Beep Beep

Beep beep? I had not heard the new cell phone make a noise before. It was a text message, thankfully in English, obtainable through button mashing on an old Nokia 1100.

English appears to be the de facto second official language, appearing more often than Swedish on government and business forms and signs. As an officially bi-lingual country, government and business services are supposed to be offered in both Finnish and Swedish. But I'm told that most workers do not speak the latter. It's part of a broader policy to participate more in the global economy and society.

Street graffiti and tagging here looks no different than that found in Calgary. They've recently discovered large stickers, but I've not yet seen silver or gold markers.

Accomplished today: obtained a social security number which was required to open a bank account, signed the first of several university contracts using social security number and bank account information, applied for KELA social security and health care using social security number, applied for a tax card using social security number and salary information from the university (2 per cent raise since I was offered the position...), and signed some student housing forms from PSOAS. Remaining for tomorrow: take passport photos, obtain an identification card from the police station, inspect the student housing unit, and whatever else.

I need to obtain an identification card from the police station to apply for a credit card with the bank. The Visa debit/credit card is said to be more useful than the MasterCard in Europe except Austria.

The Tax card office asked if I wanted to participate in the Finnish social security system; but since I would be here for more than four months, I would have to participate. They said that documentation will be mailed to me by tomorrow (Tuesday). Regular mail in Finland means overnight delivery.

The Kela processing and decision will apparently take six weeks. It would be interesting if I ended up paying taxes for social services I could not use. I learned about the distinction between the "workers' health plan" and public medical system: the former is operated by the university and has some specialists on site; the latter primary health care network asks citizens to go to an assigned local facility. Both do referrals to the university hospital for more specialists,

We also met with Lori, the head of a research institute investigating arctic sovereignty and ecology. I'm told that he "somehow" obtained a copy of my CV and has taken an interest. I thank Drs. Rob Huebert, Cooper H. Langford, Richard Davis (Center for Military and Strategic Studies, and Arctic Institute of North America) for the assorted knowledge of the Arctic that I apparently gained by osmosis.

On student housing: I've been told to move into a studio, so I applied for an internal transfer to do that. PSOAS applications are more rapidly successful when requesting an unfurnished room and a furnished one. Family apartments cost around 12 euro more per month than studios, and are not limited to families.

Observations: The city has a neat parking system where drivers are issued a manual time disc used to indicate the time at which a vehicle is parked. Some parking zones are free for 30 minutes, others for up to two hours. They trust the users to do the right thing. Also, the newer downtown public parking buildings are tied electronically to road signs on the major (incoming) roads to indicate the number of available spaces before drivers must make the decision to turn.

The version of Google Chrome I downloaded to this netbook offers spell-checking in English (US) or English (AUS).

AC: +2 (hallways)