I awoke at 4 a.m. local time (7 p.m. Mountain) to watch the results of the federal elections in Canada through my semi-reliable internet connection. In recent (mid-April) Finnish elections, the True Finns (ultra-right nationalist, anti-EU party) became the third partner in a coalition with center-left and center-right parties. They are still negotiating the power sharing arrangement. One of the big issues of the day is if and how to assist other EU countries to deal with their ongoing economic and national solvency distresses. Hopefully, Canada under an effective opposition (for the first time since the Conservatives were in opposition) will come to a similarly useful arrangement. Also, it's appearently a surprise that Canada elected its first Green MP.
The police station could not issue an identification card today because my length of stay was insufficient. They said that I have no further obligation to attempt to register as a resident of this city (since the social security number accomplishes that goal as well), and offered an alternative identity verification service to the bank. (They were unaware that Nordea had started to require ID cards to open credit card accounts, and offered an identity verification service/form for 16 euro in order to say that they've seen the same documents that I provided Nordea to open my bank account. I'm tempted to find another bank without such requirements, but that would mean deliberately using a less secure bank. These rules, I'm told, are a side effect of the banks wishing to avoid becoming entangled in the broader European financial badness, although everyone is aware that the two problems [low-level immigration banking and national solvency] and their scales are unrelated.)
H. was introduced to a new biometric fingerprint scanner in order to apply for a new passport at the same police station.
Guns and tasers: Gun crimes are on the rise, permits require membership in a gun club, there's an untapped market for electrocution weapons here.
2. Lunch buffet
Today I learned that standard lunch dining is a buffet style service in which there are three options: salad; salad and soup; salad, soup and meat. All of the above include the non-exclusive choice of water, tea, coffee, milk, lactose-free milk, other hot beverage, dessert, fruit, candy, etc. for 6-8 euro. The beef and pork stew with carrots and onions was exceptionally salty but tender, as was my colleagues' onion and potato soup (to the extent that it needed to be cut with cottage cheese to be ediable). The brownie/mousse dessert slice was exceptionally sweet (pictured: one quarter of the standard serving).
(We had lunch yesterday at a local church which operates a vegetarian lunch room with the same format. The Jasmine rice had the correct visual appearance, but no flavour, as was its accompanying curried something. The pickled garlic cloves saved the meal.) We pay up front, and then it's the honour system until one is full. I also learned that "licorice" in Finland is something much more subtle than the North American candy or baking ingredient.
Health of Fins: Due to the lack of genetic diversity, Fins are susceptible to high blood pressure and heart conditions (and allergies, and other medical issues). Therefore, the low sodium, healthy food, organic trend has been around for at least half a century. I explained that in Canada, immigrants and their offspring were statistically distinguishable from the general population on health measures, but that second- and third- generation immigrants are generally as un-healthy as the general population.
Salad bars: Every food vendor has a salad bar. Chocolate milk is not a popular concept. Soda pop and "energy beverages" are only popular among some of the youth.
3. Personal responsibility for insurability
Backstory: H. had picked up my apartment keys last Friday, and found the place a mess. Without my knowledge, she demanded that the apartment manager talk with the only tenant of the two beadroom apartment about cleaning. The apartment manager did so on Friday, and was assured by the tenant that the apartment would be cleaned by Monday when I would move in. We stopped by around noon, awaking the hung-over tenant, to find the apartment in a more than gently used state.
We returned to PSOAS to ask about further options. Upon telling PSOAS that my medical insurance may not cover my living in an apartment full of rotting clutter and fulminating alcohol remains, I was told that the idea of personal responsibility for maintaining my insurability is a foreign concept here. Knowingly moving into such a place would invalidate my eligibility for coverage, and also probably my sanity. I did not notice the WTF moment on the part of the PSOAS customer service representative, but H. told me after that she also needed to explain her previous experiences with the US health insurance system to convince the PSOAS representative that such customs are not abnormal in North America. There are apparently no free apartments this time of year, despite many students moving out. The apartment manager agreed to go back to the apartment to speak with the other tenant. *mumble mumble* something about difficult personal circumstances. He informs us that it is now in a livable condition. I expect to sign an agreement for an apartment in the newly renovated family buildings that opens June 1. Many such units open every month.
4. Social networks, STS, and technology incubation
While discussing barriers to institutional collaboration (privacy/funding/turf restrictions, etc.) I explained the basic contrasts between startup funding for new oil and gas juniors vs ICT/other startups in Calgary, the role of Calgary Technologies Inc. and the Petroleum Club (read some of papers co-authored with the ISRN Calgary team about this at http://people.ucalgary.ca/~bali). I asked if such contrasts have analogues in Oulu. I was told no, but that I could be a leading scholar in Finland in this area were I to pursue it. I'm cautiously flattered, on the assumption that those expressions did not lose something in the translation. On the other hand, I was also told that I'm also starting at two pay categories above most PhD students owing to my publication record. During our bureaucratic travels, I've seen at least three technology incubator buildings all larger than CTI and ARTC combined. I will have to look into this some more.
Canada-Finland relations outside of hockey:
Observations: I tried to configure Blink (http://icanblink.com, an open source soft SIP client) to work with my time-tested les.net account via panoulu to dial from a calgary number. No joy on the microphone, although I could hear the other side.
Finnish language [Nokia] cell phone: difficult to text with, especially in T9 mode. Also, in a city in which 1/3 of the population works for Nokia (of whom up to 3,000 have just been laid off), the iPhone is relatively popular.
The tax card did not arrive today in my student accommodation mailbox; I'm not disappointed.
On privacy: I'm told that some of the privacy strangeness I've observed were mistakes on the part of some university administrators who were caught up (such as listing the names and qualifications of the other candidates for the position I was offered) in the reorganization. I take this information at face value.
AC: +1 (spoke a young English, directed us to the mail boxes)
Food review: "kabab" at "Chinese Fast Food and Merikosken Grilli"
Every food vendor (except Subway) in a 200m radius offered "kabab", so naturally I walk into the only Asian fast food place I've seen, and order a meal of it. The staff of two were polite, butchering the Finnish names for their food items as much as I was, and boxed half a dozen take out meals in short order before my eat-in dish arrived three minutes later. The venue was elsewise full of dine-in customers at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday so I grabbed the only free table. A quarter pound of tasefully warm unseasoned beef-esque meat strips arrived on top of half a pound of generously MSG'ed fries from clean oil, and another quarter pound of salad parts, all lightly topped in ketchup and mustard from one-gallon pump bottles behind the counter. The portion size did not disappoint, but I expected at least one of the sauces to be something like mayo or donair sauce, or something other than ketchup and mustard. The ketchup should have at least tasted like tomato and not coloured sugar, while the mustard needed to have more sharpness than coloured honey.
The several other eat-in customers had ordered equally Chinese-based (rice/noodles/stirfry) meals and kabab-based plates, and the single bamboo plant on the window ledge had been gathered many months of dust, so this was certainly not an unpopular venue.
Perhaps I'm just spoiled by the week of well-nuanced food in Calgary prior to my departure, but I do not get the sense that the basic salt, sweet, sour, and bitter flavours are used in any way other than insignificant or overwhelming. I'd be disappointed if Hannu were the only Finn I met who understood flavours.
(Merikosken is an area of the city just north of downtown. The Chinese portion of their sign contains a dragon followed by two glyphs in different typefaces. The first glyph meaning "little" is in a caligraphic style but with an unusually elongated central down-stroke. The second glyph is in a modern sans-serif contains a seven- to nine- stroke [probably not simplified Chinese] radical I do not recognize [it's not remotely close to the glyph for "dragon"] next to a four-stroke radical mis-shapen for "sun", "moon", or "say". The Asian staff did not speak any of the Chinese dialects with which I'm even remotely familiar.)
AC: +2
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