Mistä olet sinä kotoisin?

Great Eng..Brit..UK-land Isles (jne) by C.G.P. Grey via Holy Kaw and @stephenfry


One of the first things you learn in Finnish language lessons is the simple question 'Where are you from?'
What people don't always understand is that may not be as straightforward a query to answer as you might think... now all I need to do is translate the video* into Finnish. Or maybe make a t-shirt of that Venn diagram.

[suomen kielien kurssissa]

• Opiskellija 1: Hei 
• Opiskellija 2:  Moi
• Missä sinä asut?
• Asun Helsingissa. Olen asunnut suomessa noin kolme vuotta.
• Mista olet sinä kotoisin? Oletko englantilainen?
• Olen englannista, mutta myös iso-brittaniasta ja brittein saarista ja u.k:sta
• Mitä!?
• Olen britti ja englantilainen kyllä. Mutta minun passini kertoo 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'
• Kirja vain sanoo 'maa: englanti, keili: englantia,  kansalaisuus: englantilainen - englannista...
• Tiedän, mutta on monimutkainen maa. 
• Sitten... oletko irlantilainen myös?
• En ole. Ihminen voi olla irlantilainen ja iso-brittanista, mutta ei aina.
• En ymmärrä sinun maa!
• Määt - monikko. OK. Sinun vuoro. Mistä sinä...
• Opettaja: Oletteko valmis seuraava harjoitus?

I wonder if there is a video to explain London, Greater London, Inner London, Central London, London Boroughs and City of London...


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* Arguably there are still a few inaccuracies in this video. Or possibly sarcasm. See the comments on 'Holy Kaw' here.

Un-boxing days

Twinkle kept out of Heisenburg's boxes

I'm sure our boxes had been breeding - there is no way we left a whole room full last year...

Although I had two weeks to do it, seeing a room full of 34 boxes, 2 chairs, 2 glass tables, 1 rug, 2 shelves, several large framed pictures, a drawing board, several portfolio cases, and a crate and several blue Ikea bags of miscellaneous 'stuff' (1950's radio anyone?) and a cat* made me think I had my work cut out for me. I actually  wondered if I would have time to visit friends in Pompey** and Town*** as promised.

Boxing Days

These are not my shoes left in a box in England...

Okay the title sounds a few weeks late* (a bit like the updating of this blog), but anyway in a few days I am heading back to Blackwater/Hawley (whichever it is - even though GoogleMaps claims it is Frogmore!) for a few weeks of sorting through boxes.  Yes these are the boxes of 'precious' items (aka junk) that got packed up over three years ago, spent over a year in storage in London, got moved to a spare room in my mother's house and have survived various attempts at selecting useful/desired things to bring over here.

Kallio snow globe

Kallion kirkko yesterday

   

It's a bit strange writing about summer (see lost posts - like you can miss them) when even in Kallio it is like being in a snow globe recently.

Lost Post 2: veden varaan

Veden Varaan was the no.1 platinum album by PMMP (2009)

Still waiting for a review from Breaking More Waves though...

 
It seems to me that the Finns have the same wary relationship to water (vesi, vetä, veden) and damp in the home as the Brits do to electricity (sähkö) - treat as a potential hazard (varaa).

In Britain we have fuses on everything, ring mains, plugs the size of a brick, and are (apparently) terrified of the thought of light switches without pull cords in our bathrooms, let alone power sockets or appliances - or at least the people who wrote our regulations were. Meanwhile we Brits seem to accept a bit of damp in our walls and when was the last time anyone in UK switched the water off to their washing machine or dishwasher between uses? And do we put our washing machine in our bathroom (with a power socket next to the shower) with a fully 'wet' i.e. tiled and drained floor just in case there is an overflow? Or on a special plastic tray for the same purpose? Back Suomessa while you can't wire a switch to a two pin plug and know which pole will be live or neutral, every kitchen sink in Finland has an extra tap or two for the washing appliances.

Lost Post 1: Rock on

Uudessa eteisessa: From Kesä10 - lost postcards

To make the point that I really could maybe have, probably, at a stretch, if I really wanted to, have found a thing or two to scrape together, to fabricate (in the very best way) the merest hint of a few lines of a post, over the last, oh let's say, six months, I'm going to have to own up to the fact that we bought, decorated and moved home back in kesäkuu (that's June for anyone who hasn't changed their date and time settings to Suomi on their computer).

Of course one advantage loss you do have of course is missing out on the excruciating exciting ... kävin K-Rautassa taas ostamaan valkoista maalata ... type blog posts.

Spies

Spies?

As the resident nerd technologically competent person I get to do exciting things for Hiiri (and actually although Konna may say otherwise I have to do the same for her too):

• Change lightbulbs & fuses
• Buy and change printer cartridges
• Reset the cable digibox when it falls over
• Get the TV off menu when the wrong button is pressed
• Upload/download photos from cameras & phones
• Install/update antivirus (and any other software) on her computer
• Put batteries in, and demonstrate the use of, any new piece of technology around the home

It also means that when Hiiri says to Konna 'Your cousin asks you can see their house on Google?', I realise that:

A) They are talking about Google Maps Street View (which is still fairly recent and hot topic of conversation around these parts);

B) Somehow Konna has never heard of it even though it was around causing controversy (yawn) in UK before we left;

C) I am going to have to show them how to use it in about 30 seconds time.

So after owning up to having already scouted my cycling route from here to town (as the Helsinki pictures seem to have been a summer afternoon) we set to 'visiting' said cousins house, Hiiri's childhood home (which is apparently a forest based on the view we could get), our current abode & Konna's childhood house (so Hiiri and Konna could complain about the owners leaving rubbish bags outside and not watering the plants). Then Konna hit on the bright idea of 'visiting' my Mum's home for Hiiri to see (as she has never visited... for real that is).

So I show the house ('Wow isn't it big and nice looking' says Hiiri to my momentary disbelief, forgetting she would not be used to the boring 60's English developer semi/detached suburban typology). Then I show my Junior school at the top of the road. Then the stereotypical english (red brick Oxford movement) spired church where my Mum is the verger. Where my Mum spends a lot of time... Where my Mum is standing outside the front door of the church apparently oblivious to the camera car... hello Mum!!

Going home?

Fish'n'chips via.

That was weird. Without thinking about it I just typed the title of this post (before I added the question mark) - I wonder if that means something? So actually our 'holiday' back in UK visiting my family is ending today, and we will be back in Finland tonight. After three weeks of unusually sunny, warm weather in Blighty, with only the first autumnal tinges showing, we will be greeted by temperatures 10 degrees cooler, and touching zero at night, and autumn in full swing... the first snow has even fallen in Lapland.

But is Helsinki 'home' now, after only fifteen months? Strangely it is Stadilainen Konna who keeps saying 'If we come back in a year's time ... we'll wish we hadn't sent six more boxes of stuff over' or '... we'll want most of this stuff that is now filling your mum's spare room'.

While I've been here I've been keen to partake in several important local cultural culinary treats:

• Battered fish and chips (not fries) with salt and vinegar - from a fish'n'chip shop, in paper
• Steak and kidney pie - mmm pastry
• 'Proper' italian style, wood oven roasted, thin crust, pizza (no Finnish kebab-shop minced-meat pies thanks)
• Sunday Roast (lamb) - cooked by my Mum (who makes fantastic crispy roasties)
• Sitting and reading the weekend papers

I've also realised that I actually missed British TV and radio (particularly radio channels that play new and current music... a radical idea that doesn't seem to have reached Finland yet).

Maybe this all explains why I managed to lose 7 kilos this summer (leading to some comedy trouser issues) not having this stuff around to eat, but I dread to think how much I've regained in the last few weeks. Back on the bike for me then until the snow comes.

Decisions decisions

Green isn't it

More on the Kela saga: Since registering unemployed a couple of months ago (which I was told I 'had' to do even though I wouldn't get any benefits from it), I have now had four Päätös (decision) letters in the last couple of weeks as well as a request for more information about the week before that.  It seems it has decided it is only going communicate with me in Finnish (as I stupidly wrote in Finnish last time), however with a bit of help from Konna I have worked out that for each 'application' you get a 'decision' response (even if you didn't know you had applied for something).  So after first being told I don't qualify for 'basic' or 'training' benefits (these are loose translations), I now have been told instead I will be getting 'integration' payments for 'foreigners joining Finnish society'. I didn't even know I had applied for it! I'm also pretty sure I will get the 'training' payments when my next language course starts now this has gone through the Työvointoimisto for approval. Not that we are talking big money here, but as my income has been zero since the end of last May it will at least help counter slightly the sizeable drain in our savings.

As it happens our savings accounts are now looking as healthy as they have ever done as we have just sold our London flat in just a month (is this a record!?). Of course in Finland the whole process would only takes a couple of days, not having our tangle of property and contract law to deal with. It is a strange feeling not having our own 'home' in London anymore, but hopefully we have made the right decision to take a decent offer now and get capital out of it to back us up if we need it, (and to stop losing money renting it out!). I can't see we would get a better offer in the next couple of years anyway, and this way we have more flexibility for what to do in the future and less risk.

I like to think I am a fairly rational and logical chap, but sometimes I do wonder at my own decision making process (the above excepted I hope!).  Currently I am on a low income, am training for a cycling event and (temporarily I hope) have a bad back and have hurt my heel.  So what I really needed to buy yesterday was a pair of running shoes, right? Right...

A taste of home

Who ate all the piirakat?

Not that I'm getting any twinges of homesickness you understand, but two tastes of home came recently.  For lunch today I cooked a home-made Steak & Kidney pie (as you can't get anything like this here) using BBC Good Food website recipe; whilst it is a bit more rustic looking that it might be, I didn't let a lack of rolling pin, pie dish or scales get in the way of tasty British stodge. Thumbs up from the Finns too.  The other taste of home? Well that came courtesy of Ruotsi (Sweden) in the shape of a visit to Ikea the other day; we could have been in Edmonton just as easily.  

As a postscript to that, we went to our local big blue and yellow box in Vantaa with Konna's isä (dad) who had unbelievably never been before! I mean is there even a house left in UK not at least half furnished from there? Maybe it is just deep seated resistance to Swedish cultural imperialism...