Result is out !

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I had written in my several posts about the two exams that I had to write on June 11th in Stockholm. Well, the results are out and I passed both the exams, there are three more papers to be cleared before I could get the certification. This was the first time I was writing exam after completing my studies two years back. The two 3 hours session on the same day was tiring but the result made up for it.

I got the result by post yesterday but there was only one envelope containing the result of only one paper , this made me bit apprehensive about the result of second one, more so since the second paper was bit tough and confusing. The first thing that I did this morning was to call the office about my result, the lady told I have cleared it and then I was relieved. Today evening when I reached apartment from work I saw the other envelope. Strange thing that both the envelopes were sent together and they got separated at their destination.

If I clear all the five papers and get the certification then it will be one good thing about my stay in Finland. Anyway tomorrow I need to go to the police station for getting my Residence Permit extended by one more year, the present one will expire on 8th August. I have got all the relevant supporting documents from office; let’s see how much time they take for extending it.

Weather is behaving quite strange these days, it will rain all day and by evening the rain will subside and then Sun will be out.

29th June

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I have still not written few posts which I wanted to write. Actually right from the last weekend, this was a three days extended weekend due to midsummer holiday, my conscience was pricking me. For the past two weeks I had not done any work in office. I got busy with the exam, then went to Italy and when I came back I got only two days in that week. There are lot of things to do so last Thursday I made a mental note of things which were pending. I hope I will complete all of them by this Friday and then my conscience will not prick for not having worked for the past two weeks.

People in Finland are taking summer break, most of them have already gone. I find this quite interesting, whole of the country going on summer break during mid june to mid august. In my country we have summer breaks for schools and colleges but never heard of five weeks summer break from work. We were discussing the amount of paid leave that each one of us get, we also get thirty days of paid leave but rarely does anyone take them at a stretch, even if someone does it is something like one person in the whole office, not like everyone would be going on leave during summers. I think it is Scandinavian phenomenon and I have also heard that tax department also reduces the tax rate to 50% for the month of summer, so more money to enjoy your holidays.

I guess whole of the Finland would be dormant now, just essential works going on, things will be fine by August end but how long ? It won’t be three months after which again holiday season will start which will go on till mid January. Anyway I would be working through this whole summer, I would be saving all my holidays for the time around November when I will go to my country during the festival of Diwali (hopefully), it is something like five years when I was at home in Diwali. We are having rainy days for all the three days in this week and rainy days somehow makes me home-sick.

I will try to put up those pending posts. Till then here is a bit of statistics from “nationmaster”

Number of days not worked for every 1000 salaried employees.

Top 10 countries

1. Iceland 367 days
2. Spain 316 days
3. Norway 239 days
4. United States 163 days
5. Finland 126 days
6. Canada 125 days
7. France 117 days
8. Ireland 72 days
9. Australia 61 days
10. Italy 59 days

Yeah Finland is right there at no 5

Back !

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I am back from Italy!

The seven day vacation trip to Italy ended on Tuesday midnight. I saw many places, can’t recall how many churches,museums, wonders and thousands of paintings. I met different kinds of peoples from different places in this world, tasted different kinds of foods and traveled on different kinds of vehicles.

Italy is an awesome country, with loads of history behind any monument which you would come across and all sorts of big names with it. I saw things about Galileo, Macchiavelli, Raphael, Michelangelo, Casanova, Leonardo da Vinci, Pope.

The trip was like this, I spent two days in Venice, a day each in Florence and Pisa and last two days in Rome. It was so hot in Italy and I got massive sunburns on my face, hand and shoulders. It was difficult even to put on a shirt over me but slowly things are getting better. I never missed Finland this much before, the cold winds and sunless days of Finland, the peace and empty places. Undoubtedly this was not the best time to visit Italy considering the temperature and the huge presence of tourists, but when one is working there isn’t much flexibility in choosing dates.

Things went well and I would remember it for many years to come and more so when I see the 350 odd pictures that I captured with my camera. I had some first time experiences as well like the airlines misplacing my baggage, luckily it happened when I came back to Helsinki or else if it would have happened to me in Venice then it would have posed few more problems.

I will try to upload the pictures to the space that Canon has provided and then I will share it for someone who might wish to see them. I will write a post about each of my days in Italy and put them here.

Globalisation

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This is about my Stockholm trip. I reached Stockholm at 6.30 am, got a shock due to cold weather (9C) and rain. Of course 9C should not have shocked me after I saw Minus 23 C, but when I left Finland, it was warm and sunny so I was expecting that in Sweden too.

On setting foot in Stockholm, you will notice the difference, something which will tell you that you are not in Finland. The bus drivers, the ticket clerk at train station all will speak English. I had to go to the other side of city and I had to reach there at 8 am. I was a bit apprehensive whether I will reach there on time or not, but Stockholm has such an extensive network of Metro or underground train (they call it “tunnelbana”) that it is quite easy to reach any part of the city in very less time. Only thing you need to find out which metro goes there, which again is not difficult due to the maps which clearly show the metro lines. When I bought the ticket, the ticket clerk gave a map also, which had details about the metro routes.

I reached the examination center, which was the executive block of the KTH University and the exam started. When the test manager came to me to get my signature on the attendance sheet, she checked my passport for identity verification and then she exclaimed “An Indian living in Finland and writing exam in Stockholm!!”. She was bemused while I thought that this is called “Globalization”. It was after a long time I was writing the exams, there were few other people also and one strange thing I noticed, all of them had stacked, coffee, coke, apples and banana at their desks for the during-exam-refreshments! I was surprised; I have written so many exams but never saw this!

I had two sessions of three hours each, by 4 pm when the exam finished I was totally tired, came out and went to a café for some snacks and tea and then proceeded to see around Stockholm (details about this in other post). One thing that was again different in Stockholm was the Swedish Kroner, anything that you do the price will be in excess of 50 Kroners. Being in Finland for the past so many months I don’t have the habit of paying for stuff in terms of fifties. In the café I had a cup of Black English tea and one kind of cake and I paid 76 Kroner!! Expensive eh!

The return trip of cruise was more of pleasure than the onward trip as this time I didn’t have the exam tension (will write about the cruise in different post). I reached Turku at 7.35 am and then took the bus to Hameenlinna, most of the time I was sleeping in the bus. I got awake by the ring of my cell phone, something which brought me back into the real life of work and Hameenlinna, and it happened as the bus was entering the limits of Hameenlinna.

On Wednesday I am again flying to Italy, so if I don’t get time to post more about Stockholm trip, I will do so after coming from Italy, combined with the posts about my trip in Italy.

Stockholm

I am in a hurry.I am leaving for Stockholm in few minutes, will come back on Sunday afternoon. Wish me luck!

Enterprise Solution

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I was thinking on this while walking to my apartment from work. . Today most of the organization has implemented what is called as “Enterprise solutions”, the market is booming for companies which are providing product for these solutions and those service firms who are implementing and maintaining it. On the face of it these solutions have made life much easier for us when we deal with banks, post offices or car manufacturing companies. Things look fine from this perspective, but for those organization that are using it, is Enterprise solutions implementation a “win-win” situation?

Most of the organizations have many of these solutions from different vendors; many implemented it just because their competitor had got it, or just cause the pressure was on the CIO for greater automation within the organization. I have read lots of stories where these solutions have eaten away the profits and the total cost of ownership became an operational burden.

If I take the example of “Toyota” and other vehicle manufacturing companies then the fact is that Toyota has invested least in IT than its competitors but gets most value of it. Where does the difference lie? One of the reasons is that companies fail to realize that IT is not a solution, not a new method to do your business, but it is a tool to realize your solution. Until and unless you have a solution, employing these Enterprise solutions is of no use. If you have a business solution then even Abacus can be used for realizing that solution. If the solution is to make cars more efficiently then IT is going to help you translate this solution and not present a solution. The way IT has helped is that it has freed the shackles of our imagination and innovativeness. Today we can think of a business solution where we need to collect information from various sources and process them in a short time frame because we have greater processing capabilities.

The use of Enterprise solutions should be within the ambit and inline of the Strategic Business Plan, only then the full potential of the solution can be achieved and return on investment can be realized.

I should stop developing on this topic now, I am lagging behind my studies and I have only one day left for my exams.

Joke

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The intricacies of manufacturing process were driving me nuts, so this link sent in the mailing list of expats here, was a refreshing break. It contains jokes about the Finns, which are all hilarious. I will post one of the joke here which I thought was the best one. Well my Finnish brethren should not get offended due to this, it is just a joke and yet if someone gets offended put a comment and I will remove it.

“A guy sitting at an airport bar in Atlanta noticed a beautiful woman sitting next to him. He thought to himself, "Wow, she's so gorgeous she must be a flight attendant. But which airline does she work for?"
Hoping to pick her up, he leaned towards her and uttered the Delta slogan, "Love to fly and it shows?"
She gave him a blank, confused stare and he immediately thought to himself, "Ooh shit, she doesn't work for Delta." A moment later, another slogan popped into his head. He leaned towards her again, "Something special in the air?"
She gave him the same confused look.
He mentally kicked himself, and scratched American Airlines off the list. Next he tried the United slogan, "I would really love to fly your friendly skies?"
This time the woman looked irritated at him, "What the fuck do you want?"
The man smiled, then slumped back in his chair, and said: Aha, Finnair!"

I guess this joke must be floating around with the name being changed for different airlines. More Finn jokes can be found here.

I can vouch that Finnair is not like that, I have traveled once in Finnair from Paris to Helsinki and believe me the 2.5 hours journey was one of the best. It was my third flight in the last 12 hours, I was tired and sick with pounding headache. Immediately after take off the hostess came with drinks and I asked her that if she can give me a pill for my headache, she gave me a tablet of panadol. I then took a half hour nap and felt much relived. She came back asked how I was feeling and got me a hot cup of tea. Needless to say rest of the journey was also pleasant.

I traveled once more with "Blue1", which is another Finnish airline and had a good experience with it as well. The hostess were all nice and none as mentioned in the joke. Infact when she brought the dinner, she said that there was special vegetarian meal for us!. We were surprised, because we didn’t mention about it as we had booked the ticket through Internet. But it seems the airlines people knowing that we both were Indians made it a vegetarian meal.

So there is nothing that I have against Finns, infact after living in here for the past 8 months now, I have developed a bonding with Finland. When I am in some other country in Europe and see some Finn or hear about Finland, I get the same feeling as I get for my own country. I don’t know how long I will be in Finland but whatever time I spend here will be a memorable (already eventful) part of my life.

June

Don't have anything specific to write, so there is no heading. I am having pounding headache right now, which has sort of ruined my whole evening. Today had a four hour conversation on phone which caused this headache. These days I am keeping busy so unable to post on daily basis and even if I have something interesting to blog, I forget them the second day.

Suddenly the work pressure has increased and then I have this exam next weekend in Stockholm for which I have to study. Overall I am busy till 21st June, after exam I have decided to take a vacation and would be in Italy for about a week and come back on 21st June. Luckily that weekend is an extended weekend due to Midsummer holiday and would give me the much needed 24 hour sleep.

So now we are in the month of June, how quicky the past 5 months passed away, those days of winter, the empty trees, the snow covered streets,gloves and the frozen lakes. Today I saw a beautiful picture of Hameenlinna with green trees and green grass in the daily newspaper " Hameenlinan sanomat ". I could make that it was saying the summer has made Hameenlinna green. When I get free after 21st June, I will also take the picture of the same place and keep for me to look during the winter times, if I am here this winter too.

I have also decided to give a new look to my blog and proof read the past entries, earlier I was using lot of those "MSN English" which we normally use during Instant Messaging, I need to edit them. Some good soul pointed couple of months back, how stupid they look and since then I stopped using that kind of English. It also helps that I stopped chatting from the start of this year, so don't use that kind of English any more.( Thanks - the good soul for correcting my langauge)

Let's see, how many things I do after I am free from 21st June, atleast I will blog everyday. I have decided to maintain daily account of my visit of Italy and even I don't get time to post them, will write them in paper and post later ( yeah I am not carrying my laptop to Italy, it is a vacation and I am going alone).

Even I don't blog everyday but I spend atleast an hour to read the blogs where I am frequent.