B - Crawley

iPhoto

Monday, 11. June 2007, 13:54:47

Macs have this picture utility called iPhoto on them, and I've just imported the 4020 pictures I have from my time in Finland. As each picture is loaded by the program it flashes across the screen, showing me a quick glimpses of all my happy memories from my time here.

I'm sure the developers meant for it to look cool, not moving, but actually it's pretty emotive. When I get the time (ha ha ha) I'm tempted to write a program that will do that, and then give it to people for free.

I tend to take a lot of pictures of the same thing, like four or five shots of a subject and then pick the good ones out, so every now and then there is a little bit of animation as someone's face appears and then smiles. Very cool. I am *so relieved* that I didn't lose the pictures. How did people live before information technology?

This is one of the first pictures I took in Finland (actually it's the second). It's looking out of one of the student flats across Yliopistokatu. The sun is coming from the northwest, which puts the time at about, what, 8pm?

The official offer letter from my new company arrived today, so I've been filling that in and will send it back tomorrow. I've just booked my flight home. I am leaving on the 27th at 12.55. Needless to say on a jet plane - a blue one.

Kiss me and smile for me.

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Pictures, ha

Sunday, 10. June 2007, 08:11:19

My first disagreement between me and my lovely new Mac – Macs aren’t particularly kind to FAT32 hard drives, and, if for whatever reason there is a power outage on the external drive while the Mac is using it the file allocation table gets creamed, and you lose all of your data. Restoring the data is a hard, if not impossible task. I’ve got a couple of tricks left to try to see if I can get it back, but I’m not holding out much hope anymore. Luckily all the important files are still on the old puter, but I have lost all my pictures from the last three years, which is annoying. Luckily a lot of the good pictures have been sent out to numerous other places and it’s just a matter of going round and picking them out again. I’m still hopeful that I can get some of them back still, although we shall see. If nothing by today then I’ll give up and move on. I’m reminded to be less blasé about data security – I was being pretty reckless by totally deleting the pictures of the laptop before they were safely kept elsewhere. I’m an IT professional, I should have known better.

In many ways it’s a good thing, as I tend to carry around a lot of clutter with me – losing 8,000 pictures that I would otherwise have held onto unto death means less clutter, and I can focus on keeping better pictures in the future, weeding out the less important ones. Still a bit galling though. Ouch!

This is a picture of Ellu from last night. When it got late and a bit cooler thousands of mosquitoes descended on us and we had to cover up or get bitten. I think I have about 4 or 5 bites on my legs this morning, so I got away with it quite lightly.

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Ophiuchius

Saturday, 9. June 2007, 08:40:53

Partly because this is a new blog, and partly because I am (basically) unemployed, I’ve made one post every day here. Even though there’s almost no one reading it. I don’t think that I can keep that up for long, and certainly not when I have this new job.

It’s a lovely day in Oulu, the sun is shining and the weather is nice. We are in the 24-hour sunlight stage at the moment. It’s not technically midnight sun as the sun dips below the horizon every day. We aren’t far north enough for genuine midnight sun, but it’s still pretty impressive anyway. Pretty lousy if you want to go out stargazing though - basically only one star is visible.

Picture taken from “Astronomy Picture of the Day” – one of the top nerd sites on the web, at http://apod.nasa.gov. This picture was published on 4th June, and is by the Japanese photographer Takayuki Yoshida. It’s the Reflection Nebula near Ophiuchius. Ophiuchius is visible in Oulu January to April, and is to the left and slightly below Hercules.

The link between the picture and my life is tenuous. I have mostly given up smoking now, but have been under some stress in the last week. I went out drinking with a friend last night, and it was all that I could do to resist smoking her cigarettes. I think I must have had about 5 or 6, seriously contributing to this morning’s hangover (as well as various other factors that will kill me). The dust clouds in the picture are millions of light years across, and are made up of particles that are about the size of the particles in cigarette smoke. Smoke beyond measure – how tiny our lives are.

It would probably be more fitting to post pictures of the incredibly abundant flora that has blossomed in Oulu in the last two weeks than pictures of distant nebulae and dust clouds, but I was too tired and emotional by the time I came home. I did head home at midnight, and it was light (if not sunny),but I didn’t stop to take any good pictures. I’m at a friends’ barbecue tonight. Will take more pictures but will not drink so much.

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Ferreros all round.

Friday, 8. June 2007, 14:47:50

On top of the packing now, and things are well underway. Took some time out of my busy schedule (ha ha) to meet the Lady Mayoress of London (no less) on an official visit to Oulu this morning - I gather the current Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress are also Friends of Finland. That’s nice.

In the picture: (l to r) Lady Mayoress Lesley Stuttard, Tiina Järvelaid (OIWC), Peter Halliday (City of London), Mrs Pirjoriita Laajava (the Wife of the Finnish Ambassador to the United Kingdom), Jean Slate (British Embassy, Helsinki) and Marion Eichorn (OIWC). Picture by me =)

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[Problem Solved]

Thursday, 7. June 2007, 17:02:27

Shortly before they fired lots of people, my former employer Mentor Graphics ESD unveiled their new advertising slogan: [Problem Solved]. The idea was that Mentor Guys where so helpful and had such a can-do attitude that with MGC, all your problems would be solved in the twinkling of an eye. There was some truth to this to, as most of them where.

The same day our corporate advertising t-shirts arrived – not the most fanciest ever, but with [Problem Solved] printed on the front and the Mentor logo on the back.

A couple of days later Green Hills Inc., one of Mentor’s rivals, unveiled their new slogan, and it was…

“Problem Solved”

I’m sure the Green Hills guys are just as helpful as MGC, only they still work for Green Hills, that’s all. MGC ESD fired a load of people shortly afterwards: Problem Solved.

I’ve been getting more and more annoyed with the British Shipping companies that I am trying to get quotes from. They just don’t want to let me know how much my small move will cost. Last night inspiration came to me: try the Suomen Posti, the Finnish Post Office. All the pricing information was on their website. I called in today to verify this – the price may come up slightly higher than I had anticipated but not terrifyingly higher. The nice lady even explained that it is also possible to arrange for the Suomen Posti to come out and collect the parcels as well, for a moderate fee.

[Problem Solved]

A winter shot - close up of the trees over the road from the Kemintie (Pohjois) bus stop, Oulu, on 13th March 2007, the day before I got fired.

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Shippers suck

Wednesday, 6. June 2007, 16:49:40

Getting a quote to ship things is a nightmare - I have one quote from a British company, although I would need to contact them to amend the weight being shipped and discuss it a little more. I have also been talking to Voovit, who pride themselves on their simplicity and ease of use.

Simple is a word which can not be used to describe Voovit. I have been emailing them back and forth for the last two days, trying to get a ball-park figure for shipping things to the UK. But they just won’t give me any information! It’s really not hard - all I want is in idea of how much it will cost, but after two days the most I can get is that using their boxes will cost me £85, and the most any one box can weigh (irrespective of size) is 30kg. What a fucking useless company.

This whole leaving home thing sucks. The worst thing is that now I am whining like a Brit over stupid things, like not being able to ship any of my material posessions to the UK. I think it's best just to pack up some of it - as much as I can carry - and then just give the rest away.

I saw these scooters in a shop in town today. They are very pink.

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Macs are good

Tuesday, 5. June 2007, 21:04:59

I just got me a new Mac.

It’s the first Mac I ever had, and now I am thinking of all the years that I wasted on Windows and Linux machines – this is the nicest computer I have ever had!

My new machine (Tarja, to those of us who understand that computers have souls and need names) is a pretty attractive piece of hardware – a MacBook, don’t know the model number but it is one of the basic ‘only 2 GB dual core' ones. And the operating system is lovely – you just switch it on and use it, no hassles, no restarts, none of the traditional Windows arseing around that you usually have to go through. Granted, I’ve only had it for one day and in a couple of years time I may not feel the same about it, but for now, I can safely say that this is a lovely machine. ☺

I got the Mac in Finland. It would have been cheaper to get it in the UK, but I wanted one with a Finnish keyboard. Partly because the Finnish keyboard is slightly easier for European languages, with keys for ¨, ^, ´and `(eg ö, ô, ó and ò), partly because I am used to it, although a lot of the ‘used to it’ factor is lost by virtue of it being a Mac. Mostly I’d have to admit that I got the Finnish keyboard because I really like the country.

At the moment I am spending not as much time as I should do on trying to find and book a shipper for my meager (hem hem) personal effects. I’ve contacted a few, but only had a response from two. One of them is slightly more approachable than the other, although it can be said that they are both doing my head in a little bit. But hopefully by midday tomorrow (UK time, which is 2pm Finntime) I’ll have something sorted. Still haven’t heard anything more from the new company though, so still no actual start date. This moving house/moving country thing sucks, especially when you don’t really want to be moving city, and especially when you aren't hearing much about when. Perkele!!!

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Another new blog.

Monday, 4. June 2007, 14:31:01

This would be my third new blog site in the space of a year. I decided to move from MySpace because it’s starting to get on my tits, so to speak. I’ve been an Opera user for ages - since Opera 4, so it’s all good

Brief explanation for the pompous title (Oulusta - Englantiin: the adventures of an exexpatriate, in case I have changed it later):

I am an expatriate living in the city of Oulu, in north Finland. It’s my favourite place in the world. I love the city of Oulu and can’t imagine being happy anywhere else. I belong here.

BUT, the only concrete thing that I have here (apart from lots of friends) is my job. I’m a computer programmer, a career that I have put a lot of work into and which I love doing. I always said that if I didn’t have a job, I’d move somewhere else and get a job - I have put too much into my career to abandon it yet.

The company who I worked for closed the office in Oulu, and I was in the exact situation that I worried about. I sent out my CV to about 30 companies and got two interviews and no job offers - pretty feeble response. My [former] employers weren’t the only people closing either, there have been a couple. I don’t think it’s a crisis yet, but I do think that Finnish employers are being a bit more choosy about who they employ, ie shying off foreign women.

I realised that I may have to leave the country, and in preparation for this sent two exploratory applications to the UK. That got me four interviews pretty quickly - one of which I declined - and, after a week of interviews in the UK, offers for two positions. Still waiting for a response from one company.

I hate to leave, but I don’t have much choice here - either turn into a bitter, unemployable expat, or repatriate for a little while before coming back in a few years when I shall be a lot better off. Hard decision to make, but the career has to win out, I don’t think I could live with myself if I let that all go.

Leaving the place I belong for somewhere else - I shall be an expatriate from somewhere that I am an expatriate, well, sort of. I expect the sadness for going will fade over time. If not, then I’ll come back because I’ll have to.

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