An Englishman in New York Finland

Tuesday, 25th September, 2007

So things have gone pretty well over the last week. A few days after we got married, we took our wedding certificates to the police station so I could apply for a permanent residency permit. I was a little nervous about it, worrying about all the things that could go wrong. But apart from the woman behind the counter who was a bit grumpy (I didn't see a single police officer in the station, they were all admin types) it all went smoothly. We picked up my residency paper the next day and took that to the magistrates office so I could apply for a social security number. I just had to fill in a form and produce the documents I'd gotten from the cop shop. The lady at the magistrates office is really nice, she's helped us out with quite a few things. Anyway, even though she said it could take up to a week to get the number, it actually arrived in the mail the very next day! So now I'm legally entitled to all the rights of a genuine Finnish person. Which means I can now get my insulin and other medical things for free like I could in England. I just need to have a doctor look at me first. That appointment isn't until the middle of October, but the health centre said that if I start to get low on things, I should just give them a call and they'll make sure I don't run out of anything. So that's one huge thing less to worry about. Although I brought as much medical supplies as I could carry when I moved to Finland, so I should have plenty to last until then.

The other thing we needed to do was go to the unemployment office to register there. So we saw a guy yesterday and we talked a little about the three year integration program I'm hoping to go on. He said that the first year Finnish course they send you on is usually 5 days a week and 6 hours a day, so I'm thinking that if I still can't speak Finnish after a year of that, then there's no bloody hope for me lol! So I need to go back to the office for a proper interview once I've been processed into their system. Not sure when that will be but it should be just a couple of weeks.

It's my birthday tomorrow. It'll be the first one I get to spend with Kati, and if I'm not mistaken, it'll be the first one where I won't see my mum. Which does make me a little bit sad.

Anyway, here's a list of stuff I do and don't miss from England:

Things I miss

1. My mum.
2. My puppy. I miss Lucy a lot.
3. My friends.
4. Owning a car and driving everyday.
5. Driving on the left, as changing gears with my right hand still feels weird!
6. A steady income.
7. Watching TV that doesn't have Finnish subtitles on it.
8. Being able to understand everything that's written down or said to me.
9. Stores that are open 24 hours a day and on Sundays too.
10. ITV's F1 coverage. I miss learning things from them and Martin Brundle's grid walk before each race.
11. Being able to buy wines and spirits from a supermarket and not having to go to a special alcohol store.
12. Little chocolate biscuit bars, like those Rocky's and Breakaways and Penguins. You just don't get anything like that over here.

Things I don't miss

1. My job. It sucked.
2. Tim Halstead. He was, and is, Tesco's and the world's biggest twat.
3. Getting up at 5am.
4. Traffic jams. Sometimes it would take me more than 20 minutes to drive the 2 1/2 miles from work.
5. Random violence in the town.
6. Football 'fans.'
7. Shit railways. Finnish trains are much better and so is the service.
8. The red tape I had to go through if I wanted to do ANYTHING official.
9. The view from my street. If I went outside in England I would see cars, houses and roads. If I go outside in Finland, I see all those things too, but I also see forests. Miles upon miles of pine trees, just a few hundred meters from my flat.

Anyway, thanks to Nick, Mark (I hope you two start blogging again soon) and Kati for their comments.

~ Graeme

I'm back!

Friday, 21st September, 2007

So I made it back to the net with a new site and server, but the same old content. Not everything works yet. The archive is still down and will take a long time to come back up. There's over four years of blogging that needs all the links changing before they can be upload. And I still need to up date the 'about me' section, and the links page needs some work doing to it. But all the major links work and the theme should now be running throughout the web page. I've chosen the city of Jyväskylä as my new theme. It's my new home and I like it quite a lot. There are about a million trees and I'm not exaggerating when I say we have about 60 lakes in the Jyväskylä area!

The following text is taken from my most recent Live Journal entry. Also, thanks to Mark and Nick for dropping by and leaving comments on there!

The Wedding

So yeah, I'm a married man now. I expected to feel different some how, but I don't at all really. It just feels like a natural step, rather than a big one. But I guess in a way, moving to Finland is a far bigger change than getting married!

We rented a car on the Thursday to pick up my mum and uncle David from the airport in Tampere, which is just over 150km from Jyväskylä where me and Kati live. We rented a B class car because they wouldn't have lots of luggage and B class cars have five doors. But because we'd just recently rented from them before, Hertz gave us a class upgrade to a C class Citroen C4, which was a really nice car, with all digital displays, and only charged us for an A class car! So it was a double upgrade really. Can't go wrong with that. Well, you can actually. Or at least the car can lol. Two minutes down the road and the car starts beeping at us and telling us to stop as the engine temp was too high. So we turned the car around and went back to Hertz. I was worried then because this is only a tiny little office in the centre of the city, and I didn't know how long it would take for them to get us a new car, or even if they COULD! But they did, and with zero fuss. There was another car there, a Renault Megan Estate, and they gave us that. Although I didn't like it as much as the C4, it was still a nice car to drive despite its size, and there was tons of space in the back for two adults. Later on, when I looked at the paper work, it showed that we ordered a B class, were delivered a J class, and charged for an A class! So it all worked out quite well in the end.

It was nice to see some of my family again. I'd spoken to my mum on msn a couple of times while my NTL account was still active, but that expired on the 14th of September, so I'm hoping she'll get the net herself so I can stay in touch better than with just text messages or the occasional, expensive phone call.

The day of the wedding was quite stressful. We wouldn't need the car any more that day, and we'd only rented it for 24 hours. So I drove Kati to her hair appointment then dropped off the car and caught a bus home. The busses are quite good here. It comes every half an hour or there abouts, and it only takes five minutes to get from the flat to the city centre. When I got back home, and made sure everything was tidy and that the nice table cloth was on the table as everyone who was going to the wedding, my mum, uncle, Kati's parents, two sisters, a brother in law, a grandmother and one friend were all coming back to the flat for cake and coffee after the wedding meal.

Before the wedding though, it's Finnish tradition to have a photo shoot done. So I met Kati there, taking with me her dress and everything we'd need. I got a taxi though as I didn't want to take the bus with all that! Having all those photos taken made me feel like a male model showing off a cheap suit for a catalogue lol. Kati looked lovely though. We get the finished pictures in about a week.

The wedding itself was quite short, taking less than ten minutes. It was done in both Finnish and English for the benefit of all, but the guy doing it had quite a strong accent and wasn't the easiest to understand! But my lines were pretty short, so I didn't really need to lol.

Then we went for a nice meal, which Kati's dad paid for. Can't have been cheap buying food and drink for 11 people! Then again, some weddings you need to do it for a hundred, so he can't really complain ;o)

Then we all came back to our flat, and it was the first time most people had seen it. I think only Kati's parents had seen it when they delivered some furniture for us before we moved in. It all went quite well. My uncle is quite the talker, so he was talking to Kati's dad for ages, with the help of Kati's sister Suvi, who happens to be an English teacher.

Then after a little while, everybody went home, and it was just me, the wife and my mum and uncle, and that was more enjoyable as we could all relax a lot more then. I didn't need to entertain anyone or whatever. Then they went back to their hotel to change and we met them in the city a little while later for some drinks. It was a nice day.

And here are a few pictures from the day:

~ Graeme