Indian Engineers pouring into Finland

The last two days has been busy looking at the issues facing Indian Engineers who are pouring into Finland, especially north Finland.

Yesterday, I had a talk with Vikas in Mumbai as he plans to come to Finland with his wife and 5 year old daughter. That is a problem as in Finland 5 year olds do not go to school, they go to Play School. This would be a problem when the child goes back to the fierce competitive life of little children there who work to a strict syllabus already from the age of 3.

I went to a school near where Vikas could find suitable accommodation, only to find it closed as the school is being renovated. I went to the International School to meet the Principal to discuss the problem, but she was away in Helsinki. I have to wait till Monday to try to find a solution.

In the meantime. I talked to my daughter, Joanna, who did her Master's thesis on Immersion learning. She suggested that the little girl be home-schooled so that she does not lose out on her status on Indian Education.

I spoke with one engineer, Raghu, who has been sent to a small town of Kajaani. He is another Keralite and hopefully I can get some locals to help him settle in.

Today I met up with 4 engineers now staying in a hotel in Oulu - Srinivasa from Vishakapatnam, Generous from Meghalaya, Seshukumar from Hyderabad and Mandar from Mumbai.

The guys are not equipped for the fast approaching winter and they did not know that if they shop in places like Stockman, their money won't go very far.

I will try to help them out next week by taking them to a few shops where they can get their necessities at reasonable prices.

(Seems there is an immediate demand to update the book "Handbook for Survival in Finland". Ilari mentioned that the book by Ildikó and him "Culture Shock Finland" is also being updated, but unfortunately they will only print that in German.)

I took my new friends to the City Goreme and introduced them to Mehmet. We had coffee and some freshly baked bread with garlic butter. As they had just had lunch, we split a vegetarian pizza amongst the four of them.

I also introduced them to Tapon of the New Bombay restaurant who is setting up a second restaurant adjacent to his present one. I am trying to convince Tapon to make it a South Indian Vegetarian restaurant as the number of vegetarians from India in Oulu is spiralling upwards.

The necessity is to find two houses for these engineers next to each other as soon as possible so that they can use a single kitchen while enjoying the luxury of two toilets. In Oulu it is quite difficult to find flats with more than just a single toilet. With all of the engineers having to set out to work at the same time, one toilet would be impractical.

One more friend will join them on Tuesday and we should have another 14 arriving later in the month.

How I wish they had an intensive orientation session BEFORE landing in Oulu. That way they could be more productive as soon as they land without going through the hardship of finding their legs in a strange environment.