Orienting to a new life in Finland

We had the good fortune to host a young Indinn student for about two months on his arrival to join Oulu University. The Northern Finland Housing Fund (PSOAS) could not offer him accommodation. 

A friend from Tampere asked us for assistance to find some accommodation for this young 17 year old boy.

We have had considerable experience in looking after visitors as over 10000 Indian IT engineers have been with us, as a commercial enterprise between 2006 to 2016.  

I remember how  IT engineers from LnT arrived in Oulu without even proper clothing. The team leader found one of our web pages and there was a call for help. 

We helped them find accommodation, (which later became known as , India House) introduced them to the flea market culture and helped them settle in. 

After that we started a commercial enterprise and it spread from Oulu to Espoo, Tampere, Helsinki, Vantaa, and also Kuopio and Raahe.

We knew they had several problems and helped most of them get through the initial phase. Simple tasks like finding and changing a fuse in an apartment could be a daunting task for someone who has no experience of the systems in Finland. 

The language was another big problem.  Opening a bank account, using cash machine machine and even filling petrol at a petrol station were new tasks for many of them.

Now we are too old to provide that sort of physical support and we are also too old to start and run a business.

I talked to Annikki about this. 

As our son had moved to his own apartment and his room was free, we offered his room for a period of two months so that the student could get his own apartment. 

As one of our guiding principle states, is to offer a helping hand to anyone who reaches out for help.

We thought that could help him in many ways as we could enjoy his company and at the same time find out how such youngsters should learn about Finnish life. 

We are two generations away and have to change our thinking frequency to understand their mindset.

We found that  youngsters are ill -equipped with information on how to cope with life in Finland.

We gave this student a copy of our out-dated 1994 book “Handbook for Survival in Finland”. 

A second student arrived soon after to stay in a nearby apartment. He had accommodation but still was raw in many other ways. 

We also gave him a copy of our book.

 But I knew the data was not complete. I also realised there were huge gaps in the information.

For instance, the very simple tradition of taking off the shoes when one enters a house, is not one that young people know or understand. 

Finnish children get educated in life as they grow up. They have school classes which tell them the essentials. Many children go to summer camps where they learn to interact with others positively.

Annikki and I decided we would put together a book about how these youngsters should be informed about important aspects of Finnish life and culture so that they do not face problems when they start their new life in Finland.

I have set up the peliminary list of chapters for the book. 

We are interested to know if any of our ethnic minority students and residents who have established themselves in Finland would like to share in this task by writing their own experiences. 

The more the merrier.

I read today that because of the spat between Canada and India the number of students likely to come to Finland is likely to rise dramatically in the coming years.

Please contact us with your offer for contribution. Whatever comes will be edited by me to fit our style. Many subjects have to be presented in a manner which is not harsh or derrogotary.

We look forward to your active participation in this project which we think is important as every arrival is an Ambassador for his country and it is important to put a good foot forward to be readily accepted into Finnish life.

Here are the India House events which helped build our community 15 years ago.

Risto Uimonen: Raise your blinds!

The other day, the Oulu local newspaper, Kaleva, carried a small news item covering a book by Professor Heikki Patomäki of Helsinki University on neoliberalism. The contents of this book follows rather closely that of David Henry’s book “A Brief History of NeoLiberalism”, which can also be referred to as Reagan Conservative Economics.




“The freedom of neoliberalism is the glory of unfettered, free market economics and the rights of corporations and financial institutions over individuals and governments. It's the freedom to fully exploit resources and workers.”

A couple of days later, the Chief Editor of the Kaleva, Risto Uimonen, wrote a scathing attack on the book, its contents, and also Professor Patomäki. Risto Uimonen was of the opinion that there was no evidence of neoliberalism in Finland and that Professor Patomäki was jousting with ghosts.

It is our opinion that Risto Uimonen is sitting in his Kaleva office room with his blinds drawn down. All he has to draw up those blinds that overlook the Höyhtyä Shopping Center on the other side of the road. If he looks out of the window he will see the backs of two offices, one which is closed while the other which is thriving by taking over the work of the office which has been closed.

There was no major outcry when that office was closed. It was the former Post Office which served a very large area in our neighbourhood as it had inherited much territory since Post Offices in various local areas had been closed.

It is strange that not even the Unions representing the workers of the Post Office were allowed to raise concerns about the handing over of their jobs to a private organisation, the R-Kioski, which is one of the cartels which skins the backs of ordinary citizens with its ridiculously high prices for day-to-day commodities.

This is one of the first steps in the dismantling of the Postal Services from a service into the neoliberal agenda of privatisation, which was the agenda formulated by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and then to Tony Blair.

"How many column centimetres of your newspaper did you give for your readers to discuss the closure of the Höyhtyä Post Office, Mr. Uimonen?"

People think that Bill Clinton was a Democrat. But the way he dismantled the media corporations in the US by getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine has been the primary reason for the concentration of the American mainstream media in the hands of 7 major corporations, whose agenda is on the opposite side of the citizens.

The neoliberalism steps in Finland have been going slowly and steadily in the hands of corrupt politicians right from the days of President Mauno Koivisto (Left 1981 - 1994) and through other Presidents, Marttti Ahtisaari (Left 1994 - 2000) and Tarja Halonen (Left 2000 - ).

There are many skeletons iin the cupboard here in Finland!

It has not mattered which coalition Government has been in power, as all of them have been equally corrupt. Barring Anneli Jäätteenmäki (Centre 2003 for a few months) who was removed from power by a bloodless coup engineered by all three major parties (supported by people such as Risto Uimonen) as she would not have permitted the growth of neoliberalism, Kalevi Sorsa (Left 1982-87), Harri Holkeri (Right 1987-91), Esko Aho (Centre 1991-95), Paavo Lipponen (Left 1995-2003), and Matti Vanhanen (Centre 2003 -) have all been part of the corrupt neoliberal agenda.

The Valko Scandal was the legacy of Kalevi Sorsa, but yet many years after that horrendous corruption issue, he was able to be appointed as Prime Minister. Harri Holkeri continued that neoliberal agenda and that was followed with great show by Esko Aho and Paavo Lipponen, who completely sidelined the people of Finland in handing over the family silver to the hands of the corporate giants.

One need only look at the Post and Telephone Department which was split into Posts and Sonera, the latter of which was handed over to the Swedes with lots of Government officials making a whole lot of money in that deal. Anyone remember the "optio" scandal surrounding Sonera?

Look at the corrupt practices in Neste (the Finnish State Oil and Polymer giant run by a third rate Diploma Engineer just because he was the son of a politician), or the corruption scandal of the Chairman of the Social Democrat Party, Ulf Sundqvist who was left scot-free after his swindling of a whole lot of money, and one realises that the neoliberal agenda which is scoffed at as being "visions of a professor" by a compliant and cooperating media editor, and one sees the cooperation between the Big Brothers in Finland walking their countrymen to the noose of neoliberalism as they undercut the power of the unions and therefore the power of the people.

Risto Uimonen - raise those blinds in your room and look out of the window to see what you choose to now ignore in the interests of your corporate colleagues!