"Findians" gets hijacked

Findians was a word I coined 42 years ago when I, an Indian, married Annikki, a Finn.

My first novel, yet unpublished, was written in 1975 and was entitled "The Adventures of the Findians".
I started a company in Finland in 1992 and called it Findians Ltd.
Findians Briefings was first an in-house monthly newsletter which started with a circulation of 110 readers and soared to 6000 in the matter of a half a dozen issues.
This was converted into a fortnightly webletter in 1994 with a worldwide readership of around 80000 by the end of 1999.
The domain name findians.com was registered in India in 1999 and had its server in Canada when I was threatened to have my internet access in Finland cut for writing the truth about the levels of corruption in Finland.

Finally in the middle of 2003, when spammers overran that domain name, I was forced to close it but never the "findians" concept which has been active right through till today. I stopped several who tried to usurp that name over the years.

Imagine my surprise when I found that someone had hijacked the "findians" name in their URL http://www.findians.co.uk/



Interesting development!

A number of questions arise.

As Findians, Annikki and I (who have been described as "anarchist hippies" by the usurper) stood for justice, freedom of speech, fighting for the rights of minorities, good schooling, promotion of the alma maters of school and college, spreading of information of all facets of life, religious tolerance, secularism, nationalism, etc., etc.

Will the new "findians" continue to promote these time-honoured family values or superimpose their own values under this banner.

A "findians" named or linked site usually goes the top of the search engines in a matter of hours simply because the enormity of links to that word and the previous 5000+ sites.

We hope the person who has taken this name is not just to jump on to the band wagon but intends to promote the values of "THE FINDIANS". For the persons information:

The Findians Google Group is still in existence.



The Findians current phone number is still being used by me: +358 8 531 5335.

And many of the articles and web pages that started under the Findians domain name have beem moved our personal webs servers of "jmatthan", "amatthan" as well as "findians" on netplaza.fi!

So, I do say that someone using our trade-marked name without as so much as a "by your leave" is a most most interesting development!

Indian Twins to the North Pole

Recently, I read a request for the loan of an Indian Flag as someone wanted to take it to the North Pole.

As Atul had brought 2 Indian Flags during his last visit to India, I asked him to loan it to this guy.

Venkat is part of a pair of identical twins from Hyderabad. His twin (Lakshman) is a cosmetic skin care scientist working in Denmark since 2001. Venkat came to Finland in 2003.

The only difference is that they have chosen different fields in their career paths. Venkat is into engineering and Lakshman is into microbiology.

They both talk, look, walk, eat, travel..the same.

Their main hobbies are travelling....around the globe in their free time.

These three photos taken when they took the flag from Oulu at the northernmost land point in Norway (Svalbard) prove that these two boys are identical.







[Photos courtesy Venkat (copyright).]

Thank you boys for carrying the flag from Oulu to the North Pole. And a special thanks to Atul for his generosity!

Who is reading this blog?

Recently, I wrote about a dear couple who were my dearest friends when I lived in Madras. Suddenly, today, I saw a comment by their daughter, whom I have not seen or heard of or from for the last 10 or more years.

It is important that when writing a blog that one understands that Google Search has become so invasive, that if you mention someone, it is more than likely that your views will be read by that person.

Sadly, I am a person who writes from the heart. If I dislike someone or their ways, I write my piece as truthfully as I can see the situation. If I like someone, I say it out loud.

If anyone who does not like what I write contradicts me, I give that person the fullest ability to publicly air their views.

In my 15 years on the web, there have not been more than 2 occasions where someone has objected to what I have written. I have always been able to justify my views.

It was so lovely to get a comment posted on my blog from Bobos, the daughter of Titi and Prem. It raised a lump in my throat and tears welled in my eyes to think that "little girl" still remembered me!

A Wasps' Nest

Have you ever wondered how a wasps' nest is built.

If you have seen one which has been vacated, you will be amazed to feel the quality of the fibre created by the wasps, and also see the honeycomb structure where the wasps must be laying their eggs.

The other day, Annikki had a narrow escape when she went to throw two bags of materials for recycling in the trailer. She carefully put the two bags at the bottom of the garden.

When she came back to the spot, there was nothing except a couple of wasps wondering where their houses had vanished.

However, they did not waste much time.

Soon there were dozens of wasps hard at work. We could only see what was happening above the shelf, but it appeared that many tens of wasps were working under the shelf.

Slowly the number of wasps above the shelf diminished as the structure took shape.

The series of pictures below show the progress of the nest above the wooden shelf.

We will get a picture of the intricate construction below when the wasps leave us in late autumn.

 

 

 

 

It was an eye-opening experience which also demonstrated the intelligence of this species!

Green Door vanishes

Annikki is in a new phase of creativity.

It is the Mirror Phase.

She believes that the mirror effect will create a new dimension in the garden.

 

 

So the "Green Door" is now no more.

Instead we have an "Aluminium Mirror Door".

THe Aluminium Mirror was created out of recycled fast food aluminium trays, a roll of aluminium film and a roll of aluminium coated plastic sticky tape.

The effect is stunning.

I am hoping to catch a shot when the evening rays hit the mirror.

A waspy story

Annikki was cleaning around the back entrance to the house when she noted two bags which Joanna had put stuff in to send to the charity recycling centres.

She lifted one and was confronted by wasps and a huge buzzing sound from inside of the bag.

She acted quickly in that she got a large rubbish bag, and after enveloping the other bag, she carried it outside of the Vesaisentie garden to a small forest area behind the house. There she left the wasps to settle down.

She came back to attend to the second bag and found the same situation, so she moved this also to the new location in the forest.

When she came back she found that a few wasps had be left behind and they were whizzing around.

She could do nothing about them and thought that they may just leave.

A few hours later, when she went to see the situation, she saw the wasps were very busy making a new nest. They were working very industriousally and slowly but surely they were making a regular nest.

 

 

The work is in progress. The above two photographs show how the wasps are bulding their new nest. I hope to document the stages of building of this.

Billy's spicey noodle

I had to be in town on Saturday. I stopped at Billy Lu's Chinese A-Wing Dragon fast food. I ordered my usual - chicken noodle, super spicey!

I was having my salad when there was a great howl from the kitchen.

Billy yelled that he had put in prawns in the dish by mistake. I assured him I was quite happy to have prawn noodle, spicey.

 

But Billy, being the kind soul that he is, added the chicken as well. I got a special dish from him, prawn and chicken noodle, super spicey.

It was just great.

Maybe he should add it too his repertoire!

Undoubtedly the best fast food in Oulu.

New Thai restaurant in Oulu

Omena is an old Thai friend. I was on my way to my accountant's office near the railway station when she ran out of a new Thai restaurant and asked me in.

 

Being in a hurry, I did not go in then, but on my way out I stopped there.

I ordered a "Chilli Fish" dish.

A supoerb spicy salad with a tang was starters. Really good.

There was plenty of fish, but very little chilli. The dish was too dry for the accompanying rice.

But the salad was well worth the stop.

I love Thai food, so I may give it another try.

But I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the restaurant. Luckily I know where it is!

Raantel OY IS a Best Buy!

One of the tenants, a lady software engineer, who stayed in our Raantel Oy apartments in Oulu returned to India last Sunday after almost 6 months here. Before she left, she sent me this touching email:

"This is just a small note of thanks to you for all the help you have provided in these 8-9 months. Even though I might not have spent hours talking to you but your presence has always made me feel homely. I have never faced any problems as such, but if any, you were always there! It would have been difficult to thrive in a foreign country with lots of insecurity and lack of proper information. With you around nothing was difficult and out of reach. Thanks a lot for everything !"

Raantel Oy Headquarters and Community Centre at Ahmatie 16 in Oulu.

Another lady, who came with her one year old son to be in Oulu where her husband was on an assignment told me at the airport that she so enjoyed her stay with us that even if her husband comes for just a month, she and their son will come with them as they felt so much at home in our apartments and in our company.


Sunita, Karthik and Rajesh leave back for India.

These appreciations shows that Raantel Oy has achieved its objective as THE BEST BUY if you stay with us in our apartments in Oulu, Helsinki or Tampere.


Carom game at the Family Afternoon
at the Raantel Community Centre.

Raantel Oy is not just about giving you an apartment to live in. You become part of our community. With this I think I have achieved what I set out to do!

Claustrophobia - A new definition?

(Posted on all my major blogs.)

Ever since the age of 12 or 13, when an uncle of mine taught me the art of relaxation using artificial stress inducement, I have never had a problem of going to sleep. Before my head is settled in the pillow, I am fast asleep. I do not wake up at night and toss and turn. I nod off as soon as the reason for waking up is attended to. I hardly ever dream. Sit in a car with a safe driver, and I can drop off into neverland within a couple of minutes.

I usually wake up fully relaxed, even if the sleep lasted only a few minutes.



I came back from the hospital on Thursday afternoon with my left hand in plaster from the forearm till the tips of my finger. The operation to repair the knuckle of my fourth finger in my left hand had been successful, but it meant that my arm would be in this plaster-cast for 5 weeks. Plenty of painkillers and a course of antibiotic for 5 days, so no real problem of pain.

When I went to bed on Thursday evening, I thought I was going to sleep in my usual fashion. However, when my head hit the pillow, and as recommended, I put my plastered arm in a suitable and comfortable position on a couple of raised pillows, I felt a tremendous and overpowering feeling of restlessness. Sleep was just not coming in the next few minutes. Each passing second was raising an anxiety within me. I was feeling claustrophobic, even though, bodily, I was not in any confined situation.

Then it dawned on me that my mind was reacting to the fact that my left hand had lost its freedom. It was caged, and the stress relaxation technique, which I have used for over 50 years to drop into my slumber, was blocked by an overpowering feeling of fear. My fingers and wrist had lost their freedom. They were confined and this feeling of confinement was causing my mind to say that I was totally confined. And the realisation that I would have to endure this confinement for 5 more weeks was mentally unbearable.

I jumped out of bed, feeling as if I could not stay put down. I walked into the kitchen and expressed my claustrophobic thoughts to Annikki.

She was cool and calm and told me that I should take each day as it came, and the 5 weeks would be over even before I knew it.

I went to the living room and plonked down in front of the tv, but my heart and soul were not into watching any of the programmes. I let tiredness possess me so much so that I allowed my body to react to a mentally created feeling of a body becoming tired. Then when I went to bed, it was not my relaxation that put me to sleep, but a feeling of great tiredness - quite different to my normal situation.

As soon as Annikki came to bed, I put my plastered arm around her, and that claustrophobic feeling suddenly lifted and I dropped quickly into my normal deep slumber.

When I woke up in the morning, although relaxed, I still had that feeling at the back of my mind that I was a caged person. My n degrees of freedom had been severely curtailed. I now understood how anyone who loses any degree of freedom, mental or physical, could suddenly feel claustrophobic.

In all my life I had never experienced this. It was indeed a major revelation to me about the sufferings of my fellow travellers on this earth who had lost their freedom, any part of it.

I will be glad when this hand is uncaged. I will value all the degrees of freedom that I enjoy much much more than I ever have! And I will appreciate the feelings of other men and women, and any animal, who are caged in any form.

Green Door has moved - Is the Secret the same?

Latest pictures of the Vesaisentie garden.

The Mysterious Green Door has moved to its new location.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The garden is wilting because of the intense sunshine, but Annikki is out there with the buckets and watering cans to ensure that all is not lost!

Indian families in Oulu relax

Thanks to Nisha and Sunil, a few of the Indian families in Oulu got together at the Raantel Community Centre to relax and enjoy a few precious quality moments.

Among those present were Rajesh, Sunita and Karthik, Srikanth, Renu and Dipankar, Narayanan, Padmavathy and Ambil, Sunil, Nisha and Hannah, Nagendra, Ashwini and Suhina, Kiran, Prasad and myself.

Raantel Community Centre

Nisha cooked the frozen ready made vegetarian samosas I had brought from Helsinki and offered crisps and cake. Padmavathi prepared some great carrot halwa, the likes of which I have not tasted since my days in Sundarnagar Market in New Delhi. She was so nice to share the compliments with me as she said I had given her the new deep non-stick frying pan!! (Mark of a truly great personality to share her fame and glory with someone who least deserved it.) Ashwini brought some delicious capsicum dish, a dish which I so far have not had the pleasure of tasting. Renu did her task in bring some of her delicacies.

Prasad dropped in after cricket practice.

The kids enjoyed themselves running around the house and the compound. After enjoying the food, the menfolk got down to some serious carrom playing, using probably the only carrom board in Oulu and possibly Finland! The board is badly warped because of the different climatic conditions between India and Finland, but our experts mastered the board configurations and played a dozen games, each one a cliff hanger!

On the whole a very delightful afternoon which extended to late in the evening.

A nice surprise

I went to meet my friend Billy, who runs the best Chinese Fast Food in Oulu. I noted a young lady sitting there waiting for her food. She looked familiar, but I did not immediately place her.

I sat with my back to her and asked her whether she came from the Phillipines. Without once looking at her we conversed about generalities.

When she finished her meal, she was leaving and she asked me whether my name was Jacob and my wife's name was Annikki!

Then she told me that she was a faithful reader of all my blogs but regretted that I had not been updating the Oulu Best Buy Blog regularly. I told her that I did that only when there was a Best Buy, like writing about the very restaurant we were sitting in!

Virpi and Elizabeth Wang (from Phillipines)

Then I recognised her.

She had attended a party hosted by my dear friend, Kannan, for his classmates where he had feted his lecturer, Hannu, and me. Elizaebth Wang was one of those who was there that evening.

You can read about it at this web blog page: Kannan Fetes Hannu and me

Thank you, Beth, for saying so many nice thngs about me and my blogs. It is something I really enjoy and to get such kind words instlls a great deal of satisfaction in doing it more regularly than I already do.

A couple who inspired me

I do not remember whether I have blogged about people who have inspired me. There have been a few in my 60+ years, but the couple who inspired me most were friends I made in Madras in the early 1970s.

Prem and Titi Sadanand become bosom friends in a very short space of time after he joined MRF as the Staff Assistant to the Managing Director.

Prem was given the task of driving the organisation into a shape fit as a professional company. He had to retain the family values and yet make it professional.

Prem was a real professional, having studied at Harvard. He came from a noble background as his father was the owner / editor of one of Bombay's best known newspapers, the Free Press Journal, and known for his courage to write the truth.

That certainly rubbed off on Prem, but he had immense diplomatic skills.

He and I hit it off from day one as we both smoked heavily and drank heavily (that was the time I did drink and smoke - I have not touched cigarettes and alcohol for the last 26 years!).

I was helping to put a plastic factory belonging to MM Group into some sort of shape as it was providing vital plastic film for the tyre production activity. But it was decided that the company should expand its role into avenues other than MRF.

Prem was asked to work with me.

Coming from a scientific research and production background, I had no idea of business principles, except from a classroom standpoint. With the short space of four weeks, Prem taught me the ins and outs of production management and control.

We used to sit the whole day in his office where he would learn about plastics technology from me while he taught me how to control factory output and production and implement cost control without moving an inch from the chair. It was amazing how much this man knew and how well he could teach.

After work we would retire to his home where his wife, an outstanding personality in her own right would have a glass of whiskey ready for each of us and we would continue our discussions where he would probe into family situations so that he could stay ahead of the rat race and deliver the results that the family expected from a top flight manager like him.

It is amazing how much I learnt from these two individuals - social skills, management skills, negotiation skills, family values, and above all the art of decision making. They helped me put my Consulting Company on track and it was Prem and Titis's handling of my life that made me understand how to leave when the going was good.

Prem had worked in the jute industry and the glass industry. He was a complete personality in that he knew his technology and his management. If it was not for him the plastics packaging fibre industry would never have caught on as he used his knowledge of the jute industry to develop the coating technolgy for high density polyethylene woven fabric to make it suitable for packaging fertilisers, sugar, and other mateials in direct competition with jute. He used my knowledge of plastics to be able to drive the new small scale rafia producers along a path that has taken them to the top of the world in economic packaging.

Very few people know this role of Prem which has affected the lives of millions of Indians. I do!

When I moved from Madras to Bangalore, what I missed most was my times with them.

Sadly Prem died of a massive heart attack when he was just in his mid forties. But he had set his wife up in a great furniture business that went alongside all her artistic skills and helped her survive his loss at that young age.

Today, I learnt that Titi had passed on. Titi was the daughter of the brilliant man (Sointi) who patented the Arsenic Pentoxide treatment for preservation of wood. He sold the patent to Bell Labs in the USA who kept it under wraps till the patent ran out and then made billions out of that technology.

Ascu Hickson Ltd., the Indian company which did this treatment of wood in India was run by Titi's brother, Teddy!

I have thought of both Titi and Prem often, as also their only daughter, Bobo's, who was the apple of their eyes and who was always there to greet me - Uncle Sushil.

Although I had not seen Titi for the last 10 years, the inspiration that the two of them gave me never left me through all my working life and now into my retirement.

May Titi rest in peace. She deserves it.

Present from Slovenia

Yesterday, I once again made the gruelling day drive trip to Helsinki - a round trip of 1200 km. This time it was to meet the Owner / CEO of the Slovenian group who have been working as electricians and staying in our apartments in Oulu, Helsinki and Tampere.

Mr. Darzen, the CEO of Elektro-k.a.a, the Slovenian company which is doing the electrical installation work at the new post office sorting centres around Finland, and whose staff stay in our apartments, arrived and wanted to see me.

So I did the round trip.



He gave me a present from Slovenia, which is the Kurent Mask.

Kurentovanje is a distinctive pre-Lenten Slovenian festival. The name comes from the festival's central figure, the Kurent, who in earlier times was believed to have the power to chase away winter and usher in spring.

Slovenians dress up in this costume in February and wander about to drive away winter. A tall order for the near Arctic, even with global warming, but one can hope!