My arrival in Finland was preceded by twentysomething hours in the air from W.A. to here. Some things of note: airlines have video on demand now, Paris was getting snow as I went through [I'm pretty sure that's unusual], and I managed to spend 14 hours wedged between two rather attractive French girls and not talk to them at all. When we touched down it was a blamy [not being sarcastic here] -5 degrees, this relative warmth was rather good as Finnair had managed to lose not just my bag, but my entire flight's [and the Finn's are supposed to be so efficient...].
The bus ride into town made me aware of two things. Firstly that there wasn't a car older than 6-7 years on the road, and that although they might have lost my bag the Finn's really do like being efficient. The traffic lights here have this little feature where if you're waiting at a red light the yellow will flash for one second [while the red is still on] before they both turn green, kind of like a watered down drag strip starting light array. This is so there isn't that little lag between the light turning green and the front cars actually taking off. Imagine how much time that saves in total. Not to go off on a tangent but speaking of cool efficient things, the crockery cupboard in my apartment is another cool idea, instead of it all being on wooden shelves, the shelves are made of dish racks and the cupboard itself is built above the sink. So you wash the dishes and put them where they live to dry, very cool.
Not so cool things, the price of stuff. Everyone goes on about how expensive everything is in Europe, but I wasn't prepared. I spent 50 Euro's in what I inferred to be Finlands equivalent of Red Dot [that's a shitty "we import the cheapest products from China" store back home in Aus] on a single fitted sheet, doona [duvet], and smallish towel. A hot chocolate in a cafe was 3 Euro and take away Chinese was 11 for a standard sized take away container and rice. Basically everything costs what it does back home, except the currency is supposed to be worth almost twice as much. I think I might see if some bar wants to employ an English only dude for three months, I think I'm totally in with a shot :/
The place where I am living is nice if simple, It's pretty reminiscent of boarding school. Most of my fellow housemates seem nice and friendly and open, which is good. I missed orientation week and the first day of school thanks to doing the radio thing at southbound so today is a serious catch up day. My sleeping pattern is a little out of whack [I started this post at 6 in the morning] but it's almost time to start getting ready for the day so I shall leave you now with some more pictures of my humble abode.
A promising entrance hallway to my building.
The stairs are like the best bit of the whole building.
This is shot from the front doof of out apartment, those grey doors you see are the bedrooms [I'm number 1!] that central block thing houses the bathroom, lavatory, and kitchen, I think it also carries all the infrastructural up and down the building [like the wet wall in the first matrix where Morpheus gets snatched.]
Our appartment is unisex, which will mean that this kitchen will probably get pretty rank [as John Birmingham rightly observed, "there is something about a bunch of guys living together which unleashes the beast"]
And this little dog box is my room, it's not fancy, but it's comfy and warm, and that makes me like it just fine.
Most excellent, sir! It's always the little things :o)Dude, that dog box looks comfy as cuss. Enjoy Ainslie!
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