The simple things

Like the Finns, I think I have discovered pleasure in simple things.

Having only recently aquired my full complement of furniture, I sat down at a table, for the first time in months, to eat Heinz baked beans (imported at 1.50Euro) and ate with the sun shining in my face and thought "what more is there to life?". Quite a lot, is the reply, but for that moment I became a simple Finn, getting enough from the simple things in life. It's a joke I heard that the Finns are the only nation whose dream holiday is two weeks without hot water and a toilet, with reference to the happiness they find in the summer cottage...

Of course this simple happines can stem from a Finnish characteristic which annoys the hell out of me so I will rant here. The Finns are happy about small things. How nice you say. Yes they can look at the bright side of minus temperatures. But this trait gets to me when it affects someone's ambition. I don't think I could work for a Finnish firm because people do their job, do as they are asked, and that's all. Working more, working harder and over achieving do not have their rewards here. As a hangover from socialism, salary rises related to performance don't exist in the way we know it in say Australia, UK and Australia.

You could see this as a nice way of ensuring that the rich don't get to rich and the poor don't exist. You could also see it as a way of encouraging people to be average and complacent.

I guess this annoys me most in personal situations and then this complacency is truly something I don't want to catch. My personal situation has been thrown into disarray here purely on complacency. Helping a foreigner to live overseas is an effort. It's a challenge. But I'd like to think it's rewarding. It's fun to watch someone settle in and laugh with them at their cultural faux pas. It's also rewarding to receive their gratitude and love for the efforts made to help them make it here. But for the Finns close to me, this has not been the case. The challenge and the difficulties are too much. Why spend hours analysing the feelings of a foreigner when a local friend or partner will be much easier. Why be a better communicator when it's easy to sit in silence with a fellow Finn.

Gggrrrr but I am opening a whole different can of worms here and a whole new post on inter cultural relationships. So I will end this rant here and go back to the baked beans in the sun on my very own table.