September 21, 2004
Media, zoo, shopping and enjoying
Finally Kaj got his Employment Pass, so we're entitled to many cool things, such as a bank account, mobile phone contract, electricity bill. Until now we could only use Internet and Cable TV.. It is amazing how many binding contracts we've been signing lately - apartment, Internet, mobile phone for 2 years, bank account for 1 year (can not be less than 500$ in the account), well, cable TV for 4 months only.. If you break any of the contracts, you get fined. I'm sure there's no such thing as consumer rights authority. Seems that the businesses compete among each other ferociously ("buy mattress, phone free" type of), but there's very little real concern about what is better for the people.
Last week's Friday the surprise news (again, didn't see any signs of this brewing) about the 2 main Leijonakaupunkilaiset media companies merger came out. It was a huge disappointment for everybody: the employees, the citizens, the government. Leijonakaupunki liberalized media market and introduced competition only 4 years ago (!). During that time media quality improved significantly, there were 2 freely distributed newspapers and several new TV channels appearing. However, (as the analysts say), the competition was destructive, the companies were "bleeding" - not really facing serious problems, but loosing some money all the time. So now they just decided to merge and there will be one company owning all the local TV channels and newspapers. Quitting 2 TV channels and 1 newspaper completely. Somehow feels completely sad. Oh yes, the market is open if somebody still wants to try, but no foreign companies allowed..
Otherwise we were really enjoying our new apartment, it feels so good to come home. Kaitsu has bought a very good (and expensive) sound system.
When in comes to the boys and their toys, I learned to "let if flow" (basically shut up), because when the shopping fever hits them, there's no voice of reason that could persuade them to think things over once again. Anyway, its really great to listen to music at home and Kaitsu is very proud of it. Otherwise we were spending money like crazy, all kinds of "deposits", "initial investments", simple things like wind fan, bed sheets, towel knobs, we just buy and buy and buy. But I guess (I hope) it will stop soon, once we've equiped the home.. But I know that there will be many new ideas for some necessary things.. And Kaj so far is the only one earning money... I hope something will come up for me too, yesterday I went to 2 job interviews, one with a headhunter, so she promised to send me to some 5 places. The job market looks quite hopeful, but sometimes I find it hard to explain what kind of stuff I've been doing in Finland. Anyway, there may be also some teaching jobs oportunities and in general, I'm quite hopeful.
There's a famous Newton Circle foodcourt not far from our home and we tested it on Sunday night. I've been there during the day and had 2$ lunch, it looked completely run down and dirty, but at night it was magnificent! The daytime places have closed and the new ones opened during the night - there was so much superb seafood!
We had chili crab and some fish and it was great and (kinda) affordable! We haven't cooked at home since we came here, it is so cheap eating out and there is unehaustable amount of places to go, all possible imaginable chinese, indian, vietnamese, thai, malay, western, pizzas, italian, greek, anything you could think of, you can find it here. We haven't come accross rye bread, but somehow I don't miss it at all (yet?).
Last weekend we also went to Night Safari next to Leijonakaupunki zoo together with a German couple (Monica is a graphic designer and in a very similar situation here as I am, so we call and complain to each other a lot..). As you can see, Nokia has adopted an oriental otter in the Night Safari. There's a show where these little otters collect and sort out plastic bottels and cans. Funny, the animals are doing that, but so far I haven't figured out how to recycle here. There's virtually no visible signs that any of the garbage could be sorted and collected. At home we just have a chute, you don't even have to leave the house, just dump the garbage down the pipe, I don't know where it continues from there. I should find out as soon as possible. This island is very small, I'm sure they'll have massive problems very soon. Still I wonder, do they dump garbage into the sea? To Malaysia?
The Night Safari itself was a very nice electric tram ride + walking in the forest. Some of the animals were roaming completely freely, the guide had to ask not to stick out hands out fo the tram, because there were all sorts animals trying to cross the road. The picture on the left is of flying foxes, they're some kind of fruit eating bats that hang on the trees most of the time, but from time to time fly over people's heads (almost touching their hair) and make them gasp and scream. The big cats were behind the glass, but trying to eat something, so they're all the time visible, for some reason staying in the lit up area (Kaj says that there were probably some kinds of electric wires around the place, but I'm not sure, the animals looked very healthy, happy and muscular. Especially the leaopard. It looked like water, so full of power, smooth and kind of "flowing", really beautiful!
I also got a haircut for 10$ for 10min. I think it is a great concept (Japanese actually), I've seen people queing there all the time. You don't have to go to salon, spend hours there, chat to the hairdresser, read magazines, have coffee, if you need a haircut, you can get it in 10min. The guy in the barber shop didn't allow to take pictures from inside the shop (protecting the concept?), but was otherwise very kind and nice, he said that somebody should start this kind of business in Finland and Lithuania. He said especially men enjoy it. Great startup idea?
Posted by gkligyte at September 21, 2004 10:06 AM