Archive for 'Finland culture'
How Finnish language sounds
Tuesday December 6th, 2011. 03:00 PM. Published under Finland culture, helsinki. No Comments.
Audio in this page.
Text in this page.
It’s a mini-novel of Juhani Aho, from 1889, called Helsinkiin.
Juhani was one of the first professional writers in Finland. A statue of Juhani Aho en Eira, Helsinki:
Norrménin talo Vs Enso-Gutzeit
Sunday June 12th, 2011. 12:55 PM. Published under Finland culture, helsinki. 2 Comments.
Before
The Norrménin house, also known as the Norrmén castle and palace, was a red brick residential house representing the neo-renaissance architecture, situated for 63 years in Katajanokka, Helsinki, Finland, opposite the Uspenski Cathedral. It was designed by architect Theodor Höijer for the chairman of the Helsinki city council, Alfred Norrmén, who ordered the building plans from Höijer in 1896.
(From Wikipedia)
Now
Designed by Alvar Aalto, was built in the place of Norrménin talo. It was completed in 1962.
The dismantling of the house has been criticised ever since the year of its dismantling, and many view Aalto’s new building in its place as completely unfit for the façade of Katajanokka, and the dismantling of the Norrmén house as one of the greatest wrongdoings in the history of Helsinki. Some have even proposed that Aalto’s building should be dismantled and a replica of the Norrmén house should be built in its place.
Recomendaciones para Tampere y Helsinki
Monday November 8th, 2010. 12:24 PM. Published under Finland culture, Tampere, helsinki. 4 Comments.
Sorry, this entry is only available in español.
Markorepairs, viral from Finland
Saturday October 16th, 2010. 10:17 AM. Published under Finland culture, Funny. 1 Comment.
Marko is a finnish guy who uploads videos to his Youtube channel Markorepairs. Most of them are in Finnish, but last week has upload two videos in English that are spreading on Internet really fast. His poor English skills, haircut and funny laugh is becoming a meme, and being commented in youtube, reddit, facebook, and twitter.
Watch these 2 videos from Markorepairs at least:
Marko showing his VHS player collection.
Marko making coffee. See 5:07. “My coffee machine is FULL power” XD
If you have some extra info about Marko, leave a comment please.
I hope not, but I believe that these videos could be part of some campaign because I noticed during these years I have been in Finland that many Finnish advertisement campaigns make fun of themselves. This says a lot about Finnish people and their modesty.
For example, we have seen it in Lidl’s Finnish Campaign, Markku promoting Finland during Eurovision, and lastly Pekka and Mauri promoting Finland in Shanghai’s Expo 2010.
Here a couple of examples:
Also, this other Finnish viral from the past it’s a disco dancing video from Åke Blomqvist (a famous Finnish dance teacher), that sure you have seen. I have seen him in the trams of Helsinki a couple of times (Here a prove), since his dancing school is quite close where I’m leaving.
1 & 2 Finnish Euro-cent coins
Tuesday June 15th, 2010. 10:11 AM. Published under Finland culture. 4 Comments.
2 years ago, we were in Barcelona for a touristic visit. A couple of days visiting the typical highlights: Sagrada Familia, Ramblas, shops in Avenida Diagonal, Raval, Gaudí and finally also Montjuic. There we stopped in a terrace to have a break. The waiter was nice and later on she asked where we were from (yes, many times they considered me also foreigner). When we said she was from Finland, she couldn’t avoid to get excited:
- Yeah? Could be that you have some Finnish cents coins? 1 and 2 cents of euros, that are the only ones that I’m missing to complete my collection.
And no, we didn’t have.
Finland doesn’t have 1 and 2 cents coins. In Finland (and later Netherlands), they thought it didn’t have too much sense to have them, because it costs more to produce them than their value and usefulness. So they use the Swedish rounding system: 1,2 cents are round down to 0, and 3 and 4 cents round up to 5.
Sometimes it happened that I had 1 and 2 cents coins from Spain and I when I tried to use them in Finland they have accept them, but they told me that the rule is that can accept them, but not return these kind of coins.
And if that Barcelona waiter would want, it’s possible to buy these kind of Finnish coins for collectionists.
Karhu, one litre can beer
Wednesday March 24th, 2010. 12:49 PM. Published under Finland culture, Funny, Photos. 12 Comments.
Beginning this year Karhu (bear in Finnish) had started to sell in Finland 1 litre-cans.
You can see a normal size can next to it. And also a taller 0.5l format.
Like my friend Stefan already told me, perfect to make jokes with sentences that include “Only one beer and…”
Limpieza de tejados durante el invierno en Laponia
Sunday March 21st, 2010. 03:16 AM. Published under Finland culture, Photos, Winter. No Comments.
Sorry, this entry is only available in español.
Google Street Views in Finland
Monday February 15th, 2010. 02:31 PM. Published under Finland culture, Photos, Summer, Tampere. 2 Comments.
Look this picture from Tampere’s lake Näsijärvi.
Professional photographer? Nop, it’s from one of the cars of Google Street View. (click over the picture)
It’s so easy to take good pics in Finland, specially in summer. Everything looks perfect. I love that little summer clouds that always are there in Finnish summer
Google Street View Service just started last week? in Finland. They have covered many little towns of Finland, not only big cities. It seems they did it during summer 2009 when Finland looks at its best.
Try yourself. Go to Google Maps, type a place and drag the yellow little man. It will show you blue streets in the map when Street View is available.
At same time they launch Google Street View in Norway and you can see in one of the streets a couple of Scuba Divers attacking the car.WTF? XDD
With Google Street View, Bing Bird’s View and 360º Cities, you can really have a good virtual visit to Helsinki from your sofa.
Helsinki transport & Finnish Punctuality
Monday November 23rd, 2009. 12:39 PM. Published under Finland culture, Music, Photos, Videos, helsinki. 4 Comments.
Finnish people are punctual. If they say 11 o’clock, is 11′oclock. Even between friends more than 10-15 minutes delay is considered rude. In Spain… how could I say… we take time in a more relaxed way generally 
This photo is the bus schedule from a City Bus in center of Helsinki. 3 main sections: Ma-Pe (Monday-Friday), La (Saturday), Su (Sunday). First row (in bold) you see the hour (18 for example), and the column under represents the minutes (18:10, 18:24, etc.)
Besides of the strange way of representing the timetable, it amazes me its accuracy . If it says there that the bus number 20 is going to be at 18:52 in that stop… it will be there (90% of times). Spanish urban buses timetables normally only say tells frequency (for example “every 15 minutes”).
In Helsinki every year is sent to home a small book containing all routes and timetables of urban transport (bus, metro, tram).
All this is nice, but in the end is paper, very 20th century thing. Is it not supposed to be Finland a high-technology country? (more…)
Benchmarking IT 2009 by The Economist
Tuesday November 3rd, 2009. 02:51 PM. Published under Computer stuff, Finland culture. 3 Comments.
IT Industry 2009 at glance thanks to this report of The Economist [.pdf Sept 2009] (via Martín Pérez blog)
More interesting points of the research, who compares 66 countries in the IT industry field.
- With economic global recession even bigger IT firms are cutting back investments in R&D
- USA remains the world’s most conducive environment for the development and growth of IT firms, despite a tougher business environment and the emergence of protectionist impulses. Canada and west European countries such as Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands are also prominent in the index top tier, owing to their robust IT infrastructure and strong support for technology R&D, among other factors.
- Broadband networks are becoming increasingly essential to IT firms’ competitiveness. Broadband’s importance will grow as more IT services and applications are delivered over the Internet. Technology producers in broadband-rich countries in western Europe, North America and developed Asia are clearly at an advantage in this respect. Conversely, the slow march of broadband in emerging markets, including those with large IT sectors such as India, Brazil and Russia, could impede their IT firms’ growth.
- Finland has risen to 2nd in the index based mainly on its strong performance in the R&D environment category, particularly patents, and improvement in its overall business environment.
- Spain with score 47.4 went down 2 positions, from 25 to 23 respect last year.
- Without a good supply of local talent, countries are unlikely ever to develop competitive IT sectors. For all the IT graduates being churned out of Asian economies, there are still concerns that education systems in the region put too much focus on pure IT skills and not enough on IT in a business context. Top schools in the US and Europe do better in this area. On the other hand, the US and Europe each face long-term challenges in cultivating the science and technical engineering skills of its younger students.
- As more applications move off individual sites and into the “cloud”. The efficiency gains that will result from this development could benefit entire economies, but countries—and national IT sectors—that lack the broadband infrastructure needed to access these services will be left behind.
Bonus.This is related to broadband infrastructure in the world. It’s a world map of the cost of broadband Internet connection. The whole image here.
