en Finlandia

Sentimental Finnish men

Tuesday June 16th, 2009. 04:03 AM. Published under Finland culture, People, Videos. No Comments.

Quite funny TV advertisement from Finnish National Betting released this month.

“We invited 127 ordinary Finnish men for screen tests
We asked them about love, feelings, sentimentality and life.”

Wanna see a Finnish man getting emotional? …. Watch it (subtitled in English)

A glance at Tampere

Sunday June 14th, 2009. 10:07 AM. Published under Finland culture, Photos, Scandinavia, Videos. 7 Comments.

Since living in Tampere,  I would like to show my relatives and friends in Spain that living in Tampere, and Finland in general, is not so cold weather always, I mean it’s not that cold all year long. Now that the summer is coming and I can prove it, I prepared a short videoclip showing Tampere through Näsinneula tower sights.  Also I wanted to show the large amount of hours of day light in summer, something surprising even to me. Although I have been 1 year studying before in Helsinki, this is my first summer in Tampere.

You can download it here in in better quality (50 Mb) or watch it just under these lines through youtube (click on HQ button). Spanish version here.

Some details about the video:

• Most information I got it at Wikipedia: Tampere, Tammerkoski, Näsinneula tower.
• Photos and maps thanks to Wikimedia, Google Images, Flickr, and webcam images captured automatically during 24 hours from Sarkanniemi webpage.
• Music: From the advertisement of H&M Matthew Williamson
• Made with Adobe After Effects.

World’s cleanest countries

Tuesday April 21st, 2009. 12:55 PM. Published under Finland culture, Spain. 1 Comment.

Forbes has published a list of the world’s cleanest countries, with Switzerland in first place:

1. Switzerland.
2. Norway
3. Sweden.
4. Finland.
5. Costa Rica.
(…)
30. Spain.
(…)
39. USA.

This study has been made by Yale University and you can see the complete list here and the methodology used.
The report ranks 149 countries on 25 indicators tracked across six established policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Climate Change.
Although Forbes published this week, it seems the study was made in 2008.

Unicef - Be a mum for a moment

Tuesday March 31st, 2009. 02:54 AM. Published under Finland culture, People. 3 Comments.

Great guerrilla advertisement done by Unicef in Finland with ad agency Taivas. Description in the image:

Here you can see also a vídeo in Youtube.
The message pointed to the web http://unicef.fi/aiti (Aiti is mum in Finnish)

Finnish Embassy and Focus

Friday March 20th, 2009. 01:26 PM. Published under Finland culture, Spain. 4 Comments.

The Spanish embassy in Finland doesn’t have website wrong! it has (thanks daniel), but Finnish Embassy in Spain does. It has interest links to know more about Finland and also I subscribed via RSS. They used to publish news (in spanish, finnish and swedish) every 10 days. Last new is about the magazine Focus, and it’s available in digital format. I didn’t have time to read it deeply, but the photos quality are really good:

Focus Economía y Tecnología 2009

C&P:

Focus on the Economy and Technology 2009, the annual publication showcasing Finland’s strengths and attractions as a target for investments has come out even bigger and better than before. Read the digipaper!

More information, more languages and also 2008 edition in InvestInFinland.fi

By the way, did you subscribe already to Corbacho en Finlandia? Don’t miss any post.

Jenkki with Åke Blomqvist

Tuesday March 17th, 2009. 11:54 AM. Published under Finland culture, Music, Videos. 1 Comment.

Do you remember this viral video of a teacher of disco dancing a couple of years ago? Well, I saw it, but I didn’t know that is FINNISH. Exactly his name is Åke Blomqvist and it’s a famous Finnish dance teacher. The song is called Moskau by Dschinghis Khan , there is also a Finnish version of the song called Volga by Frederik. Enjoy! I love it.

Now Jenkki, a chewing gum/candys brand very popular in Finland wants to rescue his virality. I saw a lot of print ads, billboards and TV commercials during the begining of 2009. I wanted to write about it before, but I didn’t see any video in Internet or Youtube. Finally last week I saw that they publish it in jenkki.fi, but …. in the moment I’m writing this I check and it’s not anymore in the front page. I don’t understand why.  Anyway, you can access by this url still, I don’t know for how long. http://www.jenkki.fi/twisted/twisted.swf. (screenshot). And also someone put it in youtube:

The name of the song is Ernst August Quellen Weekend Twist

Sunny Days

Sunday March 1st, 2009. 04:25 AM. Published under Finland culture, Photos, Spain, Winter. 3 Comments.

The sun in winter here in Finland is… shy. Easily can be one week without chance to see it, almost always hidden behind the clouds or the fog.

I live almost all my life in Estepona and Málaga. This area is better known as Costa del Sol, ¿why? Tourist agencies will claim proudly “We have more than 300 days of sunshine all year around”. I don’t care about it. I didn’t care about it. I mean, this is something that you don’t appreciate until you lose it. Supply and demand, economist likes to call it.

If the sun comes out, the best thing you can do it’s go outside to the forest with your couple to enjoy this chance. Like 2 days ago:

Now I start to have Finnish mentality, looking to the sky when I wake up to see if there is some ray of light and counting the days for the warm Finnish summer, when the sun rises at 4 am and sets after 11 pm.

Looking for job in Finland

Sunday January 25th, 2009. 04:19 AM. Published under Finland culture, Job. 4 Comments.

I am currently looking for job actively in Finland, (Tampere and Helsinki), as you know. Here is my CV.

After one month looking job offers you start to become a specialist of finding jobs, and soon I will make a guide for Finding a job, as Phil did some years ago. It’s common sense that I will not published it until it is proved that is succesful.

But the funny Dilbert strip of today, made me remember one useful resource to find a good job. To look the companies listed by the “Great Places To Work” Institute. Specially as a foreigner, if you don’t know so well Finnish companies.

(more…)

Snow in Madrid: Chaos

Friday January 9th, 2009. 04:12 PM. Published under Finland culture, Photos, Spain, Winter. 1 Comment.

Snowing is not usual in Spain in winter, except in mountains and some areas, but most of the cities is not often to see snowing and rarely snow stays on the streets. That’s why these days Spanish people go to the streets to make photos to have a memory of this weird city landscapes. You can see a gallery here and other one here.

And Spain, sorry to say, it’s not prepared for that. With the words of Enrique Belda, sudirector of the Traffic Department of Spain “(spanish) roads are not designed for snowing”. There has been a lot of traffic problems, even in main highways of Madrid, delayed trains and planes, etc. Kids don’t go to school and authorities they recommend not to use the car.

Here In Finland it amaze me that people is so used to snow, that they don’t see any problem in having snow everywhere. Because it’s a country prepared for it. Finland doesn’t stop for snowing,  they keep their normal life in the long winter even with hard weather conditions and icy roads. I wonder what kind of snow storm is necessary for Finnish people stay in their house without going to work / school. These are some habits of finnish people in winter, that still surprise me :

• All Finnish car owners are required by law to equip their cars with winter tyres. Winter tyres must be used between December 1st and February 28th but they can and must also be used outside those dates when weather conditions make driving hazardous. Juan Llaneza has a photo in his blog of this special tyres.

• To get a drive license you receive training to improve you slippery driving skills and nighttime driving lessons too.

• An engine-block electric heater is a great boon for winter drivers who do not have a garage and leave their cars outside overnight. The bock heater makes the car easier to start and reduces fuel consumption. Drivers normally plug their cars into electric sockets in the parking areas.

• Weather reports always includes warning about slippery roads, something that I’ve never seen in Spain.

This hard conditions can be he secret of such a good drivers in Finland, a country of just 5.3 million people and 77 billion trees, has produced more formula one world champions per capita than anywhere else: Heikki Kovalainen, Mika Salo and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, Mika Häkkinen (more) … and other day I’ll talk about rally’s drivers.

But still my favourite one is Fernando Alonso

Spanish Constitution Day & Finnish Independency Day

Saturday December 6th, 2008. 12:09 PM. Published under Finland culture, Spain. 2 Comments.

6th of December.

30 years of Spanish Constitution.

91 years of Finnish independency.

Finland and Spain are celebrating today importants  events and is a festive day in both countries. Better source is the Wikipedia, or this article in Helsinki Times, so I will not go deep in details.

Finland gained independence from Russia on 6 December 1917 when the Finnish Declaration of Independence was signed, changing its status from an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy to an independent sovereign nation state.

In Spain this day simbolyzes the culmination of the Spanish transition to democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.

In Finland just now (in the evening) YLE is broadcasting the gala reception for approximately 2000 invited guests at the Presidential Palace. This event, known as Linnan juhlat (”the party at the castle”) is really popular, and during next days all media will analyze this party, especially gossiping the dresses .