Immigrant as I am

One of the biggest dangers for securing future development of the human race is the speed in which we tend to forget the history and in worst case, repeat the mistakes made. Thinking that one is somehow better than others...we are all humans and should be all treated as such.

"During the last one hundred years, more than one million Finns have moved abroad, nearly 500,000
of them before and about 730,000 after World War II."

The past days I am failing to understand the rejecting attitude of some Finns, and some Europeans, towards the refugees. I simply cannot understand people, who claim that helping the war refugees will destroy Europe and mess up Finland. That it is not beneficial to help refugees with different religious background.

If one would refresh the memory and look back few generations...to the times of World War II.
During that time, including so many current day welfair countries, were their people as refugees. Refugees of many different religions. Finland was one of those countries. In Finnish one did not use the word refugee but the Finnish word at the time was evakko / mennä evakkoon (to escape/flee more permanently).

Yet, the reasons were the same and among other people, Aili-mummi, one of my grand-mothers, experienced evakko as a child and also later as an adult. Many of the Finns have grand-parents or other relatives, who had to escape and who were provided help then. Had they not received the help...many of us would not exist today. I would be one of those.

Finland lost a whole area, Karelia, to Russia. People were taken their homes and had to escape. Hoping that they get help to start their lives from a scratch. Some of them returned during the between peace (välirauha) to help to rebuild the area but when continuation war (jatkosota) started, lot of houses were burnt and many of the Finns were back to square one....fleeing again, leaving everything behind.

Government at the time of WWII even made the decision to send children (without their parents) to Sweden for safe keeping. Many families escaped, apart from Sweden, to Denmark, Spain and US.
Link to historical statistics in English.

Another reason, why I cannot understand the comments made in the media and social media, is that I am an immigrant. I have been an immigrant for most of my adult life. My reasons for immigration have even been totally selfish. In my mind that gives the receiving countries less a reason to accept me entering their country. I had absolutely no proper reason to immigrate. My reasons were adventure, learning the local language & culture, work and my immigration reason to US was purely because of: TRUE LOVE.

Yes, get this the reason to settle and apply for a Green card in US was nothing more, nothing less than love. My husband, at the time my boyfriend, did not tolerate Finnish winter very well and I cannot blame him for that. Yet that did not stop us from believing that we can build a future together, here in US. There could have been several immigration authorities questioning the whole. Yet, they know better in US. After all, everyone else except the native Americans came from somewhere else for various reasons.

There is a whole American Finns heritage in US, as a result of all those Finns who chose to leave Finland in the hope of better tomorrow. They are very proud of their Finnish roots but they are also proud Americans. They would not be....had US decided not to accept all the immigrants at the time.

Where ever I have chosen to move (Germany, Singapore, Belgium and US) I have always been treated with respect and accepted to enter the country. Even if in Germany I took a seat from a German to do my studies and in Singapore I had no job initially.
In US, even when I was able to transfer within my company...the immigration officers could have questioned my entry, as I was taking a job. A job, which was one job less from an existing American citizen.

My two cents to the topic is: before judging or rejecting the refugees fighting for a better tomorrow right now. Look into the past and see...if not your own relatives were once fleeing or immigrating, I am sure you will find many in your circle of friends or colleagues. Without the help their relatives got at the time, they would not exist or have the life they live today. Refugees have even a better reason to be helped than immigrants like myself...who migrate for selfish reasons. Finns are high in the statistics to practice that kind of migration. There are 1.3 million Finns living outside Finland for various reasons. If you think that whole population of the country is only 5,6 million, it is a big percentage. The latest trends show that numbers for Finns migrating elsewhere are only increasing. Alone during the year 2014, when I migrated to US, in total 15 490 Finns chose to move outside Finland.

We are living right now in a world, where none of us can predict the political or economical turns for certain.
Just taking Finland as an example: Who can possibly know what Putin decides to do next or how long will people endure the economical down hill?
There will be many enough, who will choose to leave the country, in the hope of a better tomorrow. Wouldn't you wish then that those people will be allowed to pursue that hope into reality? Even if they would choose to migrate for selfish reasons?

I would...cause I am one of them, I am an immigrant.

Easter and The mystery of missing Kinder Surprise Egg

Easter traditions are as colorful as the brightly painted easter eggs.

What I have learned by now from my husband and my American family, their Easter traditions used to include traveling to the family farm (when my husband was still a child) to spend the Easter with grand-parents and the extended family. They would visit the church with the whole family. Easter weekend also included egg hunt and eventually the Easter bunny also came for a visit. Easter bunny comes with a basket filled with hay and hidden Easter goodies.

Egg hunt most often means plastic eggs hidden in different places (to keep the chocolate from melting, especially in the Southern states), inside there are smaller toys, mini Easter eggs and candies. Alternatively painted eggs hidden in the house, garden, beach, etc.

According to some sources I checked, the Easter Bunny (Osterhase), is an interesting mammal...it lays eggs, as well as the hiding of eggs originally landed to US with the German immigrants around 1700. I knew these traditions from my years in Germany and it is really interesting to see how with the immigration so many colorful traditions have found their solid place in the US holiday traditions.

Out of all the egg variation one can find here, there is one major thing missing though...the surprise eggs. My all time favorite, Kinder Surprise Egg, was nowhere to be found in the mainstream grocery stores. Some speciality stores, specialized in import, e.g. Phoenicia or Specs, had some but ran out.

I was wondering why would THE Egg of all Easter Eggs, which is eaten across Europe, be missing from a consumer targeted country like US? After digging into it, I found interesting history.

The story of the Kinder Surprise egg started in 1974 in Italy. Since then the little surprise egg took over the world, one country at the time. Bringing joy to young and young at heart :)
Due to the US Federal Food, drug and cosmetics act dating back to1938 it was not allowed to sell confectionary including a non-food item embedded inside, unless the part had a functional value. Due to missing to read the texts of the age restrictions the egg was banned from US. For a while there was even a fine if anyone tried to bring the Kinder Surprise eggs into the country e.g. in their luggage.
The few cases, where public info exists, fines were between 300 - 2500 $ per egg.

Finally in 2013 the Kinder Surprise Egg was allowed to enter the US market as a result of failed attempt to succeed with the petition with the aim to ban import and sales of Kinder Surprise Eggs. That one luckily never got enough signatures. Thus, now Kinder Surprise Eggs are fully legal in US...but they can for now only be seen at the stores specialized for import goods. Hoping that some years from now they would not be such a rare commodity anymore. Because they are so good!!!

When I was living in Germany (as an young adult) I sometimes bought myself and my friends Kinder Surprise Egg to have it as the dessert after breakfast on Sunday. Just because one should have happy surprises throughout the year. I recall sitting on the beach with a friend on summer weekend, eating our Kinder Surprise eggs and enjoying the day. My mind started racing the path of its own...I started wondering how many engineers they need to design all the toys & games for the eggs and how many test cycles they have to go through to find the right balance for size, safety and not the least excitement. I think I would love to work for the department responsible for creating the surprises and testing them :)

Back from the egg to the....witch! As in Finland the Easter looks little different than in US, or Germany for that matter. Finnish Easter tradition is a mixture of old pagan traditions and the symbolics brought in with the orthodox church. Finland has only about 1% of population belonging to the orthodox church, thus the rest of Easter from religious perspective is mainly Evangelic Lutheran. In Finnish practical terms it means that the role of church is not in the center of the events.

On Palm Sunday the Finnish children dress up as witches and tour around the neighborhood casting the spell to all, who allow them to do so. Prior to that they have decorated several pussy willow branches with colorful decorations (feathers, paper ornaments, etc.). Those are the wands which they do the spell with and leave it to the receiver, in return for candy.
I remember when I moved back to Finland in 2007, all the years from there onwards the door bell rang first time at 10 am (the neighbors' kids knew I was up early during weekends)...and it continued ringing all the way till about 3 pm. As a result I had lovely bouquet of colorful branches and had been thoroughly casted with well being spells.

The Easter weekend itself is also a fun one, cause it is a long weekend. Good Friday (in Finnish Pitkäperjantai "Long Friday") and Easter Monday are public holidays. Most of the shops are closed all 4 days, only the big grocery stores (note big in Finnish context means only grocery stores beyond 400m2 / 4000ft2) are allowed to stay open some hours. I like that limitation, as it calms things down. Lot of people take the time to visit their relatives or many use this opportunity to go for the last ski trip for the season to Finnish Lapland or abroad. Some, like my brother and sister-in-law, use this weekend to prepare their yacht for the summer season. The spring is starting to show and, for most Finns, Easter marks the end to the long dark winter and start of spring season. Some even grow Easter grass (normal garden grass) on a plate or basket and put little chick decoration on it.

Easter weekend dinners are around lamb and vegetables. Some modern cooks might cook wild hare instead of lamb. Dessert is either mämmi, a sweet rye Jell-o like desert, Pasha (from the Russian traditions and more among the orthodox community), dessert made of quark / curd and something fruity to bring the spring colors to the table.

Mämmi is something, which is a must taste for foreigners, at least once. But do not think ALL
Finns love it. My husband got to spend one Easter by himself in Finland, as I was going for a girls trip with one of my good friends to Singapore and Bali. I prepared him for everything, he knew what to do and say when the witches came and he was exploring the Finnish cuisine. When I got home from the trip he proudly announced that he had saved half a box of mämmi for me :) Great! I was busy thinking how to tell him nicely that I do not normally eat mämmi and if I do, maximum one small bowl. He was highly confused...as he had read somewhere that ALL Finns love mämmi. Mämmi is one of those foods that you either love it, or you despise it. Do not judge it though only based on the somewhat enquiring looks of it.

I have been really awed to see how 2nd / 3rd generation American Finns post to Facebook community pictures of home made mämmi. Respect!

Eggs are of course solid part of Finnish Easter too. Kinder Surprise eggs are sold in every Finnish grocery store :) but we have our own speciality egg. Fazer has made a business of reusing empty egg shells from baking to fill them with chocolate. This delicacy is called Mignon egg.

Hyvää pääsiäistä! Glad Påsk! Fröhliche Ostern! Joyeuses pâques! Feliz Pascua! Happy Easter to one and all! May The joy of spring and New beginnings fill this weekend.

Work-life - continental differences

I am commanded by the doctor,  and my husband to bed rest for a week....using this time to catch up on the blog. Thought to write a little about my personal observations about the American work life versus the one in Finland. Like it would make my sick leave feel less...away from work :)

Last year I brought my project with me from Finland. I was pretty much on an one woman assignment, working for client projects based in US and Mexico but for a company, whose headquarters is in Finland. I had been working in few occasions for them and knew the company well. Thus I had rather soft landing. They knew me, I knew them and I was allowed to focus on managing the projects.

After that experience it was time for something new and time to get a taste of how it feels to be part of a bigger team. It rarely happens in the US that you find a project locally, at the time when you are looking for one. This time I got lucky though and managed to join a local project. It has been a learning experience. I hardly knew anyone, even from my team colleagues. The few ones I kind of knew, was virtually. I have learned a lot since, both from my own company and the client's. Yet I have also the feeling that due to my colorful background and having done projects in so many countries, I can contribute knowledge which is a rare trade here.

The business has been booming here so well the past years that most of my colleagues have been working only in the US. Also, the size of the population makes one's career take a totally different path than what my career experiences were in Finland. In US you can afford to specialize in a certain area. In Finland we never had that luxury; there, if you just show an open mind and willingness, you end up being thrown in into all kinds of fun stuff. Everything from your "normal work" to selling, negotiating and writing contracts or even jumping in as the client account partner. Lot of this happened of course also because I had a manager, who knew she could throw me into any challenge and I would be able to turn it around. Whether it was troubled project , impossible deal or difficult client.
Here one tends to limit the activities only to the "normal work" border lines and it is very tightly defined at which level you get to do what. Suddenly I am the same seniority level as before but the scale of my work activities has narrowed down greatly. The only way to get to do the things, which I have already done, is to get level higher.

I still remember when I asked my mentor if he thought that I could have a chance to build a career in our company but in US...he laughed. The reason he laughed was that he knew already what I have now learned. Senior resource, which was fostered and matured in Europe will be of good value here.
The diversity of skills and experience, which I or any of my European peers have versus the same level of our US colleagues; there is a difference. Lessons learned from that, a European resource with wide skill set and international experiences should never hesitate checking the possibilities in US.

I have had the luxury, within my current employer, to have a great manager when I needed one. I would say it becomes more important the further one goes, as one has matured professionally and created a solid set of work ethics and values. Having a manager who fits within that framework has big impact to the motivation level. I got lucky here in US, my manager is from UK. He understands how it feels first to dive into the US work life and learn to find your way.
I have also been lucky to have a few great mentors, some who know me from years ago and some from the time I have been in US. All of their support has been important. I am trying to pay it forward and have been mentoring for some years now. Now I have few mentees in US too. I am enjoying that relationship a lot!

But it did feel funny in the beginning....you stay at the same company, basic processes stay the same but the scale of everything changed. Suddenly instead of having overall company size of 1500 people...alone one practice area had 2000 people. Not to mention the overall size of the company here in US! The amount of things we do as a company has only become clear during the time here. Finland was too far and too small to get concrete grip of some of the ground breaking and trend setting activities that we do. I felt like I was, after 9 years with the company, suddenly a beginner. Learning so much new each day.

Some things, which are dear to me changed, not necessarily to better. I valued highly being a manager, whom my team knew well and whom they knew to trust with anything. I had the same relationship with my own manager in Finland. It was coaching relationship on top of managing.
Here developing such relationship takes lot longer, as everything is virtual. I have been working with my current manager for over a year now and have not seen him in person, not even once. It took me some time to warm up to the virtual working environment. Eventually I got there. Personally I think that it would have been easier journey if one would have had chances to meet in person.

In Finland we got excellent work life balance and employees are well protected to allow to have that balance. In US it depends a lot on the company you work for. My company is from the better end but even then work weeks are longer and everything is more about work.

It does not mean to say that one would necessarily work more quantitively (accomplishments) but the amount of hours spent working is higher to start with. The border line between work time and out of office time is more vague. Even some of my mentees, who are at the beginning of their career, shared with me that they feel the need to check e-mails on Sunday. After some lessons learned along the way I am not willing to go down that path anymore.

In some ways it is a bittersweet feeling, as by this time of my career I have gone through hell and high water, been on the edge of burn out once and learned a lot from all of it. I have learned how to work hard but how to keep the balance. Most of all I have learned to prioritize my personal health and well being. Then suddenly I am in an environment where even talking about work life balance is considered as rather a weird topic. Though US, in general, is admired for a lot and the mentality is that hard work is the only way. I respect that but I think that it would be time for the employers and government to look around and realize that there are also other options to achieve high results.

It seems that generally respect towards hierarchy sits tighter in the work culture here than what it does in Finland. I am of course totally oblivious to it and to me CEO is a person like any other.
Have noticed though from some colleagues; how they talk about some senior colleagues or leadership, it sounds as if they were next from god. Internally I can just chuckle, as that is such a foreign concept in work-life to me. Not that in Finland we would not respect the senior colleagues but we do not put them automatically on the high chair. They are considered still equal and easy to approach, to discuss anything.

What took me by surprise was the sick leave behavior. In Finland, in general, if you get sick, you stay home because you do NOT want to get all your colleagues sick and you tend to heal faster when you get the appropriate rest. You get the paper from doctor, which allows you to stay home and you do not need to worry about anything.
Here the work ethic is to work, no matter what. There are companies, which give you a maximum amount of sick days. If you go over that, you get fired. Regardless of whether you had a doctor's note or not. I am lucky not to work for one of those companies, yet I am surrounded by colleagues who have grown up with the traditional US work ethic.

This means it being totally normal and acceptable to have 1/3 of the office sneezing and coughing one week. The next week another 1/3 and so on. The pharmaceutical industry loves this trend and it means lot of customer for them. Buying high volumes of pills to keep everyone going through the work week.

I know that this trend has set into Finland as well to some companies, who are all about high performance. I think from all countries, Japan has the right behavioral model in place already for years. In Japan if you have flu symptoms, yet you choose to go to work, you at least wear a protection mask to prevent your colleagues from getting the virus.

Talking about vacations, in Finland you get, by law, a minimum 27 days of vacation per year. Depending on the industry, Saturdays may or may not count if you take Mon-Fri off. Which I admit, makes no sense in the modern world. Finland has only 13 public holidays left. If they hit Saturday or Sunday, they will not result to additional day off during the weekdays.

In US vacation comes along one's the loyalty to the company. If you start in a new company you get 10 - 15 days and need to work several years to increase the amount of vacation days. There are, depending the company and industry,  6 - 12 public holidays. Depending on the company and industry, some of those may be fixed ones e.g. 4th July and some are floating ones. Means you can take them when it suits you best from work perspective. Also, if the public holiday hits Sunday you get the following day off and if it hits Saturday, you get the Friday off.

In my case, as I was able to keep my seniority, I have actually slightly more vacation in practical terms than what I had in Finland, as the floating public holidays can be linked to vacation.

Before I moved lot of Finns kept saying "In US you will not have the same health care benefits and everything will be so expensive". Well, I think that is not a fair statement at least when one works. The health care benefits do often come with better benefits than what one could ever get in Finland. If you do not work, then you do have an issue. As a foreigner there is little business to be here unless you work anyways. The system here drives to get people to work.

Which I cannot say that Finnish system is so good about. Too many people stay unemployed because they get better money that way than going to work. There is no real thrive to ensure that everyone has work. Here the rules of the game are lot harder. Everything depends on having work and being employed.
Regardless of the background, nationality or last name, with hard work and good network, one can change the stars. Here one is very open minded to hire foreigners and give them the same benefits as for an American citizen. Our household happens to be having equality when it comes to career. Which means that first time in life I see in practice that there is such things as: no difference between female or male career opportunities or income.
Not to mention the difference in the taxes one pays in Texas versus Finland, but I will get back to that in a different post.

Summa summarum, there is no better or worse in this are. I find it more educating to learn the different ways and see the impacts of those. Hoping that with the open mind some of us travel through the world, our leaders would do the same and have the courage to change things for the better. It all starts with me making the best of each situation I get. So far it has worked.

Living abroad in today's world

Finns living in the US or Americans living in Finland, which ever way....one can gripe all one wants about missing something back home but the truth is...life is good!

With the globalization immigration to a different country is comfortable compared to e.g. the Finns, who took the journey to come to US during the Great Migration (1860 - 1930) in the search after a better life. I could think that anyone from US, who would have decided to immigrate to Finland during that time...would have been ultimately noted as a lunatic back in US.

Nowadays Finland's strengths have reached global media and the number of Americans living in Finland has been steadily rising. In 1987 there were 333 daring Americans living in Finland. In 2009 that number rose to 3907 Americans, who called Finland their home. Today that number is even higher. In 2013 there were in total 15 570 people living in Finland, whose mother tongue is English. This includes also Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and other countries in addition to the US.
Regardless, quite an improvement.

On this side of the globe, keeping up with the latest and the greatest from Finland is easier now than ever before. I browse the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper every day. Even this morning I was enjoying a quiet morning with my cup of green tea and reading the latest news from the web version of Helsingin Sanomat.

Side note: when there is no paper involved...for an ex-paper industry professional, it feels funny to still call a newspaper. I have yet to find a better way to describe it.

In Facebook there are great communities, where Finns and fellow Nordics post information or share knowledge about how to convert the Finnish recipes to the US environment. We exchange knowledge about which ingredient to use to replace some traditional Finnish ingredient, which is not available directly in the US.

The Finnish and Nordic community in Houston (as well as wider Texas) sticks together nicely. One gets to keep up the Finnish and Swedish language on a regular basis and spend nice times together, sharing the latest events about Life in Texas.

Also there are Facebook,  Facetime,  Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter, etc. which help to stay in touch with friends all over the world. Back in 1996 when I moved to Germany, I was communicating by good old letters, FAX (!!!!) and sometimes even by phone with friends and family back in Finland.

At least a few times a month there is a Facetime session with my brother and his family. My nephews know how to dial me via Facetime, which was the key reason they inherited my old iPad. It is so different to catch up with them, when they can see how life is here and they can show their drawings and latest lego creations. Especially with them it does make a difference, as they would not have the patience to just talk. Those discussions would stay rather one-sided and VERY short :))))

Then there are all these great internet shops, where one can get the necessary things. The few Finnish things that I cannot live without are proper rye bread, Fazer chocolate, proper loose green tea, Moomin mugs and Xylitol chewing gum. All of those are in one way or another accessible via internet shopping.
With good bribing and begging, friends and family in Finland have eventually also started sending occasional care packages. Yeiiii!

I do consider myself lucky that I have the luxury of learning about the US culture and life, and at the same time being able to keep my roots strong. That is a dream; a dream which the Finns, who left Finland during the Great Migration would not even dare to think of as a possibility.

The descendants of those brave Finns now number around 700 000 Finnish Americans living in the US. It is inspiring to see in the Finnish American Facebook page how proud they are of their Finnish roots, even if they would go a few generations back.  With some, the knowledge of Finnish language is limited to a few sayings, which their grandparents used to say. Yet, you can see that in their hearts....they are still Finns.

Who knows, maybe a few generations from now the descendants of the Americans immigrated to Finland will face the same situation. Hilarious thought, but everything is possible.