My Dear Hard Drive

Posts Tagged ‘Helsinki’

Um, that’s a surprise and a half. According to the new study on happiness around the world, Finland now ranks second after Denmark. I find it very hard to believe, coming from the country which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and the country where joy comes in a liquid form sold from a government owned facility; Alko. However, we do have a saying which might explain this statistic a little bit: “The one laughing longest is the one on the best meds.” Depression is a nation wide problem, and is largely treated by popping pills, which do make people happier.

There is something else though that I think contributes to the findings more than that: Finns are quite bored with their image as the depressed nation. We’re not quite as bad as we sometimes let on, but we’re seriously not the happiest people on the planet. We may be the most contented people on the planet, but certainly not the happiest. I think that the wish to change our reputation a bit, a lot of respondents have felt compelled to exaggerate the good stuff – which of course wouldn’t be a bad thing to do on a more regular basis.

There are other factors as well, considering Finnish happiness, which probably should be brought up. We are easily satisfied. We don’t expect much of life. The feeling of happiness comes largely from the fact that you get what you think you deserve or what you have earned. I think that in USA for example, people expect a lot more from life than what Finns do, and therefore feel unhappier than the Finns do, even though they might have more or less the exact same standard of life. I know from my own life, that I am ten times happier in Tasmania than what I ever was in Finland. My worst day in Tassie is about as bad as the average day in Finland. And Australia didn’t even make the top 10! And the happiness here has nothing to do with how much money I make here, what I do for living or how big my house is, it is a direct result of what happens when I look outside the window. Instead of rain and asphalt I see green on top of green and beauty on top of beauty. If I had been born here though, I would probably think that by now I should have a house with a sea view instead of a house next to a high way on a semi-industrial area, and that might make me feel quite dissatisfied. In Finland I would not even expect to rent a house, let alone having a view besides the wall of the neighboring building seen through the window of my 60 square meter apartment that I pay an arm and a leg for. In comparison, for the amount of money we paid rent for a 2 room flat in Helsinki, we could rent a 2 family home on a massive lot in Hobart-area… But that’s just it. In Finland you wouldn’t expect to get anything more than 2 rooms. (That’s one bed room by the way.)

Finns are good at accepting things as they are. It is a great asset and a great hinderance at the same time. While we don’t suffer for not being able to do or have something, we accept it as it is instead of trying to change it. And that is what makes us so damned happy.

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I am SICK of this persistent rumour that is going around and is now frequenting on Twitter. Now I want to set the record straight. I come from a Donald Duck fan-family. My grand father has been subscribing Donald Duck for his 5 kids ever since it was published in Finland in 1951. The subscription is still ongoing and there has never been a time when Donald Duck would have been banned due to the pant-issue.

Where the rumour is coming from is that in the 70’s some of the cities, Helsinki being one of them, wanted to save money. Because some countries (I don’t know which) really HAD banned Donald Duck based on his apparel, the cities used that as an excuse to stop the super popular Donald Duck subscriptions to some public government buildings like schools and public doctors offices. This made headlines in other countries as “Finland banned Donald Duck for not wearing pants”. However, Finland, as a nation, never banned Donald Duck, and DD is still one of the biggest selling magazines in Finland, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be too far of if I said it was the most read comic of all time.

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I suppose I am taking a risk here, because I’m speaking in defence of the freedom of speech in a way… Apparently, being honest about your true feelings isn’t appropriate these days. Someone important might get offended. In this case, that someone important was Fred Smith of FedEx for a comment made on Twitter about their town by certain Mr. Andrews who was on his way to give him a presentation of a sort. The unfortunate Mr. Andrews didn’t like Memphis. It seems, that Mr. Andrews should have liked Memphis, or at least should have pretend to, and as he didn’t he got into a world of trouble for mentioning that on Twitter.

What I want to ask is that how petty do you have to be if you bother to write a 350 word letter about a tweet message that most people wouldn’t thought twice about without you bringing it up? Now we all know that Memphis is a bit of an eye sore from the airport point of view. Mr. Andrews never said why he didn’t like Memphis. Maybe he has an obnoxious auntie there. He also never mentioned WHICH town he didn’t like, but thanks to Fred Smith, we all know now that it was Memphis. Now I know, that if I ever go to US, Memphis isn’t probably the nicest place to go see. (Not that I would have anyway, so no big harm done there, or even if I had been thinking about going, the harm still wouldn’t be big I suppose.)

I once got into trouble by stating online that I couldn’t understand how people could live in Helsinki. To me it was way too noisy and there were no trees in sight, and every building looked alike. I lived in Helsinki for some years after that, and I still can’t understand why some people choose to live there. I said that online, and a (former) friend who lives in Helsinki was offended. I simply cannot understand why anyone would be so precious about their home town. Now that I live in Hobart, I LOVE this place. I absolutely ADORE it. But I do understand that some people will find it way too quiet for their taste; they even might say it’s not pretty as there are no neon lights and some of the houses and stores are a bit of an eye sore, but do I care if someone says that out loud on Twitter? Of course not! They have a right to their opinion, and it won’t change my love for Hobart one tiny bit. I happen to like those eye-sores as well. They add character. :p

I don’t know how the letter got online, but I suspect that unless Mr. Andrews got sacked for this he wouldn’t have dared to. However, it got online and Fred Smith should know that publicity these days goes both ways. Everything that can be legally published and a bunch of illegal stuff can become public information. (And here’s a tip, Mr. Smith. If you resort to personal insults toward the little guy in response to something so generic than someone not liking your town, it doesn’t really sit well with general public.) Now, I am one of the few people who don’t have to worry about what drinking party photos will be published of me on Facebook, because I’ve yet to have my first drink. I still feel it’s completely unrealistic to demand a squeaky-clean public image from the people around you, because the only people who can keep that up are very likely to suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, and you would not want to hire them if you knew. People are people, and we are very fast getting to know that we all have things in our lives that other people will judge. Be it your figure, your opinions, your way of life, your religion, someone will think you’re an abomination for it.

I rarely quote the bible, but this is such a perfect opportunity: Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged

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There’s more to this story yet. Please read the comments made by Terbil Towl explaining who exactly wrote that letter… May that be a lesson in thinking before typing in anger.

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Spurred by the comment I received to the Obama-post, I started thinking about what a war is like to most nations apart from USA. Most nations, when they say their soldiers protect their nation, actually do mean that. USA has had what… One attack on their own soil, and that was hardly a military attack. They are STILL terrified of it. American civilians, thank God, have no idea what a war is like. I can say much the same for myself, thank God, but I can’t say the same for my family members, of whom some are old enough to have fought or lived through our two latest wars, the Winter War, which was fought at the same time as the World War II, and/or the Continuation War. By “us” I mean the Finns.

Finns do not have a hired army, apart from some staff members that stay on duty the whole time. If there should be a war, it would affect every family in Finland. Virtually every male, between ages 18 to 60 will be sent off to protect our borders. That excludes those who are incapacitated and includes men who refuse to carry a gun but will serve in other duties, and some women who serve in arms on voluntary basis. That guarantees, that there will not be wars that are of selfish reasons by the government leaders, as they will be sending their own sons to the slaughter just as they send those of the common citizen. Nations like that usually fight only when it is absolutely necessary, and not because some reason made up by the government to justify spending tons of money on an army.

This was the case when the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin attacked Finland on November 30, 1939. The reason was, that Soviet Union (now Russia) wanted to protect their capital of the time, Leningrad from Germans, as it situated too close to the Finnish border. They were worried, that Finland, despite it’s neutral position to WW2 would still allow Germans to attack through it, or could not stop them from doing it. Finland refused the request to use the land for military purposes, so SU attacked.

Now imagine. You sit peacefully in your home, listening to the news on the radio, and you hear that your country is being attacked by a country of a massive size, with an army 4 times the size of yours, and that is only counting their strength in soldiers sent your way. (If it was USA, it would probably mean something like the combined forces of all European countries, Russia, and probably South-America as well, and I don’t think it would still create terror similar to that of Finns.) You know that Sweden, on the west side of your country, has agreed not to join the war on your behalf in exchange of a promise by Russians that they won’t cross their border when they get there. WHEN they get there, they say. They are planning to walk all over your country in two weeks, and there is nothing stopping them, but an army of 250 000 men shooting pea guns. An army including your husband, your sons, your father and your brothers, and not only them, but every man you’ve ever known, unless they are over or under that age limit of 60 or 18. You thought they went to military rehearsal, but now you know they were sent to the border in case there is a war.

If you would live in Helsinki, the capital, you would know to expect bombing. You would know exactly where the bomb shelters are, and how many seconds it takes for you to collect your kids and run to the shelter. You would sleep with your clothes on, so you wouldn’t have to run to the streets in your nightie. The city would be sitting in a total darkness at nights, and what long nights they are in the winter, so that the army can misguide the Soviet bombers to bomb an inhabited island before the actual city by lighting little fires in there. Other towns were not as well protected as Helsinki was, and I used to live in a house that was one storey shorter than it started out with, the Russian bombers had shortened it a bit. At least it was still standing. The attic, where I dried my laundry, once was the top floor, now blown to pieces. Someone had lived there. I hope they heard the warning sirens in time and ran to bomb shelters before that happened.

You would eventually decide that it would be better for your children to live somewhere safe and you ship them off to Sweden to be raised by people you have never met, and to be treated like second class citizens all through their childhood and young adult life. You, and many of your friends would never see the children again, and some of them would never learn to speak your language. You would no longer work at what ever you did before, but you would be making clothes for the army, or filling shells of bullets with gun powder. You would go to the store hoping they had something to sell today, as you ran out of food a week ago. My grand mother once told me how she spent her last money on a bowl of pea soup at the bus station knowing that the next time she would get paid was a week from that, and she would not have a thing to eat until then. And that was after the war.

Should you live close to the Russian border, you would have left in a big hurry after the news… A little before possibly. You would pack everything you can on a horse carriage and take that last look at your home knowing that it might not be standing the next time you see it. You might not ever see it again, because your home village would be overtaken by Russians and you could never return. If you decided to stay regardless, like some people did, you wouldn’t know what would happen to you. There are no rules on a war path.

It was an impossible war, but the Soviet Union never made it to the Swedish border. Now look at the statistics here and understand why it was a miracle that Finland survived.

We received help from USA in the form of clothing and food, which we paid back before scheduled. (How ever did my grand parents and their generation ever managed that I don’t have an idea off.)

(Click on Read more to find some videos of the war, in English aired in USA.) Read the rest of this entry »

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