Oh, how I love being European in the world economy of 2009.

The guys in Bali have decided to operate on a steady currency instead of Indonesian Rupiahs (a wise choice as such), so everything is paid in US dollars. However, while the steadiness of euro has been rock solid, the value of USD just hit its all-time low at .66 euros. I just paid our 5-figure course fees and accommodation, saving several thousand dollars just by living in the this specific part of the world!

So, we have the flights, we have the course payment on its way, and we have accommodation waiting in Helsinki after New Year’s. And it seems like we’re getting to visit Vuohijärvi as well!

Tags: it's good to be me, money, planning, practical stuff

It really is not bad at all living at Oakwood. As I mentioned earlier, some of the city’s best restaurants are located on the premises (essentially, after all, this is just a mall that is a bit overblown – it looks like the Empire State Building (in miniature) from the outside and boasts a heap of silly designer boutiques that no-one can afford to shop at) and I had a go at the Sunday brunch at our favourite one – Shiro.

Now, the essential thing to know about Sunday brunches is that while they’re not exactly cheap, they’re affordable. They’re not only all-you-can-eat, but also all-you-can-drink – the bubbly wine and other things are included in the bill. The other thing you should know about Shiro is that they serve excellent East Asian food, namely sushi and dim sums (but also curries and stuff) along with some stunning salads. I took some photos of Shiro interior on the previsit:

Anyhoo, as Heikki wasn’t feeling up to it, I went and ate and conquered. My tummy that is. Started off with tofu wontons, continued with veg & chicken dim sums, stuffed my face with my favourite maki pieces while tucking into some of the most gorgeous salads. They also served this fried fish with basil, absolutely stunningly brilliantly magnificent! There’s just one word to describe it and even that’s in Finnish: Itkuhyvvää! And yeah, the desserts are included in the whole shebang as well. I only just had room for the chocolate sushi and coconut-pecan-chocolate pie.

So how much for all of this? After taxes and tips I ended up with rs. 1700 less cash than I walked in with. That’s somewhere in the ballpark of 24 euros. But then again, I didn’t need to eat that evening… and left the restaurant grinning stupidly from ear to ear. Not many places do that to me anymore.

A propos, I entertained myself with the question of what would I bring with me if I had the power and assets. Shiro is most definitely one of the things, but also the Sunday brunch tradition is something to consider. I wouldn’t mind bringing over the rooftop pool or the modern gym, although I do realise that having an open air rooftop pool in Finland is rather stupid. There are good reasons why we don’t have open air pools in that country… but anyway. It’s the thought that counts, right?

Two more nights to go. On the 26th is the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and I’m guessing the security might be a wee bit tighter than usual at the BIA (Bangalore International Airport). Considering that the security measures are somewhere between absurd and downright silly regularly, we’re anticipating delays, irrational checks between checkpoints for passports, visas, tickets, stamps and all the like. Better be there several hours before the take-off, which would be at 3.30 am.

But then it’s home bittersweet home.

Tags: drink, food, hotels, luxuries, money, travel

Oh yes, the honeymoon trip. Komandoo was a beautiful, beautiful place with the best diving sites I’ve seen so far, good food and friendly people. In other words, it was almost the total opposite of India – or was it?

As the whole island is built around tourism, it felt… artificial. Like a facade. Not only the 100% imported food and sterile environment (the staff cleans fallen leaves from the pathways in the morning), but also the staff itself. Although everyone kept up a friendly face and asked if there was something they could do for us, I could still sense a big difference between them and, say, their Filipino counterparts on Malapascua. If you ask me, it’s all about what motivates people.

You see, when I’m dealing with Filipinos, I get the feeling that they genuinely want to help me out when something is wrong, whereas Indians are only willing to do something if they get money out of it. Sad to say, but for me the Maldivians were closer to Indians than I expected. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly hostile, but there were constant signals from the staff that they are only in it for the money. I guess I’m even more sensitive to that kind of thing after being exposed to its extreme forms here in India.

Or maybe Filipinos have better acting skills, who knows.

Anyway, the trip itself. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking, so here we go:

The villas were built over water and there was a constant selection of fishes swimming around them. The house reef of the island stretched all the way around the construction and you could spot dozens of species just by sitting on the porch.

On a lucky day you could spot a small (around half a metre wide) stingrays near the beach. This one was no more than three meters from the shoreline, digging for food in the sand.

As Maldives is very close to the equator, sunsets were spectacularly quick. From the position above it took less than ten minutes until the whole star was behind horizon. The main thing for us was of course diving, and boy did we see everything imaginable:

I’ve never seen corals like this before, but that’s not all. How about this:

Or this:

And how would you feel about having one of these on your plate?

What’s more, we found some turtles on our explorations:

This was only a small sample of what we saw, the rest can be found behind the small thumbnails and this link.

Tags: diving, holiday, it's good to be me, luxuries, maldives, money, natural beauty, photos, service, travel, ways of working, what is different

Oh, bloody hell. And oh yeah!

For one, the Corporation payroll withheld 70% of my salary in taxes this month. Those masala-eating surrendermonkeys have been paying too little taxes so far, so they decided to compensate a bit now that I am leaving soon. Of course, it must be bloody difficult to get the percentage right when there are so many choices (four), and the highest one is chosen when annual income exceeds 7500 euros.

And of course I have a hugely expensive honeymoon trip to pay on top of usual living expenses this month.

On the other hand, we’re off for the said honeymoon in 12 hours. I can’t wait!

Tags: colleagues from India, holiday, it's good to be me, money, oh bugger, surprises, travel, ways of working, what is different, why I wanted a change, work

They usually say that no news is good news, but right now I’d like to have some. Almost anything would do, but one thing is hanging above everything else: I would very much like to have a schedule and know the terms for our move.

What I know right now is not much: we will have our honeymoon in Maldives, come back to Bangalore, repatriate to Oulu and then get going to Bali for our IDC (SCUBA instructor) internships. I will have some severance pay from the Corporation, but we still need to gather some more cash for the whole trip to be feasible. If we are going to stay in Finland for more than a few weeks, we also need a place to stay, and that will complicate things even further. Our furniture won’t reach Finland before end of this year, and getting an apartment for one or two months would anyway be far from practical.

It would be easy to fill the gap by selling some of the furniture we have, but by the time we’re supposed to head southeast, our cargo will be evading pirates somewhere in the Somalian seas. We could of course sell them in advance, but the last expat to leave Bangalore had a nasty surprise in the box when they opened it – the whole crate was sprayed with bug spray that destroyed every single piece of cargo and they had to discard it all. Claiming the insurance money after something like that would be the quick and dirty way to liquidate our assets, with significantly better prices and all, but still…

A lot of questions are still open and a lot of loose ends need to be caught, but I think we’re on top of it again. Most likely I forgot to mention hundreds of things, but if something bugs you, please leave a comment.

Tags: holiday, money, moving, planning, practical stuff, time, travel

I’ve always tried hard to make everyday living work smoothly and in a timely manner. My number one option so far has been staying in Finland where the infrastructure is good and things are well out-of-the-box. Everything is bloody expensive, but for that money you get a reliable road network, tolerable bureaucracy and very low corruption rates. Things just… work.

I’m sure you already know what India is like in this regard. I may be rich here, but it doesn’t make everyday life as easy as in the civilised world. I could spend my whole salary on domestic help, bribes and everything, and still be a long way from the quality of living Finland provides. So this is not the place I want to settle down in.

The problem with both Finland and India is that I’m heavily dependent on the infrastructure and other people. A lot of stuff I do requires electricity, special skills, buying something or travelling somewhere. Things are really complicated, and on top of that I have to sacrifice more than half of my daily time in a job that doesn’t give me much more than money. While it’s nice to have a good salary and a “good” job, I don’t find satisfaction in the lifestyle anymore.

The following two paragraphs may seem irrelevant to the ones above, but bear with me for a while. I’ll try to explain in a moment.

The nature of the problem is the same as in video game industry today. In the 1980s anyone could buy a C64, learn how to write code and put up a semi-decent gaming experience in a couple of weeks. Twenty years later, it takes a team of n+1 professionals, expensive development tools and at least a year (or something?) to put together even the tiniest Xbox Live Arcade game, not even mentioning “real” games. One man creations are really few and far between, and in a bigger project you can easily find yourself doing something completely meaningless just because you were told to do so.

And this is the exact problem I have with the Corporation. I worked on a project for two years, saw a prototype of the end product once (not in action), and the whole project was shot down shortly after that. Two years well spent, thank you and here’s the next one. Motivation, anyone?

The common denominator of these topics is the lack of personality and individuality. Being just a faceless part of a huge group – be it a company or a nation – just doesn’t cut it for me. I know I’m an individual person with my friends and relatives, but being a greedy bastard, I want to be one in other contexts too. This includes the ability to create something meaningful by myself and keeping my work in touch with the real world, not just fiddling with bits & pieces that are useless without hundreds of other people.

And that’s why I intend to change careers after this assignment, even if it means that my income will be cut by 90 per cent or so. I know there are endless possibilities out there, and life is too short to be spent on something I don’t like doing. IT might have been fun once, but it’s time to move on already.

Tags: friends and family, luxuries, money, planning, prices, ways of working, why I wanted a change, work

It’s funny how the role of money is different in here. Rupees feel like Monopoly money and it almost never feels like I’m spending a lot of money on anything. On top of that, I have almost zero capital expenditure, leaving me with too much to spare on living.

And still I feel like I might run out of cash any minute now.

This controversial effect comes from the combination of low-value currency (1000 rupees is 15 euros) and generally low prices (lunch buffets less than 300 rupees). While I can easily afford stuff here, there’s always the feeling that I wouldn’t have enough money for this and that back at home. I can spend 45000 on home decoration without realising that it’s actually more than 700 euros, and still feel hopelessly broke when my account balance drops below 300000 or so. Five years ago I got through a whole year with a similar amount of money – in Finland! I never had such amounts of money roaming free when I lived in Finland, but here – with cheaper prices and all – the world is not enough. Somehow no amount of rupees associates with Real Money, no matter how hard I try.

Maybe it will get a bit easier next month when I have the chance to convert part of the balance to euros.

Or not.

Tags: bank, luxuries, money, prices, what is different

Remember when I had my stuff packed in April for shipment to India? The ones to be transported by sea?

Well, it seems like they’re already in India. I was informed that the ship arrived at Chennai last Saturday and they are being moved to a train today. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to pay the customs on Thursday and may see the actual stuff before end of this week. I did all the paperwork today with some help from the removal company, meaning that their agent tells me where to sign and fills up the forms for me afterwards. All I had to involve in was listing the values of my goods for the customs declaration.

And boy, did I get a firm reminder of where I am.

The agent was quite close to passing out when he heard how much my video projector had cost, so he made some adjustments to the figures before writing them down. It seems now that my home theater – including the projector, amp, speakers and Xbox  with its controllers and all – is now worth 300 euros in total. Add in the other dutiable stuff and the shipment is valued at around 700 euros for duty purposes.

Right.

Tags: money, moving, people in india, practical stuff, prices, time, ways of working, what is different

My (hopefully) last weekend in a hotel for some time is almost at its end, and it could be worse. For the last two days I’ve been chilling out on the poolside, eating in ridiculously priced joints and reading a lot. I’m currently going through Steve Berry’s The Templar Legacy, which I bought just because I found The Da Vinci Code fascinating and well written. Berry draws his ideas from the same pool with Dan Brown, but his themes and locations are a bit less well-known than Brown’s. For example, while Robert Langdon deciphers messages in The Last Supper, Berry’s Cotton Malone has to settle with less known artists such as Don Miguel de Manara. Still, the story is quite interesting – I only bought it yesterday and I’m on page 350 or so already.

Things seem to be going well towards me moving out next Thursday, but there’s plenty of room for catastrophies to happen. I’m usually not this pessimistic, but seeing how things (don’t) work around here has given me enough reason not to hold my breath.

Tags: books, food, hotels, money, prices