Tag Archives: culture

Mexico trip, November 2012

Visited Mexico for business and pleasure during November. We stayed in the Condesa neighbourhood in Mexico City and a short time in Acapulco. All the photos here in Flickr, as usual a selection below.

Day of the Dead candy
Day of the Dead candy

Day of the Dead altar in Plaza Satélite
Day of the Dead altar in Plaza Satélite

Bikers' pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Bikers’ pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Pancita
Pancita

Day of the dead altar
Day of the dead altar in the market square

La suavicrema
La estela de luz, a.k.a. la suavicrema

En camino
On our way

Day of the Dead altar at the hotel
Day of the Dead altar at the hotel

Parque México
Parque México in Condesa

Church
Church

Mexico Stock Exchange
Mexico Stock Exchange

Day of the Dead decor
Day of the Dead decor

Sushi street stall
Sushi street stall

Day of the Dead decor

Alebrijes
Alebrijes, nightmare creatures

Cochinita Pibil en Azul Condesa
Cochinita Pibil en Azul Condesa

Driving to Acapulco
Driving to Acapulco

Tough life
Tough life part one: coconut juice, coconut “fruit” and piña colada

Tough life
Tough life part two: the Mexican Pacific
Dawn sequence
Dawn sequence

Dawn sequence
Dawn sequence

Dawn sequence
Dawn sequence

Autopista del sol
Driving back to Mexico City

Autopista del sol
Guerrero State landscape

The importance of routines for toddlers

If you are a parent, you have most probably encountered the huge need babies and toddlers have for routine, structured, predictable days.  We share most of the activities together with my wife, but I usually take care of the end-of-day routines.  Furthermore, I’ve taken to mark each step by singing a different song.

I use TuneIn for listening to internet radio stations. Since most Mexican stations play the national anthem at midnight local time, I will usually sing it when I’m preparing him to go to daycare at 8 a.m. Finnish time. Think of it as a small scale “honores a la bandera”.

If I’m around when he takes his mid-day nap, I’ll sing him this:

To brush his teeth then we’ll come with this:

When it’s time to go to bed it’s the turn of “La familia Telerín”:

Putting his pajamas will be to the tune of “Juan Pestañas”

And in case that was not enough and he can’t sleep, then stronger measures are needed

Funnily enough, if by any chance I miss or mix any of the songs, he will be very, very annoyed. I just hope he doesn’t grow up thinking life is an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical or a Pedro Infante movie. 🙂

Maybe Mexico is indeed quite misunderstood

A couple of European colleagues joined me in my last business trip to Mexico and they seemed genuinely surprised by what they saw. It was not as unsafe as they were led to believe, the people were more ethnically varied than they expected, it was not as poor (even though of course they did see a cross-section of Mexican society from wealthy city denizens to farm hands in the hills) and the food was better than they thought.

Also at some point I spent some time with a group of Finnish gentlemen who had a lot of questions about the country, which I did my best to answer in the little time we had together (personal favourite: why do all houses have water tanks in the roof?).

Maybe the place is indeed quite misunderstood as I’ve been saying all these years.  I’m not saying it’s better or worse, it’s just not what people abroad without previous experience of the country think.

Madrid

It’s always a pleasure to visit Spain, even if for work. I’ve always found it funny that for the Finns Spain equals sangría & beaches, whereas for Mexicans Spain is all about our shared culture & history. This time I did have a slot to walk through the city after my meetings, so I used it. I’ve always been treated well in Madrid (even if they immediately know where I’m from due to my accent) and people more than once remarked how Mexico is the closest of the Latin American countries to Spain.  It was however funny to feel that, as close to my roots as it is, it is not home this side of the pond.

More pictures, as usual, in the set.

Crossing the Pyrenees
Crossing the Pyrenees
Dusk over Barajas
Dusk over Barajas
Walking through Paseo de la Castellana
Walking through Paseo de la Castellana
Colón
Monument to Christopher Columbus
Cibeles
Cibeles
Gran Vía
Gran Vía
Centro Histórico
One of the things that always strikes me about Madrid is that since it was founded at more or less the same time as the colonial cities of Mexico it tends to have very similar buildings (unlike, say, Toledo).
Palacio Real
Royal Palace.

Minäkin olen suomalainen. Citizenship: Process and Identity

The eagle and the lion getting along

As long-time readers of this blog know I have lived slightly over ten years in Finland, basically one third of my life and almost my whole adulthood. A couple of months after my son was born I applied for citizenship, and it was granted slightly over a week ago (even if I didn’t find out until last Friday). It mirrors that well-trodden path elsewhere from immigrant to citizen, with the addition that it’s obviously the first time I go through it and it’s also a relatively novel phenomenon for the country I can now call my own.

The applicable Finnish law has significantly changed during my time here. Until 2007 time as a student or worker without A status (whose granting was always a mystery to me) didn’t count towards citizenship, which meant the 6 years I had spent in Finland by then were useless. This changed when four years ago the law was modified so that all the time spent in the country legally counts toward citizenship, regardless of whether it was spent as a student, a worker, a Finn’s family member or another reason. The residency requirement was 6 uninterrupted years for singles, 4 for those married to a Finnish citizen with the last 2 being continuous (i.e. if you moved away and came back even if you had lived here long enough you had to wait another two years to apply).

Besides the residency requirement, the law also stated that applicants should have a good command of one of the official languages of Finnish and Swedish (e.g. proven with the official Yleiskielentutkinto test which I took in 2007) plus a clean criminal record. Even minor fines could count against you. You also needed to show a demonstrable source of income.

I had no problem with those prerequisites, but the challenging bit for me was that when filling out the citizenship form I had to list all my absences from Finland since I moved here. Especially after ten years working in a multinational corporation and constant trips to visit my parents it was a challenging exercise (as you can probably gather from this Flickr collection). I created an Excel table with Destination(s), Travel purpose, Dates & Duration that gave me a total of over 90 absences from Finland (it could have been worse, but I was a full time student for the first 3 years). I understand very well why this is required (visiting e.g. Helmand in Afghanistan wouldn’t look good, I guess unless you’re a peacekeeper) but it was a chore. Thankfully I had my old passports, Dopplr & Flickr to help me out. I’m positive the list submitted was accurate. Based on the processing times published in the Immigration Service’s website I expected it to take at least a year, if not more.

Funnily enough I was awarded Finnish nationality right before the law was loosened up a little again (now you need one or two years less of residence, but you still have to prove the other points).

Unlike say, Spain, the United States, or Mexico, Finland doesn’t organize a ceremony of any kind for awarding citizenship nor an oath of allegiance of any sort. You “just” get a letter (blame it on Finnish distaste for useless ceremony if you will). As of last Tuesday, I’m now a Finn (or at least a Finnish citizen).

Every one of us is a product of our background and our experiences. Since the turn of the century I’ve learned to understand the Finns: their language and the way it modifies their thought processes, their love of nature, their diligence for hard study and hard work but respect of free time, their love of exercise and sports, their complex relationship with coffee and alcohol, their modesty, openness, directness and practicality, their trust in their state institutions (especially for education and security), their love of salmiakku, rhubarb pies, mämmi, new potatoes with dill, salmon, reindeer, sausages, more berries than I can name in languages other than Finnish and Karelian pies, their view that having sauna next to a lake or sea is the best way to end a summer’s day, the impressive mood changes matching with the seasons, their love of hockey and victories over Sweden, their stubbornness to the point of suicide (a.k.a. sisu, they say), and many other things. During my time here I’ve taken the tasks of internalising the positives, tolerating the negatives and trying to bring a bit of my own to the table. It’s not about this place and this people aren’t good. It’s about we can be better (crap, it still feels weird to say we).

If I didn’t like it here warts and all I wouldn’t have stayed this long. During that process of contact and adaptation, you start identifying yourself with your host society if the relationship with it is at the very least cordial. I won’t lie if I say I applied for citizenship almost purely for practical reasons: I have now the right to live permanently with my wife and son; travel to certain places like the US, Africa and the Middle East is easier (Finns have visa-free travel to 170+ countries, Mexicans to 120+) while coming back should be easier; I now have the right to influence where my taxes are used and where the society is going through my vote; I can even move freely to another EU country if I have a reason to do so.

However, I find myself in the situation where my sense of identity is being modified. Regardless of whether I liked it or not, one of the many factors that defined me in the eyes of others was the fact that I’m a Mexican in Finland, a foreigner, an immigrant. That meant (depending on the audience) that I always had to be extra careful and try to give the best possible impression, as they wouldn’t necessarily see me, but what I represent. It is a huge responsibility to feel you’re the only sample somebody knows of a country of 110 million people or of the 200,000 immigrants in Finland and you have the chance to make or break their stereotypes. While that is still somewhat relevant the turn from outsider to insider makes it weaker. I have proven myself. I’ve been measured, examined and approved. I am a part of this society and nobody can take that away from me. I am still me, but what me is evolves with my experience. Whichever term you want to use: new Finn, naturalized Finn, Mexican-Finn, Finn-Mexican, Finn of Mexican origin, etc. it is not anymore foreigner or immigrant.

Since this whole phenomenon is so new for Finland itself I know I will again be doing some trailblazing (sometimes I feel like Antonio Banderas in 13th Warrior, while on others like an Old West pioneer) and I know people with sympathies with the extreme right will never see somebody like me as equal to them. The good news is that my vote counts too and we are equal before the law. If they can’t live with that it’s their problem, not mine.

I am currently traveling for the first time abroad using a Finnish passport besides my Mexican one. It feels nice to be part of the society I’ve spent so long trying to fit with without losing the official link to my roots in the place where I was born.

Kiitos.

José José o la banda sonora de los fracasados

El buen Erich Martino en una conversación apuntó cómo los cantantes que son famosos en determinado país  reflejan su cultura usando como ejemplo a José José y David Bowie, dos cantantes de México y Reino Unido que aunque estén a años luz de distancia en género son de la misma edad y empezaron a ser populares casi al mismo tiempo.

A mí desde chico no me gustaban mucho las rolas del Príncipe de la Canción y no entendía por qué hasta que me puse a analizar las letras: ¡son absolutamente deprimentes!

Hoy quiero saborear mi dolor
No pido compasión ni piedad
-El Triste

Y es verdad soy un payaso,
pero qué le voy a hacer,
uno no es lo que quiere,
sino lo que puede ser.
-Payaso

Ahora comparémoslas con uno de los trancazos de Bowie (del cual tampoco soy gran fan, pero simplemente porque no me gusta tanto el glam):

There’s a Starman waiting in the sky
he’s told us not to blow it
’cause he knows it’s all worthwile.
-Starman

Alguien por favor dígame que no somos una cultura que venera al fracaso más que al éxito.  Eso es lo que hay que cambiar.