Tag Archives: family

Family in Finland

As much as I might sometimes encounter barriers here, I don't want to give a lopsided view about my experience in Finland.  I am very aware that nowhere is perfect and neither am I, and furthermore, I really enjoy my work, have very good friends, and I'm even part of a family here.

That's truly what this post is about, because, as my family back in Mexico would say, I truly landed in a soft sport when I came here, met my wife and after some time was pretty much adopted into her family.  I cannot be grateful enough for that, since through them, my friends and of course my wife I came to know, love and integrate here in Finland.  With them I've shared my successes and they celebrate them as much as my blood family does.  They have even asked me to enter their family records which of course is an honour.

This is probably what makes it a little confusing, because for those that know me I am "one of them" but certain sectors of the general public tend to see me with suspicion.  I'm not going to change that, so I should stop caring and move on.  ;-)

Share

Blessed those who have family and friends

At our wedding, I couldn't help but notice that we have an amazing amount in quality and quantity of friends.  Only thinking about the distances some of them had to travel to be with us during that day makes us realise how much they care.

We hope they enjoyed the occasion as much as we did.

Share

Blogueros Mexicanos y debraye sobre la lectura

Entre otras cosas que hice en París (además de encontrarme con mi papá y visitar la región de Champaña), tuve la oportunidad de conocer a dos blogueros que tienen un sitio permanente en mi Bloglines: Ceronne y Chilango en Madrid.

En la muy amena conversación, que por desgracia duró poco dado que Chilango en Madrid andaba con unos amigos y yo tenía que tomar mi tren de regreso, entre otras cosas hubo un momento en que uno de ellos me preguntó cómo era que sabía sobre ciertas cosas.  La verdad es que para mí ha sido siempre normal leer mucho, de lo que caiga, y no se me olvidan tanto los detalles más importantes.

Recuerdo que desde que aprendí a leer a los 4 años, me ha sido imposible soltar los libros.  Ya sean de historia,  economía, astronomía, negocios, ciencia ficción (mucha ciencia ficción), religión, matemáticas, política, o incluso revistas de medicina o biología en general las devoraba (y las sigo devorando) con hambre de más.  No por eso una de las cosas más difíciles para dejar en mi última mudanza fueron mis libros y una de las primeras cosas que he empezado a mandar poquito a poco antes de mi regreso son mis nuevos libros, jajajaja.

Lo bonito del asunto es que entre más se da cuenta que tiene uno idea de algo es que notas que te falta mucho más por aprender.  Siempre alguien te puede enseñar algo que no sabías, así que es mejor llegar con humildad.

Justo por eso es que escribí hace algunos meses esa Oda a la curiosidad, porque creo que lo más importante no es saber, sino tener ganas de aprender.  Por eso siempre me ha gustado tanto conocer a gente que tiene intereses distintos a los míos y también se acerca con una actitud de aprendizaje, porque esa polinización es la que crea las nuevas ideas (grandes y pequeñas).  Por eso mismo es que me hubiera gustado conocer a un miembro de la familia de mi mujer que ya no está en esta realidad, porque solamente viendo su biblioteca me doy cuenta que hubiéramos hecho muy buenas migas.  Por eso mismo me frustra tanto la gente que me dice que quiere aprender pero que no le gusta leer, siendo que en esta época de Google y Wikipedia es tan sencillo encontrar la información que a uno le interesa (personalmente, puedo pasarme horas leyendo artículos de Wikipedia, especialmente los relacionados con lingüística, aunque bien sabemos que nos es perfecta y tiene muchos errores).

Así pues, a menos que pase algún imprevisto de esos que no se desean, no va a haber cambios en el futuro cercano a que mi novia/prometida/amor de mi vida siga llamándome su trivia ambulante.  Aunque ya sé que la cita tiene más de leyenda que de realidad, yo sólo sé que no sé nada.

Share

¡Feliz día de las Madres!

Porque si no fuera por ustedes no estaríamos aquí. 

A la mía le aprendí el valor del trabajo, de la fuerza y del amor.  Y ah cómo se lo agradezco.

Share

Family

Family means different things to different people.  To some, it is only their parents and siblings.  To others, it might mean several generations of people including aunts, uncles and cousins relatively removed from them.

That is the case in Mexico.  Even though I don’t meet them very often, on my dad’s side I know around a hundred people who fall into the category of “family”, even though I don’t always remember how exactly am I related to them.  On my mom’s side it’s easier, and I probably know less than fifty.

In family reunions, since I never knew who was who, I usually called people around my age “cousins” and adults “uncles” and “aunts”.  Even though there were some exceptions to the rule, it did work.

All this because I was chatting on MSN about the family with a cousin who is the granddaugher of a cousin of my grandmother on my father’s side.  And yes, she’s still family, and we still know about each other, even though she lives in a part of Mexico I seldom visit.

Share

These days, keeping in touch is not so hard

I was reading Batz's Journal, where she comments her views on leaving Barcelona after being there two years, and going away from those friendships she has formed during her time there.

I started thinking that in fact these days it's not so difficult to keep in touch with those you care about.  With e-mail, messenger, skype, blogging and of course text messaging and voice telephony you can still keep in touch.  These days video conferencing is not so difficult either, as many chatting programs have integrated it.

Around a year ago, I was in a very particular situation.  My parents were living in Brazil, my sister in Mexico, my fiancée in Japan and I was in Finland, so there was a minimum of 8,000 km between one member of the family and the next.  Keeping in mind the time differences, these utilities were a godsend, and now that I'm in Belgium I use them to keep in touch, as my friends and family are scattered all over the place.

This is much better than the situation in the Middle Ages, or even 30 years ago.  In that sense I'm glad I was born at a time when this is possible.

Share

Never tell me the odds

I just heard about a very good friend of ours that separated from her husband (my best wishes to both of them).  As asiduous readers of this blog might know, I'm getting married as well in a couple of months, and hearing that news coupled with my preparatory discussions where I learned the divorce rates in Europe (1 out of 2 separate) and comparing it to my family history, where there have also been a couple of divorces, I couldn't help but get slightly worried.

Then I remembered who is it that I'm getting married with, who am I, and what have we been through in the past seven years.  We bridged the chasm between cultures, languages and temperaments, we learned from each other and we went through the experience of living in different countries from each other for a total of around a year and a half.  And guess what?  We're still here.  It hasn't been easy, but we still believe.

There are of course many challenges coming in the future: work, family life, and the like, but as one famous Corellian once said: "Never tell me the odds!".

Share

Attached to people, not places

My fiancée commented once that I was probably more “international” than she was (if there is such a thing) even though she has lived in 3 other countries besides her own, and in my case it’s one less. I wouldn’t mind moving from country to country that much, as long as the job is interesting, the pay and the quality of life are good and we are together (which of course entails her filling her requirements list as well). However, she referred to a valid point: I’m not attached to the places themselves anymore, but to the people in them. A place is just nature, buildings and maybe a nice view or two, but the people I know (and the people I love) are really what is important.

One example are my feelings to the place where I was born. Even though I consider myself to be healthily nationalistic I don’t have an urge to go back and settle there, but just to see my family and friends. The same is the case with Finland. I’m very grateful for my experiences there, but it’s a place as good as any, what is important are the friends and family there. Belgium is the same story: if it fills the criteria detailed in the first paragraph I’d stay after my studies are finished, otherwise I’m willing to search for something somewhere else.

The problem with freedom, as a friend says is that “you don’t know what to do with it”. I hope that’s not my case.

Share

Te, ystävät ja perhe, olette sitä osa Suomesta että minä rakastan

Ja josta syystä kaipaan Suomea. Nähdään pian!

Share

I admire our grandparents

One point brought home from another of the speakers at the CWF is the fact that people of our grandparents’ generation (65+ years old) have already gone through very big changes in the world, something that I don’t think we recognise often enough. If your grandparents are old enough, they saw the introduction of radio, TV, trans-atlantic travel, the Second World War, decolonisation, the European Union, the nuclear bomb, the massification of the automobile… without even talking about microwave ovens, immigrants from different parts of the world, computers and the internet… If you take into account that the rate of change is much faster now than when they were your or my age, you can only come to the conclusion that the world will be even more drastically different when we reach their age.

If there’s people over 70 wathching pictures in Flickr and doing their banking over the internet, that’s the kind of person I want to be when I’m their age, and I understand why not everybody can be like that (there’s also cultural issues of, say, uncertainty avoidance involved which they are not responsible for, among many other factors). If at that age they still take the world at face value and enjoy what they do, that’s the person I want to be. So if you agree with me spare a thought for your parents and grandparents and give them your love and respect. Probably a hug would be nice too.

Share