Where do you consider home? Is it the place you grew up; the place you're currently living? Why is it home?
Submitted by uncagedbird.
Home is not a place, it is wherever I come at the end of the day, where I live with my wife happily. At different times it has been situated in Atizapán de Zaragoza, Helsinki, Espoo & Brussels, but the most important thing is that we're there happily.
After a beautiful and eventful wedding, we spent a day with my family in Tallinn, Estonia. It is a beautiful city, but don't make the same mistake we did and avoid the Olde Hansa restaurant. Terrible food and appalling service.
Regardless, the next day we travelled to Prague on our honeymoon. It is an amazingly beautiful city, with well-preserved architecture of different time periods and also very lively. On the downside, it is now as expensive as any country in the Euro area, at least for tourists (and believe me, there are lots of tourists). All in all, a very recommendable and rather romantic place.
In Prague, while enjoying the they at a restaurant in the middle of the city, I couldn't help but eavesdrop in another table's conversation. The reason for my behaviour was a 15 year old kid that, after seeing my N95, started to talk about the state of the mobile industry in his country. I was amazed not only by his level of interest, but also by his expertise on the subject. In fact, he knew much more about the situation in his local market and was visibly a Nokia fan.
After seeing his enthusiasm I just had to ask him what his age was. After he did so, I commented that if he would like to work in our industry he should probably study a couple of subjects. It was nice meeting a fan of what you do for a living.
I have to confess that there was one thing I truly dreaded about our wedding: having my Mexican and Finnish friends and families together in the same place. Why, you ask? Simply because I know that cultural differences were bound to arise, especially between the less culturally-sensitive on both sides. My fears proved to be unfounded and rather stupid. On the contrary, it truly was an occasion to remember for the right reasons, everyone partied as if there was no tomorrow and in the end everything went extremely well.
Maybe I shouldn't worry so much. Or maybe everything went so well because we worried.
When I was learning Finnish I was really wondering what were the contents of the conversations I heard in the street, whether they would be somehow more philosophical given what you always hear that Finland always scores highly in different international rankings, be they about corruption, education or technology development.
Imagine my surprise when I started to learn the language and realised that most of the street talk is at the same level as anywhere else: swearwords and gossip are the order of the day. Different language but human nature is still the same.
A bad day at work means different things for different people:
Therefore, I'm glad that my bad days at work might include many problems, but nothing on that scale.
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.
But as you know, there are certain things in life that are truly worth the time you devote to them. Therefore, now I'm married with the person that has stood by me for some time now, and we went on our deserved honeymoon.
Updates to the blog will follow.