One of those little details I really like are the Valio milk carton cows (pictured to the right). The drawings change by season so you would have cows picking mushrooms in spring, cows in the beach in summer, cows walking in the wind in the fall or cows skiing or skating in winter.
Cute, even if I don’t even buy their brand. And don’t get me started with the variety of milk products available hereabouts…
I can guarantee you most people don’t move to Finland for the gorgeous weather. 😉
Found this very interesting document on the reasons of the economic downturn and the ways forward at Robert Peston’s blog at the Beeb.
I find especially interesting his thought that global markets need global rules.
De acuerdo a información que recibí hoy, ya somos 300 mexicanos registrados viviendo en Finlandia. Cuando llegué al inicio de la década, éramos 180.
¿Quién se lanza a abrir un restaurante mexicano de verdad, en lugar del horroroso Pirkka/Old El Paso/Santa María Tex-Mex que se encuentra en estas lejanas tierras?
🙂
In Finland you will find two nationwide tabloids: Iltalehti & Ilta-Sanomat. The Ilta-rags share a similar tone with their Mexican and British cousins, focusing on the main page on issues that are really not that serious.
The main difference I find between the local versions and others is also their focus on, how can I say it, jealousy. Not only will there be endless features on the Tax circus every year around tax retrun time, but also continuing coverage of the financial dealings of “celebrities” and other individuals.
This envy-as-a-social-phenomenon is something I hadn’t given much thought to unil I read Juoksuhaudentie, a novel about the Finnish dream of having a house of your own. The chapters where we see what the neighbours think about the main characters are quite chillng, as not only they disapprove completely, but express it freely and want to make their lives more miserable.
This kind of attitude is something that I tried to get rid of, as in certain circles where I grew up it can be quite common. I know in the case of a novel it’s just fiction, but are people really like that? Maybe it’s just human nature…
Even though I love my work, one of the things that makes it a little heavier is the need for interaction with different timezones. When I wake up I already have e-mails from Singapore (Finland +6 hours), around noon I’ll be chatting with colleagues from the UK, in the afternoon it’s the turn for the guys in New York and before going to sleep every once in a while I have to have a chat with my colleagues from the west coast of the United States (Finland -10 hours).
No wonder I sometimes feel I only stop working during weekends . At least the kind of workstyles and input are very diverse. 🙂
This week was my birthday, and as every year I was planning to take it really, really easy since it was during a working day.
What was different this year was that I was more than a little surprised to have received over 80 congratulations messages over Twitter & Facebook besides a couple of text messages. Of course it is much easier because social networks remind you of your contacts’ birthdays, but I have to say it was quite moving to be on the receiving end, and that’s added value 😉
Reading a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit on the outlook for this year, I found out that lipstick sales can be a very reliable economic indicator. As ridiculous at it may sound, theory goes that if lipstick is selling briskly, the economy is not doing well, as women are substituting other purchases with it.
I’ve heard of other unorthodox economic indicators, but this one is the weirdest.
One of my colleagues posted online the model we’ve been using for planning our digital marketing. If you are involved in this kind of activities and don’t know where to start, it is an excellent tool.
All of this of course relates to spreading the word, participating in & enabling conversations. That’s one of the reasons why I love my job. We are building the future one day at a time.
