A brief essay on the Friendly Finn

The Finns have a reputation, evidently, for a few things:

-being "silent"
-being unfriendly
-drinking alot of alcohol
-drinking alot of coffee

Two of these four are completely unfounded, in my opinion. I have met several Finns who have talked to me for quite some time about how incredibly shy and quiet Finns are. The only shyness I have seen is from my roommate, who may just want some privacy, and the fact that people don't talk to strangers. Not so bad.

The other stereotype is that Finns aren't very friendly. I think this stems from the first. Let me tell you a little story about Friendly Finns. Yesterday was a sunny day.
This photo was taken around 10am (it will get better with time). I went to my office (which is quite nice) and did some work. I had lunch on my own, but had a nice conversation with Pekka (my advisor here in Finland) about our project afterwards. I also got notification that I would now have internet service at home. Hooray! That means I can be on skype with you folks on a more regular basis. Anyway, when I got home for dinner I tried out the internet, only to discover that I couldn't make it work. So to cheer myself up I went shopping and bought a ton of stuff - yummy food and most importantly a real pillow! Such luxury. Anyway, after dinner I went back to the math dept to see what I could see online - maybe I had configured things wrong. Well, I wanted to use my laptop and not the computer in my office so that I could see what settings I was using, etc., and the wireless network in the math dept is only available on the first floor. So I was in the first floor lobby, and the lights went out - they were motion activated and went out when I didn't move substantially for a while. Seeing no need to waste energy, I sat there in the dark. Eventually, a man came in and said something ominous in Finnish. I had used my key to get in to the building, and I guess he wanted to know what I was doing there on the floor with a computer. I said "I'm sorry, I don't understand." He said, "Oh, I see, you are hacking." Ooops! I explained why I was there, and it turns out that he was the head of IT for the university. We bonded over how much better Mac is than Windows, and he then spent about an hour working on my computer trying to figure out the problem. We eventually concluded that it was a hardware problem, because my computer wouldn't connect even with a machine that was designed for testing if your computer had a hardware problem. Anyway, he gave me a free cable (?) and told me to call his buddies at the *Certified Apple Repair Store in Jyväsklyä* Sweet! That was very nice of him. I thought the nearest would be in Helsinki. So I emailed them and they said to bring it on out and they would fix it under warranty. So today I walked out there (probably 9km each way!), and they were very very nice. They noticed my spacebar was messed up and offered to order a new one. Free. Also, they connected my computer up to the internet and it mysteriously worked. Very nice. I took it home, and VOILA, I am now writing this from home. Very nice. Basically, because Finns are nice, I was saved probably weeks of frustration trying to get internet at home, or at least a lot of walking to the math dept to use the computer. Anyway, would this kind of thing happen in the states? Maybe. But not very often. Finns are nice. You just have to take the first step and talk to them.

To finish up, here are some pictures from my walk today. It was not nice weather - about 32F and raining. Warm, but windy and wet.