Just spotted this traffic sign mashup in Otaniemi, a self-proclaimed Nordic technology hub, but locally better known for its high density of geeky student population. Is that a sign of onslaught on consumerism? Or is it of consumerism? Hard to tell, but I sincerely hope dedicated shopping cart roads are not someone’s true vision or everything this technology hub can contribute to the world.

Mladen

Already on several occasions I wrote about the peculiar relationship between Finns and alcohol. Even though some of the readers find such topics worn out, interestingly enough there are some intriguing observations about this that continue to make my head spin.

I don’t have many vivid memories from my early childhood, but when I think about it I still rememer the first time I encountered Finns when I was five and they were intoxicated. It was on a hot summer night on the coast of Istrian peninsula in what was then still Yugoslavia (now Croatia). My parents, my brother and I were on our summer vacation in a bungalow village and during the course of our stay we got new neighbors who already during their first night assured a Finnish-Yugoslav get-together. I remember being awaken by short bursts of loud exclamations in a strange language. After this had lasted for a while I heard my dad speaking in another language that was unfamiliar to me and the noise subsided, or I had fallen back asleep.

Without a single trace of doubt this was the event of the week in the sleepy village. In the morning dad explained how in all their drunkenness our Finnish neighbors’ volume meters became unbearably thick-skinned. Since the shouting lasted too long, he had to get up to calm them down. I can imagine that they probably woke up the whole village before they reached their hut in the wee hours.

Fast-forward twenty some years. Not long ago this and other accounts of similar type suddenly all make sense. It was like staring at scattered pieces of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for two years, and then solving the puzzle in two minutes. Only recently I have begun understanding what had happened that summer night and why.

Despite the fact that many prices were being readjusted for the pocket of a foreign visitor, Yugoslavia was still a budget traveler’s dream. Whoever could afford to get there, didn’t have to worry about prices once they got there. Nowhere else, but there, have I seen anyone light up their cigar with money, a Yugoslav Dinar bill. So you can imagine that in a place like that stocking up on booze couldn’t present a financial burden. Especially not if you came from any of the Nordic countries where one suspects some sort of a fine has been added to the price of that watered-down pint of beer. While in Yugoslavia for that same sum you’d get a liter of delicious šljivovica and still have some left. The decision is all too obvious: you quit drinking beer. And that’s probably what our neighbors from Finland had decided already during their first night there. Who could blame them?

However, I can imagine that such vacation alone might instigate a month without a drop of booze, even though it is the month of January that is traditionally reserved for serious detoxification. Even though it might not be the quantity, but rather the method of consumption that makes this peculiar relationship problematic, excessive alcohol ingestion is a serious issue in Finland and many are very somber about it. A third of the population, to be more precise. That’s roughly how many have decided in the beginning of January that they will abstain from alcohol during that month. I’m quite sure it takes a steady diet of something a tad bit stronger than Coke Zero before you decide to resort to sober life for 31 days.

But where does this type of secular nationwide month-long ethanol renunciation come from? There is a dispute about who exactly had instigated the custom in Finland, however, it is most plausible that it originated in the 1970s when a gentleman named Niilo Hakkarainen, a CEO of a paper factory, suggested to his workers to stay clean for the month of February. Obviously some took it seriously and more than thirty years later that humble proposition acquired a status of a serious national challenge. It even got upgraded; the challenge shifted from the shortest possible to the longest possible month.

According to a recently conducted poll 35% of responders promised themselves to stay away from alcohol, but only about a 17% of the population has managed to keep that promise until the end of January in 2007. If they don’t manage to spend the whole month without a drop, it can be at least something to look forward to for January 2009. The good news for those is that the rate of success is on the increase.

If you think you can’t make it, worry not, there is plenty of support out there, if you need it. Finnish Center for the promotion of health and Paihdelinkki (English version AddictionLink) are just two inspirational and supportive examples. The former organization even set up a separate Web site Tipaton tammikuu devoted solely to the challenge. There you can track your daily progress or even challenge your friends or family to do the same. Information is abundant and support is offered in different formats ranging from vibrant forums and various self-tests to plain fact calorie counter for those who need to crunch numbers before they act. Center for the promotion of health even created a desktop calendar, if for some reason that’s exactly what you’ve missed in your previous attempts to stop drinking (both PC users and Mac users served).

If none of that helps, then as a last resort it might help to know that the tax on alcoholic beverages has again been substantialy increased at the beginning of the month.

I admit, the forbidden fruit of January can be a tough nut to crack. At least it was me who got cracked before I cracked it; I had blithely enjoyed my sauna beer just a couple of days ago. I lasted eight days. But then again that kspt sound the beer can made when I opened it definitely did not cause any moral introspection.

Cheers to all those who will last for three more weeks.

Mladen

iPod, a music player turned pop icon. It’s a continuous challenge for the nerds, its strong image was used to counter the war in Iraq, it inspired a book documenting its popularity and even sneaked into our daily vocabulary. Surprising? Not really. It looks nice, it’s easy to use and people love it. Apple sold millions, earn googols and marched onto new market.

Nevertheless, I was surprised to find that the talltale iPod player-earphone silhuette landed even on a Finnish rye-bread wrapping. It’s hard to tell if it was an easter egg cleverly smuggled by graphic designers or just a mere me-too statement by the Finnish food manufacturer Fazer gasping for street-cred with their Reissumies rye-bread. Whichever it is, iPod is now gone.

Since Apple jumped the fence onto the home turf of the most valuable Finnish brand, it was really just a matter of time before someone from Olli-Pekka’s office would again pick up the phone and order Fazer to replace that iPod with an Internet Tablet or a Nokia phone. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is exactly what has happened, given the notoriety Nokia has gained when their head of security ordered a cleaning company to remove “Kallasvuo sucks” stencil graffitti from the walls of the E15 squat in Helsinki.

If that’s the case with Reissumies, I’m sure Nokia got a much more cooperative response and less resistance from Fazer than it did from E15. For the sake of posterity here are both old and new, con- and sans-iPod rye-bread wrappers.

Mladen

You’ve probably heard in the news at some point last summer that a couple from New Zealand wanted to name their newborn son 4Real, but the registrar of births, deaths and marriages rejected the suggestion. Couple’s explanation of the name was not so much surprising as it was dull: it was supposedly their first verbal reaction when they found out that she was pregnant. Not a safe way to choose a name, I believe. I don’t even want to think what my kid’s name would have been if my first verbal reaction would be turned into a name.

Anyway, I chuckled after reading the snippet in the papers and thought the newborn can be thankful for the effective administration in his country and should already begin thinking about changing his parents. But as it turned out the story had a twisted epilogue. About two months later the same New Zealand family made the news again, only that this time around there was no mention of administrative objections. The couple decided to name their son Superman even though they still insist on calling him 4Real. Is it just me, or are some people just dumb as a brick.

One of peculiarities which characterize my learning of a foreign language from scratch as an adult is that I still (and very often, too) read, hear and understand words too literally. Of course, most occurrences are not interesting, but those that are turn out to be great fun and my linguistic Eureka! moments. But judging by reactions of those in my immediate vicinity when I reveal such an instance and burst into guffaw, I’d say that hardly anyone but me finds it funny. So I’ve by trying to keep these chuckles to myself as much as I can. It didn’t take a rocket scientist inside my cranium to figure out that the way I look at this language that is still new to me, would hardly ever occur to a native speaker.

You too might think that what you’re about to read is complete crap, just as my Finnish friends probably do when they treat my bellows with blank stares. But please bear with me.

In Finnish appetite is foodwant (ruokahalua), an airplane a flyingmachine (lentokone), a refrigerator an icecabinet (jääkaappi), a peanut a groundnut (maapähkinä), an explorer a findhiker (löytöretkeilija), a postmortem either a tracegame or an aftergame (jälkipeli), depending on how you look at it, I guess, a dessert an afterfood (jälkiruoka), future generation afterknee (jälkipolvi), attendance audiencequantity (yleisömäärä). I could probably list pages of similar examples, but you get my point; Finnish is incredibly descriptive. And when we use the language we don’t think about it; if we did, we would fail at using it. Since I cannot really use it just yet, I have plenty of time to think about it when others are chatting away.

So what exactly does this diversion have to do with infantile parents miserably failing at naming their son (twice to be precise)? Many parents obviously don’t really think much about the meaning of the name they are about to give. On various occasions I have bumped into a few really memorable Finnish names I’d like to share with you.

If you’re shopping for your kid’s name, please do your kid and yourself a favor and don’t name him Urpo. As a noun, urpo in Finnish stands for and idiot. Not only that I can’t imagine myself running after my own child around the playground shouting “Idiot, idiot, come here!” but it’s even worse to think how parents make life easier for bullies who don’t even have to make up a name for their kid; it’s right there. And just as I thought that Idiot must be one of the worst names, I came across Vomit.

Actually, I’d have a hard time deciding which one is worse, but Finns obviously don’t just have a knack for names, but gender equality too. So they have both male and female version of names, which in everyday parlance stand for puke: Yrjö and Pirjo.

Since Yrjö also stands for George, I’ve been wondering at which point did puke (or George) get into the midst of it. I could come up with two plausible explanations. It is either that Yrjö was originally a name of a widely popular pagan god, a proto-Finnish Bakkhos (who else could bear a name with such meaning), whose name the Church took over during the Christianization to make the whole Christian ordeal more popular among pagan locals. However, they somehow foundered at understanding what it really means until it was already too late and all their publications were already in print. Although I’d rather bet my luck on the agile, crafty and sharp-witted local pagan population who deliberately named the Christian saint as an inside joke to gibe at newcomers who forced them onto church benches.

The latter could even be seen as a precedent for one of the many modern-time Finnish mockings of Swedish. Håkan is a very common Swedish name, which unsurprisingly ensured its ease of entry into the Finnish slang. However, during one of the assimilation stages the meaning was slightly shifted. On the streets of Finnish towns Håkan is an insult not very different from English faggot.

I’m sure that in every language there are cruel name combinations, which must be especially difficult when you’re a kid. This may sound a trifle odd, but when I was in high school in the US my calculus teacher’s name was Dick Large. He was probably the best math teacher I have ever had, but also one with the name combination that makes you think if his parents wanted to make fun out of their own kid. I can still remember debating on more than one occasion with a devout Christian friend who, on account that it is a “dirty word”, refused to say out loud Dick’s name. But Dick Large is his name, I insisted. It did not help. We ended up calling him Mr. Large.

So learning that Finns also have a male name which means dick was nowhere near as entertaining as idiot and vomit were. Just like Dick, substantive version of a proper name Jorma means a male genital organ. Coupling this knowledge with the Finnish custom of giving one or even two middle names to their offspring, I already felt compassion for kids whose parents for some reason lack enough common sense and name their kids Urpo Yrjö Jorma (idiot vomit dick), or Jorma Yrjö Urpo (dick vomit idiot). I don’t know which one is worse, but these kids must go through nervous breakdowns in school.

But wait, this is not all. It must be quite rare, but you probably wouldn’t consider yourself lucky if your name was Anu Saukko. An innocent looking name turns vicious the moment you pronounce it. When spoken out loud Anu Saukko inevitably melts into anusaukko, which coincidentally sounds exactly the same as anus aukko, or ass hole. Just imagine how long it takes to get used to introducing yourself as Asshole. Imagine shaking your blind date’s hand and saying out loud “Asshole, pleased to meet you.” Or at a job interview. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to land a job as an Asshole. But then again, if you’re a Dick Vomit Idiot, what a relief must it be to find out that there’s an Asshole in the same class. You probably don’t ever want to leave that school.

In conclusion I’ll return to where I begun. Just like New Zealand Finland too has an administrative unit governing population naming. Not long ago Finland got slapped on the fingers for violating the European Convention on Human Rights for refusing to accept a couple’s wish to name their son Axl. I don’t know about wise men sitting on the naming commission, but given an option I’d much rather be called Axl then Urpo Jorma Yrjö, Raivo (Rage), or Anu Saukko, for that matter.

Mladen

The sweet revenge of the bitter Grandmas United Against Pedal Pushers Club in Munkkivuori, Helsinki. I wonder what caused the installation of this fabulously hilarious and absolutely nonsensical speed bump for bicycles. Were residents of this quiet area riding their bikes too fast? Too reckless? I really wonder just what the hell was going on here that someone actually took the trouble of bolting the bump onto the concrete path tiles. And it’s not that it would require incredible effort to ride around the bump, it’s the sign that scares the bejesus out of me: “No thoroughfare.” I’d much more expect to spot something like this in one of the German speaking countries, not Finland.

I regretted so much that I was on foot, as otherwise I would gladly engage in an act of civil disobedience and ride right through. Boohoo.

Mladen