In a nutshell: I'm extremely tempted to dump Finland and move to France.
6nergies
This business networking evening was simply amazing. How about a discussion on the phonetic niceties of Northern versus Central and Southern Vietnamese accents, as a conversation starter? How about another one, on ethnic versus national identities, as the icing on the cake leading towards a business card exchange? Lovely, isn't it? So was the girl...
Xin cám ơn, ông Mai!
I however had the nasty surprise of realizing that I no longer speak French to a native level, when Alain did my video profile. Oh, the hesitations...
Saaks mie puhuu suomee siinä videoesittelyzzä? Eiköha? Hä?
The Food
From Italian pizza to Japanese street noodles ― you name it, they have the real thing, cooked by expats. No way in hell you'll ever find that quality in Helsinki, especially not for that cheap!
The Book Heaven
France gave the world this wonderful language book collection called Assimil and the FNAC had them all... minus Le Lithuanien sans peine, whose publication appears forever delayed. Still, as Антон recently found out, they even offer material in languages other than French.
Combien vous gagez que le duc de Novgorod-la-Grande aura réussi à assimiler la langue de Molière avant Debconf7?
The People
Courteous, smily and easy-going; the exact opposite of the average Finn. What more can I say?
The Crossroad
Of course, resetting the citizenship counter to zero is not exactly my idea of fun, but then again I have a strong feeling that my 8-year venture into Finnish society has pretty much come to a full circle, so...
Y'a-tu quelqu'un dans la région parisienne qui cherche un commercial avec une forte expérience de la gestion de produits basés sur du logiciel libre et de l'exportation vers la Scandinavie et les pays baltes? En bonus: leçons de joual [en] [fr] gratis, tabarnak!
The Paradox
Visiting the South Karelia on the Senate Square event and feeling homesick for my adoptive hometown of Lappeenranta, as I kept on running into familiar faces who are still thankful after all these years that I dared become fluent in what they speak out East (which differs tremendously from normalized Finnish).
Isn't life ironic, sometimes?
