all things me

I sit down in the train after speeding in a hurry through the town on a mission – I need to get something for my godson. Suddenly a noisy flock of finnsvenskarna, Swedish-speaking Finns, comes trampling down the corridor. Oh no! They sit in the 4+4 seats smack in front of me.

I start digging through my backbag – I must’ve brought my earphones, I must’ve! (I had to make a quick switch of bags in the morning when I realised I couldn’t fit everything in my other bag.) I finally found them in a pocket I didn’t remember having.

I have nothing personally against Swedish-speaking Finns, but because the language is “foreign” I can’t block it out as effectively — the Finnish words in the middle make it worse.

And let’s be honest: they’re loud.

Anyway, I hope you have a nice weekend. I’ll be in the middle of dogs, horses, kids, and a donkey.

Last Friday I went out with a couple of colleagues, “for a pint.” We were walking to the subway station when the other asked me to come along and I had to make sure, “You’re asking me? Even though I don’t drink alcohol?” I was told that was beside the point. So, I tagged along.

We went to a beer house and I ordered a Pepsi (I was treated, how kind). The bartender asked, “you want some vodka¹ with that.” My response? A loud “god no!” When we sat at the table my colleague laughed and asked if I get asked that a lot. I don’t but that might be because it was my first time “out for a pint.” (I had a wonderful time!)

I’ve never drunk alcohol, nor tasted, nor wanted to. Usually it doesn’t cause any problems but in the company’s summer festivities we were at a Greek restaurant and I asked for something to drink other than beer or the lukewarm water they served at the tables. The waitress shrugged and said “this is a Greek restaurant in Finland, why would we have something else?” (What about kids?!?)

Finns are big drinkers and I’m one of the odd ones out. Proud of it, too, although I don’t remember making a decision between to drink or not to drink. There has been no need; drinking has never even crossed my mind.

I suppose it’s “common knowledge” at work that I don’t drink alcohol. (It certainly is common knowledge with my family and friends.) In our last Christmas party I won a bottle of wine and a promotional t-shirt. I asked if the competition organizer would mind if I gave the bottle away to everyone. I kept the t-shirt although I don’t think I’ve worn it once.

On Monday a colleague of mine had emailed a project manager saying that he hadn’t had time to finish a task so he’d buy a beer to whomever finished it for him on his day off. And either the PM or the colleague had added, “or a Hyvää Päivää² to Minna.” Today — I got a bottle of vitamin C + caffeine Hyvää Päivää.
(Yup, caffeine is my drug of choice. I’m not pretending to be a goody two-shoes.)

1. Well, he said “kossu,” but who cares. (See Wikipedia if you do care.)
2. Hyvää Päivää wellness drinks, another site, in English

I dread social situations, more precisely official situations: presentations, calling on the phone on official matters, handling things at a counter or office somewhere. When I realise I have to do something like that, my heart rate jumps a lot of notches and my face feels like it’s turning red. I have to think how I’m going to start and rehearse a few times.

Still, the situations don’t cause me to blunder; I don’t stutter, get mixed up with my words, or mumble unintelligently. In fact, I’m very normal and seem at ease. Why, then, can’t I remember it when the pre-socialising symptoms start disturbing my calm and collectedness; I won’t make (too bad) a fool out of myself however much I fear it.

I just made a call to customer service to change my parents’ magazine subscription to a discount. I tried to think of a way to state my business, thought I’d figured out a good way to start but still managed to say something quite ungrammatical (it is very easy in Finnish with the 15+ noun cases we have). Nevertheless, I was understood. Don’t get me wrong, I was flushing and well on my way to arrhythmia. But I sailed through it.

Very frustrating.

This morning when I was queuing at the grocery store cashier, an old woman started talking to me. I was being polite as usual, chatting back. Before I moved on to get my groceries (= lunch) the lady bumped me in the back with her knee/foot. She said she gave me a “kick of good luck” (we have that in Finnish, onnenpotku), stroke of luck.

I’m glad I don’t live in an English-speaking country where I would’ve been assaulted.

Often one of the co-workers who lives quite close to me gets on the same bus to/from work. This morning, for instance. She started talking about work stuff — in quite a loud voice — and suddenly said one of our clients’ name (or is it clients’ names?) out loud. I couldn’t believe it! I have a very tight filter in work related things and couldn’t be caught dropping names. Client information especially is confidential. I told her she shouldn’t be talking about those things. (And she said, “nah, it’s ok.” Well, no, it’s not.)

She’s kinda annoying (oh, 2nd person I don’t really like) because she talks very loud all the time and sort of dominates the conversations around the lunch table. In one-on-one conversations I don’t mind it because I just nod and hum but in bigger groups I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts (and chime in myself…), too. Oh well.

or “the D’oh Moment”

As I’ve been laughing at other people’s ignorance, I have to tell about a computer-related blooper of my own: Last week I received a PDF that wouldn’t open. I tried both the Adobe Acrobat/Reader versions I have installed – no luck. Then I went to one of the other tech people and asked “Which PDF versions you have?”

…

Today our latest tech support addition (probably/hopefully just for this summer) was doing something on Adobe Framemaker. I overheard him telling our DTP specialist that the program had given a message about something like “uninstall all TrueType fonts to continue” so he was asking what to do about that. He continued “I guess I can uninstall them because the program said so.”

Chatting with Vera, I noticed I misspelled all the time. I wrote “where I you flying on Tuesday?” without noticing it. I of course should’ve written ‘are’ instead if ‘I’. Why did I write it like that? They don’t even sound alike! In the same conversation I had written “I’m not sure why there links aren’t in exactly the same place though”.

My brain’s a bit wonky anyway. For as long as I can remember, I sometimes mix up the letters s and r when I’m writing by hand. In cursive handwriting they probably looked similar to me when we were practising it on 3rd grade (onwards) and nowadays I sometimes mix up even the normal handwriting letters and capital letters which look nothing alike.

I also confuse the words ‘orange’ and ‘purple’. I do know which is which, but sometimes I accidentally say one when I mean the other, and then it takes a while before I can find the correct word I was looking for.

Does something like this happen to you, too?

And again! “I could’ve slept this 10-11 if he hadn’t come whining behind my door at 8.” Jeez!

At work there’s a woman who has irked me from the beginning. I don’t know why she gives out this stuck-up vibe. I suppose it’s like anti-charisma. (Note, she’s the only annoying person in the company — in my opinion.)

We have mailing lists at work for downstairs people and upstairs people (and several different group combinations). I’m on the upstairs list but the person I’m backing up is, for some reason, also on the downstairs list. Today someone sent an email to downstairs people to remind them that the person who takes the last cup of coffee from the pot should put more coffee brewing. Then someone forwarded the request to us upstairs people because we also use the coffee maker downstairs.

Mrs/Ms Stuck-Up sent an email to all downstairs people that they definitely can blame the upstairs people for hogging the coffee when they come downstairs for meetings. Because “upstairs it’s ‘who wants coffee, makes coffee’. Isn’t it amazing how there can be such different practices inside a workplace?” (It was better worded in the email, in Finnish.) I took it that we upstairs people don’t have any manners. Upstairs we really do make coffee when we want it, not when it’s out. M(r)s Stuck-Up didn’t realise that upstairs we don’t drink coffee non-stop and not that many people even drink coffee. (I can’t say whether some people hog the coffee downstairs. I would think so, but that’s not the point.)

I was already starting to think I had judged her too hastily but that email verified my first impression. I’ll try and not look at her too murderously.

One of our (sub)vendors at work has an email template that they all seem to use. It ends with “Please confirm the receipt if this.” Just imagine what would happen if they used it in internal correspondence.