Be ready to fight!

[skullmonkey]

While I did not imply that you go with an attitude, your thread title as well as your opening statement can be interpreted as rather aggressively. If you have been working here for 30 months and living here since five years, you surely should get what is yours. Just consider that in your own country you most likely won't get an as good education as here + you also won't get paid for it. Therefore I believe that some extra "hassle" is easy to take. I have never been treated badly in this country, which I can't say of eg Germany or Spain, whose bureaucracy is terrible.

[r32]

While I did not imply that you go with an attitude, your thread title as well as your opening statement can be interpreted as rather aggressively. If you have been working here for 30 months and living here since five years, you surely should get what is yours. Just consider that in your own country you most likely won't get an as good education as here + you also won't get paid for it. Therefore I believe that some extra "hassle" is easy to take. I have never been treated badly in this country, which I can't say of eg Germany or Spain, whose bureaucracy is terrible.

I know that the opening statement sounds aggressive but I was really angry after I left the Kela office as I was almost sure that nothing will come up and I won't need to stress so much for this, considering that the law is helping me in this situation.
I guess I just want a different attitude also from Kela. Of course you can consider yourself lucky if you didn't have problems, but based on my experience I wouldn't say the same. And I know that I'm not the only one...
Have you been in Romania, because it seems that you know quite many things about the educational system there...? How did you figure it out that I would get poor education there?

[pikkupeikkomyy]

worker from the phone was asking the guy from Lahti, if Romania and Bulgaria are part of Eu...

Well, everytime i visit KELA they ask if Poland is EU member (we joined 2004)...I just got used to. Still better than question: do you speak russian in Poland?
Anyway i understand your frustration r32, but i think skullmonkey is right. In Poland i wouldn't get a cent, i guess that you in Romania either so let's appreciate that KELA has something to offer and ignore their weird (sometimes) behaviour. KELA workers are just people, maybe sometimes they think indeed ''Damn forgeiners, came here for our money''. Who knows...

[AldenG]

When the U.S. hosted the Olympics in 1996 there was a telephone service center set up for selling tickets. You had to wait ungodly times on hold to get to talk to the people selling the tickets.

There was a nationally publicized incident where callers from the 47th state of New Mexico, admitted to the Union in 1912 and nestled right between Texas and Arizona, were told they couldn't order tickets on the U.S. line -- that they had to call back to the phone number for buyers outside the United States. Of course they were indignant and demanded to speak to the supervisor. The supervisor also said that because they lived in New Mexico and not the United States, they had to call the international line, and treated them as though they were phenomenally ignorant for not being able to understand such a simple rule.

[skullmonkey]

Sadly I haven't been to Romania - yet. Though having enjoyed a good education and reading newspapers, and having not seen Romania in eg the PISA results or being listed among the best universities to study at, I imagine it must not be up to the same high standards as in Finland. If you find that insulting, sorry, maybe it helps to sooth you if I tell you that I think that also the education system in Germany sucks balls.

Anyhow, hopefully you'll be able to get what you want without much more hassle. And in case you feel they're trying to "pull your leg & cheat you" - smile. It works wonders.

[r32]

Sadly I haven't been to Romania - yet. Though having enjoyed a good education and reading newspapers, and having not seen Romania in eg the PISA results or being listed among the best universities to study at, I imagine it must not be up to the same high standards as in Finland. If you find that insulting, sorry, maybe it helps to sooth you if I tell you that I think that also the education system in Germany sucks balls.

Anyhow, hopefully you'll be able to get what you want without much more hassle. And in case you feel they're trying to "pull your leg & cheat you" - smile. It works wonders.

I do believe that many of the polls and results which are done in different fields around the world are part of politics, let's face it, politics makes the world spin

I will attach a scan from Study Abroad newspaper (http://www.study-abroad.se) in which a norwegian student goes to Romania for studies. If you have some spare time, read the article. I was almost thinking like you couple of years back but in time I started to realize that the gaps between are starting to become smaller.

[Rip]

and the worker from the phone was asking the guy from Lahti, if Romania and Bulgaria are part of Eu... Is something really rotten with these people? How they can pretend like this?

I read sometime in a list of "tips for more peaceful life" that you should not too easily assume that bad things happening are caused by malice when mere stupidity and incompetence are sufficient. You may need to keep explaining for severeal years to come that Romania is part of EU while I've learend to write "Europe" underneath "Finland" when sending something by mail from more faraway countries....

[AldenG]

I read sometime in a list of "tips for more peaceful life" that you should not too easily assume that bad things happening are caused by malice when mere stupidity and incompetence are sufficient.

In particular, that's a statement of Hanlon's razor, itself a play on Occam's razor, which has come to be most widely interpreted as the notion that when there are competing explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct or desirable.

The "formal" statement of Hanlon's razor is "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

I don't know if it's peculiar to English-speaking cultures (it seems that way to me), but there is something that loves making puns and whimsical restatements of human and scientific laws -- or dressing up folk wisdom or acerbic comments in the guise of high philosophy. It's a way of poking fun both at authorities and at oneself. If you like that kind of thing, it is well worth following the "See also" links at the end of the Wiki writeup on Hanlon's Razor, and some of the "See also" links in those articles as well.

Thus Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd Law (Clarke's Three Laws, which he called "Laws" half-seriously and half-self-mocking) states that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." So Larry Niven comes along and states that "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." (So there!) Somebody else comes along and states that "Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice." Yet another person comes along and states that "Any sufficiently advanced parody of zealotry is indistinguishable from the zealotry itself." Yet another comes along and says "Any sufficiently advanced zealotry is indistinguishable from parody."

Or Mike Godwin comes along and states that ""As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." This is often restated as "In any argument, the first part to invoke the word 'Hitler' or 'Nazi' loses the argument."

And if the discussion is long enough and heated enough in an unmoderated forum, all of these and more may find their way into a single thread.

Scientific laws are often interesting enough in themselves. But the parodies and their evolution are even more fascinating.

[blue_berry_kiss]

ok , so this is totally new for me to hear that I actually COULD GET student aid from Kela. I am originally from Austria, we are also part of EU but since yet I just heard that I can´t get student aid from KELA, because being student is no reason for getting aid as NON-FINNISH CITIZEN...

?!?!?!?!

[schneemie]

well, it depends (among other things) on why you came to finland.
if you came for the purpose of studying, no kela money for you.
if you came eg. because of family ties, there might be a possibility to get opintotuki.

i'm from germany, came to finland in 2005 because of a finnish avomies, went through integration programme and am now at an ammattikoulu. i get opintotuki. so it is possible. but don't get overexcited. even if you get opintotuki, you get it only 9 out of 12 months, so you still need some other means of living or a summer job.

edit to add:
i checked your older posts. it seems you came as an erasmus student. there you have your answer. you came for studying and are most likely registered as such. so kela says no...

[sammy]

ok , so this is totally new for me to hear that I actually COULD GET student aid from Kela. I am originally from Austria, we are also part of EU but since yet I just heard that I can´t get student aid from KELA, because being student is no reason for getting aid as NON-FINNISH CITIZEN...

?!?!?!?!

AFAIK it does not make that much difference whether you're an EU citizen or not, it's just a question of the status and "basis" of your residence in Finland, so to speak.

Generally, if you're a non-citizen and are planning to come to Finland to study, you're most likely not eligible for the KELA study grant, even if you come from the EU.

OTOH - if you're not a Finnish citizen, but have already lived here for some time (so that your residence is considered permanent), then, it may be possible for you to get the KELA grant if you should apply (and become accepted) into some degree programme or another. (edit: just as Schneemie wrote above) But I believe they handle each case individually (?) You'll find the exact wording of KELA on their web pages http://www.kela.fi -> english -> students

Here 'tis

[interleukin]

hear that I actually COULD GET student aid from Kela

The difference is whether you came to Finland as a student (you dont get KELA) or if you came for other reasons (work or family ties) and then decided to start studying afterwards (you might get KELA money).

[blue_berry_kiss]

ok so then I didn´t get anything wrong... thanks for the fast answers...

at least I get some money from my home country. But there I also do not get "study money" because they say my mum, who raised me up on her own, is TOO RICH...yeah, nurses do earn OH SO much money...sometimes the system ain´t right, because I know lots of students in Austria who do get this "student money" and their parents are doctors and so on...whatever I survived till yet

[forest_girl]

<... if you came for other reasons (work or family ties) and then decided to start studying afterwards (you might get KELA money).

That was my case. Luckily I am going to get the opintotuki.

[urpokalavalekepponen]

Sadly I haven't been to Romania - yet. Though having enjoyed a good education and reading newspapers, and having not seen Romania in eg the PISA results or being listed among the best universities to study at, I imagine it must not be up to the same high standards as in Finland. If you find that insulting, sorry, maybe it helps to sooth you if I tell you that I think that also the education system in Germany sucks balls.

Anyhow, hopefully you'll be able to get what you want without much more hassle. And in case you feel they're trying to "pull your leg & cheat you" - smile. It works wonders.

I do believe that many of the polls and results which are done in different fields around the world are part of politics, let's face it, politics makes the world spin

I will attach a scan from Study Abroad newspaper (http://www.study-abroad.se) in which a norwegian student goes to Romania for studies. If you have some spare time, read the article. I was almost thinking like you couple of years back but in time I started to realize that the gaps between are starting to become smaller.

Norwegian student going to Rumania for study? Gotta be a desperate bugger then. Or it`s part of the fear factor