Foreigners in Finland

[mrjimsfc]

they lose the end of what they wanted to say because they have to take a breath and so there's literally no end to the sentence LOL.

What? You've never heard them talking while breathing in? It happens all the time!

[Flossy1978]

You don't need to roll your eyes at me. They talk and talk WITHOUT breathing and then when they are near to the end of what they wanted to say and are out of breath, they'll breathe in while still talking and the end of the sentence just isn't there.

[kiwijim]

I think only somewhere massively multi-cultural like the USA or Canada will people be so accustomed to all races and colours that they are "colour blind".

Right....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEHD5kaOhoQ

That documentary is pathetic! Never hear such blubbering crap - for example if you use Wikipedia as a legitimate source for an argument, it's like taking advice from a 2 year old on how to drive.

[Oho]

Well beats anything Michael Moore has made by a country mile but that's not much of an accolade now is it. In any case it makes a pretty strong case against the notion of "color blind" US as every single interviewee witnesses racism on daily bases in his/her daily life. Actually Bodeker argues against the common wisdom on racism. But thanks' for chiming in, don't know what I could have done without your profound wisdom.

[Rip]

You can be hard working Roma and you still get labelled pensioner.

In principle yes. In practice (and must confess my sample here is limited) the Roma that I know with a "normal" work, don't dress like ones and as consequence don't necessarily stand out that much of the group. (That varies though. I was surprised that Heikki Lampela is only one quarter Roma when I first read about it)

[Pursuivant]

Theres "Kyösti Hagert" who writes to the Ilta-Sanomat

[onkko]

"colour blind" usa... http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/ ... 74/detail/

[Upphew]

"colour blind" usa... http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/ ... 74/detail/

[Murat]

Unfortunately, there is racist/nationalist/ethnic prejudice and discrimination everywhere, at least to some degree in some aspects of life or situation. Surprisingly, even a majority can sometimes become an object of such. Even in a pretty homogeneous society that I originally come from in Central Asia there's tons of inequality on all levels of life, based on many factors as the society is inherently very fragmented and divided... Maybe in 1000 years all humans would become more or less similar in their morphology, language, culture, there would be one global society and so all population-group based divisions would be well in the past. In my opinion, a peaceful and harmonious multi-culturalism is a myth as long as the cultures involved stand on foundations of archaic, largely hypocritical ideologies.

I would guess that for country like Finland, quite naturally, integration of immigrants from the rest of Europe (or the Western world in general) would be much more seamless and painless than of those coming from elsewhere.

[Pursuivant]

Don't know, most of the Vietnamese refugees integrated very well, whereas "Westerners" seem to have just an endless whine about Finland. But it doesn't go 50/50.. like theres "whiney nations" who confront all that racism, prejudice and whatnot, like the Somalians, whereas south of the border the Kenyans and north of the border Ethiopians are in the statistics in the highest percentile of unemployment its embarrassing.(Ethiopias new head honcho I think is a UTA graduate)... The Japanese got some weird familiarity with Finland, and there is a longnose barbarian in the Japanese Diet causing constipation, so it shows theres some "vibes" that make it all possible with Asians ( of the Oriental persuasion). Now being "Western" and neighbourly and all, the biggest whines seem to come from the Russians, but the Anglosphere is a good second, so the imperialistic undertones are there - or Americas, like the worst uneducated and stupid whine about Finland comes from some Italian decent Argentinian deported from USA, unfortunately for us all, the lying sack of horsemanure's mother was Finnish, so we can't help some pieces of human garbage polluting the globe with a Finnish passport, which I do apologise for. What comes to the language issue, the most whine does come from the Anglosphere, as the countries should be renamed "Bendoveristan", people from the Latin countries expect all foreigners to speak their language when entering the country - so its not a shock to them that someone else has the same idea.

[time traveler]

Returning closer to the original topic but still staying tangential...

May I ask where the aforementioned researchers typically work in the Helsinki region? I know of VTT and universities like UH, Aalto, etc. Other than that, I'm drawing a blank. I'm guessing there got to be much more out there in both the private and public sector.

[Pursuivant]

Private side: Pöyry pops up in mind first, Vaisala, Nokia used to be... hmmm... theres quite a few smaller bio and microtech companies
Government/Quango side: Evira, GTK, MTT, VATT, LTK, VERNE, GEREC, KOTUS, Folkhalsan, ... you name it, oh and cherry on top as far as foreigners go - EU Chemical agency

[time traveler]

That's quite a handful of acronyms! Good to know they're out there. I wish there are more to the private side. The only one I recognize from the list is Nokia.

[Pursuivant]

Well, Nokia's a corpse. Pöyry is one of the biggest engineering consultancies, and Vaisala makes all the finicky instruments you can imagine, space probes etc...

[sinikala]

Fortum, Orion, Kone, Kemira all have R&D in Finland, not sure where they're located. I think Fortum has some R&D in Porvoo.
Ok, Kemira's is in Espoo http://www.kemira.com/en/aboutus/resear ... fault.aspx

Outotec (Pori), Outokumpu (Tornio), Posiva (Eurajoki), Metso (Tampere), Raisio (Turku?) all have in R&D in Finland, but outside the Helsinki area.