Moi! Greetings from super cold country called Finland!
Me, Brown Eyes, am now here and have been here for the past two months. This is not part of the RTW trip as that has ended for me in March 2012. Much has happened since – I took on a full-time job, I quit that job and now I’m here in Hameenlinna, Finland, where Blue Eyes is based.
There is still uncertainty on whether I’m staying here long enough to find work or that I’d return to Malaysia and continue the rat race, but I decided that regardless of the uncertainty, I shall blog about my experiences here. After all, I’m no Finnish and observing the Finnish culture from my perspective could be interesting 
Hameenlinna is a nice city to live. It has a small population of almost 70,000 people and is quite a historic city as it was once occupied by the Swedes royalty. The city lies in a strategic location between two major Finnish cities, Tampere (about 45 minutes by train) and Helsinki (about 50 minutes by train). That makes it a good option for businesses to operate and professionals to live, if they wish to stay away from the more expensive city like Helsinki.
Hameenlinna’s city centre is set by the town cathedral, which stands tall on the edge of the marketplace. Rows of offices, shops and restaurants are dotted around this area. On a good sunny winter day, the cathedral glimmers in its glory. There is a popular Thai ravintola (Finnish word for restaurant) called Sa-wa-dee, which Blue Eyes like to frequent. I saw a Chinese ravintola also but have not visited the place yet. Unsure if I want to as I’ve found that Chinese cuisine outside of Malaysia/Hong Kong is usually not my cup of tea. Most of the time I ended up more disappointed than satisfied.
When I first arrived end November, Finland was hit with its first snow storms in this winter. Temperature fell to -15C and it was heavy snowing for that weekend. The following week, temperature fell below -20C and the coldest day I had was -25C! But God has been much kinder since then as I’ve enjoyed warmer days above 0C and so far, in the last couple of weeks into 2013, winter temperature has been mostly ranged between 0C and -10C. February especially has been a surprise so far, as I was told that it’s the coldest month but so far, I’ve had quite warm days of around -5C.
Anyway, as my first entry on my stay in Finland, here are some of the snapshots of Hameenlinna (Hml):
