Vacations and Noticing Things

Letter: 108

Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #108, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.

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Once a year, I get an email from HR or some similar function that tells me - hey, you’ve got some pending holidays, work-life balance is important, go apply those holidays!

This, is something that happens in Finland. Not in India. I remember when I had started working, I had this rule - once a quarter, I would go on a vacation somewhere. It could be a weekend trip, a 5 day trip, a weeklong trip - something. Something that would take me out of the city. Out of the rut - this usual thing I was a part of. Something that would recharge me.

What followed then, would be a back and forth asking managers if it was OK. Could I take one day less? Why yes, I could. (I had asked for more days in the first place anticipating this conversation.)

And on, and on.

Eventually, I grew up. My responsibilities increased.

I have moved over to a new team recently. It is a more Devops focused role. I am happy with it.

Every Monday, we have a sprint-planning day at work. The PO books a meeting room at the office. Those of us who can make it to the office, are there in that room.

There are a bunch of things that are discussed then - some long term stuff, a retrospective, but mostly what would we work on in the next two weeks.

This week, my PO looked at me, he had the holiday calendar open, and asked me what were my plans for my holiday.

Every year, during the summer months of June-July, Finland more or less goes on a holiday. There are overlaps, but mostly everything including healthcare services are kind of on a holiday.

There are special arrangements made, Savya’s daycare, for example, would house kids from the other two daycares in the area. We got lucky that Savya’s daycare is the one that will remain open. Otherwise we would have had to travel a bit further than usual. If you know how our mornings go, you would know why that would be a challenge!

I looked at my PO, smiled, and said I was still planning it.

He said, OK, just maybe not in these two weeks toward the end. But still, just let him know whenever I knew.

I had no idea then where would I go. Last year, we were in Manhattan. I wrote about it across four different posts. This year there are no such concrete plans. Prerna had mentioned Prague at some point, I had mentioned Barcelona, a friend lives there. We could just go visit her.

After the meeting, Simo, me and Tomi were sitting around a table, having lunch. Per usual, they had gotten their food from the restaurants. Chicken Tikka Masala was on the menu today, and they love it.

Tomi had gotten himself a lot of veggies, some chicken, and a little bit of rice. Simo’s plate had chicken, rice and some bread and veggies.

“What are you having today?” Tomi asked me. Tomi is nice that way. He always asks me what I am having.

“This is roti. Fresh bread, basically.”

“Flat bread?”, he asked.

“Kind of”, I said. He nodded and got back to his plate.

“So where are you guys going for your vacations?” I asked.

“Savo. I will be away for four weeks, though this is not a vacation” said Simo. “We used to live there. There would be a lot of work. Moving things around. Painting things.”

“I will be away for three weeks.”, said Tomi. “There is a wedding in the family.”

I laughed.

“I was hoping to get inspired by one of you and have a recommendation for a destination. Though its pretty warm in rest of Europe. I had been to Zurich a couple of years back and it was so damn warm. These countries don’t have the infrastructure for warm weathers. There was no AC in the trams. It felt like we were sitting in a greenhouse!” I said.

I concluded that it might be a good idea to not go anywhere and just stay in Finland, perhaps go to Lapland. I asked them about it and got to know that now is not a good time to visit Lapland. ‘Lots of mosquitoes’, they said.

The conversation veered onto other things after that.

Over the next few days, I texted with a friend who lives in Barcelona about how Spain is during these few months.

“Hot!”, she said. “We turn on the AC and sleep while under duvets. Sometimes till the morning.”

I did look at the tickets though. On Friday, she called me, perhaps the first time after moving to Spain. I remember wanting to talk to her after she moved to Spain. Asking about her job, what was she working on, and so on.

I never got to it.

Life tends to get in the way. We’ve just been so damn busy. We do message each other on our stories on IG. Which is analogous to the letters people used to write to each other, back in the day.

All this to say, I may be going to Barcelona on vacation!

A note on the anthropologists

I finished reading The Anthropologists this week.

It was such an unexpected read. What I had hoped for was something different. Something more typical - a love story. What I got instead was a glimpse into lives of a couple, which seems, at the same time a glimpse into my life.

We followed a protagonist who was trying to highlight the beauty of everyday life by making a documentary. They were also wanting to buy a house. That was the main quest. There were chapters on feeling out of place, on wanting to be friends with a native, on looking longingly at them. Things, that I/we have felt at different times in our lives here. I have joked(wanted) to be friends with someone who has a boat, and would invite us over to go out into the sea with them.

And reading this book, I’ve thought to myself now, what is NordLetter for, if not this.

This is of course something I have been working toward. Slowly. Most of NordLetter till now though, has had a documentarian feel to it, of an observer talking about things they saw. But the things they saw, or the things they talk about have been mostly surface level. Things you would find in a Wikipedia article somewhere.

I think observing things is a big part of being a writer too. Of truly looking at things. Of being able to answer why something appealed to you. Why you took a picture of the purple flowers next to the tram station while walking your kid. Something about it. Maybe, I just love the colour purple so much.

Here are some things I noticed over the week.

The flowers