Hank Williams in the snow

I'm starting my work practise next week. The Finnish course I'm on is run by the Job Centre here and the idea is to get me ready for work. As such we're all to be sent out to work in the real world. I'm going to be working in a nursery school, which is sure to be a new experience for me. I'm not sure that I've even ever been inside a nursery except for when I was one of the nursery inmates myself.

I will be bringing some 1970s UK nursery school wisdom to the Finnish children. No pudding unless you eat all the greens on the plate, leading to a lifetime hating anything green on a dinner plate. Not that the pudding will be worth the punishment. It will just be a cube of spongecake drowned in pink goo. If anybody knows what the pink stuff was, I'd be happy to learn. Water, sugar, gelatine and pink colouring is my guess.

Building up to the start of the work practise though, we've been learning about Finnish work culture and the process of getting work. It's essentially a good old fashioned Job Club. It isn't as much fun as I've heard the Job Club to be in the UK - they treat us like adults and they do seem to expect us to be a success. Those who have been to the Job Clubs in the UK tell me that the League of Gentleman is documentary not comedy.



Anyway, today we've been told such important things as this:
- Be on time to work and don't leave early
- Remember your boss's name
- Don't ask when the break is the second you arrive on your first day
- If you're sick, remember to call your work place
- When you're there, work hard

Now, I would be pretty offended to be told these things normally except that there are people on my course who seem to be being told this for the first time. We haven't done anything that has seemed pointless on this course, so they must know that they have to go through all this every time. The only problem was that the people who need this information most were all either not there or having a conversation when they were being told. The result is that the only people who get reminded to do the right thing are those of who would have done the right thing anyway.

This has ended up in a what-is-wrong style rant at the world of immigrant intergration Finnish language courses but I don't want you to think that I'm in a bad place. True, I'm currently so tired that I have a different understanding of reality than I normally do. But I'm otherwise feeling pretty good about the world and about Finland. It isn't so face peelingly cold at the moment and the whole of Tampere is under a blanket of snow which means that the city is suddenly much lighter - besides, who doesn't like snow? Especially when it hides the frozen vomit puddles leftover from the weekend.

I had Hank Williams on the iPod on my way home and was secret-dancing to Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do) on my way through the city centre. I was going to attach a Hank Williams video to this so you could all share my joy, but I couldn't find one. So then I was then going to put Rock and Roll Doctor by Little Feat on instead, but you're not allowed to imbed it for some reason (you can watch it here if you like though and I recommend you do). So instead, here is a Kinks song. My friend Mikko inspired me to listen to the Kinks after saying that hearing them on the radio had turned a bad day into a good one. Better than Beatles in my mind...