What an interesting few weeks. To review for those not paying attention: In December, I came to Finland from the States. In January, I got married to a Swedish Finn. In early April, my residency permit was approved. Went to the jobs office awhile back. Looking for some manual labor/trained monkeys could do it type of job because I don't know the language so shit jobs are alright by me. Absolutely no talk of employment, but I did get a listing of ways to get unemployment benefits. (say wha?) Yes, the government employment office was suggesting I go on welfare, basically. Oh, about those benefits. I would have a 5 month waiting period before getting these benefits, unless I A- find a job but get no pay for it (which would undoubtedly be easier to find than a paying job), or B- Go through Integration Education. Yeah, going to school sounds like a better option than functional slave labor. So there's this Swedish-speaking school that does this integration thing. Swedish, Finnish, and Society, Culture, and Religion. It's a religious school, did I mention that? ffuuunnnn But no big deal. I did a 2 week intensive Swedish class in this school in early June, and aside from the creepy songs and dances the kids sang every day in the cafeteria at lunchtime before eating (CULT CULT CULT CULT CULT... teaching children religion CREEPS ME OUT), it didn't seem oppressive or anything. (And if I could figure out how to say o, å, and ö distinctly and separately, I would be a fabulous singer. But I'm not, because my vocal control just isn't that good. argh. And figuring out which verb is the present tense for gick or gjorde is beyong me. Fucking argh.) But I need basically a physical exam to go, plus proof of various vaccinations. I had my mother send my vaccination records. And I need updates, apparently. Nobody ever told me I needed to revaccinate some things every so often. I haven't been to a doctor since 1998, and that was for pink eye. Before that it may very well have been my physical in 1991 before wrestling season my senior year of high school. The wife tried explaining to me how the health system worked here but either she explained badly or the system makes no sense. Basically such exams are supposed to be (mostly?) paid for because of the Very Civilized And Compassionate Finnish Health Care System. TM. (so, to review: To go to school, I need blood work and vaccinations. To enter the country, get married, and get a residency permit, I needed nothing. Check.) My wife's mother works in a hospital. Scheduled an appointment for me there. But, she calls back, it's in another town and since I'm registered as living in Vaasa and not Oravainen, I have to go to my Vaasa "health station" or there might be problems with payment being taken care of. I fucking hope emergency and ambulance care is handled differently. "Oh sorry that you were in a car crash in Helsinki and are bleeding to death, an ambulance from your health station in Vaasa is on the way, just lay there on the pavement for about eight hours. Unless you'd like our Super Extra Care option at added cost? Sign here." Apparently we're in some nebulous zone between specific "health station". The wife calls up one, and there's an answering service (during normal regular hours during the day not on a weekend). Explains that they don't do vaccinations and bloodwork and physical examinations during the summer. I need to go to a private clinic. W T F ahem. Health care is seasonal here? Even the wife thought that was... off. So she calls the other health station. The same answering service. Lovely. So she calls her mother back and I have an appointment at the Oravainen hospital next week, since payment is now a non(solvable)-issue. You know, I was always vehemently against government being involved in health care when I lived in the States, and my first experience dealing with Socialized Medicine (heehee!) isn't changing my mind. If they can find a fucking vein in less than five tries when I get blood drawn, maybe I'll think better of it. If they take more than three tries, I am demanding another needlepoker. I hate that shit. ARGH. *poke poke poke* "I can't find the vein." *poke poke poke* "Wow, it's not usually this difficult. *poke poke poke. JUST SLICE MY THROAT OPEN AND COLLECT MY SPURTING BLOOD IN A COFFEE CUP, IT WOULD HURT LESS AND MAKE ME LESS ANGRY. ahem. And I hope they don't need a lot of blood. I went to give blood as a date thing back in 1995 and ended up on my ass for two hours. You see, we were going out to eat right after so I didn't eat anything all day before going to give blood... ahem. Back to Finland-specific issues. IT IS HOT. HEAT. HOT. IN SCANDINAVIA. IN FINLAND. IT'S FUCKING HOT. Over 30 degrees Celsigrade (that's 86+ degrees in regular temperatures), over 35 (95+) if you look at a thermometer in direct sunlight. Which apparently gives very incorrect readings if you believe the locals, because "the sun shining on it makes it hotter." Must. Resist. Urge. To. Kill. ahem. Now, I lived in Atlanta for 12 years. Orlando for a total of about 6. I know hot. And it was never this bad. In fact, summer in Georgia and Florida is PARADISE compared to summer in Finland. Why, you ask? Two words. AIR CONDITIONING. It's a novel concept, and one I hope to someday see come across the pond. When the temperature is, you know, BOILING, and you maybe want to be, you know, NOT BOILING, you turn on this thing that COOLS THE AIR. NOBODY HAS AIR CONDITIONING HERE. Some businesses do. If there are goods needing to be refrigerated. I went to a bank today (more on that later), and no air conditioning. Several stores, NO AIR CONDITIONING. FUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. So let's review. In the winter, everybody complains (except me) about how cold and miserable it is and how everything is drab and grey. I love cold weather. But everybody does everything in the summer, I was told. (and the heating in the houses are based on these mysterious radiator thingies with no holes in them... you just turn a knob and they magically heat up to some unknown degree, so you spend all day turning knobs against every wall in the place trying to luck into the correct amount of heat where you're not sweaty but no longer cold. I just turn them off, put on my Cthulhu slippers, and say "Cold is awesome.") Now that I'm in summer, everybody sits around and complains how fucking hot it is. Not just me, Finns. But I guess it's easier to be miserable and do stuff in less clothing that never gets you cool enough no matter how naked you get than it is to be miserable and do stuff when you can pile enough clothes on to be at a comfortable temperature. There are several things preventing people getting cooler. We just moved to a new apartment. Double the space of the old place. It has SEPARATE ROOMS so me and the wife are not literally less than ten feet from each other every single moment we are home. It helped our relationship tremendously. We can afford it now because of MY WELFARE MONEY that will be coming in. No shit. Yes, we moved now based on money that I am supposed to be getting for going to a school I haven't started yet and don't have the proper paperwork for due to the "health center" issue. Color me fucking amused! I'm using fuck a lot because no other word will do in this situation. There are three windows that open in the entire place. Three. And they are tiny. 1' x 2' maybe? We've fitted them with screens. And put heavy curtains over the rest of the window array (HUGE in each room) because the sun shines in and COOKS us. We're on the second floor so it's necessary to have screens so Kitty doesn't decide to jump out the window. We've invested in multiple fans. Somehow, being close enough to the fan in my computer/office area to feel the breeze irritates my eye, making them bloodshot and achey. Fucking hell. I can't win. So I sweat. A lot. Really, I'm disgustingly gross around the house because I continuously sweat a copious amount. I thought, "OK, maybe it's just because I'm husky," but no. Skinny Finnish people have sweated in my apartment as well. Kitty just lays down. Has all this space to run around in and she's not interested. It's HOT. And the wife goes on about how awesome the new place is. IT'S HOT. So we went to the wife's grandparents' "summer house" today. A summer house seems to be a house that people get so they have someplace on the waterfront. It has no running water (so no toilets) and only the electricity a solar panel provides. "So you can turn on a lamp" I was told). But it provides swimming opportunities. This family has huge tracks of land and a waterfront house that sits idle the vast majority of the year and I keep being told they're poor. I am not so easily fooled. Some of the wife's older relatives were there, and we went to talk to them on the rocks by the shore. FINLAND HAS GIANT MUTANT MONSTER CHERNOBYL FLIES. No shit. Not just common houseflies, not the horseflies with green glowing eyes that I encountered often on the beach growing up in Connecticut. No. Nooooooo. These things land on you, TEAR OUT YOUR FLESH, and then eat it in front of you while they laugh. The wife has a supersecret Swedish word for them. There is no English word for these kinds of flies, she said. So I dub these flies GIANT MUTANT MONSTER CHERNOBYL FLIES. In all seriousness, no exaggeration, I'm standing there talking and I feel bug bites. I swat. Sometimes I just shake a leg or an arm. OK. Bugs, outside, by the water, in summer. Cool. I look down and I have several open bloody wounds. Not "I swatted the mosquito and it was full and it smeared red," but "I am bleeding because of the chunks these GIANT MUTANT MONSTER CHERNOBYL FLIES tore out of my flesh." Seriously. No bullshit. Fucking hell. But that's not all. I went to the bank today with the wife, to open my account. With the government money I'll be getting, I want some say and knowledge of the family finances. The way it's worked so far is the wife handles all the money (she gets government money from August-May as she's a student so aside from June and July it's not like this is her earned money) and then gives me a few euros to spend as she sees fit like I'm 10 years old or something. If my money is necessary to afford this bigger place, this gives me leverage. A say in what we spend fun money on and what our grocery trips will look like. An example of why the wife isn't exactly to be trusted to act fairly with fun money: I had ordered this CD from Kråklund Shåp here in town. I could have gotten it over the internet but I like this place and if it's available there, I'll get it there. It was on Metal Blade so I figure they can get it in no problem. Several weeks later the wife and I are in town and I want the money to go pick this thing up. "No," she says. "You don't need another CD right now." Even though she OK'd my ordering the CD from this place to begin with. Fuckin' awesome, right? Well there are vendors in the town square selling all sorts of things. Including (very likely bootleg) heavy metal band shirts! This one stall had cool Manowar and Iron Maiden shirts. 15\u20ac each, or two for 28\u20ac said the stall seller dude. What a good deal! Now, they were only in XL and I'm a big boned 2XL kind of guy. But this was before that Swedish class so I would be walking two hours a day back and forth from school for two weeks so I figured I could do an XL at the end of that. The wife agrees to get me two (HOLY CRAP!)... and after she buys them she complains to me, "He ripped me off. He said two for 20\u20ac!" I correct her. He had said 28\u20ac. But the point is, instead of letting me buy one CD she'd already OK'd for 17-18\u20ac, she buys me two shirts in a size that didn't currently fit me for 28\u20ac, plus thought she got ripped off without saying a damn thing handing over her money. She also buys baby clothes and childrens books for a child we plan to have someday, as in not before a couple years from now, So I need my own bank account. In the bank, the representative who would set everything up didn't do English. Fair enough, my wife could translate. She acted almost (but not quite) put out by my asking, you know, questions about costs of international bank transfers and things I know I will be doing with my account. So we go through all of that and then some forms are printed out for me to sign. Contracts, basically. Now I've signed all sorts of paperwork without reading it because the wife was also signing (the lease for the new place, for instance). Figure what the hell, she goes down with me if something's screwy. But this bank account was in my name only. Two or three pages of Swedish legal mumbo jumbo about my account. The wife tells me "Sign this." I say "Read it to me first." She looks shocked. "Why?" Yeah, I really do need my own bank account. The bank representative realized this was a good time for a coffee break. I eventually signed because I didn't want to cause a scene with the wife in a bank office but I still don't know what half that stuff said. I'm obliged to provide three months work in the salt mines every five years for all I know. *sigh* Did I mention it's hot and I have radioactive wounds from GIANT MUTANT MONSTER CHERNOBYL FLIES? Someone, seriously, start a central heating and air installation business here. YOU WILL MAKE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS AND MILLIONS and still die half poor because of the tax rate. But at least your health care will be provided for you for three months out of the year. It really is a foreign country over here.