So, the trip to Helsinki has been uneventful and I am off to Paris this evening. Helsinki is rather small and not especially unique, even by locals’ accounts. It isn’t surprising when you consider that the population of the entire country of Finland is almost exactly that of the Atlanta metro area and only a little over a quarter that of the NYC metro area. Helsinki accounts for a little over half a million people. Unfortunately, much of the architecture is very utilitarian. A lot of it has a Soviet feel to it which, when you consider they share a border with Russia, isn’t terribly surprising. It is a very harsh environment and Fins, as a race, live far more in logic than emotion which also informs their design choices. As a consequence, I really didn’t take very many pictures here this time. There just wasn’t that much worth photographing. They do have a quite beautiful train station downtown, but I shot all the pictures I wanted of that the last time I was here. One of those shots is on my Smugmug site, in fact.

Travel overseas is makes most people a little uncomfortable – assuming it isn’t something they do very frequently – because they are blazing new neural pathways. It’s really the sum of a lot of little things, but there is nowhere you can go that doesn’t remind you that you are thousands of miles from home. Bathrooms have different fixtures, the currency is different, street signs look different, plugs and light switches are different, etc. then there is language. Assuming you don’t speak the language, even the basic ability to communicate is a constant questions. As an aside, I heard a joke a while back that I thought was funny but uncomfortably close to true: What do you call a person who speaks more than two languages? Multi-lingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bi-lingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? American. Um, ouch.

Annnywho, I happen to get a rush out of the unknown, but I feel no less isolated because of that. And it is worse in some countries than others. In Helsinki, for instance, I feel far more out of place here than in, say, France or Italy. It is because, unlike French or Italian, Finnish shares no commonality in origin with English. And I’m yet to find a Finnish street name I can pronounce. I can’t even hop in a cab and tell them where I want to go unless it is the hotel (Radisson Seaside) or the airport (Vaanta) because I can pronounce those and they already know where they are. Even the sounds used in the spoken language are radically different than those in English and it sounds very harsh to my ear. But, if you ever want to feel really, really uncomfortable, go into a grocery store in another (non-English speaking) country. Real “foreignness” lives in the grocery store. The environment in a grocery store is still familiar, but nothing on the shelves looks like it does at home. The packaging, the color pallet, even the very shape of the packages is different. And you are completely immersed in it. If you get too unsettled, find the soft drink aisle and stand in front of the Coke until you catch your breath; Coke looks the same pretty much anywhere.

And, while Helsinki has certainly been interesting from that aspect, I found this particular trip far more interesting on the work related side than I did on the foreign country aspect of it. The reason I am here is for work. The company I work for is based here and we are having an engineering meeting, drawing the majority of our engineers globally to HQ. Being that we are a truly global company, that entails lots of people with major cultural differences. Being a die-hard people watcher, this week has been fascinating. Watching everyone interact throughout the day and, more telling, watching them interact in the hotel lounge at night or in after hour events. The company does a great job of encouraging camaraderie. We are all staying in the same hotel that has a huge lounge are for gathering informally downstairs, and we all go to and from the office together on a chartered bus. And we have group activities after hours.

At dinner night before last, I was at a table with 2 Italians, a guy from Latvia, a guy from Russia, a Fin and a guy from Brazil. I was in observation overdrive. I was positively fascinated. Not surprisingly the Americans in the room were the most, um, outgoing, and the Hispanic countries were pretty close to matching us. The remainder of the groups fit exactly where the stereotypes would suggest they would. I guess there is a reason for the stereotypes, huh? The Italians were warm and friendly, but fairly reserved, the Asians were painfully withdrawn, but equally painfully polite. The Germans were very German, while the Scandinavians were a bit aloof. The French were superior to all of us, of course. So, while none of their individual behavior was particular interesting, watching the interactions between all these people was riveting. There was easily twice the amount of non-verbal communications in the room than verbal. You could almost read the room from body language alone. I saw more fake smiles that night than I have in a long time, as people tried to be polite to people the just didn’t get.

But the next morning was the really fascinating part. The company had brought in a “presentation consultant” to coach us on effective communication in presentations. Having been through these things before, I knew what we were in for as soon as I walked into the meeting room to find all the tables gone and the chairs arranged in a circle around the perimeter of the room. It was the standard “we’re going to teach you to think outside the box by forcing you outside your comfort zone” configuration. Many of the others had no idea what they were in for; poor guys… It started with the ‘”coach” having us all stand in a circle and “raise your right hand… now turn to your right… now, place it on the shoulder of the person in front of you… now, put your other hand on their other shoulder and give them a quick massage” then, after about a minute, you reverse. There were group exercises where the group was divided in two and told that “you are a runners coach and he is in the last few hundred meters of a marathon and is struggling to make it through. Your job is to encourage them, however you would do that. I want to FEEL it.” and the other half of the group critiques you. The room breaks into pandemonium for a bit. Reverse sides and repeat.

Then there was this nifty little “dance” that was most amusing. While still in a circle around the room you were to follow what the coach was showing you. It went like this: you grab the front of your pants by sort of pinching the fabric on the front of each side and pulling it away from your body. If it seems like it might appear vaguely obscene, you are spot on; it did initially appear that way. And you say the word for trousers in Finnish (hosu), then grab your shirt similarly and pull it out and say the word for shirt (puseron), then pick up and grab your right foot in both hands and say shoe (kenkä), drop it and grab your right root and do the same, then jump and turn 180 degrees to you are facing out of the circle and put one hand on each, um, cheek (those facing into the circle, not out) and say the Finnish word for buttocks (pakarat). Jump back around, facing into the circle and start it over. (hosu, puseron, kenkä, kenkä, pakarat… hosu, puseron, kenkä, kenkä, pakarat…) getting faster each time until it was impossible to keep up with. That exercise really showed plainly where along the introvert-extrovert scale the different cultures fit. I felt sorry for many of them who were so far outside their comfort zone that they couldn’t even see it anymore… but it was kinda funny.

Then there was lots of role playing. “Team up in twos. One of you is the customer, who is aggressive and the other is delivering bad news.” or “OK, team up and one of you is demonstrating birth, life, death and rebirth to the other, but without words.” And the crowning exercise was the worst by far because it singled each person out. Again in a circle around the room, each person has to walk into the middle of the circle and show their “physical signature” – that is, non-verbally do something that represents you. It should last 10 to 15 seconds – then say your name and step back to your place. And he wouldn’t let anyone ‘”mail it in” by just like, walking in and waving at everyone. It had to be demonstrative. I thought the Chinese might actually die. They were miserable as their turn approached – agonizingly slowly – and grew progressively more rigid. The idea behind all of this was to force you past the instinctive instinct to close up when put in front of a crowd. I think the Chinese just came away with a keenly honed dislike for westerners.

In any case, I found it a blast, but I think I was in the minority. We all get together once or twice a year in Helsinki, but usually half of us at a time. This is the first time we’ve all been here at once since I’ve been with the company. The time for my cab to pick me up for the airport is drawing clear and I find myself a little saddened. I really like a few of these guys a lot and enjoy talking with them about common interests that I share with very few other people. And, besides, I doubt France will offer anything so over the top as a mock dance culminating with you grabbing your own behind (with both hands, no less). I’ll just have to live with it, I suppose. I’ll check back in from Paris sometime soon.

Peace out,
/g