HAVE YOU ever noticed that friends here, even good friends, don’t invite you to their house? You’re not alone. I have friends here I have known for five or six years whose homes I have never seen, let alone be invited for a meal.

Whether this strikes you as weird beyond any perverse measure or not may depend on where you come from. In New Zealand, much of our social life revolves around dinner parties. Typically one invites four or five people over, and then spends a week fretting over table settings, the correct way to produce a perfect risotto, and worry over whether the guests will bring enough wine.

One day when my husband came home from work, he started looking round for something. I somehow knew what he was looking for but I waited to let him find it by himself.

Like a cartoon cat he followed his sense of smell, walking directly to the kitchen and opening the cupboards where I store food ingredients. There he found a small plastic container filled with shrimp paste, a standard Thai cooking ingredient made from fermented ground shrimp. Unknown to the vast majority of Finns, spicy-shrimp paste produces a strong odour that might be considered unappetising for people who are not from South-East Asia.

When I was young everyone had the same hair colour. Black. Variations on the theme were quite monotonous: shiny black, curly black, straightened black, short black, wispy black and so on and so forth. The more adventurous among us would color their hair, but as a general rule everyone followed the black-on-black theme. It was probably easier because when there are six million people with the same colour of hair, dyeing yours fire-engine red was a sure-fire way to end up being compared to a matchstick. Or Ronald Mcdonald. Neither of which paints a very desirable mental image.

When I retired to Finland in mid-August of last year I was obliged to leave Hannibal, my Highland Ox, behind in Belgium. The rules for the movement of bovines are so strict that I was advised to wait until mid-winter, when no more flies were around to pose a danger of disease.

Anyway, Hannibal arrived. He is relatively small but very solid: about 400 kilos, with horns more than a metre across, point to point; these were wrapped in plastic to protect them during the journey.

All seemed well and I decided to keep him blocked in his stable for a few days. This was a big mistake because for the past six years he has lived like ...

“Say NO to sNOw!” This is what I read in January when I checked what mundane entries my friends had entered in their Facebook status updates. This one had not been written by a Finnish friend, and neither was it from a foreigner living on Finnish soil. It had been written in England and echoed what many of my fellow countryfolk were feeling by then. When the white stuff first started falling everyone had been happy because it was going to be a White Christmas. The following entry was even poetic about the snow’s arrival. “Crisp ice beneath foot, snowy scenes, blue sky, winter sunshine, Sunday pleasure!”

I have just got a call from my friend telling me that her husband and some friends ran out from a steaming sauna and jumped naked into the snow in front of the house. She believed they were not drunk. I would be very surprised to hear this – if I hadn’t already been living here in Finland for three years.

I originally came from Phuket, a tropical resort island in the Andaman Sea. Among my favorite pastimes there was swimming in the clear, blue sea. To feel relaxed after tight deadlines I could just drive 10 or 15 minutes to the nearest beach and breathe in refreshing sea breezes.

Eavesdropping might just be one of Finland’s unofficial national pastimes. Right now, as I type this people are busily listening in on complete strangers conversations whether on buses, trains, trams, planes or at gym lockers – no location is out of bounds. Shamelessly following another person’s conversation really is one of life’s guilty pleasures. Sure, most people in other countries make small talk, but this is Finland after all. Talking to a stranger usually signifies insanity, inebriation or that you are a foreigner. To avoid any grandiose schemes, you and me might have to engage the good people in Finland in some chitchat, but most people will usually bury themselves in those free newspapers...

When I first heard the sound of birdsong in an underground car park in Helsinki I didn’t question it. But then I started wondering, “Was this a City-
bird that lived in the walls of an underground car park? Did teenage birds hang out here getting high on exhaust fumes?” Not even Darwin on drugs could have come up with the idea of a city chirper adapting to life in such a place. Yet there is Bubi the city owl, honorary member of Finland’s national football team. Was Bubi nestled here somewhere with a harem of fluttery, flirty birdies?

Since coming to Finland in 2007 I have become fascinated (if not a little obsessed) with the Finnish character. Generally, the Finns are a quiet, shy, law-abiding, consensus-orientated people. The mystery is why? Finns I have talked to have been unable to shed too much light on this and usually shrug in resignation.

But recently I have been taking some psychology lectures on human development and the mystery is becoming much clearer. It all comes down to Mother.

Perhaps the most telling question for an expatriate is “would choose to have kids here?” And for those that already have children, if your child’s life is in danger, do you think “I wish I was back home”?

Last Christmas I discovered my answers to those questions. My wife was 39 weeks pregnant with our second daughter when she was taken into hospital with pre-eclampsia. So, when her placenta ruptured, she was in the right place, and was in surgery minutes after passing out from blood loss. I arrived at the hospital to find her room a mess of scattered equipment, with a clear path to the door and her bed gone.