4 new countries represented at Chaff meeting

It is truly remarkable how new people are turning up at our Chaff meetings.

This week we welcomed several new participants.

Chilli, a delightful lady software engineer from China working at Flextronics, Jeevan, an engineer from Malaysia working at Nokia, Thiery, a student of International Business from Rwanda and Josephine, a visitor from Zambia who is studying Finnish culture.

Click on images to see larger photographs.





Old timers present were Isaac (India/USA), Tingting (China), Pentti (Finland), Kamu (Zambia), Kiran (India), David (Kenya), Ilari (Finland), Ildiko (Hungary) and myself (World Citizen), plus our wonderful host and hostess, Pailin and Unnop with their younger son, Sodium, all from Thailand.

The food was delicious. As I had not expected such a large crowd today, I had told Pailin not to make her popular buffet. My apologies to all. My bad.

I would be grateful if people did ring me and tell me if they are ABLE to come, so that I can tell Pailin how many to cater for.






No complaints, however, about the food, which was consumed with great relish and an even more dash of humour.





We discussed especially about the internship jobs that foreign students do not seem to obtain from local companies.

Isaac advised me to contact the Human Resources Departments of all the major companies so as to alert them as to the problems being faced by foreign students, especially as many have been led to Finland with the bait and hook of "free education".

We also discussed the purchasing of houses in Finland as a way to save on taxes.

We all felt the lack of the presence of both Kannan and Paneer. We were all happy to hear from David that the University of Oulu have confirmed the offer to Kannan to his Doctor of Technology in Industrial Engineering and Management. We will see Kannan regularly in Oulu when he comes to take part in his monthly seminars.

He spoke to me on Saturday and is settling down in his new job.

Chilli, a very talented engineer from China, will be here in Oulu for a month. She has done her studies from Mikkeli, but now works in China.

Josephine is studying at the Institute of Home Science but hopes to transfer to the Polytechnic to do further studies.

Jeevan has been at Nokia for several years but does a lot of travelling.

Thiery is studying at the local Polytechnic.

This was a truly interesting crowd from avriety of backgrounds and hopefully we will see more new faces at subsequent meetings.

Chaff is continuing to grow, thanks to the support of all those who have found something constructive to do on a Sunday afternoon.