KELA, Nordea, YTV... Take my hand, it's my first step on the snow...

Body

OK. Here it goes.
I signed my contract in the morning. I met Johanna at Nokia and we signed the contract and the NDA.
That was cool. I had to walk in the ICE from the hotel (Which is a cool experience). I went bak to the hotel.
Helja of Finland relocation service arrived. Not to go into more details but we sat for a while then everything was hectic!

She drove me around the Helsinki city center. We then started our way to Espoo.
Now Greater Helsinki is composed of 4 regions. Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen (I failed to pronounce it).
Got myself registered with the authorities. Got my Finnish identity number.

I guess we did go to the Nordea bank after that. Got myself an account and an ATM card (You get these immediately not after 2 weeks like in Egypt). They have a combined visa/Finnish bank card. The problem was that the visa electron might not be available in some shops and that you need the visa to pay online. It should take 2 weeks to get that card.The problem here is that the ATM machines speak only Finnish unless you feed it a non-Finnish card.
I've also got the internet banking thing. That can be used to pay the bills an so. Now this was amazing. You get your customer number and a sheet of papers with passwords. Each one can be used only once. After that it's invalid. When you finish 80% of the passwords, they will mail (not email) you a new sheet. There's also a set of PINs. The system will ask you to input a random pin and you have to check it in the sheet and enter it. All these are generated randomly.
Now I had to exchange some money. Always do this @ FOREX for the best prices.

We had a meal and coffee! It's been a long time since I'd coffee I thought I'm not addicted to it!

Now comes the KELA card. KELA is the social security, I'm not sure I remember everything but basically, KELA compensates your sick leaves, pays about 30% of the private health-care and pays part of cost of the medicine. Probably other things but I'm not sure.

The travelling card (YTV card). I don't recall all the information related to it but you get a travelling part and then you load it with either money or travelling period. I've loaded mine with 2 weeks. You also have to learn how to use it which is not really that complicated.

I guess that was it for today ? I'm not sure I've not forgotten anything.

Stolkmann is somehow like a branch of stores. It's Swedish but I'm not sure. You get a subscription for free or for 10 Euros and you get discounts (But the prices are a bit high) also they are running another series of shops (I forgot the name) and they are a bit cheaper.

You can always buy your clothes from H&M (Or was it M&H) ?

They are my initials so I can't really remember!

Anyway, I'm back to the hotel with a hell lot of papers to read.

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.