Tag: solutions

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The Language Barrier

Some background information first: I am a foreigner in Finland.

It happens so, from time to time, that when people from my home country are considering a PhD abroad, particularly in Finland, and they somehow know me (directly or through mutual friends), we get into conversations about the pros and cons, the good and bad stuff, the easy and tough parts.

One of the FAQs include the language question.

In my two years here, I have not yet come up with a good short answer. Is there a language barrier in Finland? No, but yes there is. Or more like, yes, but apparently not.

I find this to be one of the weird things about my whole experience, and I never imagined that the “language barrier” would play out quite like this.

Back when I was on the other side, and I was gathering information on different aspects of adjustment, and asking people and disentangling information from the internet webs, I was told that English is fine! Almost everybody speaks English and there are no problems. They are, of course, right.

Ask me and I will tell you that of course you can survive and move about fine with just knowing English. Heck, I have myself done it for almost two years now. But I will also tell you that despite this, there is, in fact, a language barrier in Finland. And because of this, the existing language barrier is never acknowledged. I will also tell you to not take this too seriously and this is probably kind of fine-print information (not to mention, everyone has different experiences and what might feel like an ocean to me could be just a drop in the bucket for other people).

Now, I have come to realize that my methods of adjustments rely heavily on the language. In a new place, it helps to know your boundaries and how much you can dive in appropriately. And, being potentially awkward questions to ask directly, how does one get this kind of information otherwise? By observing one’s environment and noticing the interactions between already-established people in the “culture” (read: by overhearing conversations).

That ways you know if you should just keep it work-related, or if you could joke around a little bit and share light-hearted, other-workly information. And as you put together your own big picture, you see where you can and cannot fit in, in what aspects will you be limited yourself, and if you can establish a state of equilibrium with your environment.

In case there’s a “language barrier”, you are cut-off from this very important source of information. And in case of Finland, where, as the internet says, people don’t talk, or don’t like to talk, or whatever it is actually that they have with the act of talking, this effect is magnified.

So when they are talking among themselves, what is it really that they are talking about? Just work, probably? Or that’s how you start off, more or less.

Now, in my two years of observing and speculating and trying to put together the pieces of my yet-incomplete puzzle, I have reached the conclusion that the Finns do talk, at least, but they are probably not always talking about work. Though still not sure how much. Also not sure if they have a gossip culture and office politics. Also not sure how much is appropriate and how much isn’t. To some extent, I can tell which people in my environment are more friendly and which are not as friendly with each other, but I cannot say how much friendly those people are with each other.

So, yes, there’s a language barrier in Finland that nobody is ready to acknowledge because, of course, everybody speaks English, and what needs to be communicated is being communicated. Survival prospects of internationals are actually pretty nice, even if they are not up for learning the language.

Another way that this language barrier is amplified is when you are sitting in a group and the already-established people just kind of forget you are there and start conversing in their local language. The feelings of exclusion can be tremendous and these can be the main moments where you truly experience a “culture shock”. Still, I assume this is relative to what culture you are coming from and what your host culture is. I expect that in more social and inclusive host cultures, this might not hit a new person so hard (if they feel included in other aspects in their environment).

(Older posts on culture shock: here and here).

There’s only one way I have found around this, so far: Learning the language, irrespective of if you are good with communicating in English only, and even if you are not planning to speak in your new language. Having now taken two Swedish courses, I can tell at least when they are talking in Swedish vs. Finnish. Also, recently I realized that while I can still not understand what the already-established people say while talking among themselves, I can finally get the gist of what is being talked about.

Most importantly, if you are in a gathering and they forget you and start talking among themselves, it at least becomes interesting to try and understand what they are talking about, or you can just imagine it as your usual Swedish listening practice.

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Discoveries in the Lab

So it happened some days ago, during an unusually in-depth cleaning session of the lab, that we came across super-strong magnets. Such a great discovery should not be in vain.  So since then, we have been trying to come up with some uses for these.

I mean, they can be very useful to pull magnetic stirrers out of a solution if you don’t want to throw away the solution or contaminate it by putting something else in it. But THEN, the magnets might be so strong that if you would use a pair of “metal” forceps to grab the magnetic stirrer sitting on the lip of the bottle, the super-strong magnets might deflect the FORCEPS themselves and you may not be able to grab the magnet AT ALL (yes, I tried – in a casual evasion-of-common-sense moment).

But of course, that could not be the only possible use. What if, instead of pulling the stirrers out of solutions, you wanted to keep the stirrers INSIDE? Like when you are washing magnetic stirrers in a bottle and you come to the part when you have to drain the liquid (soap solution, ethanol, etc.). There’s always a risk of dropping the stirrer with it, which means you have to wash it all over again (depending on where you actually drop it).

So then, if you would use a super-strong magnet (or maybe even just a magnet), you can keep the magnet inside while completely inverting your bottle to drain the solvent. Can be pretty useful sometimes. And now you have a use for super-strong magnets lying around (or rather, sticking around) in your lab.

And as I am now discovering, they are also quite good for designing little games. Like taking smaller magnets and dropping them close enough to the bigger magnets and see how they deflect the dropping magnets. If you control the distance precisely, you can make them hit a particular point on a metal pole.

And there, now you have a game of magnet darts (and another use for super-strong magnets lying around in your lab).

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Mistakes That Follow You Around

Sometimes, things go wrong in your life that, no matter how much you try, you just cannot hide them.

Especially if you work with smelly chemicals in your lab.

You spill one of those and your biggest wish would be to bury the evidence of your clumsiness. It’s all well. You clean up, no big damages. No one saw you. It should be fine. Only if it was this simple.

The smell of the chemical will not let it be so. It haunts you and follows you around everywhere you go.

And people start asking questions. Questions that should not have been raised in the first place, that are best left unanswered.

And then, you have to admit that yes, it is you. This is something that you have done. And it is definitely you who smells like that chemical.

But in this adversity lies a masked opportunity. An opportunity to develop your own line of perfumes that smell like chemicals in your lab. Then you can wear them all the time and get the people in your lab accustomed to those smells.

So that next time, they won’t even know (plus you generate revenue. Win-win.)

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Square Tomatoes

Some days ago, I found out about the square tomato.

In short, the “cultivar VF-145” was developed at UC Davis to get to a more sturdy kind of tomato that wouldn’t squish so easily and wouldn’t roll of conveyor belts. It is not really square, but just “less round” than a more round tomato.

Anyway, many different ways to look at, and solve, a single problem (and all the subsequent problems that arise because of that). Less manpower – Get in a machine to do it. The tomatoes roll off and get crushed by machines – Change the tomatoes.

Or perhaps it depends on the person you bring the problem to. Changing the tomato would probably be the first thing that comes to the mind of a plant breeder – but not necessarily to the mind of a solar cell researcher (not that solar cell researchers are the best people to solve tomato problems… It’s probably a good idea to leave them to tomato experts). But it does make one wonder: would the solution be still the same had someone else been on this task? Someone with a slightly different background and technical expertise?

I have had times in research when I was stumped by a mundane, and most of the times non-scientific, problem (which is, of course, mundane only in retrospect – no problem is too stupid, too mundane, or too small when it is in the phase of being a problem). I only had to move around, sometimes up and down some stairs, throwing the question at people I knew – and one of them would reply with an obvious solution that would leave you in a speechless why-didn’t-I-think-of-this state.

Times like these are when you find out who your real friends are – They are the ones who will not hesitate to break you out of your tunnel vision and bring you play-doh to seal your glassware airtight when you need it.

However, my biggest concern is completely unrelated to this now: Have I been eating square tomatoes all my life, thinking they were round when there were probably rounder tomatoes out there? Have I even seen a truly round tomato ever?