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Went to Turku for my meeting with my career counselor yesterday. Because of the pandemic, I hadn't been there in a couple of years. The downtown area is still impassible because they've been constructing the underground parking garage that nobody wanted or needed under the market square (which was also the bus hub) for like three years. Bribery still rules the day in Turku city planning, and the businesses that owned the land under the market square wanted the city to buy the land from them and build an underground parking garage literally across the street from an extant underground parking garage that is NEVER full, so it happened even after years of protests from basically everyone and even after the initial excavations found archeological remains. Walking through downtown is a huge hassle now, and the market square is a huge eyesore. 🙃
My career counselor and I talked over the surprise outcome of our last meeting with the manager of the store I'd been at from May through February - after such a long work practice, and with no inkling of anything wrong, we both thought I would probably be hired there, at least temporarily, at least in some respect, and we were both caught flat-footed by the refusal (not even with 50% salary repayment from the government). Because while in retrospect I'm feeling positive about both the break and the possibility of finding something better, the fact that the counselor and I were both completely surprised by the development seemed... bad? I wanted to understand the reasoning and what the manager was actually saying, for one, but I left last week's meeting mostly confused. ( Read more... )
On an abrupt tangent, I had the weirdest minestrone ever at Turku's ancient and iconic downtown bar-brewery-restaurant, Koulu (social security, whenever they require you to do more than 3 hours of meetings or whatever in one place, also pays for your lunch, and they do this by giving you a voucher for a nearby restaurant; Koulu is the one closest to my career counselor's office). I like minestrone. I even like Olive Garden minestrone. I even like minestrone thrown together from canned and dried pantry ingredients! I make it often, okay. But this minestrone had only one type of beans, the pasta in it was literal spaghetti, the soup base was obviously canned tomato puree - no other texture - and aside from a VERY basic Italian flavor profile, it tasted overwhelmingly of pepper. It wasn't Indian-food hot, but it was about as hot as a jar of mild salsa from the store. But the heat was JUST pepper. The vegetables were skinny slices of carrot and bell pepper. I picked all of those and the beans out and then gave up and ate French fries. I actually like mild salsa! Just like...not as a soup! Also, this is FINLAND! Who pours a whole jar of black pepper into their soup pot? Ugh. Now I am annoyed that I didn't get minestrone.
My career counselor and I talked over the surprise outcome of our last meeting with the manager of the store I'd been at from May through February - after such a long work practice, and with no inkling of anything wrong, we both thought I would probably be hired there, at least temporarily, at least in some respect, and we were both caught flat-footed by the refusal (not even with 50% salary repayment from the government). Because while in retrospect I'm feeling positive about both the break and the possibility of finding something better, the fact that the counselor and I were both completely surprised by the development seemed... bad? I wanted to understand the reasoning and what the manager was actually saying, for one, but I left last week's meeting mostly confused. ( Read more... )
On an abrupt tangent, I had the weirdest minestrone ever at Turku's ancient and iconic downtown bar-brewery-restaurant, Koulu (social security, whenever they require you to do more than 3 hours of meetings or whatever in one place, also pays for your lunch, and they do this by giving you a voucher for a nearby restaurant; Koulu is the one closest to my career counselor's office). I like minestrone. I even like Olive Garden minestrone. I even like minestrone thrown together from canned and dried pantry ingredients! I make it often, okay. But this minestrone had only one type of beans, the pasta in it was literal spaghetti, the soup base was obviously canned tomato puree - no other texture - and aside from a VERY basic Italian flavor profile, it tasted overwhelmingly of pepper. It wasn't Indian-food hot, but it was about as hot as a jar of mild salsa from the store. But the heat was JUST pepper. The vegetables were skinny slices of carrot and bell pepper. I picked all of those and the beans out and then gave up and ate French fries. I actually like mild salsa! Just like...not as a soup! Also, this is FINLAND! Who pours a whole jar of black pepper into their soup pot? Ugh. Now I am annoyed that I didn't get minestrone.
