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Friday
Friday's work was concluded with a tour of the plant. This was a slightly hilarious occasion, since due to the nature of the factory, we were not able to get inside but had to resort to watching through windows, whose view -- no doubt originally fair -- had been reduced to a few glimpses by the everexpanding manufacturing configuration. The tour was expertly led by two girls, describing the manufacturing process in humorous, exoteric metaphors -- which on the other hand were correspondingly somewhat barren in exact information content, but obviously that was not the intention either. Having thanked and goodbyed (...goodbought?...) our hosts for the tour and for the week alike, the Finnish delegation raised some confusion by a severe urge to rush to the nearby Wal-Mart. Well, our stores are just different and variation is always interesting, even in the daily consumer goods market. The significant difference in prices, for the better, was not a bad motivator either. The soda selection was quite impressive although unfortunately everything was sold in two and three liter bottles (Huh? Why not gallons?) and six or twelve-packs, making it difficult for me to accumulate to my collection of cola cans within decent measures. Also the toy department proved to be interesting, with a discovery of an action figure of a Finnish person, Teemu Selanne (naturally spelled in the American style without the umlaut). We did not invest in this freak of nature though -- in hindsight possibly a mistake; this was not the everyday Batman or Barbie. Teemu, however, did add a few specimens to his American car collection.
By this time we had once again grown hungry and started to cruise the neighborhood in search for a place to satisfy the inner craving. Mostly by random we selected a place that looked like it might be serving reasonably good food (a later inquiry from the colleagues revealed our initial surface judgment correct) and went in. We chose out steaks: Teemu kindly helped the attractive waitress to win today's sales competition by selecting a huge 17 oz steak, I settled for a more moderate 10 oz version. My choice proved to be a better one; a fried steak was much more to my taste than Teemu's grilled version was to his. The overeager (to Finnish standards) behavior of the waitress nicely reminded us once again of the differences in the tipping culture. In the Land of Free Enterprise the waitresses practically live on tips so they are extremely willing to serve -- sometimes towards the border of peskiness. Whereas in Finland it is often nearly impossible to get any service in a restaurant, even if you'd like to pay your bill, here that was available in abundance, one waitress serving only two or three tables (and at this time the other ones of hers were clearly empty). We tried to keep this in mind when leaving the tip. Another notion made in the restaurant was that of the physical size of American people. While not certainly attributable to everybody, the average width of an American person seemed to be on the large side compared to Europe. Another table was completely filled with three people, together about the size of maybe five or six "normal" persons. And the table was completely filled with their dinner. I would have put a picture here but it did not fit on the page. The next stop was back at the Building 3, where I dropped Teemu to have a party with the American colleagues. Not being much of a party shark myself, I had rather planned to go get some night pictures of the Houston center skyscrapers, so I said hi to the guys and went my way. This time I decided to take my time and drive on the service road and visit any interesting shops that might be open along the way. However, time being past seven, most of the stores were already closed. One shop was still open until the next even hour, a 99-cent shop, where everything was $1.07 with tax -- a big hooray for the American sales tax system for not being able to see the final price on the shelf. Most of the store contents were pure junk, made in various white-map corners of the orient. There were, however, some interesting purchases to be made. I bought a paperback King James Bible; your own share of heaven for a buck is always a good deal -- or maybe I just find the language interesting. Another acquisition was a lousy plastic sports watch; not for the watch itself -- practically useless -- but it came in a neat metal box. During a stop I also called Bill to Phoenix to let him know that I was indeed in the country and coming tomorrow as planned. I had never heard his voice before but communication was successful regardless, and we agreed that he would pick me up from the airport, in the baggage claim area.
The plan for night pictures (besides some bad snaps taken from the wheel while driving) fell apart though, when I was not able to find a suitable spot far enough but with a good view of the center of the city, and after some semi-random cruising, I gave up and made my way back to the hotel for a good night's sleep. As a side note, Teemu had some funny nightly experiences of his own with Nipuna, involving a night club, a problem with the type of shoes worn, a right-turn on a red light where explicitly prohibited and a police car. No lasting damage though. |
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