Wheeeee, it's Afternoon Web Usability Testing!

As you can tell by the riveting title, this post is going to be chock-full of int3rn3tz g33kd0m. If you’re not a super d0rk like me, you might want to bail now.

For any of you still reading, as we came downstairs after lunch today, we noticed a table full of candy bars. Mmmmm.... chocolate. We asked the people at the table if we could have one. They said (in Finnish): “Sure! All you have to do is a take a little test!” Wheeeee!



After a minute, I realized the so-called test was actually a web usability experiment for a new travel site that MTV3 is developing! They had each person sit down and gave them a simple task, something like “Find a vacation to Playa del Carmen for under 500€.” They taped the user with a webcam, as well as recorded their screen interaction (where they clicked, how their mouse moved, etc.) so they could pinpoint exactly when a user got confused. I thought it was the coolest thing ever!



And they lured us in with chocolate! Brilliant! Can we do this for our websites back at Bonnier Corp???



PS... the guy leading the test? Dreamy McDreamington. Le sigh.





Sorry if you thought this post was boring. Here, read about naked people on Big Brother.

Month-end Highlights, Accomplishments and Random Tidbits

Well, it’s been a whole month here in Helsinki. What’s going on with me? Thought you’d never ask!


I finally learned how to pronounce my street name - Jääkärinkatu! Yay! Not an easy Finnish word to start off with, but now I’ve got it down. (Pronounced Yah-kah-reen-kah-too. But quickly. And with a Finnish accent.) Up until now, when someone asked me where I live, I was advised to say Jäger Street and people would get the point. (It was true, they all figured it out.) On a semi-related note, I’ve probably drank more Jäger in Finland than the past five years combined. I guess I live on the right street.

I've found my favorite Finnish phrase. Ok, so it's less like a phrase and more like a few Finnish words put together: “kaksi yksi yksi.” It sounds like “coxie, ooksie, ooksie” and I am in lalalaloooooove. I heard this on a commercial and was dying to know what it meant. Turns out, it’s not so exciting: “two, one, one.” (It was the announcer saying a phone number.)

Yay for laundry! Stoked to have a washing machine in my apartment, but seriously miss having access to a dryer. Especially for my jeans.

Got myself connected... sort of. I was cell phone-less for awhile, and relying on Facebook to try to make plans with people, which didn't work out so well. The upside: not having a phone number when random dudes ask for it at bars, on trains or while randomly crossing the street (true story). But no more - now I have a Zach Morris-style cell phone from the ‘90’s. Ok, maybe it’s a tad more updated (circa 2005ish), but it can send faxes! Ha! (And I still don't know my phone number, so I have a good excuse if I need it.)





I've officially realized I “live” here, rather than just taking a vacay. The realization kicks in a bit more every time I have to take out the garbage (which was a surprisingly difficult task to figure out, btw), wash my dishes and clean the bathroom.

I have turned into an eavesdropper! Any time I hear anyone speaking English, my ears perk up and I am immediately immersed in their convo and trying to place their accent. It’s a fun game.

Finnish does not equal Espanol. Speaking of languages, Spanish is the only one I even remotely understand (un poquito), so my brain will start tricking itself into thinking I’m hearing words I understand in Finnish. A good example was when I overheard a co-worker mention vessaan, which in the context of the sentence sounded like cerveza. “Oh, are you guys going for beers?” asked the silly America. “No, she’s going to the bathroom.” D’oh.

Dread mustaches are fun.

Finns don’t say anything if you sneeze. Since our office is 100% communal (and you Bonnier Corp. kids thought you had no privacy in your cubes!) it always weirds me out when someone sneezes and no one says anything. Not “Bless You,” not “Jesus,” not “You are soooooo good lookin’ “ -- nothing. For a country that isn’t overly religious, it makes sense, but I guess I thought they would at least say “kaksi yksi yksi” or something.

The artist formerly known as dissing Finland has done it again. The Prince concert was “postponed” aka cancelled. Boooo!!! Apparently he does this to the Finns every time. I’m starting to understand why they feel like the red-headed stepchildren of Scandinavia.

I haven't traveled yet but... Ticket to Stockholm is officially booked, and St. Petersburg is in the works! Boo-yah!

Sorry I haven’t been writing -- that crazy thing called life gets in the way. I have a bunch of drafts started, though, so stay tuned! Miss you all!!!

A Typical Day at the Office

Once my morning commute has concluded, I enter the MTV3 offices to begin my workday. I am first greeted by this cutie-pie retro owl in the stairwell:

MTV3's owl logo has changed many times throughout the years, and the different versions are painted all over the building. This one is my favorite -- how shocking that it's the one from the 70's.

I pass another dope logo mural after the stairwell on the way to my desk:

Then I enter the main area for the web content team. It has been accurately compared to the Studio Line from Loreal design:

My desk is in an adjoining room off to the side:

At 11:00 sharp (sooooo early!!!), we all go for lunch in the company's cafeteria. We line up like good little girls and boys to get our meals:

There is a buffet-style line with about four different food choices: a type of meat dish -- usually chicken, lamb, meatballs, etc. -- a fish entree, a vegetarian option and a salad of the day. These usually have to be translated for me, which makes me feel even more like a five year-old.

And, in case you're wondering why I've gained about 10 - 20 pounds the next time you see me, one of the reasons is this bread/dessert station. So not necessary, but soooooo hard to resist:

Then we all sit together and eat as quickly as possible because...

... afterwards we grab coffee and gather around the common area to watch (and make fun of) music videos for the rest of our lunch break!

As promised, here are all my super-cute co-workers. Some of them weren't too keen on having their photo taken but oh well. They'll get over it :)

Look, I'm actually drinking hot coffee! Not my first choice, but I'll take what I can get. I think I've only had iced coffee twice since I've been here.

Oh, and we do actual work as well, but I'll cover that in an upcoming post. Just wanted to show you where I spend my days.

My Baby Takes the Mornin' Train

My usual "commute" in Orlando consists of jumping in my Ford Focus, driving 15 minutes or less (usually about two or three songs, max), parking and walking about a minute to the office. It's a tad different here in Helsinki, so I wanted to show you my journey to work each morning through photos. (Warning: I am far from a photojournalist.)

Before you're quick to point out the lack of continuity in these photos, please note they were taken on different days. Some days were breathtakingly beautiful, others were Dreary McDrearyington -- just think of it as a glimpse into capricious Helsinki weather, which I'm starting to realize I will never figure out.

First, I catch the #10 tram about a block from my house. I pass at least three coffee/pastry cafes on the way, and have to contain the urge to drop $8 - 10 on unhealthy goodness. (This cannot be controlled in hangover situations.)

I sit behind this guy. (Well sometimes. Okay, maybe just the once.) We do the traditional Finnish "I-won't-look-at-you-no-matter-what. No-seriously-there's-no-way-I'm-making-eye-contact-or-politely-smiling-whatsoever" greeting before taking our seats.

About 10 minutes later, I am dropped off here ...

... which is by Helsinki Central Station.

I catch the M train, which is usually *just* pulling away as I run up to it.

Right about here, while I impatiently sit on the train drumming my fingers and wish we would just leave already, I start to contemplate the fact that, at home, I would definitely already be at work by now. But no... I'm just sitting... waiting... totally helpless and being an antsy, control-freakish type American who is used to having a car. Then I make myself chill, turn up my music, read my book and am thankful that I don't have to deal with driving and traffic.

Once the train (finally!!!) leaves, it's not long before I get off at the second (semi-pronounceable) stop: Ilmala, where the MTV3 headquarters is located. I get my morning workout on the stairs:

And pretty much every day, while hiking up this hill, I have one of those "Holy $h!t, I can't believe I live in Finland" moments. I think you can see why (cue Stevie Wonder singing about God or something equally inspiring):

Then I take a self-portrait:
And get ready for the most challenging part of my commute: this stupid footpath I have to conquer every morning and afternoon. (Sure, I could walk around but that would take, like, an extra two minutes or something. Also, pretty much every MTV3 employee uses this, from the humble janitor to the mighty CEO, and peer pressure can be very powerful.)

The path is very steep and narrow, and this is the point when I'm glad I'm not wearing boots with heels. There are also fun obstacles to jump over, like rocks and pipes and branches! Oh my!

I know it doesn't look so bad in these photos, but if you know me at all, you understand that my clumsy self shouldn't be up this high and balancing, with no trace of a safety barricade to keep me from plummeting to my death. Ok, so maybe I wouldn't die if I fell, but casts and/or stitches would definitely be in effect, and I have enough scars, thank-you-very-much. (Good thing Finland has national healthcare, though, I guess?)

To give a better sense of steepness, my co-workers demonstrate the afternoon part of the trek. This is the part that scares me the most, especially when it's rainy and muddy. Their favorite thing to say to fuel my 'fraidy-cat fire: "Oh, this is nothing! Just wait until it's snowing and icy!" Yep... can't wait.

After I've survived the shortcut, I pass a water-treatment facility, which has this random statue/water contraption out front:

I climb down one last flight of stairs to reach my final destination: MTV3.

This all takes about 45 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on how long I have to wait on trams and trains. Definitely not something I'm used to, but also an exciting experience.

Photos of the inner-workings of MTV3's web content team coming soon, including my ridiculously good-looking co-workers (no, really, they're all super cute!), our "Studio Line from Loreal" styled office, the owl-adorned stairwells and much more.

Stay tuned!

A Powerful Cover Line

One of these kids is doing his own thing, one of these kids just doesn't belong.


Nice to see some things transcend language barriers. Like hunks. From Scandinavia.

On a related note, these guys were in the office today:



I didn't get to meet them but my co-worker did, so that's news-worthy, right?

I'm Not a Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here

Oh, celebs. Who doesn’t love immersing themselves in shallow, self-centered Hollywood folk? This girl. But in the last two weeks, I have been forced to become a celebrity whore.

Helmi, the website for which I am now a web editor, mostly reports on celebs and how they relate to specific areas of the site (beauty, fashion, weddings, etc.). That means it’s now my job to know everything they do. I definitely wish I had paid more attention the US Weeklys that used to collect dust on my desk. No worries: the mag has an RSS feed -- as does Radar, TMZ, People, et al -- that I check about 20 times a day.

I am now abreast of every minuscule detail happening in famous-people world! Heidi and Spencer: will they divorce or won’t they? Will they actually make the big move to Costa Rica? It’s a good thing Spencer apologized on his Twitter account before he was arrested with a firearm. Oh, and that judge that called Snooki worse than Lindsay Lohan? That was a low blow, but she totes deserves it. (Loving her new look, btw. Bangs are such an improvement over the poof.) Britney’s bodyguard was pretty outta line with all his accusations of sexual harassment -- I’m so glad K-Fed stood up for her. I wonder if Bristol Palin will keep her promise about not wearing a revealing outfit on Dancing with the Stars. Do you think Jersey Shore’s “The Situation” will be any good or will he have two left feet? OMG - did you see the VMAs??? Kanye West and Taylor Swift certainly had some words for each other, eh? Did you see that Katy Perry had her beau, Russell Brand, on her fingernails? Talk about a man-icure. Lady Gaga totally wowed in her Alexander McQueen, didn’t she? Can. you. believe she draped herself in dead, rotting flesh, though? What a statement. She is sooooo fashionable. And asking Cher to hold her meat purse? Classic! (PS... check out my picks for best and worst dressed! No, seriously I made it. And it was kind of fun.)



So, as you can see, working here has forced me out of my comfort zone -- something the GROW program is all about. Bring it on, LiLo.

Kitchen Nightmares

Obstacle of the day: Working the oven in my apartment

Last night, I decided to heat up some leftover pizza for dinner, something that should really only take 15-minutes, max. Instead, it took this silly foreign girl an hour and half to work the damn oven. Why so long? Because of weird stove symbols, a major language barrier and my tendency to over-analyze everything, even the smallest, most mundane tasks.

The oven I’m familiar with has two knobs for cooking: one to control the temperature, and one with the words “bake” and “broil”. I turn the temperature dial to the usual 350 degrees Fahrenheit, set the other knob to “bake,“ add food and voila! A meal in no time.

So what threw me off last night? You might think it was the fact that the oven temperature knob was in Celsius. Not so! A handy Google search clued me in to set the oven to about 175. Piece of cake. No, the hard part was the other knob – the one with four unfamiliar icons instead of words. Since I had no clue what they represented, I looked for the instructions. They were located inside the oven, of course, because that’s totally where a 10-page printout should be. (Um, good thing I checked before turning it on! Oh wait, I couldn't turn it on.) And, this being Finland and all, they weren’t printed in English. Still, no problem - Google Translate could help me read the directions, which would help me decipher the hieroglyphics on my oven, right? Right. (Seriously, what did people do before Google? I am writing this in a Google Doc now!)

I set the translator from Finnish to English and began typing phrases like ‘undervarme tillkopplat.’ Nothing. I assumed it was because my spelling was incorrect so triple checked as I typed. Still nada. Then I guessed it was because my American laptop is not equipped with special characters like ö, ä and å, which were in every word. Of course. I resorted to staring at the words as hard as I could and willing them to mean something. Didn’t work. (Sadly, it never does.)

In a desperate measure, I started Googling the phrases that weren’t recognized by my trusty translator. The results included PDFs of oven manuals - no help, since they weren’t in English. But something caught my eye in the search results - the word Svenska. Swedish??? The whole time, I had been using the wrong language?!? Oy vey.

So finally I was able to figure out that undervärme tillkopplat meant “during heat coupled” and övervärme tillkopplat meant “of the heat coupled.” Uhhh.... I still had no freaking clue what any of that meant!!! So I did what I should have just done in the first place and chose one of the damn settings. The pizza came out fine.

If I only I could shut off the part of my brain that has to analyze every possible outcome of a situation before just taking action. Goodbye two hours of my life I’ll never get back!

First Day at the Office!

Uhhhh.....


Feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment....

Grocery Shopping in a Faraway Land

On my third full day in Helsinki, the harsh reality set in that I can no longer afford to eat out every night. That means…. drumroll, please… a trip to the local grocery store, Alepa. Rather than overcomplicate things, I went with the college tactic of survival foods: simple items that are cheap, fast and versatile. Bread, cheese, butter, eggs, cereal, milk = eggs and toast for breakfast, grilled cheese for lunch and cereal for dinner. Maybe not the most nutritious, but it works for now.

The grocery store experience seemed so harmless at first, with the produce aisle luring me in. “Oh, hello, avocados! I know what you are! No problem, I got this,” I thought to myself as I confidently entered the store. (Dear silly American, note #212: You are supposed to weigh your produce and print out a UPC to take to the cashier.)

Things got a little more complicated in the cheese aisle – dozens of choices, at least twice as many as a the average American grocery store. No matter how long I stared, I couldn’t decipher between feta, gouda, havarti and the other bazillion options. Luckily I found a pack of slices – perfect for grilled cheese – conveniently labeled ‘cheddar.’ Done.

I sensed trouble when I hit the bread section. Not only do I panic about the high caloric content and ingredients in American bread (seriously, does everything have to contain high fructose corn syrup?) but now I didn't even know what kind of bread I was buying. At this point, unless I wanted to ask someone to for help – as an independent woman, that is definitely not one of my strong points – I was forced to become a slave to marketing tactics, and base my purchases solely on packaging. Are consumers really more likely to buy products based on colors, images and graphic design? In this case, yes. Yes I was.

I bought the bread I thought was whole wheat based on the light and dark brown color combos (vs. the blue on the other package – rye, perhaps?) and imagery of wheat fields on the side. The butter I chose had a green label and a heart logo, which my brain processed as “heart healthy.” I bought something in a blue carton I assumed to be milk, because it said 1% on the label. (If there was a fat-free variety, I couldn’t tell.)

Me = clueless.

The toilet paper with a cute li’l lamb on the side with a pink and green butterfly design won my approval, all because my stupid womanly hormones simultaneously kicked in and said “Awwwwwe!”

Now with more Soft & Caring!

And finally, the dumbest (but most delicious) decision I made was reverting back to my youth and buying cereal with the Nesquik bunny. There were all kinds of Müesli-esque options, but this was the least intimating, the most safe and definitely the least healthy option. It made me feel somehow connected to my American roots, which makes absolutely no sense considering I wouldn’t touch the stuff if I was living at home. Nothing but processed sugar and empty calories, yet it was the only thing I wanted.

Shrek is Finnish for "Annoying movie character." Also, what's up with the whole grain graphic and check mark on the top of the box??? 32% misleading marketing!

And finally, after being dissed several times by Alko, I bought Finland’s champagne of beers – Lapin Kulta. (No marketing tactics here – I bought crap beer because the price was right, college-style.)

Mmmmm.... beer.

All set for now! Looking forward to a week’s worth of eating budget-friendly junk – just like the old days.