Day 51 Calm and reserved Fins

Fins strike me as a group of calm, quiet, reserved and emotionally-bottled-up people. You never see anyone rushing around on the road, you never hear anyone talking really loudly on the bus (well, except one or two), even when they are drunk, they just mind their own business. I always imagine that if we cancel out all the background noise of the city (i.e. traffic and other noises), Helsinki or even the entire Finland will be extremely quiet.

In a way, I think this is what I like about them. I don't have to say anything when I have nothing to say, I don't have to pretend to be interesting when sometimes I am not, I don't have to even talk when I don't want to.

Last Friday in our Advanced Corporate Finance class, our professor invited a top-notch consultant to our class to lecture us on Capital Structure and Corporate Strategy. As I have experienced back in HKUST, consultants are normally really energetic people who talk not only fast, but also attention grabbing and they always seem to have those "wow" factor within it. So before this Finnish consultant came to the class, I was so ready for a show to begin.

So this Finnish consultant talked, and quite frankly, I was a little disappointed at first.
1. He talked monotone.
2. He gave a lecture even more boring than the professor himself.
3. His face is emotionless.

Basically like a talking cold marble statue.

But if you were there, you would have noticed that apart from the unattractive way of speaking, this guy actually is quite smart and experienced, but he just kept it all bottled-up. There is no fancy words to draw everyone's attention, but I was just intrigued by the contents of his lecture. Calm and reserved, but there is so much in him.

You know what they say, it is not the volume but contents that matter.

I think I have located a place on earth that is not Americanized!