3rd week

September 19,2015

Hola! This week was about cultures and how you should consider different cultures while doing business abroad. My team and I did a presentation about Hungarian culture. We created a video my using animoto tool which we did because we wanted to learn how to create a video. It took us several hours to learn how to use it but I feel like we mastered it eventually. In additional we learned a lot about how to do business with Hungarians. They are very creative people and while they might seem a bit rude at first, after you get to know them you realise they are very nice and welcoming people. 

There were also presentations from other groups as well. They told about Norway, Spain, Luxemburg, Albania, Latvia and Japan. I learned a lot and I will try listing it all here: The presentation about Norway was very creative and the group that presented it is extremely talented. I learned that in Albania family is very important. You should always use at least first 30 minutes of a meeting to discuss how ones family is doing. In addition if you are doing business in Albania remember to respect the family (yours and other's).  In Latvia people are superstitious: if you give someone flowers the amount should always be odd because even numbers bring bad luck. In funerals they use red roses, so it would be a huge mistake to give someone red roses as a gift. The presentation about Japan was good too. In Japan the business culture is very different from Western's. For example you should always bring a gift when you are doing business and when choosing the gift remember that the wrapping is more important than the actual present. Also respect and family are important factors in Japan's business culture.

In addition on our group meeting on Wednesday we explored the Finnish market from the point of view of a company called Lazy box. The Lazy Box is pondering if it should start shipping lingerie to Finland. We answered the questions the best of our abilities and hope that the answers are helpful. 

This week I also learned that glocal is the combination of local and global. In addition I watched Aada's pitch video and really loved it. I'm going to learn how to do one myself. However the week was full of talk about how to write the blog accordingly and I was wondering if it is possible to get some personal feedback on my blog. The requirements seem very strict and I would like to know how I could improve my blogging. (I did try to be more specific while writing about my learning this week). However I am enjoying writing this blog because I haven't written a lot in English in a long time so this is really improving my long forgotten writing skills. 

In addition, almost forgot about this homework,  I will tell you about my culture heritage. I am a Finn which means I'm honest, feel like home in the woods, love sauna, am socially limited and eat Mämmi and also for some reason I believe all the Swedish men are gay and Norwegians are rich. I actually once read this wonderful book called "The almost nearly perfect people" by Michael Booth and in it the Danish writer explores the Nordic cultures and  lists the prejudices that the Nordic countries have towards each other. It was a good read and I was really able to familiarise with it. However I, of course, don't have anything against Swedish people and I know they are not all gay, but somewhere deep down I still think so and despise them for trying to take credit for Finnish inventions, for example Santa Claus and Moomin. In addition being Finnish I'm naturally cautious when it comes to Russians. My mother's family is originally from Karelian which means the prejudice towards Russians runs strong in my family. Our family house is actually on the Russian side now and has been completely destroyed. All this does not mean that I would have anything against an individual Russian person but it is just something that is a big part of Finnish culture. My mother is Finnish Swede and this effects my cultural heritage. I use a lot of Finnish words that have come from the Swedish language for example vekkari is a clock. I recognize a lot of familiar Finnish culture things in the young me but I feel like the more I interact with the rest of the world, by travelling or through social media, the more I understand and adapt customs from other cultures. For example I admire the English. They are kind and might talk to you like you've known each other for years and that is a habit I would like to learn. So this was me pondering my Finnish heritage =)