When I heard the news that Steve Jobs had died, my mind flashed back to 1985, when I began my love affair with computers. I was stationed in Moscow for The Associated Press, and I ordered an Apple IIc - by Telex - from a department store in Helsinki, Finland. They express-shipped it to me, a month later, by train.
Britain beat us to the abolition of slavery; the Isle of Man, New Zealand, and Finland all decided to give women the vote well before the United States. Eventually, we got smart and borrowed these egalitarian innovations.
In Finland, where 80 percent of workers belong to unions, all employees enjoy at least 30 days paid vacation, and the gap between the rich and poor is far more equitable than in the United States.
Finland is no utopia.
In Finland in the winter, when the sky is totally choked with clouds, the country becomes one big sensory deprivation tank.
My favourite country is Finland because once you get to a certain point, you can drive for hours without seeing a single person. I love peace and quiet - something I don't get very often.
A couple of taxi drivers have asked me if we can survive financially as an independent nation. I say, how come we are more stupid than Denmark or Finland or Sweden? They've all got the same amount of people. Are we all going to down tools? Is everybody in Scotland going to stop working?
Living in Finland as a singer of Nightwish, I'm used to having people around me all the time that know who I am. In the Netherlands, people never really knew or cared or whatever.
I might move to Finland, at least for a while, to learn the language a bit better, 'cause you don't learn any language better than in the country itself.
I tried to learn the Finnish language, which is really, really, really hard, and I realized that if I want to really learn it, I need to move to Finland.
