I feel like I'm just a bit screwed. I called the stamp shop today and my boss won't have any work for me until March. Finding another job is proving to be very difficult, due to my poor Finnish ability. I've contacted two English language pre-schools, Little Britannia, The Castle, cleaning jobs, and plenty of independent people looking for English speaking au peres or babysitters and nothing is coming up yet. A lot of the jobs that don't require Finnish are based in the capital. It doesn't help that all of my previous employment has been customer service based, which would be near impossible here. I couldn't even work in a supermarket. I can't survive on thin air, and now I'm really starting to think it's about time I admitted that things didn't go to plan here and I should go home.
Obviously I'd much rather be able to continue my life here but without an income that's not really possible. I have plenty of free time but I can rarely go and do something enjoyable without any money. Everything feels very empty in my life.
I have a couple of ideas that I could still try: printing adverts in Finnish for an art/English tutor, which I'd be quite keen to do anyway, possibly printing another advert as a cleaner or babysitter, trying to sell some artwork, and this is a very long shot, but making a portfolio on a USB and going to some small independent galleries I've seen to try to convince them they want my work. The commercial galleries here seem to be less exclusive than the London ones - aside from one particular gallery they all seem to have lots of different works by different artists crammed together, rather than focussing on one practitioner or theme. Even if that was a successful venture it wouldn't necessarily guarantee money, but I'm at the point that I need to try anything. I'm thinking I should set up an Etsy account too. If something doesn't come up very soon I'm probably going to have to call it a day on this one. I knew my prospects in this country weren't that great, and I've always been realistic about what's possible for me here, but I honestly didn't realise it would be so hard. Tomorrow I should probably go to the employment agency and see if they can help, but previously their only suggestions were cleaning ferries, which I applied for, and working for Nokia, although the Nokia website now says that speaking Finnish is a requirement, so maybe their rules have changed.
If anyone has any suggestions, however outlandish, of potential jobs or ways to earn money I'm willing to listen, and probably give it a shot. With the exception of prostitution, my standards are pretty low right now so I'll do anything. I don't care if it's weird, or even just irregular, because a number of irregular jobs might add up to something worthwhile. I would be extremely grateful for some help from any source.
Randomly dropping by via Finland Forum. I checked the vacancies at mol.fi out of curiosity.
ReplyDeleteHow about delivering newspapers? Itella/Posti is looking for part-time sanomalehdenjakakajia in Turku. The ad claims Finnish is required, but to be honest the job itself requires very little interaction, as long as they're willing to train you in English. I mostly see foreign newspaper delivery guys near where I live. It's not the best job in the winter, but it gets better closer to the spring/summer (speaking from experience).
mol.fi lists some other newspaper/advertisement delivery vacancies as well, but Itella is the only one that pays a semi-decent salary (they pay by the hour, the others pay by the amount of ads delivered).
There are also 20+ cleaning job openings listed. Check out some of the packing/warehouse/kitchen job ads as well, and some of the summer job (kesätyö) ads like the Jukupark one might be worth applying for.
Ask your Finnish friends to read the mol.fi ads, and pick out the ones they think you could apply for.
Try signing up with some henkilöstövuokraus-companies as well.
Thank you for your advice. I know someone who has a job like that, I think delivering the junk mail and free newspapers, like the adverts you get from K-Supermarket etc. My boyfriend showed me one website for that, it's just a bit worrying that it said the wages can be as low as €65/month. Although as something extra it wouldn't be so bad.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck with whatever you decide.
ReplyDeleteDelivering junk mail - 65/month sounds like it could be about right. I tried it as a 2nd job for a one summer, but was taxed heavily and never made even that much per month. It doesn't really pay off unless you're desperate for any extra cash or job experience, but isn't that bad if you think of it as getting paid to exercise.
Delivering newspapers for Itella - I used to make around 300 e / month, but this was almost 10 years ago. I don't know if the pay has gone up any.
In England one summer I had a job doing direct sales door to door for a pay tv company (I'm not sure if people actually sell stuff that way here) and they made the wages sound amazing to lure you in, but considering the number of hours you had to work it came to a very small amount. Like you said, if you think of it as being paid to exercise it's a bit better. I was lucky because I was staying with my parents during the break from university, so I didn't need to worry about rent etc like I would now.
ReplyDeleteThe person I know who does that job here said that it's really underpaid and he wanted to quit. It could definitely be a starting point but I guess it's definitely not something to live off of.