Saturday best Buys

Thank you for all the messages about the potatoes. It was indeed an excellent buy. Look around, as you may still find some available at that unbelieveable price of € 0.10 per kg!

Today, saturday, we have a couple of good buys.

Oranges at PRISMA are only € 0.59 per kg. We use about 5 kg a week. These oranges may last a couple of weeks, so it is certainly a good buy for us.

Bananas are just € 0.89 at Lidl. Worth a buy, although at most other shops they are just € 0.99 per kg. If you eat as many bananas as we do, then buying raw green ones so that they can ripen over the week would be a Best Buy.

Today at Halppa-Halli in Toppila you can get Chicken legs at € 0.99 per kg. An excellent buy if you are a non-vegetarian.

Do send me your comments.

Potatoes at rock bottom price

Today, Sunday, I went out shopping, even though it was bitterly cold in the afternoon.

I went to PRISMA and I saw a sight that in all my life I have never seen before in Finland.

Potatoes are the staple food of Finns. They consume it in many ways - plain boiled potatoes, mashed, fried, roasted, grilled, sliced, curried, etc. Any way you think you can prepare potatoes - that is an accepted way.

So when I came across the price of Euro 0.99 for a 10 kg sack, it is a price I have never ever seen in my 26 years in Finland.

In our book "Handbook for Survival in Finland" published in 1994, the lowest price reported for a 10 kg sack of potatoes is 15.90 Finn marks, which is Euro 2.70. This price of today is almost a third of that lowest price which I had noted between 1984 and 1994!

The farmers must be having a real hard time, as this was a sack of Quality 1 potatoes which they must have harvested late summer or early autumn. Such a price would hardly give them the price of fertiliser they would have used to produce this crop,

Though I feel sad for the farmers, it is good for those on the hunt for value for money.

If you want to live like a Finn, then switch to potatoes, pick up a few bags, and enjoy the various delicious ways you can prepare this carbohydrate! At € 0.10 a kg, you can certainly experiment all you want.

Considering I earned a 10% bonus on my purchases of today using my PRISMA card, that wored out at € .90 for 10 kg or E 0.09 for a kg of potatoes)

Can anyone tell me whether you can pick up potatoes at this price (Rs. 5.85 per kg) in India?

Dilemma! What do I do?

I was in this dilemma when I stated blogging in December 2004. I had one blog for all my different audiences. At that time I also had web pages devoted to different sectors of readers.

There was a clamour amongst my readers of the blog that I was out of tune with them as they were reading many items that they were not interested in as they pertained to my alma maters or something specific to Oulu, etc.

It was then I started breaking up my blogs - besides my primary Blog (Jacob's Blog), I started one on Politics, another related to my association with Cathedral School (Mumbai), another about St. Stephen's College (Delhi), another about finding goods and services in Oulu, etc.

Everybody was happy!

All went well till my recent trip to India, where I stopped all my auxiliary blogs and kept only my main blog going, with just a few very specific entries to my other blogs.

My readership shot up as it appeared that many were interested in all aspects of my trip around India - which I had termed as "Incredible India".

The readership more than doubled at one point. People were referring others to my blog and it just snow-balled into a massive readerfest. Old and young, relatives and friends, school and college mates, Findians, O-Indians, my professional colleagues, past and present, were all tuned in. And many strangers from around the world were liking my style!

Wherever I went I found I needed no introduction as people had been following my blog. As I recorded, at one stage it became highly embarrassing, as people would come up to me and ask whether I knew them!

On returning to Finland, I went back to my old system.

Now I am having a spate of complaints. Many say that I should only blog at one point.

That would be great for me but not fair on my diverse audience. For instance the Cathedral School Alumni Association have especially complimented me on my sustained effort to keep the school spirit at its height by my blogging.

That is definitely not possible as my Seventh Heaven and Kooler Talk Blogs have very specific readerships. And not everyone likes my Politics. To burden all my regular readers with MY political views would be unfair. And my Oulu Best (Worst) Buy Blog is very specific to my Oulu Readers. Who in India or USA wants to read about the price of eggs in Oulu?

Is there any single solution, which is outside my very limited knowledge, which will help keep all my readers happy?

One way is that you could become a "Follower" of a specific blog. Whenever the one you are interested is updated, you will get a message from Google. No infringement of your privacy. You can always stop the "Follower" program whenever you want.

That way, it would stop my having to post important blog entries on my multiple blogs. (Possibly - as I have not yet looked into the ramifications of this alternative.)

If you have any suggestions, please email me or leave me a COMMENT. (Although my blogs are not exactly "Comment" blogs, I do read all the comments and reply them appropriately - also knocking off the spam that does come in.

This entry is being posted on all my major blogs, as it concerns all my readers in all categories.

Good prices at K-Citymarket

The low prices for oranges, mangoes, and a few other vegetables, continue today at K-Citymarket. 5 kg of potatoes are available for € 0.99, which works at less than € 0.20 per kg.

Certainly worth a buy.

Bananas are still cheapest at Lidl, where they were € 0.89 per kg. Basmati rice is cheapest at Lidl at € 2.49 per kg. Both Prisma and K-Citymarket are selling Basmati rice closer to € 3 per kg.

I took an Indian friend to Lidl yesterday and he found the price of shower gel here to be the same as in India!

He also commented that the hand creams he has brought from India are not suited to this cold climate as they sort of crystallize because of the low temperature.

Back in business, Best Buys in Oulu

Annikki and I are now back in Finland and you will find your best buy tips on this page regularly.

This Saturday's local newspaper, Kaleva had, what they thought was a new discovery. They reported that in many Finnish shops, prices of smaller packs are cheaper than the larger packs.

Those of you who are familiar with our book "Handbook for Survival" published in 1994, may remember what we wrote on page 152:

Some Quirks

During our years in Finland we have had some very interesting experiences which we feel you should always bear in mind.

The first is one practice that leads us to believe that Finns must be really poor in Mathematics. It is not unusual to witness this particular phenomena in most department stores. Anywhere else in the world, a large economy pack is always substantially cheaper than the smaller unit packs. Reasons as lower quantum of packaging costs, lower transportation costs per unit, etc. usually dictates this marketing philosophy. Not so in Finland. It is very often we see the large economy packs being offered at substantially higher prices than the smaller unit packs. Do not, therefore, just pick up the larger pack thinking it should be cheaper. Look carefully at the kg price or litre price for the pack and pick up the cheaper one. Several years ago we used to watch in amazement as Finns in large department stores picked up these larger packs at 40% higher prices than the smaller ones. Products where this was common was cooking oil, drinking chocolate and washing powder.

If you listen to advertisements on TV you will be led to believe that you would be saving money if you by refill packs of items such as washing powder - and this is as it is in the rest of the civilised world. Not so in Finland. If you wander around the supermarkets and compare the prices of the refill packs as against the prices of the same products in expensive plastic containers, you will find that the refill packs are MORE EXPENSIVE. Those doing marketing are utilising your natural instincts to pick up the refill pack as they have told you on TV that you would save money, and they expect you should not to query their dictum.

If you are conscious of the environment and tend to concentrate on purchasing products that are environmentally friendly, in Finland, you will be the target of racketeers who will charge you the hilt for you to follow your beliefs. Recycled paper or environmentally friendly washing powder cost much more than virgin paper or washing powders that pollute. There is no reason why they should, but the companies either do not want you to change your habits or they feel that you should be punished for holding these radical views on environment friendliness.

For your information, the past blog entries contain several pieces of useful information as where to find the Oulu Flea Markets, where to get your spectacles cheaper than you can find them in India, where not to buy certain items, the biggest fraudsters as lawyers, housing agents, and some shops which have good offers round the year.

We will try to keep this page up-to-date as we have several newcomers to Oulu. We find that they are wasting their money going to expensive shops as Stockmann, when they can get the same stuff at much lower prices.

This Sunday, if you are a fan of many sorts of nuts, as walnuts, etc, Antilla, in the centre of Oulu has a huge stock of Christmas nuts that arrived too late for the festive season. They are offering two packets of nuts for just € 1. This is a great offer if you have the paitence to crack open the nuts.

This Sunday you can get oranges at € 0.59 per kg (I believe some shiop may be offering them at € 0.49 per kg). Mangoes, no not any of the Indian varieties, are just € 0.99 per kg. These two offers are at the K-Supermarkets in different parts of the city, and possibly also in the Citymarkets.

The end of Christmas sale is continuing in many shops. Antilla has loads of stuff at 30 to 70% off, so it is worthwhile making a visit. They are open, like many shops, this Sunday from 12 till 18:00 hours. Annikki got some really expensive winter shoes at 30 - 50% their regular price.

The shops still selling lots of Christmas stuff are Kärkkainen and Halpa-Halli, but you will also find stuff on sale in Prisma and Citymarket.

Lidl still has the lowest prices for many items. So do not forget to take a look there before going to the other shops for your foodstuffs shopping.

Glad to be back with you, and we will try to keep you updated on the Best and Worst Buys in Oulu.