“What I love about the peo­ple here is that they are great lis­ten­ers”

Kamal Singh came to Oulu in 2010 for his stud­ies from India. At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, he stud­ied to be a wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion engi­neer. Cur­rent­ly, Kamal is work­ing as a Net­work Coor­di­na­tor, and also man­ag­ing a project for Start­up Refugees.

Who

Hi, I am Kamal Singh. I came to Oulu in 2010 for my stud­ies from India. At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, I stud­ied to be a wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion engi­neer. I stud­ied elec­tron­ic and com­mu­ni­ca­tions engi­neer­ing in India and worked for a few IT MNCs until I got the chance to study in Fin­land. Liv­ing for over a decade now, I love this serene and beau­ti­ful city.

Why

I chose Fin­land because it was a ‘known’ place for me, as my aunt and cousins live in Helsin­ki and my sis­ter lived here for a few years as well. I came to know about the master’s pro­gram in wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion and I knew that Oulu is one of the pio­neers in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. When I applied, I got select­ed. Back in 2010, there were no tuition fees, so I got a full schol­ar­ship.

Why Oulu? Oulu to me is a great place to be, for a per­fect work-leisure bal­ance. The city is quite relaxed, and peo­ple are quite hum­ble. Oulu was the first city I came to in Fin­land. I remem­ber it was in August 2010.

The uni­ver­si­ty was emp­ty because the new stu­dents only start com­ing in Sep­tem­ber. I had mixed feel­ings because I was all alone, but at the same time, nature made me com­fort­able. Being my first coun­try out of India, Fin­land is always spe­cial to me.

What

The best thing in Oulu is the nature and the ded­i­cat­ed paths for bik­ing. I love those marked paths for bikes because I enjoy bik­ing. The serene, bal­anced life here is great com­pared to the fast-paced big cities like Helsin­ki. Bik­ing, hik­ing, Nordic walk­ing, and camp­ing are just a few options.

For stu­dents, to get a feel of the city, get your­self a bike. My advice to any­one com­ing here from abroad would be to invest in a good pair of shoes and good win­ter clothes. As they say, ‘there is no such thing as bad weath­er, but bad cloth­ing!’ Stu­dents also have an option to play indoor games, which are quite afford­able.

What I love about the peo­ple here is that they are great lis­ten­ers. They are kind and once they know you, they would be your super­pow­er. They will sup­port you in the best pos­si­ble way. Peo­ple appre­ci­ate it if you learn their lan­guage, or even when you try to speak it, they will not laugh at all. They appre­ci­ate the ini­ti­a­tion and the effort.

Where

Cur­rent­ly, I am work­ing as a Net­work Coor­di­na­tor, and also man­ag­ing a project for Start­up Refugees. I start­ed work­ing for them in 2021. I col­lab­o­rate with com­pa­nies in North­ern Ostro­both­nia and try to bring employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for job­seek­ers.

Till now I have helped 76 job­seek­ers employed and col­lab­o­rat­ed with more than 30 com­pa­nies, and 5 schools in Oulu. It is a reward­ing job. In com­par­i­son to where I come from, the work cul­ture here is very dif­fer­ent. Work­ing in the Finnish envi­ron­ment is a great expe­ri­ence for me. They have rou­tines that are fol­lowed.

My future plan? One day, I would like to be in pol­i­tics. I real­ly want to change immi­gra­tion poli­cies in Fin­land. Many immi­grants in Fin­land, don’t think of enter­ing pol­i­tics. One of the rea­sons is the lan­guage bar­ri­er, which is cre­at­ing a gap between immi­grants and natives. I would like to see immi­grants, enter­ing pol­i­tics so that they can make a change.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at oulutalenthub.fi
Text: She­fat Islam

Oulu Tal­ent Hub

• Oulu Tal­ent Hub brings togeth­er and devel­ops region­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and ser­vices for inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment.
• Oulu Tal­ent Hub offers tal­ents, for exam­ple, con­tacts with local com­pa­nies, match­mak­ing events and info ses­sions, com­pa­ny vis­its, a tan­dem mod­el for intern­ship pro­grammes and career coun­selling. For Oulu Tal­ent Hub, inter­na­tion­al tal­ent is defined as inter­na­tion­al spe­cial­ists, employ­ees, researchers and stu­dents.
• Oulu Tal­ent Hub aims to pro­mote inter­na­tion­al tal­ent employ­ment to com­pa­nies in the Oulu region and open up employ­ment paths for inter­na­tion­al tal­ent.
• Project part­ners are Business­Oulu, Oulu Cham­ber of Com­merce, Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences and Oulu Voca­tion­al Col­lege.
• The project is fund­ed by The Euro­pean Social Fund, ESF.
• Learn more about Oulu Tal­ent Hub at oulutalenthub.fi.

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