8) Round 2

Monday, 21th of December... Cold... brr..... but sunny :) at least for 5 hours :D

I arrived half an hour earlier to the Ålandsbanken and, well, I had to wait for a while... Funding specialist Terhi Iso-Ilomäki was quite friendly and listened to my whole presentation. She complimented the presentation and understood the idea relatively easily which gave me a feeling of satisfaction.

As expected, she also told me that Finnvera must give its approval and warranty. However, she bid me welcome to go back to Åland if I get my project accepted :)

Since the interview finished quite early, and Finnvera's offices were on the same street, I decided to pay a small visit and see if I could give them more information. After all the maximum amount of files I could sent through Finnvera's web page was 4, even though I have 17 text/numeric files and 3 presentations in power point.

To my surprise, the financial manager in charge of my case, Karina Fogel, was available and willing to give me an interview.

It was one of the most stressful interviews in my life, I must confess. Even though I was more than ready to give the whole explanation of my project, I got a bit nervous, and since she was asking me random questions of the whole project, the idea of showing her my power point presentation became pointless. However, even though she complained about the amount of money I was requesting, I believe the interview went quite well. At the end she asked me "which Bank would you like to work with?" :) For me it was a positive question.

I was able to go out and breathe the -16 degrees (3.19 F) fresh air we had on that historical Monday 21st, in Christmas week.

p.s. Yes, I had a sauna that evening :)