Stella Stenroos is originally from Helsinki, Finland. She moved to Ireland in 1997 and has lived in Bray since 1999. A web developer by profession, Stella is administrator of the very popular Bray Forum. The forum has been running since 1999 and is the most active Wicklow based discussion forum on the Internet.

The Bray Forum is located at http://forum.brayforum.com

1. You arrived in Ireland in 1997 and have lived in Bray since 1999. How Irish do you feel after these 9 years?

I think my mentality has always been a bit “Irish” as I’ve always felt at home here, which I never felt in my native Finland. But generally, I don’t really think about stuff like that. If I happen to watch sports (=rarely), I’ll obviously support Ireland, even against Finland. However, I had a very Finnish moment when Lordi won the Eurovision Song Contest…

2. What do you miss most about Finland?

My parents, cream cheeses and grilled Finnish sausages. That’s about it! I’d also say rye bread and chocolate, but my parents kindly send me a few “survival parcels” every year, so I’m good for those! Of course, it would be nice to get to visit our summer place more often. It’s on a small island off the south coast of Finland, and we haven’t been there since 1999 as nowadays we only visit Finland for every second Christmas.

3. What is the best thing about running a successful internet discussion forum such as your own Brayforum.com and how much work is involved in running it?

I don’t think of it as work, it’s more like a virtual drop-in living room. We’ve never advertised it, other than by submitting the link to various online directories and mentioning it to friends, but somehow people have found it. We actually more or less started from the scratch again, in July 2005. Our previous host was hacked, and thousands of forums - including us - lost several years of archived discussions, so the service didn’t seem reliable anymore. Nowadays, all our material is on our own domain, and we seem to be getting new members all the time.

A part of the forum is in Finnish, so we often get new Finnish members who are planning to move, or have recently moved to Ireland. I’ve posted lots of information topics for them, and I’m glad to see that many of them come back to the forum and post their own experiences, which is very useful for those who are planning to do the same. In fact, I would love to offer the same in Polish, for example, but unfortunately, I don’t speak Polish, and I don’t know anyone here who does, so for now, it’s only a thought..

4. If you were to recommend an easy way for a small business in County Wicklow to get an internet presence - what would you recommend?

It depends on the type of business, and do they want to get a website and be done with it, or would they be willing to dedicate some time to updating their content regularly. It’s basically enough to have a simple site, which clearly tells what you do and where you are, but if you want your business to be noticed, make sure there’s always something new on your site, which will keep people coming back. Why not start a business blog! But do NOT offer contact forms or email addresses, if no one’s going to check the messages you get that way. I recently emailed a place about a local property, after seeing the property listed on their site. The following week, I wondered why they still hadn’t phoned me back, so we phoned them. They hadn’t even read my email! Come on, it’s 2006.. If you have a business site with an email address, people are going to email you, so you’d better check email at least once a day!

5. The 3 websites (apart from my own) that I visit every day are….

Bloglines.com - I’m a blogger, and I follow lots of other blogs, both private and business. At the moment, I have nearly 350 feeds on my list! Obviously, I don’t have the time to read them ALL, but it’s easy to pick the interesting titles through bloglines.

BreakingNews.ie - My favourite Irish news site. We also use their news ticker on Bray Forum.

Yahoo! Groups - I’m into dollhouse miniatures and fashion dolls, so I belong to lots of related hobby groups on Yahoo!. I don’t have the time to be active in all of them, but there’s a Finnish dollhouse group whose Yahoo! site I visit everyday. I have only met a handful of the members (when we were in Finland), but we’ve still managed to write a book together, with stories and photos from our dollhouses. The second edition is currently in the shops, in Finland.

6. What do you like most about Bray? What do you like least?

I really love Seapoint Court, where we live. Although it’s right in the heart of Bray, near all the shops and services, it feels more like a little village. There’s the river (Dargle) right next to us, we can see the mountains, and with not much traffic nearby, it’s safe for our cats to go out and enjoy themselves. There’s plenty of wildlife, too. I once saw a fox in front of our house (in the middle of the night), there are swans and ducks on the river, and I’ve seen a heron and a cormorant as well, I’ve found a bat in our back garden (dead, unfortunately), and sometimes a hedgehog comes for a late night snack.. The Seafront is gorgeous as well. As I’m into papercrafts and such, I really love the craft shop on Florence Road! I’ve also recently joined the local parish communications group, working on the church website, and I’m already really enjoying those meetings. It’s fantastic to be involved in something where everyone is actually doing their bit, and being enthusiastic about it.

What do I like least.. Hmmm.. Well, all kinds of crime and corruption annoys me, whether it’s big or small. I used to read the local paper, but I quit when it just felt like buying a weekly list of small crimes. Also, I didn’t like it, a few years ago, when I found that some of my photos had been stolen from my personal site, and then used to advertise someone else’s website in a poster campaign that was very visible around Bray. It can be frustrating to get stuff done in Bray, unless you know the right people or pay the right membership fees.

7. Not a lot of people know this but I’m very good at….

finding miniature use for lots of stuff others would just throw away as rubbish. Materialwise, this is a good thing for a miniaturist, but it also means that I’m often hoarding stuff that might never actually be used for anything. I just know that I’ll need it the next day, if I was to throw it away…

8. What is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

I could not pick just one thing.. I know lots of lovely people, and they’ve done lots of lovely things. They know who they are and what they’ve done =)

9. Name 3 tracks on your ‘Soundtrack of my life’ and tell a little about why they are there..

“If I Can Help Somebody” by Mahalia Jackson - this is my #1 favourite song. The lyrics are so important, and no one delivers it like Mahalia Jackson.

“Finlandia Op. 26″ by Jean Sibelius - I see worlds when I listen to this! I might listen to this for a few times on repeat, and afterwards I need some quiet time to recover. Fantastic, powerful piece of music.

“[any gypsy music]” - I’ve no gypsy blood, but for some reason, I seem to love all kinds of gypsy music, whether it’s jazz or something else. It must run in the family as my dad used to play with some Finnish gypsy bands, and his mother, my late granny used to make gypsy clothes. (In Finland, Romany women wear a certain type of traditional costume, with a long black velvet skirt and a beautiful blouse with lots of lace decorations.) Over the last few years, I’ve become a fan of Indian movies, and having bought some Bollywood soundtrack CDs, I’ve also noticed some similarities between that music and European gypsy music. It makes sense to me as the Romany roots are supposed to be in India.

10. Complete this sentence. “A life well lived is…”

better than a life well planned.