Over recent weeks I've seen an increase in emails from my mother arriving to my inbox - they deal with various issues but one running theme is a request for information regarding what M and I want for Christmas. I usually respond with a half-baked answer, attempting to give some kind of direction without giving away that I really have no idea and can't help her on this.
So, Christmas is coming. Everyone has an opinion on it, and I'm no exception. Whereas most people militantly hate or love Christmas though, I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm really not bothered about it at all. The only reason I ever liked it as a kid was the presents - once they were out of the way the day lost its gloss completely, especially if the presents sucked. I have no religious or spiritual reason to celebrate Christmas. The presents are still cool though, and it's one of the few times the family gets together (especially with mine being pretty far flung - my parents in France, my sister in Belgium and me up here). That, however, is potentially explosive and tends to give Christmas get-togethers a slightly predictable tune.
Everyone turns up to my parents house with a role to play and, I would imagine, this is the same all over. Mothers who haven't seen their kids for a while will be overjoyed to see them and will attempt to impose an "everyone must be happy at this happy time" regime which, while it is commendable, is usually in vain because an argument will break out at some point. When she sees that her quest has failed (yet again) she will become disappointed and withdrawn.
Sisters, on the other hand, will come to the Christmas gathering with the aim of imposing their will on all present. This stamping of authority extends to all Christmas-specific issues - the size of the tree to be purchased, the decoration of said tree, the order in which presents are to be dished out, the amount of, and regularity with which, doting love must be lavished on the dog, the amount of attention they should get. With a total of 7 people and 2 dogs this Christmas, that will involve a lot more dictatorial behaviour. Given that I am enthusiastic neither about Christmas trees nor dogs, nor indeed following orders on such trivial matters as how presents should be handed out, I usually lose patience and tell her to leave everyone alone to do as they wish. This prompts an explosion of rage and lamentations full of self-pity about why she bothers trying to make this fun in the first place. Mothers (who have seen this argument and reacted negatively as described above) and sisters (who are seething with anger and need to stamp authority on someone having failed to do so with their brothers) then have a blazing argument with each other. Fathers then step in to calm things down and usually make it worse. As a result, he starts to read his newspaper while everyone else sits around being quiet.
As the day wears on, everyone will lighten up, food will be cooked and chatter will swirl around once more. This Christmas peace will last until after the dinner when someone will invariably suggest playing a game. Here, the old rivalries rear their heads again. In my family the tradition game has been Trivial Pursuit - teams can get together, have a laugh, everyone has fun. Apart from the sister of the family, that is, for she despises (or at least pretends to despise) Trivial Pursuit. Having studied politics for many years I can see her approach tactics quite well. The dictator wishes to impose his dictates on the population but, of course, cannot do it alone. Therefore, the dictator backs him/herself up with military force. Given the lack of a frightening figure in the family, the dictator must revert to some kind of non-ruling moral authority. This is Mamie - our grandmother. The dictator's choice of game will be rejected by the population (mother and brother) while the moral authority will be cajoled into giving her blessing. The international community (father) then falls asleep. This is when the mother and the brother end up playing Trivial Pursuit anyway, the sister storms off in another fit of rage, boyfriends and girlfriends sit looking slightly awkward, and the curtain comes down on yet another family Christmas.
I'm usually an optimist of sorts but when it comes to Christmas, things are far too inevitable to have any illusions about what's going to happen next month. This is why Christmas is something I'm not particularly bothered about.
Nov 25, 2008
Nov 17, 2008
Parting of ways
I'll be focusing all of my Africa-trip-related writing on me new blog - so bookmark THIS !
I will continue to dish out abuse to George W. Bush, Finland and various other (un)deserving targets right here. Don't go away !
I will continue to dish out abuse to George W. Bush, Finland and various other (un)deserving targets right here. Don't go away !
Nov 14, 2008
299 days...
We've finally done it. On September 8th, M and I will be boarding a plane, one-way tickets in hand, heading to Tunisia. We'll head east, turn right when we hit Cairo and follow the Nile down through Sudan to Ethiopia. From there we'll bum around various parts of Africa with a delightfully vague plan. The plan before then is to save as much money as humanly possible.
There are several things, I've noticed, that will take a lot of getting used to after all this time in Finland. My trips to Africa before haven't been fraught with all of these enormous culture shocks, but I've been in Helsinki for much longer now. And I can imagine that the following will be the most bizarre.
- The way the people look. They'll be black. Black, with black hair. Black, curly hair. There are a few Somalis living in Helsinki but still, the overwhelming majority of people are blonde, blue eyed and pasty-skinned. In fact if they didn't like wearing black clothes so much, they would be completely camouflaged once the snow came.
- The way the people act. I once again waited for the elevator coming back home after work tonight and as I was standing there a girl came in through the door, started coming towards the elevator and (shock horror !) I was there waiting for it. Rather than share an elevator with a stranger she turned, walked the length of the corridor and went up the stairs. This is quite a common occurrence here. Finns (at least when they are sober, which some of the time they are) have an inviolatable personal space the size of a small house. Africans have never heard of personal space.
- Communication skills. Being spoken to by complete strangers is something I've generally been used to and had no problem with, but it will still come as a bit of a shock now. How will I deal with this ?
- The temperature. What else is there to say ? An African winter is the same temperature as a Finnish summer. I love the heat though and, although I scored only the second sunburn of my life last summer here in Helsinki, I'm still filled with optimism.
In 299 days, we'll be there. Until then, life will be cold, dark, wet and mostly quite silent. At least I'll have a lot of space to reflect on this while I'm in the elevator.
There are several things, I've noticed, that will take a lot of getting used to after all this time in Finland. My trips to Africa before haven't been fraught with all of these enormous culture shocks, but I've been in Helsinki for much longer now. And I can imagine that the following will be the most bizarre.
- The way the people look. They'll be black. Black, with black hair. Black, curly hair. There are a few Somalis living in Helsinki but still, the overwhelming majority of people are blonde, blue eyed and pasty-skinned. In fact if they didn't like wearing black clothes so much, they would be completely camouflaged once the snow came.
- The way the people act. I once again waited for the elevator coming back home after work tonight and as I was standing there a girl came in through the door, started coming towards the elevator and (shock horror !) I was there waiting for it. Rather than share an elevator with a stranger she turned, walked the length of the corridor and went up the stairs. This is quite a common occurrence here. Finns (at least when they are sober, which some of the time they are) have an inviolatable personal space the size of a small house. Africans have never heard of personal space.
- Communication skills. Being spoken to by complete strangers is something I've generally been used to and had no problem with, but it will still come as a bit of a shock now. How will I deal with this ?
- The temperature. What else is there to say ? An African winter is the same temperature as a Finnish summer. I love the heat though and, although I scored only the second sunburn of my life last summer here in Helsinki, I'm still filled with optimism.
In 299 days, we'll be there. Until then, life will be cold, dark, wet and mostly quite silent. At least I'll have a lot of space to reflect on this while I'm in the elevator.
Nov 13, 2008
A Close Shave
Whoa. Even if we as non-Americans don't have a vote in their elections, we keep an eye on what happens there, and rightly so. The Americans have an unrivalled capacity to send large military forces anywhere in the world, bomb the crap out of just about anywhere they would want to, and kill with impunity around the planet. If they got wind of my office here producing something more suspicious than mobile phone games, they could flatten it without any notice and explain it away without much trouble (much like the Al-Shifa Factory bombing). If they didn't like the way the plane I'm taking this winter was flying, they could shoot it down without much of a care (like the shooting down of the Iran Air flight by the USS Vincennes). If Osama bin Laden was hiding out in the forests of Karelia and the army couldn't find him (and let's face it, anyone could get lost in those forests) they could invade leading to the deaths of millions and it would be described as collateral damage. Worst of all, I'd have to go buy a new shaver so as to not leave so much as a hint of a beard. Not that I have much of one now, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Disastrous economic management has led to a global slowdown in a way far more disastrous than would be engendered by disastrous economic management in, say, Tajikistan or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
They invade at will, carry out covert operations at will and aside from being responsible for the death of millions of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan and many others, they have been responsible for and tried to be responsible for the deaths of heads of state and government - Saddam Hussein and Patrice Lumumba were successfully disposed of, Fidel Castro was not, nor was Moammar Qadhafi (although his daughter was). They have overthrown the popularly elected Mohamed Mossadeq, Salvador Allende, the Sandinista movement and many others, replacing them with the pro-American choice and plunging those respective countries into chaos and discontentment. The first force to unify and impose law and order in Mogadishu in 18 years was expelled with American backing just because this force was composed of moderate Islamists. Mogadishu is once again lawless, being pounded to rubble and run by warlords. The bombing of Belgrade in the late 1990s, with the latest precision technology, succeeding in killing 3 Chinese journalists in the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, 15 people on a passenger train which was actually shot at twice (and described by Wesley Clark as an "uncanny incident" - can you imagine this happening if roles were reversed ?), hundreds of people in Kosovar refugee convoys and, in another "unfortunate" incident, a passenger bus near Pristina. The ambulance coming to pick up the wounded was itself, naturally, also bombed. The list goes on.
This exploration is far from exhaustive and, quite probably, what is available and known is far from exhaustive. As a consequence, us non-Americans naturally have a right to have an interest in who is elected to the White House. We have a right to be extremely concerned when a McCain-Palin double act comes remotely close to accessing the power to do all of this. I've been looking back on things and wondering what was bugging me about Sarah Palin. It wasn't her Bushesque stupidity and mindblowing inability to construct a sentence, because while I found it very concerning that such a person should be in such a position of power I also find it quite amusing. I've come to think it's the complete transparency with which these people in the US get away with it. Let's not forget that Sarah Palin is already Governor of Alaska, she's not a nobody. She's got big ambitions, she's considering running for President again in 2012. I'll demonstrate what I mean with this by now famous video . I think the most striking thing here is the fact that there is complicity with all of us. She knows she's talking crap, Katie Couric knows she's talking crap, we know she's talking crap. However the whole circus just continues unabated. I've seen plenty of videos like this but no one in the American media ever seems to stand up to politicians and say hey, Buster, that's a bunch of crap. I've seen them blatantly lying on TV without being called to account for it, when it could so easily have been done. If there are any Americans who can explain why this is, please leave me a message ! George Bush, it seems, is a man who has perfected this "we all know I'm talking shit but let's just pretend it's true" approach to stuff. Palin is a remarkable student and McCain has shown he's no pushover in the subject either. I'm not sure what it is about the Republicans in general, but I feel that it has something to do with my piece on the word "evil" from earlier on. Democrats persuade Americans to vote for them based on the real issues - Republicans persuade Americans to vote for them in the same way that they'd persuade a small kid to give them their lollipops. I just don't believe a word they say, even if it's more likely to be true. Nicolas Sarkozy, for all his faults, will tell someone in the streets to fuck off if he fancies it. The proof is that he already has. We can trust a guy like that to some extent.
So the result was quite a rare event - US voters have actually selected the more intelligent, less confrontational candidate of the two. I'm not going to cheer just yet, but let's give the new guy a chance. He's already said that he's ready to talk to Iran, Syria and so forth. This is something that we just wouldn't imagine hearing from the monkey currently in charge. It might restore a bit of trust and goodwill in the world and we might be able to get back towards working together rather than hating each other. Besides, if I was American, I'd much rather have Michelle Obama as a First Lady than Cindy McCain...
They invade at will, carry out covert operations at will and aside from being responsible for the death of millions of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan and many others, they have been responsible for and tried to be responsible for the deaths of heads of state and government - Saddam Hussein and Patrice Lumumba were successfully disposed of, Fidel Castro was not, nor was Moammar Qadhafi (although his daughter was). They have overthrown the popularly elected Mohamed Mossadeq, Salvador Allende, the Sandinista movement and many others, replacing them with the pro-American choice and plunging those respective countries into chaos and discontentment. The first force to unify and impose law and order in Mogadishu in 18 years was expelled with American backing just because this force was composed of moderate Islamists. Mogadishu is once again lawless, being pounded to rubble and run by warlords. The bombing of Belgrade in the late 1990s, with the latest precision technology, succeeding in killing 3 Chinese journalists in the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, 15 people on a passenger train which was actually shot at twice (and described by Wesley Clark as an "uncanny incident" - can you imagine this happening if roles were reversed ?), hundreds of people in Kosovar refugee convoys and, in another "unfortunate" incident, a passenger bus near Pristina. The ambulance coming to pick up the wounded was itself, naturally, also bombed. The list goes on.
This exploration is far from exhaustive and, quite probably, what is available and known is far from exhaustive. As a consequence, us non-Americans naturally have a right to have an interest in who is elected to the White House. We have a right to be extremely concerned when a McCain-Palin double act comes remotely close to accessing the power to do all of this. I've been looking back on things and wondering what was bugging me about Sarah Palin. It wasn't her Bushesque stupidity and mindblowing inability to construct a sentence, because while I found it very concerning that such a person should be in such a position of power I also find it quite amusing. I've come to think it's the complete transparency with which these people in the US get away with it. Let's not forget that Sarah Palin is already Governor of Alaska, she's not a nobody. She's got big ambitions, she's considering running for President again in 2012. I'll demonstrate what I mean with this by now famous video . I think the most striking thing here is the fact that there is complicity with all of us. She knows she's talking crap, Katie Couric knows she's talking crap, we know she's talking crap. However the whole circus just continues unabated. I've seen plenty of videos like this but no one in the American media ever seems to stand up to politicians and say hey, Buster, that's a bunch of crap. I've seen them blatantly lying on TV without being called to account for it, when it could so easily have been done. If there are any Americans who can explain why this is, please leave me a message ! George Bush, it seems, is a man who has perfected this "we all know I'm talking shit but let's just pretend it's true" approach to stuff. Palin is a remarkable student and McCain has shown he's no pushover in the subject either. I'm not sure what it is about the Republicans in general, but I feel that it has something to do with my piece on the word "evil" from earlier on. Democrats persuade Americans to vote for them based on the real issues - Republicans persuade Americans to vote for them in the same way that they'd persuade a small kid to give them their lollipops. I just don't believe a word they say, even if it's more likely to be true. Nicolas Sarkozy, for all his faults, will tell someone in the streets to fuck off if he fancies it. The proof is that he already has. We can trust a guy like that to some extent.
So the result was quite a rare event - US voters have actually selected the more intelligent, less confrontational candidate of the two. I'm not going to cheer just yet, but let's give the new guy a chance. He's already said that he's ready to talk to Iran, Syria and so forth. This is something that we just wouldn't imagine hearing from the monkey currently in charge. It might restore a bit of trust and goodwill in the world and we might be able to get back towards working together rather than hating each other. Besides, if I was American, I'd much rather have Michelle Obama as a First Lady than Cindy McCain...
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