Running out of paper?

Many blogging ideas have popped into my mind lately, but I have not had the real urge I used to have earlier to get them posted, still some ideas have been bugging me for some time now and I guess they'd better get posted, or I'll die with them spooking around in my mind.

In the very early days when I first started blogging we had this long paper Union strike in Finland, a strike that has over the years showed having huge impact on the paper industry as well as the forest industry in general in this country. Of course other things such as the worldwide recession also has paid its' respects to running down the industry in question.

What surprised me though, is that the same company, one of the major companies in Finland, that has plants and mills in other countries, has been running down mills and cutting down on personnel, is doing so well abroad their mills running on full around the clock.

I read somewhere some statistics that most magazines and newspapers are now printed on Russian paper as it is more cost-effective. Well, using the same wood must be cheaper and turning it into pulp and paper in Russian, instead of importing them to Finland and having to pay import-taxes on the wood on top of the higher costs in wages and transports in and to Finland
is much cheaper so the paper industry, that used to earlier be so important for the Finnish economy, seems now threatening to die out completely.

One comes to wonder about ulterior motives though, about what trade unions really are about, when one hears that leading union representatives are members of boards in companies, that own parts of the companies they are union representatives for, the same companies that now are closing down.

Being in the game

Statistics have for long been one of may favourite subjects, you can tell anything by just twisting the same facts around using different words and saying them in another order, giving them another meaning.

The Finns use 54 Euros per year and person gambling. This is a fact and published by the Finnish state owned gambling company, RAY. As gambling is only allowed on some machines generally displayed in cafes, bars, supermarkets and so on, and at special authorized betting agents, here comes what I have been wondering about.

Is this divides per citizens meaning all citizens including babies and children, this 54 Euros per year? Or is it per persons over 15 years old, who are allowed to gamble on these gambling machines? Or are they just counting adult persons over the age of 18 years?

Anyway, I have always been bad at gambling, the main reason for it being forgetting to get my my tickets registered in time to partake in the game, but now there is this wonderful new invention, on-line gambling, that you can use and I have actually managed to have a valid Lotto ticket for months, and as a matter of fact even have had some modest earnings deposited into my gambling account.

Not as big a win as the Italian 150 million Euros, just pennies, or maybe I should say Euros and cents, but it keeps me in the game for the time being.

Cheapest phone bills

Here's some good news for all them who complain about their mobile-phone bills being too high; Finland actually have the cheapest mobile-phone charges according to a comparison made of the OECD countries in august 2008.

Wonder what the situation is today? The cheapest phone operators still seem to have the same prices to offer as last year, just with new advertising campaigns. Anyway, the cheap phone bills will come in handy to the people in Finland that have volunteered to be involved in a big study about the safety and health risks of using mobile phones.

The same study is simultaneously carried out in Sweden, Denmark, the UK and the Netherlands for better correlation. The choosing of Finland as a participating country for this survey is excellent. No matter where you go there always is someone on the phone right beside you, and by the sound of it you might think that the volume is not adjustable.

Just the other day I was waiting at the bus-stop to get home and a lady was shouting Thai right into my ear. When turning around towards her she said she was on the phone...
When I commented "Yes, and you are shouting right into my ear" she excused herself and hang up looking quite embarrassed. Well, at least she had the good sense to quit, the shouting I mean, not the conversation.

Mobile phones are handy but maybe some more consideration to other people around you might be cautioned for.

Urban wildlife

Having spent the highlight of the Finnish Midsummer in pouring rain we are now living summer in hot sunshine.

Today for the first time this summer I saw people down the beach, in the water, swimming and the water temperature has not been the topic this summer yet, until last week.

We have about ten hedgehogs visiting the yard every night, about as the number might be even bigger but ten is the largest number having been present at the same time. At the same spot many squirrels also feed together with small birds and a couple of hares, and in the winter I even spotted a fox one night. So maybe the urban elk in Turku was not so strange after all.

Talk about urban wildlife!

Died passions?

How can one thing that I used to be so passionate and conscientious about just die?

No interest in blogging anymore it seems even though the occasional ideas keep on popping up...What is it that make routines, that are safe and sound and keep us going, one day turn into a boring compulsory thing?

I mean, I love to write and to tell stories and just looking out the window I come to think of at least three things to blog about. Watching the news is even better, especially on days when nothing major has happened in the world and the news are filled with little things just in order to say something, just anything.

Like the other day when an elk was loose in the middle of Turku with hunters and police looking for it all over. Well, they never found it as it just vanished from sight, probably into the woods to never make the same mistake again.

See how easy it was, still it seems so hard to get it done...

Crimean war fought also in Finland

The spring is here and a lot of things have lately been occupying my mind but none of them worth to blog about really, nothing to keep me ticking.

I was just surprised to hear about that the beginning of the Crimean War in the 1850´s actually began here in Finland with the British fleet supported by the French fleet entering the Baltic sea attacking various cities on the coast with a lot of shipyards were destroyed by fire and some Finns also getting killed. But then Finland was a part of the Russian empire and thus considered the enemy.

Updating family history

Well, I am finally trying to get back to normal routines after my father's memorial.

After an intense meeting with long no seen relatives and an update on who's who in your family at the memorial seems kind of surreal and getting back to normal seems almost impossible. So many things were stirred at the bottom of the profound seas of long ago lived lives of dead relatives as well as just recently lost father. The compulsory polite chatting with coffee and cake can sometimes be quite ennerving.

To tell you the truth his death has not as yet affected me in any way, just a minor out burst of tears all of a sudden, as somehow I feel I already lost him three decades ago when he left to work far from home and the father I knew as a small child never returned home again. Of course he was still there for me, but never in the same way as before.

I wonder if his death ever dawns upon me ...he just kind of left on a vacation that will last until the end of my own days.