Bitchy little teen-princesses in high-tech world!

I guess this has not merely in problem in Finland but has become a globally growing problem. Kids are a great thing, you wait for them to be born, then you wait for them to begin to talk, and when they come to their teens you wait for them to just shut up!

Today’s advanced communication technology with medias such as mobile-phones, e-mails, blogs and various chat-platforms such as messenger and likes, offer our little teen-princesses great many ways to make each others lives very uncomfortable to live. They are highly tuned and refined ways ready and at hand at most times and handy weapons in making each others lives living hell every day.

Goodbye smoking guns and OK Corral, here comes dirty high-tech duels!

A new girl moves into town and one of the girls in her class does not like this newcomer. So here we go then. First just ordinary little bitchy comments in school, not pretending to see each other, talking behind backs, just the ordinary stuff that we used to do ourselves when teens.

Well, here it becomes nasty.
Then they begin to argue, act hostile, send text-messages, write harassing e-mails to each other back and forth, write really nasty things about each other on their blogs that everyone and anyone can see and this goes on for weeks before they tell any grown ups.

Well, when the parents finally get the word it already is a question about having stolen passwords and sending the harassing and abusive messages in someone else’s name! So a third girl that was not a part of it to begin with just got involved for being friends with the other counterpart! The scapegoat begins to be shunned by the other classmates and is left outside of many after school activities like parties and stuff.

School finally gets the hang of it and as this has begun to badly affect school work even though most of it has been going on after school hours, they choose to act and to begin to investigate what has been going on between the girls.

Now the soup gets stirred badly as the school selects the bits and pieces of the free-time they will ask about. So the bit about the stolen password just gets left outside and forgotten about. The two hostile counterparts are threatened by friends of the counterparts on the Net, on blogs, on Messenger and instant textmessages and thus the parents begin to accuse each other and their off-spring, school wants to wash their hands as all the parents in the class get drawn into the fight in one way or other…

So this is where the police and the social-workers become involved as this both sending abusive and threatening messages is a crime, and stealing passwords and pretending to be someone else also is. Even though our little teen-age princesses are just 14, minors and thus also untouchable by law.

So what is the outcome? I don’t know.

But I am quite sure it was much easier to handle these problems at OK Corral! They just fired their guns and someone died. Here people involved suffer for days, weeks even months and the wrongly accused for years if unlucky!!!

And I wish this was just the OK Corral and not the 21st century high-tech world!

Blondes do have more fun!

Funny this thing about blondes having more fun, they do actually have more fun and I can vouch for that! Blondes do have more fun! Funny, this statement about blondes having more fun. They do actually have more fun and I can vouch for that!

The general impression around the world seems to be that there are more blonde and beautiful women in Scandinavia, and thus also in Finland.

I am not sure whether that statement is true or not, but a lot of the women here have their hair-colour out of a dye-jar. Probably quite a few of the women used to be blonde when small and growing-up just made my hair go darker and the blonde traits disappeared in the end. So I think there has to be a distinction between real-blondes, used-to-be-real-blondes and dye-jar-blondes!

I mean, how is Beyonce for a blonde anyway?!?

So how do the blondes have more fun then?!? Well, most of the fun comes from getting your hair done! To be able to maintain a good-looking blonde hair-colour you have to go more often to the hairdresser’s than the rest of the population. The rest of us, well, we just go and get ourselves a good looking haircut and the hair done, but blondes dye the their hair, after that they have their roots done, or just go and get some sun kissed streaks in it on top of the haircutting.

So, they certainly get to spend more money at the hairdresser's.
And spending more money is fun! Isn’t it?

How the real blondes have more fun, well, that still remains a puzzle to me…

Colder than usual.

This time of the year in March the temperature is normally a bit warmer here, at least here the southern parts of Finland.

According to the news it is supposed to be around 0 degrees +2 - +3 Celsius here during the days and dropping to a bit more below zero like -10 or something. The temperature being colder than it should be means the spring will take more time to come and also for the snow to melt.

This is a excellent in the Finnish point of view!

I have often wondered about their genuine joy for walking or skiing on the snow on the ice of the frozen lakes. So if I am really lucky will this year be able to see the Finns walking and skiing on the still frozen lakes by the midsummer festivities end of June, the highlight of Finnish summer!

Actually, to tell you the truth, up north in Lapland, they do have a skiing competition on real snow at Midsummer.

Toilet-paper!

Strikes seem to be the main issues here in Finland now.
I wonder about the paper and pulp factory workers that now are complaining about the companies discussing some lay-offs and the workers being made redundant as the paper business has not recovered since the long strike the employees carried out last summer

If the employees are on a strike for weeks and months, of course the result is missed orders for the factory resulting in decreased need for employees. Demand on the market prices the product.

I mean, and do excuse my language, if you need to wipe your bottom, you can't wait for the strike to end before you wipe it because you've run out of paper, can you?!?

You have just got to get some paper, any paper and fast!
Thank God at least the transport-strike has ended now so I will neither run out of milk for my tea nor toilet-paper... And the garbage will be collected again!

Quality time

Of course women and men should earn equal pay for the same job!

For instance, my husband could never cope with giving a dinner-party without any help and doing it all on his own. No chef, no caterer nor florist and especially no secretary to help with all that needs to be taken care of.
Just setting the table with all that it takes. The tablecloth, china, cutlery and glass-ware. Making the floral arrangements and keeping in mind about allergies. Getting the right ambiance with lights, candles and music. Designing a three- or four-course menu with the special-diets and food allergies your guests might have and combining it with the suitable wines. Doing the groceries and then cooking the meal and serving it at the right time with the right wine.
And if that is not enough, also being yourself fresh, properly made-up, dressed to the occasion, happy and smiling and not smelling of any cooking fumes when the guests arrive… Nothing you just swing out of the pantry!
But then... I would not want to be in my husbands shoes at his job because he has much bigger feet than me!

By the way, I never got any flowers for the Women's Day from my husband, but we did spend some good quality time together.

Late last night, just the two of us...

Transports on strike!

Today's issue here in Finland is the strike in the field of transportation that began yesterday.
To begin with it only involves some of the long distance coaches and some bus-companies and the sanitary workers, so how are we going to get our garbage collected and the bins emptied ? The bins will be full soon but at least the weather is cold so the bins won't be smelling too soon, even if left standing for long...

At least the Finns are not as strike-prone as some other European countries, with often weeks long banking-strikes or metros and trains standing still every other day. If the strike keeps on the supermarkets will soon run of some groceries and the filling-stations run out of petrol so we hope that this will not be for very long, they say at least until Wednesday.

So if you don't have your own car, hire one and don't empty your garbage.
And get some milk now for your tea!

Invitations by texting

The weather has been really nice this weekend. It has not been too cold for any outdoor-sports but I have stayed indoors anyway, cuddled up in my bed reading a good book and a nice cup of tea feeling lazy. I am glad there are no dinner-parties needing to attend to neither to host any.

Just in two weeks time there is an occasion I have to host, a birthday-party, so am doing some planning already. The invitations were already sent but I have not yet got their answers back and they are not due until next Sunday at latest by either e-mail or SMS or text-message.

Text-messaging is quite handy in these matters, absolutely ghastly impersonal, but still it is in the persons hand and can't be forgotten about in the same way as an invitation card could get misplaced.

I actually made the invitations by phone, but sent a reminder about it by e-mail as this is more a casual gathering and not THE social event of the year.

As rest of Europe has become more snow that usual, at the same time we have just had our even every year share of it, even though they say it is more wintry now than usually this year of spring, cause it is spring here even as you can't see it yet.

First post on the Net ever!

I am glad I have gotten this far with creating a website of my own. Some things just seem too easy. I am very pleased to have gotten my blog up and running as the first thing. Today's entry won't be that long, but I am in the future going to write about contemporary things that are happening here in Finland right now.

So even if you're not here, are coming here soon or have already left this country, you can always check what has been happening lately. And, most important of all, when discovering new things about the social life and etiquette here in Finland that is good for us foreigners to know about, then you'll be the first to know about them here in my Blog !

This blog was actually first published elsewhere and reposted after I moved my blog here to Blogspot in the year 2007.