Strikes in season

Apart from the ginger bread and mulled wine this year's holiday season seems to have a new thing that is trendy and that is having a strike.

Not like going bowling but as in walk out from your job.

The financial industry is planning to begin their next week, as they want their fair share of the companies' profits. The union says that the cash machines will be running and that the wages and pension are to be paid to their due accounts despite their possible strike if the transfers are made before hand. Remains to see the result.

Last week the aviation baggage personnel walked out of their jobs at Helsinki airport in protest with it resulting in flights being cancelled and a luggage clog up with thousands of suitcases still to be sorted out .

The employees of one of the mobile phone operator walked out today and the IT sector have been negotiating for some time now about a pay rise.

Maybe this is a new way to get more time off before Christmas for them who have jobs as they are envious of the others who have been being laid off and made redundant?

Lay offs and re-hires

The worldwide economical decline is said to ease next year but still people are being made redundant or temporarily laid off but in some lines of business they are still going strong and just hiring more workers.

People are still needed and apparently hired in the social services sector, well, that's only a matter of supply and demand. As people get laid off and redundant from their work their accessible funds decline, resulting in less purchasing power. In sad cases it means having to rely on social welfare to get by in daily life, this resulting in more paper pushers to answer to the demands as the current time of handling applications of living allowance in most municipalities is longer than the given time according to the law.

The health services of course need more people, and are hiring more staff. People are more prone to depression in a economical depression, and then there is the coming of the flu later on in the fall. Is it the "Pig flu" or the "Swine flu"? I do know that it is called the "Mexican flu" in Muslim world. Anyway, as the flu is expected to hit the health care personnel first, there need to be more personnel to step in when the big flu wave hits the country. Currently there are 176 confirmed cases of the flu. The number is likely to be higher as many cases are so mild they have not required any medical care and are not accounted for.

The paper industry in Finland has been having hard times lately but now finally there seems to be a glimpse of light, a sun ray, to see through the cloudy skies. A mill that was closed down about six months ago is to begin running again as the demand for their products is on the rise again and the workers laid off will get their jobs back, if this is on a temporary basis or not I do not know.

Laying off

Best friend of mine, actually resident here in Finland for some time now, just had a rough day at the job.

Or maybe it was more a rough moment at the job, the rough comes, when finally realizing what really took place at work earlier today. Or if realizing it is taking longer, maybe, what yesterday took place at work...

She was a about 6 months ago promoted to head of office and got the appropriate pay rise to go with the amount of working hours required. At beginning of December she was told she would keep her salary but was demoted and got a new boss. Today an hour after having arrived on the local she was fired without notice.

She was told to just pack her things and leave as they wanted to become more cost efficient.

Having called her after her e-mail where she told me about her notice I told her it was better today, as she still has until end of January to get a new job and being a single she is easily relocated to any city in Europe. Her being a homesick girl I told not say the world but I meant it with all of my heart, and she now has two more weeks to play with compared to having had her notice before Xmas. So, something good with hearing the news. More time. So now she is leaving the city in order to get some forest cleared out of small bushes growing, one hell of a good way to let go of any aggressions, I must say with a thorough sauna to relax with afterwards.

So this is really the reality of the Finnish people, and according to recently done Gallups, most people are afraid of becoming unemployed or getting laid off for some time.

At the same time the prime minister is asking people to consume as much Finnish produce and products as possible.
And here finally comes my question, with what Euros are we to consume anything?

Terrorist threat to Finnish Embassy

The Finnish embassy in Kenya has three times by e-mail been warned against a planned terrorist threat originating from Ethiopia and the Kenyan police are now investigating where the warnings have been sent from.

In the mean while the security has been tightened on the embassy premises, as the Finnish prime minister takes them seriously. The main question here remains; why on earth make warn the Finnish diplomats, what have the Ethiopians against Finland? The threat is not believed to have any connection with the current unstable political situation in Kenya.

Anyway, there is one thing going on in this country right now that people in general are speculating might make the current administration crumble down. That is the governments’ part-ownership in the forest products giant Stora Enso that are closing their mills in Finland. Especially their mill in Kemijärvi is considered to be deadly serious business and the prime minister has been visiting the Kemijärvi area in order to try and calm down the soon-to-be unemployed. 300 hundred demonstrators also took the train to the capital Helsinki in order to protest against the decision to close the mill, marching the three block distance from the railway station to the steps up to the house of parliament, where a series of speeches were held.

As the mill is the main mean of employment in the Kemijärvi area, its closing most surely will have devastating effects on the whole business situation in the area resulting in a general depression in regional economy.

Well, here I have to ask one thing, might this have anything to do with the effects of the long and tedious strike the paper worker’s union undertook two years ago during the summer? That forest industry companies re-localize their manufacturing to other countries with more affordable wages and with maybe employees more keen to keep their jobs which will be more cost effective in the long run.

German protests

The Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia has decided to close down their plant in Bochum, Germany.

Now the Germans public is protesting against the closing down and they are calling for people to stop buying and using Nokia phones. What does the closing down of one single technology manufacturer do for Germany and their unemployment? How can a number of 2.300 employees loosing their jobs make such a big issue of it for the even the German chancellor get upset about it and demanding a clarification form Nokia’s directors.

I think there obviously must be something here I have not quite understood, something the media has left out reporting about the news or I have just not been observant enough to see.

Anyway, another cake day today, which means I have to bake one of my annual anniversary cakes and I can not get out of it. The weather having been so depressing lately and now with some snow having fallen from the sky the scenery looks absolutely delicious to eat and I have been longing to go out and take some pictures of it, as you’ll never know it is the last time there is snow here this winter as the weather forecast tells there is warmer weather to expect and it will not stay for long before it melts into water again.

Maybe I could nip out for just a couple of hours…

Papercards

The Finnish forest industry together with the paper and pulp industry are facing hard in the near coming future.

Just today one of the two big paper manufacturers announced their plans to invest 4 billion Euros in a pulp mill factory in north western Russia right after having announced layoffs for about 2500 employees and several factory closings around the country as well as several hundreds in their factory in Canada, claiming it to be effects of future decreasing demand on paper as well as increased costs of wood,

The other big paper manufacturer is just negotiating with the unions on how to proceed with their layoffs affecting another 600 workers in several factories and closing dons of production lines as they are not, at least to my knowledge, closing down whole factories, as Xmas bonuses this year yet. But next year maybe?

Now the agricultural- and forest producers union state that the forest owners are not to be blamed and they claim the factory closings is not a result of increased raw wood prices as this is less than 10% of the costs but more the result of a global overproduction on many paper qualities instead together with the climbing energy prices and increased wages for paper industry workers. This being the result of the several weeks’ long strike of paper workers union in spring 2006.

Anyway, the Saimaa Canal has been leased by the Finnish from the Russians and a new contract is due to be signed by end of this year as the old agreement runs out in 5 years time and a great deal of the raw wood material for the pulp industry imported from Russia has been transported to Finland on boats on the Canal. Maybe there won’t be any need to sign another lease on the Canal for the Finns as it won’t be affordable anymore to import any wood from the east.

The Russians have also denied abolishing the high export taxation on wood despite talks with both the Finnish government representatives as the representatives of the EU and the increasing taxation will have the effect that hardly any wood will be imported from Russia in the future as it will be too expensive.

So here comes my clever question, of course as an ignorant foreigner, what is wrong with using domestic wood instead?

There are great forests here in this country and the forest industry has announced them only being in need of birch wood as there is not enough natural resources to match the demand. Maybe grow more birch forests to match the future demand on it or has this just been another Finnish scheme to get Carelia back unnoticed and this time in wood, buy it back in small pieces of wood. At least it would be a much healthier way than it being involuntarily inhaled by the people all over southern Finland as tiny smog particles from forest fires burning in Carelia during the summer of 2006.

Anyway, today is your last chance to send you Xmas greetings if you want them to arrive in time for Xmas Eve here in Finland. During the years the habit of sending each other Xmas greetings with a paper cards seems to have grown more and more outdated as hardly anyone seems to bother sending cards anymore. I am not sad about receiving my Xmas greetings by e-mail, on the contrary, I prefer the more personal greetings with photos of the family or drawings from our friends children or even clips from Xmas parties, singing Xmas carols or some schools’ theatre play more than the traditional greetings sent with the postman to be delivered on your door step as I can save them to my hard drive.

The Xmas cards one still tends to throw away after the holiday season anyway and they are more and more becoming a waste of paper, except for elder people who are not into this high-tech society we nowadays live in.

Child laboured cotton

The Swedish fashion giant H&M together with the Swedish home textiles designer, Borås Väveri, uses cotton that has been hand picked by child labour in Uzbekistan.

According to the BBC program that was aired in Sweden yesterday, schools are closed down in Uzbekistan when the cotton is in season to be harvested and schoolchildren are transported out to the cotton fields to work for much less money than they officially are said to earn. The cotton is then bought by Pakistani contractors who manufacture fabric for the two Swedish companies.

So far H&M has stated that they can only put pressure on their own suppliers as they make their agreements with their contractors and if they are supplied with under contractors using child labour and they can not do much about it and are not considering a boycott of Uzbeki cotton. Well if not earlier, than at last this statement has put me off H&M and their clothes!

The second firm, Borås Väveri has announced that they will stop using Uzbek cotton since the news got out about it yesterday. So this was teo companies in Sweden, I just wonder if there are any Finnish fashion companies that also use cotton hand picked by Uzbeki children?

Strikes spreading

A law allowing prevention of access and censorship of Internet sites containing child pornography came into force in Finland at the beginning 2007.

Two weeks ago the Finnish Police gave public notice to their first list to the Internet access operators and now the Internet access providers are to filter access to these sites but this will not prevent accessing these sites, it will only complicate the uploading of the illegal material of the sites here in Finland.

I have been wondering about the health and stress levels of the Valtakunnansovittelija, the national conciliator’s. He is busy with his office swamped with work at the time being and there seems to be some new strike popping up in the media all the time.

First we have the nurse’s of the Finnish health care professionals union, with their threat of mass resignations, one paper pulp mill in Tampere is going to be shut down with the employees walking out today in protest against it. The pharmacies are also going on strike on Thursday in the capital region, and if no agreement is struck it will spread to all the bigger cities around the country. The pharmacies in the Helsinki area are expected to keep open with their supervising staff at least his week.

A strike of telephone operators’ service personnel union is also alerted to begin on Thursday, this meaning that only some mobile phone operators would be up and running in the meanwhile and probably also affecting the Internet providers so the banking business through the net could be shut down. This strike also threatens to spread to all the other phone operators as well given time without an agreement. The engineers began their strike for better pay on Monday morning and the strike is threatening to spread to more employees of more companies in two weeks time if there is no agreement made between the employers and employees union.

Even the president has to cut a trip short and return to Finland in order to ratify the new law forcing the nurse’s to return to their work despite a resignation done due to the disagreement on pay rises. The president has to make a change in her travelling plans and skip her trip to a summit in the US for women leaders of the world. The law has been rushed through the voting in parliament once in the early morning hours today with a second voting about it in the parliament on Thursday for the president to sign it on Friday in order for it to become lawful in time before next Monday when the disputed resignations en masse are effective.

And with the strike of the personnel of Alko, the national alcohol monopoly, beginning on Thursday I was happy to find out that my traditional annual tasting of the fresh Beaujolais Nouveau of more than two decades still is going to stay uninterrupted. The Alko shops will be open on Thursday even with the strike, there will just be a smaller number of shops open due to shortage of staff. The opens stay open with supervising staff only so I will have to make sure which one is open to avoid any unnecessary trips driving around the city.

Baby girl coming

The mass resignations of nurse’s union is a well disputed issue here at the moment, according to most Gallups done in the past days most citizens are positive to the measures of the union as

The government is still rushing a bill of proposition during the weekend in order to have it law ready for polling in parliament on Monday coercing nurses to work in order to maintain patient safety no matter if they are retired, have resigned or are not working out of any other reasons. It does begin to sound a bit like conscripts to be sent to the frontline in war but then the Finnish words used in media on the matter are very warlike; measures of combat, working combat, ”wages conflict”, warning of working combat for example.

Today, the second Sunday in November, Father’s day is celebrated in Finland. The customs arrived from the US through Sweden about 50 years ago and it has become a national flagging day during the decades. The award for father of the year has been granted for the second time and he is chosen from a list of candidates compiled by The Finnish Equality Negotiation board.

We celebrated father in our family in a different way, we went to visit a family with kittens and are having a family addition in two weeks time of a little girl kitten. This will make a nice change as well to our lives as to our little cat mister who has been feeling ever so blue since his mum died almost two months ago. Guess it will give him something else to think about and keep him busy bossing around the little kitten.

I guess we all will be busy warding her off electrical cords and other stuff. The offspring has to get their rooms into kitten welcoming condition, without any life threatening hazards lying temptingly around in corners. So now we’re stuck with taking care of a baby girl now and the going won’t calm down until she’s grown up about this time next year.

Majority for euthanasia

According to a recently done Gallup 3 out of 4 Finns are in favour of giving euthanasia to their loved ones with a terminal disease to diminish the time and amount of their suffering.

Only just a little fewer, 70% of the interviewed said that they would use euthanasia themselves should the need for it should occur. Euthanasia is currently prohibited in Finland and so far there is no change on the laws concerning it in sight according to my knowledge.

Even with this liberal point of views of the Finns still comes the question, who would in fact do it for their loved ones? Talking is still is just words and an opinion is still what you only think, but would you act accordingly to what you think, that is the real question.

Anyway, the nurse’s union still have not come to an agreement with their employees, the Union of municipalities; about their pay rises and the mass resignation of almost 13.000 nurses seem likely to be effective on November the 19^th. There is also an ongoing dispute about the lawfulness of these resignations and a lawsuit about endangering the health of patients. So strikes seem to be the general issue one way or another these days here in Finland.

You are asked by your friends and people you meet about your opinions in the rightfulness of this or that unions’ actions but I guess this makes a change to what variety of potatoes you prefer at every dinner party.

Lack of alcohol

There might soon be shortage of alcohol in Finland.

At least that is if the of the employees of the Finnish Government monopoly alcohol shop, Alko, are going ahead with their threats about a strike. As 85% of all employees in Alko are part-timers, they are paid less than full-timers and thus also having fewer benefits.

A strike closing down the Alko shops would probably be more devastating on the Finns than the nurses’ unions’ strike with their mass resignations that are likely to be effective later this month. The nurses having signed the lists have received a letter from their employers about their personal point of view of the resignations and 300 of the 12.800 nurses having changed their minds so far. The union is at present making new lists to replace the old ones for their mass resignations in order to obtain better pay for their performed job.

Considering that about 25% of al casualties in Finland are either direct causes of alcohol consumption or side effects with accidents such as falls, fights and so on, so having the Alko shops closed at the same time as there is going to be a shortage of nurses and health care staff due to their strike with resignations would be well timed. 25% less casualties requires 25% less medical staff, does it not?!?

Anyway, I wonder how to avoid getting the winter blues. Now with last Sunday’s turning back of the clocks into regular winter time the sun sets earlier and darkness all of sudden prevails earlier than we are used to.

Now we are in desperate need of some light and warmth. Cuddling up under a warm blanket on the sofa drinking hot cocoa in the candle light is not always enough to do the trick. At least not in the long run, but soon will be Xmas time and then the days begin to grow longer again.

Depression as it happens is the most frequent reason of disabilities to work and for retiring because of health reasons here in Finland, and the more north up you are the more common it gets. Less sun hours means more darkness and I suspect that a winter night going on for several months can not be very good for you. Neither can a summer day that goes on for as long the winter night, for months and months.

Anyway, tomorrow is the real Halloween according to Celtic tradition, the night when the veil between the worlds is the thinnest, when the ghosts come back to speak to us and also the Celtic New year if I have not got it all wrong.

The trick and treating of Halloween has not yet got as popular here in Finland as in the Anglo-Saxon countries over the world. Even as it is not a tradition originating from the Nordic tradition still many kindergartens and schools have some festivities like costume parties in order to celebrate Halloween.

More drunk than before

It must be years if not decades since last time a Russian diplomat has been called back to Moscow from the embassy in Helsinki for some misdemeanour, but yesterday it happened again. This time the diplomat was called back home for making statements differing from the official Russian policy about Finland joining NATO.

Anyway, the soup days seems to have come to stay for a while as some planned outings were cancelled with the flu having hit hard with a bad cough and fever. Guess this was to expect as the first signs of warnings of a runny nose were not taken seriously enough, so mummy has been busy providing the offspring with some hot soup, sweet corn soup this time to be more specific and it turned out quite well, as a matter of fact too well as I have had to make some more already after the first batch this morning.

One thing I have been wondering about in the news is the fact that Finnish alcohol consumption has increased to a 26.3 million litres converted into pure alcohol sold during the first 6 months this year and it has never earlier been this high according to the National Product Control Agency with the sales of long-drinks and light wines having increased particularly. Once again I have to ask the same question, as this not adjusted into per capita, what the Finns drink per person, no consideration of that the population is bigger than before or maybe there were more tourists visiting the country.

I just love statistics!

And now the hospitals have made up their minds about the mass resignations from their staff nurses that are members of the Finnish health care union. The resignations are to be considered to be effective and real and no guarantee is made that they are to get back their jobs when the union eventually makes a deal about their pay rises.

Mass resignations?

The Finnish health care union has announced that it is going to use the means of mass resignations for almost 13.000 employees in the public health care sector effective in about a month’s time in order to obtain their demands of a pay rise. Their wages are considered unreasonably low for the workload they provide and have not followed the over all trend in pay rises.

Now the question of whether these mass resignations would be lawful has risen, as a document with only names listed is no way to resign according to the law. It would depend on what kind of data is printed on the lists, but a personal note of resignation might be required in order for it to be effective instead of the name lists gathered by the union so far.

Ordinary citizens in general do not seem to be worried the healthcare might deteriorate or be worse than normal during the strike, but there is now great concern from relatives for the elderly and for their care taking when an acute need would arise.

Anyway, fall break always is annoying as well as a hard time for me and so is this week too with the offspring being home from school. With the offspring having turned to their teens, they nowadays come and go uncontrollably, taking charge of kitchen utensils without a warning in no way taking notice of mum’s possible need of them. TV sets and PC are occupied all day around, music played on stereos on loud volume and their friends drop in unannounced. Normally at this time of the day I am home alone enjoying my solitude with our cat, but now I am seriously considering fleeing from home going shopping or just anything to get away from all the noise. At least I am absolutely up to date with the latest popular music!

It is not the noise, or the offspring itself being at home, it is the irregularity and havoc that prevails I am trying to avoid. I am not a very orderly person, I like my own kind of organized disorder, I know where the things are just as long as nobody moves them and there has been a lot of moving around my stuff going on these past few days. I like to get things done in my own time, at the time of my own choosing and here I am now queuing to get on-line to post my Blog, which normally is among my morning routines. A cup of tea with morning TV and blogging after having watched the news for some fresh ideas.

So now I at least I get to write my post, when I get to publish is an entirely different matter that nobody seems to care about at the time being.

As the offspring and their friends are not very sociable, at least to old dinosaurs like someone’s mum, I get pretty much ignored and just walked past in the hallway without even a hello. I am home alone in a crowded house until the time when dear spouse of mine comes home the going calms down a bit. Fortunately some outings have been planned by the offspring and are effective to take place commencing today.

By the way, I was worried about having to stock up with some groceries as the Finnish Service Union had warned about a strike for warehouse workers, which would have halted deliveries to most of the larger food chains. The walk out was planned to be effective today at 2 PM but the union reached an agreement with their employers about their pay rises in the early morning hours.

More work done cheaper

Recently it has been all about pay rise and wages negotiations in the media here in Finland.

Employees threatening to walk out of their jobs, threatening strikes in order to get a pay rise, demands for more money working overtime and after the negotiations between the unions and employers, companies and municipalities are now beginning to complain about having to raise the taxes in order of being able to afford the pay rises.

At the same time there still is a big unemployment rate in this country and many of these are women. Well they say women even when doing the same job as men are paid less, it was something about 1 Euro for men would be 80 cents or something for women still when doing the same job. So what is there to do, both to get more people into working life maintaining the cost efficiency in companies? Employ more women as they are cheaper and still do the same job as men. How does this sound for equality?

Companies are not as prone to employ women as they have children and stay home when they are ill, well women still normally do more than a man’s work, if you know what I mean.

Employing a second woman to replace the other being on her maternity leave should only make the business even more successful, getting rid of the men costing a fortune and never doing a woman’s job anyway and employing more cost-effective women. They are cheaper according to all research done and work harder in order to keep up in pace with the men, to be able to advance in the same time. Women not only have to work more and harder in order to receive the same benefits as men just are handed automatically, they have to prove they are worthy in working life in opposition to men. Men just are and what you see is what you get, and frankly, sometimes that is not much.

It is just a shame that the taxes and all other social costs are the same for both men and women. Maybe we now would need a change in this as we now have solved the national economy of this country. Getting more work done for less pay.

One of those days again

The libraries in Finland are suffering from staff shortages and there is a lack of especially educated and experienced librarians as new employees often lack the education needed for their position.

This might once again be an attempt to cut down costs of the municipalities, which is sad as the libraries in Finland are an excellent institution and the Finns continue to be active book lenders as it is free even though you sometimes must wait to get your hands on a hot copy of a bestselling novelty but you get to read it in the end.

Anyway, finding a new apartment to live is not as easy anymore as it used to be “in the old times” with teenagers involved and wanting to have a say in the choice of the new habitation and everyone has to be pleased, or maybe I should just please myself and leave all with a fact, this is it?

There is the location to keep in mind, to be able to see and keep in touch with their friends, and the apartment itself must meet all required standards of the offspring. How the apartment looks and is equipped, the colour of walls, the size of the rooms, is there a sauna, a balcony or a garden and the list just goes on. On top of all this, it seems that this is the wrong season to do it as it now is the end of the summer as many relationships that bloomed during the summer now has born fruit and couples are moving in together. And there are always the new incomers every autumn moving to town to study, from somewhere else needing somewhere to live so I guess we might be lucky to have a new place at Xmas to move to when these new relationships begin to come falling down a shambles. I personally would have preferred to have moved during the warmer period of the year, but then it might have been raining anyway with my luck, and today has been one of those days again.

Some days everything just seems to go wrong. Like when I was at the hairdresser’s earlier today to get a haircut, I walked into the coat rack and got my mp3-players cords entangled in it knocking it over my feet. Later when at the local shop getting some milk for my tea I to my delight spotted bagels, and as they are a special favourite of the offspring I got some, as they normally just have them on Fridays out of some peculiar for me unknown reason and I thought I’ll get some cream cheese to go with them.

Arriving home I to my disappointment discovered that I had apparently forgotten the cream cheese in the shopping basket as I do recollect having picked it off the shelf and it was not specified on the receipt I got. So here I am having a nice cup of tea and there are bagels but no cream cheese, and what is a bagel without cream cheese? Like carrot juice, tastes like carrots but is not crunchy and chewy as I prefer to eat my carrots and dietary fibre is essential I have heard. And they say this is probably going to be the last hot day of the summer for this time, well, this mind of mine is beginning to worry me, as the cooking of my tea did not turn out well. Putting the kettle on but forgetting to switch it on, well that is a major error in tea cooking, the hot water. Bagels I have but no tea. Yet.

I really wonder who will be doing the cooking today as I ma not sure whether I dare to as things just go wrong some days and this is certainly one of those days I should not be near anything hot or sharp as a knife. A salad would of course rule out the using the stove but not the knife, and there are some nice and fresh salad ingredients in the fridge and it would suit the weather, wonder who I can trick into making it as I am continuing to read the book I just have begun reading yesterday and will go on doing it for the rest of the day to prevent myself from any serious corporal damage.

Off for the day

Today more and more foreign-born get employed here in Finland as the lack of workers has begun to show, where as in the 1990’s recession you could not even get a cleaning job if you were not fluent in Finnish. The biggest problem seems to be getting new trained employees out into the countryside outside the main city areas.

Anyway, now it is hot and the sun is shining from a clear blue sky and I am off to the countryside to visit some friends spending the day there with them together with the offspring so daddy will be home alone tonight. We will just see what state our home is when dear spouse of mine has been home alone with the cats!

Trying pizzas

Drug testing is today becoming more and more common in many workplaces here in Finland and an increasing amount companies run routine drug tests on their new employees. The drug testing is most common in trades with safety instructions, such as driving motored vehicles or running mechanical engines but now even banks and insurance companies have taken drug testing of their employees into their policies and failing the drug tests might result in not getting the job or getting fired.

Today is one of the days I do not have to cook for dinner, still today it is troubling me a bit as it is the offspring with the culinary ambitions trying anything with everything that is doing the cooking. Normally the things are quite simple, and making pizzas should be just that, simple. Just simply making the dough, get some tomato sauce, grate some cheese is still harmless enough but what goes on top of it, the pizza is where I begin to get worried. I know the possibilities lying around in the fridge but what was brought home from the supermarket that might surprise me.

Suggestions so to go on top of the pizzas have so far has been ham, pineapple, prawns, tuna and that still sounds quite normal to me, nothing to worry about as yet.

Lavender biscotti

According to most Finns the pressure of high demands and the fast pace at work are the biggest problems in their professional lives. Finnish entrepreneurs only keep two weeks vacation per year but would like to have the usual four weeks employees usually have. And women still earn less money compared to men doing the same job disregarded their education, so what is new in the world?

Well, I was earlier today invited to go on a fishing trip tonight, then someone, and I bet it was dear spouse of mine, came to think about the amount of resident spiders in the boat to be used on this trip, a slight change of planes was introduced to my disappointment, but when hearing about the reason I was quite relieved and pleased of the outcome so I am not going fishing anymore tonight.

I hope at least the cats will get some fulfillment from it though, get full of fish that is.

I really am terrified of spiders to tell you the truth, no matter how small they are and I can’t help myself. It is such an unreasonable phobia and I might probably be holding the world record of height and length jumping at the same time if shown a big, black hairy spider!

So with the cancellation of my trip the offspring is soon to be disappointed as soon as it is announced that mummy does not go fishing and their party plans for tonight will have to be cancelled promptly as I am staying home making these lavender biscotti I have thought about trying for such a long time now.

Coming to think about it, going out walking in the woods then climbing into a boat with these feet of mine after yesterdays disaster choice of shoes might not have been a good idea anyway.

Better benefits

New research here in Finland suggest that young people from families with an academic background get more career benefits from a university degree.

Summers can be most stressful times in many different ways. Having the whole family around you around the clock in a little cabin off somewhere in the woods and it gets even worse when the off-spring turn into teenagers. There is almost certainly nothing for them to do in the woods, bad TV reception, no Internet access and maybe even bad connections for your mobile phones, which actually is what we adults find so attractive with our cabin lives. If it is raining is even less for the teenagers to do as they can not go swimming.

Well this year has brought a brilliant new addition to family life, getting a summer job.

First applying for a job then attending to a job interview finally getting the job! Just brilliant to earn some money of your own, keeps out of trouble during the days. Some of the earnings have already been used before hand, borrowed from mum to buy tickets to a rock concert, to be paid back on pay day. Finally I will get some of the money I have lent back but it will be thrilling to see what the money goes to. New mobile phone, Ipod or a lap top maybe?

Anyway, I just hope the job is just as boring as it sounds so that is will bring better inspiration for the studies to continue in the fall and we might get one more graduate in our family with “better benefits from a university degree”.

I wonder how many times they will show the clip of president Bush pouring himself a beer in a glass with the beer with the foam pouring over the edge?!? So far I have only seen it 5 times today and it is still before mid day. Anyway, pouring beer is an art form, you have to know what you are doing and patience is always a plus.

I better go make myself some more tea.

Artemisine

A brand new head office for the chemical department of the EU has been founded and opened for business June 1^st in Helsinki. For the time being there is only a handful of officials but in the coming year more people will be employed to be up and running by full in June next year.

Wonder if they will have any opinions on artemisine, a chemical substance found naturally in Dogwood if I remember it correctly. Artemisine has scientifically been proven effective in the cure of certain forms of cancer as well as highly effective against malaria. As the medical companies want to make a fortune on the exclusivity of new drugs, getting funding for further research might be difficult to raise for a chemical substance originating form a plant and with the plant in question growing freely in the nature for anyone to collect.

Anyway, I have discovered that it is nor “chic” to be concerned about what miseries there are in the country that you live in, people in general are positive to raising money to famine, war or nature catastrophes in far away countries all over the world. People do not want, and they pretend hard not to show they did see, the poor chap who has no where to live sleeping in your doorway. I can not see the idea in not doing something about the every day lives of the citizens of your own country first, then see what else there might be left to do after that.

So I am not sure what I think of these rallies against globalization, the fightning with the police seems stupid enough, but what else is there to do? Nobody listens to your opinions anyway, at least not politicians or senior management in any big company. Just money talks, the more they have the better.