Nothing on TV ?

There just ain't nothing on TV ever.

I have so far not lived nor visited a country where the citizens have been fully satisfied with what has been shown on TV. And when something interesting is on, of course it is on at the same time as something else you would like to see. Of course you can record, or save it on your hard drive, the other program I mean and if it is a series this will continue until either series is discontinued, which quite often happens here in Finland, or the series ends.

So the discontinuation of a catching series becomes then a problem, if you get addicted to watching it, as might happen to even ordinary sane persons, like me for instance, hypothetically of course. You look for the series elsewhere, get it and watch it. Then, after having seen the whole series you discover that there is a second series that was aired at the same time with the other one. And that one you have not got of course, as you had no idea about it even existing so you have to have that one as well, waiting for it to be sent to you, collect it...

Yes, I do understand people might download things, even illegally, over the Internet...

Safety glitch

The offspring has lately been amused by using neighbours’ wireless Internet connections. I have been very doubtful about the sanity of doing so as I want to try keeping my PC as clean as possible and up and working at all times, instead of catching virulent malware, viruses and what ever they all are called these days. It is hard to keep up with all the terminology of the high-tech world if you are not in the business.

Anyway, getting into your neighbours wireless Internet connection is not that hard, I have noticed myself. I have on several occasions just checked up the availability of WLANs and you would not believe the number that usually turns up on the list on my screen. Surprisingly many leave their access totally, and completely, unprotected and left originally named default.

I have avoided trying them out of safety reasons, and today I got an even better reason for it. Microsoft just announced that their 7 version of their net browser Internet Explorer has serious safety glitches in it and that phishers are able to phish secret info like banking data and passwords etc. from your PC.

Just one more of Mr Gates’ products that has not been up to promised standards.

This gives us one more reason on top of all the previous ones for not being too dependent on the biggest software manufacturer of the world. Not only that their software is more often targeted by malicious hackers hence being more vulnerable, but the default reason for avoiding Mr Gates’ products is, that they apparently keep on promising more than they can deliver.

A thing that sadly has become a routine over the last few decades.

Cyber stalking

Gossiping has since the beginning of time been a common pastime amongst us humans.

In ancient times you had to be face to face to gossip but lately this has now got grown into waste dimensions which are harder to emphasize.
How can you defend yourself against malicious rumours and slandering, when it is done anonymously and posted on various places on the internet? What can you do about it, what can the school do when kids are living it? Being bullied in school is one thing, but being cyber stalked and bullied is completely different. You can not escape from it as it is present everywhere, on your phone, your PC, on the Internet.

In the future when applying for jobs, or to study at a good university, you are most certainly googled by them, and if your cyber CV is not up to their requirements and taste, they have plenty of more applicants CV's in the pile to choose from. Now we have to learn how to keep our cyber reputation clean.

We all are entitled to our own, differing opinions, and thank God for that. I'd hate to be exactly the same as the next guy, but if you can not stand for what you say in person, face to face to the person you are talking about, shut the f*ck up! Writings posted "anonymously" are more likely to be untrue, as people do not write the same things when their name is stated below.

Just keep in mind that your IP adresses do show, eventually.

Globe-trotting Trojan virus

The headlines in media here in Finland this morning, has all been a bout the outcome of the US presidential elections. Everybody politician and celebrity want to have a go at predicting how the newly elected president Obama will be running the country.

Anyway, more interesting is a new globe-trotting Trojan-virus that has so far stolen the info for about 500.000 credit and debit cards. The virus has silently been collecting information for two and a half years and is constantly being updated with new variants. The most serious aspect of this virus is that any computer connecting to the Internet can become infected as it uses a method known as “drive-by downloads” and users can be infected without knowing about it, if visiting a website that has been booby-trapped with the code.

So once again, keep your virus programs and firewalls up and running at all times and have them regularly updated.

Problems, problems

I am sorry to tell you that I still haven't worked out the problem. It's either on Blogspot or I have wrong options on my upgraded browser....

No sleep nights

Even thought the World Championships in Ice Hockey are played in Halifax Canada, this meaning the matches are broadcasted in the middle of the night for us here in Finland, they still rule the TV evenings in many ways.

Weekly programmes get scheduled off their ordinary broadcasting time in order to show the re runs of the matches and even the nightly chat hosted by this one drag queen has a touch of ice-hockey with the host or maybe more appropriately “hostess” wearing the Finnish hockey team’s blue and white lion shirt. Fortunately the offspring is not that interested in watching ice hockey so there are no late nights due to the games being on so late, it is more a matter of surfing the Net. Or actually hanging around with friends all night on messenger, in stead of getting the needed amount of sleep for being able to cope with school and studies.

Today was another morning of close call, and yesterday went with the wake up time way past ten o’clock.

And my postings get later and fewer all the time because of these nocturnal activities.

The warm weather went and here we are again with temperatures way below the average and normal for this time of year. Fortunately it is not as cold that we have to switch back to winter coats but seeds sown in gardens might get frostbites if not covered properly.

Even I have sown a few seeds and will eventually plant them in the garden of a friend as I got interested in natural dyeing plants and wanted to try some out. I would have wanted to have them close by to study their development but they would probably not succeed on a balcony as well as in proper soil. One of the plants is said to produce a blue colour and the second will turn red so I am really looking forward to seeing how it all turns out in reality. The red is not to be harvested in a couple of years but the blue should be made to use as soon as there are leaves big enough, and there is a fair amount of the leaves to make use of them.

No April fool

Two issues seem to currently be the main news, the merger of the two online systems that still is not up and running smoothly as has been several times promised by the bank.

There still seems to be a major glitch somewhere in the dungeon labyrinths of the digital money world.
And the foreign minister still is hitting the headlines with his text messaging to the blonde model, or erotic dancer.

According to a non official Gallup done among the neighbourhoods old ladies most of them think the whole affair is a disgrace and would like to see him resign as his credibility as trustworthy politician has been lost. Well, I would like to know one politician that if not dishonest but at least does not make the truth up seeming mush better than it in reality and daylight is, or does not use any white lies at all. Politics it seems is like playing poker, do not show what you think of it, and keep your face plain. Say nothing and deny everything you might have said.

Well, at least some of us know, we're not all April fools you know.

Anyway, I must confess that I have not been as good as I should have with the exercise I should have been attending to advised by our dear family doctor, whom I know drops in occasionally to read up on my Blog. I have been quite good at making up various excuses for not pursuing my daily walks. Good reason have lately been the slippery surface I would have to be wary of walking upon, another has been the clod weather and winds blowing which is not good for my complexion. Not a s good excuse mostly are I have forgotten cone again the whole thing, I do not want to enter on long walks on my own, or I prefer to do them daytime when I do not have to have anyone tagging along, (read dear spouse of mine who likes to keep me company, nothing wrong with that, just sometimes love can be too much and you need to get some air, on your own as he is a caring, and loving husband)

Quite the opposite to what you would suspect I am very lazy, I prefer not to make more than I have to and I was quite energetic and outgoing in my younger days and probably did more than my fair share of exercise, but with age the metabolism gets sluggish, we put on some extra pounds, sometimes several stones and I had lost most of that, but…

Lately it has been creeping back on, slowly and almost without me noticing it at all, until our dear doctor told me I could use with loosing 10 kgs. Well, fortunately for me it was not the same 30kgs I had once already lost four years ago, but new additional weight I am carrying around that really has no use, unless there soon will be a great famine with lack of food for us here up in the Nordic countries, which I doubt will happen in the very near future. With the global warming heating up even more and climates changing you never know, so maybe I should stick to my extra weight, just in case if the worst would occur?

Text messages going public

The Helsinki District Court rejected motion made by the blonde exotic dancer against the planned publication of text messages she has received from the Foreign Minister.

The Finnish tabloid magazine “Hymy”, which would be smile in English, is now ready to publish “a sizable sampling” of the text messages sent by the Foreign minister and they stated on their website that it will be in his favour.
We have come a long way from the usual old fashioned letters black on white.

Anyway, first when dear spouse and I heard of a film called Alien vs. Predator, we thought it was some kind of joke as the idea was presented in such an odd manner, as a film to watch in some kind of comedy concept, so we laughed about it, but then the film was run on the TV so I just had to what the film was like. If it was any better, or worse than or maybe as bad as the previous Alien films and Predator films, and it turned out there had been no development in the plot, just the same old routine. Surprising was thought that the first killed person, or android in the first Alien film was in this film too, the same actor I mean, but this time he was human and he got killed by a Predator instead of an Alien.

The pyramid thing seemed to be nicked straight from Stargate and having set the scene in the arctic was just out of the X-Files UFO encounters, such a worn out idea. Lots of slime around, set in darkness to make the film more thrilling, but the outcome was the same old thing twisted around a bit.

The offspring of course found out I was watching the film so I didn’t have to do it alone.

As it happens, Alien was the very first movie I watched without the required age by sneaking in on a slow Sunday night in the movies. It was quite frightening then and as I was home alone when arriving home after the scary movie I checked underneath the bed. I kept checking under the bed for many weeks to come afterwards so I guess I did pay the prize. Since then I have seen all the Alien films during the years, not because they have been good but more out of nostalgia for the scare the first film gave me, but I can still say that I have seen all the Alien films.

Money on the hold

Two Nordic banks have now joined ventures.

One of the bigger banks here in Finland has been bought up by a Danish mega-banking corporation, it is among the five largest in Europe if I remember it correctly, and lately they now two happily joined banks have been ventured in getting their online banking system into one single instead of the two separate they used to be. This was planned to take place during the Easter holidays and should have been up and running by Tuesday but their thousands of their customers are still not able to access their system with all in all 800.000 bank customers in both countries being affected by the switch over and I guess many must currently have their money frozen into their bank accounts. The bank assures that they will have it up and running in no time at all, but I guess they said it would not affect any banking after the closing down of the system in the first place either.

I am fortunately to not have an account with the bank in question, but mind you, our bank did some updating and alterations on their online banking system that slowed it down for several months and things were either charged to the account weeks later than their original date of debit and some things were even by accident or mistake charged twice, which in fact is what happened to the offspring, being out clubbing. Double charging on a Visa electron of a sum in a bar made the account go null and no more money to be withdrawn from the cash machine either. Fortunately there were some friends along on the tour that could pay for the rest and borrow the needed amount to keep on clubbing, for you can not end it before the clubs close in the morning and things got sorted out in the end between the bank the following week and the money was replaced.

I had trouble getting money transferred from abroad into the account in the time it should have been there, so there for we were a couple of family members that were in a way over debiting our bank accounts and had their money on the hold. The money should have been there, and actually was in the bank but not on our cards to be charged for.

It has become very popular with various kinds of online scams, such as swindling under the pretext of charity and shopping hoaxes or phishing for personal information such as bank account and credit card numbers. Now the Finnish Consumer Agency has launched a website to help consumers detect them with a site lists the most common types of hoaxes and also hoping that consumers can by the website report such attempts to authorities, in order to make them alert of the attempts and be able to take action.

Some of the online scams are “art” performed by professional scam artist, they are so well thought out and meticulously designed and thought out that it is really hard to say what is real and safe and what is not as it looks like. They say what you see is what you get but in this case you can never be sure if it your bank has been hacked into, or a similar homepage has been designed at an alike address as the banks’ in order to get access to you personal info in order to use it maliciously for monetary advantages of the criminally minded. How delicious is that not, plan something that genial and then in the end get caught by the devious law enforcement?

Minister threatened to death

I must confess that this is now beginning to become ludicrous, with the Finnish foreign minister receiving death threats since his involvement in his second text message affair in two years time.

The Foreign minister has confessed to having sent a couple of hundred text messages to “a blonde erotic model”, or quite frankly, a stripper like an 80 year old friend to the family expressed herself on Sunday. I can agree with her that things should be called their right names as the name of the so called model has already been featured in the media. Mind you, she used to be a dancing teacher of good reputation this friend of ours so maybe her professional pride took a bad blow at the hint of erotic dancing.

Still, the current situation in the text messages scandal seems that both the sending and text messages receiving counterpart has been threatened to death and the Finnish security police has been informed. I assume they will begin their will investigations soon, but so far the foreign minister has not given any details about his threats to the public.

Yesterday a party member foreign minister and fellow MP of the same told one of the evening papers that she thinks the foreign minister is to resign because of him having lost his credibility. According to her the bad media attention caused by his behaviour has hurt his reputation, both in Finland and abroad.

Well, President Clinton of the US stayed in office so why should not one Foreign minister of Finland be able to do the same?

This is just politics.

Codebreaking

The Finnish National Consumer Agency has won the first ever EU's consumer campaign award. The award was won for the online game called “Galactor and the Codebreakers” among EU member countries' best consumer campaigns. The game has been developed in order to increase young consumer’s awareness of their rights and obligations concerning online shopping. The game has already sp far been distributed to Sweden, Denmark and Iceland and an Estonian version is also currently under development as well as France has expressed their interest in the game in question.

By the way, now the foreign minister apparently has confessed to having sent text messages to both the blonde busty model and her sister as well saying that it now it is up for the general public to decide upon his credibility. Well why having denied it in the first place to later confess, “doing Clinton”.

So here’s my question of the day;

What is the use of old school photos?

You have never seen your classmates since you quit school and most of them you do not even remember their names neither do you care to but still you keep them as memorabilia and look at them with occasional longing to your youth. Many of them have moved places and changed their names, at least all your girlfriends have, and some male as well. There seems to have gone fashionable in marrying women with more uncommon names and starting using them so even tracing them nowadays is almost an impossible task even with the aid of the Internet.

Strange seeing your offspring go through all the same faces in their lives, and teenage love is no joke! It has to be taken seriously, and it is serious business. No jokes about it, at least so that it shows. How serious wasn’t I back then some decades ago, with first infatuated in this and then that boy.

Fortunately I have the advantage of having lived in a couple of countries during my life I do not bump into old acquaintances or old loves. No hard questions asked and nothing to explain to the offspring. Not that there is anything that could not be spoken of, but I’d rather do it back at home instead of having to air it in the streets like a girl friend of mine the other day. And as this was an old not mentioned about ex-love, well you can imagine the interest it caused in both her child and husband.

Anyway, old photos are utterly useless, just taking space and gathering dust which I happen to be allergic to. There is one single advantage though with them, I can show that I looked the same as they do now, that we were dressed the same as they are today back then, years ago. It shows that the fashion is just like the one back then. One seems to forget how ridiculous the fashions are, cuts, colours, accessories, make-ups and hair do’s. Lucky children with parents that have saved everything from their adulthood and not as me having moved so many times and had them thrown out in the course of time. Still I do remember some “special” garments I used to have with a longing, but would not fit into anymore if I could try them on. I guess this is another sign of the course of time, getting bigger.

And respectable family mothers are not meant to be following the latest trends by the letter so I will stick to my old fashioned classic style. Old, used and boring I am told by the offspring added together with some sweet suggestions of some refreshing ideas for my wardrobe. Sad there is no weddings in sight, just one funeral I am not able to attend to.

Still, maybe I should break my own dress-code and get some new stuff.

Blonde erotic model

The Finnish ministers of cabinet seem to have been quite busy, at least the male ones.

Some male parliamentary representatives were accused of sexual harassment in the parliament not too long ago and
the prime minister just had his previous love affair aired in court after his ex-girlfriend has published a book about their love-affair and now the Foreign minister has hit the tabloids with a blonde.

The foreign minister in said to have sent 200 text messages from his office mobile phone, to a young, blonde busty erotic model, or in some media mentioned as a nude model. This is not the first time the foreign minister has hit the headlines with his text messaging, the previous time was two years ago. The ministers’ wife denies the truth of these accusations and says it just makes her laugh as the media still keeps going on and on about this thing.

The foreign minister on Friday told the Swedish speaking national radio that he is falsely accused and denies having sent the messages. Still the young model claims in the afternoon papers that she has proof of having received them.

It now seems obvious that the pie throwing of politicians, with real or made-up sex scandals, that has for far been non-existent here in Finland, has finally arrived here, and is here to stay.

Strange that no one I have talked to ever has confessed of reading the tabloid press, nor to be interested in gossip. This seems to be another façade you have to put up with living here. At least I can confess that if a really juicy thing hits my eyes I read about it, but I do not but very seldom buy any magazines if ever.

Not that I am any better than any one else, but usually I have no idea of the person in question, who they are talking about, ignorant foreigner as I am.

So it remains to see whether this is another case of ministers in heat totally lacking fair judgment or just an attempt to smouldering his name and getting some “bad press is as good as any press” publicity for this blonde erotic model.

Celebrating 2nd anniversary!

This is a year of surprising joint holidays like Tuesday in Lent or Shrove Tuesday on the same day as the Finnish Runeberg’s Day or Mother’s day on the same day as Pentecost or Whit Sunday as it also is called. May day is on Ascension Day and even Midsummer’s Day falls on the same day with summer solstice the actual real Midsummer day and not the to a Saturday transferred holiday it nowadays has become.

Somehow I had the impression that the full moons and such were not to join with

Then we have a leap year this year or an inter-calary year as it also sometimes is called, it makes the whole year one day longer than usual and a family acquintance just celebrated his 12^th birthday this Friday. Strange imagining you only can celebrate your real birthday every four years. I must’ve been really hard being a kid even harder than having been born on Christmas Eve or Xmas Day.

Anyway, I was yesterday proud to celebrate my second anniversary as a blogger. It has been a thrilling experience and I am not as yet considering to quit as it has become a habit of mine to think about what to blog about today, even though I am not always able to post my thoughts right away out of family reasons, that means someone else is occupying the internet access at times and as it is not yet a matter of life and death for me to get my thoughts posted on the Net, it can wait and that lately my blogging and posting has been quite rare out of both professional and personal reasons, but I hope for this to pick up as things will slow down as from today. Sometimes life just seems to drain all the juices from you and in order to stay sane you have to prioritize.

I also about six months ago moved my blog here to Blogspot in September 2007 and as a downside I seems to have lost some readers lost in the course. Together with the rising number of laptops in our family I have not been able to get access to the net as often as I would have wanted to. Up to this date the PC’s in this family have so far been used only as an aid studying but I suspect that some late studying nights running to early mornings also might consist of some games played on-line, not to forget about all friends needed to stay in touch with by messenger of course and dear husband of mine paying bills. I have declared that I will have to have access when ever I want to, but I guess nobody listens to mum as usual.

Maybe I should take the example of the offspring and use some blackmailing in order to achieve what I want to when ever I want to.

End of festivities

Finally the hollidays come to an end, even though Christmas really still keep on going on until Epiphany, the thirteenth day of Xmas when it really ends.

Not having posted anything for almost a week does not necessarily mean that I have not had anything to write about, I have just neither had the opportunity nor the time to post, all the Xmas preparations and activities to cope with, you know, and so many people hanging around doing nothing, just surfing the Net in order to avoid death of total boredom totally ignorant of my great displeasure about my disrupted morning routines, not being able to blog.

A great many ideas passed through my mind and many of them were even written down on paper at the time, some even got as far as getting typed into the PC but none got posted in the hurry.

Just the other day I was thinking about what Xmas really is, what does Xmas consist of?

And I guess there is no right answer there, just as many answers as there are people. At least for me much of the joy comes from the preparation of the festivities, the cooking and planning ahead of time on order to get the show on the road when it is time. A lot of my Xmas consists of food, not always the eating but the cooking of it, the smells of the cooking, and the scent of hyacinths, gingerbread and mulled wine and the Xmas music.

Xmas can actually be faked like we had to some years ago out of practical reasons. We had to postpone our Xmas until December 28^th and it all went well, even the offspring did not notice we swapped dates and we were even successfully able to conveniently swap daddies as Santa’s with our neighbours without disturbing either families Xmas activities as it normally would have done.

By the way, I am very pleased with our family doctor, the care and treatment he is providing- the very first in Finland to really have been bothered to care even in his spare time, interested enough to occasionally drop in to read my Blog. During my visits at his surgery it has become apparent for me that we do share many ideas as well as have differing opinions on many issues so I would be thrilled having a discussion with him in private, and as he lives nearby, just down the road (of course I have googled him!) it is not such an impossible thought that we might bump into each other, in private so to speak. But I guess it would not be really ethical; being a social acquaintance of your family doctors’ would it?

Okay, I better get going to the supermarket in order to get something else but Xmas food for dinner tonight.

Lack of snow and more talking

The opening event of the FIS slalom world cup scheduled to be held this weekend Levi in Finnish Lapland is moved from to Reiteralm in Austria, because of a lack of snow.

After a very mild month of October, there was no snow at all in Levi early in last week and it was not cold enough until last Friday in order to make some snow artificially. As the forecasts predict milder temperatures and the skiing slopes had only got between 20 to 60% of the needed slow keeping the venue in Levi would have been too risky. Still the cancellation of the alpine skiing event this year is a major setback for the tourist industry of Finnish Lapland but there are hopes for the future as the opening event of FIS slalom world cup is set to take place in Levi the four next coming years.

I have finally got my new specs and now I can see! What a relief, no more squinting in order to see things. Anyway, the British company Specsavers have finally arrived here in Finland as well so it is sad I got my new ones before, but guess this gives me a chance to get a new second pair to have ready having displaced the ordinary pair as that seems to happen annoyingly often. More time is some days spent searching for the specs than using them it seems.

Anyway, radio stations here in Finland need licenses in order be allowed to broadcast their program on the air and 15-30% of their time on the air should be talk according to their licenses. The radio stations just recently checked had too little talking on their broadcasts and they will be asked for explanations of why this is the fact.

This more talking seems to be against the overall trend as many people just want the music with the minimum amount of talking in between the songs. The disc jockey, or should it be radio jockey, is better off just announcing the name of the artist or band together with the name of the song. Period.

The more music the better the radio station, and this is not only my opinion but most of the people I have talked to think the same. There are of course some talk shows worth listening to, especially in the mornings and if you are into talk shows then tune into one radio station with more talking. I definitively prefer more music with less talking!

What’s the use of viruses?

On Sunday was the International Heart Day; and heart disease is one of the top causes of death here in Finland.
On Monday was the International Liver Day which for the first time was celebrated here in Finland this year.
Liver cirrhosis happens to be the most common cause of death for men and the second most common for women causing the death of 1000 Finns every year and this number has doubled since the year 2000.

Maybe today on Tuesday it should have Brain Day following by all the major organs in the body, we could have celebrated anatomy of the human body for weeks! I really wonder what these different International days of this do a difference. I guess they are supposed to raise our consciousness on issues but I really doubt about the efficiency of it.

Anyway, every time your PC begins to do some monkey business the first thought you get is that there is some kind of virus or some spyware that has got into your system. And all his we have all the spammers of the world to thank for.

So it always begins with checking your system for viruses and spyware and so also this time but nothing has still been found, and the problem is not caused by lack of memory which is the second thing that comes into mind.

I have for a long time been wondering about the use of making viruses, the kind of ladybug that used to walk across your screen was cute enough and I would actually enjoy having that one but I doubt it is compatible with modern day systems. As a private suspicious citizen weary about the good and bad about globalization, it brings to mind that I might myself not be opposed to attacking a ruthless multinational company with viruses, or hacking into their databases in order to get to get back on them for the evil they do, or have done. A vendetta against a company for the wrong they have done distributing dangerous medicines around the world, or making money on people’s misery, polluting the environment or what ever.

I can also accept if you want to get back on some person that has behaved badly towards you personally, that I get, but I still can not understand is the joy and fulfillment it brings a hacker, or virus programmer to infect the PCs of ordinary people. Personal revenge I can understand, but this impersonal type of just doing bad" to just anyone" just for kicks beats me.

So the search still is on, what is the matter with this PC of mine and it seems such a strange coincidence that it all began when I moved my Blog here…

Technical problems

Moving my Blog here seems to have been a success, many readers have followed the link here but I had technical difficulties with getting into my account, not out of bad memory, forgetting my password, but with accessing the Net. Nothing wrong with the cords, the adapter or the PC, just the socket to plug into for accessing the Net.

After awhile of trying various combinations to find out which was causing the problem, changing the socket did the trick. Strange, one moment it worked and in the second the connection just went dead so now I have to call the janitor about it.

Anyway, there are a surprising amount of small beer and cider breweries around Finland.

Wait a minute, do you brew cider?

There are also some restaurants that brew their own beer, lager and stout and it has grown quite big here in Finland. I think this is nice even though I am not personally into beer, am more of a cider woman.

Anyway, both bars and supermarkets nowadays keep in stock many differently flavoured ciders and I am especially fond of the light ciders as I am no huge fan of sugar and sweet things and a long the years I have come to taste many excellent ciders to remember but astonishingly much awful stuff. My personal favourite has for many years now been the Vanilla light cider which at first only was sold in the Christmas season but now is available all year around. Two to remember to avoid are the blueberry cider together with the lime flavoured cider. I have never really tasted dishwater but I remember blowing soap bubbles in my childhood and the taste was similar enough. A Salmiakki cider also comes in mind as not being good, at least according to my taste that is. I think it is good that everyone has something to their taste and I enjoy trying new things, new flavours even if I might not like them.

Learning new things and getting new experiences makes life worth living.

Copyright

A fifteen year old adolescent here in Finland has been fined for posting a video of his teacher singing on YouTube, declaring it being from a mental hospital mentioning the teacher’s name.

The District Court of Nurmes determined that the adolescent was of age to understand the consequences of his actions and how it would affect the authority of the teacher in the school. The adolescent got fined by the court with 90 euros for defamation together with 800 euros for suffered damages together with having to pay about 2.000 euros for the court proceedings.

The story has one good point in all its’ sadness, you can not publish photos or film clips without the approval of the person appearing in it if the face is to be recognized. That is why I so rarely take pictures of people or in public as they are not always applicable in any way. Take a photo in the town square for instance and post it somewhere and someone is in the wrong place with the wrong person they are not supposed to be there with at that time, then you are in trouble.

This is the reason why I strictly stick to photos of friends and family, and hardly ever publish any recognizable faces on the Net, to avoid getting into any trouble.

Anyway, now the southern most Finland has been pestered by heavy rain with thunderstorms during the mornings. Lightning has struck in people and aerials affecting the national TV and radio broadcasts and the train connections have been on and off standstill in various directions around the capital area, hindering commuters getting to work. Buses and coaches seem to have been the safe way of getting where you have planned to arrive at a given hour these last few days if you have not had your own car to rely on.

Now the weekend finally is here and a bit colder weather is expected together with rain in most parts of the country which should be nice for a change.

Healthcare guaranteed

According to research from an ongoing study at the universities of Tampere and Helsinki based on material gathered from five Finnish-language and two Swedish-language newspapers, four magazines and five television channels in Finland the covered side of Muslims is mostly linked to terrorism and political violence abroad and there is almost no coverage on Islam as a religion or a culture. Does anyone ever make any research how the Muslims cover the Christian world, what they write about the rest of the world? Are all so called western countries terrorist countries according to their newspapers or what?

We always only see the one side of the matters that we personally are on as we do not know the other side’s truth or living conditions. How much of how we react is a result of the culture we live in and how we were brought up and how much of it is really ourselves, a result of what knowledge we have acquired during our lifetime and based on own our freewill? How good is the Internet as there is no one censoring what is in it, who is to publish and what?

I am myself quite disturbed by all sex-related spam that turns up in my mailbox and sex ads that pop-up as windows visiting some site covering a completely different issue. Yes there are net guards to adjust for avoiding it, but running the latest scan with the filters even this Blog turned out as being offensive containing sex!!!

Where, what, who, why?!? Having content in another language than English twists the results even more it seems.

Anyway, with the new so called health guarantee here in Finland you are supposed to get medical care in six months time through the National healthcare. Same goes for dental appointments with the municipal dental health, and having been on the queuing list since September last year I have finally received an appointment to a dentist in end of august. This makes almost a year counting any way, making more than six months in all ways.

I have been very fortunate with my genes and my teeth have been in good condition, I have not had much work done on them apart from a job done more than two years ago by this particular dentist I am appointed to again. The tooth that was fixed then is still not well and took 9 months then to get to quiet down, nothing major just a small cavity filled but apparently not with enough care.

My problem now is that you have to go to the dentist you have been appointed to, you can not go to someone else, not one of your own choosing. I used to be carefree about going to the dentist when young, even a couple of years ago before visiting this dentist but now I am horrified about it and the thought of going to this particular one…When asking about how to go on about changing dentist the answer was that it can not be done. In the end it was admitted that I could contact this one person about the issue, well, July being on all offices in Finland are understaffed if not closed as the officials are on their vacations and having to get in touch with a person in particular, well that is impossible.

The person in question as it happens is the same person I had to complain about the dental job to, but time running out before my appointment and in the worst case having to cancel it, well the result will surely be another waiting time of six months, the guaranteed time to get help in, which already turned out to be eleven months, almost a year!

Adjustments needed

How well do we know the people living with us our daily lives?

What do we really know about our own family, friends, relatives, neighbours and colleagues?

When a person you know pretty well hit the headlines, is news on all the front pages having done something extremely violent you just can't believe it is true. Someone I once knew quite well, once years ago indeed, just hit the headlines in another European country.

The place mentioned in the papers in the stories telling what happened is right, the pictures prove it even though no faces are recognizable and no names are mentioned and the violent temper was there all along but I still have problems to believe the fact, as it is a fact, someone going to those measures and now spending time in prison.

The offspring was supposed to go visit there, well guess the vacations plans this summer need some adjustment and pretty fast.