New neighbours

How delightful is it not to get new neighbours? And to find out the ingenuity of your new neighbours on waking you up in new ways as early as possible in the morning, especially in the weekends?

So far this week I woke up with a bad migraine by repetitive banging on the wall just next to my head, baby crying for hours and hours (why didn’t anyone do anything about it, I almost went to ring on the door) and a dog howling for hours. Today I was woken up by just gentle tapping on the wall and not banging. And there is absolutely no use in complaining about it to the neighbours, (they’d just get annoyed at you) and not to the Board of the apartment building either. You just have to put up with it or move or hope they soon will. Why is it always that the ones behaving nicely have to suffer silently? What happened to the happy ending “And they lived happily ever after”?

Crime against human rights?

The State of South Korea has filed a complaint against the Finnish police for crimes against the human rights for their treatment of two South Korean diplomats.

The diplomats arriving on the train from Russia locked themselves in to their compartment and refused to come out. I do not know what the disagreement was about from the beginning, but is this not ridiculous?

Anyone arriving into a country denying showing identification to the customs or in some other way refuse to co-operate with the authorities, is that not a crime in itself, no matter if the persons in question happens to be diplomats or just ordinary citizens? And they can not stay on the train in their compartment for ever and after either, they would have had to come out eventually anyway. Or did they think that?

Foul play

Finland has in recent studies been one of the top countries with the least corruption, but still many Finnish companies have recently faced both charges and convictions about forming prize-fixing cartels and taking advantage of monopolising the market making secret agreements with their fellow competitors.

The latest now is a Finnish elevator manufacturer that has been fined to pay 142 million euros by the European council for having formed a prize cartel together with a couple of other elevator manufacturers in the European countries. Earlier, last year, a Finnish paper mill was charged in the US for fixing prices on glossy magazine FrontPage-paper.

Guess this is not bribing but foul play anyway, is it not?

And as it happens among Finnish companies that are supposedly uncorrupted, how widespread is it really in the real world?!?

Now with the globalisation of business?

A-virus?

One peculiar custom I can not stop wondering about is the discussion of this or that virus causing the flu here in Finland.

They talk about the A-virus or a ROTA-virus and it is that virulent this year and it causes these symptoms. Just like they were old friends, which they are not. So now we live with an A-virus flu to come this winter, and it is said to be a milder variation of the same circulation amongst the population last winter and if you are lucky you had it then so you will not catch it now. Or you have it like I do; it never really hits you for you to have to stay in bed to cure yourself, so you just keep on going when poorly and half ill and for a long, long time.

Hey, this is viruses we are talking about, they change all the time and there is no cure for them before you get immune to the variation you have been infected with. Or is there?

Skiing accidents

In the times of the ongoing winter-hollidays and skiing season being at its’ heights more accidents are reported. Especially the young tend to injure themselves and more seriously than before, even as they wear more safety helmets than earlier. The increase of injuries is said to depend on people showing less respect and not taking other skiers in concern on the slopes, and also the use of snowboards with more jumps and rails are said to contribute to the growing seriousness of the skiing accidents of broken wrists and knee injuries.

Well, with our annual week of skiing holidays I still have the same skills as I acquired years ago, I take it slow downhill and am just happy to sometimes still be upright when arriving at the bottom by lifts which the off-spring make jokes about.

At least I do not get injured that often, even though I am quite accident prone.

Scary advertising

According to statistics 50% of the Finns die of heart related illnesses, and to make people more aware of the fact some quite disturbing advertising has been shown on the TV. Four people getting strapped in for a ride in an amusement park, but only two of them get their safety equipment strapped, and the other two just disappear during the ride. Well guess that is in a way true but quite awful to show it anyway.

And a Finnish electricity company has made an ad about global warming, showing a fictional weather forecast from the future with tornados and the disappearance of the Åland archipelago as a result of flooding, asking what your electricity company does do to minimize their contribution to it. And here we are now living the coldest winter after the longest and warmest summer I have experienced in Finland so far.

Coffee good is for you!

I just recently heard that coffee is good for us in several ways, not just the social beneficial effects of having a good chat among friends or the well known effects of caffeine.

To my surprise coffee contains many substances beneficial for our health, with a moderate use of coffee for a healthy person being 4-5 cups per day. Filter-brewed coffee is best as the harmful substances stay in the filter which means good news for the Baristas. Espressos and Lattes are here to stay!

Coffee is said to have beneficial effects on your cholesterol-levels and to reduce blood-sugar which means less heart-disease and diabetes. Coffee also according to the latest research slows down the advancement of Alzheimer’s having good effects on the proteins in the brain and preventing the nerve tissue from damage in Parkinson’s disease. Maybe I should switch to coffee instead of my accustomed tea?