Blog Assignment #3 T2: Carte Blanche

I´ve received an interesting group invitation at Facebook recently. “You know you are from Sweden when…” I think these sorts of statements are really fun, when they are playing at prejudices about Swedes. And then I’m raised in Sweden and believe that I’m a typical Swede this was something I really had to test. How much of a Swede am I?

1. 
   “You love complaining about Sweden when you're there, but state it’s much better in Sweden when you're abroad.” Of course! As soon as you’re abroad everything is suddenly so much better in Sweden. But you do not notice this when you’re living here.


2. 
   “You would happily catch the tube to the suburbs at 3am or walk alone through a park at night, but you'd never ride a car without your seatbelt on.” Yes, I’ve never been afraid of walking alone in the middle of the night or at any time of day. I refuse to be afraid! And absolutely, I would never drive or be a passenger without using the seat-belt.


3. 
   ”You take your shoes off when entering a house and don't get why Non-Swedes think that's funny.” I HATE when people goes into my apartment with the shoes on. Take them of people! Haha! However, when I was at my exchange-family in German its different, they never take their shoes off except for sleeping and showering, I guess! ;-)


4. 
   “You get annoyed by people standing to the left in the escalator.”
   When I was in England a week in july 2007 I got accustomed to it, they have left-hand traffic even in the escalator.


5. 
   “You plan every second of your day, including the visits to the bathroom.” It isn’t really so bad, but I like to plan my day the evening before. I book what I have to do. Many of my foreign friends teases me for this, they think that I need to ”relax more”. Then I tell them that they should plan more, hehe!


6. 
   “You end your phonecalls with 'pusspuss' and then don't understand at all why the english-speaking people around you looks at you like you're a retard or a pervert.” Hihi, YES.


7. 
   “You don't drink or eat anything that is one day past its "best before date."” No, absolutely not, so disgusting. But it's no risk that my food would get old, I eat too much! ;-P


8. 
   "You believe it is very uncommon for people under twenty five to actually be married.” When I met two of Carmen’s friends from Ecuador, both 23 years old and they had been married for four years, I thought it was real odd!

Then there are statements that aren’t real…

"You have ketchup on boiled eggs." Excuse me, I feel sick! Does anyone have that? :-S

"You constantly whine about the rain or the cold weather." In Sweden Yes, but not when you are abroad then you sometimes wish it would start raining.

"Non-Swedes laugh at you for wearing a bicycle helmet and you answer: "At least I won't be the one dying of a skull fracture"". I would say that it is the other way around. I would never put a bicycle helmet on my head, I’m sorry! Haha!

Blog Assignment #2 T2: In a nutshell

By watching the video clip http://www.storyofstuff.com/ , I was stunned over the connection between the government, the corporation and the consumption by us citizens.

I strongly believe that if we shall be able to create a more sustainable world, we all have to take responsibility and question the obsession of owning things, especially here in the Western world. I really think that the ownership request is the biggest issue. Humankind has a tendency to continuously want newer things in their homes. This makes the request in new technical gadgets increase, which means that the manufacturing industry all the time must seek to do its best in order to make the trendiest. This design hysteria creates more quantity than quality of durability in many cases. And this leads to that you need a new thing in a short time interval. The corporation’s mission is to make more money. And they are doing that by making us buy stuff, we are feeding the corporation.

Isn’t it possible for us to be happy without consuming? “Stop wasting week” – is a yearly re-emerged theme week that beholds the need of resource saving. “Stop wasting week” question the Western consuming culture, pays attention to global (un)fairness and want to encourage people to decrease the material consumption. If all the people on earth consumed as much as the average Finn, according to an international index comparison, we would need four earths. More information at: www.nuukuusviikko.net/svenska

Blog Assignment #1 T2: Should the government know it all?

The Swedish government has in the latest years provided many legislative proposals that refer to increase bugging, surveillance and violation of integrity.
Among other things it includes bugging our phones and to be able to do house search without crime suspicion, to analyze the containment in all e-mail that are crossing the national border and to be able to store information about who we call, e-mail and text messing with. A lot of this doesn’t specifically turn to crime suspects but rather all of the population.
”Trust us, we won’t misuse the instrument of power”, this is the statement from the government to the citizens. Do they really deserve the trust they asking for? Do we really want them to get us registered because of our point of views? Do we want them to know which newspaper/magazine we are reading so they can ratiocinate us from that?

We already have a big brother society. Alright, we doesn’t need any implanted chips in order for the government to know exactly where we are or where we been. The invention is called cell phone! The cell phone is exactly controlled where it been, day and night through the year. Those who don’t have a registered cash card shall know that it isn’t a problem to find the owner anyway. Sweden doesn’t need a new law, the police have already today practically right to do house search. The companies must count on that all communication is being bugged. The government aren’t protecting the companies from this but rather supplement the possibility for espionage in Sweden. This lead to that foreign companies can’t have secrecy or research in Sweden.
Through velocity cameras and environmental tax cameras all car traffic are watched in and out through Stockholm. Together with the mobile phone surveillance it can be controlled if a certain car (person) is in or beyond Stockholm.