This actually is a backpack I got in the US last month.
The Finnish NATO predicament
Finland has a continuous history of being a non-aligned country, but some politicians hereabouts have started to wonder whether they should be joining NATO. They know that they would be most welcome, but domestic public opinion seems to oppose it, preferring the status quo of universal military conscription. Somebody close to me summarised the situation with the following line:
"Who do I trust to defend Finland, crooked foreign politicians or drunken Finnish teenagers?".
Time travelling
During the past few days I've seen quite a few stories that involve time travelling. From an episode of Babylon 5 to the Spanish movie Open your Eyes to the novel The Forever War, I spent this weekend trying to analyse rather convoluted timelines, and finding myself enjoying them.
Interestingly enough, I know that some people close to me have certain difficulties following those plots whereas for me those kind of paradoxes are kind of normal. That's what happens when you grow up with a steady diet of science fiction.
Superclásico fever
In every league in every sport there are derbies. You know what I’m talking about, the kind of grudge games that build up in the whole city or country that are one of the highlights of the season.
In Mexican football, there is none bigger than the América (águilas, or eagles) vs. Guadalajara (chivas, or goats) rivalry. The 200th version of that game was played last Sunday, and my beloved Chivas won.
The most rewarding part of the whole experience is when we look at the league table, where Chivas is at the top (having lost one game in their whole league campaign) and América at the bottom (having won only two in their worst season in history).
Chivas’s Copa Libertadores campaign hasn’t been so good, but there is still a chance to qualify to the knockout stages of that competition too. Needless to say, I’m a happy Chiva congelado.
The SEO rapper
This guy rules.
Tototoromoomin
What happens when you mix Finnish & Japanese cartoons?
Work in Finland
This is a marketing campaign for Kauppalehti, the leading Finnish business daily that brings forward the labour shortage in Finland. The English language version of the online component of the campaign is actually quite bad, whereas the Finnish one has real content in it. I guess that contrary to what the campaign seems to be about, they didn’t care too much about the immigrant / foreign audience after all.
Funnily enough, there was a completely wasted bum/drunk just next to this ad, but I couldn’t bring myself to take that picture. I guess it would have been too poignant of a social commentary.
British transport infrastructure
Is worse than in some "third world" countries I know. I was there the fatidic day of the opening of Heathrow's Terminal 5, but fortunately in another section of the airport so wasn't affected.
However, my Heathrow Express train from Paddington was delayed for almost an hour, as the thing just decided to stop dead in the beginning of the journey (but outside the station). Since I've already experienced quite a few problems in the tube during previous trips, I really wonder when (if ever) they will get their act together. I'm just amazed by the rivers of money flushed down the toilet because of downtime…
Immigrant taxi driver
For the first time in 7 years altogether I've lived in Finland I took a ride with a taxi driver of a foreign background. Born in Turkey and around my age, he has been here for more than twice as long as me, so pretty much half of his life. The funny thing of course is that we were discussing in Finnish abou this experiences here and he told me something very revealing:
Almost every time he picks up a white, blond, blue-eyed customer, they speak to him in English and are surprised when he answers in Finnish (which he finds rather ridiculous as he's a Finnish taxi driver). Furthermore, he mentioned a couple of "adventures" with skinheads in Tikkurila during his youth that fortunately came to nothing. The most interesting of his experiences for me was when we discussed about our Finnish friends. He said once, after going out for drinks, one of them said: "Hey, we're not that different after all". Notice that this was his friend, so I wonder what does the average Pekka Virtanen in the street think when he sees somebody like him or like me…
We had a very good discussion during the whole trip and I really enjoyed hearing his take on certain things I've also experienced. Wish him the best of luck.
Recommended Book: The Flight of the Creative Class
I've followed Richard Florida's theories for a few years. Building upon The Rise of the Creative Class, where he introduced us to his model whereupon a certain group of people whose job relies not only on the consumption of knowledge, but also on the creation of it, and how the world economy is changing, he introduces this book where he expands on the concept and what does it mean for individuals and countries.
The edition I bought starts with his essay The World is Spiky where he critiques The World is Flat, saying that it only looks flat from one peak to the next, but there's plenty of places that haven't yet gotten connected.
Furthermore, the whole idea of the book is simply that the people constituting this creative class are highly mobile and will settle wherever they see fit, therefore having a huge influence in the prosperity of the places they choose. According to his analysis, this choice is guided by 3 factors: Talent, Tolerance & Technology, and he goes on identifying places in the United States and abroad that are doing all they can to attract and retain their "brains".
Whereas his results for North America seem well founded, he tends to get in a flimsier position when identifying creative class hubs outside of that zone. He, for example, lumps Helsinki-Tampere-Oulu as an area (which is rather like talking about Brussels, Barcelona and London being in the same neighbourhood).
There are, however, certain things that leaders in Finland should take to heart, as he mentions explicitly in page 173: "Not all cities are able to compete effectively for global talent. There are a signficant number… indicating that they are either attracting a very narrow band of immigrants or not attracting many immigrants period. Cities in this group include… the Scandinavian centers of Helsinki and Oslo. These places are challenged by their lack of appeal to global talent and will need to improve their diversity and tolerance if they wish to compete at the global cutting edge."
In other words: your educational system is excellent, your use of technology second to none, but the lack of diversity puts a hold on the ideas and points of view you can create here, which is a definite minus in these terms. As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of foreigners here who work as hard as everybody else here, and not feeling welcome will make them leave, taking their skills with them. Furthermore, as more and more Finns get to know and appreciate that kind of diversity somewhere else, they will also leave.
For Mexico there is also a lot of lessons to be learned from this book, but I have mostly covered them in another post. Further moderation of Mexican racist attitudes would also be most welcome.