The New North: The World in 2050. Laurence C. Smith by Laurence C. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book raised significant interest here in Finland, and it is not difficult to see why. Reminds me a lot of Joel Diamond’s work (for good or bad) without the hysteria. You can see it started as a climate change study that turned into an exercise in geopolitical prospection. You might or might not agree with its future scenarios, but it was an interesting and not too heavy read.
As you probably know if you read this blog, one of my passions is food, especially of the Mexican kind. Unfortunately, most of the Mexican food you find outside of North America is not really Mexican, so I make a point of testing Mexican restaurants when I’m traveling to make sure they are more Mex-Mex than Tex-Mex so that I can recommend them to friends.
You can find an abridged list after the map below (they’re listed by how far away they’re from Finland, with the first being the farthest out).
Even if it is geographically and culturally quite close to Helsinki, visiting Stockholm is always an interesting experience. The city is much more cosmopolitan, people are generally more fashionable, and the riksvensk accent sounds quite peculiar to somebody used to the way Swedish is spoken across the Baltic. Always a pleasure to visit, especially now that there is a good Mexican taquería very close to downtown (they even sell corn tortillas!).
I had heard that a proper Mexican taquería had opened in Stockholm recently, and this week I had the chance to visit. As in any such places back in the land of nopales and chilangos, they don’t serve any of the elaborate traditional dishes like mole and such (which doesn’t make their food any less good), focusing on the humble taco in its varieties. They prepare bistec, pastor and a variety of quesadillas, as you can see in their menu and they even have a tortilla making machine.
The reviews have been very positive, and I’m glad as the food is great and the real deal. I wish them well.
The WHO has raised its alert status to level 4. There have been over 2,300 cases in Mexico now, 700 still in hospital, 150 deceased. There are confirmed cases in Spain and Scotland, and closer to home suspected cases in Belgium, Sweden, Norway & Denmark. To make matters even worse, there was an earthquake in Mexico City today, although there is no reports of damages.
Although Mexicans are now starting to sound worried, some still cope by joking. Some people commented that the earthquake was basically another way of sneezing, and the influenza song now has a video. People are still staying home, following the instructions of the government, and the school shutdown has been expanded nationwide. If you speak Spanish, the Mexican Presidency has live video coverage of the situation here.
I won’t go into the whole story of who the Sámi (also known in other languages as Lapps) are, where they live and what their culture is like as Wikipedia already does a much better job than I ever could. However, it was very nice to see a traditional reindeer farm while we were in Levi.
Santa’s mounts were also kind of cute.
What does this mean? What we are seeing is the shift of economic power from the United States & Europe to markets elsewhere, and especially China, India and parts of the Middle East are in good shape to reap the rewards. However, since the system is built around the countries of the G7 with the US as the main motor of worldwide consumption, co-operation between all countries is needed, or else the rise of protectionism will amplify the current situation.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in case the crisis lasts long (hopefully not) China ends up bailing the US so that its own economy can keep on growing…
I found the movie especially poignant given the current immigration debate in Finland. Not too long ago, Finns were leaving the country, facing similar issues in other lands to the ones found by newcomers here.
A few weeks ago we were fortunate enough to visit Stockholm, to finally see Nortec Collective live. Nedless to say, we jumped around like crazy and enjoyed the gig immensely, especially since instead of Banda samples they actually had live musicians backing them up (who played an encore of their own). We even ended up backstage with them after the gig, and naturally welcomed them to come to the Helsinki Festival whenever they could.
It was a very welcome pause, and it was nice to see that Stockholm still looks the same. An interesting note was that everybody spoke to me in Swedish (even though I had a tejana on most of the time), while that seldom happens in Finland with or without funny hats.
