The Flu, The Media and The People

Today I got involved in the preparedness work for the possibly pandemic swine flu. This is completely new to me, but it is quite interesting to see how these things work. It is also quite interesting to see how the media work from this perspective.

Ok, it was a very long time since I trusted what media reported, not since I worked with migration matters. But still this is new! The whole day I sat in conferenses with the responsible authorities and in our situation room. Still I get to hear a completely different story in the evening news on tv. Although they were referring to the same authorities and the information basically the same, the angle was quite different and it gave quite a different picture. But of course; if they would have just said what the authorities said and only talked about the confirmed cases it would not have been that spectacular and sensational...

However, I might not be the most suitable person to work with these matters. I might just be "too cool", I am just not the worrying kind. What I worry most about right now is that I might have to work this weekend. Instead of having a real long weekend. :-(

But on the other had there are persons who just worry too much. One of my colleagies got a call today from a person who wanted to know where he could find the hoarding lists. It took my colleague quite some time to figure out what the person meant, bt obviously he thought there were lists on things one might need to hoard in case one would get isolated. It took her even longer time to explain that there are no such lists and there is no reason for such lists and there will be no such lists nor reason to get isolated etc etc...

Too Old for the New Media??

I admit my technological ignorance; or as someone said today “I fully realise I am standing with all feet in the world of dying media”.

Even though I do occasionally blog and I am present on Facebook I am a rookie on social digital media. Therefore it is quite funny that I, who only had heard about something called twitter, but had no real idea what it is really about, in one day both attended a seminar and later followed a debate on TV about twitter (and other similar media). The seminar was called Facebook – in face of disaster and was about the roll these new media play and could play in disaster/crisis management. It was actually very interesting and opened the eyes on many, if not all of us, attending. I never thought about it as something professionally useful. Maybe that is the real sign of what generation one belongs to, not if you use it or not, but the matter of importance or meaning it has to you. For me, these things never seem really serious or trustworthy, it’s only for fun.

On the other hand; the lecturer showed some rather interesting statistics. According to those figures it is not mostly the young – teenagers- that use twitter. The largest group of users was the group 25-49. I don’t really know how to interpret that. Does it mean I am unusually old-fashioned even in my own age group?!

Happy to not be American!

I soo look forward to when the US-election is over!!!
I am so sick and tired of hearing about the campaining and whos going to win. It feels it has been going on for ever. First the primaries and then the real campain. Do people really care?!

I am also quite amazed by how biased the Swedish media is. It is pretty obvious they all support and expect Obama to win, and have been the whole time. Gone is every kind of objectivness and impartiality. It is also rather obvious how amused and satisfied the journalists are when they find some really ignorant and stupid rednecks full of predjudice and manage to catch some stupid opinions on tape. It makes me scared. Scared both to know that people like that get to vote about the most powerful post in the world, but also scared to see how little integrity Swedish journalists have. But most of all it makes me happy that I am not American!!

Small Town Crime

Yesterday there was another “school-shooting” where ten people were killed before the perpetrator shot himself. This time it was in the small Finnish town of Kauhajoki. And as always when anything terrible happen there are interviews in the media and there are people saying they find it unbelievable that anything like that could happen “in this small town” and that they never thought anything like that could happen in “such a small town”. I guess it is natural not to expect things like that to happen to you, anyone you know or anywhere close to you. But if there is something we ought to know by now; it is that these things do happen, and to me it seems they happen more often in small places than in big cities. Ok, I haven’t checked this statistically, but of all the places I can think of where things like this have happened recently, none of them is a major city or capital. I am sure that on a per capita basis this kind of mad-man-crime is more prevalent in smaller towns and communities. So maybe it is really about time we stop romanticise the small town life.

Olympics from a different Angle

Well, then the Olympic Games in Beijing is over. It is obviously the least successful Swedish game since Saint Louis 1904, where we did not even participate… Still I feel a little bit proud myself, as I guessed we would get five medals and five we got! I was during a discussion with some friends from various nations, the day after the opening, when we were discussing how many medals our respective countries would take. My friends were rather surprised and disbelieving when I answered only five, but I insisted. So, I guess I was right! (Seppi and Wouti, I hope you remember and can confirm! :-) )

Maybe most other Swedes believed Sweden would get more, only because they follow the sports in the media, which I don’t. Somehow Swedish sports journalists always praise the athletes overwhelmingly in advance. It is, however, very interesting to see the reporting from the Olympics in different media and maybe most of all so in different countries’ media. The previous Olympics I was in Shanghai and hence was watching the reporting in Chinese TV. The Chinese state television CCTV only showed the sports where China had big chances of getting a medal, which of course were quite a few, but apparently almost exclusively the sports were no Swedes have a chance. So even though the Olympics in Athens were one of the best ever for Sweden I did not see one single Swedish medal being won. At the same time there was already then a big focus on this Olympics and the Chinese aim of making it a huge national success. Now, watching these games on Swedish TV I almost had the impression China did not get so many medals and that these games were not the great success the Chinese planned for. Not until I saw the statistics over won medals. Of course they were fabulously on top of the league. It is only a matter of focus. Swedish TV probably spent more time reporting from quarter- and semi-finals, were some Swede MIGHT have a chance to advance, than reporting about another Chinese gold in diving, gymnastics or synchronised swimming. Well, it is indeed all a matter of point of view.

Poor News Value

It is amazing what makes it to the news. And sometimes I can not help wondering who the hell is interested. I can understand that the US primaries are important in a way, but it has just been going on for ages. And it is not even the real election!! Who can be bothered to take an interest in it?! It has been on the news in Sweden for I don't know how long. Now hopefully it will soon come to an end, but then I suppose the race for the real election soon starts. I am glad I am not American and don't have to pay attention to it. If I was American I would most probably not have been bothered enough to vote. But then on the other hand one might get stuck with a president as Bush...

One other thing that is amazing about the Swedish news are the absolutely unimportant and irrelevant things that make it to the news. It becomes all the more apparant when you have been out of the country for a while. (not that the Italian tv-news are that much better, but still they have more channels and hence more of a choice). The first thing I saw when arriving at the airport was the headlines of the two tabloids. Ok they are tabloids and as such maybe not worse than others, but once they actually wrote about things that happen in the real world. Now they only seem to write about things that happen on TV. After not having had any Swedish news at all for over a week I was a little curious to know what had happende. But the one had a big fat headline about "what happened after" to some participants of a TV-program. The other wrote about a commedian and TV-celebrity who apparently had to "flee" the fans at some party after the Eurovision Song Contest. Such a pseudo world!!

Today on the TV-news there was a report on a communal landlord who wanted to close down some of the laundry rooms in some of their buildings (back again to one of my favourite topics!) against a small decrease in the rent. There was an interview with one of the tenants who was explaining what a disaster this was for her as a mother of two children, now she would have to walk out of her house and in to another building in the same area. That was just impossible. Ok, I can understand that it is a problem for her. But who the hell thougth this had any kind of news value for the rest of the nation!!!

Different Lives

The last couple of weeks Swedish television has been absolutely crowded with different “galas”, music galas, sport galas, tv-show galas and film galas etc etc. This is absolutely not my kind of shows so I normally never watch them. But today there was really nothing else on TV and I had no real energy to do anything else so I got stuck in front of the screen for a while and I very soon realised another reason to why I don’t watch them; I simply live a completely different life. Not that I expect to identify myself with the sports-/music- or film stars on the shows, but of all the Swedish movies nominated for the different Swedish film awards 2007 I hadn’t seen one single one!! Not even the documentaries or films that were broadcasted on TV!! I felt so out of tune with the rest of the country!! I could only imagine what it would have been like if I would have gotten stuck in front of the sports gala. Then I would not even have known the stars of the gala!!

Modern Freak Shows

To follow up on the TV-theme I just have to come back to another theme that I have touched on earlier, the programmes that teach people how to live their lives. Just happened to end up watching a show about dieting obese children. It is a British show about an obese 11-years old girl. After only watching it for a couple of minutes I realise it is not only about teaching the family how to eat healthier and exercise, it is about educating them like parents normally educate their children. So the family even was thought not to use bad language!! It is amazing!! It is so prejudiced. It is almost like an old-fashioned freak show, where you put poor, uneducated white trash on display and then do a “good deed” by telling them how to live their lives and become better people!! How can they get away with that?!!? And how can any adult persons accept to be told how to talk and not use bad language on a TV-show??

Almost famous

I just love the way they call the local TV-channel here in Kristinehamn, KLTV. Ok, it is a logical abbreviation for Kristinehams Lokal TV, but still it makes me think of something completely different. It makes me think of that 80-th’s TV-series Midnight Caller, with Jack “Nighthawk” Killian as a late night radio talk show host. Do you remember? Ok, the name of that radio station was KJCM, but still….
“Good night America. Where ever you are!”

Congratulation Serbia!!

Not only to winning the Eurovision Song Contest, which of course is great and well deserved, and I am really glad for that, but I think Serbia won a lot already by sending Marija Serifovic to the competition. It was so refreshing to see a female artist who is not only a great singer, but also can perform without being half naked. She is also so far from the standard stereotype of the Balkan female ideal; not skinny, no silicon boobes, no blow dried long hair and heavy make-up, no miniskirt and no high heals (ok, she might have brought five choir girls to make up for that, but anyway...).
I really do not care whether she is a lesbian or not, but if she is, I think that is an even greater progress for Serbia, considered the general attitudes towards homosexuals in the macho country Serbia. The ESC has for quite some time been regarded as a rather gay-event, but it has been a predominantly male gay event, so it is about time that the lesbians also get their share of the attention!

The absolute contrast was the Moldovan contribution. It felt so taste-less, tacky and cheep that the country mostly known for trafficking of young women would send a young girl dressed as a really cheep porn-star. Bad, bad, bad!!

So, maybe we should have a re-union in Belgrade next year and enjoy the show!?! :-)

Calming my environmental conscience

Right now I feel there is a huge boom for questions about our environment and especially the climate. Everyday there are new articles about it in the papers, reports on TV and radio and even media that normally don’t deal with these matters do now. It is very political correct. Of course there are many reasons why this happen now, the latest UN-report about the climate change is only one and probably less influential than Al Gore’s film.

Of course it is great that people start to become aware and care about this and I really like the focus on what everyone can do in your normal everyday life and also the focus on that it really matters what you do about it. But still I worry about the effect. Sometimes these things just seem to be a trend or maybe even a fashion and after a while people forget and go back to life as before. There is also a risk that when there is too much talk about it, people tend to get frustrated, feel hopeless or get fed up with it. I must admit I do to some part belong to this second group. I like to see myself as a fairly environmentally aware person and I try to act accordingly, but now I have the feeling that no matter what I do it is not enough.

I believe my worst environmental crime is the way I travel. I love to travel and I do it a lot, both privately and professionally and my international travel is mostly by plane. I find this hard to change and I can not say I would appreciate an increase of the price for flying, especially as I don’t feel sure about what this “extra tax” really will be used for. Somehow I don’t see the connection how the climate automatically will benefit from increased costs for flying, unless you increase the price that much that hardly anyone can afford it anymore. Therefore I have come up with my own idea. I am not saying it is the best and for sure it is not sufficient, but still I kind of like it. I have been thinking about that for every time I fly somewhere I could also donate some money to some environmental organization working with plantation of trees. I know there are mixed opinions and it might not be enough and it will take time for the trees to grow etc etc, but at least it feels as a straight connection, and until anyone comes up with something better that is what I will do, if only to calm my bad conscience. Anyone who would like to join me?

Here is an interesting link, unfortunately only in Swedish: http://klimatfakta.com/2007/03/12/vilken-nytta-gor-koldioxidkompensation-genom-tradplantering/

Modern Stalking

It is amazing what Google can do for stalkers! Not that I am stalking anyone, nor even googling people regularly, but recently I was sitting in front of my computer and was a bit bored and somehow came to think of an old ex-boyfriend. “Hmmm, I wonder what he is doing now” I thought and then I just tipped in his name in Google. I did not find any certain information about him, not like he had a private homepage or so. I did not even find a picture to prove that it was really the person I was looking for and not just another with the same name. But I did however find traces of him and they were clear enough to make me sure it was him. I found his name on the homepage of his work and that made sense. Not that he was working there those 15 years ago I knew him, but I think he mentioned that is what he would like to do. I also found some advertisements he had submitted in a local paper, all addresses pointed to the place where he used to live, these ads told me what sports he is (still) doing and from them I could also tell he and his girlfriend have three kids. From another advertisement a year later, I could guess they are not planning more children as he was selling some baby equipment… Then it got almost scary and I stopped googling. It felt as if I was sneaking into someone’s life and I felt uncomfortable. I am happy there is nothing to be found about me at Google. You will not even find this blog!

To blog or not to blog...

For being a blogger myself, I read very few other blogs, partly because whenever I do I feel like stop blogging myself. Either I find other people’s blogs so much better than my own, which makes me feel inferior and wonder why I am doing this; or they are so pretentious they just make me tired; or I find the other blogs so extremely bad and nerdy that I start to wonder if mine is too. Nevertheless, I will keep doing it for a while still.

However, the last couple of days, there has been a massive media debate about the blog of Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, Carl Bildt. He has been criticized for using his blog to vent personal opinions on foreign policy and other issues in a way that would not be suitable for a person in his position and also for using it for spreading information without having to answer to the critical questions of journalists. Therefore I had to read his blog today and some of the comments there. I must say, I don’t understand what the fuss is about. Isn’t blogging just about giving a personal view on things? And I am quite sure he is smart enough not to reveal any state secrets on his blog. And isn’t a blog a perfect way to communicate directly to those interested, without the filter of not always very objective and unbiased journalists? Because I can not imagine that he would stop talking to journalists completely.

With all respect for some journalists, I have to say that many journalists and media in general have lost credibility. They seem to see themselves as a purpose of it’s own, never to be questioned themselves. Questioning a journalist sees to be the worst thing you can do sometime.

Without any other comparison between my blog and Carl Bildt’s blog, I see we have one thing in common; he started writing in English but has shifted to Swedish after some consideration. I have been thinking about that too, as I feel most of the readers understand Swedish and above all, I think the quality would increase if I did. But at the same time, I need the practise and I know some non-Swedish-speaking people read it every now and then and those are the one I speak to most seldom anyway, so I will continue…

Fear of being afraid

Oh, I got so happy when I read this article in SvD today: http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/idag/did_14632526.asp. Unfortunatly it is only in Swedish and I can not translate it all, but it is about the importance of taking risks and the danger of overprotection. It is really true that sometimes the most dangerous thing is fear itself!

Lost in a virtual world

This weekend I spent quite some time with a good friend, who for the first time tried the game World of Warcraft. Although I am absolutely ignorant about computer games I had heard about it and knew it is very popular, but I did not know until this weekend that apparently more than 8 million people all over the world play it and I had no idea what it was all about. Fortunately this very good friend of mine has the patience of an angel and obviously didn’t mind having me hanging over his shoulder asking (stupid) questions (Thank you, if it had been the other way around I would have gone mad and killed “myself”). So now I know a little more, even though I still haven’t played it. What fascinates me is the amount of time you can/have to/will spend on games like this. I just don’t understand the attraction of creating a second character and live a virtual life. This is of course even more the issue in the virtual world of Second Life. I have never seen it but read a long article about it over the weekend and as far as I understood it is not even that much about fantasy anymore, but about creating a parallel world that looks quite the same as the real one. Then I am completely lost! What the hell is the point in living a Second Life parallel to the real one?? Aren’t people busy enough with this the first one that we live here and now?? How can life in front of a computer give you more kicks (if that is what it is all about) than real life?! To me it seems a little like having one of those Tamagotchis, if you still remember them. I just don’t get it!

Life Aid?

Considering the fact that the human species has been around for quite some years one would think we would have gotten some training and gathered some experience in how to live life. But somehow we seem to have been better at making life more complicated, than at coping with it.

Ok, we have found a lot of solutions for many problems, but we are also very good at finding new problems. Somehow I now have the feeling we can no longer live our lives ourselves, we need help to do that. Now I am not talking about the need for doctors, psychotherapists, lawyers, technicians or all other people we whose help we sometime might need. I am just fascinated about all TV-shows that aim at helping people live their lives. We have seen so many docu-soaps trying to make stars or top-models out of hopeful wannabes, we have seen loads of extreme makeovers of people and their homes, we have seen tons of different dating shows and we have seen people fight and get married on TV, and we have had the Super-nanny teaching people how to raise their kids. Nothing of this is new. However, lately I have noticed a kind of TV programme that for me seems to take this one step further. It is no longer any competition and it is not focusing on how you look or how your home look but it is trying to tell you how you are supposed to live you life!

I Swedish TV we now have one show running that is closely following a family with small children, while they are visiting other families with children to see how they cope with everyday life. There is another show where professional economists are helping families who are trapped in debts. They try to explain the basics of economy and tell the families how they must change their way of living to be able to pay their debts. Another show is called the Single Coaches. There a group of probably self-elected “experts” teach people how to behave to get out of their miserable single life. They are taught not only how to dress and style themselves, they are also taught how to flirt, how to move, how to talk, how to act on a date etc etc..

I am not saying anything of this is wrong, but when the hell did life get that difficult that we need someone else to live it for us?? And are we really the first ones who want to meet someone to live with, to have a nice home, to cope with debit and credit, and are we the first ones to have children?? I don’t think so. And when the hell did we get that bored we need to watch other people live their life on TV??