entries on english: February 2003 Archives

I have had a bad conscience about it since before Christmas. That's when the first reminder arrived in the mail. Since then I have gotten two more and all three of them have a alarming red stamp saying "We have a shortage!"

So today, after collecting the theatertickets for Saturday, I did a good deed. I went to the blood donor center Södertappen.

I have only been a blood donator once before, in August last year. So the nurse was kind to me and asked me how I had felt after the first time and if the iron pills had left any secondary effects. I said no, I felt just fine afterwards and she replied that my blood count was excellent.

- You are a A+, she said.
- Is that uncommon, I asked hopefully, and wondered why I thought it would be so much cooler to have a rare blood group.
- No, not very, she answered, 37% of all Swedes are A+.

She pricked. It didn't hurt and I got a rubber ball to squeeze while she drawed 450 ml blood from me. I studied the ceiling and after a couple of minutes, it was over. When I left, I got to pick a present from a glass cupboard. You don't any money when donating blood in Sweden but the present and a the feeling of being a kindhearted citizen is more then enough ;)

I picked a pink toy pig!

When I got home, I checked the blood bank and saw that the hospitals in Stockholm really have shortage of A+ blood. So I guess I did a good deed today then :)

According to Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish Armed Forces has gotten its first pilot case regarding female veils. A member of the Swedish female defenceorganization SKBR decided that she, on religious grounds, wanted to wear a veil. Participating in a course at Eksjö garnision she was taken aside and told she had to put the veil away or she couldn't continue the course.

This is interesting!

Swedish state television (SVT) was recently criticized because they wouldn't let a female reporter host a tv-show because she was wearing a veil. The veil would distract the viewers, according to SVT.

Passing McDonald's the other day I saw one of their employees wearing a headscarve with the McD-logo on.

So how will the Swedish Armed Forces deal with this? Would a headscarve in the same fabric as the Swedish uniform be okay? In about a month, this issue will be brought up at a meeting in the headquarters. I will definately monitor the outcome of these discussions.

"Swedish journalists don't cover wars very good. Half of them haven't done military service and the rest are women"

This is what our journalism teacher said when we were discussion the possibility of a war against Iraq.

I found it interesting since:
a) I have done military service
b) I am a woman

But I didn't get myself involved in any discussion with him, I am probably just an exception that proves the rule. Watching the news today (Aktuellt in SVT at 21.00) I learned that 500 journalists are participating in a military training program in the US which is preparing them for covering the war on Iraq.

These journalists will be given the opportunity to follow the American troops all the way to the front line. But of course there will be restrictions, they cannot write anything they like. They must keep to certain rules, for example not writing about on-going missions or revealing too much details.

This might be something for the Swedish Army to copy?! Military training camps for journalists. I could be the drill sergent ;)

BTW, I saw the movie "No Man's Land" yesterday and decided never to get involved in tv-journalism. Especially not from war zones.

Heute hab' ich Deutsch gesprochen!

Jenny invited me to meet her Austrian friend Viktor today. He is an exchangestudent from FH Kufstein who currently is studying at our university. She cooked for us and we talked about everything from the skiing opportunities in Huddinge to how the Austrian newspaper "Krone Zeitung" handled the Temelin plebecite about a year ago. Very interesting!

This is my favorite tree casting its shadow on my house (I live to the right on the first floor).

When I lay in my living-room sofa, I have an excellent view of the tree and sometimes, when I feel overstrained and tired, like right now, I just want to stay in my sofa and watch my tree and stop to care about the rest of the world.

I will be feeling such a relief when this week is over.

Please forgive me for I have sinned... I haven't been totally honest with you guys...

Since I started blogging in English about a year ago many of my regular readers started complaining and some lost interest and stopped reading here. The majority of the opinons expressed meant I ought to start writing in Swedish again.

English is not my mother tounge and I understand my texts can be a bit difficult to read and especially since I'm not the world's most brilliant English-speaker.

Anyway, all along I have kept another blog. In Swedish. For many reasons, one is that some things are just better said in Swedish :) Another reason was I thought I needed a place to write where not everyone knew who I were. To perhaps let off some steam without the risk of hurting people. As it turned out, this other blog never really had that function, I more or less continued to write like I had always done.

A few people knew about my other blog (*vinkar till Anna och Elin*) and for the rest of you... welcome over to have a look at Hypodea :-)

I did not join the 75 000 other swedes (according to DN) demonstrating against a war on Iraq this weekend.

I had to concentrate on my article about Estonia. The deadline is today at noon and after writing all weekend I finally finnished yesterday around midnight. Boy was I tired on Estonia by then! ;)

And even if I wouldn't have had the article to blame, I wouldn't have joined the demonstrations. That however, doesn't mean I support a war on Iraq. And not supporting a war on Iraq doesn't mean I love Saddam Hussein. And not loving Saddam doesn't mean I think the american way is the best way in this particular case... and does this babble make any sense at all?

A cable-fire somewhere in the underground system caused the trains to run on ten-minutes-traffic during the worst rush-hour this morning. T-Centralen, where all three underground lines meet in Stockholm, was crowded and I climbed on to a bench to get a better overview.

I love to commute. Öffentliche Verkehrsmittel is one of the best invention ever made. When it works...

"... but was has changed is that we have accepted that multiculturalism is here to stay. It's not going away, we will have to learn how to live forever with diffrence, with people who follow diffrent rules.
Living with diffrence is an art of life, one of the most difficult aspects of art of life because it's always disquieting, slightly frightening. You don't know how to behave, you are not sure what the situation is and if you really understand eachother well. You feel anxious, apprehensive... right? But now we know this situation will last..."

Zygmunt Bauman was being interviewed on tonight's Mosaik and said something like that (and much more). An old man in an armchair smoking his pipe. He looked just as wise as he must be and I can't wait to read "Modernity and the Holocaust" which I recently bought. I have wanted to read that book for a very long time and have a feeling it will become one of my favorites, just like Erich Fromm's "Escape from freedom".

Tomorrow I'm going with Elin to her film-history class because they are watching Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph des Willens" which I also have wanted to see for ages.

And then I better start writing my Estonian-article because on Monday at 12 o'clock it should be finnished...

Went to hearing with the title "Is the openness threatened?" at the university today (referring to the principle of public access to official records, called "offentlighetsprincipen" in Swedish). We were supposed to, it's a part of our course at the moment, but I would probably had gone anyway because the subject interests me. They had managed to gather a competent panel and the discussion had two focuses: a new law regarding how information should be stored used by courts might make it more difficult for journalists and citizens to gain access. Why and is that really good? Shouldn't authorities try to be as open as possible?

The second issue was paragraph 7:16 in the Swedish Official Secrets Act which is very unprecise and ambiguous written causing trouble for journalists trying to get access to diffrent kinds of documents. I find these subjects very interersting but to tell the truth, they lost me somewhere between the paragraphs. Suddenly it became very complicated for someone without expertise knowledge.

I actually have some, expertise knowledge I mean, so I should be well prepared. I studied a part of this problem before for an article I wrote, namely the secrecy regarding photos of individual persons in official registers, for example the passport-photo register or the driver license photo register. Today, anyone can get hold of someone elses photo from either one of these registers, you just need to know when the person is borned and his or her personal code number (which also is public information if you call the national registration). The Justicedepartment is investigating how this can be changed without damaging the "offentlighetsprincipen" and that was my story.

Does anything of this makes sense? I just realized how difficult it is to explain. Especially in English. Anyway... The hearing gave a glimpse of the complexity of these questions. I wish I knew more about law, so that I would be able to follow the discussion better...

I returned from Tallinn this morning after spending four days in the cold and snowy Estonian capital. I travelled with Jenny and Daniel, two of my classmates, and the trip was a part of our journalism class we're taking now and the goal was to learn under what conditions a foreign correspondent works. It should result in an article on a burning Estonian issue and I found several interesting things to write about. The problem is I feel so insecure. Who am I to think I know something about Estonia after spending four days in Tallinn? It feels so... presumptuous. I mean, there must be alot of people who know a whole lot more about Estonia then I do. I feel like an arrogant foreigner who sweeps in, skims through a couple of books, makes a couple of interviews, makes some photos and then goes back home to write a story about how real life is in Estonia.
I asked myself the very same questions after having lived in Austria for 10 months. "Do I really know enough to analyze the Austrian political situation? There must be several people who are more suited for this then me". And I knew a whole lot more about Austrian politics back then then I know about Estonian politics now...

Is it just bad confidence or the Gretchenfrage of journalism?

"Journalists are people who write about things they know nothing about for people who cannot read" is sometimes said to be the characteristic of journalism. I always wanted to be another sort of journalist, but does that mean I must get a masters degree in every subject before I can open my mouth?

The only fair way to do this, as I see it now, is to start from myself and my own experiences in Tallinn. I cannot pretend to to be someone else then who I am. Hopefully it leads to a result as well... ;)