Greenpeace stowaways

Saw three Greenpeace-activists yesterday morning. They paid for Helsinki internal tickets, tried to get to Espoo, and got kicked out of the bus. Upon being kicked out they were swearing that they imagined they were in Helsinki.

I gave them the benefit of doubt then (map-challenged people are common, and being abroad does not help), but now that I know that they were going to an organized event in Espoo, the benefit of doubt has weakened somewhat.

One day I'll go postal and mount a device right up the manufacturer's ass

My employer-provided phone (Nokia 6600) is a buggy shit, and the phone I actually own (Nokia 3510) was made when dinosaurs roamed the earth and cavemen beat each other over the head with cell phones. So I am considering buyng a new one.

One new feature I am very interested in is the possibility of connecting the phone to the computer by a USB cable. (BTW, when I am the queen of the world all the people who manufacture devices that need their own proprietary USB cables will be rounded up and flogged publicly, and told not to do so anymore. On the second offence they will learn what "cell phone penetration" really means. Unless they actually like it.)

Anyway, the description of most of the phones that have a possibility of a USB connection has some words about Windows and drivers. Not a word about Linux.

Having never owned Windows I have no clue whatsoever why they seem to need a separate driver for each and every USB device, but Linux tends to use its own drivers and see the devices connected to its USB ports as mass storage. Or sometimes not.

I can understand Nokia's and other device manufacturers' reluctance to write drivers for Linux, but why the hell can't they just say whether the damn thing will work on Linux or not? It does not take a fucking Einstein. All it takes is a device, a computer running Linux, and a person who is capable of physically attaching the one to the other and writing down the result. "Can be mounted on Linux as mass storage" or "cannot be mounted on Linux as mass storage".

(Actually, the speed with which Nokia has answered my question on the subject shows that they have already tested it. Is it so hard to put that info on the web?)

Kiroileva mamu

Kuukautisista ja liian vähäisestä alkoholin nauttimisesta johtuen rupesin ajattelemaan että olisi hauskaa jos olisi joku "kiroileva maahanmuuttaja"-sarjakuva, samantyylinen kuin Kiroileva siili. Koska en osaa piirtää edes tämän verran, joudun tyytymään kirjoittamiseen. En itse asiassa edes hahmota toimiiko tällainen kirjoitettuna. Kokeillaanpas:

Kukkahattutyttö: Onpas ihana kun tulee lisää maahanmuuttajia, saadaan vähän väriä katukuvaan!
Maahanmuuttaja: Osta spraymaalia perkele! En mä mikään vitun väriläiskä oo.

Maahanmuuttaja A: Paljonks Kela maksaa sun Kämpästä?
Maahanmuuttaja B: Vittu se mitään maksa.
Maahanmuuttaja A: Millä vitulla sä sitten elät?
Maahanmuuttaja B: Mä käyn töissä, saatana.
Maahanmuuttaja A: Miten niin töissä? Mikä vittu se sellainen on?
Maahanmuuttaja B: No sellainen jossa mennään töihin joka päivä ja tehdään töitä ja saadaan palkkaa joka kuukausi.
Maahanmuuttaja A: Ai perkele! Ihan oikeissa töissä! Mäkin kokeilin sitä vuonna 1986, ei ollut yhtään vitun hauskaa!

Militaristinen setä: Miksi helvetissä ne somalit tulee tänne? Ja vieläpä nuoria miehiä, perkele! Puolustaisvat isänmaataan, saatanan käpykaartilaiset!
Somali: No vittu, minähän olen puolistanut! Tapoin vaikka kuinka monta muiden klaanien tyyppejä, mutta sille saatanan sodalle ei vain näy loppua.
Militaristinen setä: Mitä siitäkin olisi tullut jos jokainen suomalainen mies olisi lähtenyt karkuun Ruotsiin, perkele? Me jäätiin vittu tänne ja puolustettiin isänmaata, ja tehtiin se helvetin hyvin. Jokainen suomalainen vastasi kymmentä ryssää, saatana! Teidän pitäisi painua täältä vittuun takaisin kotiin ja tehdä samoin!
Somali: Mutta mistä vitusta mä löydän kymmenen ryssää siellä Somaliassa?

The right name for the right man

OK, it's not nice to make fun of people's names, mostly because they have already heard every joke you can invent at least a thousand times. But hey, the guy is hopefully not reading my blog.

The WHO decided to recommend circumcision for the prevention of HIV infections. And who is speaking to the media about this? Dr. Kevin De Cock, the director of the WHO Department of HIV/AIDS.

It's tax time

Time to file the US taxes. Forms are easy to find, but I had no clue where to send them.

Nowadays you can e-file. The basic idea is, according to their webpage: "You can file your taxes on the Net if you have a computer, an Internet connection and appropriate software. You can probably buy the software somewhere. No, we have no clue where."

It looks like I am not about to start filing on the Net yet, but luckily (or maybe purposefully) that page had a link to the addresses where people should file their tax forms if they are filing them the old way.

Scared?

Very few people use their own names when writing about the Religion of Peace nowadays. This is quite understandable, considering, especially in the areas where there are significant minorities thereof. I don't, however, think that Finland is one of those areas - yet.

The level of fear is pretty high, even here. I realized it when I started getting emails from people (BTW, thank you, guys, once again) offering to help with the song video, but strictly anonymously, and people suggesting that even if I write under my own name I shouldn't give out any other useful information.

Personally, I don't think the danger here in Finland is all that high right now. OTOH, you never know what tomorrow will bring. One of the reasons this blog is in my own name is simply that when I started it I had no idea I would write so much on this particular topic. I also had no idea Theo Van Gogh would get killed, etc.

If I ever start feeling that this is getting dangerous, I will start a separate anonymous blog just for this topic, either by myself or with other people.

The reason I am thinking about all this today is that Sheik Yer'mami got "outed" by Cairns Post journalist Gavin King, who approached him for an interview and guaranteed him anonymity, and then went on to reveal his name, age, address, birthplace and place of business in the printed article.

I certainly respect Sheik Yer'mami's and everyone else's desire for privacy and safety, but I don't think that in general there is much safety in hiding. I think that it is safer for everybody if everyone who can decides to stand up and be counted - especially in places where it's still not very dangerous to do so. This would assure that it would remain not very dangerous to do so.

As for dangers - one danger I never thought about before this year: will it ever be safe for me to visit a Muslim country? Considering that my name is quite rare, if any of them google the visa applicants they will surely find my writings. (The question became current for a moment, but now it is theoretical again, especially since after this summer vacation my passport will become unfit for travelling in most of the Muslim world).

Remember those innocent old times when Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie was a new and absurd thing, and American newspapers printed cartoons with the First Amendment and a note "void where prohibited by ayatollah"?

Sleepy

Haven't been able to sleep properly for a couple of days now.

I never know whether to go to work or call in sick under such circumstances. Usually end up going to work, just because staying in and trying to sleep is not very conductive to properly sleeping the next night.

OTOH, feeling like a vegetable at work is not nice.

Oh, deer...

Necrozoophiles live among us.

Cheesy coffee-ey goodness

Just made some coffee and cream cheese ice cream. Yummy.

This is one of those flavors that Finns usually just don't understand.

I've always found it funny that Finns don't usually like coffee-flavored things even though they drink a lot of coffee.

I have also wondered how come the coffee-flavored stuff in Finland is usually called anything other than coffee-flavored: "mokka", "espresso", "cappuccino", even "lavazza".

Confessions of a former multiculturalist

This is my answer to the question "mistä teitä sikiää", which I hear every once in a while:

Multiculturalism is a very easy mistake to make - or at least was in the 80s and in the 90s. There are some people who encourage it for their own political purposes, but the reason the multiculturalism has become so popular with the educated masses is IMO simply that decent educated people (decent != educated, but there are a lot of people who are both decent and educated, and I am speaking about them) have a very strong tendency to know only other decent educated people, and have a chance to observe a perfectly peaceful interaction of cultures.

When you think of foreigners your think of your Spanish or Canadian or Sri Lankan or Arab coworkers; your friend's Chinese wife and another friend's Israeli husband; a Russian, an Indian and a Nigerian that you went to the university with; the kid of some Iranian dissidents who went to your high school; your father's Bulgarian or Portuguese coworker, etc.,etc. All of these perfectly nice people, getting along without any problems.

Of course people who come from different cultures can along very well. You can see it with your own eyes. People who claim otherwise - well, probably they just haven't seen it with their own eyes yet. Or are stupid. Or evil.

Since these people whom you know are all good people, and get along pretty well, their cultures must all be quite nice, and get along perfectly well, right?

Or maybe you don't believe that. Maybe your Bangladeshi coworker has told you about the war and how Muslims used to kill Hindus, or maybe your Cambodian friend told you about how Khmer Rouge used to kill, well, everyone. Or maybe even you yourself came from Russia and actually have a pretty good idea that the Western culture is much nicer than most or all others.

In this case, obviously, the people who come to the West came to the West because they preferred living in the West to living wherever they come from, and therefore like the West better. And of course they know better than to make the West into a semblance of their countries of origin.

Especially if you yourself are part of an immigration wave consisting of people who disliked their country of origin and were committed to the West, you assume that most non-Western immigrants are.

You might not care much for Islam, but you understand Muslim immigrants all the better for it: after all, who would ever want to live in a Muslim country?

Sometimes immigrants rob or rape, but of course so do the natives. Sometimes they clearly behave in bad ways that they have clearly brought from the country of origin, but these are Isolated Incidents (tm) and Exceptions from Which You Shouldn't Generalize.

And then you walk down Edgware road in London, in a Muslim neighborhood, and lots of people try to give you flyers calling you to Islam, and you are much annoyed, but not that much more than with Jehova's Witnesses or Hassidim.

And then you walk on Trafalgar Square the next day, and there is a demonstration, thousands of them, carrying slogans that say "Islam - the Future for Britain", and suddenly you realize that you really don't want Islam to be the future for Britain, or any other civilized country for that matter. Also, you find yourself thinking "if Islam is so wonderful, why don't you bugger off back to some Islamic shithole".

The same summer some things slowly connect in your mind. Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie, WTC bombing in 1993, an attempted attack on France with a plane hijacked in Algeria; the 1995 bombing of the Paris subway... a tiny minority of extremists, to be sure, but why always the same minority?

You start thinking suspicious thoughts about Muslims on your flights.

You read up on Israel and Palestine, which you have always assumed to be just a territorial conflict, and realize it's not just that. You find it natural that Palestinians hate Israel - after all, warring neighbors always do. What you don't, however, find natural, is that so do Pakistani and Indonesians, considering that they are neither neighbors nor at war.

And then you read an article where a Somali girl casually says that her parents would get angry if they found out she has read Anne Frank's diary, because "Jews are our enemies", even though there is probably not a single Jew in the whole Somalia.

And then your country gets attacked by a group of Muslim terrorists, and you see a lot of other Muslims celebrating. And then they attack your country's ally, and your country's another ally, and a place that just happens to be often visited by tourists from your country's another ally, and a lot of random Buddhists in Southern Thailand, just in case.

And then you check out the uneducated anti-multiculturalist rednecks and their writings again, and suddenly you realize that they don't mean every single immigrant, and suddenly they make a lot more sense than 10 years ago. They have changed. Or you. Or the world. Or all of the above.

You search for sensible Muslims. You find them, too. You also notice that they tend to receive death threats when they speak out.

You feel the world change around you. In the Western Europe where you moved just over 10 years ago there used to be no places where you'd be afraid to walk alone at night. Now there are places where you wouldn't go with a group of friends in the daytime. In the Western world of 1989, Khomeini's fatwa was taken as a joke, an insane demand by an insane old man. In 2006, there is a lot of otherwise normal-looking people who say "we should respect their culture" under similar circumstances.

You see huge crowds all over the Islamic world burn flags, embassies and occasionally each other because of a cartoon in the Islamic world's obviously most popular newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.

You listen to what various Muslims say. And you mostly don't like it.

You are receiving new information and adjusting your worldview. You don't like it either - but then the people who were unable to adjust their worldviews according to the new information did not live long enough to become your ancestors.

At some point you realize that the Exceptions from Which You Shouldn't Generalize are the ones with whom you do get along, not the ones with whom you don't. Even though the majority of the ones you meet in person are still very nice.

And then you see multiculturalists realize the same thing. Instead of bravely continuing with the "Isolated Incident" line, more and more of them start saying "we'll have riots on our hands" and stuff like that. They still sing the multiculturalis song too, but I wonder for how long anymore.

"They are good and enrich our culture... besides, pissing them off is easy and dangerous"

During the last year or so, the multiculturalists (I mean those people who say that immigrants enrich our culture, that communities with very different cultures can always easily live together, that multiculturalism does not create any problems and that any bad things the representatives of the third-world cultures ever do are isolated incidents that we cannot and should not generalize from) started using a new kind of arguments: "you can't stop them from moving in anyway", "the ones already here will get really pissed off", "you'll need the army for that", "printing those pictures is disrespectful, and, besides, it will cause a riot".

OK, I get it: these are perfectly nice and peaceful people who are just like us and whose rapes, violent robberies, riots and terrorists are totally Isolated Incidents, and who will start rioting again if we don't let more of them in and give them the Most Peaceful title. I understand.

The reason I am pointing this out is not to accuse multiculturalists of hypocrisy: all kinds of groups and individuals, probably myself included, easily switch from realism to idealism and back whenever it happens to suit them. The reason I am pointing this out is that, in this particular case, this is a fairly new phenomenon. Until about a year ago the multiculturalists sounded rather purely idealistic. The reason I am pointing this out is because it is a pretty new development.

Either I am hearing the kind of multiculturalists that used to be silent before that, or the multiculturalists have found realism. In the latter case it will be interesting to see what happens to the multiculturalism as an idea, and whether or not it will survive the encounter with realism.

Immigrants - who are they?

No, I don't know either. This posting is just a list of things to consider when trying to guess who they are and what to expect. Most of then are rather obvious. All of the following is empirical and not scientific, of course.

1. Security problems:

Some groups are inherently a security problem, in the sense that no matter how much you screen them, if you let enough of group X (say, Muslims) into a country you will have a security problem. Will, not might. Generally, if a group is a security problem everywhere else, it will be a security problem here, too.

(This is not a reason to completely close borders for them, IMO. An individual Muslim who has not been suspected of participation in Islamist activities is a very minor security risk, and can often have good reasons to move to a country (spouse, job, etc.), and the benefits of letting them in usually far outweight the risks. But if you want to bring in large groups of workforce it's better to get them somewhere else.)

Also: yes, it's true that for every perfectly decent-looking Muslim immigrant (yeah, I know that your friends - or mine - may be exempt from that, but immigration authorities usually don't have time to know them as well as people usually know their friends) there is a small (but significantly larger than average) risk that either a) they are a closet Islamist, b)they will become a Islamist eventually, or c)they will never become an Islamist, but their children will. This, however, is no reason not to try to filter out people who are already Islamist. You can never be 100% sure that a person is not a security threat, but there are some people about whom you can be 100% sure that they are a security threat. Being persecuted for Islamic extremism in Muslim countries is a rather good sign of it. This is a no-brainer, or should be, but some Western countries have admitted people who were an very odvious security threat.

2. Ethnic/religious minorities:

This should also be obvious, but by taking specific ethnic and/or religious groups from some country you get different results. You get something different depending of whether you get Iraqi Arabs or Iraqi Kurds, Iranian Muslims or Iranian Bahai, Lebanese Muslims or Lebanese Christians, Estonian Estonians or Estonian Russians, Russian Jews or Russian ethnic Finns, etc.

3. Education:

Also an obvious thing. Security problems might well exist in both groups, but immigrants' employment prospects are vastly different depending on whether they are, say, Iraqi engineers or Iraqi goat herders.

(The stereotype of an uneducated third-world immigrant is very strong. It is, of course, based on the fact that most of them are uneducated, but amazingly many people believe that they are all uneducated. I remember when I worked in a store and one of the workers was an older Iraqi man, at some point everyone was totally amazed that he had a university degree in English literature. "They have universities in Iraq?!")

4. Timing:

During an immigration wave different people arrive at a different time. Even if they belong to the same ethnic group and social class. The Russian Jews who went to the US in 1972, in 1978, in 1988, in 1991 and in 1998 were fairly different groups of people, even though they largely knew each other and were related to each other. Timing and structure of immigration waves are a complicated question, but to simplify it grossly: the most dynamic people, the people with the most initiative go first. This might mean that they find jobs easier and faster, or that they make better criminals. The structure of immigration waves tends to depend on the situation in the country of origin, too: if there is a developing crisis, the smartest go first. If there is some ongoing problem, the most decisive go first.

(This, of course, is a vast generalization. There are surely some very intelligent and decisive people leaving Russia even now. But this generalization really does have something to generalize from, in that first there were immigrants who went to the US without any idea how it will turn out, and having never even heard of such a thing as public assistance; then there were immigrants who knew how the system worked and believed they could make it in the US, and then there were immigrants who only wanted to go when they already had enough relatives in the US, etc.)

5. Who are they - in comparison to the rest of the original country's population?

In Finland I often hear the stereotype that there must have been something wrong with the immigrants/refugees back home, or else they would have never come to Finland. This is usually not the case, but sometimes it is.

Sometimes they are persecuted minorities or individuals. Usually persecuted people are persecuted for some reason. Most often this reason makes no sense to anyone except the persecutors (why did the Hutus kill the Tutsis again?) but sometimes, especially in case of individuals, they have been persecuted for a very good reason. Usually, however, they aren't.

Sometimes they are upper- or middle-class. Sometimes they are lower-class. To make another rough generalization, oppressive regimes tend to generate immigrants or refugees who are somewhat higher-class than the general population, countries with very large income discrepancies and a very poor underclass tend to generate lower-class immigrants, and all-out wars usually have pretty much everyone on the run. If you have an oppressive regime with very large income discrepancies and a very poor underclass that has just started an all-out war you will probably actually have to ask who the refugees are.

6. Loyalties

Loyalties vary. It is quite normal for a normal immigrant to have divided loyalties, and not necessarily a bad thing - depends on how well-aligned the interests of the old country and the new country are (Finland+Spain might work better than Finland+Russia). With refugees, the loyalty questions are a lot more complicated: some really have divided loyalties, some are all for the old country, some are all for the new country, and some hate both on general principle.

In general a high level of connection with the old country does not predict much good (I suspect that this is one of the factors of why Russians here are doing worse than in the US). And it's not like any particular act of establishing a connection with the old country is bad in itself - but the desire to do so very often on the part of the whole community is not a very positive predictor for integration.

There are some really strange things that affect loyalties and integration - one of the reasons Russians "bond" with the US better than with Finland is that the US is a big country, and Finland is a small one, and they want to be a part of a big country. I would never have imagined it until I heard so many of them say it.

New template

Got a new template. The main news are the hierarchically arranged archives and the labels. I might add labels to the old posts, too, if and when I feel like it.

Tried to keep layout and color changes to the minimum, but there are a few.

Hey! Can I have some slaves too?

Research commissioned by Finnish Ministry of defense shows that a conscript army is cheaper than a professional army to whom you have to pay salary.

And in tomorrow's report from Nokia, I am sure: "our research shows that free workers would be cheaper than paying salaries to the employees".

While we are at it, can I have a couple of slave boys to pay my mortgage?

On the other hand: forget the slaves. Just pay me for conducting similar studies, and I'll be all set.

Vittuvittusaatana!

Nyt alakerrassa on nigerialaisten helluntalaisten lisäksi kotimaisiakin. Heillä - luojan kiitos - ei ole omaa bändiä, mutta he ulvovat oikein reippaasti, ja joka saatanan arki-iltä tällä viikolla.

Kun ne soittaa jotain humpantapaista se ei ole hirveän kovaa eikä kovinkaan ärsyttävää, mutta jatkuva "halleluja! halleluja!" joka tulee seinän ilmanottoreiästä varmaan ajaisisi kovempiakin tyyppejä hulluksi.

Ajattelin suorittaa kostotoimenpiteitä vapputorvella, mutta kävi sääliksi viattomia sivullisia.

Immigrants are forever

One - and probably the most important - immigration issue that the US handles better than Finland is that the US understands that people who come to the country are there forever, and is realistic about it. Well, tourists are usually an exception, but even they sometimes stay. When you let a refugee, a guest worker or a foreign student in, there is a very good chance that you are never going to get rid of them. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but this is the kind of thing that should be discussed realistically and taken into consideration when admitting people into the country.

Refugees come to the host countries, and most of them are already offically in need of a permanent resettlement and are given some kind of permanent or soon-to-be-permanent residence permits, either immediately or after a long application process. Some are issued temporary permits on the assumption that the problem in their country of origin is only temporary. The time flows, and some of them finds spouses, some find jobs and the rest get their temporary permits extended. Then, after a few years and a few residence permits the authorities discover that, against all their expectations, the third-world shithole where the immigrants have originally come from has still failed to develop into a semblance of a civilized country, say "what the heck" and give them a permanent residence permit. After having supported them for several years on taxpayer money, usually.

For some reason Finns tend to have an illusion that refugees will eventually go home. Regular people have this illusion more often than immigration authorities - I often run into people saying that refugees should not be expected to work because they are here just to be protected. These people mean that they think the refugees here are temporarily. (At least I hope so - otherwise they would mean that refigees should be entitled to lifetime support in Finland just because they ran away from somewhere, and that is a bit too much even for the most multicultural folks. I hope.)

I've never run into this in the US. There might be some kind of a temporary refugee visa there, but I've never met a person who'd had it. Or a person who imagined that refugees eventually go back. There, people know that refugees are forever.

IME the understanding that refugees are here to stay is a healthier way to relate to them than expecting them to go back, both for the country and for the refugee (there are a lot of refugees that also imagine that they will eventually go home, although they won't). The causes that produce refugees are usually long-term, and the people who flee some genuinely short-term trouble like floods don't usually go all that far.

As the result of the realization that refugees are there to stay Americans are both somewhat more welcoming, somewhat less patronizing, and have more expectations of the refugees. They hear your sob story in the consulate, give you a visa if you are lucky, take care of the elderly and sick and provide the newly-arrived refugees with a health insurance for a while. Then you come to the country, and come to your case worker, and they give you a booklet with some useful information, tell you what officials you have to visit, where the English classes are and how many months of support they will provide you, and wish you good luck finding a job. This might sound a bit uncompassionate from the Finnish perspective, but the jobs are usually somehow found, and fairly quickly.

The same goes for guest workers from undeveloped countries. (The people from developed countries usually move to other developed countries for some personal reason, so their moves are a lot less predictable.) There are exceptions among the people from undeveloped countries, too, but in general a person who has moved from some Camelfuckistan to a civilized country does not want to go back to Camelfuckistan any more than you want to move to Camelfuckistan. And they won't. Deal with it.

The common objections: from the left: "but of course they want to go back to their homeland", and from the right: "but of course we can make them go back". Sure thing. Just ask Germany. Or France. Or the Netherlands.

(Dealing with it IMO means a)don't let any group of refugees or foreign workers in unless you can accept that they will probably become a permanent fixture, and b)any integration measures should be applied to any immigrants you can get your hands on (i.e. everyone on public assistance), even if the triple choir of multiculturalists, anti-multiculturalists and immigrants themselves is singing "but of course they/we will go home". They won't.)

The worst is when the immigrants themselves believe it (this is mostly a refugee problem). Nothing is quite as annoying as an immigrant who has been in a country for many years and have done nothing to build a new life, learn the language or find a job, but instead keeps saying how he or she will eventually come back home on a white horse (or in a black limouisine). I've known a number of Russians like that, and I still haven't seen any of them ride a white horse on Red Square.

In the US system tends to gently correct those people, unless they are elderly: at some point they notice that the public assistance is about to run out and they still want a lunch every day, so they have to go out and get a job. In the countries with eternal public assistance they can go on about "going home Real Soon Now" forever. At taxpayer's expense, naturally.

Mascara

What do people use mascara for? (I mean, as opposed to permanent coloring.)

I understand that some people tend to use different colors on different days, but there are a lot of people who use the same mascara daily - wouldn't it be easier to just dye the lashes?

Or is the "mascara look" (which is somewhat different from the dyed look) a desirable thing in itself for a lot of people?

Pant crisis postponed

One pair that I classified as both "too small" and "have a hole between the legs" turned out to be the right size, and have only a small hole on the ass. With any luck I'll survive till my summer vacation.

(I usually buy my pants once a year, in the US. You can get really nice jeans there for $10 a pair. But in case of emergency I sometimes buy pants here. The last time was a bit more than a year ago, and they promptly fell off.)

I buy bras in the US, too. Although lately my size have been very hard to find, even though there are smaller and larger sizes all over the place. I am still looking for a way to blame Islam for that. Probably Osama Bin Laden is sitting on a pile of bras in Tora Bora.

A deadlock

Probably gonna write some thoughts about immigration sometime soon, and here is a somewhat absurd conversation as a prologue to them.

A few years ago my old friend S. has visited me here in Helsinki with her family. We hadn't seen each other for 15 years. They still live in Russia.

We had a pretty good touristy time, and then came over to my place for food and drinks. All that time S. herself, her husband and her parents sounded very excited about Finland and the West in general and kept talking about how bad it is in Russia and how the real life is here.

I happen to share this opinion, and a lot of other people do, too (some don't). But then I am here, and I sort of assumed that pretty much everyone who wanted out of there has already gotten out of there. But they really sounded like they wanted out of there. What made the situation really mysterious is the knowledge that S. had been offered jobs in two European countries, and decided not to take them.

After a few glasses of wine I asked the natural question: "Why are you guys still living there, then? Or are you trying to get out?"

The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees, and they gave angry looks to each other.

"We are ready anytime," - said the parents, - "but the kids don't want to go".
"I'd go anytime," - said the husband, - "but S. does not want to go".
"I'd go as soon as my husband learns English," - said S., "otherwise he is not gonna find a job".
"I'd start learning English as soon as we move," - said the husband, - "what's the point of learning it now?"

I took a deep breath and pointed out that a) learning language before moving is in fact quite useful and tends to save time, and b) S. can support the whole family on one salary in the West better than on two salaries in Russia. This started a new round of complaints about the deadlock: S. not wanting the responsibility of being the sole breadwinner even for a short while, the husband not wanting to study language in advance, and both wanting to live in the West anyway.

"Ever considered going as refugees?" - I asked. At the time some countries still accepted Russian Jews as refugees.
"No," - said S. firmly, - "if you move somewhere as a refugee you end up washing floors for the rest of your life".

This made my jaw drop. This is undoubtedly true for uneducated third-world people, at least in some places, but S. and I know pretty much the same set of Russian/Soviet refugees, and none of them spend their lives washing floors - all the working-age ones are employed in some kind of professional jobs.

"Do I look like I am washing the floors for the rest of my life?"
"No. But you were much younger when you left."
"My parents were much older, and they are not washing floors either."
"Yes, but they are smart."

Well, what can you say to that? I shut up, which I should have done half an hour earlier anyway, and they continued to talk about how nice it would be to live in the West.

Pant crisis

My jeans fell apart. That's the third pair of jeans in 3 or 4 months. I should own a jeans factory.

Right now all the pants that I own belong to at least one of the four following categories: "too small", "too large", "have a hole between the legs" and "capri". Except one pair that is only a little bit too large and has a hole on the ass, and can therefore be worn with a belt and a sufficiently long shirt.

Since purposefully gaining weight or sewing up the holes is out of question, the only options remaining are either a really fast diet in order to fit into the biggest of the too-small (2-3 kilos should do it), or declaring the start of the summer and putting the capris on.

And no, I really don't feel like shopping right now.