D&D Web

Now it’s official: I gave back my greencard!! Yes, I did it. It was necessary in order to enable Dana to travel to the US and also to avoid problems for me when entering with the Greencard. So yesterday, after having made an appointment a while back, I went to the US embassy here in Helsinki and gave back the laminated little thing for which we had waited so long.

Any regrets? Nah, not at all. I can still travel with a normal visa waiver program and it allows me to enter without justifying my temporary stay outside the US. And in the very unlikely case of (temporarily) returning to the US, the normal business visa route is still open. So this is just fine and a good step towards our full return to Europe.

…but it is kind of weird giving this back after all the pain, fingerprinting, filling out forms and what not else that we went through getting it in the first place

Yes we made it downtown to our favourite cafe. It was a nice walk in the center. There is some stage down the market place. Maybe they put it up for today’s icehockey final: Finland vs Sweden! We will not stay for that one

It’s really sunny and beautiful here today. A good Sunday to go for a walk and coffee later. Only minus is that it got colder compared to yesterday. We had some 5 degrees yesterday, which now converted to a minus figure of the same extent. But we’ll just put another layer on top

And we have already our main target for the walk, Sandro’s Cafe. It’s one of these many cafes here in Helsinki but what’s special about this one is that the main room is made like a living room. Really comfortable. And the owner recognizes and chats nicely with us. This is just like it is here in Helsinki. Folks are really friendly. He’s a foreigner himself but has been living here for many years. I’m already looking forward to having my cake and coffee

Today I had again the confirmation that moving to Finland has been a good move when it comes to getting help while living in a foreign country. I had to buy something from pharmacy and also get a fidelity card and the woman was so nice (not the US fake nice that makes you vomit, just naturally helpful and nice). Since we moved here in May, all the people in the service area we’ve met (including doctors) have been so kind to us and so easy to communicate with (except some minor bad experience with BMW service people). Yesterday, we had to call in US to a credit card company and we heard again the “Hiiiii, hoooow AAAARE you?” in such a fake tone that you felt sick. I really do not miss that… I don’t get why people say that Americans are nice just because they greet you with their fake platitudes. I prefer so much more Europe, even though sometimes you get some rude behavior from some waiters. But we’ve also seen rude behavior in US, so nothing unusual.
Just felt like putting this down since I did not write too much good about life in Finland lately. People have been asking if we still like it here: Yes, we really do. Some things at work got more annoying than they were last year, but Helsinki and the Finns have not dissapointed us so far.

Just read this article about an abortion ban bill being almost passed in South Dakota and freaked me out! It’s absolutely unbelievable that they can go back to the Dark Age of prohibiting women to have abortions! And who is yelling louder: men! I just remember the horror stories about the communist times in Romania when women had to go to the factory’s doctor every month to be checked if they are pregnant or not and then monitored so that they won’t have an abortion. Maybe that’s what the Americans should do. Just treat women as child factories. That’s their job anyway, isnt’s it?! Of course, nobody cares about the children or the mothers after they give birth. Nobody from the yelling self-righteous people will help them raise the kid, pay for the childcare and food. That’s not the point. They don’t actually care about the child anyway. They just care about the fetus! Then maybe they should take the children that are born from parents that cannot afford to raise them. Of course they will take them when they’re old enough to go to war and get killed!

So there it is, the UN report, saying that Guantanamo should be closed, torture immediately stopped and the responsible ones brought to justice (anybody wonder why the US did not endorse the international court of justice in LeHague?).

Sure enough, the US rejects the calls for closure, calls the allegiations non-substantial and based on hearsay. When the UN inspectors asked to get into Guantanamo, the US finally agreed last December with the small little condition: no interviews and meetings with prisoners (what did they expect the inspectors to do there but talk to the prisoners??). The UN gracefully denied the offer.

It does seem to work keeping your own people living in denial! You keep telling them: “Hey the UN is accusing us but does not have any substantial content, just rumors.” Then you turn around and deny the process of evidence gathering.

It is this hypocrit standard of defining what is right or wrong, that is so sickening. While the US invaded a country based on the same kind of behaviour, it has no problem in doing so itself (anything new in this?). Even worse, it defines its own behaviour as being comform with international human rights conventions through self-defining torture and applicability of the Geneva convention. It is interesting to see how long brain washing and double standards can prevail…

“…It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into servants and whores. Hearing and seeing the same stories over and over makes me feel sick. After hundreds of years of slavery and colonisation of Africa, globalisation of african markets is the third and deadliest humiliation for the people of this continent. The arrogance of rich countries towards the third world (that’s three quarters of humanity) is creating immeasurable future dangers for all peoples.”

Hubert Sauper, director and writer of Darwin’s Nightmare – documentary film nominated for Oscars 2006

It was impressive this morning when going to work. You can see changes in light every week. I walked to Nokia at around 8am, and it was quite much light. It is really nice Of course, the snow makes it even brighter…

Last night we watched the short program for men figure skating in Turin. I am not sure anymore what this is about since it seems to me like most of the skaters, including Plushenko, do not even need a music for background because their steps do not match the music anyway. It’s true that for the past years I did not watch too much figure skating so maybe that’s the reason that it all looks more like a circus act now than skating. I liked a lot Johnny Weir and an Ukrainian, Anton Kovalevski, that got pretty bad grades but I found he had the best match of skating to music. Plushenko skated like a possesed person with a music that did not fit at all (except maybe at the beginning). Yes, his steps were impressive but nothing beautiful… I hope the free program will be better.

Some observation after going to two shows in Finland: more people than I’ve seen before get up and leave before the ending (when it just looks like it’s going to end). At the horse show, the horses were still in the arena and doing some good bye jumps when bunches of people started to leave. Is it fear of getting stuck in the traffic that gets out of the parking??!! It could be but it was not that bad anyway. Remembering some of the bad experiences from US (like trying to leave by car from the Tweeter Center in Mansford, MA) getting out from Hartwall Arena was nothing…
I noticed the same thing when we went to a Barbara Hendricks concert. Maybe it’s fear of staying in the line to get back the coat!
Whatever it is it’s just rude! Maybe that’s why not too many famous people come to Finland ! Or maybe they are like that because not too many famous people come to Finland !