I have always been aware of North Korea, despite it being a remote and fairly small country. As a child I found the North Korean mass gymnastics shows and the ‘human moving pictures’ really beautiful and fascinating. They were occasionally shown on television in Sweden.
Every part of this picture is made by dancers
or children displaying differently coloured cards…
I was aware that the country that these impressive spectacles came from was ‘Korea’, but I did not realise at the time that the country was in fact split in two.

In Sweden, for some strange reason, it was not unusual for infertile couples to adopt (South) Korean babies.
Ignorant of politics and geography I assumed that these children came from the same country as the mass-games and a really pretty Korean doll that I owned. All were referred to as ‘Korean’ so how was one to know the difference?

North Korean Embassy

When I was eight or nine perhaps, a massive crumbling (but quite elegant) house in my neighbourhood was bought by North Koreans to become their new embassy in Sweden. The house had stood empty and neglected for many years. Suddenly it was bustling with life.

It was then that I realised there were two Koreas. My affluent and politically conservative neighbours started making comments about ‘communists’ and references to the (quite correct) perception that Sweden was giving third world socialist dictatorships far too much aid… People commented: ‘With all the aid we send to that country, we may as well have given them the building for free! It was paid for with aid-money anyway… ”
This is the low-tech way in which the moving
pictures are created. Oops, wrong card!
I thought the new inhabitants of the building were quite industrious though. They repaired the house themselves in their spare time, rather than bringing in workers. Little by little the house’s appearance improved. A year later it looked pretty impressive. The Koreans in the garden smiled at passers-by and the presence of the new embassy did not generate any noticeable extra traffic. (In fact, you hardly ever saw anybody going in our out.) I could not see why people were so negative.

Another interesting fact was that unlike other embassies in the area, the North Korean embassy did not use large black luxury cars to travel around. At the front of the building were parked some very ordinary looking cars with diplomatic number plates.

The Dark Side of the DPRK

I spent quite a bit of time in Japan in the early nineties because my father lived there. Japan is not exactly North Korea’s biggest admirer and in the Japanese English language media you could read speculations (later confirmed) that North Korean commandos had abducted Japanese citizens (even teenagers!) from the Japanese mainland.
Megumi, a school girl who
was kidnapped from Japan.
Also, it was well known that much of Japanese drug traffic and Pachinko (gambling) parlours in Japan were run by expat North Koreans. The profit that was made from these activities was subsequently sent back to North Korea.

Strange! Funds from the most disgusting types of capitalist activities used to support a communist country? How odd! By now, Eastern Europe was beginning to open up. Communism was exposed as a failed, unworkable political theory. Eastern Europeans, if asked, would normally say that they never believed much in communism even before the fall of the wall. (Much like most Germans said after the fall of Nazism… But if nobody believes in it, how does it hold up year after year?)

In North Korea the state of affairs appeared to be the opposite. People there appeared to be very committed believers in Communism and in the greatness of their leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Even the large and vocal group of Koreans in Japan were committed believers in the Great Leader, his Juche philosophy and communism in general.
Another card display…
Kim Jong Il, the ‘Dear Leader…
Why? I was mystified and became curious… How was North Korean communism different from the failed communism in Europe? How were North Koreans able to go on as communists despite the death of the revered leader Kim Il Sung, and the really bad famine that hit the country in the mid 90s?

Information Black Spot

One odd thing about North Korea is that there is no literature produced there, no music that is sold outside of the country and there is practically no tourism there. The country is a black spot on the news arena.

Anybody who wants to travel there has to submit not only their passport to get a visa, but also a CV or university enrolment papers… Journalists of any kind will not be allowed in. Americans and South Koreans can only go there if there is a very good reason. You cannot jump on a ferry or a plane to get there if you are in Japan, despite North Korea being a fairly short boat ride away.

The only way into the country for Westerners is via train or plane from Beijing, hundreds of miles away from Seoul. It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad. For North Koreans, there is virtually no legal way out. Once in North Korea as a tourist or on business, you have to be with a guide at all times and cannot visit any part of the country that you want at will, the way that you can in practically all other countries.
Secret filming in the countryside. Somebody
lies dead, starved. People ignore it.
What is it that they are hiding? The poverty in the countryside? The fact that they allegedly grow opium on some of their best agricultural land? Stalinist style gulags? North Korea does not allow mobile phones or internet usage. They must be afraid of something; probably that un-controlled information is entering or leaving the country.

Clearly some outrageous practices are going on in North Korea. Entire families are punished for the wrongs of one member of the family; civil liberties are non-existent and the country leadership has been criminally negligent in allowing large numbers of the population to go hungry, all the while continuing to buy weapons and equipment for the army.

(The decent and responsible thing to do for the North Korean leadership would be to resign, admit failure and ask the world for help. If a country’s population is starving, that country’s leadership has failed; no excuses. But perhaps they are scared of what would happen to them. The fate of Ceusescu, Erich Honnecker and many others is probably fairly fresh on their minds.) Or are the hardships and starvation over? That is what North Korea is now saying…
The inhabitants of a collective farm
near Pyongyang. Having a day off.
North Korea has one interesting thing going for it; it is a country that tries to live out an alternative world view in a world that takes an increasingly suspicious view on such attempts. North Korea rejects the excessive consumerism and Western capitalist values that are governing almost all other countries. There are practically no other such countries in the world today.

In some interviews with North Koreans that I have seen, it appears that they are indeed aware that living conditions in other countries (including South Korea) are higher than in North Korea. However people are extremely scared of the United States and believe that almost any degree of hardship is better than having to live as ‘US Puppets’. Are their opinions well-informed or the result of explicit and/or subtle manipulation?
A grandfather explains the wicked deeds of American
soldiers as his granddaughter listens carefully…
The North Korean government is able to pick and choose what news they present in the state-controlled media. It cleverly exploits pictures from Iraq, Afghanistan and Serbia (all countries that have recently in confrontation with US/UN military). Quite frankly, if I saw such pictures and was told that my country was potentially next in line I may not be too delighted either, particularly if I had been indoctrinated into think that my country’s ideology was the only correct one…

It is also clear that 1950s American soldiers doubtlessly perpetrated some rather ghastly atrocities in the Korean War; another fact that is exploited by North Korean propagandists. Most people in the West don’t know that the US virtually flattened the entire country of North Korea, and that millions of Koreans died in this war. Really, vilifying the US is not that difficult if you set your mind to it; there is plenty to build on. The North Koreans have pictures of dead pregnant women horribly deformed, of cities where not a single house is standing and of houses consciously burnt down when people were still in them. Why do such things happen?
A Pyongyang housewife in her kitchen…
I can’t help but think it sad that every single country has to be modelled on Western values to gain international acceptance. Should a country’s perceived national success really be counted against how many Starbucks there are per ten thousand inhabitants? Aren’t alternative economical models both valuable and useful? As long as such a model is what the inhabitants actually prefer, I think it is preferrable to our consumerist society.

I am aware that I may be wrong in saying that. Perhaps Western capitalism really IS the only valid and feasible modus operandi for running a country? Perhaps it is the only way of financial model that is beneficial to the largest possible group of inhabitants in a given country. However I am not yet fully convinced. There are so many flaws with Western democracy, don’t you agree?

Axis of Evil?

I like the United States but I think it is wrong to be making categorical statements that certain countries are “evil.” There is no black and white when it comes to countries. A country can have a really wicked leader but a charming people; likewise it can have a rather out-of-order population but a focussed leadership, such as in Singapore in the 1960s for example.
Grocery shopping in the Axis of Evil. The ration is
5 eggs and a chicken per person per month.
If you are going to be extremely cynical about it, North Korea probably does not have much to fear from the US, since it has no oil, and is not moslem…It does have a strategic position though; particularly from a South Korean perspective. South Korea for all intents and purposes is currently like an island. Everything going in and out has to be shipped via cargo freighters. However if the land-route was open, cargo could be shipped with ease into China or to Europe via the Trans Siberian railway.

South Korea would never instigate a war though, and currently wants a slowly, slowly paced path towards unification with it’s poor brother state. South Koreans are scared of a huge burden on their economy as witnessed in Germany.

Personality Cult

The way that people look at the leaders of North Korea; the now deceased Kim Il Sung and the new leader (his son) Kim Jong Il is not that different for how religious believers look at religious leaders and personalities.
No metro train is complete without a
picture of the Great and Dear leaders…!
The indoctrination into ‘faith’ in the leadership, the guiding Juche philosophy and mainstream communism starts early. Every school text book, every newspaper issued, every meeting taking place contain references to the greatness of the system and the leaders. The indoctrination is so thorough that it is probably impossible not to be affected.

Propaganda?

Growing up in Sweden, I remember being told that advertising and commercial messages in Capitalist societies were the capitalist equivalent of Communist propaganda. Both were trying to make you believe something and act on it. The implicit message was that it was that both had good and bad sides to them, and could be abused.
No ads in Pyongyang’s metro, but instead some
first class propaganda murals. Impressive, aren’t they?
Who is to say that it is not a very bad thing that I am exposed on a daily basis to extremely consumerist/capitalist messages the minute I turn on the TV, open a paper or leave my house? Perhaps in a hundred years from now, the eco-system will be ruined.. People then will take a very dim view of consumerist society which brought that about…. including it’s ‘propaganda’ messages encouraging people to obtain more and more things…
Ever thought of it that way?

North Koreans stick to traditional family values, they value nature and are industrious in making do with what they have, rather than constantly buying new clothes, furniture and consumer goods. They see such behaviour as virtuous and positive. They have excellent work ethics, are well educated, well-disciplined and learn fast. All and all the country ought to have plenty going for it…

Mystical Abductions…

A North Korean pic of Megumi.
They say she committed suicide.
North Korea has abducted great numbers of foreign citizens. Particularly South Koreans, both civilians and officials, but also Japanese and possibly some US soldiers. The abductions are mysterious in that there usually are two pretty conflicting versions of events. Is one true and the other false? Is one side always lying and the other always telling the truth? Could it be that there is sometimes a fairly complicated mix of factors that play in? The strangest thing about the abductions is that there is no red thread, no logic to why a school girl was abducted from Japan, an actress for South Korea and Japanese professionals of varying age were abducted from the beaches of Japan.
Intro page for the DPRKs fast expanding
IT industry. The kids are being trained..
North Korea would state in almost all of the cases that the person defected volountarily. In some cases there was reason to believe that this could be true. Some people were ideological communists, others had messed up their personal life and wished to ‘disappear’. On the other hand, some people were undisputably snatched off a beach or captured after unintentionally crossing into North Korean waters, such as happened to hundreds of fishermen.

Some of the fishermen were returned almost immediately and said that they had been treated well. Others choose to stay and were integrated into society. One such fisherman returned to South Korea after decades in North Korea. He said that he had had a good life in the North and only left because he missed his family in South Korea. Some South Korean air-hostesses became news readers on North Korean foreign broadcasts. The film director directed a number of successful films while ‘in captivity’….
Looks like a poor third world country…
Another very mysterious case involves a South Korean teacher who simply walked into the North Korean embassy in Norway. The North Koreans said he defected and the South Koreans said that it was an incredible mistake: The man had taken a taxi to the ‘Korean Embassy’ but ended up at the ‘wrong’ embassy. Failing to notice any signs that it was in fact the embassy of a different country, the man had walked straight into a trap and was then not allowed to leave…

That somebody would not be able to spot that they are about to enter an embassy that is not that of their own country sounds too silly to be true… Surely the flag and the name outside the building would be a clue! Particularly for a teacher… And if he was indeed abducted, how did they get the man from Norway to North Korea? There must be several changes of planes on the way between the two countries. No doubt the journey also takes well over 24 hours and would involve a stay overnight while in transit.
A factory worker and her boss finish the day with a duet..
What happened to the North Korean embassy in Norway? It was closed down shortly after, as it was discovered that the diplomats were trading in cigarettes, alcohol and drugs smuggled via diplomatic channels… The same thing happened at all the other North Korean embassies in Scandinavia. Only the one in Sweden remained open after that.
A girl and her brother at the collective farm.

A Country, a Riddle…

Yet another riddle in the mystery that is North Korea! Do they have nuclear weapons? Probably… Would they use them? Probably not, unless the regime was pushed into a corner with no way out. Are they a threat to the US or Europe? Hardly! The country is the size of an average US ‘state’ or small-to-mid-sized European Ccountry. If anybody is under threat from them it is South Korea and Japan.

Why did I write about this…?

This is what will happen to the US if
it tries invading. Best leave them alone…! In case you are wondering what on Earth posessed me to write about North Korea; Well I saw a really interesting documentary about it on TV. It is a ‘neutral’ film - no clear political message, just the story of six months in the lives of two young gymnasts who perform in the mass games. The British film makers swear they weren’t censored and that they were able to film anything they wanted that was related to the two gymnasts.

Most of all this documentary shows North Koreans as normal people trying to get on with life; not robotic fanatics. Watch out for some heavy-duty anti-American slogans though. Mind you, they have never met an American and are probably only repeating what they’ve heard thousands of times. A quick check online reveals that “A State of Mind” is available here at BT Junkie. Before you can download it, you need to install a bittorrent client though.


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After having watched three episodes of “Jericho” a doomsday/survivalist soap, the “what if” questions have popped into my head and won’t go away.
Nuclear attack on London…
Do you ever think about all of civilisation just breaking down? If a war, terrorist attacks or some natural or man-made disaster just destroys all of society as we know it… ?

How would people react? What would it be like to live without any mod-cons.. ? People who are dependant on medicines such as insuline, asthma inhalers etc would have it tough and may not even survive.

You’d be quite pleased if you’d been keeping tinned food, powdered milk and such things at home. Personally I’d be in dire straits as I do not keep such things at all

Growing up during the Cold War, we did thing about these things once in a while. I remember a talk at my school about nuclear war. Somebody from ther Army said that there was enough nuclear weapons to blow the entire planet up 18 times over.

There were also descriptions of false alerts that almost triggered nuclear responses. Admittedly, Sweden would not have been at any immediate risk though.. It probably would have been a fairly safe place to be, bearing in mind how sparsely populated it is, particularly in the North of the country. I imagine people in Washington, New York and Moscow would have thought about nuclear hits on their cities from time to time.
A survivalist’s kit
But we knew that there was a good reason there was conscription. That did not take place solely to disrupt the lives of young men even though it certainly did. There was a threat and that’s why conscription was necessary.

The threat did not keep me awake at night, but in the mid-eighties (when I was too young to have a perspective on it) people got really spooked by the mysterious Soviet submarine infringements on Swedish waters. People started wondering what the USSR was planning. There were stories of mysterious frog-men being spotted on the shores of islands near some of Sweden’s Baltic Sea navy posts. I think that happened just before Perestroika started.

A book by Gudrun Pausewang that I read when I was about 12 really scared me; it was about a group of German children who survived a nuclear war in Europe. The book was gruesome enough to make you a pacifist for life!

Now we are scared of terrorist attacks instead. Here in London it is a fact of life. I used to work at Piccadilly Circus in Central London. The tube station there is probably pretty high on a terrrorists hit list. Passing there at rush hour, this did enter my mind from time to time. After the 7/7 attacks you saw a lot of policemen around in the underground, but all the extra security appears to have subsided now. There is no noticeable security at Piccadilly Circus or Bank at all, other than CCTV.
They say it’s not a question of if…. but when…
People are fairly seasoned to false bomb-alerts and tend to get irritable and frustrated rather than scared.

Now I commute via Waterloo Station, another potential target. I get off the tube at Bank - a good spot to hit if you have a problem with Western capitalism. With the crowded conditions there, there’d be a veritable mayhem if somebody hit at rush hour. Liverpool Street which I sometimes travel to is the same. All it takes is a few guys with a grudge or a fanatical conviction doing some meticulous planning and they could kill an awful lot of people. Particularly if they are prepared to die themselves. For that, I genuinely don’t believe the underground system can be protected.

It is sickening to think that people who actually grew up in England can be prepared to kill there own countrymen! Yet we read of serious plots that were stopped by Scotland Yard every 2-4 months. Media keeps repeating “It is not a question of if, but when”. But we can’t think of that, or we’d all leave London right away. We can just hope that we won’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As I am sitting at my desk writing emails to collegues around Europe I feel so inadequate. Why, oh why didn’t I pay attention in French classes in school? And why did I never study German when it would have been the obvious useful language to learn?

I took French for five years and I probably go to a French speaking country at least once a year… But all I can do is order food, ask for my size in shops and get around on public transport… The French are SO much nicer to people who make the effort to speak French. But I definitely cannot write a business letter, or even have serious conversation relating to IT…
Our eternal communication frustrations…
Speaking English is not always the ideal solution.
Coming from Sweden, I definitely to be able to speak German. My mother spoke it and so does my father. Even my grandmother who didn’t even graduate from secondary school speaks it really well. It is a very easy language for a native Swedish speaker such as me to learn. I also find it linguistically elegant.

But for various reasons I never studied it at school. As a result I can only speak very basic ‘pidgeon’ or ‘bush’ German with completely incorrect grammar. It’s kind of embarrassing, but also a bit fun, as the Germans quickly work out that I am from one of the Nordic country and am improvising.. I’ve hear that they think we are a bit of a joke! Hmphhh!

However, attempting to write a business letter in German would make me the laughing stock of ‘LargeITCorporation Inc.’ in Germany. So instead I have to write in English, despite having a very German sounding name. But neither them, nor I will be speaking our mother tongue. (For the record: Cordelia is only my ‘blogging-alias’)

I took Spanish at school for three years, but at least Spain is very far away from Sweden and I do not regularly go there. I don’t feel too bad about not being able to speak Spanish. (Actually I do know some Spanish but never mind. I found it really easy to learn and to pronounce. Being a latin language it does not come naturally to me though, like German does.)

It’s funny how us non-English speakers obsess about learning perfect English. If we are from a small country, we feel that we really also ought to speak at least one other major European language, other than English. (I am speaking now mainly for professionals…)

This ‘classic’ poster has been around for 20 years or so… Check out the Swedish Gal and
compare with my opinions! More European jokes at Fistful of Euros.

.
Because I run a pan-European project, I also need to contact collegues in Norway (no problem, I’ll write to the Norwegian collegue in Swedish, he won’t mind), Finland and Denmark.

The situation with Denmark is sensitive. Will I alienate her if I write in English? She knows I am Swedish. Last time I spoke to her on a conference call, I noticed that her English was not that good. She mainly kept quiet rather than risk getting it wrong. It is probably better if I write in Swedish, avoiding confusing words, and let her write back to me in Danish… But what if she is one of those Danish people who doesn’t like Swedes? I really need her input on the project…

The Finnish person is an easy decision; he has a Swedish name so he belongs to the Swedish speaking minority there. Hurrah - I am sure I’ll have a good working relationship with him. Otherwise the situation with Swedish is very frustrating in Finland.

Everybody there learns Swedish as their first foreign language. Yet they mainly won’t speak it and usually say that they don’t understand it. Interesting, since everything is double-posted in both Finnish and Swedish… The story behind the prevailing attitude about Swedish in Finland is fairly long and complicated and I won’t get into it here. I kind of see where they are coming from, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating to have to speak English with them when really, I think it ought to be Swedish.l

(My English is good enough now that I can pass for a Brit. So next time I go there I might just avoid the whole issue that way. My name is a giveaway though. The Swedish spoken by the Swedish-speaking minority there is very nice indeed. They speak it better than real Swedes to be honest, and it sound really nice too. )

As for my English friends; well they are constantly embarrassed that they really don’t speak any foreign languages at all, to a decent standard… It should be said that some of them speak ok French though. But nobody really blames native English speakers for their lack of English skills! It is more or less taken for granted since English is the new ‘Lingua Franca.’ When abroad, many people prefer to practice their English on them, others simply stay out of their way… British expats find this very frustrating.

The English do beat themselves up about this though, and so does British media. The poor foreign language skills are constantly popping up in stories relating to education or travel.

Sigh! We are in the same European Union, but these issues are constantly ongoing. The actual language issue is just the tip of the iceberg. At least we have the same currency….. aside from the UK, Sweden and Denmark…

I, Cordelia, a Scandinavian girl, have on my team no less than 12 Indian guys!

They are based outside Bangalore, India and are working on my project! There are also three Indian guys who work on my project and are based here in London. (Those are the most senior team members.)

Why have we got this odd set-up? You guessed it – Indian labour is cheaper than British - much cheaper! (but equally qualified…)
The Impressive ‘Campus where my team members work….

Growing up in Sweden until my early twenties, I had practically never met anybody from India. (Granted, there were some Indians in Singapore where my father used to live. But I never knew them, just ate at their restaurants.)

Here in England there are plenty of people of Indian origin. But most of them were born in the UK and there really isn’t much that differentiates them from any other British person.

When I first walked into my present employer’s office in the City of London, I was really surprised at how many brown-skinned people worked there. Really, one in four or so is actually Indian! It certainly stood out from what you’d expect in a London office. I remember thinking “Gosh, they must be doing some kind of reversed discrimination here…. “ Pretty stupid thing to be thinking, but I was really surprised.

Then I was told about the set-up whereby my company has a large part of it’s infrastructure located in India. I hadn’t picked up on that in the interview actually.. In addition, my company is using one of the largest Indian consultancies for further outsourcing. People from the offices in Delhi and Bangalore regularly come over from India and work for a few months in the UK.

With a completely straight face my manager told me that I must get signed up for the “India Cultural Awareness” three-day training course. My boss isn’t exactly politically correct most of the time. So I thought he was just being silly at first. But this is genuine corporate course, run by HR. It teaches about Indian languages, traditions, the caste system and many other things that most Europeans have a very sketchy knowledge of, at best.

Jacob , my boss, was adamant that I must attend, but then dumped enough work on me to make sure that it was completely impossible to fit it in. As a result the actual Indian lady who runs it came to see me and was very concerned that there was no time for me to do the course. Jacob then assured her that “Cordelia will be going to India on business soon anyway and then she can learn all that stuff when she is there” The trip has yet to materialise though!
….meanwhile outside Bangalore….
At first I was really struggling to understand the Indian accent of my team members. For that reason I was really reluctant to call people in India… With some people, I couldn’t understand more than about half of what they said! When I mentioned it to somebody, they said; Actually, they can’t understand us wither. The Indians just have a different intonation that any European would have… The way they speak sounded a bit ‘robot-like’ to me at first. It took a while to get used to, but now it is much easier. Still, some people sound incredibly grumpy! Their vocabulary is as good as mine, or better – the only difficulty is the intonation.

The number of Indian team members based in the UK was larger when I started than it is now. But some of the Indian guys didn’t like it here and actually requested to be sent back to India! I suppose that’s understandable – the British weather is awful beyond words and housing here is pretty bad unless you make a very good living.

Jacob my boss claimed that they have a really excellent lifestyle there, much better than we have here. (Good for them, if it is true!) However in the UK they get very little for their money. I wouldn’t know – it sounded like he was exaggerating. Surely ordinary programmers don’t have gardeners and maids!

However these guys have no shortage of top-notch electronic gadgets, designer shirts, expensive watches and the rest of it, actually. They may be the ‘cheap’ labour, but there is nothing cheap about their appearance! (I don’t actually know how that works out actually. If we only pay £150 as a daily rate for a consultant based in India, then the guy in question would be lucky to get half of that in his paycheck… (I ‘got’ a third of my rate when I did consultancy.) So how is he able to afford luxury European consumer goods such as Swiss watches and Italian shirts with an income of less than £75 /day? I must be missing something… Glad for their sake that they’re able to afford this kind of stuff though.
Romance, Indian Style: I like it!
(And aren’t ’saris’ sexy?!)
From a project management perspective there are mixed benefits with the outsourcing setup. The cost of labour in India is something like 1/4 of what the exact same resource would cost in the UK. This is of course very welcome when budgeting. But time differences, cultural differences, infrastructure problems etc makes the setup logistically difficult at times. When you most need to speak to somebody they may not be in the office. You can not walk over to somebody’s desk and have a serious conversation with them. Everything is done over email or telephone.

There also seems to be a much higher incidence of illnesses and miscellanous other family emergencies happening with Indian team members than with others. The family emergencies also seem to take a lot longer to sort out. When you least need it, somebody jets off to India for reasons that are never very clear. Although I sympathize, as any normal person would, that doesn’t make the impact on my project any less. I found that Indian family emergencies is something I have to keep a backup plan in order to be able to handle. I have to admit that I find it irritating.

There are lots of funny mix-ups as well. The guys in India didn’t at first realise that “Cordelia” is my first name. Several people wrote me emails starting with ‘Hello Neumann…’ We probably mix up their names quite badly too though!

The English team members say they ideally want to shorten Indian names (like using ‘Jay’ for ‘Jayanthkumar’ etc). But they don’t actually do it, as they fear it may be rude. (Second-generation British Indians our own age accept that without any problems.)

As the Indian guys on the team are all around thirty, many of them are currently looking to get married!
I am fascinated by their structured and scientific way of finding a wife. Very cool! It seems a bit rude to probe, but I hope to find out more about how they are getting on when we go out for a team dinner shortly.
(Gosh, I wouldn’t mind it if somebody else introduced me to a ‘fully compatible’ guy the way that seems to be happening in India… )

It is also fascinating to think that the whole caste system thing is going within the Indian group, [correction, it is not: see comment by Gana] and that I am completely oblivious to it. My English team members have known the Indian guys longer and have revealed that ‘such-and-such’ is a really low caste, but ‘such-and-such’ is a high caste….It means nothing to us though, of course, but it’s fascinating.
Indian Fabric, Textiles, Carpets….Gorgeous!
I really wouldn’t mind it if I was able to go out to India for business. My own company’s offices are in Delhi and the consultancy that we use are outside Bangalore in an incredibly cool ‘campus’ where customers are apparently driven around in little golf-carts. Very funky! Indian culture is beautiful and fascinating. I love the fabric, textiles and carpets.

Well, as things are turning out – the Indian team are not as alien anymore as they first felt. I have got to know several of them well and we can have a good laugh together. I suppose the language of IT is fairly universal.

I am not sure what I think of the whole ‘outsourcing to cheaper countries’ concept. I wonder whether it bothers the Indians to know that they are essentially the ‘cheap labour?’ On the whole, I suppose it must be a good thing that these jobs are being created in India. But where is this trend leading?

For the time being I am trying just to enjoy working with this fascinating group of people and not worry about the bigger picture. I have learnt a lot from the whole experience already and I really like my Indian team.

I have never been to North America. There is no good reason for this, it simply hasn’t happened. Going on a long and leisurely trip there is now number one on my ‘travel’ list.
Car Culture Extreme….
I can’t even drive!
Over the last couple of years I have become quite fascinated with the US and now I am saving the visit there for some exciting time in the not-so-distant future.

I’d like to make something really special of it! I have three childhood friends who live there; Lovisa outside San Francisco, Trine in New York and Jessika in rural Ohio.

First the Negative…

Up until I was about 25, I had a snobbish but ignorant view of the US. I thought I knew all there was to know about that country from constantly being exposed to American media, films, fast food etc. I guess my impression was “Why go to a country that already see and hear about every day?”
All there is to American Cuisine?
In addition I had heard all the urban myths about Americans that are circulating in Europe. I thought the US was a country mainly populated by poorly educated TV addicts, by people who never walk - only drive, by violent gang members and by greedy, egoistical and war-mongering capitalists in general…

As for things to do there, I snobbishly figured “Well what culture, art and architecture could they possibly have? The whole country is only a few hundred years old!” That’s a pretty ignorant view though, since some extraordinarily interesting things have happened there during this period! And additionally, things can be beautiful and fascinating without being old..

I also held the kinds of reservations against the US that you get if you are constantly exposed to negatively tainted newspaper articles or TV news.
Over-exposure on TV…
(The media in Sweden is normally quite critical of the United States due to the fact that the great majority of people working in media there are social democrats . Finding faults with the greatest capitalist economy on earth is part of the job description. This is slowly changing now though.)

To sum it up; the US was a constant presence in my life, but not one that interested me, or that I cared particularly for.

Now I am Positive!

My negative impression was contradicted though by the extraordinarily nice personalities of the Americans that I met here in Europe and in Asia. I noticed that they were friendly, helpful, fun and un-assuming. You really couldn’t help but like them. Their personalities didn’t fit the stereotype about their country at all. I also worked with some American techies and generally found them to be clever and hard-working.

I was also impressed that many Americans seem to have an active Christian faith and aren’t afraid to say so. I never normally meet perople like that. Those few people that I know here in Europe who occasionally attend church do so mainly out of a sense of tradition and duty. Not because they particularly want to or because they feel strongly about Christianity. I almost fell off the chair when a guy I worked with suggested we should pray together. It turned out to be quite a special moment though.

Another thing that really amazed me was realising that the US has some of the most majestic nature on the planet. Most of Europe is quite lame in comparison, to be completely honest. I discovered US nature through watching documentaries on the Discovery Channel. Just to mention a few spectacular things that I really can’t wait to see for myself:
Magnificent Badlands!
we haven’t got anything like that!

• Mighty Rivers
• Geysers
• ”Alps in Colorado, Idaho and Utah
• Fantastic Beaches and Impressive Coastlines
• Pine Forests in Minnesota
• Redwood Forest in California
• Swamplands in the South
• ”Badlands”
• The Grand Canyon
• ”Craters of the Moon National Park”
• Prairie
• Deserts
• Glaciers and Arctic Tundra in Alaska.

We have some of these things in the Europe too (but not all though!) However since we are in different countries, and speak different languages, people in general tend only to experience the nature that is in their own country and perhaps one or two other countries. Migration is quite unusual with the exception of the attraction of London and Paris on people from all over the continent. I am fascinated by the different ’states’. A country in a country?
In America on the other side, people can move to any part of the country they fancy living in!

They could grow up in Texas, go to college in New England, work for a while in Silicon Valley… then in, say San Diego and then in New York. If they want something really different they can go to Hawaii, Alaska or Puerto Rico. They could retire in a sunny state like Florida.. All without even owning a passport. That really is very impressive. I guess I envy that a bit.

(In theory we could do that in European Union too, but the language situation makes it complicated. You can’t really work in a professional career unless you have a very good command of the local language and culture.)

I also became aware that the majority of Americans aren’t very interested in visiting Europe since they perceive they’ve got everything they need on their own side of the Atlantic… I guess that’s fair enough.What’s a medieval church or castle compared to the Grand Canyon… ?

I suppose that the kind of historical remnants that we tend to value here are something you wouldn’t miss if you never got used to having it around. A scene from The Emigrants, a film about
some Swedish Emigrants to the United States”
Another very interesting thing about America is that practically everybody who lives there is a descendant of brave people who dared risking all to search a new life on the new continent.

It wasn’t the most sophisticated or successful people of their time who left Europe for America. Instead it was those who had a personal drive, a vision for their family and who weren’t afraid to take a risk.
Some of the best people left for America!
What a “brain drain”! In Sweden there are still whole villages left abandoned in the forest; called ‘dead’ villages they are left to decay after the inhabitants left for America a century ago… Their old wooden houses are rotten and probably mostly fallen to bits by now. I saw such a place once when I was out in the forest with my grandfather.

When bearing in mind the emigration to America, perhaps it isn’t so strange that Christianity is dying in Europe today. (Particularly in Northern Europe). Those who were passionate Christians left the continent for the States as they got persecuted for not sticking to the regional church practices.

Taking communion at home was illegal.
I remember from history classes that 19th century Swedes who wanted to hold prayer meetings and take communion at home got penalised and mainly left for America. At the time of learning about that I thought “Quite right too, why didn’t these people listen to the Church? Good riddance to them!” But now I realize now that they were probably the most faithful people around in the country at the time! A generation after they had left, they were pretty much forgotten. Written off. The decline of Christianity too, had started. That’s a whole different article though.

(Footnote: In my own family we had quite a surprise in the late 80s as an American from the state of Georgia contacted us and said that he was my grandfather’s second cousin or something like that. Him and his wife came to visit and were very nice indeed. They didn’t speak a word of Swedish though, and didn’t look very Swedish either. They were chuffed to bits when they realised that they were related to the (Swedish) composer of the hymn ‘How Great Thou Art”. They also really enjoyed visiting my grandfathers brother who still runs the family farm in Southern Sweden. That was where his emigrant family had left from and most of the nearby village probably looks more or less the same today as it did when his ancestors left!)

Perhaps the dynamic and intensive personalities and the entrepreneurial spirit of many Americans can be explained by the fact that modern white Americans are the descendants of people who dared to sell all their possessions and board a ship for a new, unknown, savage continent in search of a better life. If bravery is in the genes, these people ought to have it!
Now the US has its own traditions..!
In order to do such a thing you need heaps of optimism, courage and enterpreuneurship. These people didn’t even know the language of the country that they were going to!

As a European I also have to envy Americans their un-abashed nationalism. It simply isn’t acceptable in Europe to be too patriotic (unless it’s in connection with a sports game). In the US, nationalism seems to be alive and well and I guess this has been very useful for strengthening the country recently.
This wouldn’t happen in Europe.
I admire the outgoing and cheerful “everything-is-possible” personalities of most Americans. They are willing to improvise and improve how they do things, instead of being weighed down by tradition and norms. Social class, etiquette and such things are not a big thing. It is about who you are today, instead of who your familyor ancestors were. Americans seem to make the best of the ‘here and now’ and chance that a friendly manners will see them through any difficulties. I find that positive and refreshing.

In Europe we are very quick to label people based on their accents, manners background and education. I do that myself despite not wanting to do it. Lots of Europeans from disadvantaged backgrounds are absolutely unable to imagine a way out of their circumstances, whereas in the US it seems even the lowliest worker harbours high-flying dreams. There is plenty of room for individuality and freedom of opinions across a wider spectrum.

Please return for more about my American Dream! I haven’t finished yet!