In reaction to the new burka prohibitions "for security reasons" in Barcelona

What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman

As we know, one man once got on one plane in a pair of exploding hiking boots and as a result everyone else in the entire world is now forced to strip naked at airports and hand over their toiletries to a man in a high-visibility jacket.

In other words, the behaviour of one man has skewed the concept of everyday life for everyone else. And we are seeing this all the time.

Last month a Birmingham couple pleaded guilty to starving their supposedly home-schooled daughter to death. Now, of course, there are calls for parents who choose to educate their children at home to be monitored on an hourly basis by people from the “care” industry, and possibly to have their toiletries confiscated.

Then we have calls to ban sexually provocative pop videos from the television until 9pm and put Loaded magazine on the top shelf. Will this prevent teenage boys from seeing girls’ breasts? Well, whoever thinks it will has plainly never heard of the internet.

We see the same sort of overreaction to paedophilia. Just because one man in your town likes to watch schoolgirls playing netball, you must apply for a licence if you wish to take a friend’s kids to school in the morning. And I now run the risk of having my camera impounded by the police if I take pictures of my children playing on the beach.

Likewise, if I decide to take a picture of St Paul’s Cathedral I will be hurled to the ground by anti-terrorist officers and possibly shot six times in the back of the head — just because one person in Bradford once made a speech about the infidel.

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that throughout history 90% of people have behaved quite normally 90% of the time. Agatha Christie, for instance, was home-schooled and at no point was she forced to eat breadcrumbs from her neighbour’s bird table.

Of course, at the extremes, you have 5% who are goodie-goodies and who become vicars, and 5% who build exploding hiking shoes and starve their children to death.

It’s this oddball 5% that is targeted by the tidal wave of legislation. But making it more difficult to teach your children at home will not stop kids being mistreated.

It just changes the pattern of everyday life for everyone else. This is what drives me mad.

We now think it’s normal behaviour to take off our clothes at an airport. But it isn’t. Nor is it normal to stand outside in the rain to have a cigarette or to do 30mph on a dual carriageway when it’s the middle of the night and everyone else is in bed. It’s stupid.

And last week the stupidity made yet another lunge into the fabric of society with the news that government ministers were considering new laws that would force everyone to take a test before they were allowed to keep a dog.

No, really. Because one dog once ate one child, some hopeless little twerp from the department of dogs had to think of something sincere to say on the steps of the coroner’s court. Inevitably, they will have argued that the current law is “not fit for purpose”, whatever that means, and that “steps must be taken to ensure this never happens again”.

The steps being considered mean that every dog owner in the land will have to fit their pet with a microchip so that its whereabouts can be determined from dog-spotting spy-in-the-sky drones, and that before being allowed to take delivery of a puppy, people will have to sit an exam similar to the driving theory test. The cost could reach £60, and on top of this you will need compulsory third-party insurance in case your spaniel eats the milkman.

So to ensure that someone in the north called Mick doesn’t shove his pit bull into a primary school playground to calm it down, I will now have to computerise my labradoodle and answer a lot of damn fool questions about when my dog should be on a lead.

In other words, the normality of dog ownership will be skewed. Instead of spending your free time with your pooches, throwing balls or tickling them under the chin, you will be forced to provide tea and biscuits for someone from the department of dogs while he inspects your cupboard under the stairs for evidence that they’ve eaten the cleaning lady.

This will achieve nothing good. It will ruin the enjoyment of dog ownership for millions, it will result in thousands of abandoned dogs, as people realise they can’t afford the insurance, and yet it will make no difference to men in the north called Mick, who will continue to tattoo their dogs with gothic symbols of hate.

What good did all the airport legislation achieve? None. It simply means that you and I now must get to the airport six years before the plane is due to leave and arrive at the other end with yellow teeth, smelly armpits and no nail file. Did it prevent a chap from getting on board with exploding underpants? No, it did not.

Happily, however, I have a solution to the problem, a way that normal human behaviour can be preserved. It’s simple. We must start to accept that 5% of the population at any given time is bonkers. There are no steps to be taken to stamp this out and no lessons to be learnt when a man with a beard boards a plane with an exploding dog.

Government officials who are questioned on the steps of coroner’s courts must be reminded of this before they speak. So that instead of saying the current law is “not fit for purpose” and that something must be done, they familiarise themselves with an expression that sums up the situation rather better: “Shit happens.”

-Jeremy Clarkson

The Sunday Times 07.03.2010

An afterthought on 12.6.2010

Despite having lived in 6 different countries during my life, I still have so much to learn about culture, identity and respect. It's humbling to realise that. I read over my post from two days ago and realised I wrote it feeling somewhat frustrated and a bit angry, and I feel that my intolerance came through perhaps a bit too much, especially in the part about culture and language. It can be difficult to embrace difference while juggling the many differences that fluctuate within your own identity.

I think that, as I am thinking more and more about belonging, establishing some kind of sense of community and having a network of friends and family to give their support which will be particularly important if I am blessed with a family one day, I am more and more conscious of the way I construct my identity. To some extent my identity is a case of pick and mix (although I can assure you I am by no means an extreme case), which makes for a lot of thinking as to what aspects of culture and society, and of what culture and society, you want to take on as your own and pass on to the next generation. I feel like I have spent at least 10 years mulling over this matter and only now am I starting to see myself a bit more clearly. Or so I thought.

Yesterday I was speaking with my dear anthropologist about the fact that, while I am keen to try and do something new and "settle down" a little bit more when I move back to Spain, how silly I feel about getting involved in a community that isn't mine (Gracia, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain), and about my interest in being involved in a project to do with Latin America because, as I already pointed out, I am not from that continent. He astutely asked me why I was so keen to be involved in something to do with Latin America, and why did I think I had to get involved in working with e.g. a support group for Latin American women. Was there not something else I could do that wouldn't make me constantly question my involvement and my own identity?

I was a bit taken aback by his question. It made me realise that not only had I limited myself to a certain idea of Latin America and of being involved in some kind of community development project, I had undermined my own identity. I was trying to come up with a way of fitting a mould that I was never going to fit instead of creating a space for myself. That is not to say that I could or should never be involved in something that purely corresponds with who I am (if it were the case I don't think I'd ever find anything!). It simply made me realise that I sometimes compromise myself for no reason and seek ways of being me which maybe aren't who I am at all.

When a Colombian friend of mine said to me a while back that I was "practically Colombian", I took it as a wonderful compliment and a sign of friendship and acceptance from someone who takes pride in her country and her heritage, but also as a sign of perhaps having something of an insight to life and culture in her country. Now that the football World Cup is on, I join my Mexican friends in the pub, wear my Pumas t-shirt and support the Mexican team in some kind of desperate attempt to identify with these people who I have learned to love, but at the cost of what? At the cost of my Finnish and "other" heritage? Why do I sometimes not feel so strongly about those heritages?

For the past two months or so I have been reading and learning a lot about Colombian political systems due to the presidential elections in Colombia that have their final voting round on the 20th of June. I am also reasonably knowledgeable on Colombian education policy because of it is an integral part of the dissertation I'm working on. What frustrates me is that I probably know more about Colombian politics and education policy than about their Finnish equivalents. And occasionally I take this frustration out on my dear anthropologist, who, while taking an interest in Finland and its culture, is by no means as interested in it than he is in his own culture. And there is no reason why he should be. Having a strong interest for Latin America and having many friends and a significant other from that geo-cultural region, I sometimes I forget - as funny as it may sound- that in fact I in am NOT Latin American, never will be and should never even strive to be. Although I have learned to embrace my uprooted Finn-identity, I sometimes think that my identity is an obstacle. It of course, is NOT an obstacle. I just sometimes make it into one. I sometimes exaggerate the importance of other cultures and belittle "my" culture. And sometimes vice versa - being annoyed at people who think the Finnish language is "weird", or praising the Finnish social security system and every other possible system to high heaven.

Why is it that after all these years I still have such a love-hate relationship with my Finnish heritage? Or, better yet, why do I still struggle to find the right balance of my "other " heritage, all the many heritages and cultures that I love and can identify with due to my uprootedness? Why the imbalance?

All those cliches about getting to know yourself and finding yourself are true. It takes time to get to know yourself. It takes courage to live your life the way you want to. A dear friend of mine recently said that she was more afraid of succeeding than of failing, and I felt that at least to some extent I could identify with her feelings.

It's madness!

Why are we so afraid of ourselves?!

What I have learned.

My academic year at UEA is gradually coming to a close. I am in the process of writing my dissertation, and in a few weeks’ time I’ll be moving back to Spain. It has been a tough year in more ways than one: being a full-time student after a 5-year break; being in a long-distance relationship; trying to find my feet in a small city to which I had no previous connections. It has definitely been a learning experience. I think it took me about 6 months to feel more at home here and more settled in my friendships, and then the academic year was pretty much over after that. Some of my course mates have already left Norwich; others, like myself, are coming and going for the past couple of months. We have all been dispersed somewhat – not that I really feel like we were exactly united and in the same place at any point. But yes, geographically we are all dispersed again, and those of my friends and acquaintances that remain Norwich are few and far between. We are all off to start a new adventure, or to return to where we were at before, just that little bit more knowledgeable about international development, with a fresh perspective on life and an inquisitive mind.

What have I learned this year?

I have learned a lot about international development. I had no previous academic background to the subject, so everything was new. One of the first things I discovered that Amartya Sen is a development theory guru and by quoting him you can cover your back pretty much on any topic. I learned a whole lot of jargon, buzz words and concepts that don’t necessarily mean anything much, the word “empowerment” perhaps the most over- and misused of them all. What I still haven’t learned is what “development” is, or whether such a concept even exists. Or, maybe that is exactly what I have learned.

I have (re-)learned that we live in completely unjust, corrupted world and that most of the efforts of those who try to fight it remain within a framework of structural injustice, and that there is always an us and them-juxtaposing going on.

Following from the above learning experience, I have (re-)learned that the language and way of thinking in the field of international development is often racist, prejudiced and patronising towards “developing” countries, and that studying post-colonial theory when I did English Literature at undergraduate level has helped me remain critical of that kind of discourse.

I have (re-)learned that I can write and that my writing is at its best when I just plough on bravely without constantly editing myself.

I have (re-)learned that I can be rather impatient and hard on myself, but that I can do anything I set out to do if I really want to.

I have learned to stress and worry a little bit less.

I have learned that I still procrastinate and that I still get very frustrated with myself for doing so.

I have learned that I can overcome silly little personal fears, but also some bigger ones, and I have overcome some of them to a great extent this year. A very silly example of this is my slight fear of horses. Having to walk past about 12 of them every morning on my way to lectures, and occasionally feeding them a little, was a good way to feel more comfortable around those beautiful (and huge) creatures.

I have learned to meditate a little bit.

I have learned that I have had enough of country-hopping for a while, and that I would like to feel more part of a small community and maybe put down some roots somewhere. This is a huge step for me as I have never really felt much like part of any community or even had much of a desire to do so. I think it will be challenging for me but exciting too.

I have learned to value and love my family even more than before.

I have also learned that some of my closest and dearest ones are very special and that it is important to hold on to these people, care for them and appreciate what I have with them.

I have learned that truly good friends are hard to find.

I have learned that I am starting to like alcohol less and less – especially beer.

I have learned more about trusting others and myself.

I have learned that it is worth investing in some funky heels and a timeless dress.

Having said that, I have also learned that I don’t really need that many things to be happy. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget.

I have learned to appreciate plants more.

I have (re-)learned that thank you-cards are important.

I have learned that sometimes I chase dreams that aren’t mine. But I have also learned to pursue some of my own dreams in small steps.

I have learned oh so many other things as well this year. I guess that goes to show that it has paid off and that despite my constant feeling of not having made the most of my time, I have got a lot out of my year.

And maybe –and that’s just maybe- I have learned something about that over- and misused word empowerment.

In praise of difference, (in)tolerance, the fine art of being (un-)PC, and the mysteries of a foreign language

Sometimes those who consider themselves the most open-minded and tolerant people are in fact the most intolerant ones. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) did well in writing political pamphlets for both the Whigs and the Tories back in his day - at the end of the day, politics is a full circle where the extreme left meets the extreme right and they are exactly the same thing, exactly as good or bad as each other, with very similar political agendas.

And the same goes for tolerance and intolerance, "religion" and non-"religion" (the word "religion" in inverted commas because it is a word and concept widely ill-defined and misunderstood). What I witness time and time again is self-proclaimed tolerant people expressing intolerant ideas in the most audacious manner. By tolerance I refer to something like not interfering with or judging a person or an idea without careful consideration and respect.

Let me give you an example: a weed-smoking, apparently left-leaning woman in her late 20's with a rock n roll attitude and a passion for international relations and social justice goes on about how open-minded she is, then proceeds to slag off a small group of practicing Catholics standing in the other corner of the room. A second example: An association of self-proclaimed neo-hippies (or hippies with credit cards, a friend of mine so aptly once put it), set up a cafe where people can come and go as they please, paint, play music, sleep on the battered sofas and bring their own lunch if they want. But alas, should a person who does not fit the stereotypical hippie and who may decide to have an un-hippie bite to eat in the cafe, (s)he is asked to leave. An allegedly open-minded young professional struggling to tolerate a new acquaintance who to him/her seems completely intolerant due to his/her faith and belief system.

I recognise my own false tolerance in similar situations. To tolerate someone you think is more intolerant than you can be intolerable, but often highly necessary. I can understand intolerance. Some things simply cannot be tolerated (and by this I mean very serious things). But acceptance of and respect for even the more conservative, allegedly more intolerant people is vital. How can one be open-minded and think that their open-minded way is the only way?

Nobody wants to recognise their own intolerance.

Now, a second, related, matter that I find intriguing is political correctness. I enjoy being un-PC in certain company. You cannot make un-PC jokes around most people. I find that despite enjoying making un-PC jokes, I find it difficult to understand and - here it comes again - tolerate authentically un-PC people.

The Spanish language is full of un-PCness. It is quite refreshing. You can call your chubby friend "Fattie", your anorexic friend "Skinny", your dark friend "Blackie" and your hairy friend - well, "Hairy", or, even better, with a little twist of irony, "Baldy" (the last one I keep getting confused with as the word for hairy, peludo, and the colloquial term for bald, pelado, are different by only one vowel). And best of all, they are actually considered terms of endearment.

Now, there are elements of this example of un-PCness which I don't really appreciate. Most of it has to do with ethnic minority naming within the community. Some rather racist or at best segretationist expressions are accepted as funny expressions that form part of the language and the culture (at least in Spain).

And so now we come to the difficult part - my intolerance. I have written about the importance of tolerance. But I am actually very intolerant of some un-PC expressions and attitudes. I am intolerant of intolerance. My problem is that I struggle to tolerate intolerant behaviour, in myself and in others.

One of the things I struggle tolerating, and now we come to the culture/language part again, is a possessive, diminutive term of endearment in Spanish (to my knowledge more common in Latin American Spanish than in Spanish Spanish). For example, calling someone "my dear so-and-so" when quite clearly the person is not theirs, and possibly not that dear to them either (or vice-versa). I have had many a discussion about this topic with a very dear (and now I use the word in what I consider the true sense of the word) anthropologist I know. I can understand close friends and family calling each other "dear". Even "my" goes. I have learned to use and appreciate the "my dear so-and-so" expression to an extent, and the diminutive, "my dear little so-and-so" as well. But I don't understand why everyone calls everyone else "my dear little so-and-so". Surely if "my dear little so-and-so" applies to everyone, it applies to no-one at all! If everyone is your dear, who truly is your dear? Then again, I understand and appreciate these terms of endearment. I even know that just because someone calls another "my dear so-and-so" it often simply means that you care about the person, or that you are being patronising towards them, or, from what I have gathered (and correct me if I'm wrong), most commonly, it means absolutely nothing. But it is this what I interpret as indifference towards the spoken word that I struggle to tolerate, even though to an extent I feel I understand it as well as I possibly can as a non-native speaker. And what I struggle to tolerate is the fact that I still struggle to tolerate this. Why do I still struggle to accept the fact that ahora can mean anything from "now" to "never"? Why is it that, even if you appreciate a different way of thinking and being, do the best you can to adopt it and know that you may never truly understand, it is still so hard to tolerate such difference?

Then again, maybe I am being tolerant in this matter. After all, I want to understand. Or, better yet, I want to not care about not understanding this aspect that I get hung up on time and time again.

Perhaps I am being too hard on myself and on other tolerant wannabes out there. Perhaps I am being too hard on those who don't even want to be tolerant.
Perhaps tolerance is simply a matter of will, understanding and time combined.

Perhaps tolerance isn't the word I'm looking for.

Olha,
você é tão bonita quanto o Rio de Janeiro
em maio
e quase tão bonita
quanto a Revolução Cubana

Look,
you're as beautiful as the city of Rio de Janeiro
in May
and almost as beautiful
as the Cuban Revolution

From Cantadas by Ferreira Gullar

Sigh.

I don't make a good ill person. You know how some people are just naturally good at it, resting their angelic curls on a pillow, sleeping like a baby, smiling weakly at visitors, taking their medicine regularly?

I'm not one of those. Taking my medicine regularly, yes, mostly. Sleeping like a baby - no, unless I'm VERY ill. Smiling - being a Northerner is my excuse. And no angelic curls either.

And for the past two days I have been ill. Not terribly ill, but just ill enough to feel dizzy when I walk, with a bit of a temperature, but not ill enough to just doze off into a coma and then wake up feeling a bit better.

I have tried to read but I feel dizzy when I do. I have watched old TV series to the point of despair. I have looked at old photographs, stretched my legs, bought paracetamol and lemons. I am incredibly bored and restless and uncomfortable and have decided that I will be out of the house tomorrow no matter what.

So, as I said before, I don't play the ill role very well.

A bit over a year ago I was pretty ill for a substantial amount of time. I had a fever and tonsillitis and swallowing was very painful, so I barely ate for a few days. It was terrible. It was also a difficult time for me in other ways - you may recall from a previous post that February is the worst possible month in the year for me. And other things on top of that didn't help.

In the midst of it all, when I was unable to eat and could only sleep (and badly at that) and grumble and produce puss and snot and tears, a very special someone, despite having a bit of a hard month or so himself, came to sit on the side of my bed and spoon-fed me. He fed me some soup with such gentleness and it was one of the most beautiful, selfless and loving acts I have ever been at the receiving end of.

And tonight this grumpy, restless mess of a woman wishes that very special someone was here, so that she could tell him in person how much she loves him.

Great Expectations

After a conversation about meditation and Buddhism, a very dear friend of mine lent me a book called Going Buddhist by Peter J. Conradi as a kind of a Buddhism For Dummies-kind of introduction to the faith. I remember studying Buddhism in Religious Education class in school, so I didn't consider myself a complete beginner. Still, I thought a personal account of Buddhism, subtitled "Panic and emptiness, the Buddha and me", would be an appropriate way to learn to understand the philosophy in simple terms, and to find out more about meditation, something that I have been interested in for a while.

Now, I'm not one for self-help books. Or maybe secretly I am, but in practice I usually shun away from the overly cheerful paperbacks that scream quick fix. Still, I am half intrigued by them and was open to the one that was lent to me (although I was warned it was far from perfect). Going Buddhist is described as a "self-help book for cynics", and this too helped me in approach the book with an open mind.

Unfortunately, Conradi did not want to write a book about Buddhism, but about himself, about his friendship with Iris Murdoch, about the chip that he carries on his shoulder because of bad experiences with what they call "religion", i.e. some form of Christianity. It made me quite angry to first see the potential of the book and then be disappointed. It somehow justified my scepticism and left me feeling a bit bitter about it all.

Of course, it's not the book's fault. I'm sure my expectations were far too high as usual. I am often told that my expectations for various things are too high, so I'm sure books are no different.

So I decided to go for an author that I had a bad attitude towards: the Dalai Lama. Call me irreverent if you will, but I am wary of these saint-like 20th/21st century characters that pop up every once in a while: the Dalai Lama, Princess Diana, Barack Obama...I don't mean to say that I am against them as such. But I can't help but treat these figures with a bit of suspicion. So when I decided to buy a book by the Dalai Lama, I was taking a big step. I later told about this step to two acquaintances, and they didn't seem to understand why it was such a big step. In any case, I have got off to a promising start - I have cast away my negative expectations and my suspicions. I am in a sense back to having great expectations, in a good way, but somehow in reverse...if that makes sense.

Will I become one of the herd who hails the Dalai Lama to the heavens? I don't really like the idea, but half of me hopes it will be the case. Even if it's just because I don't want to be disappointed with a book two times in a row.

And, you know, it would be kind of nice to learn a bit about inner peace and all that once I'm at it.