Morgan and I travelled to egviidu for an overnighter. We stayed at Kõrvemaa keskus, which while not your coziest tourist farm -- more of a sports base -- is well-situated and has the necessary Wifi in case I had leftover energy to get some work done.
The biggest luxury of being out of the city has got to be the fact that, after inspecting an area for bodies of water and nettles and Sosnovski karuputk or what have you, you can plop a kid down and you don't have to worry about them every second. All of a sudden the radius is 200 m or even more if you have line of sight.
Morgan turns into a completely different person outside. It's like his games expand to their natural size. Whereas they might seems a little cramped or even incomprehensible indoors (he uses a lot of placeholders to symbolize stuff and it isn't always the obvious choice) a game of house make more sense in the architecture of the forest. (More arguments for getting out of the city.) I also noticed that gone is the "cautious" toddler we knew from our trip out West last year. At Kõrvemaa, he charged down an embankment that was more of an overgrown cliff face, though sandy, no potential for any harm. (I feel obliged to add these disclaimers for American readers, "charged down a cliff face" might raise eyebrows.)
The forests here are pretty deep, part of the Kõrvemaa complex that extends 20 km north clear across to the Narva highway, then continues as Lahemaa National Park. Morgan doesn't quite have the concept of "lost" down, and still shows a tendency to go off trail. We will be on your standard 18-inch width forest trail a kilometre out, and still he will say, "let's gp into the forest". So I indulge him, and we follow a faint herd path where a deer has trod on some ferns and still he wants to plumb deeper.
I'm a little concerned that he always seems to get sick at the slightest bit of fresh air. I sometimes have a dark suspicion that his immune system is stressed from the city. It's probably unfounded, but I know no one chills him. In this case, temperatures in the 70s and there was little wind. Maybe he doesn't know how to take it easy and exhausts himself. He also stopped taking naps when he turned 2 and rarely seems to need a time out. We climbed Valgehobusemägi, a 103 m prominence -- for his size it was probably like a Virginia mountain. I let him lead the way, but maybe it was too much.
Incidentally: Morgan was sleeping by 9pm, despite the light (at home we have covered over the windows), slept deeply until midnight, during which I vegged and got no work done. At midnight I fell asleep. When he awoke briefly at 1am, I couldn't get back to sleep until 3am. At 5:15 am the sun was brilliant in our room and that was all anyone was going to sleep. Typical night when it's the two of us. I don't know what I would do without my wife, hire a sleep attendant (do they have those?) I guess.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
We've outgrown our apartment, there is no denying it -- and we're in the market again.
We bought our current place dirt-cheap by current standards. We prided ourselves on getting a nice, cute little hole-in-the-wall in a great location, for under a million, right before the boom. It seemed we had more organizational energy back then: We rented a diamond saw from Estpak, cut through a 40cm limestone wall and had a guy frame and hang a third room in what had been a cellar storage place.
It isn't a bad place at all if you put aside the Estonian cultural prejudice against basements (the floor is one metre below the street). Except that the three rooms are in a row, so only the farthest one can really be used as a bedroom. It's gotten to be a kind of involuntary Bohemian existence. No, more of a siege existence, as if it is wartime and a general staff is quartered here -- sleeping bags on the floor, people catching a couple hours of sleep in a corner when not on sentry duty, everyone always drinking coffee and sucking on sugar rations. Ah, parenting.
Real estate prices are of course different compared to 2005. Everything good seems a little out of the monthly-payment comfort zone right now, and I'm reluctant to commit unless something perfect comes along. "Something perfect" -- where I would actually resort to hitting other people up for money, relatives, maybe even blog readers -- would be one of those "Estonian Victorians" in Nõmme -- you know, with a gable roof and semicircular Florida room/veranda -- for perhaps a shade under 3 million? This is where people laugh raucously, I'm sure they're twice that.
My wife is a fifth-generation Tallinner, which I understand goes way back in Estonian terms, and has parents here who are bonding with Morgan, so Pärnu would be out of the question. Haapsalu, well, maybe -- some bigwigs commute the hour. I liked Rakvere personally.
Frankly I don't know how most people would afford anything. I had the same question about all the Audis and Mercedes being driven in the 1990s, when the average salary was less than half of what it is now. Occasionally I will find an apartment in the rght space-price matrix, and get excited, but it is always in Lasnamäe, where both of us vow we will not nove.
We visited an incredibly cute loft in the Kalamaja district today that was a little like our place if it was at the top, not the bottom, and if it had a better layout and better kitchen furniture. The price is an even multiple of a million kroons and at 70 sq m it almost seems reasonable to me.
But once we got over the buzz -- the polyhedral folds of the ceiling, a small balcony off the kitchen, timbers extending the length of the apartment, the gardens and large yard below...we noticed it was small. No storage space. Many places to bump your head. And it has only three rooms. I don't even understand why we were looking at it. We have always entered 4 rooms and 80 sq m as search criteria.
I have been hoping to get the same multiple of a million for our current apartment, but considering that our kitchen furniture is outdated, and it is on the 0-level of an old building that still needs work, I am not sure if it will quite make the grade. There is the location, on the other hand, which is primo. They say location is everything. And the location is why we have been waiting to sell it. The conventional wisdom is that property in the city centre will not drop in value; everything else is expected to correct 10-20% if it hasn't already.
We bought our current place dirt-cheap by current standards. We prided ourselves on getting a nice, cute little hole-in-the-wall in a great location, for under a million, right before the boom. It seemed we had more organizational energy back then: We rented a diamond saw from Estpak, cut through a 40cm limestone wall and had a guy frame and hang a third room in what had been a cellar storage place.
It isn't a bad place at all if you put aside the Estonian cultural prejudice against basements (the floor is one metre below the street). Except that the three rooms are in a row, so only the farthest one can really be used as a bedroom. It's gotten to be a kind of involuntary Bohemian existence. No, more of a siege existence, as if it is wartime and a general staff is quartered here -- sleeping bags on the floor, people catching a couple hours of sleep in a corner when not on sentry duty, everyone always drinking coffee and sucking on sugar rations. Ah, parenting.
Real estate prices are of course different compared to 2005. Everything good seems a little out of the monthly-payment comfort zone right now, and I'm reluctant to commit unless something perfect comes along. "Something perfect" -- where I would actually resort to hitting other people up for money, relatives, maybe even blog readers -- would be one of those "Estonian Victorians" in Nõmme -- you know, with a gable roof and semicircular Florida room/veranda -- for perhaps a shade under 3 million? This is where people laugh raucously, I'm sure they're twice that.
My wife is a fifth-generation Tallinner, which I understand goes way back in Estonian terms, and has parents here who are bonding with Morgan, so Pärnu would be out of the question. Haapsalu, well, maybe -- some bigwigs commute the hour. I liked Rakvere personally.
Frankly I don't know how most people would afford anything. I had the same question about all the Audis and Mercedes being driven in the 1990s, when the average salary was less than half of what it is now. Occasionally I will find an apartment in the rght space-price matrix, and get excited, but it is always in Lasnamäe, where both of us vow we will not nove.
We visited an incredibly cute loft in the Kalamaja district today that was a little like our place if it was at the top, not the bottom, and if it had a better layout and better kitchen furniture. The price is an even multiple of a million kroons and at 70 sq m it almost seems reasonable to me.
But once we got over the buzz -- the polyhedral folds of the ceiling, a small balcony off the kitchen, timbers extending the length of the apartment, the gardens and large yard below...we noticed it was small. No storage space. Many places to bump your head. And it has only three rooms. I don't even understand why we were looking at it. We have always entered 4 rooms and 80 sq m as search criteria.
I have been hoping to get the same multiple of a million for our current apartment, but considering that our kitchen furniture is outdated, and it is on the 0-level of an old building that still needs work, I am not sure if it will quite make the grade. There is the location, on the other hand, which is primo. They say location is everything. And the location is why we have been waiting to sell it. The conventional wisdom is that property in the city centre will not drop in value; everything else is expected to correct 10-20% if it hasn't already.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Service nightmare: FedEx, NT Logistika and Estonian Customs
Earlier this month, I was asked to order a car part for a friend's Buick. I ordered it from www.rockauto.com in the US, which happens to have an excellent online catalog interface. It cost $150. My friend inquired into the cost of the Estonian customs duty and found it would still be cheaper than buying the part locally.
Before I go on, let me note I have had problems before with Estonian customs arrangements under the EU. For example, gone are the days when you could order books from Amazon in the US with no headache. Now you have to make sure you are under the minimum of about 40 EUR or you face a tax form that besides being an incredibly poorly laid out and ugly document (which is beside the point) is also an expensive proposition. Also, Morgan's baby clothes, both new and used ones, have been taxed. The Joe Q. Populist in me says the system is slightly broke. But as I said, we did the math in this case.
I chose the basic international shipping option at $35. The valve shipped the next day.
On Friday, two weeks later, I got a cryptic first-class letter from a logistics firm in Maardu, which is a town 20 km from Tallinn, saying that a package had arrived but they had been "unable to contact me thus far". Eh? The letter also listed various prices for customs formalities, which I figured was not "mix 'n' match" but "we choose most of them for you", but nothing was clear about the letter.
I sent off an e-mail, saying, essentially, "Hi; You found me at my address, good work!; Now please tell me the amount and your bank account number, please, so you can deliver the package to my address" (but not actually sounding like an asshole).
Because this is the way you do things in Estonia. If you need to pay, you remit by Internet at light speed. And things do get delivered to your doorstep 99% of the time.
No answer for two days. It was the weekend, but it was an international logistics firm. On Monday I got a reply with a list of options for formalizing the customs declaration. One seemed time-consuming and one seemed exorbitantly expensive at $50 plus the actual duties.
I finally got around to the time-consuming option on Wednesday, figuring that I needed about an hour. I hopped in the Skoda and headed off to the ominous-sounding address of Kesk-Sõjamäe. It translates as Central War Mountain. This is very relevant.
It was located in a battlefield -- I mean, brownfield -- between the airport and the Soviet suburb of Lasnamäe and I think I nearly snapped a tie-rod negotiating the potholes before I got to the customs warehouse.
Every courier firm you can think of has leased space in the customs building.
At FedEx, which to their credit I found quickly, two women were sitting at computers in the busy-looking/doing-nothing way. One of the women, who was very nice, handed me a stack of papers, including the incredibly ugly and poorly laid out tax form. I checked: "Just one package?" She told me to go to customs, adding, "have you been there before" in the tone of voice that implies long and involved directions are about to follow.
Customs is in a separate entrance to the building, 300 metres away, far enough to verge on annoying and probably (I'm just editorializing here) avoid the semblance that FedEx is in bed with them and collects part of the customs storage fees.
Customs was a blast. If you wondered where the apocryphal world of EU banana-length standards had got to, it is right here, in Estonian customs. Or, Welcome to Soviet Estonia.
When my number was called (after 15 minutes) I had to fill out a document called "traveler's form", which I should have known to do when I first took my number. A "traveller's form"? I hadn't travelled anywhere, ah, not unless you count the potholed route to get to the customs terminal at the edge of the brownfield.
Then she studied me and asked if I knew what the auto part was for. Uh-oh, I thought, could it be used for making pipe bombs or something? No, she needed to find the code. I don't know, I said, can you just put down the code for "auto part"? No, she said. To be honest, I still don't know what an EGR valve does.
But I finally said it goes "inside the car", and she seemed to be all right with that.
She then told me to sit down, which I duly did, and this kept me from seeing what she got up to in the next 30 minutes, but I know it involved:
* conference calls
* huddled consultation with co-workers
* scissors
* ballpoint pen
* felt-tip pen
* computer
* co-worker's computer
This was not her first week on the job. I asked her.
But she wasn't done. She told me to go to a window across the aisle to pay the duty, $35, and then return the receipt to her. I asked if I should get another waiting lisr number. You never know with places like this.
The cashier was a silent type whose acknowledgment of me was ambiguous (this seems to be true of bursars everywhere). Then followed more use of scissors and pen, manual keying of my debit card number followed by what must have been a very lengthy payment details field; and then -- as a novelty -- an ink stamp on multiple receipts.
Back to the first woman, who actually said I was good to go...to Package Pickup on the ground floor of the first part of the building.
The reading material at Package Pickup was, generously, Linnaleht, the free rag. But I recommend you bring a copy of The Bridge by Iain Banks.**
Here at Package Pickup I had a problem. They had started calculating the storage fees on the package about two weeks ago, and they had run up to another $40. But I KNOW I received the first notice on Friday, two business days ago. At this point I balked. They told me to pay, and take it up with FedEx later. I said I would go right back to FedEx before paying anything.
Back upstairs, at FedEx, unfortunately I made the nice women turn defensive and not so nice. Oddly, they leapt to the defence of the mystery Maardu logistics firm, NT Logistika, which was not even in Tallinn, who, they said, had gone to CONSIDERABLE LENGTHS to contact me. NT Logistika had apparently even Googled my name, costing them a pretty penny, to try to find my mobile number and e-mail address.
Unfortunately -- no, they had not tried to reach me at the address to which the package was addressed. But -- they quickly put in, seeing where this was going -- this was good service.
I went back downstairs to Package Pickup, where I told them that FedEx had screwed up royally, and had admitted as much, and had made their first written attempt to contact me only on Friday. The woman at Package Pickup unfortunately called FedEx and learned that FedEx refused to pay the $35 in stroage fees for me, and someone would have to pay it before I could pick up the package.
It then turned out that the whole prospect of paying was academic, anyway -- Package Pickup had no pay-by-card option. The woman, who was twirling a ballpoint pen significantly, told me to go to a shopping centre 2 miles back down the road to use an ATM.
At this point, things, mm, deteriorated.
I left, drove off, and just kept going. I may have to authorize the Buick owner to pick up his part. I'll have to think of something. They may call security if I go back myself.
**The Bridge may not ring any bells, but it's convoluted and I remembered the absurdist bureaucratic parts.
Before I go on, let me note I have had problems before with Estonian customs arrangements under the EU. For example, gone are the days when you could order books from Amazon in the US with no headache. Now you have to make sure you are under the minimum of about 40 EUR or you face a tax form that besides being an incredibly poorly laid out and ugly document (which is beside the point) is also an expensive proposition. Also, Morgan's baby clothes, both new and used ones, have been taxed. The Joe Q. Populist in me says the system is slightly broke. But as I said, we did the math in this case.
I chose the basic international shipping option at $35. The valve shipped the next day.
On Friday, two weeks later, I got a cryptic first-class letter from a logistics firm in Maardu, which is a town 20 km from Tallinn, saying that a package had arrived but they had been "unable to contact me thus far". Eh? The letter also listed various prices for customs formalities, which I figured was not "mix 'n' match" but "we choose most of them for you", but nothing was clear about the letter.
I sent off an e-mail, saying, essentially, "Hi; You found me at my address, good work!; Now please tell me the amount and your bank account number, please, so you can deliver the package to my address" (but not actually sounding like an asshole).
Because this is the way you do things in Estonia. If you need to pay, you remit by Internet at light speed. And things do get delivered to your doorstep 99% of the time.
No answer for two days. It was the weekend, but it was an international logistics firm. On Monday I got a reply with a list of options for formalizing the customs declaration. One seemed time-consuming and one seemed exorbitantly expensive at $50 plus the actual duties.
I finally got around to the time-consuming option on Wednesday, figuring that I needed about an hour. I hopped in the Skoda and headed off to the ominous-sounding address of Kesk-Sõjamäe. It translates as Central War Mountain. This is very relevant.
It was located in a battlefield -- I mean, brownfield -- between the airport and the Soviet suburb of Lasnamäe and I think I nearly snapped a tie-rod negotiating the potholes before I got to the customs warehouse.
Every courier firm you can think of has leased space in the customs building.
At FedEx, which to their credit I found quickly, two women were sitting at computers in the busy-looking/doing-nothing way. One of the women, who was very nice, handed me a stack of papers, including the incredibly ugly and poorly laid out tax form. I checked: "Just one package?" She told me to go to customs, adding, "have you been there before" in the tone of voice that implies long and involved directions are about to follow.
Customs is in a separate entrance to the building, 300 metres away, far enough to verge on annoying and probably (I'm just editorializing here) avoid the semblance that FedEx is in bed with them and collects part of the customs storage fees.
Customs was a blast. If you wondered where the apocryphal world of EU banana-length standards had got to, it is right here, in Estonian customs. Or, Welcome to Soviet Estonia.
When my number was called (after 15 minutes) I had to fill out a document called "traveler's form", which I should have known to do when I first took my number. A "traveller's form"? I hadn't travelled anywhere, ah, not unless you count the potholed route to get to the customs terminal at the edge of the brownfield.
Then she studied me and asked if I knew what the auto part was for. Uh-oh, I thought, could it be used for making pipe bombs or something? No, she needed to find the code. I don't know, I said, can you just put down the code for "auto part"? No, she said. To be honest, I still don't know what an EGR valve does.
But I finally said it goes "inside the car", and she seemed to be all right with that.
She then told me to sit down, which I duly did, and this kept me from seeing what she got up to in the next 30 minutes, but I know it involved:
* conference calls
* huddled consultation with co-workers
* scissors
* ballpoint pen
* felt-tip pen
* computer
* co-worker's computer
This was not her first week on the job. I asked her.
But she wasn't done. She told me to go to a window across the aisle to pay the duty, $35, and then return the receipt to her. I asked if I should get another waiting lisr number. You never know with places like this.
The cashier was a silent type whose acknowledgment of me was ambiguous (this seems to be true of bursars everywhere). Then followed more use of scissors and pen, manual keying of my debit card number followed by what must have been a very lengthy payment details field; and then -- as a novelty -- an ink stamp on multiple receipts.
Back to the first woman, who actually said I was good to go...to Package Pickup on the ground floor of the first part of the building.
The reading material at Package Pickup was, generously, Linnaleht, the free rag. But I recommend you bring a copy of The Bridge by Iain Banks.**
Here at Package Pickup I had a problem. They had started calculating the storage fees on the package about two weeks ago, and they had run up to another $40. But I KNOW I received the first notice on Friday, two business days ago. At this point I balked. They told me to pay, and take it up with FedEx later. I said I would go right back to FedEx before paying anything.
Back upstairs, at FedEx, unfortunately I made the nice women turn defensive and not so nice. Oddly, they leapt to the defence of the mystery Maardu logistics firm, NT Logistika, which was not even in Tallinn, who, they said, had gone to CONSIDERABLE LENGTHS to contact me. NT Logistika had apparently even Googled my name, costing them a pretty penny, to try to find my mobile number and e-mail address.
Unfortunately -- no, they had not tried to reach me at the address to which the package was addressed. But -- they quickly put in, seeing where this was going -- this was good service.
I went back downstairs to Package Pickup, where I told them that FedEx had screwed up royally, and had admitted as much, and had made their first written attempt to contact me only on Friday. The woman at Package Pickup unfortunately called FedEx and learned that FedEx refused to pay the $35 in stroage fees for me, and someone would have to pay it before I could pick up the package.
It then turned out that the whole prospect of paying was academic, anyway -- Package Pickup had no pay-by-card option. The woman, who was twirling a ballpoint pen significantly, told me to go to a shopping centre 2 miles back down the road to use an ATM.
At this point, things, mm, deteriorated.
I left, drove off, and just kept going. I may have to authorize the Buick owner to pick up his part. I'll have to think of something. They may call security if I go back myself.
**The Bridge may not ring any bells, but it's convoluted and I remembered the absurdist bureaucratic parts.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Fabia arrives
Picked up our Skoda Fabia Combi today. This is one way to hedge against chaos.
We went to the dealership in corpore, 18-day-old, Morgan, TTT and me. It was surprisingly smooth. I hadn't slept much the past few days and I was already thinking with dread about balancing a baby on my lap while trying to read a bunch of lease documents while TTT chased Morgan (who favours luxury models) around the showroom. But Lorna slept most of the time and the Skoda people seemed organized and scrupulous.
On the way there, our cab driver, an opinionated sort, told us things that would produce buyer's remorse before the fact...well, in people who were buying. We're just leasing.
These were his talking points:
* They don't make German cars like they used to, unless you go for top-of-the-line. They're not like the Japanese cars. I want a Toyota Avensis. My current non-cab is a Mazda. It's great.
* Estonian diesel (which is the cheapest in Europe) is the worst in quality. My friend had a repair bill of $2200 to replace some engine parts that conked out from the bilge water they sell at local gas stations. Diesel engine repairs cost a lot in Estonia.
* I know that I get 15% better gas mileage driving in Finland.
* All diesel cars in Finland are levied an annual tax of about 1000 EUR. It is only a matter of time in Estonia.
Take these with a grain of salt. I pressed him on the last one, and I have yet to Google it to see if it is true. Aren't new diesels so clean that they're worried about ultrafine particles, and only very recently?
But I wonder what would have happened if we had got this cab driver when we were still shopping.
When we got to the showroom, Morgan liked the Octavia Scout and another showroom model, both running around twice of what the Fabia cost. What an elitist! I figured the fire-red colour of our Fabia would be the only sales argument he would need. We even got the Ambiente package, not the Basic. Finally he settled for the Fabia.
My wife drove home, and Morgan drove when we got home. I have yet to drive it. I certainly like the car. I will get around to it. I am tempted to drive to Riga right now with Morgan for a boys' road trip.
I think I am suffering from a mid-life crisis so I am trying to distance myself from bright red shiny metal things.
Dylan week
It's Dylan week here at the Alert. On Sunday I make my pilgrimage to the Hartwall arena in Helsinki, Finland, which is about an unlikely site a Dylan site as, well...Hibbing, Minnesota.**
Unlikely as in, although Hibbing was his birthplace, and MN is a state with a very social democratic and tolerant tradition, it was a somewhat stifling place and a bit of a square hole for a round peg. Full of Finns, though.
In Helsinki's case, I don't quite see how a figure whose entire M.O. lies in delivery and intimacy and the folk idiom will play in a stadium kind of place in a Nordic capital.
Meanwhile, I finally got my hands on a copy of the film I'm Not There, a sort of O Brother Where Art Thou collage of Americana loosely based around Dylan's life and full of his music. It would be, I fear, pretentious to most, but for someone who knows a lot of Dylaniana, it is a delight. I ate it up, like a document.
Then again, taken by themselves, many scenes are just beautiful (like Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg as young lovers in early 1960s brownstone Bohemia) and not particularly Dylan or anything particular. Upon seeing Ledger I immediately thought of Richard Farina, a Dylan contemporary who died young.
So will the elusive Bob be "there" in Helsinki? We shall see. He could always get Cate Blanchett, one of the actors who plays him ca 1966, to fill in for him if he is not there. As odd as it was to see a women cast as Bob, she played it quite well.
**I was in the small town of Hibbing in 2003 on my way back from Oregon. I had a beer at a place called Zimmy's, which is just a main street bar that rips off Dylan's birth name, then I went to the public library where they have a small museum called the Dylan room. I was the only one there and I got to hear the librarian say over the PA system, "Please bring the key to the Dylan room". Needless to say, I felt like a VIP being allowed to inspect a safe deposit box of Americana.
New poll. I think multiple options are allowed. But please refrain from illogical combinations so we can get scientific results. And, for example, people responding "There will be no chaos" AND "Buy guns" may be investigated.
The guide to the options:
1. Gold. Not being an economist, I don't really understand this one. So say you're an alchemist, you spend your life on this, and let's say you end up with a nugget. Then what? Apparently, though, powerful men are attracted to this when all else fails and it is hoardable and malleable. Downside: Current inflated price makes it questionable you will earn financial gains when the chaos passes.
2. Land. Always a popular pick. I opt for 10 hectares in the temperate zone with an inhabitable structure, well and 3x25A. And a fat-pipe Internet connection. But once things collapse, the amenities get stripped, and it becomes hard to defend from your neighbours and your farmhands.
3. Guns. Useful for defending land and gold, preventing genocide, and sniping the odd fox or poacher. But, as middle-class American homeowners are always finding out the hard way in peacetime, there is the ever-present risk that they will be turned against you, long before you ever need to really use them. Also, if your beef is with a government/warlord, you will be overpowered anyway.
4. Derivatives. Starts with the same letter as "denial" and "disingenuous", but there is something to said for a shell game. No cartoon character has ever gone into free-fall unless they look down. In fact, betting on when the chaos will end may make the whole episode seem like a hiccough in the big picture.
5. Stock up on dry goods. Probably should do it anyway. Has certain weaknesses as a long-range plan. May lead to short-term price gouging. If you start early, though...
6. Elect fascists. Responsible for many good slogans, like Unity through Strength and E pluribus unum. Useful in creating bubble from which to fiddle while the rest burns. Important to make sure the ones you elect were not the ones behind the chaos.
7. Muddle through. Most people do this anyway, there is no stigma in this. If you are one of the working poor, you may not have any time to do anything but this option.
8. Party. Not just getting jiggy wit it, but welcoming anarchy and placing your trust in humanism, and your own karma. Some people even think anarchy is the preferable social arrangement. Downside: no social safety net.
9. There will be no chaos. Still the leading theory. Many reasons to support this one. But make sure whoever says this is not a derivatives trader or incumbent fascist.
The guide to the options:
1. Gold. Not being an economist, I don't really understand this one. So say you're an alchemist, you spend your life on this, and let's say you end up with a nugget. Then what? Apparently, though, powerful men are attracted to this when all else fails and it is hoardable and malleable. Downside: Current inflated price makes it questionable you will earn financial gains when the chaos passes.
2. Land. Always a popular pick. I opt for 10 hectares in the temperate zone with an inhabitable structure, well and 3x25A. And a fat-pipe Internet connection. But once things collapse, the amenities get stripped, and it becomes hard to defend from your neighbours and your farmhands.
3. Guns. Useful for defending land and gold, preventing genocide, and sniping the odd fox or poacher. But, as middle-class American homeowners are always finding out the hard way in peacetime, there is the ever-present risk that they will be turned against you, long before you ever need to really use them. Also, if your beef is with a government/warlord, you will be overpowered anyway.
4. Derivatives. Starts with the same letter as "denial" and "disingenuous", but there is something to said for a shell game. No cartoon character has ever gone into free-fall unless they look down. In fact, betting on when the chaos will end may make the whole episode seem like a hiccough in the big picture.
5. Stock up on dry goods. Probably should do it anyway. Has certain weaknesses as a long-range plan. May lead to short-term price gouging. If you start early, though...
6. Elect fascists. Responsible for many good slogans, like Unity through Strength and E pluribus unum. Useful in creating bubble from which to fiddle while the rest burns. Important to make sure the ones you elect were not the ones behind the chaos.
7. Muddle through. Most people do this anyway, there is no stigma in this. If you are one of the working poor, you may not have any time to do anything but this option.
8. Party. Not just getting jiggy wit it, but welcoming anarchy and placing your trust in humanism, and your own karma. Some people even think anarchy is the preferable social arrangement. Downside: no social safety net.
9. There will be no chaos. Still the leading theory. Many reasons to support this one. But make sure whoever says this is not a derivatives trader or incumbent fascist.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Ten-minute roundup
Haven't been blogging very much. Both kids were sick. One night was every bit as bad as it could be, with one taking turns waking up the other. This time I did not catch the bug.
All the old wisdom is coming back. Little things, like the fact that "khkhkhkh" is more effective than "shhhhhh" for comforting a squalling baby. At least our babies.
I found the time to make croissants. Huh? Well, yes. They came out well. Maybe real men don't eat quiche and they probably don't bake croissants. That's what I thought until I saw this video. This guy could be a general describing how to invade Manchuria or something. Actually, making croissants takes a sort of Eastern military discipline. Anyway, really, if you are house-bound and have a lot of butter on hand, and are sick of walking to Reval Cafe for pastries, what can you do?
* My small test stock portfolio, now down to mostly Apple and the rest a no-name lo-cap tech firm, is back to where it started in January. So I've been eating more lunches outside of my own house as of late.
Came across an interesting piece that was sort of mind-blowing for a second -- that Apple has 66% of the market for computers over $1000. Being told by Lenovo and Dell that they didn't want my business because of my Hansabank-issued credit card, I had forgotten there were even computers under a grand. Overall Apple is still way in the minority.
* The Supreme Court of Estonia has issued a landmark decision. Now Ühisteenused, the ticket controllers and performers of odd jobs, can no longer fine people because it is a private contractor. I don't know how it will affect fare-dodgers, whether fare-dodgers are taking advantage of the temporary power vacuum to run amok, as I have stopped the odious practice. But it does make Estonia even more modern; these are the last little chinks in the õigusriik (state governed by the rule of law) that are getting spackled and sanded over.
* Two men are planning to swim across the Gulf of Finland. This is a cold, long swim. The Gulf of Finland may be 16 or 17 (65) degrees, then the next day it may be about 6 (42)degrees -- in mid-summer. They swam the length of the Emajõgi (river) last year which I imagine might have been about 18 or 19 degrees.
I would like to see a ironman type race across the ice to Finland, if it froze in winter, so hence the interest.
All the old wisdom is coming back. Little things, like the fact that "khkhkhkh" is more effective than "shhhhhh" for comforting a squalling baby. At least our babies.
I found the time to make croissants. Huh? Well, yes. They came out well. Maybe real men don't eat quiche and they probably don't bake croissants. That's what I thought until I saw this video. This guy could be a general describing how to invade Manchuria or something. Actually, making croissants takes a sort of Eastern military discipline. Anyway, really, if you are house-bound and have a lot of butter on hand, and are sick of walking to Reval Cafe for pastries, what can you do?
* My small test stock portfolio, now down to mostly Apple and the rest a no-name lo-cap tech firm, is back to where it started in January. So I've been eating more lunches outside of my own house as of late.
Came across an interesting piece that was sort of mind-blowing for a second -- that Apple has 66% of the market for computers over $1000. Being told by Lenovo and Dell that they didn't want my business because of my Hansabank-issued credit card, I had forgotten there were even computers under a grand. Overall Apple is still way in the minority.
* The Supreme Court of Estonia has issued a landmark decision. Now Ühisteenused, the ticket controllers and performers of odd jobs, can no longer fine people because it is a private contractor. I don't know how it will affect fare-dodgers, whether fare-dodgers are taking advantage of the temporary power vacuum to run amok, as I have stopped the odious practice. But it does make Estonia even more modern; these are the last little chinks in the õigusriik (state governed by the rule of law) that are getting spackled and sanded over.
* Two men are planning to swim across the Gulf of Finland. This is a cold, long swim. The Gulf of Finland may be 16 or 17 (65) degrees, then the next day it may be about 6 (42)degrees -- in mid-summer. They swam the length of the Emajõgi (river) last year which I imagine might have been about 18 or 19 degrees.
I would like to see a ironman type race across the ice to Finland, if it froze in winter, so hence the interest.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The morning after
It is the day after the Eurovision semifinal and there is a bt of queasiness in the air.
No, Estonia did not advance. The local TV voiceover tried to generate some suspense each time they opened an envelope, but unfortunately it was already clear from the boo-birds during the performance: Estonia could not parlay its oddball anti-song into fan favourite.
Now there's a feeling that you might have after a party, when in your mind you dazzled everyone all night with deft satirical jabs at the hosts, such as "Lobster!" and "I've had it"...and then you end up getting the bill, too -- 2 million kroons.
A feeling of "what exactly were we thinking?" has set in.
A "wait a second: maybe this wasn't that funny" moment, followed immediately by "why was this supposed to be funny?"
And the fucking economy only grew 0.4%.
Someone close to me was just saying she was celebrated for something when in high school -- "monohumour". She would be rolling in the aisles at her own jokes. Luckily this itself was funny in a meta sort of way.
I viewed most of the proceedings in last night's semi-final with monohorror, of course, especially Dima Bilan's ever-more desperate attempt (oddly, intonationally flat rather than sharp) attempt to convince us he "Believes" in which I think the violinist actually hit 11, as in the Spinal Tap guitarist's metaphor, but not on the volume scale but as in points for overwroughtness.
But it seems that in Estonia's case, what was supposed to be a "small drily ironic country sticking it to those Eurobastards" was more like...monohumour. Maybe the far better thing would have been to stay home, like Kosovo did (check this).
Next time, stick with small bits of shouted nonsense like "Perrea perrea!" and have a genre.
No, Estonia did not advance. The local TV voiceover tried to generate some suspense each time they opened an envelope, but unfortunately it was already clear from the boo-birds during the performance: Estonia could not parlay its oddball anti-song into fan favourite.
Now there's a feeling that you might have after a party, when in your mind you dazzled everyone all night with deft satirical jabs at the hosts, such as "Lobster!" and "I've had it"...and then you end up getting the bill, too -- 2 million kroons.
A feeling of "what exactly were we thinking?" has set in.
A "wait a second: maybe this wasn't that funny" moment, followed immediately by "why was this supposed to be funny?"
And the fucking economy only grew 0.4%.
Someone close to me was just saying she was celebrated for something when in high school -- "monohumour". She would be rolling in the aisles at her own jokes. Luckily this itself was funny in a meta sort of way.
I viewed most of the proceedings in last night's semi-final with monohorror, of course, especially Dima Bilan's ever-more desperate attempt (oddly, intonationally flat rather than sharp) attempt to convince us he "Believes" in which I think the violinist actually hit 11, as in the Spinal Tap guitarist's metaphor, but not on the volume scale but as in points for overwroughtness.
But it seems that in Estonia's case, what was supposed to be a "small drily ironic country sticking it to those Eurobastards" was more like...monohumour. Maybe the far better thing would have been to stay home, like Kosovo did (check this).
Next time, stick with small bits of shouted nonsense like "Perrea perrea!" and have a genre.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
REVIEW: Singing Revolution -- the book
As noted by several reviewers, the documentary Singing Revolution covers a lot of ground -- it has to inform and move people who potentially know absolutely nothing about Estonia -- and it manages to do it very well.
In case history buffs need something more meaty, there is now a companion book: an English-language volume retells the documentary in the equivalent of a long National Geographic article on Estonia's history, written by Priit Vesilind, Estonian exile author and photographer and long-time contributor to that magazine.
Vesilind is a premier feature writing voice. Who better to introduce Estonia to tourists who may be browsing an Old Town bookshop for a volume just like this?
The only disappointment here is that you don't get that great National Geographic picture quality. Though the usual journalistic standards apply, no one really expects a work like this to be a go-to source with its historical incisiveness or rigorous treatment (although it is important to give the proper weight to the proper forces in society).
It should be eye candy.
But if I had not admired the quality of Vesilind's own collection of photographs from his legendary 1979 trip, also published by Varrak, I would have recommended that anyone wishing to publish a book with abundant pictures from different sources, steer clear of this publisher.
Apparently they need a lesson in anti-aliasing.The At first I thought most of the pictures were fuzzy stills from the documentary; the impression is that the colour images were taken with a cheap digital camera. Yes, this is XVid.Singing.Revolution.CAM.
The typography is surprisingly uninspired as well. Uninteresting sans-serif fonts make appearances on busy backgrounds. The manuscript was not checked for double spaces. (If you think this is unimportant, I defy you to find a single book among the bestsellers at a Barnes and Noble's that has any of these problems.)
Though it is not without its fact-check problems ("village of Kunda", "Hiiuma" etc), I am more forgiving on copy editing. I am listed as the proofreader of Mart Laar's chronological general history of Estonia, a 200-page work not too unlike this book, and I have yet to look at whether my changes were incorporated accurately, or, more likely, if I missed anything. I fear the worst.
Fortunately, the writing and the pacing in Singing Revolution, like Laar's, is fine. Good enough to raise the hackles of Popular Front leaderswho feel they did not receive their due. It seemed people were more unanimous in their reception of the documentary itself.
And the small format makes it convenient to schlep it back home as a gift.
Just make sure you include the DVD for the original photography.
In case history buffs need something more meaty, there is now a companion book: an English-language volume retells the documentary in the equivalent of a long National Geographic article on Estonia's history, written by Priit Vesilind, Estonian exile author and photographer and long-time contributor to that magazine.
Vesilind is a premier feature writing voice. Who better to introduce Estonia to tourists who may be browsing an Old Town bookshop for a volume just like this?
The only disappointment here is that you don't get that great National Geographic picture quality. Though the usual journalistic standards apply, no one really expects a work like this to be a go-to source with its historical incisiveness or rigorous treatment (although it is important to give the proper weight to the proper forces in society).
It should be eye candy.
But if I had not admired the quality of Vesilind's own collection of photographs from his legendary 1979 trip, also published by Varrak, I would have recommended that anyone wishing to publish a book with abundant pictures from different sources, steer clear of this publisher.
Apparently they need a lesson in anti-aliasing.
The typography is surprisingly uninspired as well. Uninteresting sans-serif fonts make appearances on busy backgrounds. The manuscript was not checked for double spaces. (If you think this is unimportant, I defy you to find a single book among the bestsellers at a Barnes and Noble's that has any of these problems.)
Though it is not without its fact-check problems ("village of Kunda", "Hiiuma" etc), I am more forgiving on copy editing. I am listed as the proofreader of Mart Laar's chronological general history of Estonia, a 200-page work not too unlike this book, and I have yet to look at whether my changes were incorporated accurately, or, more likely, if I missed anything. I fear the worst.
Fortunately, the writing and the pacing in Singing Revolution, like Laar's, is fine. Good enough to raise the hackles of Popular Front leaderswho feel they did not receive their due. It seemed people were more unanimous in their reception of the documentary itself.
And the small format makes it convenient to schlep it back home as a gift.
Just make sure you include the DVD for the original photography.
Notes on birth in Estonia
Viimsi Hospital and the adjoining birth centre, Fertilitas, are part of a socialist architectural complex that is par for the course in Estonia, not unlike one of those bunker-like shopping community centres you find around Sõpruse and Keskuse in Mustamäe. You get used to it and think no more of it.
Viimsi is a more affluent spa-ish area and the air is cleaner. Though it's not on the sea or anything, the facility is pleasant enough. Our room looked just like any "SPA" or sanitarium room, with TV, WiFi, good lighting...
The birth room is very cozy at Fertilitas, leaving the impression of perpetual candlelight. A rocking chair, which my wife notes is useless for her in the actual process, adds rustic charm as a prop. There is a bath for water births. The house music (we didn't bring our own or a guitar, thinking the less distractions the better), if desired, was Jack Johnson, basically the epitome of mellowness and whatever the opposite of egoism is. Good choice.
Down the corridor from our room is a fantastic palm and tropical plant choked atrium with statuary. It's overgrown like a secret garden and a little decadent, with algae-stained tile. This may not sound appealing, it is clean, and seems alive in a fertile way, more than, say, a slick, art deco Nordic hotel atrium. It looks just like the courtyard of a hotel we stayed at in Mazatlan. So the combination of socialist architecture, quality health care and tropical paradise said "Cuba" to me, though I have not been to the island.
Besides a flat fee for birth, and a fee for each bed-day, we paid extra to retain the services of one of the midwives, as I mentioned in one of my posts. It just doesn't work out the way you planned. She was fine, I guess, conferred with us and was in touch, but she was mortal too and when it came down to it, and we were in the actual birthing room and Jack Johson was playing after 24 hours of irregular painful pre-labour, it was another midwife who was there.
No complaints there: the entire bill came to $600, which to me seems negligible considering we were there for five days.
On the negative side, there was a sense of a private clinic that wasn't there in 2005 when Morgan was born. Not that a public hospital would be preferable, natch. Yet I got the sense they were hurrying along the process to make way for the next batch of birthees. A doctor even said, around the time when we were eating spicy food, that the coming weekend would be busy for them and that we should think of inducing. We didn't, and the process started naturally, albeit very slowly.
My suspicion is that you only get one chance to give birth, even if you are not in actual labour. After your one chance there is pressure -- in the form of an array of subtle cues and suggestions expressed as foregone conclusions -- to induce, to resort to surgery, or other clinical options...
In this case, Lorna was postdue and there were signs that she might be close to foetal distress, so who knows. I trust Estonian doctors. But I do insist on knowing by what path they arrive at their recommendations, and it seems they don't always want to say. It's something I've experienced in the past. As a patient in Estonia, especially coming from a different cultural background, you need to be an investigative journalist if you want to get to the bottom of your case.
One thing worth mentioning, and I noted it on the Fertilitas customer survey, was that the cleaning staff were completely from another planet. A bewildering mixture of obsequiousness, class-fuelled disgruntlement and just plain illogical thinking.
One patient who had bled on the floor in the IC unit said that a cleaning staff member who happened to be in the room at the time, that "I didn't need that kind of gift."
The hospital had provided do not disturb signs, but if these were not to keep out cleaning staff, I wonder what else they would be used for. It seemed that after I asked that uneaten food not be taken away immediately, they made a special effort to be unpleasant, pointedly failing to take away one empty yogurt container or one dirty spoon. And they seemed to take offence when I would leave some food that they served.
Vibe is very important in the birth process, and if the people who enter and exit the room the most often are weird, it negates part of the effort of the doctors and other dedicated staff members. The overall impression from Fertilitas is still a warm one. And I would recommend it.
Though, God, if I were a woman, I wish we had the Dutch system of supported home birth. It is effective, safe and humane.
All's well that ends well. Laps on käes -- we have our child.
Viimsi is a more affluent spa-ish area and the air is cleaner. Though it's not on the sea or anything, the facility is pleasant enough. Our room looked just like any "SPA" or sanitarium room, with TV, WiFi, good lighting...
The birth room is very cozy at Fertilitas, leaving the impression of perpetual candlelight. A rocking chair, which my wife notes is useless for her in the actual process, adds rustic charm as a prop. There is a bath for water births. The house music (we didn't bring our own or a guitar, thinking the less distractions the better), if desired, was Jack Johnson, basically the epitome of mellowness and whatever the opposite of egoism is. Good choice.
Down the corridor from our room is a fantastic palm and tropical plant choked atrium with statuary. It's overgrown like a secret garden and a little decadent, with algae-stained tile. This may not sound appealing, it is clean, and seems alive in a fertile way, more than, say, a slick, art deco Nordic hotel atrium. It looks just like the courtyard of a hotel we stayed at in Mazatlan. So the combination of socialist architecture, quality health care and tropical paradise said "Cuba" to me, though I have not been to the island.
Besides a flat fee for birth, and a fee for each bed-day, we paid extra to retain the services of one of the midwives, as I mentioned in one of my posts. It just doesn't work out the way you planned. She was fine, I guess, conferred with us and was in touch, but she was mortal too and when it came down to it, and we were in the actual birthing room and Jack Johson was playing after 24 hours of irregular painful pre-labour, it was another midwife who was there.
No complaints there: the entire bill came to $600, which to me seems negligible considering we were there for five days.
On the negative side, there was a sense of a private clinic that wasn't there in 2005 when Morgan was born. Not that a public hospital would be preferable, natch. Yet I got the sense they were hurrying along the process to make way for the next batch of birthees. A doctor even said, around the time when we were eating spicy food, that the coming weekend would be busy for them and that we should think of inducing. We didn't, and the process started naturally, albeit very slowly.
My suspicion is that you only get one chance to give birth, even if you are not in actual labour. After your one chance there is pressure -- in the form of an array of subtle cues and suggestions expressed as foregone conclusions -- to induce, to resort to surgery, or other clinical options...
In this case, Lorna was postdue and there were signs that she might be close to foetal distress, so who knows. I trust Estonian doctors. But I do insist on knowing by what path they arrive at their recommendations, and it seems they don't always want to say. It's something I've experienced in the past. As a patient in Estonia, especially coming from a different cultural background, you need to be an investigative journalist if you want to get to the bottom of your case.
One thing worth mentioning, and I noted it on the Fertilitas customer survey, was that the cleaning staff were completely from another planet. A bewildering mixture of obsequiousness, class-fuelled disgruntlement and just plain illogical thinking.
One patient who had bled on the floor in the IC unit said that a cleaning staff member who happened to be in the room at the time, that "I didn't need that kind of gift."
The hospital had provided do not disturb signs, but if these were not to keep out cleaning staff, I wonder what else they would be used for. It seemed that after I asked that uneaten food not be taken away immediately, they made a special effort to be unpleasant, pointedly failing to take away one empty yogurt container or one dirty spoon. And they seemed to take offence when I would leave some food that they served.
Vibe is very important in the birth process, and if the people who enter and exit the room the most often are weird, it negates part of the effort of the doctors and other dedicated staff members. The overall impression from Fertilitas is still a warm one. And I would recommend it.
Though, God, if I were a woman, I wish we had the Dutch system of supported home birth. It is effective, safe and humane.
All's well that ends well. Laps on käes -- we have our child.
Friday, May 16, 2008
HFI all over again
George W. Bush had something called a Healthy Forests Initiative.
It was innocuous enough on the surface of it, basically amounting to thinning underbrush and making untidy forests look more like a kind of place where you might want to have a church picnic. Deep down, I figured it was driven by the same fear of unspoiled wilderness that made early travellers across the Alps hide their faces to avoid seeing mountains in their nakedness. More practically, HFI was also driven by the real motives of protecting valuable timber tracts, probably already promised to companies, and the tinderbox McMansions of Bush's Western base. And it ran roughshod over endangered species living in underbrush, and the key fact that fire is a part of the natural reproductive life cycle of most Western US forests. As far as I know, it was successfully challenged by challenging one specific part of it. As of 2003, there were orderly piles of underbrush outside visitor centres waiting to be burned, but none of the "aggressive backcountry thinning" has taken place, although Bush has undermined environmental protection in so many other ways.
Estonia has a new legislative initiative to change the Forest Act. If you go by the critics, the amendments seem to be similar in effect to the executive-level HFI, in that they disingenuously predicate forest policy on what is supposedly good for the forests -- while benefiting the private sector. The subtext of the initiative is that forests have been mismanaged for years and it is time to put order in the house.
The new Forest Act also provides legal instruments that the private sector, through potential toadies in government, could potentially use to change the nature of a forest in order to reclassify it as clear-cuttable. Say what you will about former environment minister Reiljan, but if his like returned to office, they would have much more leeway to be corrupt.
Right now, the situation is decent. Estonia, while viewing forests as manageable resources, is still deliciously wild by European standards. People hunt big game here; it's a yardstick of the state of the environment. The proposed forestry model is considered to be Scandinavian. This is not good, except for maybe the paper industry. The only reason "Scandinavian model" is not synonymous with "environmental destruction" is that there is so much more boreal forest in Finland and Sweden to clear-cut.
The biggest sticking point is that the legislators want to get rid of the provision that 20% of Estonia must be forested at any given time. (The figure is 60% in Bhutan and is constitutionally protected, at the preservationist extreme. Just for comparison.) If the number drops, what gets cut will inevitably be mature pine and spruce. What grows back will in most cases be brush and at best alder and aspen.
Other major changes (summarizing from hooliveesti.ee) state forests can be leased for more than 100 years to timber companies.
* Sales and leases will be decided by a council of bureaucrat laymen, with no naturalist participation guaranteed.
* Administrative reform will create large management zones that do not reflect specific character of local ecosystems.
* The "protection forest" category will be abolished, which is basically a buffer zone, but a key one for many human communities and natural reserves. (Protected forest is the more strict classification.)
It is supposed to be enacted on 1 July. There is a grass roots movement against it. I am trying to find out if there is a legal challenge against it, as the Sierra Club ws instrumental against HFI.
Of course, HFI was a sneaky Bushie executive-level order, this is taking place in parliament.
It was innocuous enough on the surface of it, basically amounting to thinning underbrush and making untidy forests look more like a kind of place where you might want to have a church picnic. Deep down, I figured it was driven by the same fear of unspoiled wilderness that made early travellers across the Alps hide their faces to avoid seeing mountains in their nakedness. More practically, HFI was also driven by the real motives of protecting valuable timber tracts, probably already promised to companies, and the tinderbox McMansions of Bush's Western base. And it ran roughshod over endangered species living in underbrush, and the key fact that fire is a part of the natural reproductive life cycle of most Western US forests. As far as I know, it was successfully challenged by challenging one specific part of it. As of 2003, there were orderly piles of underbrush outside visitor centres waiting to be burned, but none of the "aggressive backcountry thinning" has taken place, although Bush has undermined environmental protection in so many other ways.
Estonia has a new legislative initiative to change the Forest Act. If you go by the critics, the amendments seem to be similar in effect to the executive-level HFI, in that they disingenuously predicate forest policy on what is supposedly good for the forests -- while benefiting the private sector. The subtext of the initiative is that forests have been mismanaged for years and it is time to put order in the house.
The new Forest Act also provides legal instruments that the private sector, through potential toadies in government, could potentially use to change the nature of a forest in order to reclassify it as clear-cuttable. Say what you will about former environment minister Reiljan, but if his like returned to office, they would have much more leeway to be corrupt.
Right now, the situation is decent. Estonia, while viewing forests as manageable resources, is still deliciously wild by European standards. People hunt big game here; it's a yardstick of the state of the environment. The proposed forestry model is considered to be Scandinavian. This is not good, except for maybe the paper industry. The only reason "Scandinavian model" is not synonymous with "environmental destruction" is that there is so much more boreal forest in Finland and Sweden to clear-cut.
The biggest sticking point is that the legislators want to get rid of the provision that 20% of Estonia must be forested at any given time. (The figure is 60% in Bhutan and is constitutionally protected, at the preservationist extreme. Just for comparison.) If the number drops, what gets cut will inevitably be mature pine and spruce. What grows back will in most cases be brush and at best alder and aspen.
Other major changes (summarizing from hooliveesti.ee) state forests can be leased for more than 100 years to timber companies.
* Sales and leases will be decided by a council of bureaucrat laymen, with no naturalist participation guaranteed.
* Administrative reform will create large management zones that do not reflect specific character of local ecosystems.
* The "protection forest" category will be abolished, which is basically a buffer zone, but a key one for many human communities and natural reserves. (Protected forest is the more strict classification.)
It is supposed to be enacted on 1 July. There is a grass roots movement against it. I am trying to find out if there is a legal challenge against it, as the Sierra Club ws instrumental against HFI.
Of course, HFI was a sneaky Bushie executive-level order, this is taking place in parliament.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
To plough the seas
I will be going to the States with Morgan this year for a month, during my vacation, which is scheduled for mid-August to mid-September.
I remember the days (until about 2003) when I would wait, procrastinate, and then finally buy a Lucky Fare from Icelandair. It would cost about 350 dollars for round trip airfare from Stockholm to New York. The ship from Tallinn to Stockholm? Don't mention it -- about thirty dollars for a spot on the deck.
Now, of course, there are no more deck spots or people sleeping in the sunroom. You have to get a stateroom, with the cheapest berth running well over $100 and entailing sharing a cabin with strangers (probably fierce smokers and drinkers). Springing for the whole coupe -- as one would do on Eastern European trains in the 1990s -- would be well over $300. Worth it last year, when three of us travelled.
Airfare, as many know, is double what it used to be. Things have now got to the point where I am considering a transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary. For the thrill of entering New York the proper way, of course, but also for a taste of the future.
It's only a six-day crossing (though that, too, will change by 2025). For only slightly more than a high-season plane ticket, you get six nights in a cabin with board.
I came across something very enticing about a "free return flight to London" (too good to be true, right?) from as recent as last year, when the QE II still plied the Southampton-New York line. I take it it no longer exists, but that would make a sea crossing very competitive indeed. SleazyJet to London and then Southampton Dock.
I remember the days (until about 2003) when I would wait, procrastinate, and then finally buy a Lucky Fare from Icelandair. It would cost about 350 dollars for round trip airfare from Stockholm to New York. The ship from Tallinn to Stockholm? Don't mention it -- about thirty dollars for a spot on the deck.
Now, of course, there are no more deck spots or people sleeping in the sunroom. You have to get a stateroom, with the cheapest berth running well over $100 and entailing sharing a cabin with strangers (probably fierce smokers and drinkers). Springing for the whole coupe -- as one would do on Eastern European trains in the 1990s -- would be well over $300. Worth it last year, when three of us travelled.
Airfare, as many know, is double what it used to be. Things have now got to the point where I am considering a transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary. For the thrill of entering New York the proper way, of course, but also for a taste of the future.
It's only a six-day crossing (though that, too, will change by 2025). For only slightly more than a high-season plane ticket, you get six nights in a cabin with board.
I came across something very enticing about a "free return flight to London" (too good to be true, right?) from as recent as last year, when the QE II still plied the Southampton-New York line. I take it it no longer exists, but that would make a sea crossing very competitive indeed. SleazyJet to London and then Southampton Dock.
New pics
Updated the "New" section of the photo site with a few pics of pink baby and grizzled sleep-deprived adults. (OS X Leopard users will inexplicably still see the unupdated site. Must be a parallel directory somewhere on the server, will have to root around.)
Sunday, May 11, 2008
MOTHER'S DAY: Outdoing herself
Looking at my heroic own wife, now a mother twice over, with babe in arms, I reflected on the obvious fact of how "mom" is in the beginning food and sustenance.
Moms do so much more, of course, and "outdoing yourself" need not even refer to cooking. (By my own choice, I do a good part of the cooking in our apartment.)
But I've been wanting to record some family history for some time, and I got to thinking about who cooked what in my childhood, all of the food cooked by mothers, with only a few exceptions. I was astonished how well I remember the specific smells and tastes, even as I feel some things slipping away.
("Just like Proust's madeleine", I should say here, if I wanted to appear deep.)
This stuff should be written down, somewhere. Eventually, recipes should be recorded, reconstructed.
Any appreciation of meals cooked by my mother and grandmothers over the years has to start with the first woman in my life, the one who, not least, packed my lunches every day for over ten years. Sparing me from a fate worse than death -- the American institutional school lunch -- especially the dreaded "Egg McJefferson", which made a rotating appearance in the form of an aluminium tin filled with some sort of overcooked crud, black at the corners. And sparing me from school-lunch vegetables, which in this era in the USA were ketchup and french fries.
My mom's lunches were nutritious and assembled with love. Despite my legendary morning crabbiness, she never failed to pack that brown bag. She could have easily snapped, pack your own and left it at that. Many would.
When it came to the vegetable du jour in my mom's bag lunches, even the Savoy cabbage was considered tradeable. The other kids derided it in jest as "purple kohlrabi", but I think they sort of assumed the Rikkens were Europeans and ate a lot of weird vegetables like endive, so it wasn't a big deal.
My favourite was always a sandwich of brown bread from a can (I am not making this up) with cream cheese. Usually there was a whole grain sandwich with cold cuts and cheese and sprouts. I acquired a taste for mayonnaise and hot pepper sauce that lasts to this day.
For dinner, Mamma had maybe 30-50 "bread and butter" dinner dishes. Enough to never get boring. Chicken in a creamy tomato sauce. Chicken almond ding. Jambalaya. Gumbo. Flank steak teriyaki. Fondue nights. Later, meat fondue nights (boiling oil over Sterno). Taco nights.
I am guessing that a lot of it was infused with a 1970s cosmopolitan spirit, healthful lifestyles. This was the time when people in DC were probably first discovering tabouleh, shiitake mushrooms, hummus. There wasn't that much pot roast or apple pie, which was fine by me.
We made cookies on holidays with Mamma -- snickerdoodles and mincemeat cookies -- and it was a shared activity. In general, the baked goods supply was grandmother territory. Again, as it should be, in my opinion.
Interestingly, both my grandmothers had a repertoire of dishes with no overlap. I wonder how it developed. They weren't over for each other's house for dinner, I don't think. Didn't they occasionally clip the same recipes? Kringel, the traditional sweet pretzel-shaped raisin bread eaten at birthdays, was perhaps the only thing both made.
My paternal grandmother Memme was more of the traditional baker. In her suburban Virginia Formica kitchen, full of comforting rounded corners and chrome dials, she turned out goodies the likes of some of which you can't find anywhere today. For all I know, these might have been common things in Estonian cafes in the 1930s -- sweet flaky sour cream rings, Aleksandri kook (kind of like a shortbread sandwich with raspberry jam and topped with lemon flavoured glaze), savoury pastries that covered the whole baking sheet, usually carrot and cabbage. I'm sure I've left out something -- yes, another one was cottage cheese cake, again square-shaped. I wasn't fond of the corners and edges, which were too bready and thick, but the center pieces were moist and delicious. Everything seemed to be scented slightly with cardamom.
But that's not right. My maternal grandmother Vanaema also worked the oven. For example, she was the only one in our family to make black bread, that most Estonian of baked goods -- used a sourdough starter yet it was sweet. Occasionally today a restaurant will serve bread like that, but I haven't located it in stores. And at Christmas, there would be sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies galore. And there was English Muffin loaf -- a good bread that was especially good hot (more than most breads). You couldn't call it white bread, there was something grainy in the crust. Vanaema tended to be more progressive, with more American cakes, spring mold type affairs like double chocolate cake. I assume these were 1950s American recipes. Memme also had a pineapple Jello cream cake and a kiwi Jello topping tart from the same canon.
(Now that I think of it, the pineapple Jello cream cake (I can taste it and see it, but am not sure if this is the right description) might have been made by Vanaema on occasion, too.)
At dinner, Vanaema shone with a green bean-beef-cream of mushroom casserole with -- the best part -- french fried dehydrated onions in a can. Paahdettu sipuli can be had from Finland so I have made this a couple times here.
Memme had an array of labour intensive dishes like stuffed cabbage rolls (the usual, but the tomatoey sauce was better than anything I have had in Estonia). Kotletid, too, of course. Unlike her baked goods, these dishes you can find today in a recognizable form in any baar or söökla, except these were home-cooked par excellence.
Moms do so much more, of course, and "outdoing yourself" need not even refer to cooking. (By my own choice, I do a good part of the cooking in our apartment.)
But I've been wanting to record some family history for some time, and I got to thinking about who cooked what in my childhood, all of the food cooked by mothers, with only a few exceptions. I was astonished how well I remember the specific smells and tastes, even as I feel some things slipping away.
("Just like Proust's madeleine", I should say here, if I wanted to appear deep.)
This stuff should be written down, somewhere. Eventually, recipes should be recorded, reconstructed.
Any appreciation of meals cooked by my mother and grandmothers over the years has to start with the first woman in my life, the one who, not least, packed my lunches every day for over ten years. Sparing me from a fate worse than death -- the American institutional school lunch -- especially the dreaded "Egg McJefferson", which made a rotating appearance in the form of an aluminium tin filled with some sort of overcooked crud, black at the corners. And sparing me from school-lunch vegetables, which in this era in the USA were ketchup and french fries.
My mom's lunches were nutritious and assembled with love. Despite my legendary morning crabbiness, she never failed to pack that brown bag. She could have easily snapped, pack your own and left it at that. Many would.
When it came to the vegetable du jour in my mom's bag lunches, even the Savoy cabbage was considered tradeable. The other kids derided it in jest as "purple kohlrabi", but I think they sort of assumed the Rikkens were Europeans and ate a lot of weird vegetables like endive, so it wasn't a big deal.
My favourite was always a sandwich of brown bread from a can (I am not making this up) with cream cheese. Usually there was a whole grain sandwich with cold cuts and cheese and sprouts. I acquired a taste for mayonnaise and hot pepper sauce that lasts to this day.
For dinner, Mamma had maybe 30-50 "bread and butter" dinner dishes. Enough to never get boring. Chicken in a creamy tomato sauce. Chicken almond ding. Jambalaya. Gumbo. Flank steak teriyaki. Fondue nights. Later, meat fondue nights (boiling oil over Sterno). Taco nights.
I am guessing that a lot of it was infused with a 1970s cosmopolitan spirit, healthful lifestyles. This was the time when people in DC were probably first discovering tabouleh, shiitake mushrooms, hummus. There wasn't that much pot roast or apple pie, which was fine by me.
We made cookies on holidays with Mamma -- snickerdoodles and mincemeat cookies -- and it was a shared activity. In general, the baked goods supply was grandmother territory. Again, as it should be, in my opinion.
Interestingly, both my grandmothers had a repertoire of dishes with no overlap. I wonder how it developed. They weren't over for each other's house for dinner, I don't think. Didn't they occasionally clip the same recipes? Kringel, the traditional sweet pretzel-shaped raisin bread eaten at birthdays, was perhaps the only thing both made.
My paternal grandmother Memme was more of the traditional baker. In her suburban Virginia Formica kitchen, full of comforting rounded corners and chrome dials, she turned out goodies the likes of some of which you can't find anywhere today. For all I know, these might have been common things in Estonian cafes in the 1930s -- sweet flaky sour cream rings, Aleksandri kook (kind of like a shortbread sandwich with raspberry jam and topped with lemon flavoured glaze), savoury pastries that covered the whole baking sheet, usually carrot and cabbage. I'm sure I've left out something -- yes, another one was cottage cheese cake, again square-shaped. I wasn't fond of the corners and edges, which were too bready and thick, but the center pieces were moist and delicious. Everything seemed to be scented slightly with cardamom.
But that's not right. My maternal grandmother Vanaema also worked the oven. For example, she was the only one in our family to make black bread, that most Estonian of baked goods -- used a sourdough starter yet it was sweet. Occasionally today a restaurant will serve bread like that, but I haven't located it in stores. And at Christmas, there would be sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies galore. And there was English Muffin loaf -- a good bread that was especially good hot (more than most breads). You couldn't call it white bread, there was something grainy in the crust. Vanaema tended to be more progressive, with more American cakes, spring mold type affairs like double chocolate cake. I assume these were 1950s American recipes. Memme also had a pineapple Jello cream cake and a kiwi Jello topping tart from the same canon.
(Now that I think of it, the pineapple Jello cream cake (I can taste it and see it, but am not sure if this is the right description) might have been made by Vanaema on occasion, too.)
At dinner, Vanaema shone with a green bean-beef-cream of mushroom casserole with -- the best part -- french fried dehydrated onions in a can. Paahdettu sipuli can be had from Finland so I have made this a couple times here.
Memme had an array of labour intensive dishes like stuffed cabbage rolls (the usual, but the tomatoey sauce was better than anything I have had in Estonia). Kotletid, too, of course. Unlike her baked goods, these dishes you can find today in a recognizable form in any baar or söökla, except these were home-cooked par excellence.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
One more Estonian and one more American -- Lorna Liis Rikken born on 8 May at 1:13 pm local time -- oh hell, 13.13 :P Everyone happy and healthy. We're now entering the "golden period" of several days when newborns are docile and meek and sleep a lot. And indeed she has -- including six straight hours two nights in a row. That's probably way too much for newborns who need to get fed, flush fetal hemoglobin etc. But worried dad has faith in the doctors and midwives and pediatricians who are basically leaving us alone -- nothing is amiss.
She's lovely and unmistakeably a girl -- sound of her crying. Morgan was more like "just a baby".
My suspicion all along has been that going from one to two kids would be a bigger difference than having no. 1. We shall see starting today when we leave the cozy cocoon of the birth centre, and Morgan comes home from grandma's. Lots to blog about, too, about our experience here, mainly positive, with a cleaning staff from hell.
She's lovely and unmistakeably a girl -- sound of her crying. Morgan was more like "just a baby".
My suspicion all along has been that going from one to two kids would be a bigger difference than having no. 1. We shall see starting today when we leave the cozy cocoon of the birth centre, and Morgan comes home from grandma's. Lots to blog about, too, about our experience here, mainly positive, with a cleaning staff from hell.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Give us your burden
In recent years, Estonia has lived a charmed life when it comes to immigration. Sweden has accepted most of the load for decades including, recently, Iraqi refugees, even though it did not have a hand in displacing them. Now this is changing -- Sweden is reaching their limit. What isn't changing, of course, is the flow of people yearning to breathe free (or at least have a car and better things), and it will only get worse. I don't think I need to provide evidence for that claim, given the issues that are going on in the world.
180,000 sought asylum in the EU in 2006. Euroasylum Ltd., a research group on the subject, notes: "With less than 0.003% of the total asylum applications lodged in the European Union, the Republic of Estonia is not a traditional country of asylum. However, in view of the obligation for the first country of arrival in the EU to examine all asylum requests, in addition to issues of burden sharing, Estonia will be likely to see a gradual increase in its asylum figures."
Why isn't Estonia a traditional country for asylum? I'm guessing a) the immigrants haven't heard of it, and b) the only conceivable first point of entry would be from Russia, land of pogroms and virulent racism, and no one would sign up for a ride through there, even if it were the relative safety of an airtight container.
So burden-sharing with first-line countries like Spain it will have to be, and not the kind of burden-sharing (an ugly term in the best of cases) that took place between Estonia and Latvia in 1995, when a trainload of Kurds was sent rolling back and forth for days. Hot potato episodes like that are probably one reason Estonia gets only 5 applications a year. As odious as drowning in the Mediterranean is, people will still undertake desperate maritime journeys -- but limbo and "extralegal status" at a reception centre in the Baltics is certainly not what they are looking for.
The detais of burden-sharing has to be worked out, but the elements in the original German model are valid -- criteria like GDP and population. As Estonia gets more affluent (with one of the highest per capita GDPs in formerly communist Europe) and its low population density continues to drop to near-Swedish and Finnish levels, it is becoming capable on the strength of sheer economics of helping. Just today there was an article about how Estonians are adopting more children, including problem ones. Something similar on the state level, maybe?
As far as our own formerly illegal immigrants are concerned (illegal immigration was a huge problem in Estonia from 1940 to the 1980s) we have generously integrated them as much as we ever will, and there isn't even a hint of the hatred and personal invective that you see in intraracial conflict in, say, Belfast. Look how good things are between Estonians and Russians, for God's sake. We can manage a few thousand or so Iraqis or Fur or Zaghawa. They will blend in and give us a run for our money, and make us question whether our Lutheran work ethic hasn't gone a bit slack.
Estonia offers no real racism compared to its neighbours. It's actually refreshingly a blank slate in that regard, rather like the Netherlands, another tolerant "port country", was after the war. Sure, Estonia has your contingent of "tonal aesthetic" idiots, who act like they have never lived within 100 miles of a person of colour /and probably they haven't) and think that a slight shift in the colour of the social fabric will unsettle things and eclipse all other issues. But they will quickly realize when the guy their neighbour is sponsoring moves in, that he will not be a muezzin walking them up at 3 am with a keening wail. He'll probably be too busy working to even pray.
Finally, the few bona fide unpleasant racists who have made Estonia their virtual or real-life haven (just shy of a trend, I would say) will realize that maybe this isn't some kind of free-floating moral vacuum, just as inexorably as they will have to take responsibility for their actions in their past lives.
180,000 sought asylum in the EU in 2006. Euroasylum Ltd., a research group on the subject, notes: "With less than 0.003% of the total asylum applications lodged in the European Union, the Republic of Estonia is not a traditional country of asylum. However, in view of the obligation for the first country of arrival in the EU to examine all asylum requests, in addition to issues of burden sharing, Estonia will be likely to see a gradual increase in its asylum figures."
Why isn't Estonia a traditional country for asylum? I'm guessing a) the immigrants haven't heard of it, and b) the only conceivable first point of entry would be from Russia, land of pogroms and virulent racism, and no one would sign up for a ride through there, even if it were the relative safety of an airtight container.
So burden-sharing with first-line countries like Spain it will have to be, and not the kind of burden-sharing (an ugly term in the best of cases) that took place between Estonia and Latvia in 1995, when a trainload of Kurds was sent rolling back and forth for days. Hot potato episodes like that are probably one reason Estonia gets only 5 applications a year. As odious as drowning in the Mediterranean is, people will still undertake desperate maritime journeys -- but limbo and "extralegal status" at a reception centre in the Baltics is certainly not what they are looking for.
The detais of burden-sharing has to be worked out, but the elements in the original German model are valid -- criteria like GDP and population. As Estonia gets more affluent (with one of the highest per capita GDPs in formerly communist Europe) and its low population density continues to drop to near-Swedish and Finnish levels, it is becoming capable on the strength of sheer economics of helping. Just today there was an article about how Estonians are adopting more children, including problem ones. Something similar on the state level, maybe?
As far as our own formerly illegal immigrants are concerned (illegal immigration was a huge problem in Estonia from 1940 to the 1980s) we have generously integrated them as much as we ever will, and there isn't even a hint of the hatred and personal invective that you see in intraracial conflict in, say, Belfast. Look how good things are between Estonians and Russians, for God's sake. We can manage a few thousand or so Iraqis or Fur or Zaghawa. They will blend in and give us a run for our money, and make us question whether our Lutheran work ethic hasn't gone a bit slack.
Estonia offers no real racism compared to its neighbours. It's actually refreshingly a blank slate in that regard, rather like the Netherlands, another tolerant "port country", was after the war. Sure, Estonia has your contingent of "tonal aesthetic" idiots, who act like they have never lived within 100 miles of a person of colour /and probably they haven't) and think that a slight shift in the colour of the social fabric will unsettle things and eclipse all other issues. But they will quickly realize when the guy their neighbour is sponsoring moves in, that he will not be a muezzin walking them up at 3 am with a keening wail. He'll probably be too busy working to even pray.
Finally, the few bona fide unpleasant racists who have made Estonia their virtual or real-life haven (just shy of a trend, I would say) will realize that maybe this isn't some kind of free-floating moral vacuum, just as inexorably as they will have to take responsibility for their actions in their past lives.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
May fools
On May 1 as hangovers wore off -- and as some people with apparently no plans to go to work on Friday refuelled -- I witnessed this: A man was standing at the beginning of Viru tänav, dressed only in diapers, not in blackface but blackbody. Occasionally one of a few men lounging on the steps would pause in their conversation to whack him with a big wooden paddle. Fortunately, all were Finnish. I'm not sure what this bush baby performance art was supposed to mean, and I'm not sure I wanted to know. It was a little repulsive so I kept on walking, as did most Estonians.
Viru värav is a strange place any day, with rullnokad, tourists, pickpockets, flower sellers, taxi cab mafia and bicycle taxis all milling around.
On this day, there was a heavy police presence. Also, cars flying the flag of Azerbaijan (I think) were cruising down Pärnu mnt and honking their horns as if they had just got married. I couldn't find any news of, say, a football friendly being played that day. They announced the next day that the Azeris would be opening an embassy in Tallinn; I hope this was not an official motorcade.
If anyone can shed some light on (or interpret) these events, please do.
Viru värav is a strange place any day, with rullnokad, tourists, pickpockets, flower sellers, taxi cab mafia and bicycle taxis all milling around.
On this day, there was a heavy police presence. Also, cars flying the flag of Azerbaijan (I think) were cruising down Pärnu mnt and honking their horns as if they had just got married. I couldn't find any news of, say, a football friendly being played that day. They announced the next day that the Azeris would be opening an embassy in Tallinn; I hope this was not an official motorcade.
If anyone can shed some light on (or interpret) these events, please do.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Estonia as an FCZ
I am running into this more frequently -- the "this video is unavailable in your country" message.
(It was this one -- I continue to suffer from an unslakeable need for high lonesome Americana. Here's a version of the song people in Estonia can stream.)
I understand most people get by on torrents, that there's no reason to feel guilty as the content producers will get monetized anyway, and that there is probably even a simple workaround to watch the video in question, not that I really need a third version of "True Blue".
I’m not even sure if the trend of geographical IP restrictions is a trend.
It still seems like a nose-thumbing at Estonia by big companies -- "your people are not rich enough and do not speak good enough English to be suckers for our advertisers. Go listen to a CD or something."
In my mind, I'd like Estonia to be a port city among countries. A country where anything can be bought and sold, where speech is refreshingly free. A free content zone or FCZ. But for some reason these geographic IP restrictions persist. I'm sure the chances of getting the Jayhawks back together and playing a free concert in Tallinn are marginally greater than changing the model of how business is done!
Assuming that this issue is a hassle that is worth overcoming, a related question I had is whether embassies are immune to geographical IP restrictions (and if there’s a loophole in it for me). The US embassy is US soil, isn't it? (At least I think for most legal definitions.)
If they have some kind of ultrasecure satellite setup, that's one thing. I would think, though, they would have a local ISP, just as they have local security companies provide security. If we could get a special dispensation for the embassies, maybe others could ride along.
That's more for curiosity's sake. I'd hate to see a scheme where only US passport holders get to access US content.
Cut to the utopian part of the post.
Though it's against my belief in less government, maybe there should be a state agency dedicated to lobbying for and obtaining rights (there's only 1.4 million of us) and advertising Estonia as a place that is the ideal -- watch/listen to anything ever made, while in Estonia. Instead of the current set-up, where Estonia is a second-class EU country when it comes to getting movie rights and such, promote Estonia in a pilot project, try to get all the majors on board.
Something new -- not a FTZ, not a tax haven, but.. a free content zone. (Naturally no free lunches, there would be a small flat surcharge to every ISP client, or some tourist dollars could help fund it).
"Visit Estonia and get a free subscription to the world's biggest digital library and online movie database for as long as you are in the country. Laptop not included."
Shoot it down, use it, steal it.
(It was this one -- I continue to suffer from an unslakeable need for high lonesome Americana. Here's a version of the song people in Estonia can stream.)
I understand most people get by on torrents, that there's no reason to feel guilty as the content producers will get monetized anyway, and that there is probably even a simple workaround to watch the video in question, not that I really need a third version of "True Blue".
I’m not even sure if the trend of geographical IP restrictions is a trend.
It still seems like a nose-thumbing at Estonia by big companies -- "your people are not rich enough and do not speak good enough English to be suckers for our advertisers. Go listen to a CD or something."
In my mind, I'd like Estonia to be a port city among countries. A country where anything can be bought and sold, where speech is refreshingly free. A free content zone or FCZ. But for some reason these geographic IP restrictions persist. I'm sure the chances of getting the Jayhawks back together and playing a free concert in Tallinn are marginally greater than changing the model of how business is done!
Assuming that this issue is a hassle that is worth overcoming, a related question I had is whether embassies are immune to geographical IP restrictions (and if there’s a loophole in it for me). The US embassy is US soil, isn't it? (At least I think for most legal definitions.)
If they have some kind of ultrasecure satellite setup, that's one thing. I would think, though, they would have a local ISP, just as they have local security companies provide security. If we could get a special dispensation for the embassies, maybe others could ride along.
That's more for curiosity's sake. I'd hate to see a scheme where only US passport holders get to access US content.
Cut to the utopian part of the post.
Though it's against my belief in less government, maybe there should be a state agency dedicated to lobbying for and obtaining rights (there's only 1.4 million of us) and advertising Estonia as a place that is the ideal -- watch/listen to anything ever made, while in Estonia. Instead of the current set-up, where Estonia is a second-class EU country when it comes to getting movie rights and such, promote Estonia in a pilot project, try to get all the majors on board.
Something new -- not a FTZ, not a tax haven, but.. a free content zone. (Naturally no free lunches, there would be a small flat surcharge to every ISP client, or some tourist dollars could help fund it).
"Visit Estonia and get a free subscription to the world's biggest digital library and online movie database for as long as you are in the country. Laptop not included."
Shoot it down, use it, steal it.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
City of odd things
(blatantly stealing a device from a Tartu blog for the title)
We went strolling around Tallinn today. I wish I had had my camera. Another beautiful day with a feeling that it wants to rain but the sun won't have any of it. At the end of the walk (which I forgot to mention when I posted this entry) we saw a pigeon chase and taunt a lazy black cat that just wanted to lie down in some grass on our street.
We climbed up to Toompea, Tallinn's Città Alta. I thought it might be just as full of sidewalk cafes and nut-vendors as the lower town. Instead it's a very strange place, lovely but very quiet. You've got parliament, two cathedrals and embassies, sure, but it mainly seems deserted and residential, with very specific institutions, like the Ballet School and the Representation of the Russian Railway in Estonia.
And, most bizarrely, what must be a community of expats from Kaliningrad. Because the seat of power in Tallinn has at least five Russian souvenir shops, all of them entitled "Suveniirid". It's disorienting. Toompea is only about four or five blocks long, but big enough that you can't see the lower town, and each time you round a corner you see another souvenir shop with the exact same name. Actually, eventually you get to one that is called "Symphony of Amber". They are so proud of their originality that they sprang for wrought iron cursive lettering. It must taken a while to forge, and I would hate to break it to the proprietor that amber is not found in Estonia.
Besides amber, all of the shops also sell "nestling dolls", which sounded cute (as in aw, the dolls are in love with each other and are spooning) until I realized it was just the Russian matrioshki. Bo-oring! What is cool is when the smallest matrioshka in the series is a caricature of Bush or Putin and contains a dead insect, like amber, but no luck. These were probably new and made in China.
There is some kind of cultural disconnect going on up on Toompea all right, and the only restaurant to be found was Greek. Or maybe this is globalization and I'm getting old.
There are tourists up on the viewing platforms, and the view from Patkuli Steps toward the harbour is beautiful. Not a single high-rise can be seen (except for the 13th century St. Olaf's); they're all around the corner. I hope it stays that way.
The bizarreness continued as we left the viewing platform and we saw a person some on Toompea might see as an "asocial" (aftereffects, open sores) giving a tour to some Finns, holding forth in an opinionated tone. I have to pride him on his resourcefulness. There was no dead air on this tour, he was earning his keep, or maybe he was just a down-at-heel relative.
**
Earlier we followed the sound of tümps or sült music to Freedom Square and up Harju Hill, where there was a Labour Day (hold the puns) event in progress. Kids were jumping on a trampoline to the beat of the music and blue balloons were everywhere. The colour red was nowhere to be seen. The lyrics were "raha ei ole" (don't have money) and the singer was yodelling at the end of some of the verses. It wasn't protest music.
We found a boulder halfway down the hill marked "future site of the Freedom Monument". It was one of those natural rocks with carvings you might see in a county manor park honouring some 19th century poet.
I should probably read more and blog less: I thought the Freedom Monument was going to be installed down below in the middle of the square (I just had Riga's Freedom Monument in mind, which is a nice spacious area) giving an excuse to get rid of the parking lot that is taking up the place. But no. From the looks of it they are gouging out half of Harju hill to make a place for the monument to be in. I think this qualifies as "numnuttery". I just hope they remember to remove the boulder before digging too far into the hill.
I'm sure there's a brilliant reason for all of this, including why they paved over the tennis courts at the foot of the hill.
We went strolling around Tallinn today. I wish I had had my camera. Another beautiful day with a feeling that it wants to rain but the sun won't have any of it. At the end of the walk (which I forgot to mention when I posted this entry) we saw a pigeon chase and taunt a lazy black cat that just wanted to lie down in some grass on our street.
We climbed up to Toompea, Tallinn's Città Alta. I thought it might be just as full of sidewalk cafes and nut-vendors as the lower town. Instead it's a very strange place, lovely but very quiet. You've got parliament, two cathedrals and embassies, sure, but it mainly seems deserted and residential, with very specific institutions, like the Ballet School and the Representation of the Russian Railway in Estonia.
And, most bizarrely, what must be a community of expats from Kaliningrad. Because the seat of power in Tallinn has at least five Russian souvenir shops, all of them entitled "Suveniirid". It's disorienting. Toompea is only about four or five blocks long, but big enough that you can't see the lower town, and each time you round a corner you see another souvenir shop with the exact same name. Actually, eventually you get to one that is called "Symphony of Amber". They are so proud of their originality that they sprang for wrought iron cursive lettering. It must taken a while to forge, and I would hate to break it to the proprietor that amber is not found in Estonia.
Besides amber, all of the shops also sell "nestling dolls", which sounded cute (as in aw, the dolls are in love with each other and are spooning) until I realized it was just the Russian matrioshki. Bo-oring! What is cool is when the smallest matrioshka in the series is a caricature of Bush or Putin and contains a dead insect, like amber, but no luck. These were probably new and made in China.
There is some kind of cultural disconnect going on up on Toompea all right, and the only restaurant to be found was Greek. Or maybe this is globalization and I'm getting old.
There are tourists up on the viewing platforms, and the view from Patkuli Steps toward the harbour is beautiful. Not a single high-rise can be seen (except for the 13th century St. Olaf's); they're all around the corner. I hope it stays that way.
The bizarreness continued as we left the viewing platform and we saw a person some on Toompea might see as an "asocial" (aftereffects, open sores) giving a tour to some Finns, holding forth in an opinionated tone. I have to pride him on his resourcefulness. There was no dead air on this tour, he was earning his keep, or maybe he was just a down-at-heel relative.
**
Earlier we followed the sound of tümps or sült music to Freedom Square and up Harju Hill, where there was a Labour Day (hold the puns) event in progress. Kids were jumping on a trampoline to the beat of the music and blue balloons were everywhere. The colour red was nowhere to be seen. The lyrics were "raha ei ole" (don't have money) and the singer was yodelling at the end of some of the verses. It wasn't protest music.
We found a boulder halfway down the hill marked "future site of the Freedom Monument". It was one of those natural rocks with carvings you might see in a county manor park honouring some 19th century poet.
I should probably read more and blog less: I thought the Freedom Monument was going to be installed down below in the middle of the square (I just had Riga's Freedom Monument in mind, which is a nice spacious area) giving an excuse to get rid of the parking lot that is taking up the place. But no. From the looks of it they are gouging out half of Harju hill to make a place for the monument to be in. I think this qualifies as "numnuttery". I just hope they remember to remove the boulder before digging too far into the hill.
I'm sure there's a brilliant reason for all of this, including why they paved over the tennis courts at the foot of the hill.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
