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July 10, 2005

How to make a lot of babies

Once again I'm scraping the left over photos for this story - well, I just didn't take any pictures this week.. I don't have our small camera now, because Kaj took it to Vietnam and there wasn't much happening anyway. I will be joining Kaj in Vietnam in a few days - leaving next Wednesday. So far I have been hearing mixed reports from Kaj - Ho Chi Mingh seems to be an interesting city, but the Mui Ne beach that was supposed to be our final destination seems to be not so exciting as we imagined. Well, I will soon find out about it myself..

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For a long time I wanted to write about the attempts to increase population in here. It is quite an amazing issue, I think. As most of the developed countries, Leijonakaupunki is facing not so rosy future - the population is dropping. Family planning first, nation going extinct after - this happened to many countries. The good thing for the Leijonakaupunki government is that they don't need to worry about the pension system collapsing - in here the social guarantee is your children (based on the famous "filial piety" concept deriving from confucianism). However, to sustain "growth" and assure that the economy wheels are turning, Leijonakaupunki needs to increase population. Fair enough. So how do you make babies in Leijonakaupunki?

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First of all - Baby Bonus, the financial incentive for the families that decide to have children (I think I wrote about it sometime in September). Well done! But the money that families receive is really not all that substantial to convince people to change their lifestyle, put their careers in danger.. Increase maternity leave to 3 months! Wow, I'm impressed! Paternity leave - 3 days.. Well, at least something,right? The leave couldn't be much longer, because young mothers would have worse employment prospects, you see..

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Ok lah, but still, who wants this little creature that poops and burps all over the place, demands attention and sucks up all your savings - think about how much the education will cost!! How about shopping and enjoying yourself, lah.. (btw, shopping was announced to be a national Leijonakaupunki sport during the Olympics meeting in here..) Right? We need some stronger incentive, a complete change of mindset. How do we do that? Ok, we need some role models, some good examples of happy family lives.. So here it starts.. Since the time I came here, there were some 15 local media stars getting pregnant, the newspapers following their journey all the way through and now follow ups how their babies are growing, how much happiness they bring, etc. One celebrity even told that she washes her face with her own milk, because she has so much of it! Yiewks... Besides that (come on, I don't mean to suggest that they were "in-pregnated" by the government to be the baby-policy front runners, of course not.. he he.. That would be quite something.. ;) there are lots of new local TV series popping up, telling about family lives, main characters getting pregnant, etc. Then some fashion magazines showing those celebrities with their kids in some fashion shoots.. Interesting, right?

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Another interesting discovery - a survey showed that Leijonakaupunki people have least sex in the world! Now how is that? Why? Well, some of high-fliers and just ordinary working Leijonakaupunki people get to sleep only 4 hours a day! it is common for the people to go to sleep at 2am, I think the majority falls asleep after midnight.. Do you think they spend few hours before sleep doing something funny? Ha, the funniest thing to do is, of course, to shop and to eat! This definitely has some implications for the population..

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So how do you tackle that? Taku can be a witness - one weekend there was a huge article in the paper telling about the community clubs (usually located in the housing estates like this one above & meant to be community cultural centers) besides caligraphy, martial arts and cooking classes, also offering a "sexy dancing" course, where you can learn moves called "hooker walk", "pussy-cat roll", etc. Next weekend there was another article telling that the interest and response from the audience was huge - all the classes were filled in no time. Now, anybody able to add 1+1 in this story? He he.. Can't stop looking around and wondering.. Exciting, isn't it?

Posted by gkligyte at July 10, 2005 03:42 PM
Comments
Aja so are you interested on those maternity benefits yourself? he he Report form vietnam?? ahhhh...... Posted by: abc on July 21, 2005 08:50 PM
Labas, Kaip tik gavom Julijos dovanele, labai aciu :)) Mergina kaip tik uzaugo ta amziu, kai pagal instrukcijas galima zaisti su smulkiomis detalemis... Ir suprato ka tai reiskia gimtadienis, kad cia tik jai vienai o ne taip kaip kaledos :)) Linkejimai, rasyk?? Posted by: Norvyda on July 14, 2005 02:45 PM
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