September 25, 2005
Same same but different
Do you think you've seen this picture before? I have the same feeling, but I'm not recycling the photos this time. We had another Finland-themed party last night. Kaj's colleagues & all 3 "Giulianos" came over, but unfortunately the 3 are not in the picture, because we remembered to take out the camera only when Luca said "enough" and demanded to sleep in his own bed. Gary promised to send more pics (he left for Vietnam today, poor soul), so I will update this story when I get them.
This time we had some real rye bread and smoked Rudolf! People apparently wisened up after last time - the Finlandia vodka bottle is still half full.. :) This time we also didn't have any casualties, nobody throwing up in a taxi... :)
A nice coincidence (nicely continuing from my previous post) - towards the end of the evening the stories took a spooky turn. It is really amazing to hear that almost everyone has experienced some supernatural encounters in their lives.. Now look at this spooky picture - an innocent baby and these evil twins lurking over him with a beer can! If poor Luca would have opened his eyes at that moment, I'm sure he'd be traumatised for life. :) Kaj says that he's completely unmoved by the local spooky stories, but when I hear Sean telling about a little green guy squatting under a banana plant that he saw next to his grandparents house as a child, my arm hairs stand!
Anyway, this was fun, among not so fun things that I was wanting to write for a long time are 3 recently publicised police cases somehow disturbing my life. I am not directly related to any these cases, I'm only concerned. Only as much as any human being should be... :(
1) One filmmaker has been having tea with police for making a film "Leijonakaupunki Rebel" about the oposition leader that is currently bankrupt and facing defamation suits. His movie is illegal according to Film Act that bans any movie "made by any person and directed towards any political end in Leijonakaupunki".
2) People have been complaining about authorities not opening one MRT station, as they were forced to walk significant distance to other stations to catch a train. The reason for keeeping it closed was not sufficient amount of people who'd be taking the train from this station. To gently & jokingly remind about the issue, somebody put up carton cut-outs of white elephants (white elephant may symbolise a useless object) on the day when a minister visited the area. The minister laughed it off, somebody made a call to police hotline (or so the press claims). The case is currently under investigation as it is against the Public Entertainment and Meetings Act (under this act, besides being not allowed to carry banners, people are not allowed gather publicly in groups of more than 4 people).
3) 3 "bloggers" were charged under Sedition Act for racist remarks online. These are the first cases when somebody was charged for expressing their opinions online. The racist comments were directed against Malay-Muslims and posted in some pet-related forums (in response to somebody complaining about taxi drivers allowing to take dogs inside - some Muslims can't come in contact with dogs saliva because of their religion). The guys, 17, 24 and 27 years old face up to 3 years in jail. Btw, they are all called "bloggers", although some of them were posting comments in online forums. Some people say that this may be done on purpose to make a clear association between "bloggers" and "criminals" and to give an idea that blogging is a dangerous pursuit.
Posted by gkligyte at September 25, 2005 03:56 PM