Good luck to a new star with a great voice!

Well, I'm happy Anna Bergendahl won.



I hope she makes it to the European final.
And I hope Pernilla really breakes a leg!

The pro's are boring!

Pernilla Wahlgren and Peter Jöback are both old professional singers. But in this weekly song contest "Melodifestivalen" you have to make the audience feel something - at once.

The young singer Anna Bergendahl was absolutely the best one. She made me shiver. She was georgious. Hope she beats Pernilla. Pernilla is middleaged and she has dominated the musical scenes in Stockholm for the last thirty years or so. It's enough now...

I'm sure the audience out in the country vote on their old stars. But on the other hand, they like "dans-band", the music that typically is played at large local fairs and that people dans foxtrot and bugg/jive to. What can you expect?

Or as the kids say, the result is decided by the record companies. Let's hope Anna has got a record company that will pay for some votes for her...

Financial analysts take a short-term view when they demand industries to move to low cost countries

Why isn't it investigated if there is a competing company dominating in the same area or town when sensitive development are moved to low cost countries? Why isn't anyone looking into how resources are shared between companies via consultancy companies? And how the culture in the country is, if local students are more likely to be loyal to their friends than to a forreign company?

It seems it's only the hourly rate that is considered when moving research and development to low cost countries. It seems the financial market only think there is a price war. Have they heard about competing using features and functionality, industry knowledge and even quality? If a company don't have such a competitive advantage in their offer, then it's only a price war!

It is wellknown that competition is good for an industry when two companies are on the same level and located geographically close. They become more aware of the competition and can more quickly follow, adapt and surpass each other. It is similar to the evolution of the academic world. Since different Universities share results from research, they can copy each other, verify, complement and superseed each other. That's evolution!

In the industry such competition and drain of knowledge is of course not favourable to the leading company. Especially in industries where the income from patents are a valuable source of income, and where innovation is happening on top of the technical knowledge.

Now I think it's also interesting to note how experienced people who have been fired from the European company are being headhunted by the competing company's local organisation. All to secure as much of specialist competencies and competitive information as possible to be transfered to the low cost country (at least in the short time frame).

I find it amazing that the financial analysts who are demanding Euopean companies to fire people in Europe and move their development abroad don't consider and evaluate the risk of losing the competetive advantage. Products don't only have a price you know, they have a value too.... and that value can differ.

Stockholm traffic chaos or what happens if there is no plan B

This winter the snow clearance work has failed in Stockholm. The streets and the sidewalks have been so icy so lots of people have ended up in emergency care with fractures. Now the trains and the metro fail too which causes total chaos.

Why is it so? Stockholm has had snowy and cold weather many times (although not every winter). Normally it's only some local trains that don't run on time, because they were built in some warm country without the right winter requirements. Everybody knows that. But why did other things fail as well this year?

I believe it's because all the routines, all the requirements and plans could only handle a normal case. There are few or no routines for a slightly abnormal case. It seems nobody asked the questions "but what if it's not a normal case?"

I lady originating from southern Europe told me that the temperature is always around zero degrees when it's snowing. She had noted that during the few years she had been living in Stockholm. I didn't think it was a general rule, but I had problems to prove her to be wrong. Last year when our conversation took place her statement was true. It was only snowing when the temperature was around zero degrees. However, it has not been true this year.

Apparently the snow clearance people and the traffic planning people have only been planning for that normal mild weather case too.
The snow clearance people usually remove snow from streets and sidewalks in a rather careless way. They get away with it, because they use salt to melt away the rest of the snow. Usually the salt makes it look like an early spring with water pouring off the streets and the sidewalks a few days after a snowfall.

It seems the trains use another techniques. They add some electricity to melt away the snow from trails and switches with heat.
I usually use electricity and heat to get my car nice and warm too. By heating it up a few hours per day and by using heat on the windows when driving I usually keep my car fairly safe and comfortable even during the wintertime. Except this year. This year having the heat on made my car turn into an ice igloo.

It has been quite cold lately also when it has been snowing, it hasn't been around zero degrees, but much colder. So I've learned to avoid having the heat on the windows or use the windscreen wipers when driving in snowy weather. Since the snow is so cold and light it has been blowing away by the wind when driving.

The salt that was added to the sidewalks just made them icy, since the weather turned cold instead of warm afterwards. The electricity that has been added to the trails just made them covered with ice, instead of making them cleaned from snow.

The conclusion is that they need to have some routines for a plan B too. When the weather isn't going to be warm, salt should be avoided on the streets, and the snow have to be removed properly and not in a careless way (instead of relying on melting it away with salt).
When it's too cold, maybe electricity and heat shouldn't be used to get the snow off the trials, but maybe the snow needs to be blown away instead. It's all about having the right requirements and the right routines for the abnormal case too. To avoid the chaos we see in Stockholm today...

Are you a risk-taker?

Do you take risks in your personal life? I made a personality test, and answered the questions "do you want to do sky-diving?" and "would you like to be a racing driver?". The answers should show if I'm a risk-taker or not. I've got a feeling the test was intended to be answered by men and not women. How many mothers do sky diving or car racing?

The other day I happened to check up what people die from in Sweden. Did you know that the main reason why men have shorter expected life than women is because they die from "external violence" before the age of 45? In my mind, taking stupid risks seems to be something that men do much more than women, and it's not such a good idea, especially not if you want to see your grand children.

What I also found was that people die from tumors earlier than they die from hart problems, so it seems smarter to avoid getting cancer (unless you're a very stressed and a middle aged man of course). If you're a woman you should definitely look out for tumors. Or rather stop smoking.

I'm happy my children don't go sky diving or car racing or smoking. If they wants to take risks they can invest on the stock market... The questionnaire didn't mention any such risks. It seems you should risk your life to be a risk-taker!

Why change if I'm good enough...?

Now it's all clear. All my problems in life comes from my low self esteem!

I need to change that. If I do improve my self esteem, other things will improve as well.

"I'm good enough just as I am!" is the message.

I just need to change...

It feels like a contradiction to me! But I guess I need to overlook such a detail.

Does anyone knows how it happens? I've read a dozen books about it, and I still don't know...

The song that didn't win

This was the song I instantly liked, performed by Anna Maria Espinosa:

Espinosa's song

Last year I picked the Swedish winner Malena Ernman at her first perfomance in this contest. This year I picked Anna Maria Espinosa, but unfortunately she didn't even make it to the Swedish semifinal. :(

(I happened to make a mistake in the code earlier, this link should work)

Of course the rest of the audience is wrong! :)

The Swedish audience consists of ....... I'm still convinced that Espinoza would have been a winner. Because she made me shiver. It is not enough to come with a hit, a refrain that people remember and a song that people feel they have heard about a thousand times already. A winning song has to make you feel something apart from recognition.
Either people didn't vote or they watch sport instead. I don't vote. I don't want to pay any more to Swedish TV than I already do.

Phase 2 of melodifestivalen

Saturday evening and Swedish melodifestival, this song contest again.

Espinosa is a winner. I didn't like her timing, it seemed she was singing too fast, but her song made me shiver. A lot. If she isn't winning it's because the audience consists of children who rather vote for their favorite singer (like Erik Saade).

I think Andreas Johnson is a joke. He keeps coming back to this contest year after year (the guy who organize it must be one of his best friends). He looks a bit handsome but he is very well aware of it. Nothing he does come across as true. It doesn't move me an inch.

Hanna Lindblad and her song was very much like a Madonna wannabe. I like Madonna. But no shivering. (rysning in Swedish)...

I hate webforms

I hate webforms. Especially those red stars that indicate that you must fill in something,
"Please Mr, submit the following information: select you state please."
I live outside of US, does that mean I'm stateless?
Ok. I'm Mickey Mouse and I live in Alaska. Happy now? There must be thousands of them already in their database. How do they manage them all?

When applying for jobs it's the same thing; "Please fill in your age!!"
Oh yes, of course I'll make it easy for you to make a first selection on age! Sure.
Should I put 30 or 35? And then claim I misunderstood the instructions?
Don't think that would make such a good first impression.
In this country it is forbidden to discriminate on religious views, sex and age.
That's a joke. They already have age and sex and can also make a wild guess on religious view reading the name. Why have stupid laws that you nobody needs to follow?

Sometimes it's possible to add a cv. But sometimes, the stupid piece of software is not designed to allow a pdf file. How am I supposed to know which Microsoft Word version they use? And of course I'm not allowed to see what it all looks like, what I've just submitted.

Of course you're supposed to put in a valid e-mail address. I guess that's why you need to change your e-mail address every now and then. Receiving those "no thanks, but we have decided to move forward with a few selected applicants and you are not one of them" don't lift me up. Maybe I should get a special e-mail address just for those, just as I have one for SPAM-like news letters and less prioritized subjects.

Sorry for bringing up the same topics several times. I just need to get used to them, those webforms. Now my browser fills things in for me automatically. That's a relief! Next step is of course to collect the information without even asking..

Close to... what?

I was trying to look up a place in Sri Lanka using Google Maps and got a proposal on a street in NY or "close to Africa"!!!
I guess using that rough positioning, Stockholm is pretty close to Istanbul.

My life experience is about crashing my prejudices

When I was young, even when I was about 25, I was walking around in life collecting experiences. Whenever something new happened to me, I was thinking;"this is a good experience to have". I wasn't really experiencing "life is happening now", but I was preparing myself for the rest of my life. When I was traveling at work I was being grateful for the opportunity to learn. I remember having no idea at all what clothes to wear at different occasions, like when representing the company I worked for. (As a girl that's much more difficult to learn, since men tend to wear suits at all occasions, and there were hardly any older females around to learn from.)

In my private life I was of course also learning a lot of things. Like having my own place, how to have parties, how to handle boyfriends parents and very much on how to manage my own expectations on a relation. It was like meeting the real life and experience how it was crashing with all I knew about life from my childhood but also from reading books (many) and watching films. All the prejudices I had.

For the moment I'm very well aware of that life is happening now. This is definitely not just a rehearsal. But the funny thing is that from time to time I'm still surprised by the differences between real life and my prejudices. (Now for instance I'm much less prejudice about unemployed people.) Will that process ever stop? If I get very old will I then be a person without any prejudices? I thought normally the development went in the opposite direction... from being young and open-minded to having all preconceived opinions.

My experience can be concluded as "you don't know anything at all until you've been there yourself". And I'm still learning...

Swedish Melody festival a painful business.

It is one of my traditions to watch "melodifestivalen"; the Swedish song contest, where the winner will compete in the Eurovision Song Contest. The only problem is that they have extended the show to last during several weeks.

The beginning of Melodifestivalen today was rather painful for different reasons. I do not understand how that guy that is known to manage it (and who managed to sing false the only time he was participated in the show) is allowed to do some embarrassing small acts.

The attraction tonight was Dolph Lundgren who was one of the MCs (heard of him before?). Anyone with his self confident would fit in, but I'd like to know who had written the lines to the rather silly and painful "jokes"... He was allowed to show us all of his skills in the show; he said some silly lines, he was singing (actually), playing the drums (for a few seconds) and showed off using Karate!

When it comes to the real show and the music, I didn't shiver much at all (my way of determining is a song is good or not). A little bit on the first song performed by Ola (can't help it, I don't even like him and the song didn't seem to be in the right tune for him), otherwise I think that Sand Road song was beautiful.

I'm glad that the musical singer Ekborg didn't made it to the final. It's not only about music, it's also about the general impression. European viewers like innocence and youth. They do not like a man who's singing some strange lyrics and being surrounded by women who looks like taken from an old whorehouse. The "bad style" is popular in musicals and songs, but I've noticed that it isn't at all appreciated by South European voters in the Eurovision Song Contest.

For the summer fashion, it might be interesting to note that (in Swedish television) the questions isn't about the length of the skirt any more, because most of them wear no skirt at all!

Surgery, that's scary!

My mother is scared of hospitals. That's because she has been working in the health care for years, and she has seen too many mistakes happen. My mother needs to have some surgery done on her hip. She has needed that for a very long time. She can hardly walk at all without crutches, but she is stubborn and doesn't listen to any good advice regarding her health.

Some time ago I called my mother and told her that I am planning to have two different surgeries done this spring (no plastic surgery but internal stuff). I told her that I booked them myself. I wanted to get them over with. It didn't take more than a week until my mother had booked herself surgery too!

I really do hope my mothers's surgery will improve her possibility to walk.

As a matter of fact, now I've cancelled both my surgeries...for different reasons... I don't think I need them.

An important difference between Swedish and American housing loans

Isn't it strange that the rules for banks and loans varies so much between different countries?

If you take a housing loan in Sweden, you have to pay it back whatever happens. Even if you sell your house to a lower price than the amount of loans, you still have to pay the loan. The Swedish banks don't take any risk in this case.

I've read that in the US, the owner of the house can just hand in the keys to their bank when they get problems, and they basically get rid of the problem. They don't have a house any longer, but on the other hand, they don't have any loans either.
That principal and all the hidden gambling around it (like sharing the risk etc), seems to have been one of the reasons for the start of the latest financial crisis.

The backside of the Swedish rule, apart from all the problems people may get if they have to sell their house in an unfavorable situation, is the behavior of the banks. The banks are happy to give people loans these days, to buy houses and apartments to very high prices, since they don't take much of a risk. Since the interest rate is extremely low, the prices are increasing dramatically when people believe they can afford to take large loans. The risk is now that the Swedish house market is just another bubble. Another disadvantage is that the Swedish banks rather give loans to private persons than to companies. Companies can go bankruptcy these days, but private persons cannot.