theme of the day

The subject of today has definitely been peonies. I woke up and turned on the telly and found myself watching this season's first programme of the gardening tv show Pioni (apparently, the show's been running since 2002 but I've never come across it. Perhaps because I rarely watch tv early Sunday mornings.). In the afternoon, I went to the trade fair that's hit town this weekend. Although the main attraction on the gardening side was orchids, the peonies did a good job in getting people's attention. And half an hour ago, part of the lifestyle tv show Strömsö dealt with a garden where peonies grow.

It is such an appropriate theme for a day like this, as it feels like spring's finally here. The sun's beaming down through the trees and the mercury decided to break through and stopped at 10 degrees. This time of year leaves me bubbling of energy and inspiration and I truly believe that there's nothing I couldn't do. It's a similar situation as when the first scents of your chocolate muffins baking in the oven hit your nostrils. You know that you're in for a good treat (=the summer) after some hard and dirty work (=the winter) and it's only a couple of more moments away (=it's only spring). And according to me, watching the muffins rise through the oven glass is more rewarding than the actual eating.

Baudrillard and Malta

I’m back home from the vacation in Malta, and I keep thinking about what Jean Baudrillard said about hyper reality and simulation. He claims that the images we see in the media seldom represent reality. They are rather phantom images of a reality that gets lost on the way through the media channels to the consumer. What we see is therefore a hyper reality.

The reason why this comes to mind is that in my quest of useful information about Malta before I left, some websites encouraged me to explore the islands by bicycle:

"Put on walking boots, hire a mountain bike and head out from the village squares on the narrow farmers’ tracks."

and

"Highlight: hire a bicycle and explore the Maltese Islands."

Since I’m fond of biking, I thought to myself that “yeah, that’s a good idea, I’ll look into that once I get there.”. But once I got there, I realized that it probably isn’t such a good idea. Why? Because the traffic was chaotic! Few pedestrian crossings, very few bicycle roads, narrow roads and loads of cars passing you by in high speeds. Perhaps I’m over sensitive because I’ve been in two traffic accidents but there’s no way I’d get into the Maltese traffic on a bike. Therefore, the image I got of the conditions of the bicyclist on Malta on the tourist sites and what I finally saw when I got there did not match. I saw only one person biking during the whole week and the Maltese themselves seem fond of their cars, as there are more than 200 000 cars on the island, and about 350 000 habitants. But it's great fun to find out that things are completely different than what I thought. It’s healthy and educational.

Despite the trouble of crossing the roads, I really enjoyed Malta. There were lots of things to do for a film buff like me. There’s the Popeye village, built for the shooting of the movie Popeye, and the Mediterranean Film Studios with two large circular water tanks, where movies like The Count of Monte Cristo, Revelation and The league of Extraordinary Gentlemen were shot. It was pretty cool to visit the places you see in the movies. (This is a picture from the movie The Odyssey and this is my picture)

Unizon conference streamed

For those of you who are interested in the mobile phone as a tool for co-operation and education, I recommend the virtual part of the conference "Crossborder Networking and Learning - Unizon Conference" that's taking place here in Vasa today and tomorrow. Today, at 14.00 - 15.10 (CET), Gunnar Wranne at Ericsson and Riitta Vänskä at Nokia are talking (in English) about mobility and work. The sessions are streamed here.

TV viewing

Last week I enjoyed Aalborg, Denmark, where the euro itv conference was held. While at the university, I visited VR Media Lab, one of Europe's largest virtual reality installations, and played around in its cave. The cave is a small room where continuous images are projected onto side walls, floor, and ceiling and when experienced through lightweight glasses, it felt like a 3D-world. In this picture, I had a go at basket ball game. It was quite tricky so I only scored 4 points… It was pretty cool but I felt quite sick afterwards so I don’t recommend this as an alternative for dessert.

During the conference, it seemed to me that every discussion at least touched upon two topics: 1) social TV viewing and 2) active vs passive TV viewing. The first issue deals with the question: is the TV viewing mostly a collective action or not? Are the TV programmes mostly watched by groups of people, e.g. families or friends or are there loads of single individuals sitting alone in the TV couch? Because the nuclear family is no longer given and the number of singles living alone is quite high, the old notion of TV being a media product consumed in a group has changed.

The other topic that the debate quite often boiled down to is whether TV viewing is a passive or an active action. And if it is a passive one, is that so bad? We’re active and engaged almost all the time in almost every area of life, then would it be so bad if we relaxed in front of the telly? This makes me think of a Swedish stressresearcher, Aleksander Perski, who says that there’s a new addiction around in the modern Western civilization today, namely time addiction. We are time addicts because we are too active and we don’t allow ourselves to recover from stressful events or a couple of hard days at work. Since he takes up the cudgels for recuperation and rest every once in a while, the new word on my mind (in the sidebar to the right) will be time addiction. I’ll think about it when I’m enjoying my vacation on Malta next week.

Curio: There are only two countries in the world that don’t allow divorces by law: The Philippines and Malta, where I’m spending my holiday in two days.