Migration

"From the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, hundreds of thousands of people spontaneously leave their home areas with any risk forcing the run in Europe. Experience of countries which constitute the main target in the ongoing exodus proves a disturbing reality. The assimilation policy adopted after the war meant a collapse evident. Inability but deliberately refusing to align with European standards of coexistence of newcomers is a challenge to which European countries have not yet found a solution.
Lately, on the background of rapid growth of the influx of immigrants and in the interest of keeping at least relative stability, Western policy on emigration receives coordinates. The solution, at least for the moment is giving up termenulde ASSIMILATION by replacing it with a new one yet fully incomprehensible: multiculturalism. According to this principle, under the umbrella of Europe there in terms of social and religious place for all: Europeans, Arabs, Africans, Muslims, Christians, atheists, ie a kind of "Babylon" social, cultural, religious, linguistic and economic .
Considering the fact that the final destination of the great migration phenomenon is just beginning, but it is primarily Germany and France and England, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called a special committee to analyze the phenomenon of migration.
Presenting the report to the German Bundestag stunned the entire European community: by the end of this year (2015) between 800,000 and 1 million immigrants are expected to lay only in Germany. The report is more alarming projections coming years. Psychosis of huge masses of people mostly from sub-Saharan African countries Muslim and Arab but to emigrate and settle permanently in Europe then catch unimaginable dimensions. It seems to be a phenomenon in development and will be conducted over a period of several years.
In the face of this phenomenon of migration is just beginning, reality demonstrates unequivocally: European countries were taken by surprise. Some measures and statements by governments of the European Union confirms that. On August 20, 2015 according to Radio DW, Macedonia was forced to institute a state of emergency throughout the territory, with the ability to use firearms in order to keep population.

http://www.cotidianul.ro/macedon"

Of course this is getting even worse as countries like Finland have no recourse to have very large numbers of people settling in,  especially of vastly different cultures, there's often very little sympathy or pity to be found in what people write in newspaper comments for example. The most common attitude is: we already have so many poor people of our own that they would have to be taken care first. So everything would stop there as that's utopia.

It only happened once?

Couple of years ago I started taking photos of cruise ships. First in berths next to the Akershus Castle, then at the end of Tjuvholmen when the ships were leaving. The photo on top has been taken there.

Then I found that a place called Huk in Bygdøy has a high rock, though not as high as when one is standing on the Akerhus Castle grounds. So I can take a different kind of photos there.

In the harbour I could sometimes get a video of a ship leaving and using her horn. I have a collection of those. One cannot usually hear those in Huk. One day, though, a ship was leaving the harbour a bit later, so she met one of the incoming Danish ferries,  not far from Huk. I heard one using her horn and quickly changed the setting of my camera to video. She used the horn three times for a greeting, got an answer of two horns and even answered that. I was so happy! But then I realized that I must have thought I had not got the video going and pressed the camera a second time, which of course turned it off!

I don't think this is likely to happen another time. I bit later two ships met but not close enough for that to happen.

I have not yet tried to take a photo of a ship leaving from the castle, that would be something new.

Travel in Oslo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68_mbqCyFRQ


One can find interesting efforts on YouTube. A woman seems to make travel videos on different cities, I just happened on one when looking for videos on Oslo. The commentary is in English but I do not know her origin, as her English is not easy to understand and the sentences are halting and have mistakes. Someone asks whether she is from Madagascar and she just answers: Nope.

I wonder if they have a similar camera as mine, as it does not seem to have zoom, either.

The video starts by explaining what it is about, the problem is that she is in the camera and they shot her face so close that it is too much "in your face", which is uncomfortable.

They show lots of the centre of the city, but stay very long on the square enclosed by the National Theatre and the National Metro station. She calls the area for 'park', though there is no grass and hardly any trees visible. I wondered why they could not spend more time in the real beautiful Oslo parks. Later we see nice scenes from the central fountains.

They go into the Egon restaurant but stay too much in the close-up mode.

One sees good scenes from the central street, Karl Johans Gate, but she pronounces the name as if it was English. 'Gate' means 'street' in English, not 'gate'.

They call themselves 'JiVie Channel' which sounds very official. They have even an official Facebook page.

There is a good section showing the palace guards and their movements. Also they show Aker Brygge close to 9 o'clock at night, which tells people in more southern countries about the light nights of summer.

A company called Expoza Travel has an older travel video on Oslo, very professional, though containing a few mistakes, with a flowing commentary. It has only some 550 views compared to 25 thousand of the JiVie one, though it has been longer on YouTube. I wonder why?

Well, I have a funny video of a kitten chasing his daddy's tail, which  is not popular, either.

Enjoyment

In 2013 I heard Arkadij Volodos play the Brahms Piano Concert nr . 2 with the Oslo Philharmonic. He certainly is one of the leading pianists of this decade. After the third call he sat down again and played something quite opposite to the fairly boisterous concerto. Was it Bach or Handel, I'm not sure, gentle, fairly slow, but his pianissimos are magical.
We also heard the 5th symphony by Sibelius, my favourite. The director was Jukka-Pekka Saraste. I love the ending by cords. It also has the famous 'swan theme'. You can find the 5th on YouTube by many conductors. I loved the interpretation of Bernstein, partly perhaps as it is a DVD, not CD, so you can see him. Especially the end, where he,  after thanking the orchestra with his hands held palm to palm, folds them in front of his face, seemingly overwhelmed. the camera moving quickly away.

There are some fine remarks on the performance:

"Surely every performance of any work has its merits unless played utterly contradictory to a composer's wishes. This is Bernstein's performance and who has the audacity to argue with him? Sibelius is not here to defend his work and who is entitled to say that he would NOT have approved of Bernstein's
, Karajan's or anyone else's interpretation? Great orchestra and fantastic sound. Thanks."

"Thank you for posting this. It makes me homesick for Finland- and I'm not even from there!!"

"Epic piece...played it in San Vito Lanciano (Italy) 1989 with german conductor and the Orchestra Interazionale...last movement especially really emotional. Best interpretation I have ever heard! Bravo!"

After this some criticism:
"Leonard Bernstein was a true genius one of the greatest musicians, composers and conductors EVER so stop picking nits ! He COMMANDS this orchestra as if he's playing each instrument personally ! I once felt sick when I heard a 'Classic FM' DJ called Henry Kelly refer to him as 'Lenny' as if he were a personal friend and worthy of anything more than doing up his shoelaces !"

"Surely every performance of any work has its merits unless played utterly contradictory to a composer's wishes. This is Bernstein's performance and who has the audacity to argue with him? Sibelius is not here to defend his work and who is entitled to say that he would NOT have approved of Bernstein's, Karajan's or anyone else's interpretation?
Great orchestra and fantastic sound. Thanks."

"Of all the versions of Sibelius' 5th, I must say this is the most perfect.  Which is a lofty thing to say...today I heard this very performance on SiriusXM and had to hold back my blubbering tears as I sat in my car during lunch."

"When Raymond Leppard was music director of the Indianapolis Symphony...he had a weekly program on our NPR station. Called this 'the most perfect symphony'. It is. Yet, the 2nd symphony is still my favorite."

He was answered by: "The face of Bernstein following the end of the Fifth and the end of the Second says it all. I think Bernstein would agree with you"



These probably followed Bernstein's interpretation of the 2nd.:

"Two geniuses made this symphony breathtaking, it leaves me in tears of thanking God' grace on this rainy day in northern California."

"Pinch yourself if you don't feel moved by the closing 15 minutes.  Have to be dead."

"I played it with the Longwood Symphony. It was hard not to weep during the string unisons.
My brother in Seattle heard this done by their Symphonic Orchestra and turned me onto it...can't help but be pulled into the emotion and action...fun, fun, fun."

"Thanks for this!  I love watching Bernstein conduct, & he's especially wonderful here.  Those last few seconds totally melted my heart."

Countries I have visited

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

Four of these I've lived in, not counting England, where I just lived for two months.

Problems, problems, help!

(The photo has nothing to do with the subject, Some kind of aloe grew on our lawn, reaching high, my husband had to steady it with rope. In the end we had to cut it down, it had hundreds of babes which started to grow, took ages to pick them up.)

This is Flickr nowadays. Extractions from the Help Forum:

"Uploading is messed up again. Only tried to upload 2 photos, both timed out. Location Norway.

Click on a picture and it comes up momentarily - then a black screen. This is not a lot of fun. I also agree about very long upload times. It takes longer than when I was using a dial up connection.

I have honestly never used a site that has this many issues. It's not the least bit surprising anymore when something goes wrong. I mean, something goes wrong literally every few days.
I've pretty much given up all hope that Flickr will ever be usable for any sustained period of time.

Same from Belgium when viewing (or scrolling) a picture. Upload was OK.

I have a weird problem... The images flash up quickly and then disappear (the page renders completely black and nothing is visible). this is after I have click on a picture on the main feed of other peoples pictures...

I have the same problem here in Alabama/USA- the page loads, you can see the photo for a moment, and then the whole page just goes black. I have cleared the cach, dumped all .tmp files, looked for unwanted extensions in Chrome- none there, rebooted and run two different malware programs which report all clean. Intermittently, too, I get the Bad Panda page. Mostly just the page that loads then goes black. "


It is just terrible. I read all these problems and maybe I shouldn't. My Flickr behaves quite well, and if something does not work, I usually clear my cache and it works again. What can it be! I get frustrated for the others. People saying they will leave. Things not working for weeks! Even a Norwegian complaining.

The staff has not said much, maybe they have not a clue. Is there something wrong with people's computers, routers, broadband or what?
When are things going to be fixed, people ask. How does the staff know what to fix, if their equipment for ex,  works ok?

Certainly things happen even to me but then it is usually something they know how to fix.

Just now Magic View would not come, clicking for a photo gave me Bad Panda. I cleared the cache and things worked again!