me in front of the Moulin Rouge

We shall over come - part 2

Background
In the '90s Swedish Immigration Minister made her self infamous by singing "We shall over come" at a meeting with a group immegrants, as she started to lose control of the attenders which complained more and more. The resultat was distasterous, and she lost her credability as politician many years afterwards.

Story
This weekend I went to Belgium by bus. The bus driver was a Dutchman with lacking French knowledge, which he tried to compensate by making bad jokes. Well, arriving in Brussels, the bus drivers must have lost his orientation, because one of the passengers had to help him find the bus terminal.
Anyway, the weekend passed by - rainy and gloumy - and on Sunday I had to take the bus back to Paris again. And... yipiee (ironic) the same bus driver. Even before the bus trip started, the bus driver made him self impopular by not allow a women have her tiny bag as hand luggage on the bus. The woman protested loud, but at last she had to give in. On the bus, I had to stand the same joke again, but besides that the journey went well, until we stopped for a 10 minutes break just an hour and a half before Paris. The bus driver clearly said "no pizza in the bus", before letting of us passengers. Ten minutes later he wanted to continue to drive the bus again, but not all passengers were there. The two last passengers came running five minutes later, with a bag filled with hamburgers. The bus driver started to verbaly attack one of the two late comers, first that they arrived lived, and secondly because they have brought hamburgers on the bus. The passenger defend himself: This is not a pizza - this is an 'amburger'. Some of the other bus passengers started after a while to defend the bus driver, probably because they were obset, because the man arrived to late back to the bus. Among the defenders were also the woman which wasn't allowed to bring her bag on the bus. Soon the discussion became more aggressive among the passenger, and the man became furious. After discussion wildly about 30 minutes, and other passengers had to keep the opponents apart, to avoid that a fight would arrise, the bus driver started to sing. He sang "We shall over come", probably not knowing the result Birgit Friggebo had a little more than a decade ago. At first the argument started to calm down, but then it became even worse. It didn't stop until one of the other passengers went up telling the man to sit down and take it easy. The man calm down, but he still had problem to relax for the rest of the journey. Also the bus driver must have been feeling quite tense, because back in Paris, he took the wrong way, and started to drive over payments, and with high speed through small street.

Consensus: "We shall over come" might be a good song, but use it prudently, and at the right moments.

Time acceptance

So on Thursday last week, I moved to the Swedish house, and although I
just live in the guest room for the first month, it feels so good,
after the room at the American house. It is not the thing that is
Swedish, it is only the fact that it is so calm and quite in the
house, and that the atmosphere is nice. It is only 36 persons
leaving here (compared with a couple of hundreds in the American
house), and after just some days in the house it feels I have better
contact with the people here than where I lived before, both the
Swedes and the others that live here (I was told that 40 percent in
the house are from Sweden).
Regarding small and big environment. I have thought a little bit about
what the size of the environment effect the accaptence of time you
have. When I was living in my home town Mora (13.000 inhabitans) I was
always counting to get to a place in 15 minutes. If it would take
more than 15 minutes to walk, I would take my bicycle instead. And if
it would take more than 15 minutes with the bicycle, I would go by car
instead. When I was living in Vienna, my time acceptence was instead
in the same way 25 minutes, whereas in Stockholm I am always counting
30 minutes where ever I am going. Here in Paris (which has 10 Million
inhabitants) I always counting in being around 45 minutes at the place
where I am going.
Another thing with time, it seems like it doesn't matter when I wake
up in the morning, or when I get on the comuter train. I always arrive
at work at 8.50 p.m. Time is strange!