Australian Football

If you've ever been to Melbourne Australia, you'd probably be surprised how into football they are. Like us Europeans, they're obsessed with football, everyone has a team that they barrack for and the games are a constant source of discussion material over lunch at the office. However, going to a game of football, or footy as it's casually referenced here, might leave you confused. The sport being referenced when talking about football is actually mostly played by the players carrying the ball in their hands, performing hand passes and occasionally kicking the ball. Strange, huh? It get's even weirder as you travel to other parts of the country where referencing football means rugby.

Australian rules football takes some time to get used to. The basics are that there are two teams, each consisting of 18 players, trying to kick the ball between two goal posts. Each goal awards the team 6 points and whoever has the most points at the end wins the game. There are also an additional two posts outside of the goal and if the ball is kicked in between them then that counts as a behind, awarding the team 1 point. The game is played on a very large oval field and the players sometimes cover as much as 20km in one game. There are four quarters to a game each 30 minutes long.

What I absolutely came to love about this sports is it's intensity. The players are incredibly fit, able to cover huge amounts of ground whilst carrying large amounts of muscle needed to protect themselves from brutal tackles. There is never any whinging or simulation in the game, the players normally take the tackles on the chin and get on with the game. There is less stopping and starting than european football, the games flow quickly and there's always something happening on the field.

I think European football could take a leaf out of the Australian football's book.

Political opposites

The political climate in the world is always an interesting topic to discuss. No matter where in the world you are, or who you are talking to, everyone seems to agree that the political climate is getting worse. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but to me it sure feels that way.

I feel like we've had a political renaissance as of late, where it's become 'popular' to be involved in politics. Maybe it's because I've gone through the transition from youth to adult, but I find that discussing politics is becoming increasingly popular in my social circles. One issue in regards to this, is the divide in political view that is present in today's society. Don't get me wrong, having different views can be a positive thing.  What I find troublesome, is that such large groups have views that are polar opposites of each other. Having such vastly different views will obviously leave the two groups unable to agree on a number of issues. That's fine, that's their choice. What I'm struggling with personally, is being left in the middle.


I feel like either the amount of people who are not affiliated with any of the more extreme parties are either dwindling, or they are just not very loud. I often see discussions where one side wants the government to give the world everything, and the other nothing. The room for being rational in these situations is getting smaller. People will often try to make you agree with them on the situation, and if you don't surrender to their view, they will put you straight in the opposing camp. I believe in many situations there is a happy medium to be found, if we would all just loosen up a bit and listen to each other.

I believe this problem largely stems from the climate between the different parties of the parliament. Whenever I see them in debates or the public forum in general, they refuse to focus on how they will improve the country and instead focus on how others will make it worse. This is a terrible attitude to have, and it spreads like wildfire, poisoning the minds of the people. I wish politicians would take the responsibility to just stand for their own views, and make it their top priority to make sure the people know how their ideas could make our country a better place to live. Until that happens, I fail to see how we could all get together and work towards a better tomorrow.

I wish this would change. I know it can't be over night, but surely we can improve over the next 50 years?

The pollution conundrum

I'm sitting in my office in Melbourne, looking out the window. The office is in the central part of the city, giving me a great view of the city as a whole. The M1 highway, which runs along the coast around all of Australia, is just outside my building. The road is, from the time I get here until the time I leave, filled with Australians driving cars or trucks. Looking at it from the outside, I can't help but feel slightly annoyed.

My distaste for commuting in general and doing so in a car in particular runs deep. I worked at Volvo for a couple of years, and even though the office was not far from where I lived, it still took an hour each way to get there due to the heavy traffic. My parents have always accepted that this commute is a part of their life, but I couldn't do that. Despite my annoyance with the commute itself, what's annoying me as I overlook the heavily trafficked road is something else. Each and every person driving by in their car is being part in destroying our environment.

Driving and owning a car is seen as some sort of right in Australia. I have heard countless of people telling their tale of their distaste for the public transport system. It's too crowded, there's weird people, it smells funny or I just want to be alone, everyone has their own reasoning. So Australians keep driving their cars, and no one seems to care about the damage they're doing.

By using petrol powered cars, we're allowing the big oil corporations to stall development. As long as they make money, there are no incentives for change. The only way that we are able to influence big businesses is by refusing to buy their products. We as a collective need to push towards renewable energy. We need to show the big corporations that the demand is for renewable energy that's not going to produce dangerous gas and pollute the air. Only when we start thinking of the consequences of our own laziness and comfort will we be able to change things.

Sadly, I think Australia is a long way away from such a realization. If the people continue to refuse to see the problem and do something about it themselves, then the government needs to step in. We need heavier taxes on petrol and other dangerous energy sources. The price of oil in Australia is roughly half of the price in Sweden, while the average wage is higher. For me, I feel that if you're doing something to damage the planet, it should hurt your wallet.

This is only one of the huge challenges Australia faces in regards to the environment. As you've probably read before, their famous Great Barrier Reef is dying from pollution. Let's hope Australia wakes up before it's too late. I hope this changes, within 1-5 years.

Reflection on 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a book written by Mark Haddon. It is written in the perspective of a young boy with autism writing the book himself. 

Christopher lives with his mother and father in Swindon, United Kingdom. He has autism and struggles greatly with everyday life while excelling in math. One day he notices that his neighbors dog has been brutally murdered with a garden fork and decides to 'do detecting' to find out who the killer was. The hunt for the murderer and the questions that comes from his detecting takes Christopher places he never thought he'd go.

This book certainly challenges the reader to see things from a new perspective. I would go as far as saying the book invites the reader to see the world in a completely different way.

From the start it is clear that the protagonist has a different way of doing things. The book divulges everyday details that would not be deemed important enough to be featured in other stories. An example of this can be seen when the boy purchases a train ticket, and every single step is described down to how much each coin he got as change was worth. Reading such scenes made me question how authors select what is important? How is it normally decided that the value of the coins is not relevant to the story? Furthermore, I wondered how the central character would react to books that didn't disclose the details that he found most important.

Another interesting thing I took away from reading the book was how the boy's brain never seemed to rest. My life for instance is divided into years, weeks, days, hours and so on. The central character seemed to have another perspective on time which is illustrated in the way he writes the book. It's especially apparent with the way 'he' starts sentences with the word 'and'. Of course a person who has gone through the regular Swedish schooling system knows this is not grammatically correct and him doing it might be a result of him having gone through special education. However, I think this reflects how his brain just won't shut off and all of his days blend together into one.

As one last reflection, I would like to bring up how calculated the boy was in the way he lived his life. His mind seemed to work like a computer and each decision seemed to be based on an advanced formula. Love or other emotions didn't have any power in his brain. I wonder how society would look had this characteristic been the way people without autism worked too?

Reflection on 'Why work doesn't happen at work'

As an assignment for school I watched the Ted talk by Jason Fried called 'Why work doesn't happen at work' and frankly I'm happy I did because it was a very interesting video.

Jason's speach really got me thinking straight away. What I immediately found interesting was the concept of offices. The norm that people should do their work in the office feels dated and I wonder if it's still relevant today? What benefits could there be to base more of our time working in places other than the office?

In my opinion, yes the office still has a role to play in the way we conduct business. With that being said, I don't think there is a reason for it's role to be as prominent as it is today. With virtual meetings on Skype and other software, advanced web platforms and a lot of the work being e-mail or phone based, there's nothing tying you to your desk anymore. In past jobs I've had more to do with people in other continents than I have with people in my office. Obviously this is not true for all positions in a company or even for all companies, though, and sometimes having people around you as support is important if not necessary. This is especially true when you are new to a company or new to your position within the company.

An immediate thought when thinking about doing work outside of the office is obviously the company saving on having to provide space for the worker in the office. If the company can cut down on the size of the office it will save money on rent or even earn money by renting out parts of the office if they own the building. Combine that with Jason's point about managers and other employees disturbing and slowing down other employees work and you can see a motive for moving more work outside of the office building.

I am also curious of the effect someone working outside the office a couple of times a week would have on morale. Could the employee who is working out of office come back with a higher level of excitement for work and more energy to spread to the group? I also think having a few days every week where you don't see your coworkers could give you time to come up with ideas and solutions that could later be cultivated and improved upon by discussing them with your coworkers.

When he went on to talk about meetings and their role in businesses I plainly couldn't agree more. I've worked in the office at Volvo in Arendal, and for the people who have done the same you know that Volvo is obsessed with meetings. In my experience, most of these meetings were a waste of the managers and the employees time and frankly they slowed the whole day down. We could sit for hours without me understanding what was being said, partly down to me being inexperienced, but also because what was being said had no relevance to my position within the company. I always felt like what was being said in these meetings could have been addressed in short one on one interactions around the office with the person who it concerned.

Going from being an organisation that values meetings to one that values getting the information to the right person can in my opinion only be a good thing. This would in my mind make the office and in turn the business run smoother and should be the way forward.

My reflections on 'The Year of The Paywall'

I have just finished reading the article 'The Year of The Paywall' and it's got me thinking about whether or not newspapers should charge for their content. I think this is an important topic that we should all give some serious thought to, after all newspapers are still one of our primary sources of information about the world.

In today's society it is, in my opinion, clear that news corporations should have their content subscription based. As the internet has evolved, my feeling is that the ads we see impact us less and less. This is without even taking into consideration adblockers that will let you view websites without the ads. For these reasons companies looking to advertise will naturally be less keen to pay for it.  For the websites to still be profitable they need to charge for their services.

We have seen internet services like newspapers charge for content here in Sweden. One of the problems with this I think is that they're not charging for the actual news. Instead they have opted to charge for additional articles which I personally feel are more of a novelty. All the content that I desire still remains free. 

What I think needs to happen for the newspapers to raise their revenues from subscriptions is for all of the newspapers to start charging money for their content. If only a few were to do this then they would be at a major disadvantage and people would look to other sources.

For this to be successful these organizations need to make sure that the content they are producing is of high enough quality for people to pay money for it. This is more important now than ever before considering the social media competition the traditional media is facing like Twitter and Facebook.

With the convergence of social media and news it is more important than ever to have reliable news organizations that privilege hard hitting journalism over 'infotainment' news that often pops up on our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We need to remember that without journalists taking a critical look at the world, and challenging the actions of powerful companies and institutions, change for the better  is less likely to happen. 

With globalization and the growing power of large corporations it has never been more important to have objective voices raising awareness of issues important to the many. The demise of quality journalism should not be an issue overlooked because it is only with the dissemination of knowledge that power can be observed, challenged and changed. hopefully in line with society's values. For this to happen, we need people to be willing to pay for their news.