Step into the Danish world
9th of August, 2008. I left Romania with a good mood, along with my girlfriend, both being optimistic. I don’t think I was afraid of change, and it was the time to prove that. Anyway, it would add up to my life experiences.
Romania’s educational system left a bit of salty, bitter taste in my mouth, and probably filled my brain with unnecessary things. There were a few people in the system that I still remember and respect. The rest of them were just the same, running downhill towards their ruination of self. You can say the same about public organization, sanitary system and many other corrupt administrative parts.
A sudden change
It felt like I was breathing another air, landing on a distant planet. But they were humans too. Seeing the western part of the Europe for the first time was a great experience for me. It seemed like everyone cared about having an ordered system, clean streets and politeness all around. I was having all positive thoughts about Denmark at that time. But of course that, in time, you also see the empty side of the glass, not just the full one.
When I arrived in Århus, it was midnight, everything looked and seemed like a dream. Maybe I was tired and sleepy and it may have been the reason for that. But I have noticed one strange thing: there weren’t any people in the streets, everything was closed, and the streets were empty. I haven’t seen this, even in my small home town in Romania, at 3 o’clock in the morning!
Me and my girlfriend crashed at a friend’s place, along with one of his relatives, which came to visit Århus. We were 5 people in a rather small room, with just one bed and a couch.
In Århus, it is very hard to get a place to stay, and to get one you have to wait a few months. This is because it is a very important educational center in Denmark, and many students go here to universities.
So we didn’t have a place to stay at the moment, although we have applied at the college dorms since spring. Our friend really helped us, and he talked to some other romanians, that were staying there, to give us a hand with accommodation. We ended up staying about a month with other 3 people, in a 2-room apartment. Still crowded, but at least we had a place to stay and we got along pretty well with them.
We have moved three times until now and it was a pain in the ass every time. But the current apartment is the best, being located near school and it also looks very new and pretty.
The people
We were pleasantly surprised that, people were generally happy on the street and they kind of smiled at you. There were no ugly looks, except for some old ladies analyzing every part of us like we were aliens. But we had that in Romania, from just about every one in the street. Good mood everywhere, especially in the weekend, when they all partied and got drunk, singing out loud in the street. Few of them were violent, but it was just the alcohol acting in them, otherwise Danes (the Danish) are quite rational and balanced.
You can call Danish party people, because they love parties, going out and having fun, but when you get to know them, they’re a bit shy and cautious regarding friendships. We haven’t made any acquaintances except for some Romanians, and people we knew at school. It’s very hard to break into their world and expect them to come with their arms opened and hug us. They love doing that, but only with their closest friends and they call it “hygge”, the moment when they become cozy with the dear ones.
Danish respect their own traditions, especially for Christmas and few other important holidays. Relatives gather as a large family and they eat a big meal together, dance and enjoy themselves.
They love to travel, they have a lot of money so they go and see different places on the globe, have the time of their lives, but then they return to their country, which they adore and respect.
You can say that they are a bit too nationalists, and if you come from a different country, then they may even look at you at a foreigner for the rest of your life, no matter what you to do integrate. Some people just do that, you can’t change it. But I believe there are many Danes that can get along very well with you and even become your friends.
I haven’t got to a conclusion about how the people are in general, and it may take me a few years, or maybe I will never get it how they really are, but they seem civilized, clean and as friendly as they can be without getting too personal.
To be continued with the following parts: “Getting a job”, “What I’ve learned from Danish people”, “Dreaming about the future of Romania” . Stay tuned!
Getting a job
One very important thing to note is that life is very expensive in Denmark. The rent (some 500 euros for a 2-room aparment ), food (meat and dairy products are quite expensive), fun and going out (3.5 euros a bottle of beer; 25-30 euros a nice meal at a restaurant), all add-up to about 10.000 euros per year. It was better for us, because we (Romanians, as part of the European Union) didn’t have to pay the tuition fee (education tax) for our university.
Although they have these high prices, their social system is made so you can pay all these and also have some to spare with the minimum wage. So they earn incredibly good, even if you are a student and work half-time. But the tricky part is finding a job.
At the beginning, we were determined to find a job as soon as possible, because, even though we had money from our parents to cover up expenses, we wanted to earn money ourselves and be rather independent. But as we went and looked for jobs on the Internet, and asking in some coffee shops and restaurants, we didn’t get any close to finding something for us. You can’t do too much when you don’t know any danish. You can’t work as a bartender, or seller, or anything that involves talking to people. Although everybody (small exceptions) knows English in Århus, when it comes to jobs you must speak Danish.
Some positions that early students can occupy are cleaning jobs, warehouse workers, newspaper delivery, dish washers, and some few others. The best to do is try to talk to companies that sell these kind of services and apply for a position.
When we asked our classmates and colleagues about jobs, those that had a job, had found it through someone else. So connections are very important in Denmark. If you know so many people, then you have that more chances to get a job. They got some of the jobs because they knew someone who worked there and knew a position was available.
My girlfriend got a temporary job as a cleaner for an office building because one of her classmates applied for the job and got it, but he didn’t have time for all the shifts, so they split them in order to keep the job. Although she worked only 2-3 days of the week and 3 hours every time, she earned in a month more than I’ve earned with my webdesign projects online in three months. Now you can see that having a job in Denmark solves most financial problems you got.
After I’ve tried several times, I kind of got discouraged and stop trying to get a job. After all, I’m earning some from my freelance activity online, but it’s hardly going to cover even the monthly rent. In these situations, it’s good that you can rely on your parent’s money. Thank heavens! They are pretty nice to me and never held me from doing what I want.
What I’ve learned from Danish people
I like to observe how people behave, talk and think, because I want to learn things that I’m not currently able to do. Danes are rather inspiring because of their rightness,attention to detail and non-conformism.
First of all, by analyzing the town and the society, I’ve learned that it is possible to have a well thought and well built system and maintain a high level of order, without getting into socialism and by keeping a democratic society. As citizens, Danes are well informed about necessary things and there is a will to eliminate bureaucracy by implementing IT systems designed to manage simple things like e-banking, electronic payment of bills, tickets, etc. And the most surprizing fact is that all citizens use those, even the senior citizens know how to make these electronic payments.
Then, there is organization. That we lack of in Romania. We need to know the order of things, and how much time to invest in them, in order to complete them. Going from a complete chaos (in Romania, and in my personal life) to a country where organizing is one of the key factors to success has been a big leap for me. From the day one of school, we were introduced to an organized meeting and some outdoor group games to which the main idea was to teach us about how to work in teams and organize ourselves so that every one does it’s job, while building towards a complete product.
One more thing is respect. People aren’t stepping on each others to get in front of the line, they aren’t stepping on each others pride when competing in something, they always respect the fellow near them. They also respect the system and if they want to say something about a particular problem, then they do it it the most polite way. They don’t just charge ahead with a bunch of made-up complains that the people in the system could not use constructively.
Danes also pay respect to the nature around them and I think they are one of the few environmentalists that existed a couple decades ago. They do not build concrete around every place they get their hands on, rather they use nature to decorate. Some of the houses in Denmark have the most beautiful gardens I’ve seen. Flowers and blooming trees are very lovely in the spring, and they are all around the town, not just in a remote area. And they take care of every part of grass, cut it, water it, fertilize the land.
Last thing that I’m mentioning here is the fact that they have a really good relationship with themselves. They exercise very often, going out for a walk or run in the park, or riding a bicycle in the town. Danes know how to make priorities and take advantage of their time, without getting excessively lazy, like I’ve seen so many Romanians do. I have to admit, it’s also one of my bad habits that I need to change.
Dreaming about the future of Romania
I’m not saying that Romania is a b*lsh*t. I love my country. I love the potential it got for becoming a very important place in the world. Why I’m loving it? Because it’s beautiful, I think some of the scenery and landscapes are unique in the world. And also because of the people. I don’t know, it maybe is me, but the general feeling of friendliness, excitement and joy that surrounds some people, this I’ve never seen in Denmark. You make friends rather fast and you build up some really nice relationships with the people. Some are rather crude and uncivilized, but they are a lot of fun. They really know how to relax and have the time of their lives together with their pals. That’s what I love about this place.
After I’ve seen that is possible to be civilized, to have an ordered and organized social and public system, it made me think about the possibilities that exist for Romania. I know we have some western and more civilized towns, such as Timisoara, Cluj, Sibiu, not like the dense and suffocating capital of Bucharest. It’s like they would build on top of other buildings if it’s possible, that crowded it is.
We need to do something about this problem. I have no clue momentarily, but I was thinking to maybe adopt, step by step, all the good things that the western society has and also THINK about what they’re doing. Think about the environment, think about the people that are living there.
We also need to change the crappy educational system that we have. We’re not teaching kids how to build a better country, we’re teaching them to be selfish, to seek the easiest way out and to jump to the first occasion they have to earn money. All that heavy scholar material they have to digest is not teaching them anything. They learn to hate it, because they don’t see any application for it. If we were to teach them to think and learn what the society needs from them, and what can they do for a better world, they would be a lot better.
I also think that the environment they are learning in is harmful and they rather need a relaxed atmosphere, where interesting things happen that make them learn. We need to design that environment for them, they don’t need boring textbooks anymore, we need to design those just like we design a building or a website. We have to make them both interesting and functional.
There are a lot of wrongs that need to be straightened out in my country, and every tiny little bit helps because if everyone were to think of a tiny little bit, then we’d have a bunch of things that make improvements. If people were to see how much better life is in the western part of Europe, then they would think about how to make it the same, if not better, in Romania.
We don’t have to let go of the things we are so much used to, I mean the good things. We don’t have to let go of our charismatic and joyful way of being, and certainly we don’t have to let go of our free spirit in order to make this change. It is possible, so let’s do it!
I welcome you to have any comments and questions about Denmark, Romania, and any subject that covers my article.
Why is variety good in this world?
As human beings, we are born and used with this type of world: a world where variety is abundant. We are different, the places we live in are different, we have different tastes. Although we have basically the same structure (like the base of the tree) we have spread branches and grown entirely different leaves.
We also think that one of the most important things in our life is the fact that we are able to choose: we choose our education, we choose our social group, we choose what to eat, to drink, where to live, all in the period of a lifetime. As we are surrounded by these outstanding number of decisions we have and want to make, we grow a personality and we create a society where every individual is different and unique.
Where does variety help?
It helps us evolve. Just like Darwin’s theory of Evolutionism, where variety in species and individuals is the key to evolve to a better species. The bad traits of the species are left over in favor of the good traits, and by experimenting (a different, new individual is born), nature leaves way to the better, more capable of outliving individuals.
I’m not saying that we should judge by appearances, but by the essence and the effects it will have in the future. We can support a new way, but only if we know that its essence is for the best and it can stand all possible forces that try to take it apart.
Variety in governments
Governing a society is never easy. It has to withstand all different types of individuals that must live together in a “form” of harmony. So, since the civilisations emerged, humans have tried different ways to govern the societies. Some of them were brilliant, but they also had a bad part, a bad part that was underestimated and then it consumed the establishment right away, therefore leading to the downfall of that civilization.
But variety serves its purpose: by observing behaviors along the time, people have come to a rather stable form of government, which is democracy as it is in the majority of today’s countries. Thus the conclusion that many small governments evolve much faster than a single one and so people become aware of what is good for a society.
This could be seen all over the world where different types of governments have different reactions from the population (the society). And it looks like a trial and error thing: if a country wants to adopt some kind of law or regulation, it thinks, who else has done this, and sees if it’s convenient or not.
Variety in companies and organizations
The same applies to companies and strategies. They use historical analysis of what has been done before in order to make a decision on how they are going to act now.
In the present, there are so many forms of products, services and other results of consumerism that you can find the best one for each person. You can find that perfect sweater that you adore, you will find that laptop that suits every need of yours, that phone, etc. But they are so scattered and spread that you will need a lifetime to find every perfect product for you, and after you found it, you will want a different one.
What is the solution and how do we deal with so much variety?
At some point in our life, we have to say stop. There are too many decisions for a human being to make and we are so busy with working and doing something that probably isn’t what we wanted to do. So we need to think about a solution that will help us cope with all the variety that exists among us.
Analyzing the Venus Project proposal
I’m not getting into excruciating detail now about The Venus Project and what it proposes, but I’m going to analyze the solution it has to eliminate unnecessary things in our lives.
Firstly, it proposes a new government system, which is based on singularity and openness. The monetary system will be gone, so there is no exchange of products between human beings. Instead, it offers a intelligent resource management system that aims to eliminate scarcity (no more fighting over necessary items).
It also brings to us humans what we always wanted: free time. As there isn’t need for jobs to support basic needs, there will be occupations for people to improve the system, such as working as designers, engineers, scientists, artists, people-oriented jobs and others. In this way, is assured that everyone is doing exactly what they want and have no obligations, but only moral ones for the society and themselves.
I don’t completely agree with their proposals, I only am excited about the novelty of this idea. It is something that offers an improvement to the initial system that we are living in and it tries to give answers to some of the existent human and society problems.
The Venus Project has a major fault when it comes to eliminating scarcity. It also eliminates variety, which as I tried to demonstrate before, is needed for our society to be healthy. It eliminates the many mistakes (and lessons that come from them) of the many existing governments. We can use this existing information (what has been done and what is being done now) to make decisions in the near future, but what happens after a long time, when the “big” system will show it’s weaknesses and to try something new on the big system will certainly have disadvantages. We won’t have a “testing ground”. It’s hard to think about this, because no one will want to be inside a testing ground, but in the current society, this is how it is, there isn’t a better choice for those people in some bad governments. But smaller governments can recover much more quickly than bigger ones.
And there is also to be thought about the variety in our day-to-day life: the clothes we wear, the houses we design ourselves, the historical buildings and some of the bad parts of the society that are sometimes fun to watch and witness. What kind of “fun” is there left if we eliminate all this? Can we also design a new type of “fun” ? But more importantly, will we be able to bring all of the current beautiful, breath-taking, amazing, hilarious things into a new type of society? Will they work?
Your comments are highly appreciated and I want to hear even the craziest ones out there. We need crazy, we need everybody!
The Green Deal
Just a new trend?
The whole world has heard of the green alternative. The clean and safe planet… the healthy way of eating. But is it more than just a trend? Of course it is, you have to be crazy to think otherwise. The new “trend”, as you might want to call it, includes the idea of making something for anyone. Of helping the planet, while helping the inhabitants, of creating a new way in which people interact.
There’s also a downsite to it, as with any other new trends. The downsite, in my opinion, is the fact that people will try to take advantage of this in order to promote themselves, or their business. This becomes wrong, when they only take the facade of the “green thing”, the design, the benefits, but they don’t include the responsabilities. People will always find a way to lie and hide what is really going on, if they want that. I have come to the conclusion that people can do almost everything if they really want it. It doesn’t matter how evolved is the society in which they operate, so things might not be so “clean” after all… You can’t know, but please, do something about the wrongs you witness!
Green economy?
Well, this is a contrasting pair of words. Why? Economy means, in short terms, how you get the most profit out of something, while keeping your image clean. The “green” movement is all about caring for others, and the nature, without taking too much for yourself. So you can clearly see the difference in terms here.
Can this be fixed? Well, economists and businesses are trying to adhere to the “green” movement, by taking some ideas and implementing them. This is good, right? Yeah, in some terms it is, but you have to be aware that the foundations of the economical world are opposed to some ideas portrayed by the “green” term.
A completely green economy might mean that the most important factor is how is the business affecting the environment, and when I speak about the environment, I mean everything around us, including humans. The best decision has to be made around the idea of “what is the best practice now and for the future”, which means profits might have to wait a while before all decisions are assured to be safe for everyone. This also means investing time and money into researching what is the best decision. And while the best decision is something of an utopia, there should be done some serious risk assessment beforehand.
The core of green thinking
If you are ready to adopt this “green thinking” movement, then you should know how to do it. My advice is not to take a set of rules and apply it immediately. That is why it’s called “thinking”, because you actually have to do some thinking. What it means to be truly green? Become Hulk? Eat more vegetables? Paint your house green? Yes, of course, if you found a way in which it can help you and the environment. But most important of all, it means that it could be everything, from just simple tasks you do everyday to your whole lifestyle.
Preparing yourself to go green also is thinking about the nature, thinking of the Planet as a whole, and assessing your footprint on it. Is it negative, or is there something you could do about it? Something that could inspire people? Some advice that you need to give in order for people to see the right way? There’s a lot of questions, that need your thinking. So go ahead, think it through, and once you got through some important matters, plan your moves: think of buying stuff that helps, think of driving cleaner, think of celebrating nature as it is.
After you have seen how much can you do for this world, there’s nothing that can stop you from acting and doing the right thing. Become green!
Choosing Education
They said to us that education is the key to success, and pursuing a college and getting degrees is going to get you far away in life. But can we rely only on this fact, that every education we choose is a great thing and by every degree we get, we are smarter?
The right path…
As youngsters, we were being tought different things in different schools, and there were numerous methods of teaching us. One way of doing it is to enforce the information into the child’s head and treat him like a dummy that has to repeat everything they say, word by word, and finally what happens to the kid? Does he know more if he has learned by heart every text from the manuals? Is he a better man, does he know how to make better decisions in life, that will not only affect his career, but his entire future?
I’ll tell you what happens to the child in such educational systems. He get overwhelmed by all the false lectures he gets and gets very confused, not to say that he grows into a teenager, making things more confusing for him. The important matters in life for the child are upside down, and does not know what things in life will give light to his confusions. If no one teaches that to the kids, they will not know if it’s necessary to pursue the right goals, and they will not. They will stick to conforming to what life around them is, they will find friends in troubled people, and they will not try to become better.
Creativity? Why in the world do we need that?
It is a general idea in most educational systems that pupils don’t need to focus on their creativity part. Every person needs a way of expressing himself, and creativity means different things to different people, but the whole idea of creativity is that we possess it when we are small kids, but we are tought out of that in schools and by our parents. It’s the thing that makes us say stupid things, which are the most creative thoughts in the whole world, but sadly we are being told that that is not good for us, that we should grow up and they inspire us the fear of mistakes, which, in my opinion, takes away all that’s left from a person’s creativity.
Could we ever know what’s best for us in terms of education?
To me, teaching people something does not neccessarily mean to make them learn something they feel it’s useless. It’s about telling them how great it is to have knowledge of all that stuff, and what things they could create and what interesting jobs they will have if they complete their knowledge in that particular thing. It’s about motivation and making the student wanting to learn, no matter if there is no actual teaching of the subject. It’s about leading the student to find materials, to find inspiration and to find his own path to pursue a goal of his own.
In nowadays, it’s possible to learn about something without ever going to a school, just from Internet. But books exist too, they expand the knowledge of a person beyond the computer screen, and make them imagine more. Also an important part in learning something is to talk to the right persons, and actually try and make conversations about the subject. Getting tips from others can save you a lot of work and saves you from your own mistakes, nevertheless in which you could have learned more, but this takes an awfull amount of time. You can’t do everything by yourself, so get people to help you and show you how.
Inspirational video
This is a very inspiring story of how people get education wrongly, and in which way it could be better.
Internet over TV?
To begin with, I clearly state that I’m not talking about viewing television programs through the Internet (that is possible, though). A few weeks ago, I was searching with no target in mind (as usually) on the Net and I realized that I was watching documentaries and short films, reading about what interested me, and so on. What went through my mind in the next second was that the sites which offer great content, places where you can learn something really interesting were there, at a click distance, and completely free.
The contrast between the nonsense television programs and these cultural, informative videos is immense. I was wondering next how it would be if the Internet was to become the next television. You may ask, what advantages does it have? Well, let me count a few for you:
- Being able to choose between loads of video and broadcasts, so the choice is yours if you are looking for a way to kill time or if you are looking to feed yourself with culture and knowledge. So far, this beats the television programs where you can choose from 50 or so broadcasts, that may or may not please you.
- The multitude of information is not always good or bad, but in time, just by having both good or bad information at your finger, makes you able to know and select the good parts of every site, and therefore become realistic and knowing what is truth and what is invented.
- You have the right to doubt any information, but the Internet gives you searchable text base that had been disputed by others before you, so will find dozens of opinions, you just have to stick to the one that’s closest to your beliefs.
And so many others, that I can’t find one that’s against this technology.
Recently, I’ve found a site that promotes cultural and inspirational web content, with loads of intersting, funny, and inspirational videos and podcasts.
That is www.oculture.com
To add on the list is the marvelous TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment and Design), where you get to know people that have something (and something really important) to say.
What about YouTube? YouTube is now the largest provider of streaming videos, but the flaw in their system is that they don’t allow videos longer than 10 minutes. So the next best thing is Google Video, which is very good when it comes to documentaries. When I was searching (targetless again) on the Internet, I found a very good site that contains links to documentaries hosted by Google Video: http://www.bodocus.com/
I hope you enjoy these sites as they astonish me every time I visit them.
Blogs? Where are they going from now?
So here it is, my first real post. To begin with, I’ll put and try to answer some questions that are basic to the understanding of what I will be posting in the future.
What are those nasty things called blogs?
For those of you who do not yet know, but have stumbled upon this piece of article, a blog is something that looks like this (take a moment to breathe and lean back on the chair to see how this page really looks). Good, you saw how this looks, and now let me tell you how this works:
It’s a system that consists of a dynamic page which is updated through the web interface (browser, that is, e.g. IE, Firefox). The author(s) of the blog usually posts articles or notes, or things they want to show other people. Some of them are like diaries and journals people have the nasty habit to write in order to ridicule things or to let their undischarged feelings and thoughts loose. But there are few hundred blogs (out of millions) that really want to teach the readers something, not just to brag about or complain about how good, respectively bad their life is.
As I mentioned before, there are tens of millions of blogs on the net, and I don’t know if my blog will be different from 80% of them, but I’ll try, I’ll really try to make it worth your reading time. I don’t even want to call it a blog, because this word has been overwhelming the Internet. Every thing you search with the world blog in it, you will get an annoying number of result from your search site, and guess what, none of them on the first page were what you were looking for. So, to my mind, using the term blog, is now just like using the term website or site. Well, if you search on the net, you type the word website after the terms? I don’t think so. You’re looking for something specific, and specific isn’t in the definition for website, and also it isn’t for blog anymore.
Future of blogs
In the near future, blogs will be something common (if they aren’t already), and the terms blog and website will collide and will end up meaning the same thing. I’m not exaggerating, posting on blogs will be the equivalent of a news site coming up with a new article. Looking at the bigger picture, they are in fact the same, blogs are websites, and websites are blogs, because they display information the same way, using the Internet, and in readable human form, with titles and paragraphs.
The only way they distinguish now is by the format that is specific to blogs, but that’s because they have predefined styles and themes, but as the Net develops (and in what an incredible rate) they will become more and more flexible, allowing them to behave in the way a normal web site behaves, to let the author choose it’s layout, usage and behavior.
So what is this all about?
What’s Z|nK?
That’s me. It used to be my nickname on the chat, but I have adopted it on the web as well.
The things I will write about:
- My ideas of the world around us
- Common life subjects as: school, education, love, relationships, people, politics, science.
- Stuff I dig up on the net.
