Dinner in France....24hrs later dinner in Sweden!

Sounds like a life of the rich and famous, right…but believe me even nomads can have their way…here is what I mean.
Team days (time when national office members of AIESEC in Switzerland get together outside of the office space) this time had been scheduled to be together in Sweden, and that meant that I had to apply for a schengen visa to travel outside of Switzerland, and since I work in Geneva; my immediate thought was applying at the French embassy in Geneva – but since I live in bern I ended up applying in Zurich instead, nevertheless I had my visa posted to me with no hassles.
I was told that my fist entry into any schengen state would have to be the country that issued me with the visa so that I do not experience problems while travelling to other states. On Monday 21.04.08 I made a trip to the nearest town in france from Geneva called Thoiry so that I can receive a stamp to prove to the authorities that I was there, I waited for the bus for about an hour i.e. from 18h59 and caught it at 20h11, The bus ride was pleasant and when we arrived I was the only person in the bus except the bus driver, he stopped for 10minutes in Thoiry – I had a little chat with him and we went for coffee and a burger at Mcdonalds, I found out that he is from Cape Verde and has been living in Avian for 14 years now – sounded like a nice, genuine person, but communication was hard as he mastered only French and Portugese and I only English 
When I got back to Geneva I realized that I had left my mobile phone in the bus, I called my phone and the driver answered, for 10 minutes I was trying to understand where I should meet him to collect it – we finally understood each other that I should meet him at 23h45 at the station, during this time I stepped into an internet café to get numbers of people I knew in Geneva to house me for the night as I was going to miss my last train back to Bern, I ended up chatting with Emily in Canada who contacted Regi in Switzerland who phoned someone in Geneva who then phoned Nicole to come pick me up at 00h30 when I got back to town – I was scared of having no accommodation for the night but things worked out thankfully. I woke up at 07h00 to catch an 8h45 train to Bern, on arrival I packed my clothes and headed for another train going to Basel – one hour away, where I caught Rynair which took 2hrs & 20min to arrive in Stockholm Skavstra airport.
Stockholm, a beautiful city surrounded by water, went out to discover the city with my new found friends from Sweden (Himanshu - Indian, Joao – Brazilian, Joanna - Swedish and Linn - Swedish). This was my first Scandinavian travel and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
…..Last day with the Swedes was spent with a national dish called köttbullar i.e. meat balls, boiled potatoes, and canburry sause/jam, the conversation last light – me and Himanshu kept on with our common wealth connection in trying to detect the commonness of our cultures until about 23h30.
Since our flight back to Basel was at 07h50, and getting to the airport took an hour and half, we had to wake up 02h45 for breakfast, catch a taxi at 03h20, then caught a bus and later at an odd hour of the morning we arrived at the Stockholm Skavstra airport.

….when I landed in Stockholm, the customs security check guy singled me out of a group of people passing-by and then asked me where am I coming from and what am I doing here; my response was ‘I just flew in from Switzerland,’ and he let me go, I wonder if I had mentioned I am originally from South Africa – would I have been stripped searched?
Then on my return again at customs, the security guy let my workmates pass and stopped me, demanded that I put all my belongings on a scanner – he even scanned my passport! I wish to understand what the criteria is for picking out people at the airport for inspection, how do you explain being singled out on a queue and being the only one to be humiliated by being double- checked while other people just simply pass-by . . . it must be disappointing for them not to find any drugs in my bag.

Kick Off 2008

Last week i was in fiesch (high on the Swiss beautiful mountains) engaged in a conference with about 300 people talking about world issues and our impact as individuals and communities. There were people from different parts of the world and it was really interesting, below is a clip of what happened.

Shoot the bastards!

...that is what the South African deputy safety and security minister said the police should do to criminals if they feel their lives threatened. The statement has received an enormous publicity attention from the media all over and attracted human rights activists and so on and so forth…
There is always an issue of human rights, the constitution, etc, one has to consider when it comes to such statements from a public representative but all of this issues are debatable under 2 perspectives for me i.e. from those who’ve experienced violent crime and those who have not!
When you have been pickpocket you last transport money at the age of 12 by 3 guys, had your laptop stolen from your bag at gun point in the middle of the night in a place thought to have been safe, had your house ‘broken-in’ that they even stole your room-mate’s underwear because she packet them in a fancy bag (they did not bother to look inside) in your absence then I suppose it would be automatic for one to support the deputy minister because one’s life has been threatened on many occasions!
But there are others who have not experienced such brutality and would advocate that giving license to shoot is not proper – we should look at the root of the problem and do ‘the right’ thing and not a ‘good’ thing and that is have a highly trained police force, get an efficient and effective justice system and get competent human capital to execute this tasks. hmmm…this reminds me of the argument: the right to life vs the limitation clause (every right is limited) – this discussion is very interesting and can get really heated when you talk about abortion – does life begin at conception? …anyway this is discussion for another day!
Personally because of my above experiences I choose the first option. Hypothetically – if someone jumps over my wall at odd hours of the morning then drags me at gun point, fastens & blind folds me to help themselves to my hard earned furniture and food that I continuously pay for and they just come and take (they invaded my right to privacy & psychologically scared me about safety in my own yard. I might forgive them but I won’t forget) but if someone jumps over my wall at odd hours of the morning, drags me and my family at gun point and rapes my kids then I will shoot the bastard and forget about who has rights in which circumstance.
…Yet again I don’t want the country to emulate the US where people have killing spree paranoia even in high schools by advocating that guns solve the issues but what is the short term solution that will benefit a long term solution of re-educating a criminal mind? Ohh and I don’t think offering a job is a short term solution – some criminals prefer not to work hard for their money.
….so if you look at this was the minister really wrong in saying what she said, I think she spoke from a parent’s perspective and let down her guard as a minister.

Bush booed at 2008 Nationals home opener