denmark isn't entirely immune to rackets

denmark is largely a country of very little corruption and few signs of racketeering, but (you knew there was a but) the odd thing pops up now and again. years ago, i realized the whole setup around the .dk domains was one big mafia. i also suspect the way you get a driver's license in denmark is similar - with a whole apparatus built up around "driving schools" (some dude with a "school vehicle" sign that he mounts on the top of his skoda sedan and charges 20,000kr to "teach" you to drive). and this week, i encountered a third example.

there's a scheme by which employers are forced to pay for you to have "screen glasses" if you do a lot work in front of a computer. i recently realized that i am having trouble properly reading the fine print on my screen(s) (getting old, you say?) and since my solution to not being able to see things to read them is to get about 2cm from said screen, i decided it was getting rather embarrassing and i broke down, filled out the form and made an appointment to get "screen glasses." (i'm putting that in quotation marks because i've been outside my native language for so long now that i'm no longer sure whether that's just a direct translation from danish or a real thing.)

i filled out the form, got it signed and stamped at work (oddly, that's apparently still a thing, though it felt like i had to teleport to 1990 to do it). i even got permission to use an old pair of my own frames for it, which felt quite sustainable of me. why get new frames when i had some that i knew i liked, just languishing here at home, unused since they were an old prescription. i went to the optician we are mandated to use (not my regular one). 

they immediately started asking me questions about where the glasses i was wearing came from. i found that a little weird. i said they were from another optician, but didn't specify where. it felt like none of his business. i handed him the form and reminded him that i was there for screen glasses. 

we did the eye test and then he started trying to up-sell me. i think the deal they have with companies has probably been pushed to the bare minimum by cynical purchasing people with some kind of bonus riding on how much they save. so he gave me the hard sell on premium glass. 

i asked what the company pays for and he said that the premium glass hadn't been ticked off on my form. i had filled out the form myself, so i knew that, and since i didn't know what any of those boxes had really meant (they were written in rather insider-y language), i hadn't ticked anything, thinking we'd be able to discuss. he really tried to push me to get the fancy glass, without telling me what it would cost. in the end, we agreed they would call my work and ask whether we could include the fancy lenses.

i was thinking that for glasses i'll wear only when i'm looking at my screen, i don't really need anything fancy. i chose my own old frames to be a bit more sustainable and to save a bit on new frames (i had admittedly heard that the choices were limited). naturally, my company didn't fall for the up-sell from our friends at louis nielsen (yes, i'm going to name names), so i'm getting normal glass. the guy called me and really tried the hard sell on the phone, telling me that the fanciest glass would cost more than 4,000kr. (that's over $500 these days). and i'm like, wait, what? thank you, no. 

clearly louis nielsen isn't too happy about the deal they've made to provide screen glasses for companies, so they try to push people into spending more than the company will allow, in order to try to recoup some of the costs. it seems rather like a racket to me. 

living like vikings

every summer, there are viking markets here and there around denmark. people who use their summer holidays dressing up and living like vikings. cooking in iron pots over open fires. sleeping on piles of wooly sheepskins, weaving with hand-dyed yarns. drinking mead. i'm always a little envious.

and it seems that now you can go to school to learn to be a viking! (thanks E for the link!)

a toothy problem

it's windy and blustery outside and grey and the weather seems generally cranky. and it's rubbing off on me. and it's not improved by an email exchange with the municipality dentist people. you see, children's dentistry is provided for free until they are 18 in denmark. they should be called in yearly for a checkup and until the 6th grade, sabin was. and it occurred to me (and her) recently that she hadn't been invited for a checkup in nearly two years! 

so, i went to the municipality's website to look up contact details. they have a "self service" button that you're supposed to press and make your own appointment (the government in denmark wants everything to happen electronically, but alas, hasn't really set up the systems to support it). right above that is a big long message about how the self-service is currently out of service. so i managed to find an email address to write to, since no one ever answers the phone numbers that are buried about three layers in. i think they have a secret 5 minute window where they answer the phone that you have to try to guess. and probably as soon as someone guesses it, they change it, so good luck getting through.

originally, i wrote on february 4, asking for an appointment for the child. funnily enough, i didn't get any response. no email back, not even an automatic "we received your mail," and definitely no appointment. and this, even tho' i wrote in danish, so it wasn't that they were intimidated by an email in english. so yesterday, i wrote again, this time specifically requesting a response (and a little put out that that was even necessary). 

a couple of years ago, i did a big research project where i talked to a lot of foreigners living in denmark and from them, i repeatedly heard a story of how the municipalities are a bit lax with the children's dental offer towards children with foreign parents. i heard again and again how kids with crooked teeth were assured they didn't need braces and how checkups were offered less often than to purely danish kids. and i rather smugly thought that i had never experienced that. but now i'm starting to wonder. with an aging population, the welfare state in denmark has to begin to make choices regarding their resources. so to let a few children with a foreign parent slip through the cracks on the dentistry offer would probably save a few kroner here and there. in my second mail, i brought this up and said i hoped that wasn't the case.

this morning, i had an answer. although i had signed my name, the answer was rudely not addressed to anyone, no "dear julie," no "hi julie," it just launched into a question regarding the child's social security number, which, unfortunately, i had typed incorrectly in my original mail. i answered back with her correct number and received an answer with a time in one month, at 9 a.m., during the school/work day. in other words, not a convenient or possible time.  she also provided a link to the non-functioning self-service, as if it were working (or perhaps she was unaware that it wasn't working), pedantically telling me how i could look up the records and make appointments there myself. if only it were working. i took a screenshot of the message about how it's not working and said that i would have been happy to make the appointment that way, were it possible. and while she was generally responsive and answering my mails right away, she ignored that part of my mail.

she also tried to tell me that they had sent multiple appointments to us and that maybe we hadn't checked our e-boks (the electronic system where all communication from the state now happens). i do check my e-boks regularly, because i have it set up to send me a mail when there is something there. but i checked it again and funnily enough, there were no mails from the municipality regarding dentist appointments. oddly enough, husband doesn't have any either. and the only conclusion i can draw from that is that she lied about that or sent them to some other parents.

being a conflict-shy dane, she also completely ignored my question about sabin being pushed allowed to fall through the cracks because she has a foreign parent. like she didn't even see that bit. and in all of her answers, despite my modeling back to her the correct way to write a mail, with a salutation of "dear so-and-so or the more normal danish version of "hi so-and-so," she continued to rudely refuse to follow the conventions of basic email etiquette and politeness.

funnily enough, in the middle of this, the postman came to the door with the mail and in it, there was a postcard from the local school dentist, with a time for sabin on february 18. and it arrived today, on february 24. so we missed it because we didn't know about it. and a postcard is quite different than an electronic letter. i tried to call the number of the local school dentist that's on the postcard, but i apparently missed today's 5 minute window, because it just rang and rang and cycled back through the system. so we are still appointmentless and it's been two years and counting.

well done, vejle kommune. well done.  (you might recall that this isn't the first time vejle kommune has had an epic fail.) 

* * *

the day continues in weirdness mode. the telemarketers are getting more and more cheeky. on principle, i don't answer my phone if it is a blocked number, but i suppose that happens quite a lot for telemarkers, so they have started to call from numbers that show. because of my waiting state, i answer the phone, even if i don't recognize the number. this one was a young man who wanted to ask me some follow-up questions about a contest i'd supposedly participated in online. not having participated in any online contests (buzz feed quizzes don't count), i laughed and said that was weird. he got really mad and said i had and that i had provided my full name and address and phone number, tho' funnily enough, he wouldn't tell me what my full name was, or even my first name, nor my address. i just kept laughing and then he got petulant and said he'd give the trip to spain to someone else. you go right ahead and do that, buddy.

* * *

fat cat photobombs famous paintings with hilarious results.

what is to be done?

somehow, reading this piece on incorporating the maker movement into schools, as a learning/problem-solving tool, makes me wonder if we should have tried harder to make it work with our local school. but we had tried for a whole year and it felt like time was running out. with unresponsive, slippery (i honestly wonder if they're part eel) leadership, that smiles and nods to your face and fills the air with fluffy spindoctor speak and then goes away and does nothing, it felt like such a daunting task, so we gave up and moved sabin to a new school. we are blown away at the difference already and it's only been a little over a week - she's motivated, she sits down and diligently does her homework every evening (and she actually HAS homework every evening) and she comes home talking about what she learned (even stuff about hitler!). she never did that at the old school, not once. getting her to tell something about school was like pulling teeth.

but some part of me thinks that the old school should have had to get their ducks in a row and shape up. they should have been required to perform and even excel. and we should have been proud and happy to be there. they owe it to the community, because little communities like this depend on having smart, motivated people to keep them going. we pay a lot of tax (don't get me started) and i wouldn't mind it if i saw results here within my community. and with a grade point average of 4.7 as opposed to the 7.1 of the school we moved to, it wasn't even a contest. and apparently the local superintendent insists that the school is ambitious and that the scores are exactly where they should be. which is the whole problem. how can, what is arguably a D+ average on a comparable american scale, possibly be deemed ambitious? even the schools which are full of the purportably problem immigrants have much higher scores than that. and these are normal, bright, middle class kids with danish parents (hmm, i wonder if the immigrants are really so bad?) so there's honestly no excuse.

but i still feel very sad about the whole thing, even while i'm sure we made the right decision. the class itself was great - socially, they functioned just fine, everyone had someone to be friends with and there was no serious bullying. the problem was the teachers and even more so leadership that tries again and again to cover up problems and doesn't welcome conversation and dialogue which could lead to solving them. frankly, our little town deserves better. it's too bad that so many of us (as of tuesday this week, 9 will have moved from the class of 26) had to choose to leave instead of continuing the dialogue. our kids deserve better and we simply couldn't wait any longer.

* * *

stupid things hard-core christians say.

hilarious, but also really, really sad.

and possibly more than a little disturbing.

election day in denmark

it's election day in denmark. we vote for the municipal and regional representatives. i say we, because even i, as a non-citizen, can vote in the municipal and regional election. there are a lot of parties in denmark - left (which is actually right), conservative, the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti - they're just a shade to the left of nazis), social democrats, socialists, radicals, a left party called enhedslisten, which wants to send denmark into an ecstatic state of fourierian utopian socialism.

i have a pretty clear idea from the national level, what each party stands for, but it gets a little murky and diluted at the municipal level. and tho' you'd think the regions are between national and municipal, in denmark, they're not (basically all they decide about is the hospitals), they're really a third tier. DR, the national media outlet, has a quiz you can take to determine who you should vote for (there are so many candidates and you can only vote for one, so it's hard to know what each individual might stand for). the candidates were asked to the take the quiz as well and then the results match you with the ones whose answers were the most like yours. here are my results:

they illustrate nicely how far the local politicians are from their national party lines. i come out as most in agreement with someone from enhedslisten, which is at the far left of the spectrum on the national level. tho' i am not an advocate of utopian socialism, i could possibly be inclined towards their thinking, so the result isn't that surprising. what is, however, surprising, is that the candidate i'm next most in agreement with is from venstre, (which tho' literally left, is actually right), the second most right wing party in the country. on the side i least agree with, it doesn't surprise me that at the top is a member of dansk folkeparti, the party which has done all they can in the years i've been in denmark to capitalize on fear and demonize immigrants. what is surprising is the place in that column of a member of enhedslisten - that means that their two candidates represent the opposite ends of the spectrum in our local election.

the person that i was planning on voting for doesn't even make either list, which leaves me a bit in doubt. she is, however, one of the few i've actually spent time talking to about the issues, so perhaps that should count for more than the results of some media quiz.

tho' there is generally high voter turnout in denmark, people are saying they will stay home from this election. i personally think it's because there are too many candidates and people feel they can't get their head around it to know who to vote for (i know i feel that way). however, i do intend to exercise my right to vote. i think it's important and i'm grateful that i'm legally allowed to do so, despite not being a citizen. what happens in my municipality (which is more like a county in american terms) affects me, so i'm pleased that i have a say.  with so many candidates, the election can be decided by just a few votes, so it might even be that my vote actually counts.

i'll have to do some more thinking before i go in and tick that box later today, but i know already now that it's not going to be a member of dansk folkeparti. i never did like their politics, but last week, their "equality spokeswoman" spoke out against a toy store catalog that had featured boys playing with girl toys and vice versa, saying it was "perverse." that level of perverse thinking will definitely not be getting my vote. nor will anyone from venstre, whose national leader is in trouble (again again) for flying first class to the tune of 700,000 kroner in his capacity as director of a dodgy environmental organization (GGGI). not to mention at a more local level, one of the politicians from venstre declared in a neighboring municipality that "it's over with approaching the municipality in english."

i imagine i'll land somewhere in the middle and probably vote for the woman who seemed sensible and intelligent when i spoke with her a few weeks ago, even tho' she's not a member of the party i most identify with (radikale). sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

send in the clowns

ahh, it's a day and a half until the school group departs for st. petersburg. still no visas and still no flight details, tho' we did, late thursday evening, get a more detailed itinerary as to the actual sights the kids will see. we were told they have to be at the airport at 4:30 a.m. on tuesday, tho' no flight number or time or anything to accompany that enlightening little fact. we were given a link to the air baltic website and a reference number so we could check in online. sadly, since it's a group reservation, i cannot actually access flight numbers, flight path or flight times (e.g. an itinerary) and it's still too early to check her in, so i can't see it that way either. so i wrote back and said that i thought that the flight information was missing on the information we received. 

the clown who sent it responded, "what specifically is missing?" 

i answered, "times, flight numbers, airline, just the usual flight itinerary, like any normal trip." then i further explained that i couldn't see it on the air baltic website, due to it being a group reservation. i said i couldn't imagine there were direct flights between billund and st. petersburg, so there must be at least one flight about which we lacked any information at all.

then, while impatiently waiting for an answer (he had answered quickly the first time, despite it being sunday, so i expected an answer just as quickly), i thought i'd dig out an old flight itinerary and show him what i meant (tho' in this day and age, imagining that someone hasn't seen an airline's flight itinerary is a bit of a stretch). so i sent him an old one from my days of traveling with SAS (they once owned Air Baltic, so i figured the same systems would be in place). and since his tactic is to treat me as if i'm a small, dull child, i carefully explained it all to him:

"When you travel, the travel agency or even just the airline provides a PDF with all of the flight details on it. I have attached an example, in case you're not familiar with these. It contains all of the information needed for the flights - flight number, airline, departure time, terminal, arrival time, how much luggage is allowed. All of this information is included for each of your flights. Everything you need to know about your flights if you (or more importantly, your 12-year-old child) are going on a trip to another country. Depending on the airline, it's even available electronically, so you can use Passport on your iPhone as your ticket/check-in.

I expect to receive such an itinerary tomorrow morning at the latest. Specifically."

he initially responded that he didn't have such a detailed itinerary, but that he would look into it.

then, a little bit later, he sends this:

BT146 Billund - Riga
BT442 Riga - Sct. Petersborg (sic)
BT445 Sct. Petersborg (sic) - Riga
BT145 Riga - Sct. Petersborg (sic - believe this should read Billund)

we're getting closer, but still no flight times or the actual dates of the flights (tho' the dates i more or less know, since a previous 8-mail conversation finally revealed those).

why be so difficult, i wondered and so i remarked "no times/dates? very mysterious."

then he has the nerve to answer that they were included in the previous mail. which they were not. if they were, i wouldn't have been asking in the first place.

and i couldn't help myself, i had to ask:

I sincerely do not understand why getting this perfectly normal, logical information out of you is like pulling teeth. What possible reason would you have to keep essential details like this from us? It was the same way with the changed dates, it took 4-5 emails to get the new dates from you. I don't think I'm asking too much or for anything out of the ordinary. I am a parent who wants to know the details of her 12-year-old daughter's trip.

and funnily enough, it's been nearly and hour and he hasn't answered. and i still don't know the actual flight times of these flights. tho' now, with the flight numbers, i could look it up and probably will. we have exchanged ten mails and i still don't have the information i need and it's not like it's something special i'm asking for, just a simple, normal flight itinerary, which every travel agent or airline provides when you make a booking. i just wonder why it has to be so hard? 

i would have canceled this whole thing long ago, but somehow i want to see how it plays out. and if we cancel, sabin's friend is left alone on the trip without anyone she knows and we didn't want to do that to her. i'm still holding out hope that it won't happen because they won't have the visas by 4:30 a.m. tuesday morning, but only time will tell. 

i'll keep you posted.

update: i finally got a response from the clown, he said, and i quote (translation mine), "i have read your mail and have nothing to add. that's it from here." 

* * *

"Society is telling us, like, be true to yourself, authentic, develop your potential, be kind to others. It’s kind of what I ironically call a slightly enlightened Buddhist hedonism."

--yup, zizek has still got it.

sometimes you have to call a spade a spade

that pipe says "danger zone"

imagine this scenario: you're coming down with a cold and feeling a bit achy and under the weather, so you're making yourself a nice warm cup of elderberry cordial. your phone rings and you answer, stating your name in lieu of hello, as you've been forced into coerced taught by the culture of the country in which you live. the person on the other end doesn't identify himself, but instead sarcastically asks who he has gotten hold of. you repeat your name, mentally kicking yourself for not asking who the hell he was first. then he finally reveals that he's the rhino from the ungdomsskole (remember the one that's supposed to be taking sabin to st. petersburg in 10 days?) and you've filled out the visa application totally incorrectly (despite filling it out exactly as he advised you on the phone last saturday) and you need to turn some password over to him immediately, as he's sitting at the russian embassy in copenhagen. you say that rather than turn over a password (who does that to someone on the phone?), you would gladly log into the application and make the requested changes (tho' he hadn't said what they were yet at that point), since it should probably be you anyway as the child's parent. and despite not having said what the changes should be, but just condescendingly accusing you of filling it out wrongly, he gets very snippy and demands your password again.

you're standing outside, since the reception is rubbish in the house, but you can't for the life of you remember any password on the visa application site. and if you did set a password, it's one you commonly use (you bad) and you don't want to just hand it out to some condescending asshole on the phone. so again, you try to calmly state that you would be glad to log into the russian embassy system and make the changes (provided you are told what they are, since, again, you filled it out per the rhino's instructions while on the phone with him last saturday). since he was at the actual embassy, they would surely be able to access the updated form on their end and use the correct information.

but he goes on in the most condescending tone, as if you are a small, dull child, saying the equivalent of "listen here missy" (høre nu her) that you must immediately turn over the password to him or you can just go to copenhagen yourself next week and secure the visa. and that point, you completely see red, switch to english and end up calling him, and i quote, a fucking asshole, among a rather lot of other things, which may also have included swear words. bearing in mind that danes use the word fuck freely and it doesn't have the same impact to them that it does to you, you mean it with every fiber of your being in that moment and you mean it in the strong american sense of the words, even as you realize you probably shouldn't have gone there. but seriously, this asshole, who has been abominably disorganized and has still, tho' the trip is due to leave in 11 days, not provided an itinerary, flight details or any other information about the trip, has the nerve to be a condescending prat to you on the phone because you filled out a form as he instructed. unbelievable.

as you might guess, all of this happened to me this afternoon. and after i hung up and went inside to make changes to the visa, i learned that there isn't a password - all you needed was the visa application number (which he had on a physically-printed piece of paper) and the first five letters of sabin's last name, which was clearly stated in the blank beside it. there wasn't a password. so he was a complete ass for absolutely no reason.

there is a worrying thread running through all of the encounters i've had thus far with the ungdomsskole. it started already at our parents meeting when the leader of our local outpost told a highly sardonic and condescending (not to mention sexist) story about how sometimes young people's mothers call him to sign their kids up for things that he thought the kids should sign themselves up for. i suppose i'm being put in this box as well, as i am a mother who, funnily enough, is involved in preparing her 12-year-old daughter's visa application for a trip to russia. apparently, these kids should just do these things for themselves. and if, as a mother, i want to know something more about what my child will experience, is that seriously too much to ask? an itinerary, possibly some flight details, for a school trip to russia? isn't that just a given? these disorganized clowns haven't even managed that. on the other hand, it's likely that the trip will fall through, as they've gone to hand in the visa applications far too late. from what i can read on the russian website, it will take at least ten working days, maybe 7 if we're lucky, and there are only 6 working days left before their departure.

i truly hate to find myself becoming one of those sort of righteous danish women, but there you have it. i've been pressed into it by a condescending, misogynist ass of a danish man. and while i will admit i shouldn't have called him a fucking asshole. he really was a fucking asshole.

* * *

and to take our minds off all of this, some interesting photos.

or have you read sinead's open letter to miley cyrus?

princeton or bust

thankfully, i had no odd dreams of dominatrix school principals, instead my nightmares were of an education system bent on making sure my daughter becomes a plumber or electrician (not that those are bad professions, it's just that i'm not sure that's the route she should take).

there was much talk last evening, by an overly tan man with long, white hair (can you say 70s leftover?), of how the kids would be counseled towards their ungdomsuddannelse. already in the 8th grade, they will make a plan for their future education (because you totally know what you want to do/be when you're 13). that rings a little soviet in my ears - having the state decide what you'll be at an early age and then seeing that you become it. i think russia groomed a lot of scientists that way. but denmark's ambitions are a bit lower, it seems they're more interested in grooming carpenters and plumbers (tho' there aren't enough apprentice spots for these professions, so many people taking those courses never become those things). but, we shouldn't forget that low ambition is what keeps the danes at the top of those happy lists, so there's that.

but it all raises my hackles. partly, i will admit, because i'm not entirely clear as to what is meant by ungdomsuddannelse (youth education, if i translate literally). here, mandatory school is through the 9th grade, with an optional 10th grade (many people take that at an efterskole (a boarding school that specializes in something or other - often sports, or riding or music or even media studies)). after that, if you eventually want to go to university, you tend to go to a 3-year gymnasium (somewhere between our high school and the first year of college). if you're not university bound, you can go to technical schools of various kinds. is it those technical schools and maybe even the efterskole that are ungdomsuddannelse, or is it all of it, including gymnasium and university? that's very unclear, even in the three pages of materials they gave to us last night.

basically, i want to know how they're going to help my child get into princeton. or if they're going to try to lead her down a path towards moped mechanic (that was actually mentioned). i'm being a bit facetious here. i'm not sure i really want her to go to princeton (berkeley or columbia would be ok too), but my point is that i want her to think that anything is possible and not that she has to follow a narrowly prescribed path determined by some aging hippie who didn't even know her when she was in middle school. and how will we ever know where she's going if she doesn't take the SAT?

that's the other thing that's not clear. since there's not much standardized testing in denmark, how do they determine what they call uddannelsesparathed (educational readiness). is it entirely subjective? is it determined by a bunch of teachers who frankly, have been questionably educated themselves in seminarium that are somewhere in the neighborhood of a suburban american junior college academically? are the kids out here in udkantsdanmark (the countryside/fringes) especially pushed in the direction of such professions by current political forces? (a story i heard on the radio yesterday suggested as much.) can your location determine what you can be when you grow up? the future of my child is hanging in the balance here and i can't see what it's balancing upon.

the only thing that's clear is that it's denmark's current goal to get these kids out there and through their education as quickly as possible so they can begin to be good little taxpayers. let's face it, those politicians aren't getting any younger, so they need to ensure that the next generation is paying for their pensions.

and now i'm off to google boarding schools in switzerland.

* * *

that's four more items off my "to blog" list from the parents' meeting last evening.