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| Talk,
Martin Algesten,
19 January 1999 | |
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It could be an expression of my naivety, but I believe that most western cities do not differ that much. At least from what I’ve seen, the major ones tend to look the same at a glance. But it’s when you first study the details, going beyond McDonalds and Diesel, that you start to see the differences. Being Swedish means that you have a compulsory obsession with what’s "practical" and what’s not. The ability to assemble IKEA furniture is instinctual, something I’ve genetically inherited from my Viking ancestors. This has the implication that the things I first notice as different are very practical matters. The Brits have, in my opinion, most often got it only almost right.
In my closest environment I directly noticed that my MiniDisc wouldn’t fit in the power outlets. Fine, there are several standards for connectors throughout the world, I will not complain, at least there are 243 kicking volts in mine (yes I have measured). What irritates me are the outrageously large plugs. For no apparent reason, each plug has a fuse inside it that makes it physically impossible to shrink. And why does every outlet have a switch next to it?
The fact that I have a washing machine in my flat is very good. I would get bored to death if I were to sit in a launderette watching my dirty socks go round-and-round-and-round-and-roundÂ… But why do I have the machine in my kitchen? I would place it in a washing room preferably, the toilet maybe, but certainly not in the kitchen where I mess with ketchup and greasy pots.
Generally I would say that in a one bedroom flat, there is little need for doors. It could be nice to have one front door, one for the toilet and one for the bedroom. In my flat I have five of them including the ones mentioned. And some of them have this extremely frustrating auto-close feature, why on earth would I like them to do that?
Back home I always thought that the kicking-in-the-front-door thing you see in the movies now and then, is fiction. A typical Swedish front door is a massive wooden thing, almost 2 inches thick. You would sooner break your leg than the door trying to kick in one of those. My British flat door though, really tempts me to try a little "Beastie Boys – Sabotage" act. One of these days, when works sucks and everything is crap, on my way home, in the elevator, I’ll be putting on the fake moustache and gigantic pair of Ray-Bans. Charging through the hallway in slow motion, I’ll burst through the door into my flat, smashing the thing to splinters and feel really good.
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