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I just realised that in each of the three cities I have lived in Sweden – Lund, Karlskrona and Kristianstad – the hospital and graveyards are adjacent. Further, the chapel is on the hospital side of the graveyard. Who said that government allocate resources inefficiently?!

I am an avid Google Reader user, and very regularly check the blog suggested via explore. For me the results are usually a very eclectic – ranging from breaking tech gadget news and nerdy comics to an inexplicable number of design blogs focusing on weddings. Somewhere in the middle come the food blogs – and this is where I found Lottie + Doof.

The post that first caught my attention was pasta with fresh corn pesto. And that is what Oziel and I made for dinner tonight. This is our attempt below.

We were very happy with the result. The recipe makes about four serves.

The other post that caught my attention was ginger beer. We also made that tonight, but haven’t had a glass yet as we want it ice-cold (so no photos).

I love ginger beer but, like salt and vinegar chips, it is one of the things that hasn’t taken off in Sweden. It is possible to buy from Gray’s American Store in Malmö. Gray’s sells supermarket goods from around the English speaking world that are otherwise hard to find in Sweden. They even sell Tim Tams for the bargin basement price of 9.20 AUD per pack!! However, all of their Cadbury chocolate comes from the UK =(

Today I ordered my preferences for both the lower and upper houses in the Australian Federal Election. I was impressed with Below the Line as I diligently dragged the Senate candidates up and down after reading about the various political parties. The list of candidates for the House of Representitives for my seat was easy enough to handle manually.

But I am not sure I can be bothered to go and vote. It’s not the train fare, we were thinking of going to Copenhagen anyway. And it’s not that I am registered to vote in a seat so safe that Volvo is looking at using the technology in its next car. It’s that I am so disillusioned with politics – even if I cast the deciding vote I am not satisfied with the difference it will make.

Politics has become a career. There is no room for ideology as the political corporations seek market dominance. Political ideology is no longer a vision for the nation, it is about ensuring a sufficient number of votes market dominance in a sufficient number of electorates markets.

To facility change in Australian politics today, you need to be part of a focus group. You don’t need any qualification – from my observation it actually helps not to have them. No, this is more like a psychologists couch – you vent your fears and prejudices. Then the political corporations roll them into their product offerings. How else can someone explain to me why 2000 people coming by boat to seek refuge from unwarranted persecution can be blamed for trafic delays in Sydney?!

We need leadership. Leaders shape opinions and beliefs. They don’t just follow them.

I was pleased to see on the issue of adoption by same-sex partners that the Swedish politicians lead public opinion, rather than waited for it to catch up with their own beliefs. When introduced, adoption by same-sex partners was only supported by 17% of the nation, but eight years later it is supported by a majority of the Swedish nation. They did what they thought was right and took the nation forward with them.

I recommend you listen to the discussion on Late Night Live from 4 August 2010.

Today Oziel and I are working from Malmö City Library. But given the summers are short in Sweden, people don’t want to waste them inside the library. The library understands this dilemma, and has set up tables, chair and lounges in the library gardens so that you can enjoy the best of both the summer and the library.

For lunch Oziel and I headed to Max Burger. They have new self-service terminals for ordering, much like the self check-in terminals at the airport.

To our surprise, no one else used these terminals while we were eating our lunch – preferring the queue. But it turned out that these were even better than we expected:

• There was no queue for the terminals, while the queues for ordering with a cashier were at least six people deep.
• We could order by picture – meaning the cashier didn’t get confused with our Swedish.
• We were given many more options than we knew existed (eg. swap chips out for salad, carrots, potato gratin, etc …)
• After ordering we went to the express counter to pick up our meal and it was almost ready (fast food in Swedish is not known for being fast).

We give the Max self-service terminals the thumbs up.

Some researchers (who I guess are at the other end of their careers to me) have just sort to answer the research question, “in which country is it best to die?”

Hopefully this isn’t something I need to think about for a long time, but it seems overall my best option is to go back home to Australia (via The Swedish Wire). However, remaining in Sweden will prove to be cheaper.

I think it is important for Australians to realise that not only are things not that bad, they’re actually quite good. Rather than talk about winging Poms, we need to reflect on attitudes a little closer to home.

Let’s start with healthcare. Public opinion rates this as the governments poorest performing area, yet a recent study rated our healthcare system second best in the OECD and I’ve already mentioned our end-of-life care. Further my healthcare experiences in Australia have been positive, so I cannot explain this disconnect. This is especially confusing for me when most Swedes are very proud of their healthcare system – but every session I see a number of international students go home developing and third-world countries because the Swedish healthcare system is unable to deliver them health outcomes they deem to be acceptable.

Next, public transport. I will admit that I lament at the state of Sydney’s public transport system. Yet the cumulative delays for my travel on Swedish public transport in the last week is over five hours, and while the northern hemisphere has been enduring a heatwave the airconditioning has been broken on around one-third of the carriages. And while Sweden not making the Eurovision finals was described by the media as a fiasco, the state of public transport this week didn’t rate a mention.

And I don’t want to even write about the misinformation and fear in the so called asylum seeker debate.

Im not trying to say things are better in Australia than in Sweden. I am saying that with a positive outlook everyone is happier, and you can still work to achieve greater things. We should still aim high. Things could be better and should be better. I can think of many areas where I would love to see improvement. But rather than bitch and moan about things that aren’t that bad, we should raise the quality of our political debate. When it comes down to it, we are all going to die, and Australia is one of the best places to do it.