In my old, lovely life in Belgium, I was one of those, opposing technical evolutions. I didn’t want to learn (or couldn’t) work with my computer and ultramodern gadgets were nothing for me. I hold on to the printed newspaper, buying books and cds and loving libraries.

But then I moved to Sweden and since most newspapers are tabloids here, I was forced to do news rounds on the Internet. Now, I am sitting here in my bed, being interconnected with the whole world by the WWW. Spotify, a free program to listen music, enables me to constantly discover new music (or makes me an addict?). Writing in a standardized program called world, so this message transmissible through all of you. Meeting at least 5 nationalities each day. And this is where it became too much this morning. I was reading an opinion article (http://opinie.deredactie.be/2010/11/12/het-%E2%80%98integratieprobleem%E2%80%99-anders-bekeken/) on a Belgian news site, yes, I am practicing long distance nationalism. This article is on the immigration ‘problems’. Especially, when it came to the comments, I was getting really angry. Because, I am an immigrant myself in Sweden, you know. And it is damn hard to get integrated, you know. I am just hanging out with international students. Swedes are friendly but very cold and most of the time, you don’t even come to a conversation with a Swede.

Anyway, I spend my whole week reading about globalization, whether it brings homogenization or diversification and stuff like that. And yes, I am a little bit worried about the ‘McDonaldization’ of our society. The disappearance or impoverishment of cultures, languages, .. And then, on that news site, there were all those people, commenting that integration should be a one way concept. People can only change into Belgians (is there something like a Belgian national identity???) and that there is no space for a little bit diversity. This world is sick, I will kill myself.