Having been in a rather existential mood the last month or so I have recently learned again the virtues of humour. I have watched several episodes of The Office and basically been laughing my head off. I have watched some old episodes of The Simpsons and Futurama as well, and been reading some fairly good comic books. (The Far Side is always a hit. So is 'The Sandman' although Neil Gaiman's masterwork is not strictly comic)

Amidst all this gloomy identity mish-mash emotional stuff it has been good to escape into humour sometimes. Humour, and good music. I have been listening a lot to some of the albums of my youth: 'Tubular Bells' by Mike Oldfield, 'The Joshua Tree' by U2, 'The Wall' by Pink Floyd (it was one of the first albums I bought as a teenager), the first album by Björk (the song 'There's more to life than this' here a classic), 'Is this desire?' by PJ Harvey, and finally worthy of notice is the debut album by Enigma. (Gregorian chanting, ooh yeah baby!) Mostly main-stream Western music, I am afraid. Nothing avant garde there.

As a result of all this brooding and enjoying popular culture, I feel better, and am ready to take a step back into the world.

These days I am writing on my draft for the term paper in my English Literature studies, and the topic is the books 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley and 'Waiting for the Barbarians' by JM Coetzee. Apart from that, I am preparing for the April issue of the international politics magazine I am editor of, where the main issue this time will be the European Union. Norway is, as you might know, not part of the EU (the people voted no twice, in 1972 and 1994), but there is, again, a movement of people who wish to have another referendum. The youth political party I am member of, 'Liberal Youths', is in favour of Norwegian membership, while our mother party, the Liberals (in Norwegian the name literally means the 'Left' - long story) is still officially against a Norwegian membership. The next Norwegian election for parliament is in 2005, and the political parties are already strategizing and positioning themselves. What a mess...

Anyway, just a nod towards the importance of humour in our daily lives. And no, I do not have any incredibly funny friends around who I can keep company with. Most of them are dead serious social changers, blabla. ;)

-- China Update Series: Part III --

The degree to which China is affecting the world is certainly growing. In 2002, China accounted for 16 percent of the growth in the world economy, only beat by the United States. Recently it was reported that the global steel market is being affected strongly by China's strong demand for stell for their factories. In politics, as more politicians educated abroad enter Chinese politics, we will slowly have an increase in political reforms, as well as economic. However, this is at least what we can hope for.

The matter of the fact is that China is focusing first on meeting the economic rights of their population. If met with the choice of attracting even more foreign direct investments (FDI) and offering better working conditions for it's people, it is quite certain that authorities will mostly go for the first option.

Politically speaking, China is also having an ever more important regional and global role. The Chinese intervention in talks between South- and North Korea is one example of this, another is China's role at the Cancun meeting. China also successfully launched a manned space flight during the last months.

How will the China effect actually effect the world? Today, the world over, companies are moving factories to China, and this is putting pressure on the employment market elsewhere. What about culture? There has been a surge in movies from China at festivals around the world, and a major hit such as 'Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger' is a testimony to Chinese-language cultural products having a major impact.

I am looking forward to the day when we not only have active TIG members from China, but when these youths have the same opportunities for social action as the most of the rest of us.