Suzy
Last night was by far the best of the week. Arriving early we went off to La Ruche where I wanted to watch my friend in a circus show. Ecole Atelier Shanju is a circus/horse riding/theatre school based in Ecublens, and they put on a fantastic spectacle at 4pm yesterday in the circus part of the Paleo. Juggling whilst standing on horses, drumming, balancing off hoops and acting, they pulled off an impressive show in the late afternoon heat.
Suzy
My new red Hunter wellies finally got to see some real festival weather. After losing my flats into the mud last year, I decided to acquire some real glastonbury style footwear, but had no chance to sport them due to the heat until yesterday. We arrived under threatening clouds at around 7pm, and sure enough the heavens opened around 8.30. We danced to a Brazilian drumming band in the Dome called Olodum, which was quite a spectacle of crazy hairstyles, hip shaking, giant drums, and classics such as “No Woman No Cry” sung in Portuguese. The Dome was packed, an unusual sight as the Village du Monde bands usually have trouble filling the tent, however I think its fair to say that we haven’t come across one single bad band in the Dome this year.
Suzy
A slight delay in the posting of this blog is due to the stupid time we got to bed last night, and consequentially the fact that we got up an hour ago. I distinctly remember my clock reading 6.10AM before I closed my eyes.
Suzy:
“We are the first band opening the Paleo. Obviously, this is all wrong, it’s like having dessert before dinner, the orgasm before sex, but anyway, we say good morning to you paleo, ARE YOU READY?!”
Every Easter the fountains around Nyon are decorated by local schools, voluntary groups and organisations. From down near the lake, to up into the old town, you can find chicks, eggs, rabbits and flowers amongst all the displays.
One group used just painted plastic bottles for their work of art, a good way to recycle and very effective too.
There are fifteen fountains decorated in total, go check them out and Happy Easter!
I ended my last blog entry with astonishment at the happiness level of the people of Bhutan as measured by Adrian White at
the University of Leicester in the UK. Bhutan shares the 4th happiest country in the world position with Brunei, Canada, Ireland and Luxembourg. Bhutanese live 20 to 25 years less, earn a fraction of the yearly wealth and have half the literacy rate of these countries. This defies Professor White’s theory that happiness is the result of abundant health, wealth and education.
So why are Bhutanese so
happy?
Professor White suggests that Bhutan’s strong national identity, their beautiful scenery and intact culture explains their
high level of happiness.
Bhutan’s national identity is fiercely protected by the government, which is famous for
it’s Gross National Happiness policy.
Bhutan strictly enforces annual
limits to the number of tourists who can visit. In 2007, about 21,000 tourists
entered the Kingdom and the government sees little reason to increase this
number. The stated reason for this, according to a tourist website is to “avoid the negative impacts of
tourism on the culture and the environment.” Tourists need to be on a guided
tour for the duration of their visit.
The tiny kingdom, about the size of Switzerland is surrounded by the beautiful Himalayan mountains which both isolates and protects it from the outside world and makes travel difficult at best. Television and
internet was only allowed throughout the country starting in 1999 and is government controlled. Television program are allowed based on what increases a person’s happiness. The government recently decided that watching MTV and World Wide Wrestling do not make people happier so they were taken off the air.
Buddhism has been the dominant religion in Bhutan since the 7th century. The Bhutan Tourism Corporation Ltd.
website states that Buddhism “has inculcated deeply the value that all forms of
sentient life, not just human life, are precious and sacred.” This statement
conflicts drastically with the government’s expulsion of over 100,000
Nepali-speaking Lhotshampas in the early 1990’s. The Lhotshampas practice the
Hindu religion. The 1988 census revealed that the Nepali’s constituted 45% of
the population in Bhutan,
threatening to become the majority. The Lhotshampas have been exiled in Nepal and
confined into seven refugee camps for the past 15 years. A detailed history of
their situation is found on the UNHCR site.
Hindus are not the only devalued religious group in Bhutan. Bhutan4Christ is a website
which details the struggles that Christians have experienced in Bhutan.
Yesterday the BBC reported that the first group of
Bhutanese refugees were being resettled in the US and New Zealand.
Perhaps they will find freedom to practice the religion of their choice in
these countries.
After 15 years in a refugee camp, perhaps they will finally find
happiness.
More chocolate festival photos in the GenevaLunch "Versoix, Switzerland Chocolate Festival" photo album.
"Go on, only a few hundred calories!"
Paradise if you love the stuff and don’t have to worry about your weight, but purgatory if you do.
Everywhere you turn in this annual festival there are stall holders offering their wares, tempting visitors with plates of little squares of chocolate, all too good to resist.
There are also vendors with chocolate fish, chocolate rabbits, chocolate fountains, chocolate for children, dark rich chocolate for adults sold in dark, rich sophisticated boxes. Cakes with chocolate, ice cream with chocolate, chocolate covered apricots, chocolate in boxes from every cocoa bean producing country in the world. A chocoholics delight.
This annual chocfest in Versoix is very popular, so it is also very busy. The queue for the free visit to the Faverger chocolate factory was so long I couldn’t be bothered to wait. Maybe I missed the sight of Oompa Loompas operating the machinery or sailing on rivers of chocolate, but never mind.
There are other attractions laid on for visitors such as a "choco" train, balloons, food stands, and the obligatory Swiss band to entertain the crowds. This is a good day out for a family albeit a bit of a chaotic one. The chocolate tents can get quite squashed at peak times, so I would advise next year go early to enjoy it at its best. This way you can try all the varieties on offer in peace, even if you have to live off salad for the following few days.
At the end of my last blog entry, I
suggested three ways to lessen or even eliminate the mid-life slump in
happiness:
1) accept
yourself for who you are, after you figure out who you are
2) manage your
emotions, especially the negative ones, and
3) frequently
express your gratitude for all the wonderful things around you.
Well that sounds like pretty good advice to
me, and there are plenty of psychological theories to back me up on each of
those points.
Adrian White, an analytic social
psychologist at the University of Leicester in the UK has discovered three more components of happiness or as he calls it subjective well-being:
health, wealth and education. He studied data from 80,000 people in 178
countries to gage their overall well-being and life satisfaction.
Based on the results of his surveys and
research, he has ranked the countries of the world and has produced a Global Projection of Subjective Well-being. Denmark and Switzerland came out on top, tied for first place. The top 12 happiest countries are:
1) Denmark
1) Switzerland
2) Austria
2) Iceland
3) Bahamas
3) Finland
3) Sweden
4) Bhutan
4) Brunei
4) Canada
4) Ireland
4) Luxembourg
Most of these countries have life
expectancies between 65 and 80 years old, most closer to 80, as evidence of
excellent health care. Wealth was measured by per capita GDP which averages
around $30,000 in the top 12. Luxembourg
is the highest at $55,600. Education was measured by access to affordable quality
education and the literacy rate. Most of the countries on the list are over 90%
literacy with Finland and Luxembourg at 100%.
However, there is one striking exception
that begs for an explanation. Bhutan, tied for 4th happiest country in the world has a life expectancy of 55
years, a per capita GDP of $1400 and a literacy rate of 47%! White argues that Bhutan‘s strong national identity,
their beautiful scenery and intact culture explains their high level of
happiness. So maybe there is more to happiness than good health, sufficient wealth
and quality education.
In my next blog, I’ll explore in more detail Bhutan’s secret
to happiness.
David Schiesher is a psychotherapist practicing in Geneva.
Happiness, or lack thereof, has been
getting a lot of press lately. The
latest one was a story covered by Reuters about the greatest likelihood of
depression occurring during midlife. The famed “mid-life crisis” has been
confirmed!
Watercolor by Laura Logan
Economics professors David Blanchflower and
Andrew Oswald, from the University of Warwick in the UK, found an inverted U-shaped curve
showing that European men and women reach a peak of unhappiness around the age
of 46. An interesting gender and geographic difference among the Americans
studied is that American women reach their highest probability of depression at
38.6 years while American men reach their peak at 52.9 years. The researchers
cannot explain these differences.
The researchers looked at statistics in 76
different countries all along the development continuum. The U-shaped curve
existed in countries all along the continuum. Only 21 of these countries showed
no U-shaped happiness curve. But since these countries tended to be developing
countries with small sample sizes, conclusions could not be drawn.
The researchers also cannot explain the
causes for the dip in happiness in middle age. They do, however, take three very
tentative stabs at an explanation.
The first is that we get to know ourselves
along with our strengths and weaknesses as we age. We are able to accept our
weaknesses and maximize our strengths. We are also able to more accurately
assess whether our lifelong dreams will be attained or not and adjust our
aspirations accordingly.
The monthly Sunday flea market in Nyon usually attracts a fair-sized crowd and 27 January was no exception.
Despite a chill in the air, visitors and townspeople were down by the lake pottering around the stalls looking to pick up an unusual antique or bargain at the Marché aux Puces.
There was much to chose from. Beautiful blue bottles to Bakelite radios to colourful sewing threads. Furniture laid out like a sitting room on the lakeside, china, tea sets, beads and toys, all for sale.
It’s worth going to at this time of year as it can get very busy in the summer. In winter you get time to chat to the stall holders and get a good look at the goods on offer.
Who knows, you may just stumble across a real find as one lucky customer did at another flea market a few years ago. He picked up an old painting in the Plainpalais market in Geneva, only to discover it was most probably a Van Gogh self-portrait. Listen to his story on youtube.
Finds like this are rare but you never know.
The next market is Sunday 24 February.
More photos in the GenevaLunch photo album "Nyon flea market."