SAS hires Chinese stewardesses at 1/5th of the salery of Danish stewardesses

SAS has hired 35 Chinese stewardesses to cater passengers on flights from Copenhagen to Beijing - at 1/5th of the salery that a Danish stewardess would recieve. This in itself stands as expression of the many 'innovative' ways of exploitation taking place in the name of globalization.. so why does this bit of news 'hit' my blog?

Well, as many little girls - I too dreamed of a future 'high in the sky' - I had hot flashes and shining eyes whenever I went to the airport and could almost smell the excitement of people going on vacation or business trips - and most of all the sense of adventure which seemed to be connected to the job of - being a stewardesse.

So - yes I dreamt of becoming a stewardesse - and sometime around the 5th or 6th grade - in the late 1970'ties somewhere in a rich surburban town north of Copenhagen Denmark - I was looking through the 'What to become' - catalogue that my teacher had presented us with - and as I looked up the magic job - ** Stewardesse ** here's what it read (as I remember) and at that time SAS was the only option.

Requirements:
blue eyes, blond hair and height above 1.70 m

I remember 'freezing' and got that later to be well-known feeling of - surprise, wonder and then the feeling of being excluded from society... ever so subtle and ever so discrete - but still - excluded.

Later though, while flying to Bangalore.. I discovered the hard realities of a life as stewardesse with no or little time to rest even at long distance flights, jet lag, heavy trolleys etc. and well - I wouldn't wanna be a stewardesse today.. even though it seems that SAS is now accepting stewardesses of other races and other faces than the 70'ties/80'ties Scandinavian 'brand'...

however - I wonder if SAS will start hiring Dutch stewardesses for destinations to Holland or Surinam.. perhaps - if they come to 1/5th of the salery?

"III Crossing" by June Bum Park

I first got acquainted with June Bum Park at the exhibition Seoul Until Now at Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2005. And now one of the leading digital arts galleries Bitforms, N.Y. + Seoul-based is curating works from this South Korean digital artist in the N.Y. branch!

So >> click here and find yourself at Bitforms, N.Y. :) and enjoy the video of JBP.

Ps. Bitforms Gallery is - in my humble opinion - one of the most innovative and inspiring platforms of contemporary digital artwork. BG was founded by Steve Sacks and is heralded as the King of digital arts by Wired.

Succesfully mixing old and new? The world's no. 1 digital nation holds memorial service for fish that died in experiments..

Well - it seems that Korea show the way of bridging old and new. Researchers at the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute in Gijang County, Busan, held a memorial service for fish that died in various experiments. Fruit, pork and other food that the subject fish enjoyed were laid out as offerings.

Today's generation of Koreans can go online via the mobile and check in on his or her minihomepi at Cyworld while on the metro on the way to a memorial service for fish that payed their lives in the name of science.

I think this is a beautiful tradition and not at all to be amuzed by .. this shows a respect for Mother Nature. But I guess this is just one among many examples of why Europeans can benefit from hiring a cultural interpreter/consultant upon starting up business ventures in Korea.