stories from luxembourg
inside - Work, stress and health (or lack of it) affect
one's family life. Having no time for each other
and for the children is a waste of precious time
which will never come back. I'm glad I understood
that in time.
outside - Here in Lux. nothing much ever happens so I can
worry about other things further away from my cosy
life.
Why on earth (or god's name) do some people in
countries like afghanistan, algeria or iran want
to return to the middle ages? What's so exiting
about a life filled with hatred against your
fellow citizens who have a different opinion. I
can't believe this has anything to do with
religion. It's sheer power, power to dominate
their fellows, oppress women and children.
future - Looking at it from a pessimistic point of view you
would imagine 100 years from now quite badly;
numerous small nationalistic states governed by
extremists; more misery, povery and famine. But
we should be quite happy to have the European
Union which maybe balances this force that pushes
everybody to this so-called 'independence'. In
100 years time there could be some kind of union
of people (not nations). All this technology might
eventually lead to a better distribution of wealth
and a sensible use of technology improving the
quality of life of most (but not all
unfortunately). Problems like global warming could
be solved; clean and renewable energy will be
available, not abundantly but sufficiently to
sustain quite a large world population. A
cyber-civilisation? Hardly. Of course some kind of
network will be used to communicate and work but
just like today, it's not everything and many
people just don't care.
Marius Groenendijk <marius.g@innet.lu>
Sandweiler, Luxembourg - Monday, January 27, 1997 at 12:50:54 (GMT)
inside - A visit to the French Maritime Alps followed by:
a walk on the seafront at Antibes on Christmas day followed by:
an afternoon walking around a frozen lake, at Echternach in
Luxembourg. Three very different aspects of the natural world Europe in
less than two weeks. Luxembourg has the best of both worlds. It is a small
pleasant country with easy access to other European states.
outside - If 1995 is recent then the European year of culture which has
had benficial spin-off effects to Luxembourg (and therefore the quaility of
life here) ever since.
future - This could be a long essay. Instead I will keep it short. The
haves and
the havenots will still be will us but most of the haves will be in Asia
and the Europeans will be a different group of people as a result. We need
to start adjusting now.
Stephen Cotterell <Stephen_Cotterell@vo.lu>
Hostert, Luxembourg - Sunday, January 26, 1997 at 13:26:36 (GMT)
go back to VWO diary of stories.