Keeping Up with Modern Technology

Yesterday was rainy, and I did not go out - it was also Laundry Day for me anyway, and I had enough to do indoors. Today the sun made an appearance again, and in the afternon I decided to go for a walk to the supermarket for a few items. 

Above: I stopped on the bridge across the river to snap a photo of yellow leaves dropping to the ground now (and into the water as well)... 
Below: Some very red Rowan trees next to a tall building.

 

For over ten years now I've been doing most of my grocery shopping online with home delivery (from the same supermarket that I walked to now); but once in a while I like to go myself for some speical item, or just to try to keep up with changes in the store. When I do go in person, I always self-scan the few items I bought (with a hand-held scanner), so don't have to stand in line to check out. I've been doing that for even longer than I've been using their home delivery service, and it's routine procedure for me. ... 

 

However, recently they have also made some changes to their self-checkout area; and for the second time this year, I found myself bewildered when getting there. I blipped my card at one of the stations and then clicked on what I thought was the right button that came up - but my self-scanned items did not appear on the screen. So I had to ask for help from a young girl (member of staff), who patiently took me through the explanations of how these check-out points were for customers not carrying a scanner with them through the store, but doing the scanning at the check-out; whereas those ones (pointing) are for customers who used a scanner along the way... 

It all suddenly gave me a feeling of being old and confused and out-of-date... (And in this particular case, I suppose that's exactly what I was!) ...  I'm not normally very chatty in stores, but it also made me want to explain, "in my defense", that the reason that the two different ways of "self scanning" had escaped me was that I do most of my shopping online these days! (Hoping somewhere at the back of my head, I suppose, that this might restore her opinion of me as perhaps not totally out of touch with the modern world after all...) 

After I got back home, I learned that there's also a third scanning method now - downloading their special app to my phone, and then scan a QR code at the exit to pay. However much they claim that to be "simple", I don't think I'll complicate my life further by adding that to my personal mix of options. I just hope that they'll continue their home delivery service!!

Autumn Colours

Storm Amy has gone away, whereever storms go when they're "done"... I was able to go  for a rain-free walk around the old cemetery this afternoon; and everything looked pretty much normal for the time of year - not much evidence of a storm having passed. But Autumn keeps making steady progress now, changing the general colour scheme; and no doubt an increasing number of leaves dropping to the ground will be keeping the cemetery workers very busy over the next month or two... 

 

 

Linking to Through My Lens

 

Weekend Reflections, and Storm Amy

 The Calm Before the Storm 

Wednesday, 1 October 2025

Friday, 3 October 2025

October is Breast Cancer Awareness (and fundraising) month here in Sweden - and if memory serves me right, I think in a number of other countries as well (?) Anyway, when walking into town on Friday, I found these temporary pink decorations added on one of the bridges across the river... Reminding me both of the friends I have lost to breast cancer over the years - and those who survived. (Note to self: Make an extra donation to cancer research.)

The Storm 

With sunny and calm autumn weather all week so far, it was almost hard to believe the forecasts about the storm expected to blow in over us on Saturday, and likely to wreak havoc here and there. I decided to take the warnings seriously, though, so spent Friday afternoon taking in some things from my balcony.  I took my foldable "sun chair" down to winter storage in the basement, made room for my geraniums on the window sill in the living room, and even tied my wooden bench to the balcony railing. Felt a bit silly doing that with the sun shining from a perfect blue sky - but...

... when Storm Amy arrived on Saturday, she did prove to be quite capricious. I can't say I noticed her wreaking any serious havoc just around my street (and we stayed connected to electricity and internet all day) - but I followed her adventures on my local newspaper app during the day, and it seems she behaved quite badly elsewhere in town, uprooting and throwing big trees around (blocking roads, and damaging buildings), and even managed to tear an old steamboat loose from its jetty in the lake north of town...  
 

My own photo of the steamboat on a calmer day...

Photo from our local newspaper

The photo above, copied from the local newspaper's website, shows how a tree fell on an apartment building (not in my street, but another part of town). Luckily it did not break any windows, but it caused some damage to a couple of balconies. 

Today it still kept raining all day; but in the afternoon the wind had died down, and I went for a short walk around a few of the neighbouring buildings in connection with taking out some rubbish to the bins at the corner. (Only about 10 minutes or so, though, and in spite of both umbrella and raincoat I also felt need to change my trousers when I got back in...) 

Linking to Weekend Street/Reflections 

 

Some Thoughts about Faith, Tradition and Identity

 

Yesterday, fellow blogger Yorkshire Pudding published a blog post entitled "Jews" - related to a recent tragic attack outside a synagogue in Manchester, in which two Jewish people were killed and three left in a serious condition after a car ramming and stabbing attack. 

YP asks some questions, like:  "How can it be that someone who is a native born citizen of Great Britain [or some other country] may self-define more eagerly through their religious heritage than through their nationality?" and "If you were born into a Jewish family in another land - what is your relationship with the state of Israel and [---] why should it be more intense than a Christian's relationship with The Holy Land?" and  "[One Jewish woman declared] that she would now have to emigrate from this country where she was born and raised and I thought - why?" (For the full context, I recommend that you read the whole post.)

Very complex issues, not easily answered, and I certainly can't claim to be an expert on any of it. But it did trigger some thoughts for me, and also a memory from my childhood. Because of the complexity, I chose to write my thoughts down in a separate text document first, before sending a comment to YP's blog. And on second thought, I decided to share it here on my own blog as well. (If nothing else, that will make it easier for myself to re-find it later, if I should want to.)

*******

I'd say it's all deeply rooted in history and inherited traditions even more than in “faith” – and that the bigger question is why some people still persecute others because of their origin (which is really something that none of us have chosen ourselves). 

I'd also say that a Christian's relationship with the “Holy Land” is totally different because the Christian tradition from start was to spread their faith to the whole world. (Jesus told his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” Matthew 28:19) Jewish history on the other hand goes back to nomad times long before they had a country of their own to begin with. I think a bigger question is why others are still persecuting Jews living elsewhere than in Israel. Considering the history of how the Jews were persecuted under the Nazi regime in Germany back in the 1930s/40s, I'm not surprised at all if a single terrorist attack anywhere in modern times still causes panic among people of Jewish heritage, whether they're very religious or not. 

I think my own first awareness of "different" religious beliefs/traditions was when I was about 10 or 11 years old (i.e. in the mid 1960s). We got a new boy in my class in school, who was Jewish (born somewhere in Eastern Europe). Back in those days we were all still going to school half days on Saturdays here in Sweden. We were also still taught “Christianity” rather than “Religion”, and each morning started with singing a psalm, and prayers were said before going to lunch. But unlike the rest of us, this new Jewish boy was excused from attending school on Saturdays (the Jewish Sabbath). And our teacher took some time to explain the difference in traditions to us. I suppose it probably made us a bit jealous that this boy got more “time off” from school than the rest of us – but as far as I can remember, we came to just accept it as a fact. (Or at least I did.) 

In 1968, the same year I started  “secondary school” (at age 13), no school on Saturdays was introduced nation wide, so then that wasn't an issue any more. And Christianity was replaced by Religion on the curriculum - aiming to give us all a bit more insight into different traditions. (I'm not trying to make out that this solved all problems, though!!) 

For my own part, I do identify myself as Christian. (I had a brief period of regarding myself as atheist in my early teens, but then gave that up!) 

*******

PS. "On third thought" it strikes me that there are actually quite a few other people(s) around the world too being (or having been) persecuted for either religious or political reasons, and forced to live with "split identities" - as in not always finding it easy to know whether to identify oneself primarily according to one's religious faith - or lack of it - or one's country of "origin" vs where one happens to have ended up (by choice or by chance!) later in life...

The Tip of the Tap

 

Of course I was up and dressed at 7.15 today, even if it seemed unlikely that my flat, right in the middle of a building, would be the very first to get a visit from the plumbers who had forewarned that I could expect them to turn up some time between 7.15 am on Thursday and 4 pm on Friday (cf previous post).  

Actually I rather expected they wouldn't be showing up at my door until Friday - but they (two guys) did ring on my door just before 2 pm today. It also turned out that the whole job only took about 5 minutes rather than the predicted 20. In the kitchen it was only the "tip" of the tap that they replaced; and in the bathroom the shower hose and head. 

They also did some quick checks for leaks; but there was no exchange of the actual taps (faucets) involved. 

 I suppose the whole project is about trying to minimize waste of water. 

The new shower head is much larger than the old one and somehow looks a bit intimidating... I haven't tried it yet but suspect it may take some getting used to? 

While waiting for the plumbers, not knowing when or if they'd come, I was vacuuming the rooms that they would have no reason to enter; and it occurred to me to also undertake the very rare task of also pulling out the extra bed from under the sofa in my living room - which is a sofa-bed in itself, but also has an extra bed tucked in underneath. I had no idea when I last did that (it's been years since the extra bed was used), or what dusty horrors might be revealed... It wasn't too bad though. There's really very little room under there even for dust to gather. 

One surprise that turned up from under the sofa was this little guy, though - who I vaguely recall missing last Christmas...

 

 

I gave him to Skipper now, to look after until December...  
 

 ...when he can be reunited with the Santa Claus family...  

I was happy to find this classic Swedish Christmas song below translated to English on YouTube. Saves me the trouble of thinking of other ways to explain why my brain connects both "tip" and "tap" (cf the heading I chose for this post) with Christmas!