Socialized medicine is back on every American’s mind thanks to President Obama, and Americans are once again skeptical. And I’m not surprised.

Finland prides itself on one of the best socialized health care systems in the world – Surely a role model for the United States! Well, Finland’s “free” health care is no longer covering Swine Flu…

A government decision to remove swine flu from the list of generally hazardous communicable diseases officially comes into effect on Monday. Cases will now be handled in the same manner as seasonal flus.

Experts say that the H1N1 has become so widespread that special measures involving individual treatment will no longer prevent its further spread.

Most treatment of the virus will now be transferred from specialist hospital wards to health centres. They will concentrate on treating patients belonging to risk groups such as pregnant mothers, the long-term ill and small infants.

The decision also means that patients will now be charged for physicians’ services, medication and possible hospital treatment.

So if you get Swine Flu, and you’re broke, you’ll spread it everyone you know, but fortunately you’ll die before that happens. LOL!!

I got nailed by a speed camera while heading up north on Highway 5 back in April. The camera flash was unexpected and blinding, not the kind of thing you want to do speeders – I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s caused head-on collisions in the past.

I was expecting a fine in the mail but it never came, looks like I was within the 3km/h grace range they give you due to the inexactness of speed cameras.

I wasn’t even trying to speed, it’s just damn near impossible to keep up with the rapid-changing speed limits on Highway 5. Every kilometer it goes from 100 to 60 then to 100 then to 80 then to 50…

Which wouldn’t be a problem if the speed limit signs weren’t the size ping-pong paddle. For fuck’s sake, the TIEKIRKKO signs are three times larger. I wonder how many would-be-safe-drivers have simply missed the tiny signs and caused accidents?

My suggestion is: When the speed limit changes, make the sign bigger. Or make it blink. There’s lots of us law-abiding drivers out there who want drive safely…if they can see the damn signs. (Oh wait, that would mean less speeding fines, less tax revenue for the state, and less embarrassing articles of wealthy drivers getting 100k+ speeding tickets…never mind then)

This post brought to you by Nokia Maps 3.0: Now featuring the locations of speed cameras!

Remember a comedy show I was promoting here back in March? A guy who does the St. Patrick’s Day event bookings for Molly Malone’s in downtown Helsinki asked if I would do a comedy show for a certain price. I agreed, I booked a couple other comics, the show went well etc..

Well now it’s July and they still haven’t paid me, even though I’ve already paid the other comics out of my own funds. I’ve been hounding them every few weeks, they keep saying they’ve paid me, I keep saying the money hasn’t arrived, then they say, “oh now we’re paying you!” and of course they haven’t.

I think I got screwed here. Is there anything I can do? Contact the Finland Better Business Bureau? Collection agency? The police? Or just give up? I guess I should have got the money FIRST, but I thought Molly’s would have been a reputable establishment.

Any ideas what to do? Cheers in advance!

Another strange school in Guernsey…

Dover (UK) reminds you of the dangers of cannon climbing…

I came in Amsterdam…

From Penn & Teller’s Bullshit…

Sorry I haven’t posted recently, been on holiday. Check out this photo I took in Guernsey. I’d love to have this school on my resume…

Finland’s first ever English open mic night was such a big success, Manala wants to have another one!

Wednesday August 19th at 8pm, tickets are just 2e from the door – It’s part of Helsinki’s annual Art Goes Kapakka festival. If any of you want to try out stand-up comedy, please sign-up by e-mailing: openmic@botta.fi

Hope to see you all there!

I’m in Denmark for a few days. Here’s a photo I took from the Copenhagen railway station, now we know why “something is rotten in Denmark”… LOL!

On a side note – Last month I traveled to Riga to see my all-time favorite band, Depeche Mode. Well the lead singer had emergency surgery and the show was canceled. Bummer. So yesterday whilst walking around Copenhagen, I keep seeing people with Depeche Mode t-shirts – I finally found out that Depeche Mode was performing that night, and I didn’t even know about it. Double bummer.