Monday, December 18, 2006

Almost Famous

If you read the PR-folders from the Swedish Embassy in Manila you get a picture of Swedish society, culture, industry, nature, climate and celebrities.

Yet they missed the most common thing Filipinos know about Sweden. It is not the Nobel Prize or IKEA or Greta Garbo or Ingemar Bergman or Ingrid Bergman or Björn Borg.

Definitely not Ingemar Stenmark or Peter Forsberg.

Not even the Swedish Muppet chef.

The two things that come in close of our winner is ABBA and Ericsson phones, which everybody knows of in this karaoke- and textmessage crazed country. But they don't necessarily know they're from Sweden. (To be honest, I guess most Ericsson phones are from China, but anyway)

What they do know is Swedish Massage, something most Swedish people never heard of (and I say this with confidence since I'm Swedish and can speak for the entire Swedish community, really)

/J.

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