TV4's Nyhetsmorgon, Abbey Road LIVE -Chris Medina talks with co-hosts Jenny Östergren and Peter Lindgren about his life since American Idol and the months since his successful visits to Scandinavia this past summer. December 14, 2011.
My last blog post about Chris Medina was on July 16th of this year -less than a week before the bombing in Oslo and the massacre on Utøya Island carried out by Anders Behring Breivik- when he performed LIVE on VG Lista Topp 20 at Rådhusplassen, (City Hall) Oslo.
My post then about his American Idol performances and his successful trip to Sweden and Norway was called, A talented & worthy American takes Scandinavia by storm: up-close with Chris Medina - One Day In Stockholm (What Are Words)
As I mentioned at the time, and for reasons I explained, I'm NOT an American Idol viewer, but you don't need to be Quincy Jones to see that Chris Medina CLEARLY has a unique voice and talent.
It's hard not to root for him to have nothing but success.
As I said back in July, the more I see of singer Chris Medina the more I am impressed, and the more he reveals himself as one very-grounded individual in a very cynical world.
And with this interview and these performances -in English- from December 14th on Sweden's most-popular TV morning program, Channel 4'sNyhetsmorgon, he proves that all over again.
In the TV interview, Medina also discusses his feelings about being asked to perform at the funeral of 18-year old Monica Iselin Didriksen, one of the 77 Norwegians murdered at Utøya on July 22nd, whose very last conversation with her parents -on her cell phone, while taking the ferry to the island- was about her intense feelings for his song, the popularity of which had led him to be performing in Oslo just a few weeks earlier.
TV4's Nyhetsmorgon, Abbey Road LIVE -Chris Medina sings One More Time. December 14, 2011.
A few days after his calm and earnest appearance on Abbey Road, Aftonbladet columnist Ronnie Sandahl pondered what it must be like to be Chris Medina now,
and suddenly go overnight from unknown singer working hard to become a success in the industry on his own terms, to becoming a beloved American Idol contestant and popular singing artist whose songs are famously sung back to him with gusto at performances. But inevitably, he knows that at nearly every performance he gives, the question will arise about his fiancée, Juliana Ramos.
Medina talks forthrightly about that very issue in the second video above.
Aftonbladet
Chris får berätta samma berättelse tusen gånger
av Ronnie Sandahl
2011-12-19
För vilken gång i ordningen står han där med samma milda sorgsna leende, samma fruktansvärda berättelse?Femhundrade? Tusende?
Det är ännu en dag i nöjesfabriken. Den amerikanske sångaren Chris Medina försöker variera sina intervjusvar,fastän frågorna nästan alltid är samma
As you know from my earlier blog post, for weeks earlier this year, What Are Words was the number-one song on the best-seller list in both Norway and Sweden.
UniversalMusicSweden video: Chris Medina - One Day In Stockholm (What Are Words). Chris appears on Rix FM in Stockholm. Yes, they DO have 'Morning Zoo' radio formats in Sweden.http://youtu.be/eNjSIKIBE1U
As I wrote back in July, I received the behind-the-scenes Chris Medina video above within about ten minutes of it being posted to YouTube by Universal Music Sweden, and thus was one of the first persons to see it.
That's the kind of video I want to see more of!
ABC News Good Morning America: Robin Roberts with Chris Medina.
NRK-TV video: Chris Medina LIVE on VG Lista Topp 20, Rådhusplassen, (City Hall) Oslo, Norway. June 2011 http://youtu.be/ap6oY2cN11E
RT video: KHL Catastrophe: Three-time champions plane crash into Volga River on takeoff after old Yakovlev-42 plane hits airport beacon. Tragedy shocks Russia to its core. http://youtu.be/lg3oFLeSJsI
TV4.se News video: Olympic Gold Medal-winning goalie Stefan Liv of Tre Kronorisamong 43 perishing in Russian plane crash into Volga River after his team, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, prepared for the KHL season-opener against Minsk. Only two passengers survived. September 7, 2011.
RT is the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news.RT live video stream and broadcasts available in high resolution.
SVT Rapport video: Överlevande åter på Utöya. August 19, 2011.
SVT's Thursday night news segment on the survivors returning to Utøya for the first time since the armed attack one month ago, along with dozens of family members of the survivors and deceased and an army of psychologists.
Both videos available at SVT Play website until August 19, 2012.
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Sunday's LIVE telecast of the National Memorial in Oslo regarding the attacks in Oslo and Utøya on July 22 can be seen via computer at NRK at 9 a.m. Eastern U.S./Canada.
According to the latest information on SVT's website, the following individuals are scheduled to participate:
Music: Kringkastingorkestern, Susanne Sundfør, Leif Ove Andsnes, Karpe Diem, Dumdum Boys, Sivert Høyem, Jarle Bernhoft, Bjørn Eidsvåg, Ingrid Olave, Sissel Kyrkjebø and A-ha.
Readings will be led by actors Aksel Hennie, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Ane Dahl Torp, Adil Khan, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Sofie Gråbøl and Maria Bonnevie.
The ceremony will be hosted by (reporter/singer) Haddy N'jie.
I've refrained up 'till now from writing about what transpired a month ago in Oslo and Utøya on July 22nd for reasons that are not entirely worth getting into right now. Perhaps in the not-so-distant future.
There were some things, though, that I wanted to share now that I think reflect my frame of mind and what I will eventually post here, and will give you some small guidance if you watch Sunday's national memorial service.
First and foremost, as it always does, timing and opportunity rules everything.
I was reading/watching the LIVE reports of the armed attacks in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik -via Stockholm and Oslo- within mere minutes of it happening, even BEFORE it was being reported in the U.S. media, because of the fact that that particular morning -my time- I was already looking at Swedish news websites like Aftenposten, SVT, TV4, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, et al.
I'd also written some recent posts about Norway, so still had the NRK website handy as well on my Bookmark list.
SVT video: NRK:s Peter Svaar direktrapporterar från Oslo. July 22, 2011.
Above, one of the first reports from Norway's TV2 on what happened in Utøya, with lots of helicopter shots outlining the island.
I watched the foreign and domestic coverage for a few hours almost continually for days, constantly amazed at the VERY poor and incorrect reporting being done in the U.S. media on this rapidly-evolving story.
In CNN's case, that is, the U.S. version of CNN, that included reporting low casualty figures hours and hours after it common knowledge among the media on the scene that the grim numbers were FAR HIGHER, an upsetting point that I made in some quick emails to some U.S. media friends around the country, some well-known, that I wanted to know the true scope of the attacks, not the old info being foolishly repeated over-and-over on CNN.
One of the emails I sent was this news about an important Tweet warning being sent around the area as people were warned to turn off their cell phone rings.
My subject header was: FYI: Ominous Twitter warnings went out re Utøya: ”Ring inte ön"
"RING INTE FOLK PÅ UTØYA. De gömmer sig för gärningsmannen. Kopiera statusen! (Ambulansen kommer inte fram ertersom det fortfarande är skottlossning)."
which roughly means:
Do not call the island on your mobile as fake cop re-loading gun in search of people to shoot, is listening for rings from phones. Ambulances won't arrive if shooting is happening.
from Ungdomarnas larm från ön på twitter: Hjälp oss, Nyheter, Aftonbladet
I also watched the LIVE telecast on SVT Play via NRK the following day of the Memorial service at the Oslo Cathedral that drew so many notable figures, as well as the families whose loved ones had perished.
Above, right-to-left: King Harald, Queen Sonja, Princess Märtha Louise and her husband, author Ari Behn.
That started at 5 a.m. Miami and was very tough to watch as you'd see people just start crying, tearing-up or sobbing out-of-the-blue.
Especially after the poignant lighting of the candles!
The emotion of the occasion gets to the King and Queen, too.
Above and below are just some of the screen shots of the dozens I took of that church service which I have been holding onto, knowing that it would be impractical to simply post them all, knowing that 99% of you would not have enough context to appreciate what was taking place just from the photos.
While it might not always seem that way to some of you, especially those of you who are in South Florida, I try my best not to be too preachy here on the blog, and I knew that it would be hard to drop ALL those photos on you all, out-of-the-blue, then as now, without seeming either patronizing or...???
Because if you have to explain everything...
So I've held onto them.
But I thought I'd share a few now...
The Royal Family represents.
Above and below, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg addresses those assembled in the cathedral and across the nation.
TEN Network News, Australia: Playground inspiration at the railway station in Utrecht, The Netherlands. August 11, 2011. http://youtu.be/vZrUuC8j7XY
Dutch genius and ingenuity at its best -making the familiar even more useful and fun! The quickest distance between two points is a slide!
Despite The Netherlands being a small country, size-wise, it's ranked number eight, right behind Sverige (Sweden), in the number of readers coming to my humble blog, and the home of a few readers who fairly regularly send me a head's-up on interesting ideas, news stories, songs and videos.
Blijvendie ideeënkomen!
Let me take the opportunity to show you some of my favorite recent Dutch treats...
(In case you forgot or weren't reading the blog then, as I've previously mentioned here, The Netherlands is a country that my family has always had a great deal of warm feelings for. We not only knew a few very friendly Dutch emigres in North Miami Beach as I and my sisters were growing up there in the 1970's -esp. me- but one of my two younger sisters studied in Rotterdam at Erasmus University for a semester her junior year atIU -January of 1985- and absolutely LOVED IT.
So much so that four short years later, she had her honeymoon in Amsterdam and the rest of the country after getting married in New Amsterdam -New York!- which is when I first became aware of and a regular subscriber to the salmon-colored New York Observer.)
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KLM Royal Dutch Airlines video:KLM Personal Space Experiment
I first posted this video in my January 10th, 2011 post titled Armin van Buuren feat. Christian Burns - This Light Between Us -Official Music Video; Unplugged version with Christian Burns & Eller van Buuren at
The land that feminism forgot: They wouldn't dream of working full-time, spend three hours a day drinking coffee and their men pay for everything - have Dutch women found the secret to happiness?
By Liz Jones
Last updated at 11:34 PM on 9th March 2011
Have you wondered what life would be like if feminism had never happened? If we were all housewives? If we were not required to live on our wits and our adrenaline, and were able to take up a hobby? If men were happy to step up to the mark and look after us?
Am I talking about travelling back in time to see what life was like in the Fifties? No, it is much simpler than that. I am catching a flight to Amsterdam.
TV4.se Nyheterna video:Kommuner raggar arbetskraft i Holland.
Sverige behöver invandrad arbetskraft. I dag finns det tusentals kvalificerade och arbetslösa invandrare i Sverige. Samtidigt raggar kommunerna arbetskraft utomlands. TV4Nyheternas Lena Sundström har besökt Emigrantmässan i Utrecht.
TV4 Nyheterna reporter Lena Sundström visits an Emigration Fair held in Utrecht, The Netherlands in February that sought to motivate smart and educated Dutch workers to consider emigrating to Sweden, with various parts of the convention space dedicated to different aspects of life in the country, with about 100 cities and towns represented. This fair is very successful as over 700,000 Dutch citizens a year seriously consider emigrating overseas and over 120,000 actually do it.
It's not said in the video but one way of looking at this fascination that Sweden holds for some Dutch citizens is that just as kids who grows up in small towns in the U.S. often aims to go to a big city some day to do whatever it is they they aim to do, so it is that for a person who grows-up in a small and congested country like the NL, where land is precious, going to a country with lots of space to breathe sounds appealing.
For someone from NL, the mid-central and northern parts of Sweden -where as I recently wrote, film director David Fincher has recently recorded some scenes in Sollefteå for the new American film version of "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" starring Daniel Craig- can be like visiting another planet.
Space is everywhere, along with hills, mountains and lakes.
To quote myself, whether in Iceland or the Hill Country of Bandera, Texas, the Faroe Islands or Holland, "girls love horses..."
And if there are a few things we know about our friends in the land of the Oranje, de nederlandse, one is of them is that Cinzia ♥ horses and Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean.
That is a stone-cold fact you can't deny.
I first discovered Cinzia's earnest YouTube videos a few months ago after seeing it next to one by Eva Skemm, another devout teenage horse lover -from the Faroe Islands- whom I first mentioned in my July 27th post,
Question: If Miami-Dade County or Broward County had a 'Sister County' sort of deal along the lines of the Sister Cities program, with Amsterdam or Rotterdam -cities where my sister her honeymoon and went to school for a semester while going to IU- and they did an exchange of elected officials and employees, what would happen quicker?
The people from South Florida "accidentally" flooding the city, or the Dutch using common sense and some style to make Miami more sane, livable and possibly, sexier?
Slate
HOME / ARCHITECTURE: WHAT WE BUILD.
Can Cities Save the Planet?
Scientists are skeptical. Planners are hopeful. The Dutch are pragmatic.
By Witold Rybczynski
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
Winning With Water
According to Timothy Beatley, an urban-planning professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Green Urbanism, the per-capita carbon dioxide emissions of American cities are almost twice as high as those of their European counterparts. Hardly surprising, since European cities are denser and more compact, homes are smaller, and people rely to a far greater extent on mass transit. So if Americans are to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, we will have to do a lot more than switch to reusable shopping bags and recycle our soda cans. But as a recent conference on "urban design after the age of oil" at the University of Pennsylvania (where I teach) demonstrated, there is something of a disconnect between the global-warming problem and the available solutions.
On Tuesday night I had the pleasure to meet several members of the Dutch delegation that came to Miami for a two-day ThinkBike workshop. The purpose of the ThinkBike workshop was to learn from the expertise of Dutch planners. They came to teach us how we could improve downtown Miami’s bikeability. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the actual workshop, but I was able to make it to the post-seminar cocktail hour. Over a couple of Cold Stellas I spoke with several members from the Dutch delegation, a gentleman from the County Public Works Department, as well as citizens all of whom participated in the seminar. The feedback I recieved was extremely positive.
By the way, I spotted someone riding one of the Dutch bikes -with the KLM basket- in May in Hollywood, east of The ArtsPark, that I strongly suspect had been stolen
I didn't know what it was, though, since I hadn't read the story yet.
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Houston Chronicle
Steffy: U.S. and BP slow to accept Dutch expertise
By Loren Steffy
June 8, 2010, 10:13PM
Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.
It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.
The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.
Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.
Please be sure to read my blog post of almost a year ago, August 18, 2010, titled Fascinating Deutsche Welle TV video of innovative architect Thomas Rau in Amsterdam, and what he's done with the WWF HQ in The Netherlands
Last year before the 2010 World Cup tourney started in South Africa, I predicted that The Netherlands would win, likely beating Spain 4-2 in the final. C'est la vie.
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This was a real gold nugget of useful information.
Aftonbladet Web TV's Sports Channel had this humorous video of a German TV channel showing Josefine Öqvist exchanging shirts with a fan in the stands after the game.
All screenshots below of Swedish star striker Josefine Öqvist by South Beach Hoosier, July 6, 2011.
Above, Josefine on Wednesday just seconds before the start of the U.S. game and likely 'visualizing' the ball in the goal. She had no goals on Wednesday but had several excellent chances thanks to her skill and great speed to beat defenders to the ball, esp. on long passes.
Maybe she'll do it today against Australia in the third Quarterfinal game of the 2011 Womens World Cup.
Would you believe that as recently as about April, theLocatel health/drugstore here in Hallandale Beach, on Hallandale Beach Blvd. near Panera Bread, STILL wanted the full retail price on the dozens of official 2010 Mens World Cup soccer balls that they had, at about $120-plus each!
Seriously, who pays that price so long after the tourney ended?
Reminded me of the Publix here in town charging full retail price for some of the Colts and Bears Super Bowl t-shirts more than a year after that game was played down here.
Yes, you can't sell them at that price because after the game is history, you can buy it elsewhere for $5, so why would you think customers would STILL pay $20-25?
TV4 video: Following Sweden's 2-1 victory on Wednesday over the U.S. National Team at the Womens World Cup match in Wolfsburg, TV4's Anna Brolin evaluates Swedish group play in the World Cup directly from Hannover Germanyand speaks with, yes, Swedish star forward Josefine Öqvist.
"Oslagbara Sverige" -Unbeaten Sweden- says the Sports page of Sveriges TV (SVT) website, July 6, 2011 screenshot bySouth Beach Hoosier.
Meanwhile, in other news of the coming musical apocalypse, Ireland's 2011 Eurovision entry, Jedward, the subject of a previous post here, played onTV4's ”Sommarkrysset” and nearly caused a riot among the crowd, with several girls fainting -like it was Obama 2008.
Below, the Brothers Grime singing their official Eurovision entry, "Lipstick."
