Seed bombs and secret vegetable patches - guerilla gardening aims to make the urban world a better place.

THE RAPID urbanisation of the world’s population has resulted in a lack of space, yet an increasing demand for gardens has sparked an enthusiasm for reclaiming neglected land. Urbanisation is lending itself to help create resourceful cities that respect ecological systems as well as encouraging socially and aesthetically pleasing environments. On the frontline of this phenomenon is “guerilla gardening,” the “guerrilla” term reflecting its adventurous, albeit illicit facet – the garden-less’ horticultural incursions and surreptitious cultivations on private land.

Internet forums work as a space for discussion on basically any given topic. Lately, however, immigration has been a particularly hot subject matter on many sites. What is currently causing heated debate is the shield of anonymity on these virtual discussion boards.

AS MANY as one in five Finns log in to the ubiquitous Suomi24 internet forum once a week, and have now amassed a staggering 50 million messages. And they are not alone; Helsingin Sanomat’s message boards receive 200,000 visitors per week, compiling several tens of thousands of messages. A similar number use the message boards of Ilta Sanomat, while dozens of other small forums exist, covering everything from knitting and horoscopes to politics and immigration.

The most anticipated game for 2010, Alan Wake, is geared up for release mid-May. With gaming enthusiasts counting down the days and the industry set to see the outcome of it, the developers at Remedy are confident the game is a true masterpiece.

REMEDY, one of Finland’s oldest software developers, is famous for two reasons: firstly for originally developing the popular 3D benchmark programme Futuremark (now 3DMark); secondly for releasing the bona-fide classics Max Payne 1 and 2, arguably the biggest games ever to emerge from Finland, in the early 2000s. Remedy’s latest project, the highly anticipated thriller Alan Wake, is out mid-May for the Xbox 360.

OVI-project

Who runs it?

The Finnish Association for Mental Health (FAMH).

What’s it about?

The OVI-project extends FAHM’s services to accommodate the growing immigrant community in Helsinki. The goal is to inform and educate immigrant organisations on mental health issues and where to go for help and support, says project planner Jouni Saarelainen.

Finland’s film classification laws have seen changes throughout the years, but a new law proposal would put the advance review board out of business.

CHANGES are afoot in the way in which television programmes and movies are to be classified in Finland. Like in other countries, members of the public are, nominally at least, restricted as to what they may watch by a system of age-restriction certificates. A somewhat overly-extensive range of certificates is currently in play, meaning that television broadcasts and films shown in cinemas are granted categories of 3, 7, 11, 13, 15 or 18.

Questions of nationality, citizenship and identity are sometimes complicated issues. But when it comes to sports things start to really get messy. Just ask handball champion Maria Hyppönen.

MARIA HYPPÖNEN admits she is a little excited. Tomorrow she has an appointment at the police station to submit her application to become a Finnish citizen. Despite her unmistakably Finnish-sounding name, Hyppönen, 32, only has one Finnish grandparent. She was born in Ukraine, at the time a part of the Soviet Union, and after almost two decades in Finland she has no Finnish citizenship, and only an alien’s passport, which is given to Finnish residents who can’t get a passport from any other country.

Always looking for something different to burn in the kitchen, I was delighted to find some red deer (saksanhirvi) in the deli section of my local supermarket last week. Standing in line at the check-out, reduced to reading the small print on the package for entertainment, I was stunned to find that my fillet of Bambi had travelled all the way from New Zealand. I had assumed the deer was Finnish – after all, surely in a country moose and reindeer call home, some farmer would have looked into farming of other kinds of deer? Apparently not.

Immigration is rapidly changing the face of Finland’s cities, but it’s also transforming its countryside. For a “New Finn” fitting into the quaint rural lifestyle can be tricky but rewarding.

Beautiful scenery, carefree summers and proper, snowy winters, and a community that values you as an individual – these are the advantages of living in the Finnish countryside, according to Petri Rinne. Rinne is the Managing Director of Joutsenten Reitti, a development agency working with the rural municipalities of Sastamala, Huittinen, Punkalaidun and Hämeenkyrö, and he passionately believes in the power of immigration to transform the Finnish countryside.

While initially applauded for being more environmentally sound than its paper predecessor, the plastic bag now provides one of the biggest headaches for environmental groups.

A much-parodied scene in 1999’s Academy Award winning film American Beauty sees one of the main characters overwhelmed by the simple beauty of a plastic bag as it dances in the wind. But what of his reaction when the plastic bag is eventually washed down the drain and spat out to sea, wreaking havoc upon marine life? With baited breath we’ll have to wait for the sequel, American Beauty 2: Beauty Runs Ocean Deep.

Academic unemployment is rising and it’s increasingly difficult for many new graduates to find work suited for their degree. A generation of overeducated drifters wait tables and man check-out counters, stuck in job market limbo.

Anne Tarvainen is perhaps a fairly typical social sciences graduate, at least when it comes to working. Having spent ten years reading for a Master’s degree in communication, she is currently employed as a storage worker in a warehouse. For Tarvainen, working and studying concomitantly has been the norm.