Lars Karlsson: CapacityNow

Today we celebrated my sons 25th blrthday with a family Bowling Brunch in Lund.

We had a great time together this afternoon, having brunch at Stadsparken Restaurant and bowling in bollhuset.

Martin did his strikes, naturally. As always.

Great food, good discussions, a lot of laughs. Gold times as always.

A walk in the Park. My family.

A country has changed its name. The Kingdom of Swaziland, is now eSwatini.

I have visited Swaziland, sorry eSwatini three times and I have a lot of friends there. Is this a move flr the future or yet another story of countries marking their distance to history?

Here is a text from an The Economist article about the name change.

‘The King of Swaziland, Mswati III, has a problem. “Whenever we go abroad”, he says, “people refer to us as Switzerland.” So on April 18th, at a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence from Britain, the king announced that he was changing Swaziland’s name to eSwatini. (As an absolute monarch he can make such decisions.) With its lower-case “e”, this new name might seem at first glance to be an attempt to rebrand one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies as something a little more modern, but the new name in fact simply means “Land of the Swazis”.

Whether many people do in fact confuse Swaziland with Switzerland is unclear. Both are gorgeous mountainous countries with small populations. Both are landlocked and surrounded by bigger powers. But the differences are perhaps more striking. As well as being ruled by a man with 15 wives, Swaziland is a poor country with the highest rate of HIV infection in the world. Some 26% of the adult population is infected. That in turn contributes to a life expectancy at birth of 58 years, the 12th-worst in the world. Changing the name from Swaziland to eSwatini strikes many as a distraction from bigger issues.

Nonetheless, the king’s decision does have a logic to it. Many other former British colonies in Africa took new names on becoming independent. The Gold Coast became Ghana; northern and southern Rhodesia became Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively. Basutoland, a tiny enclave surrounded by South Africa, became Lesotho. Swaziland becoming eSwatini is much the same story, serving to distance the country from its colonial past, albeit 50 years after the separation. The king has in fact long used the new name in addresses to the United Nations and at the opening of his country’s parliament.

It may take some time to get Swaziland accepted as eSwatini. The Czech Republic is still rarely referred to as “Czechia” in English, despite the best efforts of its government over the past couple of years. And many institutions will presumably have to be renamed. The Royal Swaziland Police, the Swaziland Defence Force, and the University of Swaziland all come to mind. The constitution may even have to be rewritten. The Economist itself is likely to stick with “Swaziland” for now—at least until the weight of global opinion persuades us to alter our style.

Source: The Economist

In October, the world’s largest airport will open in Istanbul Turkey. The new airport will have a capacity to receive more than 200 million passengers each year.

The cost of the building is said to amount to over a ten billion Euro.

The new airport will have a futuristic architecture and it’s not just the design that is top notch, the airport will also be the world’s largest.

At the first stage, 90 million passengers can be accommodated, but the goal is that the airport will be able to handle 200 million passengers when all terminals are completed in 2028. It is more than any other airport in the world.

The surface will also beat the present record. It will be the largest terminal under one roof with an area of ​​one million square meters.

The tram tower is tulip shaped and taken out of a space film. The terminal will use all the latest technology for check-in and passport checks. The restaurant area is 32,000 square meters and will offer everything from gourmet to fast food.

Outside the large terminal and the six take-off and landing lanes, a hotel area, a large park, a mosque, a conference center and a medical center are created. The airport will have the world’s largest tax-free shopping area and Europe’s largest car park with space for 24,000 cars, according to dailymail.co.uk.

The airport is 3.5 miles outside of Istanbul, but will have frequent communications with the city by train, bus and subway. In recent years, tourists have ratified Turkey because of terrorist attacks. But now visitors begin to return and this year the country has increased significantly in the number of bookings in Sweden.

The first stage of the airport is scheduled to open on October 29 this year on Turkey’s national day. By 2028, the entire airport will be ready. Then you will move the commercial traffic from Ataturk Airport, which will primarily receive freight and private planes.