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Yang Zhilin vents on the Oulu ball and why it’s the least attractive structure for a javelin’s throw in any direction.
 Rotuaari pallo
Drunks pee there. Passing tourists stop and look confused. My relatives from China – my mother, grandmother, and second cousins – examine pictures of it in shocked disbelief. The Rotuaari Ball may be one of Oulu’s most recognizable landmarks, but it also happens to be fairly clumsy. It’s only my opinion.
It may just be me. I look into my soul and wonder: is it me.
I say to myself: it may be about expectation. Before I came here, I’d been to a number of cities; been intoxicated by the Eiffel Tower, bowled over by the International Finance Centre in Hong Kong; transfixed by Sydney’s Opera Theatre. It may be I am spoilt by experience, dazzled into comparing the ball unfairly to other municipal landmarks.
I say to myself: it may be that I don’t know its historical significance. The word ‘Rotuaari,’ the name of the street with its Nordea bank and Suomalainen book store, comes from ‘trottoir,’ or ‘Pavement’ in French. Maybe the ball is the spirit of the pavement, a granite globe that symbolizes not only Oulu’s desire to be international but a recognition that France is culturally a very important and desirable country.
Or maybe it’s just a bit crap.
The ball itself, I admit, is quite pretty: it moves and whirls in a pleasant way.
But it’s only circular for about half the year, if that. Four months tops. The rest of the time it’s columns over a box with handles: not circular in any fashion. In summer a child could lean on the ball, but in winter they’re more likely to climb on the cover, fall off it, break a bone on the handle and be rushed to hospital for a splint.
And the ball above it, what’s that? Like a plastic disco ball that doesn’t move – what’s that about?
Perhaps the worst indictment of the ball is that by its nature, in its core use, is sexist.
There are no signs actively discouraging men from peeing on it. Everyone knows they do, so the authorities must know and condone the peeing. But what about the women; what about an extra step and a handrail to this male-exclusive public toilet; are Oulu’s women somehow endowed with superhuman bladders? The implied anatomical discrimination alone should get someone locked up, someone high up on the Oulu council.
And that’s before you consider the ageism and anti-invalidism, the pale and elderly and infirm but incontinent – the old man on a Sunday evening staggering home from the job he’d rather not do but has to because his benefits are too small.
The Oulu ball is a menace to our social equilibrium. It should be dropped into the sea. And replaced with something that says high technology. Like a giant mobile phone.
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I just wonder who gave you the right to write such an unprofessional, and really subjective article. Or I should stop reading this paper...
