At one point, everybody in the country was watching As The World Turns . It became a huge part of what people thought of as soaps.

Nobody's ever dead unless you see them die in a hospital, they're pronounced dead, and then maybe their body is shot a couple of times in the coffin.

Irna wanted her actresses to stay in character all the time -- she wouldn't even call them by their real names, just their character names. And she didn't want them playing other roles while they were on As The World Turns .

Last year the Swiss business leaders we asked placed the country 56th overall on a world scale and it actually dropped to 79th this year. There was a tangible higher sense of pessimism.

I'm optimistic our country will continue to get better.

For such a wealthy country, and one where there is such innovation, the tertiary enrolment rate in 2003 was 48.7 per cent. Compare that with Finland, which was 87.5 per cent. This is definitely something that should be addressed.