Author Archives: linuskendall
I quite like
via youtube.com
A very rough translation:
Coming from the wrong part of the yard, from the other side of the track
I grew up with gypsies
playing accordion
wanting to tell my future
while my dad emptied a bottle of explorer [cheap vodka]
taught myself to play guitar and those chords
djangos quintett playing from the grammophone
with second hand suits in the closets
and brass bands live every night in the garden
it started out good but then the problems came
stepped in the shit early, and the tax bill
i mean the responsibilities
rights
governments
the justice system
the likelihood is small, the unemployment office admits
maybe one should change name or
sell the mobile home or
knock out the gold tooth or
but some time the prejudice must be caught up with
You can call me an outsider
because i didn’t do what the others did when they
did what people did back in the days
no, im not the neighbour above
but the old lady calls the cops every time and says that i make the noise
comes from the right part of town
thats the problem
i grew up in the nicest neighbourhoods
my dad is a designer etc.
my other dad is already late
myself I was a kid and adopted
so my school time was very hard and complex
because my classmates thought it was wrong that
and the teacher was soon to get her pension
not their fault that
things turned out the way they did
according to recommendations from the holy scripture
johans dad “watch out, he’s the anti christ!”
according to miss teacher who tried to explain it sure
maybe we should have shot’er
or carried her out of th’re
now she’s dead and lies in the urn
but in some way the words still live on
the house peace, or something like that
I barely have any time to listen to your criticism
not Lykke Li
but pretty happy [Lycklig]
so lady please give me a chance to listen to my music
but no
Not “when in rome”
If the spoon is made of silver I”ll take it when I get there
they told me so many times
so thanks but no thanks, ill find the exit
but everything is just a dream
I’m swedish, I mean, I just go past the line
I’m even a man and I have a higher wage
as long as I don’t sit around with no job
I like the opposite sex
So kid I’m hardly what you call a fag
But kid I might be what you call slow
cause I don’t understand what you’re saying even if I hear you
(Translated by notwist from Reddit)
Got your Jodhpurs on?
As I’ve mentioned before, I spent New Year’s eve and day traveling and staying in a city in Rajasthan called Jodhpur. For those who might be into horse-riding, Jodhpur is indeed the origin of the classical rider’s pants called Jodhpurs.
It’s also a pretty city with an imposing fort and pretty winding lanes full of blue colored houses. The blue color is indigo, and it was traditionally reserved only for Brahmins, the highest caste in the Hindu varna system. Eventually however, the indigo fashion spread to residents of other castes as well. According to some guide book it’s supposedly good to keep away mosquitos as well as to keep cool.
The fort in Jodhpur definitely deserves mention, as it had been beautifully set-up for visitors with an audio-guide that is one of the best I’ve taken anywhere (normally audio-guides leave a lot to be desired). This guide was a great aid in doing what I love best when in historical places – trying to transport my imagination back to the time when the place was in use. Apparently the last maharaja and his family had taken quite an active role in restoring and making their family’s heritage available to the rest of the world. And though there was something quite patronizing in his voice when he spoke about his role vis-a-vis his subjects in Jodhpur, I must admit that maharaja had done a good job of making the fort an accessible piece of history.
Of special note was the recording in the audio-guide of the grandmother of the current maharaja speaking about the experience of leaving purdah. Purdah was the practice of keeping women completely cordoned off from men only allowing them to be seen by their husbands and certain servants. In fact the entire palace, with it’s covered windows was designed to make complete purdah possible. Women would only be able to follow the life of the outside court through the slits in the windows. As grandma narrated you definitely got a feeling for how odd it must have felt to leave purdah and suddenly start living uncovered in the open. Not that neither she nor her family had to live any kind of harsh life – they still had the modern Umaid Bhavan to house them, and seemingly they didn’t experience any hardship when money was concerned.
Beyond blue-houses and fort, Jodhpur did have some great culinary treats such as saffron-lassi and great Rajasthani curries (none of which I quite remember the name nor ingredients of)…
Holy places #2: Hinduism
Varanasi seem to elicit all sorts of responses even in normally fairly sane travelers. It’s described by guide books as a sort of hell-on-earth cum awe-inspiring, exotic-India in overdrive. Annoying travelers on backpacker forums describe it as “the real India”.
With all these descriptions in mind (none of which I was very inclined to believe in), I had a sort of negative anticipation when arriving from Bodhgaya at 5:30 am. Some place described so vividly by all sorts of people can’t be anything but disappointing. Prepared to be screwed by the numerous auto-wallahs at the station, I was surprised to easily find a rickshaw taking me to my intended spot for less than 30 Rs. Furthermore, he only half-heartedly tried convincing me that I wouldn’t be allowed to carry my bag to my hotel and would need an extension of his services.
Arriving at this early hour to the city proved to be a great move. Not only could I start exploring without any people around, I also managed to catch the sunrise from the mandatory boat ride on the river.
Varanasi is located on the river Ganges, and is the holiest place on earth according to Hindus (less than 8 hours away from the Buddhist’s holiest place on earth…). It is a city you come to be cleansed (by bathing in the not-so-clean Ganges water), be cremated (at special cremation sites from which your ashes is spread into the river) as well as study and practice religion. It’s an incredibly old settlement, and somehow you can feel that in the air of the place – even though the buildings in the old city often aren’t older than 300-400 years (must be something oozing from the river then…).
After spending a few days walking the, albeit rather dirty, streets of Varanasi I neither hated nor particularly loved the place. The best part of it is the fact that the streets of the old city are so narrow that they’re practically reserved for pedestrians (and the occasional two-wheeler). The worst part is probably the old raja’s house – Ramnagar Fort – a museum patched together of unlit exhibits showing dusty rifles and the odd object from the life of the maharaja. There was a ban on all photography in the palace – I imagine that the reason must have been to stop people from showing what a complete and utterly horrible state the museum was in.
Raining Delhi
Past few days have been all thunderclouds, raining and lightning. To that backdrop I watched Black Swan with a friend, and indeed what a good backdrop it was to a superb film – as usual, Darren Arronofsky skews your sense of what is real and what is not while simultaneously wrenching your guts around a bit.
Boot-strapping IT for a non-profit (or other start-up)
Nowadays, you can’t really run any company without having a proper setup for e-mail, websites, shared folders, backups and all those things that comes with running day to day operations in an efficient way. For a start-up or an NGO that neither has access to an IT department, nor a lot of time or money to spend on infrastructure , it becomes even more crucial to find the right solution. To spell it out, it needs to be something that just works, and preferrably comes at no (or little) cost.
However, the good news is that there in fact are many such solutions that fits those criteria perfect already and as part of my fellowship at Waste Ventures I’ve been configuring these for our use. Since I’ve since received quite a few questions from others on how to set things like this up, I figured i’d share it as a blog post.
Read on for my tips for all those services a company needs when bootstrapping their operations.
Holy places #1: Buddhism
I must admit, there is some truth to the maxim one of my friends keep telling me – that “the amount of blog posts has an inverse relationship to how interesting your life is” – however in an attempt at not making that entirely true, I’ve got some blog posts coming up now even as my life is quite interesting indeed!
So, to start off, I’d figure that I post a bit of my backlog of travel pictures & places. As I wrote previously, during christmas I traveled to Bodhgaya and Varanasi, two holy places for buddhists and hindus respectively.
In my first post about Bodhgaya, I might have been a bit irreverent in describing it as a buddhist Disney Land, but that was indeed how it felt when arriving. Even after spending a couple of days there, I couldn’t quite shake that feeling, meaning that I mostly walked around with a bemused smile at all the various foreigners, buddhist monks, asian tourists and backpackers congregating.
The “Buddhist Disney Land” also showed it’s “underbelly” now and then – whether it was through 12 year old boys offering sexual services (clearly something they’re used to foreigners buying there) to fake schools that similarly aged boys would bring tourists in order to solicit donations. Main attraction however is not that (I hope), but rather the temples, with the big Mahabodi-temple next to the bodhi-tree being the greatest landmark. This temple was apparently built in 5th and 6th century, but the site was largely left to it’s own devices after the region was controlled by Islamic rulers from 12th century or so up until the British arrived.
After having chilled out in the city, eating Tibetan bread and hummus, for the first two days, I eventually ventured out of the city to the caves where Buddha medidated as an asketic for long years. Sure, there’s something special about visiting a place I remember fantasizing about when reading about buddhism as an 11-year old, though, in the end, the cave itself wasn’t at all as nice as the ~10 km rural walk to and from the main road (a walk most people miss as they come in tourist busses / go by rickshaws). I had planned on catching the sunset from the caves until I realized that this after all still is Naxal territory and described by local municipality as ‘unsafe’ post-sunset.
Back in Bodhgaya after my excursion, I managed a visit to the last temple (Myanamar) that I hadn’t seen. Starting after independence, it has become a trend for buddhist countries to each build temples in Bodhgaya, in honor of Buddha as well as to host the many pilgrim’s arriving. Each temple styled in national custom, temple-hopping becomes an interesting review of temple-styles across east Asia (see if you can guess all the temple styles from the pictures!).
Been there, done that, still doing?
via youtube.com
Röyksopp & Robyn – two of my favorite Scandi artists…
Finally I can become a catholic: Pope accepts confessions over iPhone
Apparently the Vatican has now accepted an iPhone app through which the believers can post their confessons – finally a religion embracing the modern era.
Oh the christmas spirit in me is awoken
