Bicycles in Copenhagen
As some of you know, Denmark is a pretty flat country. Whereas many think that Himmelbjerget is Denmark’s tallest “mountain”, but in fact it is Ydinge Skovhøj that is the tallest place in Denmark with its 172.5 meters / 565 feet of majestic height. Actually, there has been quite a debate on what point in Denmark is the tallest.
Anyway, with Denmark being this flat, it is a country made for bicycling, and the city of Copenhagen now has an explicit goal of making the city the world’s greatest bicycle city before 2015. Here is a link to their campaign site (in Danish).
The last months, I have been borrowing a friend’s bicycle, and I have taken quite a few trips around Copenhagen. Whereas I never used a bicycle in Bergen or Oslo, it seems so natural here, and it is very convenient.
Here is a video I took yesterday, which I present unedited (because my Sony Vegas application decides to crash every time I load a movie file into it :/). It is 15 minutes long, and gives a pretty good impression of how it is to bicycle from Nørrebro to Nørreport on a morning. The trip was taken about 9 AM.
Did you notice the “69″ tags on the yellow wall (@ 5:48 min)? 69 signifies the now abolished youth house, which was at Jagtvej 69.
Very sad news
This morning I received the news that someone had killed the wife of Prakash, a good friend of mine from Kathmandu, Nepal. I have known Prakash since 2002, and I met him once in Oslo when he came to Norway to attend a workshop on human rights.
Prakash is also the friend of mine from Nepal that some videobloggers sent a videocamera in spring 2005 so that he could start videoblogging. Unfortunately, for different reasons, he did not manage to give us many updates from Nepal, this poor, land-locked country whose people have gone through some sad days the last years with violent fights between the King’s government and Maoist rebels.
I have known Prakash to always be a man to fight for justice and progress in the civil society. I first met him through the youth network Taking IT Global, and his commitment to the future of his people has always been evident.
I am shocked by these news. That someone took away the love of his life after only 13 days of marriage. That he has to experience this shock, this anger, this sadness, this tragedy.
With the e-mail that I received about these news, sent by someone else while Prakash is in 13 days of solitary mourning, was this message:
Members of Youth Action Nepal along with friends and family of Pravina and Prakash are planning to establish a Trust in her name to support educational opportunities for young people in Nepal. But I was wondering if you have any ideas about how we could support Prakash – maybe giving him a holiday somewhere later in the year, etc.
Here is a link to Youth Action Nepal, a NGO that Prakash has been involved in since 2003.
My thoughts go to Prakash, his family, and the family and friends of the deceased.
A news article about the incident is here.
settled
this evening, after a far too long day at work, I finally settled at my new home. the birds are chirping outside the window of my room, the room is quiet, and white, and I can already see how I will Live here.
a fun aspect is this
Ocean
As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,
As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,
I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.
Løvekvinden - not a review
Last week I was notified about the upcoming publication of Løvekvinden, the latest novel by Norwegian author Erik Fosnes Hansen, in Danish translation. I started reading it on Friday, and even though my reading went pretty slow, I finally finished it yesterday.
Overall, I was disappointed in the novel. I liked the language of the writer, and I find the theme of the outsider very interesting, but overall I didn’t feel that the novel achieved much. *SPOILER* At the end of the novel, Eva, the lion-woman with thick fur all over her body, is chased down by a bunch of people, and they have a scissor, and they cut her hair off all over her body, hurting her in the process. The very end of the book describes how she stumbles home, upset, and closes the door behind her - firmly.
I would have been interested to see how she moves on from there. How she moves on from being hurt so much that she broke down in tears. That she howled. That she cried out, at least for herself. The end of the book gives the hint that yes, she will now isolate herself even more, if not totally, from the world. How would that work? They didnt have the amount of paparazzi and coloured magazines as one does today, but still, her existence would continue to attract interest from within Norway and elsewhere.
The book was published in Norway late last year — as you may know, the high season of books being published is in the autumn (this probably has a lot to do with the christmas sales) — and it received mixed, yet positive reviews. I don’t know anything about its sales in Norway, nor do I know if it will sell well here in Denmark. The publisher, Gyldendal, is Denmark’s largest, and I am sure that the publication will receive some media attention - in fact Berlingske Tidende has aldready printed a pre-launch interview with the author, taking place at the legendary Theatercafèen in Oslo.
This is the first novel by Erik Fosnes Hansen that I have read, and after I finished Løvekvinden yesterday I decided that I want to give him two more chances by reading first Psalm at Journey’s End, and then Tales of Protection. I now have both, in Danish translation, and will begin on them tonight.
Tomorrow night I will attend the author event I wrote about earlier, and it will be interesting to hear what the author has to say about his latest book. I don’t know what else to say about it, what I thought about it. I liked the themes, and I liked part of the portrayal of Eva, but I disliked how the novel went the last 90 pages or so - - I became rather bored, to be honest. The description of her innocent flirtings with a classmate that turned into so much more, her trip to Copenhagen to be the central piece of interest at a scientific/medical conference, her “fall from grace” as she slept with a musical teacher as a revenge on another girl, and the final disgrace, having her fur mangled by the unsharpened scissor - it bored me. Provincial Norway bores me. Movies like Jerusalem bored me endlessly when I saw it - admittedly years ago.
I have begun writing a journal over my reading, and you can see it here. I will fill the page with keywords about each book from now on.
Penguins
Hah, I didn’t realize I joined Vimeo that early: This is video clip #126. It was shot sometime in february 2005 at the Aquarium in Bergen, Norway.
I haven’t used Vimeo much since, but I really like some of the features on the site.
And, here is a video I found on Vimeo:
Powerlines 01 from flight404 on Vimeo
Norway’s obsession with Facebook
On Saturday, the Norwegian online newspaper aftenposten.no had an article basically telling people to be more careful about what they expose on Facebook. Because, as it says, maybe your potential employer might check out your facebook profile first. This kind of paranoia for the publication of that party picture from 2003 is pretty old, in my opinion, but I guess it is important that the general masses is still aware of the risk.
Myself, I had not properly taken notice of Facebook before I read about it on jill/txt a few months ago. Here Jill Walker also writes the fact: Facebook is the first social network to Really hit it in Norway. Today there are close to 250.000 Norwegian users on it, according to the Aftenposten article.
As with blogging, videoblogging, opml and twitter, I am interested in what possible implications of this can be. What could the popularity of Facebook, in Norway and elsewhere, mean? What can it do for the growth of the civil society? How can we use these networks to do things we could not do before? Things that has more importance than writing on each other’s wall about how good/bad the last Hollywood flick was.
Here is my public Facebook profile - feel free to add me if you have not already done it. Who knows where this may lead.
Baltic Sea Glass
A few weeks ago I went to Bornholm, an island south of Sweden that belongs to Denmark, together with some international students at RUC. There we visited the Baltic Sea Glass workshop, and I was fascinated by the pieces on display there as well as seeing the crafting of the glass.
Here are three videos from our visit there.
