Through English Eyes

On a rather short notice I ended up seeing Blur in Hyde Park on Friday. Due to the short notice I missed all the other bands bar Vampire Weekend (and they were OK) and due to the heavy mobile phone usage in the area I nearly missed Blur too! However, C found me and all was good.

Now, I was never a massive Blur fan and I think they just came across very differently in Sweden, perhaps I wasn’t even cool enough to like them, I don’t know. But here, through English eyes and yes, a while later, they seem a lot different and a lot more… human than they ever did back then. And the crowd! Roughlians, even pikeys! I would never have thought it. I knew more lyrics than I thought, and the highlights I think was Coutry House, Parklife and Song2. I believe they started off with She’s So High and that was pretty mindblowing- as always happens when the band you’ve been waiting for enters the stage.

It was all in all a most pleasant Friday, and although I lost my friends for a little bit I eventually found them again. Whilst it was nice going solo singing along becomes a lot more fun when there’s more of you.

The true cost of food and how it was lost

I remember, many years ago, my teacher read a story to the class. I can’t have been old at all as most of the story is a blur, but the concensus is this:

Young man meets peddler, who announces ridiculously cheap pencils for sale. So cheap that he cannot make a profit from the sale. Young man observes as a young boy walks up to the peddler and buys a pen, and walks away. The next person that walks up to the peddler is a young woman, and as well as a pencil she buys a comb.

The young man approaches the peddler and asks why he is doing such a silly thing as selling pencils so cheap that he is making a loss. The peddler explains that yes, he is making a loss on the pencils but as the young woman bought a comb the profit made for that was more than sufficient to cover for the loss for the pencils, but that the cheap pencil attracted the woman to view the rest of his merchandise.

The story carries on, can’t quite remember all the rest of it, only that the young man then applies this to a food shop and by luring customers into the store with an offer of “cheap Falu sausages” (it is possible that the story said “sausages” and I made them “Falu sausages, by the way) causing the customers to rush to the store and fill their baskets with the sausages, yes, but also with plenty of other things.

The young man learns more and his career develops. Another part of the story describes men in suits around a table wondering how they could make people buy stuff for no reason, and as the teacher asked my class what we thought the solution was someone did actually guess “Mother’s and Father’s Day”! I should point out that perhaps we weren’t actively encouraged not to celebrate these days in school, only to think about whether it was necessary to buy stuff.

I can’t remember how, but I know the story doesn’t end there and we all know perfectly well it really didn’t. It was a very sweet story teaching children the tricks of advertising but whether we actually learned how to be aware consumers is a different question.

One thing is definetely true. The day man invented bargains to lure customers into their shops man lost track of the true cost of food. I’m not even bringing government subsidies into the picture here- that’s another story to be told at another time.

If anyone out there knows what story I am whittling on about I’d love to hear from you, by the way!

The warmth and the welcome

Dear Sara ***
Greetings and Best wishes from Kudumbam, Tiruchirapalli, Tamilnadu, India

We are very happy to learn form Mr. Tobias that you will be arriving Chennai on Oct 17, 2009 and to our Organization on Oct 25, 2009.

We welcome you.

With warm regards

Oswald Quintal
Director
KUDUMBAM

_______________________
Goodness me I’m going to India!

Cutting Ice to Snow

I have had two deep insights on this fine evening. Well, one of them deeper than the other.

The first one is that Efterklang has a song called “Cutting Ice to Snow”. Now, what can be more of an acceptance of the genre journalists give you than this? Because what happens if you deconstruct ice? Snowflakes! Deconstruction. Plinky plonky scando music.

The other insight is perhaps a bit bigger and it goes as follows:

My things reflect me. I have over the last year managed to surround myself with beautiful things that make me happy. You look at my cup and you think “that’s Sara’s cup”. You look at my plants and you think “that’s Sara’s plant”. You look at my bedsheets and you think “that’s Sara’s bedsheets”. All in all, you look at my room and you think “that’s Sara’s room”.

But, although my things are me I am not my things. Doesn’t sound like rocket science perhaps, but it has been to me even if I’ve known it on the outside. Until now.

So, new plan is to reduce the amount of boxes already packed (and I still have some to go). I don’t need all this Stuff.

Hugs

Some real stuff

So I realise I’ve sort of turned this into a travelling journal, without giving you any kind of updates apart from slightly emotional ones.

So, in terms on embarking upon a journey this is where I’m at:

I have packed some boxes. They contain kitchen stuff, wintery clothes and little tokens of memories such as journals and photos. I reckon I have another 6 at least to go and I’ve had an acceptable quote from a shipping firm.

I’m leaving work in about three weeks, and the country in about five.

I picked myself up from the emotional self pitying ground and have now decided to make things happier, by not feeling sorry for myself. It was my own desicion after all!

Course wise, I have chosen what workshops I will be attending at the aidwork course in Härnösand, and arranged for my sister to drive me to the actual place of learning, Biskops- Arnö, on Monday 24 August.

I have made contact with some environmentalists in Sweden, knowing I shant be deprived once I get there!

I have read loads about Tamil Nadu and have made arrangements to go to the Sri Lankan hindu temple in Tooting before I leave.

Last but not least I have some exciting links:
For Swede tonguers, and this is linked below but nonetheless another mention of the most profound blogger in the Swedish IT atmosphere.

Again, for you Swedes wondering what the heck it’s all about and how Sweden can get involved.

And for Englishers, last but not least! I found this essay about the organisation I’m going to, in English written by a Swede. Warning! It’s a PDF!

As for new beginnings, I can report that they started sooner than I thought. The total and utter fool that Sara Grön is knows how difficult she is making things for herself, without being able to turn around. Not now.

Hugs

Back to business

Sometimes I just feel that I don’t have to say anything- others do it better than I do. Like this Alex Renton for example. I have never tried bin diving myself but I have come across a couple of freegans in my days.

I’d also like to take this moment to dedicate a few words to one of the most astonishing buildings in London, next to which I had the pleasure to enjoy some art and culture last night. Battersea Power Station- I love you! There you are, on the bank of the Thames, looking like an upside down dressing table and just symbolising the ginormous effects of industrialisation. You could be scary, but in fact you are just derelict and covered in scaffolding. You are a perfect example of how great London can feel. It wasn’t just the wine- I promise!

A short tale

He said “hi?”
I said “hi!”
I said “hey?”
He said “nay!”

And thus, dear reader, another story ends. Hopefully, new beginnings will fill the empty space.

Shipping vs Airfreight

Have you ever asked yourself “if I had to pack all my belongings into boxes, how many cubic feet would they fill?”. This amongst other pleasantries are filling my thoughts on this fine Friday, my last one off before I go back to work full time next week. This will then last for about a month and a half, until 10 July, my last day at work. This is when things will get real, for real.

I need to get moving. I have just about 9 weeks left in London and considering that shipping stuff to Sweden may take up to a month I better get packing. It is however very tricky to use your stuff as well as wrapping them up and putting them in a box.

It is quite intense too. I will be packing stuff into boxes without any idea as to when they will get unpacked! It can be a month, a year or never. I have however decided that the best stragegy is to take stuff with me rather than disposing of and starting from zero yet again in the Future. I will of course get rid of some things though and this is a very liberating process!

Bed, anyone? It’s queen sized, cast iron… all right it’s from Argos but it looks nice! I’ll be selling all my furniture off in a couple of weeks.

To clarify: nothing has been packed yet. But I’m planning it.

Joel gave me a Tamil phrasebook the other day. It puts definition on the whole thing. Vanakkam!

More news

I now know where in India I’m going!

Swedish speakers can read more about the exact place here.

And non-Swedes can read about the organisation here.

London’s been extraordinarily hectic sine I got back- but I’ll get plenty of sleep once the Transition Towns conference is over after this weekend…

Changes ahoy!

I started this post some time ago, but have refrained from posting it until I had told people at work that I am leaving.

I am leaving. I’ve been looking into the possibilities to do so for some time now, namely to join an “apprenticeship course” (praktikantkurs in Swedish) that involves going to India.

Anyone that knows me know that my passions in life includes the environment, food and food production. Although I have appreciated working with organic food and have during my two-and-a-bit years learned absolutely loads and developed my own views, I now find myself at a crossroad, trying to work out how to best pursue my passion. I have considered moving back into journalism, reporting the world out of food poverty. I have fingered on Agronomy, draining and refertilising the way out of food poverty. But I find myself too inexperienced, too unaware, to make any kind of decisions. I have now found a not strictly academic way to return to studies and experience first hand how food production shapes itself for some of the poorest people in the world, for some of the people most in striking distance of Climate Change. This in one of the most inspiring cultures of the world, in my opinion.

Without going into too much depth on how the Swedish education system works, I will at the beginning of August be located in the north of Sweden to do a course in aid work with Framtidsjorden, Future Earth. After that it’s back southwards again, to Biskops-Arnö just north of Stockholm for about 6 weeks of studies of things like globalisation, organic farming, the language Tamil, etc. I’m not too sure exactly what to be honest. It’s all going to be great though!

At some point in October me and my 7 course mates will be heading to Tamil Nadu in the south of India and to one of a couple of organisations that Future Earth are working with. They are very rural and very basic and they don’t have much in place in terms of websites, but they are CIRHEP and Kudumbam. I don’t know which one I’ll be sent to yet. But I know I’ll remain there for about six months, and then it’s back to Sweden to finalise the course, which comes to an end in May 2010.

This is about as much information I can cram into one post. I am absolutely delighted, excited, inspired and all that. I am also terrified, petrified and heartbroken to be leaving London and the life I’ve lead for so long. I never thought it would be easy, but is sure is time for a change.

More details, thoughts and regrets to follow… but I am so excited my fingertips are tingling!