Stats and opinions

The blog has been rather selfish lately. Well, it’s never been anything BUT selfish, as this is why one keeps a blog about nothing in particular… but I had every intention to do a bit of a summary about the goings on in Sweden at the moment. To be honest all I can think about is memory cards, underwear and other things I have had to pack to last for 5 months.

However, how I feel about Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize you can probably guess from this post, even if I think others deserve it more.

I’ve spent the last 6 days in my parents’ house (well, in my own little house in their garden to be precise), eating rye bread and dairy products and hanging out with my one true love; the cat. I also celebrated my birthday with family and relatives and was given things like a mosquito net, a camping shower and other travel related gear.

And, behold! I am ready:

I liked the list John posted on his blog before he went to Nepal, but to be honest I don’t think that my list of stuff is even half as impressive. As well as a camping shower it’s stuff like ”an empty water bottle, two packs of Immodium, a snorkle and books”.

Anyways, I won’t be more ready than this. See you on the other side!

Never Alone

Autumn is here and nearly gone. I’ve forgotten that it’s my favourite season, as to be honest it doesn’t do too much in England.

Here it makes a world of difference. There’s a big difference between plus five and minus five when it comes to temperature, and a big difference between some leaves and no leaves. The first snow will arrive any day now, I know this as the shade is frosty all day long up here in Dalarna.

As episode 2 of my ”Living in Sweden again”- experiment has now come to an end, that of living on the island, I can conclude that it’s been a success. Moving back to Sweden has not been even half as traumatic as I thought it would be, and even if I miss certain Londoners heartachingly much I can declare that there are decent folk up here in Winterland too.

Now I’m just about ready for anything. Even for India, I think…

Happy Dusshera!

This weekend has been incredibly intense, thanks to S who travelled out to the island to give us India- travellers a crash course in Tamil.

The first word we had to learn was ”Tamil”. Seriously. There are 3 different L’s in Tamil, for example.

S is born in Sweden in an Indian family and has since lived a few years in Chennai. He’s nowadays a college teacher in Stockholm and probably one of very few Tamil teachers in this country. J kindly gave me a Tamil phrasebook what feels like ages ago, and while this no doubt will be incredibly handy I soon discovered that Swedish is a better language to learn Tamil from. Swedish tends to be that way.

When I say ”intense” I really mean it. Yesterday we studied from 10am to 9 pm, with short breaks for food. As well as basic Tamil we learned briefly about hinduism and also about Tamil history. But the real treat came today, as it happens to be the hindu festival of Dusshera, and S took us along to one of the hindu temples in Stockholm to participate. As this was a North Indian (mainly) temple we didn’t get to practice any Tamil, as this and Hindi practically are a world apart.

Dusshera is in North India a celebration of Rama’s victory over the bad demon who lives in Sri Lanka and who kidnapped Rama’s wife Sita. The Ramayana is where the full story can be read, so thank you L for advising me to buy it a long time ago! Rama is the first incarnation of the god Vishnu, and walked Earth around 2 million years ago. In South India Dusshera is celebrated too, but the story is slightly different and this time it’s a more recent incarnation of Vishnu, that of Krishna, who is celebrated. However the slayer of bad bad demon is this time his wife, Radha.

Anyways. Dusshera is the run-up to the biggest Hindu celebration, Divali. Divali means light, and in the Ramayana this is when Rama returns to Ayodha with Sita. In real time, this year, this happens on the very day me and the others arrive to India. I am absolutely terrified! Whilst of course it’s going to be great to be in a big city during the celebrations, it’s also going to be even more of a challenge to get where we’re going!

Nevertheless I feel more than ready to go now. Just a couple of more lessons on the island, and then I’m off back north again. For a week. Then…

Buzzing Tooting

Two big events were recently organised by Transition Town Tooting. I wish I could have been there, but this is the second best thing to do:

A professor of Food Policy and the founder of New Economics Foundation in conversation:

And of course the Tooting Harvest Foodival 2009. I wrote about last year’s event here (in Swedish).

Now I’m off to learn some Tamil…

Love letter

My teacher just walked past and asked if I was writing loveletters. I’d say that more than anything I was reading them:

”Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

-Rachel Carson

General update shortly… the countdown has begun!

You say potato, I say potato

It’s funny how you suddenly wake up to an insight in terms of what different words mean to different people. ”Organic” to most probably refer to a more ”old fashioned” way of farming, more environmentally friendly and less use of pesticides and fertilizers and therefore healthier perhaps. Maybe even the animal right prospect is taken into consideration. To me, institutionalized as I may be, organic in short means ”an environmentally sound alternative to conventional farming, heavily rule bound and must therefore be certified by a certifying body you trust, like for example the Soil Association in the UK, KRAV in Sweden”.

If the term ”organic” means to you what it does to me, this article simply has no grounds. As long as organic certification is as heavily monitored as it is, companies like OneFood are caught in the act and an investigation eventually started. This is why bureaucracy is a necessary evil. It hurts so bad to see that there are people at the ready to leap at the prospect of slaying a whole industry like this.

Zoe Williams does have a point. Should the fact that even though you’re not against pesticides necessarily mean that you have no right to claim that you prefer locally produced, top quality veg? Of course not. The question is, who can tell you that it really is? Even if in an ideal world everyone has the personal trust in their own farmer, that just ain’t gonna happen in a world where half the population lives in cities. We have to rely on these certifying bodies, even if they seem to become more and more, day by day.

This is where Trading Standards come into place. Whenever ”the rules” are broken, it is in terms a criminal act and whilst I hold the SA high they’re not the ones who should uphold the law. Shame on you, Ms Williams, for failing to recognize that Swaddles were caught, most probably by the very institution you seem to oppose.

Light pollution

On Saturday I had the opportunity to experiment a bit with the occurence of light pollution. At least, this is how it started.

I stood next to a lamppost and tilted my head back. Staring at the night sky I could see an almost disturbing display of stars; there are so many.

Walking a few steps sideways, but still with the lamppost very much in my vicinity, I tilt my head back yet again. Apart from the vast array of starts Milky Way itself is showing me a some sort of unknown path. It’s insane how such a small change of scenery, small change of light source is causing me to see so much more.

I go mental.

Then I realise: we all came from this. Somehow you, I, and all the biomass we all find ourselves surrounded by (99% of our biomass per hectare, for example, is trees) came from the same atom. We came from up there. And now I can barely see it, unless I make an effort to.

Another year, another pound

I promise I will stop going on about mushrooms. Soon. It’s just that I really have re-discovered something and made it into something so much more than it used to be. I prefer picking mushrooms to eating them for a start (although eating them is rather pleasant too). Walking around in the leaf-patched pine forest really is Home for me. I’d forgotten.

I’m studying hard despite all the foraging (and not just about mushrooms although I have learned 6 new ones thanks to K). It’s so intense and there’s so much more I’d love to learn more about but I think I have now come full circle and am back at where I decided to go to India in the first place: to observe how food is grown in harmony with the local eco system, and with realistic methods ensuring that it is a viable alternative to the commercial, conventional way. All this theory on the island (beautiful as it is, I’m for example reading a book on poverty reduction through empowerment as opposed to aid) is beginning to choke me which is why a quick retreat to the forest is a most welcome break from it all.

The rest of the class have gone off to Stockholm or Uppsala to interview various aid working and similar organisations today. Our interviews are all scheduled in Stockholm tomorrow (Greenpeace, FIAN and IM), so we’ve camped in the classroom for the day. How many classrooms do you know with two shelves of mushrooms drying in the corner? It’s a nice room. I think J is determined to make the day special as it is after all my birthday. Tonight however, most of the others will be back and instead of a birthday carrot cake (which I did bake but sold at the Eco- Café to the benefit of CIRHEP in India) I shall instead present a mushroom orgy of at least four different ones. I was celebrated at midnight too, as we were dancing away to T’s crazy dubstep mixture. And, according to Swedish tradition I was also sung to in bed this morning. We are however not decadent enough to be having cake in bed here on the island.

So, what’s happened in the year that’s passed, besides moving countires and about to do so again?

Pretty much a year ago I was half way to Bristol, as I had a job interview for that big organisation I so like over there. I really really wanted that job, and was quite down when I failed to get it. A year later I can certainly see the reason for it all, and think I’m in a much better place now. I don’t think another job in another office is what I need. At least not now.

My 27th year was the year permaculture entered my life. This may perhaps sound rather ambitious from someone who only attended a weekend course at Earthship Brighton with Brighton Permaculture, but this is exactly what happened. Permaculture can, as some of you will know, be applied to most things and life being one of them. I just can’t help but clichéing it all by saying that Sara has planted the seeds for an eco system of her own… the first step is to observe, something I’m praciting a lot and will practice even more.

Also, on my very birthday the Brixton Pound is finally about to be launched, by Rob Hopkins himself. Preceded by the Totnes and Lewes pound, Brixton shall be the first actual borough to try it out and I really hope it goes well. It’s such a great way to support local business and you should support it too, if you’re around.

Now I must go back to the boring book I must finish before I get to move on to the more fun one about the LEISA network., and then watch the Ghandi movie with J. Lots of love to you all.

Fear of the dark

I spend most of my days riding on statistics and falling back on sleek expressions. I read to enlighten, pardon, inform myself of the current state of affairs. I make choices, sometimes difficult ones, trying to become a better person who use my allotment on this planet of ours to Do Good.

And indeed I learn. I develop. I change. I feel good about it. I don’t allow myself to feel that I’m in any way better, mind, but I certainly feel good about myself and the path I am treading.

Most times.

Some times even the most positive mind feels gloomy, despite it’s surroundings. Sometimes things can seem rather dark, even in the fullest of light.

However most times a tiny speck of joy seeps through, such as today’s wonderful article in the Independent. Not great news perhaps, but at least it’s IN the news.

And sometimes, it feels great to just be alive, and feel that I too am part of this wonderful planet of ours.

And, on top of it all, a great sense of belonging:

Fonts do matter

”What’s new in the land of Sweden?” I hear you ask (not).

A few pickings would be the decision to use tax payers’ money to build a motorway which will bypass Stockholm, saving commuters half an hour at least… at a cost of at least 27 billion SEK. Apparently this road has been discussed and argued over for about 40 years. Sounds like a great time to finally build it, a sort of tarmac celebration of peak oil, financial crisis and climate change… a really expensive memorial.

IKEA has decided to change font in their UK catalogues, causing the Guardian’s Simon Garfield to slate the swap from Futura to Verdana. See? These things do matter to a lot of people…

Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet recently published an article about the Israeli selling organs from Palestinians on the black market in the US, causing an absolute outrage in Israel and consequently an apology from the Swedish embassy in Israel… we truly are the flagholders of Freddom of Speech, aren’t we? Others know how to, and dare to, hit where it really hurts…

Sweden will soon be the chair of the EU.

Umm… and what else?

Anna Odell is someone frequent in Swedish media at the moment, as she is currently in court. As part of an art installation she faked a psychosis on a bridge in Stockholm and subsequently was ”taken in”. She was pumped with drugs, tied to a bed and taken in forced custody at a mental asylum somewhere in Sweden. I’m going to drop her an email and ask her to look into the devastation caused by EU farming subsidies to third world peasant farmers as her next project.

And last but not least… the mystery of Arctic Sea! A ship that was hijacked outside Gotland (off the Swedish coast) turned up in Russia after having frequented the media for some time (where is it?). Under strange circumstances the ships’ crew are silent, Russia is silent but one thing has been observed: ”the ship was laying too low in harbour to have a freight of only timber”… Theories of nuclear weapons has therefore risen.

Sara’s news are as follows: technology bit finished, theory starting Monday. I am certainly back with the Mac and feel confident that even I will be able to produce somethign that looks sleek and representative at the end of my journey, but I can’t wait to bury myself in books (first: Guns, Germs and Steel) and get into this whole going to India to explore sustainable agriculture bit. I went into Stockholm last Tuesday to do some filming and also managed to squeeze ina brief encounter with lovely S, who cured my technology angst and even agreed to lend me an SLR… sometimes sensibility has to come from outside! I’m feeling more at home on the island and also in myself as a Swede.