over the last weekend I experienced the most intense shock I’ve had for quite some time… While I was visiting the Amber Fort in Jaipur together with Ana I was taking lots of pictures and as the sun was shining, I had my Lens Hood on the objective which turned out to be essential…

Ana and me went through the Fort and at one point we were going down a small stairway when I suddenly lost my balance and crashed full force down onto the stairs… As Ana was in front of me, I guess I did not see the sand on the stairs due to her shadow, thus stepped right on the sand and boom… I had my D90 in my right hand and thus tried not to land on it… Instead I landed with my full weight on both elbows (ouch!) and next thing I heard was a real ugly sound of breaking plastic… Totally in panic I turned around to see that the Lens Hood had broken into two pieces BUT neither the D90 nor the objective seemed to be damaged

Still being under shock, really hurt, I got up to check upon the D90 and focused on the next visible thing: An exit sign. After I had checked that the D90 took the picture as wanted I felt relieved but saw some Indians standing next to the sign who had thought that I was taking pics of them and therefore started to pose for me… Somehow I managed to make a few pics in order to satisfy them and then walked a bit shaky away…

Gosh, I just don’t want to think about the camera being broken and am unbelievably relieved and happy that I used the Lens Hood. I guess when the cam touched ground it did so first with the Lens Hood which, due to its breaking, took most of the energy and thus saved the objective and body

Next item to shop: A new Lens Hood

Take care, Strothi

BTW: I’m fine, got a little scratch and my left elbow is still not entirely alright, but it’ll be soon!

I thought I should share again some “Indian Experiences” with you guys As some might have read on twitter or facebook, Ana and me recently went to a wedding! That has been an awesome experience, as Indian weddings are way different then the European ones. Down here, right now it’s “wedding season” and no kidding, never ever I’ve seen so many weddings taken place as right now around me. I actually stopped counting even the ones in my neighborhood, as there are simply way too many Indians that apparently want to get married…

Alright, so when Ana arrived here a couple of weeks ago, she told me: The one thing I really wanna do in India is going to a wedding! While I’m normally known for my organizational skills, I somehow doubted to be able to get my hands on an invitation easily. Guess what, next day I was given one by a good friend of mine! Strike

So before going to the actual wedding, shopping had to be done, as we wanted to be dressed appropriately! While I don’t like shopping that much, it was ok and – considering to be shopping with a girl – a rather fast process Now I think it’s better let pics speak – many of you might have seen them already. This is what we bought:

View photos at SmugMug

Isn’t Ana looking just gorgeous? I love my dress as well and look at my shoes… So we went to the wedding fully dressed up Indian style just to find out that a lot of people either didn’t care at all what they were wearing, wore casual stuff or dressed up very well. On top of that, you could see people dressed up in Western, Indian style and somewhat in between…

View photos at SmugMug

The whole thing took place at a very nice venue, the Officers Club here in Delhi. Just imagine, they handed out invitations to 1000-1500 people and they all wanted to eat and drink – for free! The food was really good, entirely vegetarian but encompassed a broad variety of Western and Indian dishes So even before the happy couple was on scene, everybody was busy eating…

My friend gave me a call to get out of the venue to see the “Barat”, a tradition where the groom rides to the venue. Well, riding refers only to the “sitting on the horse”, as many people dance in front of him, thus the whole group moves about 10 meter in 5 minutes… When I was about to take some pics I was spotted by a family member of my friend who pulled Ana and me right in front of the whole parade… Now we had to dance Moreover, before entering the venue there’s a ceremony, where the male members of the grooms family give a bloomy neckless to the members of the brides family and vice versa. Guess what, suddenly someone pulled me right into the middle, gave me one of these necklesses and then I gave it to some guy from the brides family… I’d call that “being fully integrated” Later we found out that they probably thought that I was a friend of the groom who had studied in the US, whereas I did not know him but his cousin

View photos at SmugMug

After we “survived” the ceremony to enter, we enjoyed the great food and just chilled a bit. To our disappointment, nobody was up for dancing and the whole thing remained pretty calm. But that helped getting to know my friends family…

View photos at SmugMug

After another ceremony, where the bride and groom do the “neckless hand-over” themselves, a “photo-show” started, where everybody wanted to have a pic with the couple. Now you might wonder, why the bride looks so sad on all the pic. Well, I was told that a) she has to look “not too happy” (no idea why that though) and b) the whole wedding ceremony started on Monday, the Barat I’m just telling you about on the following Sunday, so I guess she was a bit tired and fed up with everything as well…

View photos at SmugMug

To our surprise, the couple wasn’t married by then: The whole wedding process started at around 1:30 am on Monday lasting for at least another two hours. Interestingly, even before the ceremony started, the majority of the guests were gone! It was basically only Ana, me and the family members who were still there to see, so we decided to trust into the couple (that they would actually really get married ) and left the wedding

View photos at SmugMug

All in all it was a fantastic experience, just the lack of dancing was a little disappointing. Oh by the way, I love my dress and look forward to the next costume party outside of India…

Take care, Strothi

it’s been a week since I told you about my awesome Diwali so it’s time for a little update on “living in India” Actually last week nothing really special happened. I tried to work in the library, had language class and enjoyed my time. The only reportable thing was my try to book tickets to Agra.

Since I’m healthy again and actually close to hit the “bergfest”, thus half of the time being here, I thought I should finally start making travel plans and get out of Delhi. So I opted to go to Agra for a day and see the Taj Mahal. I actually wanted to book the ticket online, but after I had spend quite some time on finding the right trains, I wasn’t able to book: Neither one of my two visa cards would be accepted, as they are not “verified by visa”. This new system introduced by Visa some time ago has not been implemented by german banks so far and thus booking online was no option anymore. BUT my friend Navarun came up with the great idea to use the “Travel Agent” of the institute I’m working with. To make a long story short, 2 hours later I finally got my ticket and thus I’ll travel to Agra on Wednesday. Great, but even better: I won’t travel alone! A good friend of an old friend of mine is coming tomorrow to Delhi to do some research for her thesis and even though I haven’t met her in person yet, we decided (via e-mail) to travel to Agra together. Moreover, me being the nice guy, she’ll be staying at my place for a couple of days while searching for an apartment, thus I guess I gonna have a great week

Alright, from future back to last weekend. Actually it was great. While I had no real plans except of working a bit on various things and check out a festival at Teri University, Navarun called me early in the morning on saturday to tell me that he was going to the University as well and asked, if he could stay at my place afterwards. Thus, my “finally let’s do some work” plans vanished Vrishali, Navarun and me met and drove to the campus where we arrived right in time to get good seats for a panel on “youth and sustainability” that encompassed not only an Indian Minster, the Swiss Ambassador and other distinguished persons, but as well Dr. Pachauri, Chancellor of Teri University and Chair of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)! As some of the panelists said, this guy is a “rockstar” to journalists who are interested in climate change, but to everybody else dealing with the issue probably as well With the exception of the Ambassador’s speech, all the others were refreshingly interesting and thus I enjoyed my time. Moreover, I managed to pose two questions to Dr. Pachauri -> me being very very happy

Another thing that really made my day: Ripping me off failed As you know, I stayed the first couple of days on campus. Last week I got the invoice for that and believe it or not, they tried to charge me four times the initially communicated amount of money! So I wrote them an e-mail asking about the difference but became no answer. Now, being on campus again, I ran into the responsible person and was told that there “has been a confusion” and that I would only have to pay the initially stated amount of money! Yeah, that’s actually 100€ less

Now, aside from the panel there was lots going on on campus. The festival (Aahvaan – the awakening call) was meant to celebrate the 10-year existence of the University as well as to raise awareness for environmental issues. As it was a festival open to other Universities as well, a lot of people were there Moreover, a lot of competitions were going on. Be it theater, music or other arts, everything was there Even though I did not understand much of the theater played by the different student groups, I understood the main ideas behind their plays and as many of the students were really good actors, it was fun to watch.

At one point, Navarun came to me and told me that he had to accompany a relative of his supervisor (to which he’s rather close) to the railway station and proposed that I should join, so I would know on Wednesday where to go. I agreed and (as nearly always), we started with a delay of nearly an hour. I wasn’t sorry about that, as that gave me the chance to talk to the girls I know from living on campus. Most of them were happy to see me and thus I talked a lot about my place here in Green Park, my work and my impressions of Delhi so far When Navarun, the said relative, me and the supervisor’s driver finally left, we had one and a half hour to reach the train. Guess what, we arrived at half past six at New Delhi Train Station only to find out, that the train – scheduled to leave at ten past seven – was leaving from Old Delhi Station. Now you might not have an idea what distances mean time-wise here in Delhi, but let me say this: Reaching Old Delhi in the given time was close to being impossible. Just check out the pics I’ve uploaded and linked below on the traffic. We were basically stuck, but the driver was really freaky awesome. He stayed cool the entire time, drove fantastic and somehow managed to drop us at Old Delhi at seven past seven – three minuted to actually get her on board. So we ran – well, I crossed the street in good old Paris-Style (thus just stepping right in front of the cars causing them to hit the brakes really hard ) but Navarun and the girl weren’t that conviced over my style of crossing the street so they stayed behind. Shortly afterwards they managed to get to me and we ran into the station, got one of the guys that carry your luggage, and told him to show us the way and run! Believe it or not, we reached the platform on ten past seven, put the women into the train and shortly afterwards the train left! Wow, that was some kind of an adventure

Afterwards the driver dropped me and Navarun at my place and we had a great time watching “Thank you for smoking”, one of my favorite comedies On sunday Vrishali joined us and we – well basically Vrishali and Navarun – cooked a really good indian lunch By the time we were nearly done cooking, Bala, my flatmate, finally arrived home. He was scheduled to be back in Delhi at 3:30 in the morning, but his train got stuck for NINE hours! When he finally came, he was really dead but happy to enjoy the great lunch with us. Vrishali, Navarun and me relaxed afterwards by watching “The Constant Gardener”. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must! It has the same quality as Hotel Rwanda, maybe a bit less action, but certainly as impressive. It’s about big drug companies testing drugs in africa and the tragedy behind it.

Alright, that’s been my weekend I hope you had a great time as well. Tomorrow I’m going to get Ana at the airport, Wednesday we’ll go to Agra, Thursday I’ve language class and Friday we’ll meet up with some Indian friends – sounds like a great week to me

Oh, here are some of the pics from the weekend. Check out SmugMug to see all of them

View photos at SmugMug

Take care, Strothi

as promised, I just uploaded a few of my pics from yesterday. You can check them all out over at SmugMug. Here are just a couple of them. The gallery show the pics taken first at Navarun’s place, afterwards my neighborhood and finally the huge fireworks I enjoyed

View photos at SmugMug

Besides, here’s a little video of the fireworks that I enjoyed yesterday

nachdem ich ja schon hier von der Freiheit statt Angst Demonstration in Berlin am 12.09. berichtet habe, bin ich nun endlich mal dazu gekommen, auch die passenden Bilder dazu online zu stellen. Zum einen hab ich ein Album mit 35 Bildern erstellt, die ich am Besten finde. Darüber hinaus gibt’s noch ein weiteres Album was so ziemlich die gesamte Demo abbildet. Dabei habe ich mich auf eine Straßenbank bei “Unter den Linden” gestellt und die Demo von vorne bis ganz zum Ende photographiert. Herausgekommen sind dabei ca. 350 Bilder von denen ihr im zweiten Album 113 findet, die was geworden sind Die Demo selbst war klasse und hat Spass gemacht. Insbesondere die Kreativität (wie auf den Bildern zu sehen) hat mich öfter’s mal Lachen lassen – auch wenn man über den Anlass der Demo nicht lachen kann!

View photos at SmugMug

So müssen wir derzeit erleben, wie in Deutschland immer mehr Bürgerrechte und Freiheiten im Namen der “Sicherheit” eingeschränkt werden. Das dies äusserst fragwürdig ist, brauch ich glaub ich nicht groß weiter erklären. Es ist schon erschreckend, wie ausgeliefert wir Bürger heute dem Staat gegenüber stehen, der durch eine immer wieder betonte (rein abstrakte) Bedrohungslage immer neue Sicherheitsgesetze verabschiedet. Diese sind dabei vielfach weder effektiv (also möglichst zielführend) noch effizient (also angemessen) und dienen mehr zum Selbstzweck. Nach dem genialen “Du bist Terrorist” Video gibt es nun den Nachfolger, der ebenso genial wie überzeugend ist. Guck-Pflicht!

Ach ja, hier noch was Schönes. Via Netzpolitik.org bin ich gerade auf dieses PDF gestoßen, in dem Daniel Schultz unter dem Titel “Zensursula – eine Rückschau” eine chronologische Betrachtung über die Entstehung des Zugangserschwerungsgesetztes anstellt. Beeindruckend!

Ok, das soll’s erstmal wieder gewesen sein,

und weg, Strothi

since I started this blog I tried several different methods to use photos. First I stored them locally on my server and used the MyGallery plugin to implement them into this blog. But the process of uploading, editing and using the pics was rather uncomfortable When I got MobileMe I thought to use the service not only for mail but as well for pictures, but that wasn’t the solution. While the presentation of the pics is really awesome as well as the integration with Aperture, my photo program of choice, the implementation of MobileMe into this blog sucks! Thus, pictures are there but rarely seen. No tagging is possible, no description can be given and even worse, the pics can not be used in a post on this blog.

So I ended up doing some research over the last couple of days in order to find a fast, reliable picture service that can be integrated into this blog as well as into my workflow, thus has an Aperture plugin. I ended up comparing the well known Flickr with SmugMug and finally went for the later. (A good comparisons on both services can be found here ) It just feels right and my experiences with it are so far really great. I’m absolutely stunned by the performance of the uploading process (from India with slow connection, it’s WAY faster then the MobileMe upload took back home in Berlin)… It costs a few bucks but I’m willing to pay for quality and thus this is no big deal. Especially if you move over from Flickr (or say so), you get 50% rebate on the first year To conclude, I’m quite happy with smugmug and hope that everything works out the way I hope for. The old MyGallery pics will remain here as well as the pics on MobileMe, but from now on I’ll only use SmugMug

Take care, Strothi

while I’m sitting here in the heat, I thought I share my “Experiencing India” stories with you guys On Friday I had planned to sleep a little longer in order to rest a bit – that didn’t work out… At nine somebody knocked on my door and offered my a ride to Teri-Institute, which is in the middle of Delhi whereas the University is really on the outskirts… Even though I was really tired I thought it might be a good idea to meet up with the guy I’m supposed to work with. Well, so far I’ve the feeling that he neither is really interested in my project not got an idea of what I want to do here… BUT, that’s not a bit deal as I found at the library a great book that’s only half a year old, written by some guy at Teri and covers most of what I wanted to research on Great, that’ll help me a lot! Especially, as my initial idea to see the actual e-waste sites and do some interviews probably won’t work, as only the “well educated” speak english down here. In general I think a lot of research on each part of our project has been done already, but no one has tried to connect the dots as we are going to do it Thus we can build on lots of already available knowledge and still come up with something new That great!

Even better, I already have lots of nice contacts down here (already, big stunner… ) In the library I met Navarun, a researcher who had spent some months in Berlin and he invited me to join him on a little dinner later that day. Perfect, especially as another friend of his, a german girl working for the GTZ, showed up as well and thus I already got lots of useful informations The dinner was great and after my first trip alone with the “auto”, these funny threewheel “knatterbüchsen”, I was back “home” at eleven – to the big relief of the guards, who had started seaching the campus for my at nine…

Yesterdays was great as well. After lunch I got back to Teri in order to meet with Vasundhara and Taruna. Before starting our “Delhi Sightseeing”, Taruna and me tried to buy an indian sim-card which turned out to be more complicated as initially thought. But finally it worked and now I’ve an Indian number – yeah We travelled with auto, bus and so on through the city and the girls showed me many nice places (see below). After a nice dinner I returned safe back home You’ve to know, the campus is really remote and thus the drivers normally don’t know it. So just like the day before, he found the way up to a certain point and then I gave him the direction by pointing the way – here my very good orientational sense really helps It’s really an experience to drive around in Delhi  - especially in an auto. Cause while in Paris it was rather normal to see drivers making four out of three lanes, here you’ve two and they use five… It’s without kidding normal to have two or three centimeters space between the cars!!! And they drive and honk like crazy, but if they wouldn’t, it probably wouldn’t work

Alright, today nothing special is going on but tomorrow is going to be a huge holiday and I’ll be going downtown with Navarun to check out the craziness

Take care,

Strothi

View photos at SmugMug

as the title suggests, I just got my new camera – the fantastic Nikon D90 with the 16-85 VR objective. I had thought about buying a digital SLR for quite some time and now I actually jumped the cliff and did it As you probably know I’m travelling a lot and I always was a bit upset that I didn’t had a camera that could actually capture the beautiness of the places were I’ve been. To be fair, my Fuji F31fd is an awesome camera and did a really good job, but it is a small camera in a way different class. Due to the fact that I actually dissolved my “Home ownership savings plan”, I got recently some money (I had to do it to be able to book the flight to India, pay the vaccines etc.). Together with the fact, that I’m going to be in India for three month and hopefully will take lots of nice pictures, I decided to invest some money into a good camera.

Nikon D90 or Canon 500d?

Before I started my research, I was thinking to buy the Canon 500d but after a couple weeks of research I concluded that the Nikon D90 would be the better of the two. Aside from tests and user reports I read, the D90 felt way more solid in my hands than the 500d. After I had found the right camera, I did lots of research on the right objective. While the body of the camera is important, I learned that a good body won’t help you if you don’t want to invest some money into a good objective as well. After having spend lots of nights reading through

a huge variety of articles, I decided to go for the Nikkor 16-85 VR. In comparison to other “Kit-Objectives” it’s quite expensive, but several people recommended it and I’m always willing to invest a little bit more to get better quality. Today the postman brought me my new toy and I’m really happy. It just feels right  If you wanna know more about the camera itself, just click on the beauty to the right

Oh, even though I bought the camera over a german online store, I got a French manual and a warranty card from Nikon Netherlands – weird Anyway, as I side effect I’ll improve my French and if I don’t understand it I’ve the online or CD version in German The picture above is the very first I shot with the new camera (part of my family’s garden) and I assure you, there are more to come…

Take care, Strothi