Sarajevo, StarWars, & Bubba Ho-tep
First the non-sarajevo part of the update:
I wish i could go to this Grassroots Use of Technology conference at MIT, but I won't be back in time 
Yesterday I emailed the european branch of MIT to see if I can drop by their place in Dublin sometime in April. Hoping to hear back. I want to talk to them about collaborating on a project.
Top 50 Independent Films! Wow, I didn't know these were all independent! I've seen & loved most of them! Reminds me that I need to see Bubba Ho-tep! Did you know that Ron Howard directed the movie Willow?
Did you enjoy Wolverine in the X-Men movies? Well Hugh Jackman is coming back to the screen as the man himself, in Van Helsing. Wheee!
Check out this project to create software-based artificially intelligent ghosts. There's a great audio-activism site at DownhillBattle.org
on Saturday Igor and I are going to try to build two of these!, one each. Should be fun! Going to Chipoteka to buy the parts in a few minutes.
Here are some good quotes that I came across this week:
- "It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." - Jacob Chanowski
- "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." - Naguib Mahfouz
- "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd." - Bertrand Russell
- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin
- "Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth." - Bertrand Russell
And finally, some great sites about How to build your own StarWars props and costumes. For an idea of what they're capable, check out The Fighting 501st: Vader's Fist, a massive group of over 2500 fully costumed Imperial Troops. Wowieeee! I still really want a Light Sabre
Sarajevo Day 2
The river is mud-brown; raging like my stomache. It takes me 2 hours to find a bank machine, and even then it doesn't work Nor does the next! Starving! I find an open bank and exchange my 380 kunas (kn) for 80 konvertible marks (km). 1km is almost = $1Cdn. I buy a sirnica (cheese pie) for 1km! Wheee! They are tasty. I walk all around and stumble upon the centar - Old Sarajevo. It is 700 years old in the Turkish area, and 500 years old in the Austrian area. Beautiful, too. Mosques, Cynagogues, Roman Catholic Cathedrals and Orthodox Churches co-exist peacefully, in close proximity to one another. The woman are all HOT. I sit on a bench for a bit - my feet are really sore. I'm walking around the shopping part of old town when an older man in a suit approaches me and says "Excuse me Sir, do you require accomodations? I have a room for rent right beside this mosque!" I know Vlad has reserved us a room somewhere iwith a guy named Besim, but I don't know if a) Vlad will make it across the border, being a Russian working for the Canadian government living in Serbia visiting Bosnia; b) where this Besim character's building is -- so I hesitate, then decide to ask for his card just in case. Of course, this man's name turned out to be Besim, and I quickly showed him that I already had his mobile phone number programmed into my phone, and said "Oh, I'm already booked to stay at your house!". Smallll world. Crazy luck. He says "Oh, well lets have coffee then!" He buys me a Bosnian kafa, which is super-dark and thick with a chunk of turkish delight in it. Then he shows me the room and gives me a key to his house. O offload my backpack and he ways "Come, I show you around." He shows em where to buy the best cheapest most authentic Bosnian food, and then says "Lets have tea." Besim loves the coffee culture. He says he goes 3-4 times a day. We have mint tea at the "Bodyguard Club", which is operated by the former bodyguard of the former president. Facts Besim told me:
- Sarajevo's population is 1/2 million
- 3 million grenades & mortars hit the city during the war - that's 6 per person!
- 20,000 civilians were killed by Serbian snipers
- the war lasted for 4 years, 92-95 inclusive
- time without electricity: the entire 4 years
- Every conversation begins with either "Before the war..." or "After the war...", to establish temporality.
Now the people here are very friendly, and never fight with one another, even across religions. All industry was destroyed by the war, and unemployment is more than 50%. Their industry now consists of (in order from most to least important): 1) caffees; 2) ice cream, cake, & food shops; 3) arts and crafts (many things made from bullets); 4) tourism. I asm Besim if the hills are safe and he says "No! Stay on the roads. The rest is landmines!" - so I was glad I had stayed on them! He also said "You are welcome in my home" at lest 3 times over the course of the morning. It's nice. Besim is a 47 year old retired telecoms person whose pension isn't enough to live on, so he rents out his room for 15 euros/night/person whenever he can. There's a great view from his balcony! He's very friendly and kind. He thanks God for his house, which he owns outright. I ask if he's lived there long and he sais "Yes, I was born in this house". His family has been living in Old Sarajevo for over 500 years, since the end of the Turkish era. Wowwww.
More tomorrow...