Stephanie Booth's online ramblings
Everything cultural that interests me: music, reading, science, arts in general, news, photography…
[fr] Rentrée. Choses familières.
This year, I spent just two and a half days in Bangalore, at Anita’s. And this year, unlike two years ago, I was ready for the way in which Bangalore is different from the India I’m used to (understand: Pune in 99-00 ;-)).
I enjoyed staying in a modern housing complex which is pretty much a self-sustaining village (coffee shop, pharmacy, swimming pool, tennis courts and probably many other things), eating in nice restaurants (pizza and delicious lettuce, at Chez Mariannick, vietnamese food, at Phobidden Fruit), going to the cinema (Life if Pi with totally scratched 3D glasses you had to hand back before the credits finished rolling), the huge mall, even though we didn’t do any shopping (complete with bomb-check of the car as we entered the parking), having a driver to take us to the girls’ karaoke night out at Opus — and more importantly, back.
I had a little “hero moment” at Opus. The menu cards there are a piece of paper surrounding a candle, like what we would call a “photophore” in French. One of the women of the table below us (we were sitting at the floor tables) was leaning against the empty take next to ours. She didn’t notice that she was also leaning against the menu card and candle.
I smelled something burning, burning hair actually, looked around, and saw the menu card had caught fire just behind her. I move it away, and saw there was a patch of burning hair on the side of her neck — flames and all, maybe the surface of half a hand. I swatted it repeatedly with my hand — hitting her, in fact — and the put out the flames.
I think it took her a little while to figure out what had happened (from her point of view, somebody was suddenly hitting her quite hard on the neck) — but she thanked me profusely afterwards, of course.
Being in Bangalore also gave me a chance to see Ranjita’s beautiful pottery, after meeting her for the first time in Goa a few weeks ago. Check out the My Artitude India Facebook page if you like her stuff. She’s very talented and there is a lot of demand for her pottery.
I definitely plan on visiting her in Pondicherry next time I come to India.
At Anita’s also were of course Kitkit and Tikki — first cat in my lap for weeks. I miss my cats!
It was nice seeing you, Bangalore. I’ll be back for longer next time I have a chance.
Les jours filent en semaines. Il paraît que c’est le week-end, mais je ne l’aurais pas su. Hors du temps et reliée “au reste du monde” par la fragile connexion 2G de ma carte SIM indienne, la Suisse et ses préoccupations me paraissent bien lointaines.
Nous sommes à Mysore en ce moment, à Hillview Farms, petit coin de paradis où je loge pour la troisième année consécutive. Avant ça, le Kerala, Goa, et Pune. J’avais prévu d’écrire plus régulièrement, bien entendu. Ce n’est pas grave.
Cette année, j’ai fait plus de “tourisme” que jamais. Et c’est une bonne chose. J’ai assez facilement tendance à me laisser gagner par l’inertie ambiante, à me laisser décourager par les difficultés probables. Pas mes compagnons de voyage. Nous sommes donc partis un jour visiter deux temples des environs de Pune, Jejuri et Bhuleshwar, et le lendemain grimper sur un des “hill forts”, dont j’ai oublié le nom. Chaque expédition a fait l’objet de nombreuses photos qu’il me reste encore à trier, et mériterait un article dédié. On a aussi visité le Parvati Temple de Pune, qu’en une année sur place je n’ai pas trouvé l’occasion d’aller voir, alors même que notre vétérinaire avait son cabinet au pied de la colline.
Dans le même ordre d’idées, nous avons pris avant-hier une voiture pour aller voir une réserve ornithologique (très chouette) et un temple (j’ai écourté, me retrouver tel le bétail pour aller dire bonjour à la divinité résidente, pas trop ma tasse de thé). C’est bien de sortir un peu. L’oisiveté, il en faut, mais trop, ce n’est pas bon non plus. J’avais déjà remarqué ça en Suisse: pour être heureuse, il me faut un certain degré d’activité.
Que raconter? Que l’eau de la Mer Arabe au Kerala a une température comparable à celle de nos bains thermaux, que les lampions-étoiles et autres décorations de Noël à Goa sont féeriques, que le “homestay” est décidément un moyen extrêmement commode de loger en Inde? Ce sera peut-être plus facile quand j’aurai des photos à vous montrer.
En attendant, ici au chaud-pas-trop-chaud, tout va bien. J’ai prévu de revenir dans deux ans. Ce sera peut-être avant.
[fr] Joyeux Noël!
It’s the time of the year again. Christmas. I like Christmas. I’m not Christian. And like each year, the stuff that annoys me is the “let’s boycott Christmas” movement and the American “Happy Holidays” stuff.
Here’s a post I wrote two years ago which pretty much sums it up and is still valid today.
I think making a point of saying “Happy Holidays” instead of simply “Merry Christmas” only emphasizes the religious/believing dimension of Christmas, in a sort of weird Streisand effect: “ew, it’s a Christian celebration, I’m not Christian, I’m not going anywhere near it.” To me this kind of attitude actually smells of fear. What on earth is wrong with considering Christmas a secular celebration of love and peace for those who do not believe (in Christianity), a celebration which has its historical roots in the dominant religious tradition of Europe and America, and that we keep around even when it’s emptied of its religious dimension? (Er… like Thanksgiving, for example?)
And even if it wasn’t, what is wrong with wishing somebody with a different faith of yours a good celebration of something that’s important to them? I have no problem wishing Muslims a Happy Eid, or Hindus a Happy Diwali — or Christians a Merry Christmas. Why would I seize the occasion to point out that I believe that what they believe is not true? I don’t see the point.
But again, my argument is that Christmas has long since ceased to be a religious celebration (except for the more religious Christians out there) and is now mainly a family/commercial thing.
Which brings us to my second pet peeve: people who throw out the baby with the bathwater and reject all of Christmas and all of the gift-giving because of the excesses involved. Of course, present inflation sucks. But there are ways to reject present inflation without throwing out Christmas. You can decide to have less presents. You can put a price cap. You can decide to have only presents that have cost time rather than money. You can have a present lottery with one present given and received per person. There are options.
What irks me the most with the (mostly) American “Happy Holidays” is that I don’t believe that Thanksgiving gets the same treatment. Hullo? Thanksgiving! The pilgrims! Giving thanks to… who, already? I sometimes see the very same people who turn their noses snobbishly up on Christmas joyfully feast on turkey at Thanksgiving. Why the double-standard?
So Merry Christmas everybody. Whatever you believe.
[fr] Arrivée en Inde!
“Welcome to India!” is a phrase I often use somewhat ironically. Like, when the Indian Consulate General sends back your visa application paperwork with a note saying “please apply in person” because you didn’t see that applications by post had been discontinued (despite the instructions for applying by post still being on the website), and so you end up on the train to Geneva with those very papers they had in their hands the week before, yes, because they stuffed them in your return envelope to send them back to you so you could bring them back to them in person… Yeah, welcome to India, indeed.
So anyway. All this to say that I’ve arrived. After a little airport adventure (a flight that didn’t exist, flying through Zurich instead of Munich, arriving nearly two hours before we were supposed to!) we made it to Pune. I managed to have a decent number of hours of sleep and still wake up before lunch (methi, Nisha knows I love it).
I got to meet the two canine house guests, take note of the advancement of the building works in Akashganga since last year, and this afternoon, was faced with the evisceration of the road leading up to the house. I hope nobody needs to take their car out these next days.
My plans for the week? Not many:
Two hours later: the power is back, I can publish my post! (We’ve been without pretty much all afternoon and Nisha has been cooking by candlelight.)
[fr] Départ pour l'Inde. Programme.
My bags are packed, all is set, the plane takes off at 8.50am tomorrow morning.
Why India? The short answer is that I have lived there, have friends there, enjoy the food and the place. And like a sunny warm break in winter. And a good break in my working year — no e-mails for me during my trip.
What’s the plan?
Off I go!
[fr] Pelote de liens.
Linkball time.
Now that you’re nice and depressed, let Kim Wilde lift your spirits with an impromptu performance on the train home the other night.
[en] A lovely book a friend of mine wrote -- a kind of guided biography to pass down to your children and grandchildren. In French and for sale in Switzerland at the moment, but it will shortly reach the rest of the French-speaking world and be translated in English.
Il fallait y penser: un livre pour se raconter, pour laisser une trace à ceux qui nous sont chers une fois que l’on ne sera plus là.
C’est Christine Wirz qui y a pensé. Christine est une copine de judo et d’uni. Comme moi, elle a perdu sa mère trop tôt: elle avait 13 ans. L’autre soir, elle m’a dit: “Qu’est-ce que ça aurait été différent pour nous, si on avait eu ça pour nos mamans.” Elle a bien raison. Quand les gens ne sont plus là, il y a tout un tas de choses qu’on ne peut plus leur demander.
Christine et Alessandra Marchetto ont publié à compte d’auteur, en créant albiziabooks (avec une page Facebook à aimer!). J’aurais fait le même choix. (Le monde est petit: c’est Corinne qui a fait l’intégration de leur site web, dans le plus grand secret.)
A temps pour Noël, ce très joli livre est disponible dans les librairies romandes (29 CHF). Ne tardez pas toutefois — même si le premier tirage a été important, je ne serais pas étonnée qu’il y ait rupture de stock avant les fêtes.
[fr] Photos et vidéos de chats 🙂
Being a proper cat lady and an expert in social media I of course make sure my cats’ online presence is at least decent. Twitter doesn’t work too well because we only have one phone for the three of us, and I get to use it most of the time. On Facebook, I have thankfully (for my friends) joined a francophone “cat people” group where I post most of the kitty photos I take. Quintus and Tounsi do have their own presence on Facebook, though it’s spotty at best. (Do please like them, it’s good for their egos.)
During the last module of the social media and online communities course I direct, Thierry Weber came to give a couple of hours of training on YouTube and online video. I “played student” for the occasion, which inspired me to tinker a bit more with video in the future. I actually did some “videoblogging” early on, and was a rabid user of the initial Seesmic, but never really got into YouTube. Probably because I joined it early on (my username is “steph“, that should tell you) when it was still really crappy. (Which is why I used to post more to DailyMotion or Viddler.) I’ve also always found messing around with video formats and codecs and upload size a real nightmare, but now it’s much easier. With an iPhone and a programme like iExplorer to get the videos off it (warning: you have to pay), I’m actually looking forward to making some videos while I’m in India next month. Oh yeah: video editing… not so much for me. I shoot short sequences, throw them online, and that’s it.
So, without further ado, cat photos (Tounsi and Quintus) and videos from the last days.
Enjoy!
[fr] Des nouvelles du front.
Here we go again. My last post dates back to November 19th. This would seem to say the after-effects of the Back to Blogging challenge were short-lived! Not quite, though, because I’m writing today, and nearly wrote Tuesday, and am still focused on writing shorter.
The week before last was module 2 of the course on social media and online communities that I direct at SAWI. That means 4 days in the classroom, although I’m not teaching all the time (about two-thirds of the time I’m watching somebody else teach, and learning stuff!), with a conference and networking event by Rezonance on the Thursday night. (Needless to say I had other stuff going on the other evenings.)
The module went great, I was very happy — and from what I heard the students were too — but it was utterly exhausting.
Early this week I finally managed to extract myself from the nightmare of dealing with IRCTC Customer “care”. This is the blog post I started writing, and might finish at some point. Endless to-and-fro e-mails, disastrous user experience, crappy website, ridiculous security rules… I’ll spare you the details for the moment. Weeks of frustration were suddenly solved when I accepted I would get nowhere through official channels. An Indian phone number from a friend in Delhi and a few confirmation codes by IM later, I was finally booking train tickets for my January holiday.
I’m heading to Paris tomorrow for LeWeb, like each year. I’m looking forward to it! Maybe tomorrow or later today I’ll write a post on how to pitch me (or how not to pitch me). Short version? Do your homework. Know that I’m not interested in breaking news. I like cool new toys but what is cool for you is not necessarily cool for me. The main thing that interest me? People. What I’ll do for a friend, I won’t for a stranger. My contact page is harsh, but still stands.
Other than that I’m having some drama with the cats and the concierge. Three cats in my building go out. Tounsi, Quintus, and my neighbour’s Salem. (All the others are indoor cats.) One or more cats are spraying in the corridor. We don’t know who it is. All three cats know how to sneak into the building in between somebody’s feet when they walk in. So there are regularly cats hanging out in the corridor. I clean any markings I find with water, but unfortunately they leave stains (attack the flooring?). So my concierge is asking me to “make an effort” but won’t tell me exactly which effort I’m supposed to make (yeah, prevent my cats from being in the corridor; I’m already doing that).