January 2012
1 post
October 2011
1 post
Making Money out of Misery
Living in the Balkans is wonderful. Well most of the time.
As in every country across our world not everything is perfect in so many ways and I suppose that’s normal.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has more than its fair share of dysfunctionality and that is certainly a fact, combined with an amazing low standard of human rights, it can be depressing at times.
I find myself at times looking...
August 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Balkan Acrobatics
Last week I spent a short, but enjoyable, amount of time in the village of Krupa na Vrbasu, some 25 kilometres south of Banja Luka, here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, watching a collection of International acrobats and circus skills performers conducting workshops with children from the locality.
Krupa na Vrbasu was the location chosen to host some 35 performers for a 7 day period, where...
3 tags
July 2011
11 posts
11 tags
Experimenting at Demofest
I really think it must be hard to be a rebel here in this part of the Balkans. I really do. The peer pressure that’s so evident stifles the will of most young people to want to do much in the way of progression (apart from run away to another country where they think the streets are “paved with gold”). They simply don’t want to see that it’s “Same Shit,...
9 tags
Missing Something can be SOOOO Painful
I had really planned to get to Social Innovation Camp, in Sarajevo, to see what was brewing and to meet some people I feel can stimulate me professionally.
Sadly it wasn’t to be BUT this video really makes the pain of not having been there worse (in a good way people)
4 tags
A Supersized Update?
Well the Sarajevo “Arches” has some 18,750 likes on their Facebook Fan Page as at 19 July, so the “Games afoot”.
Menu is: BigMac, Royal, Cheeseburger, Nuggets, Pomfrit, McSundae, McFlurry, Happy meal s poklon igračkom, McCafe sa izvanrednom ponudom različitih vrsta kafa i kolača
NO “Turbo-Mac” YET!
11 tags
Would you like that Supersized?
My holiday “read” this summer has been “The Dark Tourist” by Dom Joly. For me it was a book that showed the human, more personal life of Dom, who is famous for his off the wall and cutting comedy on TV. You can get the book and read it for yourself if you are weirdly interested in what a “Dark Tourist” does, but Dom said something that struck me in regards to...
8 tags
It's THAT word again!
A totally roasting weekend (eating, funnily enough, “roast lamb”) has had me considering whether or not to sacrifice all my current social media platforms and tools for a solitary presence using Google Plus, or Google+.
I am not sold on the argument that Google+ is another passing fad, as already I can see how more in control of my content I am. The idea of “circles”...
7 tags
Tourism, Tourists, Foreigners ....
Walking around my local town of Laktasi and the city of Banja Luka some 25kms away, in this glorious summer weather, there is, I feel, something missing that’s so evident in other countries across Europe and in fact, the world.
What’s missing?
Tourists.
Well there may well be the odd one or two, but as you walk around this beautiful country you very rarely hear a non Balkans...
8 tags
"Good" things that go "Bad" don't have to be...
The past few days have seen a catastrophe unfolding in the UK concerning unethical and I have to add, unlawful, practices by journalists especially surrounding the use of “phone hacking”.
Centring on the News of the World newspaper, it has transpired that as well as “snooping” on the lives of so called “celebrities”, the newspaper has also hacked into...
A good day for the Balkans I think
A good day for the Balkans I think (mp3)
9 tags
June 2011
5 posts
5 tags
7 tags
Changes Happen Slowly
I am now settling into my new, “slower”, lifestyle here in north west Bosnia. Living in a very rural environment does takes some time to get used to. Firstly, I am a city boy who was born in London and I have never sat comfortably with gardening and traditional ways of doing things and secondly, the pace of life for me has always been hectic to break point, maybe that’s why I...
6 tags
Weird Social Media Habits :(
You know, when you commit to writing about almost anything, there should be an element of research, cross checking content to see how factual and credible the information is and if the story is interesting. Some of the basics of “Journalism”.
I look at things differently. I am not a trained or even experienced journo, rather a broadcaster that’s fallen (on occasions) into a...
7 tags
Social Innovation for the Balkans?
Some times living in a country “in transition” can be very frustrating and hope can quickly get lost when “normality” (whatever that is) disappears from everyday life. It happens all too often, even 16 years after the terrible 90’s here in Bosnia.
So 2 weeks today I intend to be on my way to Sarajevo to attend a weekend of “Social Innovation (SI) Camp”.
...
6 tags
Please DON'T send things to Bosnia!
Back in late May 2010. I was in the admin phase of my departure from Kabul and had an amount of things to “take back home”. My employers (NATO/ISAF) gave a generous 50kg shipping allowance for personal effects, which I fell easily into BUT I had a small portable suitcase studio that I wanted to ship to Bosnia, rather than the UK where my personal effects would be delivered.
Off I went...