How to tease your dog.

I just got this one, and I just have to share this with you.

Friday the 13th and more random stuff!

Got to be something happening today, as it is Friday the 13^th, isn’t it?

Not that I can say that I am the most superstitious person in the world, but there is always something about the 13^th and especially when it is a Friday.

For us, there will be something special happening today.

Friends we haven’t seen for about 5 years is at this minute in Hong Kong, and therefore we are going to meet up later in the afternoon for the magical Margarita Therapy, offered by the “Agave” restaurant in Wan Chai.

Dec is the guy here on the right side, writing a greeting to us on our wedding night.

Last time we saw each other must have been on the night of my farewell party in Dresden, sometime in July 2007, so there will be a lot to catch up on, so maybe it is understandable that I am excited and a bit impatient at how the hours are dragging along endlessly.

Maybe after the reunion, I can even man my self up to a wee post here, but on the other hand, who is interested in seeing pictures and reading the minutes of two old friends reunion at an obscure location in Wan Chai in Hong Kong.

And now to something completely different: North Korea.

Yes, North Korea. That country has a special attraction to me, like I want to go there and see for my self, how it is there.

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of stuff about and from there and also been listening to one of my students –from South Korea- and his description of the place and relationship between the north and the south.

And still I am amazed by it, and curious. I even get more curious when I look at Google Earth and zoom into the north. Try it, it is amazing as when you see it together with South Korea, you realize that only one destination is named in the North: Pyongyang, the capitol. No other cities or rivers or any other thing that is categorized and equipped with a name in every other country in the world. And even as you get closer and closer, you get nothing else than the country with its cities, mountains, rivers and roads, like the way you in reality would see it from far up there where the spying cameras for years has provided us with these images of our planets surface; without any names.

Now I have to get back to this student of mine, who I mentioned just before. He showed me yet another film made by a tourist who’d had the possibility to visit the country and to film there. Have a look your self, and read the comments he got to this video.

I will not comment any thing else, just let the film do its own work.

Pyongyang Style 

Click on the link up here. As the interface for blogspot.com has changed, it isn't possible to embed videos from other services than YouTube -or at least I haven't found out how.

"Something nice"

Happy New Year.

That is something nice to say to people when you meet them for the first time after the New Year has started.

Basically it is nice to say something nice every day, but often we just don't do it -enough. Then someone get's an idea and put up something in public, and suddenly people cannot stop saying things in public.

This blog provider has changed the interface, and I have to get accustomed to this new way of doing everything, but it will slowly get there.

Phnom Penh calling!

The very last day of 2011. Are at Phnom Penh airport with John Denver’s evergreen; “Leaving on an Airplane“ playing on my mental mp3 device.

I am leaving on an airplane, leaving Cambodia and finishing of this years Christmas adventure in Cambodia.

Have been here since the 21^st of December and have visited the place that more and more seems to be our chosen Christmas home; the city of Kampot, located south in the country and with access to the gulf of Thailand and to the jungles and mountains towards Vietnam.

Cambodia has so much to offer visitors who are not afraid to go out exploring on their own in the rural countryside, and we are filled with good and exciting experiences from our little Christmas trip.

Well, maybe I will manage to upload some of the best photos from there and also leave some small stories about life and habits in this nice developing country squeezed in between Vietnam and Thailand.

 

Happy New Year to everyone when ever it is your turn as the clock of the globe ticks down.

Today is for education!

How to make the news for TV?
That is just what I try to teach and explain every day, and then I found this high quality example on the video sharing platform some days ago.
I think you deserve to see and learn as well.





I do excuse some parts of the language used in this news clip, but there is no way I can change that.

Music clip of the 22nd 11enth.

"OK go" from Chicago, Illinois. Never heard of them, until today.

How did they make it to the music clip of the 22nd 11enth then?

Well, working with young people gives you a lot of impulses and inspiration, and this was one of those kinds of thing happening.

Some of the students are working on a film from the swimming gala a while back, and then we were talking about music and then searching for some inspiration on that major video sharing platform you know, you can find on this internet.

The music is all right, but that is not why I've chosen to put this up. No, I put it up because of the videos and the amazing choreography in them, and that it is all done in one shot, in one take so to speak.

It is a very cool concept and so full of fantasy and surprises and I wonder how much time they must have been rehearsing and how many takes they had to go through, to make it all come out like it did.

Enough of talking, enjoy.

They even do different video versions of the same song, here exemplified by the song: "This Too Shall Pass".

Again the one shot strategy and some planing and timing.

and then it gets even more weird and nerdy, but very entertaining.

Bali Blog.

Since the last post, my routines has for sure changed. At this moment I'm sitting at a beach hotel in Seminyak on the southwest coast of the Indonesian island Bali. But this is also a change of routine from the previous four days. Since we -me, a colleague and 13 young students- arrived in Bali on the 12th, we have been living on an organic farm on the northeast part of Bali. The farm was run by one family, who has decided to go completely organic and offer room to visitors who would like to experience the traditional Balinese farming life. The farm was placed between the rice paddy fields in a rural district and only accessible by foot over narrow pathways between the rice fields.
At the farm we were sleeping in small typical stilt cabins, which during daytime was open to all sides, and at night time got closed by rolling bamboo curtains. There were some electric plugs there, but no internet. For the students this was maybe the biggest challenge and even bigger than the one cold shower and the one not flushing toilet, which furthermore also was with out a roof and placed quite central not far from the small houses where we all slept, ate and spend the time when we were not doing hard manual labor in the fields.
To be honest, I was quite nervous myself how I would adapt to this environment, and I was certainly thinking how the students would adapt. Coming from the highly developed and quite sterile world of Hong Kong, where every possible facility to ease human life is available, and where facebook is a more natural mean of communication than the face to face dialog, I for sure had my doubts and was just waiting for the mutiny to start. To this fear came the real hard labor we were doing under a merciless burning sun. We were digging holes in the ground and planting banana trees. 33 was the number. And not that we were only digging the holes, we were as well digging out compost behind the pigs and the cows stables, transporting it in buckets and sacks to fill into the holes around the new banana trees.
But no mutiny came. The students stood the distance and also helped each other keeping up the spirit and a positive atmosphere and work ethic. Best of all, they came to me in the evening and said how much they enjoyed their opportunity to try out this kind of life., and even when the task for the next day was announced -turning a plain grass field into flower beds to growing carrots- there was no angry response or any argument, that this was to hard and they would not do it.

Sorry, but I have the next task on in a few minutes, so I have to stop for now. We have to go to the beach for 3 hours of hard surfing.

It is Friday the 11th of the 11th and tomorrow is the 12th of the 11th. And so what?

Bali Blog.

It is Friday again and that is nice, no mistake about that, but this Friday has been a bit weird and so awful busy.

It is now 20 minutes past 6 in the evening, and I am still sitting here at the school while some of my film students are filming at a kind of music carnival. It will go on until about 8 PM I think. Then after that I have to get home and sort out some clothes for the coming week. Just some shorts and t-shirts, underpants, flip-flops, some old shoes I wouldn’t mind to loose, and some other light stuff. This has to go into my bag pack, and then next morning at 6:30 I will be heading to the airport to catch a plane for yet another work trip.

This time I will join a colleague and 13 of the young year 12 students on a trip to Bali. We are going to spend about 8 days there, and will be working on an organic farm in the north of the island, but will as well get some time at a surf school at the beaches in the south.

We will be blogging from there and from the other destinations in Southeast Asia, where our year 12students are working on different projects in the week to come.

If interested the link is here:

http://casweek.rchk.edu.hk

What a hard life it is!

It's Friday!

Todays little youTube!

It is a film from my own backyard -or is it front-garden?
Unfortunately it wasn't me who made this little film about peoples wishes and visions.
It is a nice and positive little document from a very busy and crowded area; Mong Kok.

Go and animate!

Go online and sign on to Goanimate.com. This is an online tool which claims that you can make animations, and that it is easy and fantastic.

As it is my job to try to find new ways and tools for education, I tried to knock on that door and got the acceptance to step in and develop my own little animation.

At GoAnimate, you get some templates to work with, like a set of different locations and some different figures as actors.Then you just have to type in a sort of a dialog and then after 2 minutes -says the introduction- you can publish your own super animation.
Well, all of that isn't quite right. It takes way longer and you have to hope that not a lot of other students or teachers have the same idea at the same time, coz then it is a killer.
I managed to make a wee 12seconds animation about some pool balls talking, and as I hit the button saying publish it was with a slightly uneasy feeling. It all just sounded too good to be true; "create an animation in two minutes?"

And it was too good to be true. After having shown the progress indicator saying "publishing" for about an hour, the computer I was working at, lost the connection to the internet and I had to start all over again.

I did and managed to kind of recreate the little film, and this time it was successful saved and published.

If you feel like it you might be able to watch the wee film here.

GoAnimate4Schools.com: Talking numbers by Jorgen Mortensen

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate4Schools. It's free and fun!

Old style LP Cover Design of the day!

That is just so embarrassing right now. Here I tell you that it is the old style LP cover of the day, and then it turns out that it is a CD released in 2009.

I thought it must have been older as I saw it, as it reminded me of the comic with the "Fabulous Freak Brothers".

So here is a little taste of of it then.

"Poor Old Dirt Farmer".

Music of the day!

The last day of October and we need some music.



At their concert here in Hong Kong in August, Red Hot Chili Peppers didn't disappoint any by playing this old song as one of the extras.

Weird Music clip of the day:



In the late 90ies, Bjørk was one of my absolute favorites, and I remember sitting late at night at a friends house watching MTV and wondering what on earth was going on in this video.
Today I am more experienced, but I still have no clue.
But it look nice.

Far east in -on Okinawa?

Helloooo.
Or should it be aloooo.
Cant really tell but we are somewhere far out in the ocean east of china.
We`re in- or on- Okinawa island.
Since this summer where our holiday trip had to move house,　Okinawa was one of the destinations we wanted to visit, but could`nt coz the time limit of the move and holiday, but who can get everything right?
So now i`ts autumn and we`ve got visitors again, they are always in it for some new experiences, so now it was finally the time for visiting those islands.
Now we are 4 days into the visit, but I cannot show any pictures yet. I only want to tell you that there might be a chance for some photos - and stories- later, when we are back and have some more relaxed time.
I would seriously like to be more relaxed when writing on this blog when travelling, but it always seems to be a hazel to my travel partners, and therefor to my self, coz who wants to be left out being boring, or worse: `no you are not writing this one on the blog`!
If the next post is in Danish or German, you should know why?
By the way: the islands around Okinawa is just stunning.

Happy Birthday China!

Guilin in Guangxi Province.

Today is Chinas Birthday. The first of October 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China.

In Hong Kong this will be celebrated with a big party with a huge fireworks at Victoria Harbour at 8 PM.

I doubt we will be going to see that though. Imagine more than 1 million people trying to get there and get a spot with a good view.

We’ve done this before, once from a restaurant just at the waterfront, and once on a Party Junk direct on the water in that very same Victoria Harbour.

Instead to celebrate this Birthday, I decided to post some pictures from some of our travels to “the mainland”, as it is called here in the “Special Administrable Region” of Hong Kong.

No doubt that there are many issues about China that can be discussed and things that should be improved, but one thing I would like to mention; travelling in and through this huge nation is exciting and there is one thing to mention, one thing where China as a travel destination beats the most of the Western countries; It is still a very safe place to travel.

Lijiang, Yunnan Province.

Dali, Yunnan Province.

Longsheng Rice Terraces, Guangxi Province.

Lijiang, Yunnan Province.

Dalian, Liaoning Province.

Xiamen,Fujian Province.

The Great Wall, Beijing.

Qingdao, Shandong Province.

Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

Yanji, Jilin Province.

Harbin, Heilongjiang Province.

Poetry in the time of online tools.

Once I've said that I never known any software or application that in it self could create art or some sort suggestive narrative.
Then I did try a new experiment today using googles online translation.
I'd written some sort of neo punk cross trash poetry in Danish.
That I fed into the translator and let in turn it into some form of English. Then back to Danish and then yet another turn to English. A third generation online translation, a translation without any reflective effort to transfer a desired meaning from one language to another.

Anyway I kind of like the brutality of the words and the way odd pictures invades my mind, out of nowhere other than a cold electron brain.

Here it is, I call it:

Through patches to survive
I breathe, exhausted
striped
anchored.
The stench from a store boot
breathing resistance
and hidden under a filtered tenderloin
background light is green.
discomfort
when I can again be a man?

Angry young man?

"You do not get it, do you?"

Variability is ready substitutes.
Nix of confusion Lies
tubers clusters with the wording and dissonance
scratchy
a fanfare of pride
Cut along the fence
and deprived of the awareness of our daily bread
hands sew earwigs in butter with wire.
Sweat!
Yes, I sweat.

Eventually, it was winter again

But strangely half and hollow
to see fresh snow transform into an Jesper Klein on the accelerator in the chest freezer.
A wood chipper
a murmur,
pointers car flips and cook,
words, which grows
believe my word on Thor, so great.

A combined hedgehog part of jellyfish arthritis and splat them off
Windshield wiper just could not take it anymore, man
And bread -
"Did you really broke?"
"Yes!"
"What do you eat?"

"No, dammit, what I mean is whole lot collapsed!"

Audio Visuals of the day. Category Music Video.

Trying not to repeat my self I stumbled over a kind of philosophical problem. By titling this post; "Audio Visuals of the day", I kind of limited myself from possible posting any more Videos or music today, didn't I? So the only thing to do was to create categories for Audio Visuals. It is a hard ship to be a blogger, right?

The music today is from New Zealand, and again inspired from my good colleague Mr. Dufty. Yes that is the "kiwi' one who sits right next to me -on the right side- in the office, and who always has either music bumping out of the loudspeakers or the noise of some obscure Rugby Union game. Both mostly to origin from down there, on the other side where the national symbol -a bird without wings- is named after a fruit, and there is more sheep than anything else.
Except fresh air.

One of the good things by working in an international environment is, that you get to know so many new things that you might never had encountered without, like for example this band; "The Datsuns". Get to know more by clicking here, or there I mean, click on the name.

Great song and video -audio visual- but I seriously do excuse the bad language, but think this is as well one of the characteristics of those "kiwies", the use of bad and foul language.