BasBasBas.com

Month: January 2009

  • I’m Fasting in Solidarity with the People of Zimbabwe

    The situation is getting very bad in Zimbabwe. Hyperinflation, lack of clean drinking water or food, violent oppression of citizens, Mugabe is destroying his country through clinging on to his power. We’ve all seen the images.

    I got word from Avaaz that hundreds of activists, including Desmond Tutu, have started a hunger strike in solidarity with the 11 million people in Zimbabwe who can have only one meal per day, or less.

    It’s time for a change. This Sunday, February 1, heads of state are meeting in Ethiopia. A call has gone out for people to fast in solidarity during that day. The pledge is as follows:

    We, the undersigned, pledge to fast for a day in solidarity with the Zimbabwean people. We call on leaders throughout Africa—and the world—to act now to decisively support their struggle for justice, democracy, and survival.

    The fast is just from sun up to sun down. I’ve always wondered about fasting, about ascetics, or Muslims during Ramazan/Ramadan, what they go through. I’m quite sure I won’t enjoy the fast, but it’s for a great cause and after all, I have a choice. Many people around the world do not.

    Take the pledge. Do it with me and 25,000 others. Just for one day, between sun up and sun down, how hard can that be?

    Go to take the pledge now!

    Photo by Sokwanele – Zimbabwe, shared under a Creative Commons license.

    Are you in? Why is this worth fasting for?

    Keep in touch with me next Sunday to see how I’m doing. Follow me on Twitter.

  • The Cannabis Villages of Bulgaria

    Cannabis Wanted PosterCannabis is always a very controversial topic. Some of us have tried it, most of us haven’t. Some of us regard it as innocent, many of us regard it as a dangerous drug. In Bulgaria, marijuana is illegal and I’ve been told the justice system here doesn’t make a distinction between hard and soft drugs, so marijuana is essentially treated as a hard drug. Even though this is the case, a lot more young people I know here regularly smoke weed or have tried it than the young people I know in Holland.

    While doing research for a presentation on The Netherlands – Drugs, Prostitution and Same-Sex Marriage, I already discovered that in the United States about 35% of all people have smoked marijuana at some point in their lives, whereas in the Netherlands it was around 19%. Makes one think about whether the policies of banning cannabis are effective… Whether you smoke it or not.

    In some areas of Bulgaria, particularly the south-west near the Greek and Macedonian borders I’ve been told, there are entire villages of farmers that rely on cannabis harvests for their daily bread. Supposedly the entrance road to the village is protected by mafia who most likely have deals with the police to keep them away – although in recent years there have been a few busts in these villages, such as in Gabrene, where 1600kg of cannabis was found. One look at the news articles shows that it’s just simple villagers between 50 and 70 years old who are doing this, even a 63 year old priest was caught.

    Bulgaria is the poorest nation in the EU and these people are doing what they have to do to survive. The people allegedly pretend to be growing crops and herbs and if you tell them it’s weed they will go “Oh really? What’s that?” It’s right in the center of their normal crops, like corn.

    Another problem is that organised crime buys the cannabis from the farmers for low prices and sells it in the cities for much higher prices, so every time someone consumes cannabis (which is more innocent than alcohol), they make the mafia money and help them strengthen their grip on Bulgarian society.

    Photo by elrentaplats, shared under a Creative Common license.

    BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

  • Happy Birthday To Me!

    Happy BirthdayIt’s my 23rd birthday today! Over the last few years I’ve started to care less and less about my birthday, maybe partly due to be away from my family. I remember last year I hardly cared about my birthday, but due to the fact that it coincided with my last day of my internship in the Bulgarian National Radio, I had a great day.

    This year I felt the same apathy towards my birthday, partly because I’ve just been very busy arranging things and getting myself settled here in Sofia. Bulgarians are great when it comes to birthdays. In Holland you might get a call or a text message saying happy birthday from a few close friends and your family, but that’s about it (in my experience). In Bulgaria however, you can expect almost everybody who has your number to give you a call to wish you a happy birthday, a great life, great health, great love, luck with any new plans or projects, great friendships et cetera.

    Probably the best thing about Facebook, besides the fact that it’s really useful to keep in touch with your networks of friends, is the birthday reminders. I’ve had a lot of great birthday greetings from my friends today and would like to thank them all. Dutch, Russian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Spanish, German, English… Dankjewel, спасибо, благодаря, teşekkürler, gracias, danke, thanks!

    Oh, and I was just sent this Bulgarian popfolk/chalga happy birthday music video. The video’s probably not supposed to be funny, but it’s making me laugh a lot.

    Photo above by enggul.

    BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

  • Groove Armada’s New Mini-Album… For Free!

    Groove Armadas new EP... for free!Groove Armada, the famous big beat, electronica and trip-hop producers, are sharing their newest EP freely with their fans through a nifty downloading scheme. One of the guys from Groove Armada recently stated about filesharing that “it’s utterly futile to try and stop people, just like it was stopping people creating mix tapes once they had two decks and a tape recorder”.

    You can download Groove Armada’s newest mini-album by clicking here or on the picture (provided by aeter). All you need to do is enter your age, since the deal is sponsored by Bacardi rum and you have to be above the legal drinking age in your country, and your email address to receive the first song of the album immediately and to acquire the rest later.

    This is very interesting to me, since I’ll be doing my final thesis of my bachelor degree very soon and it will be about the future of music distribution. It is very obvious that labels need to adopt new business models and that the old models simply don’t work anymore, since music is going back to being a service, instead of a product, so access is the most important thing. Groove Armada have realized this very well and have started this music distribution campaign which is bound to go viral (it already is).

    Apparently Groove Armada spoke about this deal with Bacardi at the MIDEM Conference  in Cannes, France where the music business meets every year. Below is an example of one of their chillout songs, for two more famous songs, check out Superstylin (big beat) or My Friend (lounge/electronica) on YouTube.


    Groove Armada – Fly Me To The Moon from Giul Viera & Fabia Oliveira on Vimeo.

    For Groove Armada’s new mini-EP, click here. If you’re a music lover like me, also have a look at The MiX-Files where I post my DJ sets as Spartz (for drum ‘n bass), spacescape (experimental & psychedelic), and EvilAngle (house/eclectro/breakbeat).

    BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

  • Finally found a flat!

    So I finally found my flat for the time to come. I moved from Istanbul to Sofia, Bulgaria one and a half week ago and have been flathunting each day, but it took quite a while to find something.

    I lived here one and a half year ago and prices were quite low, but to find something decent near the center for a reasonable price is very difficult now, especially for a foreign student.

    What an awful process. Going from flat to flat, waiting for agents, replying to online ads for apartments that have been given out already, saying yes to a flat to find out that they’d rather have a Bulgarian living there and not a foreigner. Saying yes to a flat to hear the next day that they are only interested in people for a long-term stay. Seeing all corners of the city, resisting agents’ arguments on why some nasty remote suburb is a great place to live (which it is not).

    What a painstakingly exhausting process. Hence the pic, from Flickr by hiromy.

    Well, yesterday I found my apartment. I still have to sign the contract later today, but it looks like all is well, but you can follow my Twitter feed to get an update when everything is all done, or wait for the next blog post.

    The flat is quite close to my old apartment where I lived up until a year ago (how time flies), although my old apartment had a much better location. It has a separate living room and kitchen, although I prefer the two combined because I’m lazy, plus I like to listen to my DJ sets or other music while I’m cooking. A bedroom with a nice double bed; bigger bedroom than the last one, for those in the know. Since I’ll be spending a lot of time at home behind the computer, to write my final thesis, I wanted to make sure I’d be comfortable at least. Now I’m sure. A video soon!

    Below are two videos of my old flats, the first one is of the flat I previously lived in in Bulgaria, the second is the flat I shared with 3 other students in Istanbul.

    BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

  • So Virgin founder Richard Branson took my friend to Washington today

    What the f…, Len! Apparently he was being his usual cheeky self this morning when attending a speech of Richard Branson, the British industrialist famous for founding Virgin. You could SMS questions to him during the speech, which he would then answer afterwards. Well, Branson said that he would be taking his private jet to Washington later to attend the inauguration of Obama, so Len Hulsbos and his friend Omar sent him an SMS asking if he could join.

    I guess the conference hall was filled with laughter as Richard read out the SMS, followed by surprise when he said that they could come. Congratulations, mate! Looks like your cheekiness got you somewhere! 😉

    Omar, Richard and Len (photo from here)

    Can’t wait to hear Len’s stories. I hope he’ll send out some more messages to his Twitter feed or posts a story on his blog, Pomtidom.com. Let’s stick this in the face of our university professors. Me meeting Philip Kotler, you flying on the jet of Branson.

    Cradle of Design and Mankind is no Island are destined to be successful!

    Apparently he’s been eating caviar and drinking champagne on his way to Washington. More about his adventure soon! Right here, or there.

    Dutch article by NOS (click).
    English article by Reuters.

  • Google Friend Connect

    Still apartment hunting. Quite exhausting and boring at the same time. You have to be ready to rush from apartment to apartment, but sometimes you’re simply waiting for people to contact you to tell you about new available flats.

    So, while I was waiting yesterday, I set up Google Friend Connect, which allows me to directly connect to the community/readers of the blog, but also for you to connect to me, or even each other. Google seems to be rolling out a lot of options for Friend Connect, with which it aims to turn the more static media on the web into social media, or even integrate them with the existing social media, such as Facebook.

    I’m going to activate some of them, for you (and myself) to play around with. First thing I want to experiment with is a wall on which community members can write their messages or even post YouTube videos that might be interesting to me or other people that visit this site. Not sure how/where to integrate it however, since I can’t reduce the width to less than 280 pixels. I’ll be looking at that. For the meantime get connected. Scroll to the Google Friend Connect widget in the left sidebar and join up!

    Bas

  • How I Got Robbed in Istanbul Pt. 3

    After being robbed we went on a manhunt with some bad ass Istanbul cops dressed in even more bad ass civilian clothes. The adrenaline started to subside and feelings and thoughts arose… The aftermath of a robbery, including what happens if you don’t learn your lesson the first time.

    How I Got Robbed in Istanbul part 1.
    How I Got Robbed in Istanbul part 2.

    After making sure we’d keep in touch over the next few months, while I was living in Istanbul, we said goodbye. It was now morning and I got on the bus, full of people ready to go to work, or wherever people go at 7 in the morning on a Sunday (and it couldn’t have been church, because it’s Turkey). On my way home the events of the night kept going through my mind like a film. Even when I got to my bed, it was tough to fall asleep. My mind was noisy…

    Could I have intervened? Why had I been so calm during the robbery? Did I put myself at risk by refusing to give the robber my stuff? I also felt a kind of compassion for the robber, which surprised me the most. When we were looking for the robber with the police, on one hand I hoped we’d find him, so that we could get my friend’s phone back and that justice would be done… However, I also knew that justice would not be done if we found him. He’d most likely get the living crap kicked out of him and with a few broken ribs and maybe a broken limb he’d be put together with hard criminals, murderers and rapists for a few months. That doesn’t seem like justice to me. So I sincerely hoped for the robber that we wouldn’t find him and that he might change his ways.

    I started to feel like the guy needed help. I was unimpressed by him and he seemed like a total rookie, so maybe something could still be done. I believe that if the guy had felt that he had a choice, he wouldn’t be out robbing people. Imagine having to threaten people’s lives for a living; I don’t think this can make a human being happy. I have all the chances in the world. I’m more likely to be happy than the guy who robbed us, I’m more likely to achieve my dreams, to attain a certain level of spiritual development even… while this guy has no prospects at all. I felt very sorry for him, but at the same time I felt guilty for feeling sorry for him. I guess it was human and societal values colliding.

    Over the next days I started getting a little scared. I realized that anyone can rob someone successfully quite easily. All you need is a knife and a quiet spot… and it only needs to be quiet for one minute, that’s all. I grew very wary and my previous feelings of sometimes being uncomfortable in certain situations in Turkey, which arose from culture shock, were now transformed into fear. I constantly kept my guard up during my time in Istanbul.

    A week after the robbery, a friend of mine and I went to a club in the party district of the city again, Beyoğlu. It was a cool underground place, but they were charging 8 lira for the beers (EUR 4.- / $6.- more or less). So after trying to bargain, we decided to get some alcohol outside and drink it somewhere in the street. My friend suggested drinking it in some sidestreet, but I insisted that we’d drink it somewhere in a very busy area. We walked down to a big road where a lot of taxi’s were waiting for customers. Most of the taxidrivers wait outside their cars and talk to each other. We judged it as a safe place, even though the ghetto started just at the other side of the road.

    After about 5 minutes, some dodgy looking guy came over and started talking to us in Turkish. I tried to tell him that I don’t speak Turkish and he should go away, but my friend insisted that it was fine and nothing would happen. Everything would be alright, as it always is with him and I’ve got to admit, this friend really knows how to deal with sketchy people. So apparently the dodgy guy spoke German, as did my friend, and they started conversing. We shared some vodka and some beer, but the whole time I was filled with adrenaline and extremely on guard… my body even shaking.

    At some point I was talking in English to my friend and I noticed the guy tapping his finger on my friend’s pocket… I immediately told my friend, since I assumed the guy would try to pickpocket him. Some taxidriver joined the conversation and another guy. I figured we were safe from getting robbed, but we should still be completely on our guard… I couldn’t enjoy the alcohol anymore and wanted to go back into the club.

    We tried to have some fun with the guys and we even ended up taking a picture with them.


    The dodgy guy on the left, my friend in the middle and a friendly guy on the right (sunglasses came from us). The guy on the right actually showed me pictures of his children which he carried around and really wanted to share to show me who he is and what’s important to him. Or possibly because he didn’t speak English and I didn’t really speak Turkish, so it was just the easy way out.

    At some point this guy left and an acquaintance of the dodgy guy came by. They said hi and the guy joined the conversation. It was now him, a friendly taxi driver (who seemed a bit wary about the guys we were speaking to), the dodgy guy, my friend and I, in a street with plenty of people around and a lot of passers-by. I really wanted to go back in and was just waiting for my friend to finish his conversation… At some point I heard my friend saying “hey hey hey!” in a strict tone and saw the guy passing a phone to his acquaintance who was standing behind him, but right in front of me. I got up with a new rush of adrenaline in my body.

    The urgent tone in my friend’s voice might have scared the guy and he got the phone back from his acquaintance and passed it back to my friend. The taxidriver had disappeared. My friend told the guy in German that he would be very friendly, but he should not try to play tricks like that on him. He was very strict on him and the guy (more or less sincerely apologized). Then immediately police showed up and asked me if there was any problem. I told them to ask my friend if there’s any problems. My friend said there are no problems at all, but the cops still asked the dodgy guy for his ID and they stuck it in their pocket after giving it a glance. Guess he would have to report to the police station to get it back. Then I saw the taxidriver again. I think he had warned the police immediately. Very friendly.

    The police told us to get our beer and get out of there, so we did. 10 meters down the street two angry men approached me and told me to throw away my beer… I hesitated, but they showed their ID’s and were cops in civilian clothes. Wow, so much police presence, yet so much crime.

    So this had been the second time I was out drinking on the street in that area and both times someone had tried to rob a friend of me… Once successfully, once not. This made me even more pessimistic about the safety in Istanbul. The city’s safe if you play by its rules… but I’ve never been the type of person to follow the exact rules.

    The next months I felt caged… I didn’t feel free at all, scared to write too critically about the Turkish government and getting my site blocked or getting charged for “anti-Turkishness” (a law once useful perhaps, but now often applied in fascist ways by corrupt politicians and judges), but also scared to be alone on the streets at night. It was the final push I needed to fall into a culture shock that would last for about two months.

    Towards the end of my stay I really started to enjoy myself again and feel alright, but it was too late.

    The good part however: I learned how to deal with culture shock, I got some life experience and I learned to be a little bit more careful at night.

    This was the final part of the three piece series. Thanks for following.

    BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

  • My Old Neighbourhood in Istanbul

    Still looking for my new neighbourhood here in Sofia, which is taking up quite a bit of time. It’s not as easy as 1.5 year ago, since the city got remarkably more expensive. I’m not worried though, patience and perseverance are the key to the keys of a great flat, in a great neighbourhood. If you know something good however, not more than 10-15 minutes by public transportation from the center, you can email me at .

  • How I Got Robbed in Istanbul Pt. 2

    We had just been robbed… I had gotten off with just being threatened with a knife, but my friend had just lost an expensive phone. After chasing our robber we decided to go to the police and a new adventure was about to start.

    Click here for part 1.

    We headed to the closest police station. We got there and my body was still filled with adrenaline… the rush started subsiding and I started to feel a bit weak. I realized I had to sit down for a second or I would faint. Funny how you can switch from a clear, calm and focused mental state to nearly passing out in such a short time, but then again I’ve always performed well under pressure.

    We were told we had to take it to a different station, so we went there. That’s when we found out we were robbed just 3 corners away from the main police station of the district. We went in and told the cops about what had happened. We were sent to some office where there were a few people telling their accounts to police officers. My friend translated that the basic attitude of these guys was that it’s people’s own fault if they get robbed; they shouldn’t have been in that place, at that time. We were sitting in a waiting room and there was an older man (in his 50s or 60s) whose head was bleeding. My friend talked to him and apparently he had been mugged by the same guy. Apparently he had also held the knife to the head of the guy and had cut him. We told the police that it was probably the same guy and they told us to wait. They said they would send some cops in civilian clothes out to act as bait.

    After about ten minutes we were told to come along and we were introduced to two super bad ass cops in civilian attire. The one had hair until his shoulders and a long red leather coat. The other was shorter and had a black leather jacket and looked like he had a mix of coffee and whiskey as blood and ate burning cigarettes for breakfast.  They told us to get in their car and we started driving. Their attitudes were dead serious. I knew that if we found the robber, they’d beat him up quite badly. Turks hate thieves intensely and many people condone the violence they endure when they’re caught.

    We drove back to the street where we were robbed. Nothing there. We drove through the street where we were drinking beers. At some point we passed some people who were sleeping on the street under a blanket. They stopped the car and told us to get out. We got out. The guy grabbed the blanket and uncovered the people in a rather rough manner. He asked us if it was one of  them and we said no. We then got back into the car, blanket still lying on the street. The cops were definitely a bit rough around the edges.

    We drove down to a neighbourhood which is right next to Taksim, not more than a 10 minute walk from the main street. We entered the neighbourhood and immediately we were in a different world. From the nicest, and one of the richest and most modern sites of Istanbul, to one of immense poverty with a high degree of f—ed upness. The streets were no longer asfalted or paved… There was trash everywhere along the dark or dimly lighted streets. There were prostitutes and transexuals in some streets and murky guys standing around in others, even though it was after 5 in the morning.

    At some point we stopped in the middle of one of the streets, a rather crowded one. One of the cops got out and went into a building. As he stepped into the entryway he disappeared into the darkness of the shadows. Neither of us knew why he had stepped out to go there, but after a few minutes he came back, got into the car and indicated that we hadn’t found him. We drove around for a few more minutes and then went back to the police station.

    That neighbourhood is the worst place I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen quiet a few bad places. The most alarming side to it however is that it’s right next to the area where people go out and get drunk. Robbers can just come out of the neighbourhood, go back to their neighbourhood where nobody will follow them and they won’t be found.

    The next post will be about the aftermath… What I realized afterwards, how it might have affected my stay in Istanbul and the opinion of the Taksim district, and another similar event… Leading me to the conclusion there’s a 99% chance someone will try to rob you if you hang out in certain parts of the district at night. Follow the rules kids, don’t f–k around in this area! Especially at night.

    What are the best and worst experiences you’ve had with police officers? What do you think about the officers in your country? Do you have similar areas next to the most important party district of your city?

    BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

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