BasBasBas.com

Sounds like a title for a memoir, but it’s not. Ever since I started studying in Amsterdam 4 years ago, I’ve been on the move a lot. The longest I’ve lived in one place since then is about 11 months I believe. This is an overview of the places I’ve lived in, at home and abroad, and the people I lived with.

How I’ve Lived

Uilenstede (Map)

The first place I moved to is probably the most dreadful, although some people like it there. It’s a student campus just outside Amsterdam in the suburb town called Amstelveen – although its residents would prefer me to call it a city.

How I got there

I was living with my parents and every day I had to take the bike to the busstation, the bus to the trainstation, the train to another trainstation and a metro to the stop at my university. Meanwhile I was going a little crazy at home, with two parents and two other brothers and all three of us were getting a little too big to stay under one roof… So I convinced my parents that I could do much more homework if I lived by myself, closer to school and after a lot of dinner conversations dominated by the topic, they agreed. I arranged the housing via my university and a little later… I was moving into this flat on the first floor (not the ground floor).

How I’ve Lived There

I made sure that it at least looked like I was not being lazy and scored a 100% for my first university exam which was in Global Marketing. Besides, I didn’t have internet in my campus room, there was no student internet cafe, so there was not much to do besides reading, studying, sleeping, eating and playing a game every now and then. The communal kitchen sucked, and I tried not to go there. I hardly met any of the other people living in my hallway. Two nights a week I was awoken by the couple upstairs having their nightly pleasures. I went to my parents every weekend and took my laundry with me… Partied it up in my hometown and went back to Uilenstede. There was a lot of green around though and it was a great area for running, which I loved to do back then. I read a lot about Buddhism and even though I disliked the place, the loneliness pushed me to start my spiritual development. I think I also had a girlfriend back then who lived in the south of Holland so I spent quite some time with her also – missing a bunch of classes, but it didn’t show in my school results.

I had a bedroom/studyroom/livingroom, my own bathroom and a hallway with a big closet. Kitchen was shared, but I had my own cooker and fridge in my room. I also had a microwave, which I used, a lot.

Schepenbuurt (Map)

When I could terminate or extend my contract after half a year, I knew there was only one way to go. Terminate that sucker Arnold Schwarzenegger style! So I moved back to my parents and looked for a new place for a while. I was looking in both Amsterdam as well as Utrecht, one being the city where I studied and the other being the city where I had most of my friends. By train, they’re just 25 minutes away from each other. That looking for a new place for ‘a while’ turned out to be 2 months; because it can be really hard to find a place in those two cities.

How I Got There

A friend told me about a friend of his who was living in a studenthouse and they had a room that was freeing up. I went there and both myself and another girl were clearly the contestors for the room, as far as the students were concerned. Their landlord however, had placed two people in their house, one being an alcoholic who had his wife and children walk out on him and the other was a 35 year old unemployed Arab guy who barely spoke Dutch. They decided to go for some quiet girl and they would not have it any other way. The friend of my friend (Marc) apologized to the girl and myself and said he knew another house in that neighbourhood where two rooms were freeing up and he would try to get us in there.

A few days later I was once more sitting in a living room full of students and we talked and all of us tried to show the best side of ourselves. After a short while the people that were living in the house left the living room to discuss who they liked most. They came back and both the girl from the previous time and myself were picked. Hooray!

How I’ve Lived There

I had a tiny attic room, but when it was time for signing the contracts the other girl told my landlord that it turned out she could not terminate her previous contract and she left. I then got the slightly bigger, but still very tiny attic room (more later). We then had to pick a new candidate for the other room. We had a few girls come by… Two girls were absolutely awful, so we decided to call someone else who reacted but didn’t show up and beg her to please come by. She came in and we immediately knew she had the place. I lived there for about 1 year and I saw many people come by. I moved in with:

Jesse, Jaap, Ruud, Iris and Rosa and the girl we picked was called Ayla. We lived with 7 people and shared one toilet, one shower and one kitchen. Then people started moving out and within half a year I was the last one left with a whole bunch of new people: Laurens (for 1/2 months), Petter, Dani, Laura and Wieger and one more girl whose name I can’t recall.

In the end it was perfect. The fire department came by and determined only 5 people could live there. It was Petter, Dani, Laura, Wieger and me for quite some time and we all became good friends. The house was in harmony. Then we got the bad news: the landlord was selling the house, we could either move to another house of theirs or find something for ourselves within a month. I said bye to my tiny attic room with just 2 square meters where I could stand up straight and a very low corner where I put my matress to sleep, my bedcave.

There was the occasional coffee smell in the neighbourhood since there’s a coffee factory right next to it.

Kanaalweg 92 (Map)

How I Got There

Not sure how I found out, but I was informed of a place that rented out rooms in an old office building. It was going to be demolished some day, but until then, they got a permit to let people live in there. So they built a bunch of student rooms into the building and moved in 240 creative people. I contacted the foundation that was running it (Stichting Tijdelijk Wonen) and could move in one or two days later.

How I’ve Lived There

This must have been one of the best times in my life. I had some friends living in the same building and two of my friends moved in a little bit later. I only lived there for a few months, but it was great. My room overlooked a small canal in front of the building. Oh and my room was pink.

I had a lot of fun, a lot of nights sitting in my room with one of my best mates Bouwe, drinking some beers, listening to music. Besides my computer, the most used item in my room was my microwave/oven (in the evening for my meals, in the morning for my bread), closely followed by my bed. I really loved this place, it was excellent. Showers were shared and so was the kitchen, but there was a lot of space and the people living there were cool and progressive. How progressive they were I found out once more through Googling the address… Turns out there was a Foundation for the Development of Lesbian Culture housed in the building.

After four months or so, I moved to Sofia, Bulgaria for the first time and had to say goodbye to the building. It was being torn down 2 months later, so I would never see it again.

Sofia, Bulgaria #1 (Map)

Well, it didn’t hurt for long, since I was moving abroad and was so enveloped in this new place that I forgot all about my life back in Holland.

How I Got There

This is a long story, but in one sentence, I was inspired by the Balkan music one afternoon and decided to go live there. When I got there I got into contact with an agent who showed me a few flats in the center of Sofia and I picked my favourite.

How I’ve Lived There

Oh how I hit the jackpot. For the same price as all those places above, I got my own big living room with a kitchen, a bedroom and bathroom… Everything was included! Tables, chairs, couches, TV (which I never used), well, everything. You can have a look at it in the video below.

I lived by myself for the first time since Uilenstede and this time I LOVED IT! I was mixing a lot of music in my living room, eating at restaurants in the area, partying a lot, and working a lot. I had a great time that half year, which led to me moving back 1 year later.

Which I will post about soon… in part 2 What are the coolest places where you’ve lived? And the strangest? Leave your story in the comments or post about it on your blog and leave the link here.

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.

A few weeks ago the Bulgarian psychedelic trance community, OUIM.org, celebrated its 5th birthday. They invited a bunch of great progressive psytrance DJs like Vibrasphere, Sandal Wood, Kalumet, Kliment and there were also some harder sounds from Bulgaria and Macedonia (see it here). Well, I went there and made a video… so without further ado, I present to you………. ME!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHLH31PKNvY

Like it? Are you in Bulgaria also? Then come out to the Astral Projection party on the 4th of April!

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.

For a while now I’d been thinking it would be kind of cool if there was a Tweetup in Sofia, especially after all the Twestivals in 202 cities around the world. Well, a fellow Sofia resident, @brainpicker, contacted me with the idea and now it’s finally going to happen.

It will be held on the 24th of February in a bar/club called Hambara, which is a very special location. It’s located at ul. 6-ti Septemvri 22, just behind restaurant Zion. You can recognize it by a wooden doorway in the alleyway behind the restaurant; the door’s unmarked and you have to knock (more here). Would love to see you there at 9 o’ clock in the evening!

So if you’re a Twitter user in/around Sofia, then come to the meet up. Help spread the message and use the hashtag #hambara09.

See who’s Tweeting about the Sofia tweetup (#hambara09) (more…)

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.

A while ago I attended a concert by Fukkk Offf to do some video journalism for SPIN Magazine’s new online video platform, SPIN Earth (beta). The video I made was a bit too long for them to use, but haven’t had time to cut it down since. I figured it might be appreciated by some of the blog’s audience, especially since you can meet the real me.

Shot at Club Dirty, 13-Dec-2008 for SPIN Earth.

Music by Fukkk Offf (Rave Is King): myspace.com/fukkkofff

More of these?

The influence of new media on current day politics

An essay by Bas Grasmayer

The 20th century was the age of mass media. The impact of radio during the first half of the century and that of television during the second brought politics closer to home. Starting from people grouping around the one radio in their neighbourhood, to the radio in their street, until the point that everyone had a radio in their home. The same happened for television and through these media politics entered the living room. Through sound at first, but later through moving images which became more detailed and more accurately coloured over the course of the last century.

We’re now close to ten years into the new century. Television and radio are still important, but there is a new player in the field of mass media: the internet. This essay will look at how the internet has already influenced politics and hopes to answer, in part, the following question:

How is the World Wide Web as a medium influencing
politics and the government right now?

New Media

In the 2008 US Presidential elections, politicians were seen embracing new media. Barack Obama became microblogging service Twitter’s most followed user and YouTube set up a site called You Choose ’08 dedicated to the elections. On the latter, campaign teams posted videos hoping they would go ‘viral’, a term used to describe the phenomenon of certain content on the internet being spread out through huge networks of users, which is often initially an exponential process. Ron Paul, who was running to become the Republican presidential candidate, had so much support on the internet that TIME magazine at one point commented that due to “his  success  recruiting  supporters  through  new  social  media  channels” he was “the  new  2.0  candidate”.

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amfufu.com by @RuthsCreations has won the Giveaway! So long Entrecard!

I announced earlier that I’ll be leaving Entrecard in my 8 Reasons to Quit Entrecard post. The day has come and my final ad has run. I’m leaving now. I have however 1100+ credits left, that I’ll be GIVING AWAY to visitors of this blog.

For the next 24 hours every EC user that Tweets me (http://twitter.com/spartz) a link to their profile gets a chance to win a share! (keep reading!)

Since I want everyone to have an equal chance and don’t want to give away 100 credits to people (since that’s really nothin), I will do it as follows…

I’ll divide the total number of participants by 7 and pick that number of winners via random.org. I previously suggested to give every seventh person a share, but since this can be monitored, I decided to make it more random. So tweet me now (!) using this format:

@Spartz I am joining your Entrecard Giveaway (http://doiop.com/EC). The link to my profile is: http://is.gd/c9sQ

You can use a link shortener for your profile URL at is.gd – but this is not a rule.

Just follow these simple rules. I highly value people who follow instructions, because it shows that they care and that they’re paying attention. Any entry not according to instructions will not be counted.

I guess this adds one more reason to the list of reasons to use Twitter.

BasBasBas.com is about my life as a Dutch student living in Istanbul. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul 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.

I am leaving Entrecard. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about it and recent events have made the decision all the more easier. I’ve turned off advertising on my blog. When my last ad finishes, on the 16th, the widget goes. Until that time I’m still returning drops.

Entrecard is a social network for bloggers who can drop by each others’ blogs and earn credits in return. With these credits, they can advertise on each others blogs. A nice system, but in the end it’s not worth it for me.

8 Reasons to Quit Entrecard

If you’re a blogger using Entrecard, don’t take any of the following points personal. If any of them insult you, please keep reading on until the end of this article.

1. Poorly invested time. Unless you’re on a very fast connection, it’s going to take you a considerable amount of time per day to get the best out of Entrecard. To get the best out of it, 300 drops per day is a must and its results are spectacular then. However, your time is better invested in discovering and commenting on relevant blogs, using Twitter and more actively engaging the blogosphere, because…
2. Entrecard traffic has low value. Much of the traffic generated through Entrecard just inflates your statistics and increases your bounce rate. Many people just “drop and run”, as it’s dubbed in the Entrecard community. In the end, the traffic has more value than that of most social bookmarking services, but is for the most part still of low value.
3. Bad quality blogs. I’ve had it with low quality blogs. There are too many of them. Poorly written content, grammar and spelling mistakes all over the place, lots of sponsored posts, bad designs. Stay away from me.
4. Non-interesting blogs. I suppose making a blog about your cats is fun, and I’m sure it’s fun for many others to read it, but I’m simply not your target group. You don’t need me on your blog and I don’t want to be there to be honest. There are many other types of blogs I am not interested in that I had to visit because of returning ‘drops’.
5. I don’t care about your ‘hubby‘. Dear Stay/Work At Home Mom (SAHM/WAHM) bloggers, please erase this word out of your vocabulary. If I see it one more time I will puke. Never thought this word would end up on my own blog. Refering to your spouse like this in every one of your blog posts is like two ugly people making out right in front of me. My stomach cannot help but revolt. Sorry. I guess Entrecard has brought me to your blog, but I doubt you really want someone like me there.
6. Linkback building obsession. My God, is there an immense obsession with getting linked back on Entrecard. It’s good to get links back to your blog, because it helps to build your status in search engines. Google Bombs are proof of this. Entrecard is a BAD place to build your linkback. Firstly, you want to get linked back from blogs and sites that are relevant to your site. I don’t need topdropper links back to my page from blogs about cars.
   Secondly, I don’t want to give “link juice” out to unrelated blogs. It’s unfair to the related, relevant or highly interesting blogs that I link to. More about this on SeoBlogr. I read a better article about it recently, found it via Entrecard, but forgot to bookmark it. Doh! So stop caring about your Google PageRank (PR) people, I have zero PR and I get a LOT of search engine traffic. Start worrying about writing good content, writing some linkbait and having high keyword density (but not too high or you’ll get flagged as spam ).
7. The captain is drunk. I’ve put a lot of energy into the community on the Entrecard ship and we’ve sailed far and become friends, but the captain has been making poor choices and I suspect he’s incapable of taking this censorship much further. I love the community on board, but I’m getting off before we hit an iceberg. Graham, the owner of Entrecard, is childish and yesterday banned one of Entrecard’s top users. As you can see in the comments, many people are outraged. I think this was the final proof of Graham’s immaturity and incapacity to make the right decisions at the right time. Although Turnip‘s tweet wasn’t a great show of maturity either. While Graham is saying the negative publicity is only good for Entrecard, his poor leadership is not and new and current members will soon realize that.

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This is a blog about countries, travel, life abroad, culture shock. Yet this post is about technology. About Twitter, to be exact. Why?

I’ve been “using” Twitter off and on for over a year now, but it was only up until very recently that I really got it. I love it. They only thing I don’t love about it is that many of my friends, readers, family, acquaintances are not using it and I’d LOVE to interact with you via Twitter.

Briefly, Twitter is a service where you can share your thoughts in micro-blogs of max. 140 characters. These messages are shared with your followers who get your updates. They can then choose to interact with you. You can also follow other people for their updates.

Here are 5 reasons WHY you should sign up for a Twitter account and start using it.

• Friendsourcing. Got a question? A problem? Let’s say you want to know what the cheapest airline to travel to a particular location in Europe is. Before doing a lot of research, post it on Twitter. Let your friends help you out.
• Network inside your niche. Are you a travel blogger? A PR expert in France? A Norwegian expat? An amateur photographer wanting to go pro? You can follow other people in the same position, but also experts in your niche and stay up to date with them. Through Twitter I’ve communicated with Guy Kawasaki, DoshDosh, had some email exchanges with Michael Arrington, got linked by John Chow, (yes, I’m namedropping) and became acquainted with Andy from CommentLuv – he even commissioned me to produce a DJ mix for him. I also met many fellow expats from around the world through Twitter!
• Learn about the every day lives of others. You might be a medical student, about to graduate soon, maybe you’d be glad to follow doctors and see what their everyday lives are like as a preparation of your professional life.
• It’s the easiest way to stay up to date with friends’ daily lives. Yes, you probably don’t feel like reading all about people’s daily lives. Don’t worry, some people leave maybe 1 tweet per day… and even if you get a lot, you’re not expected to read each and every tweet.
• Stay up to date on current events. Twitter was my main source of updates during the recent Mumbai terrorist acts.

Maybe I convinced you… Maybe you just need to try it out and see for yourself. Here’s what you need to do to get a good start on Twitter:

• Install Twhirl. After signing up with Twitter, please do yourself a favour and use Twhirl. Nearly nobody uses just the web interface of Twitter… and those that do are the sporadic users (like me, in the past). If you’re doing it right, you’re going to be receiving a lot of Tweets from a lot of different people (Tweeple). Using Twhirl keeps it manageable and pleasurable!
• Start following! First of all, find people you know. Have you seen that the authors of blogs you like reading use Twitter? Visit their blog and find out where to follow them on Twitter! Also, use Twitter Search and look for specific things you find interesting. Start following people that write about them. Don’t worry about them possibly not being interesting. It’s fine to unfollow them if they annoy you or you get bored of them. Just grab a lot of people now. Then start selecting later. Here’s a bunch of interesting people to get you started. Oh, and don’t forget to follow me!
• Interact. This is where Twitter really gets fun and offers an awesome value. You can communicate with experts in almost any field through Twitter. You see someone posting an interesting Tweet? Reply to them (here’s how).
• Tweet! Write about what could fascinate others. Found an interesting link? Share it. Pondering an interesting thought? Put it out there. Need some help? Tweet it! The world is listening.
• Promote the fact that you’re Tweeting. Share it on your blog, put it in your email signature, your Facebook status, et cetera. Maybe more people you know are already using Twitter… if not, maybe you’re usage might motivate them to join up. The more, the merrier. After all, that’s why I wrote this post.

First things first. Go to www.twitter.com. Sign up. Follow me.

Are you already using Twitter? What’s your nickname? Why are you using Twitter? Do you have any other useful tips?

Besides following me on Twitter… you can also follow this blog via RSS or email updates.