BasBasBas.com

Author: Bas

  • Taking Action Against Climate Change, the best choice

    In the whole climate change debate (it’s ridiculous it has to be a debate), I decided that the possible cost of NOT taking action, would FAR outweigh the cost of taking action NOW. Actually, what would be so bad about preventing climate change? Living in a cleaner, healthier world? The cities wouldn’t be so filled with smog, there would be less polution, no more oil wars… Sounds a lot better.

    Anyway, the following video argues the same thing, but in a way that’s a bit more digestible than my elaborate theories.

    [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ]

  • Young idealists… (Free Burma protest in Sofia, Bulgaria)

    Pieter with rosesWell, it wasn’t big.. but at least I did something. The protest had 8 participants, but it’s probably the biggest protest the Chinese embassy has ever seen here in Sofia. As indicated earlier, I decided that it would be a good idea to get red flowers, because I had a feeling our presence would not be very strong. Turned out to be roses, because they were the closest to maroon red we could find. So we went to the Chinese embassy and went onto the steps to place the roses. Immediately a guard came out to ask us what we were doing, tell us not to take pictures and wanted to know if we had any permit to be protesting… Come on, it’s just 8 of us placing roses. So the only picture I have of us at the embassy is 1 second (literally) before that moment and you can see it at the bottom of the post. We stayed around for about half an hour, seeing if anything would happen. We saw some Chinese employee of the embassy looking at us and making a few calls. After a while we decided to leave the rest of the roses for the embassy employees with a note that said “For a free Burma”. Then we left.

    If there is anyone from Bulgarian protest groups reading this, or has any experience (and knows how to get a permit), please contact me.

    Click to enlarge!
    Representing France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and Bulgaria.

    Oh, and I realize now that i could use my contacts at the radio and TV next time. Great!

    This proves that everyone can do at least SOMETHING. And it can be fun, I met two new people through it. STUMBLE IT to spread the world!

  • Protest for Burma, Sofia 2007

    Since nobody is taking the initiative, I will. In the hope that people will find this post through Google.

    This is the plan!

    If you care about the situation in Burma at all… Please do the following.

    Go find the Chinese embassy (search: China Embassy on Google Maps), and lay a maroon-red flower there. Preferably between 2 and 3pm today (but if you read this too late, any day will do – I plan to do it once every few days).

    Why maroon-red? It’s the colour of the robes of the Buddhist monks who were imprisoned, tortured, mutilated and killed in Burma.

    Why the Chinese embassy? They’re Burma’s main ally… THEY can do something about this situation, but so far haven’t.

    Why only a flower? Because of the small scale of participation. If we can’t organize a mass of people to come together at the same time… Let’s at least do something.

    The people in Burma were killed and abused while the world was watching. They’re blood’s not only on the junta’s hands, but on the hands of all who failed to act to prevent it. So please, do something!

    If you’re interested in setting something up, please email me at baslife (nospam) gmail – com

    Some news just got out: Injured protesters in Burma are being burned alive!!

  • A Day of International Action for Burma

    Basically it’s like this… remember the first things we heard about Burma, and the images of protesting monks? Well… they’re dead now. Or as good as dead. They’re either dead or facing serious torture, or locked in their pagoda’s (where they store no food). We stood by and watched while this happened. At least I tried to get people active.. but I wonder how people who didn’t even bother to sign the petition feel.

    Tomorrow is your chance. A Day of International Action for Burma (or have a look at the petition link and scroll all the way down for a list of places to go). GO. GO. If there’s anything near where you live you MUST go, you must do something, we must do MORE. There is nothing scheduled here, which really sucks, but I called friends and told them to let people know. I’m probably heading for the Chinese embassy tomorrow at 2pm.

    If you’re googling and you’re reading this.. In front of the Chinese embassy in Sofia! 2PM. I have a feeling not many people will show up, but I can’t let this happen without at least doing something. Had I had more time and known about it earlier, I would’ve set something up properly (maybe I would’ve been able to mobilize a hundred people, who knows), but now it’s too late for that already and I feel sad about it.

    So if you have the chance to join a protest.. DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!

    And if China does not intervene… let’s boycott the 2008 Summer Olympics.

  • My rent just dropped 40 euro’s.

    I love this place.

    I now pay less than I payed for a 8 square meter apartment in a small city in Holland… for an apartment in one of the best parts of the center of a big European capital. Which looks like this.

  • The cutest thing just happened!

    Cute cats

    Not as cute as this, but still pretty damn cute. So my neighbourhood has a lot of little shops and right outside my building there’s a small shop that sells alcohol and tobacco (and cable television, because the people in Bulgaria prefer to share one subscription than have 10 different ones).  Normally I only come in there when I have a hang-over and desperately need a coffee, but today I actually wanted alcohol. So I went inside to get a liter bottle of beer (oh yes), but the only one they had was crap beer, so I decided to go for two half liters. I ran into the lady that works there yesterday in another shop and she was telling the lady in that particular shop that I was such a good boy etc. etc.

    So I order two half liter bottles of Zagorka… and she gets one and tells me that that’s enough for me. Haha. Sweet old lady, if only you knew.

  • I need your help!

    Dear readers,

    Something sad has happened… It seems that I am no longer able to stumble pages on the website of my work. Which is said, because I’m in the process of adding social bookmarking to these pages. As most of you know, once a place is getting traffic through social bookmarking, the likeliness of this traffic increasing rapidly is big.

    So… I know messages like this are often ignored (I can see what links are clicked and which aren’t, Big Bas is watching you ;-)). Please, if you read this, go check out these 3 pages (1 2 3) and Stumble! whichever you like best.

    You might be the only one, so please help a friend out. Okay, I’m overdramatising, but please take a minute to help me out with my work placement here.

    Thanks so much!

    Bas

  • Free Burma!

    Free Burma!

    Free Burma!

  • Two Web 2.0 Tips!

    RSS2Twitter

    Just found a really nice tool for shameless self-promotion. A simple tip to increase your SEO ratings.

    Go to www.rss2twitter.com right now! If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, open up one. Basically, you can let RSS2Twitter export any RSS link straight to your Twitter (the Picasa one doesn’t seem to be working though). Easily increasing links back to your website. Encourage other people to do the same and who knows how fast you might rise in the indexes.

    Here’s the next cool thing.

    Selecting del.icio.us tags for your site

    If you’ll have a look at the bottom of the menu on the right on this page please, you’ll see that I have links to some of my bookmarks there. If you click through to my del.icio.us account (add me!) however, you’ll see that I’m bookmarking a lot more. Have a look here: http://del.icio.us/Spartz/baslife. These are the links that are exported to my site by adding an RSS feed widget to my blog. This specific site (everything tagged ‘baslife’ by ‘Spartz’ (me)) is automatically aggregated to this page. Ain’t that sweet?

    Like it? Stumble it! – Add this to your del.icio.us!

  • Crazy night out…

    A Dutch girl, an Englishman, two Dutchmen and a Belgian dude… minus the girl = trouble. Trouble + cheap alcohol = last night.

    So err… It all started with a phone call, as it always does. I decided to join the gang for dinner and then go for a couple of drinks. We went into a bar and all had a beer. As I was looking at the menu for a a nice cocktail (they’re like 2 euro’s here anyway) I noticed a particular cocktail… called the Old Seaman. So I asked James if he fancied some Old Seaman… (if you don’t get the joke you’re not old enough)  I showed him the menu and he ordered it immediately. This was the start of an hour of hilariousness and very lame jokes which should not be repeated in written word.

     James enjoying the Old Seaman

    It was good, because we only had the one beer there and the Old Seaman, so we weren’t actually drunk. We were acting like it, but we weren’t. Then we headed down to a pub to watch a football match between Aston Villa and the Spurs. What a crazy game it was… So basically we’re drinking and drinking and drinking and talking (from time to time – there was football)… Actually I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves… Have a look, they speak a million words.

    Click here for the gallery.

    01-10-07-023.jpg

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