I recently started blogging for Techdirt, so keep an eye on that blog or my profile to see more articles by me. Of course, I’ll throw out updates like this one every once in a while, so you don’t have to follow me in 3 different places.
Two articles I recently did for Techdirt:
Tunisian State Secretary Says Censorship Is Fine Because The West Does It Too. The West cannot expect other countries to respect civil liberties, when it keeps in power governments that don’t fully respect our own civil liberties. This is mostly caused by politicians who have no clue what a reality-shift the internet has created and thus pass laws (often suggested by lobbies) that are not in the best interest of their citizens.
The main reason many of the readers of this blog found me, is my thesis on digital communication strategy for the new music business. I am almost ready to publish it and send it out, so if you’re not on my distribution list already, put yourself on there. I promise not to spam you too much. 😉
Also, I’m moving to Sofia, Bulgaria next week and I would love to find a job that let’s me apply my knowledge and expertise in digital communication strategy and leveraging the power of the ecosystem. If you can help me out or know anyone that can, please get in touch.
I should be working on my thesis right now, but I feel I would work more effectively once I get this out of my system.
Yesterday there was a tragic accident as a 30 year old bus cut its way into a group of tourists in Southeastern Bulgaria. Brake failure. 16 people died. 4 are still in the hospital. For the specifics, see Martin’s blogpost. Now this of course made some impression on me, but not as much as what happened after I learned about the accident.
I continued working for an hour, maybe two. I decided to take a nap. By now, the newsstory had already left my mind or at least gone to the background. While I took my nap, I had a strange dream. Just before I woke up, we were in a coach pulled by horses. There was one carriage in front of us with two women riding it which crashed into the shrubs in the roadside, but it didn’t look bad, so I didn’t think much of it. What stuck with me most, is what happened inside the coach I was in. We were about 6 people in there, two families – mine and another it seemed. A girl of about my age was on the phone with a friend of her and said: “Sofia is doooooood” (dood is Dutch for dead). She said it in a strange way and her parents commented on it, disapprovingly. Shortly after, I woke up.
I immediately started thinking… Does this have something to do with the recent tremors and earthquakes here? Will something bad happen to the city of Sofia? But this was maybe 2% of how I felt, because for the other 98% I felt that Sofia was a person… So I thought of the bus accident again. I tried to see if there were any names of victims released yet. Not yet. I became convinced that something happened to Sofia – either in this bus accident, or in some other way. As I woke up this morning, there was a list of names of the casualties. Including a Sofia.
Creepy. On the one hand I’m a very logical person, on the other I do have a believe in the paranormal and spiritual. And I have been experiencing a lot of synchronicity lately… Which I haven’t really experienced in nearly a year (and I’m very happy it’s back – it’s a good sign in my eyes).
Don’t know what to make of it. Given the increase in synchronicity, I have a feeling I’ll be able to put it into perspective through future experiences. For now… It will remain a mystery.
😉
How about you? Have you experienced such things before? What do you make of your own experiences?
As promised, here is the video of my recent travels in the last month. One month ago I was in Prague for a conference and some sightseeing, then went to Greece for a weekend a few weeks ago and I spent last weekend in the Bulgarian countryside! I’m having a great spring!
Since I didn’t upload any pictures yet, I decided to 1 UP my promise and to deliver a video. 🙂
I’m about to embark on a 24 hour busride to Prague with my girlfriend. I’m invited to speak at a conference about social dynamics and hope to change some lives with the speech I will give there. I’ll be staying with a friend of mine who’s a DJ and who’ll be playing at 3 gigs that weekend, but before having a blast in Prague, I’ll have to make the best of my time in the bus.
I believe it will be a wonderful trip. Instead of flying across Europe from the south east to the center and seeing only clouds, we’ll be driving through a bunch of countries of which we’ll be able to see the beautiful landscapes and nature that they offer. Last summer I got in a car that was going from Holland to Bulgaria and even though it was exhausting, it was a great experience to witness the diversity of Europe. It made me feel a lot more European at the same time.
Also, when we arrive, a day after leaving, we’ll really have the feeling that we’re somewhere else – which I sometimes miss after a 1 or 2 hour planeride. Let’s hope all goes well and it won’t be too boring. 😉
I’ll be publishing some pictures of the trip if I manage to get any interesting shots and else expect a bunch of pictures from Prague up soon!
And to my fellow expat bloggers who are reading/viewing this…please do something similar! I’m very curious to see how you’re living! 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 😥
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!
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.
I’m sure I’ll offend someone with this; good. This needs to be said and people have to start becoming aware of this. The following is possibly the biggest hurdle for the Bulgarian people and it needs to be discussed.
A few months ago I was on Bulgarian English-language news website Novinite.net, where I often got into discussions with other readers through their commenting system. One day one of the people argued that foreigners that come to live in Bulgaria must be the lowest of the low in their country. Why else would someone move to Bulgaria? Most of the commenters on the newsportal are Bulgarians that have moved abroad, mostly the USA. They are very hateful and find reason to despise just about everything. They point: the corruption is the fault of them, they hate parties on both sides of the political spectrum, except for the extreme right-wing party Ataka. It’s like they’re reading the news just to get an affirmation that their move abroad was a good choice. These people are among the most negative Bulgarians I’ve come across and they mask their own insecurity and feelings of inferiority by pointing, pointing and pointing.
Many people I meet have trouble understanding why someone from Holland would ever move to a country like this (twice!) and even bother to pick up a few words and sentences. To me, Holland is organized, linear, and everyone stays in their own bubble. To some that might sound appealing, but to me that sounds boring – and on top of that, the weather’s always shit. I went to Bulgaria to taste a little more of life. The food is better and more authentic, the people are not emotionless robots when they’re working, and they worry a bit less about their time. Whereas in Holland people look up the exact times of the bus and try to be at the busstop the minute before the bus comes, here people are more likely to simply go to the busstop and wait. That’s what I like, that’s why I’m here.
But why I really believe there’s some type of underlying inferiority complex in the Bulgarian society is the expressions of powerlessness people give. They feel their vote won’t change a thing, they feel it doesn’t matter who they vote for, they feel corruption can’t be solved….. They feel completely powerless to change anything about Bulgaria. That’s why I believe this is a more important thing to handle than fixing corruption, the justice system, or anything else. People have to believe they can make a difference; and then they will. The state of Bulgaria is improving, but slowly and with a determination to make a difference, from person to person, this process could speed up ten-fold.
People need to stop pointing at politicians, politicians need to stop pointing at each other, companies should stop pointing at politicians and politicians should stop pointing at companies. We ALL live in this country and we ALL want to have the best we can get; every time you point a finger, you can also pick up some of the litter on the streets and make a real difference.
Life’s not perfect people, nor will it ever be. Stop expecting to get something great, while you don’t believe other people deserve something great to happen to them. You are part of those other people, we are one society. Now stop pointing or holding out your hand and DO something. Anything at all. Make a difference today.
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.
Sofia is covered in snow once again, so Tsvety and I decided to make a small snowman on my balcony. I’m looking forward to the spring though… Enough of this snow, I want to be able to sit on my balcony and chill out properly. 😎
How’s the weather over at your side of the world?
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.
I should be working on my thesis right now, but I feel I would work more effectively once I get this out of my system.
I’m about to embark on a 24 hour busride to Prague with my girlfriend. I’m invited to speak at a conference about social dynamics and hope to change some lives with the speech I will give there. I’ll be staying with a friend of mine who’s a DJ and who’ll be playing at 3 gigs that weekend, but before having a blast in Prague, I’ll have to make the best of my time in the bus.
The first place I moved to is probably the most dreadful, although 
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.
I’m sure I’ll offend someone with this; good. This needs to be said and people have to start becoming aware of this. The following is possibly the biggest hurdle for the Bulgarian people and it needs to be discussed.
