sherlock screenings on pubs, and truisms on graffiti form – gotta love neukölln!
a postcard to the first person who guesses which german movie the quote on the last photo is from – but no google-cheating! :)
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early morning studies
i was always one of those kids who spent the summer vacations counting the days till school started again. the holidays were great, but what i really wanted was new stationery, new teachers, old friends and never-opened books that smelled like new beginnings… and i also wanted to know more – about everything. i like discovering new things, and my favourite method of learning has always been from teachers. good teachers are outstanding storytellers – inspiring and captivating.
because we miss the stimulation that comes with pushing beyond what you know and learning something new, the boy and i have decided to do join some online courses on subjects that we found interesting. he’s learning about finance on coursera, i’ve been listening and taking notes from a berkeley class podcast, on the history of europe. every early morning after breakfast (but before checking our inboxes and to-do lists), we take an hour or so to sit on a nearby café and just learn.
it’s been… refreshing – and not just because of all the things we’re studying. for me, it’s also the realisation that we can do this: we can learn what we want, at our own speed (as long as we are disciplined and make some time for it). no need to go back to school and endure hours of not-so-interesting lectures in order to thrive on those few subjects that you really like. makes me think that the future of education is probably already here.
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bits of red…
… from an old cars parade, many months ago.
“It’s late afternoon and you’re exiting the metro into a flock of hawkers; the lady with a bazillion different notebooks, the cart with cages of baby rabbits and birds, and if it’s winter, the yam guy. Then, before you even see the culprit, you encounter a stench that makes you wonder how a beached whale carcass managed to roll this far inland. You spot the source, an idle square of stinky tofu in a wok across the street. And even as someone who professes “don’t knock until you try” and “don’t be an ugly tourist,” when I first smelled stinky tofu two years ago, I just about blurted out, “who the f*** would eat this stuff?”
shanghaiist nails it! :)
we tried it back in 2009, at my chinese teacher’s insistence… you can read what we though of it here.
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a surprise in a flour package
today, while unlocking our bikes, paulo noticed something was tucked on the back rack of his. it looked like trash that someone had put there, but upon closer inspection, we discovered what seemed to be an empty package of (bio!) flour, all rolled-up. strange…
when opening it, he found what looked like a shiny new bike dynamo inside – and then he noticed the dynamo on his own bike was dangling, broken. someone probably knocked it off, and then bought a new one, which they left there, in disguise.
so instead of being cross about it, today i’m actually quite proud of the neighbourhood! :)