This weekend, I have three couchsurfers from Argentina staying with me, and I’ve been practicing my Spanish a lot. It’s quite rusty, but it’s fun, and we have had some great conversations. This evening, my roommate joined us, and all five of us were sitting around the table platicando. We talked about Toronto, and all [...]

It’s incredible the stuff you can find on the internet, how everything is linked together. So I’m in our little apartment in Beijing trying to clean up before my wife comes back, and put on a collection of Norwegian 60′s music which I have downloaded. The first song is cute, the story of some woman [...]

As I was walking home tonight, I listened to Migrapolis on my iPod. It’s a Norwegian radio show about multiculture, identity and immigrants. Last week they interviewed the daughter of the “king of the gypsies” in Norway, who never went to school, and grew up to become a drug addict. Finally, she decided to kick [...]

The electronic publishing and the Open Access movement has led to many different experiments with academic journals. One idea that I found quite interesting is “open peer review” (the Wikipedia article is a good overview). Open peer review could simply mean that the author knows the names of the reviewers, which is not very interesting [...]

I spent a year studying in Sweden, and really enjoyed getting to know better our neighbour, that Norwegians always make fun of (they tell us the same jokes back, with Norwegians in the stupid roles, so it works both ways). I love the Swedish language, and often read Swedish novels, or download audiobooks (my latest [...]

I recently left Varanasi for New Delhi, and I am staying in the crazy and dirty backpacker ghetto called Pahar Ganj, conveniently located behind the main train station. Luckily, my hotel has a TV (with some 80 channels), and thus I was able to catch the live broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Beijing [...]

I’ve posted some great Amharic dance videos earlier, and today I came across Ethiotube.net, a Youtube clone started in February this year and describe themselves in this way: Founded in February 2007, EthioTube is the leader in Ethiopian online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos related to Ethiopia worldwide through [...]

I have been thinking about trying “event blogging” for a while, since I have such a portable laptop now, and inspired by the master, Ethan Zuckerman and his tips for conference bloggers. Incidentally, I am going to a conference on international comparative education (CIES) in New York in March, maybe I will try this there. [...]

I love how Web 2.0 and a lax enforcement of copyrights is making it possible to access cultures from all over the world, I can see Russian TV-shows, and music videos from Ethiopia, things that I could never even buy before (perhaps in Toronto, if you knew exactly where to go, but certainly not in [...]

Not one to normally promote Microsoft or the Zune, I came across this site with beautiful short films created by various artists, and wanted to share them. They are very much worth watching. I realize this is just what Microsoft wanted to achieve – viral spread – but hey, if they promote cool artists, I [...]