Rework The World

I went to the Rework the World conference, www.reworktheworld.org in early June, representing Arghyam. The conference was in Leksand, a lakeside resort a few hours north of Stockholm. The conference was a very good experience. The next and last edition of the conference , which is one of a series is going to be held in Alexandria , Egypt in 2012 and I heartily recommend that to any young person, though needless to say, it would be quite expensive.

As luck would have it, my passport was quite close to expiring and I needed to get it renewed. I had a difficult time getting the renewal done ; worth its own blog post!

I flew out of Delhi and back to Delhi which make the overall trip more strenuous.

The event was on youth and social entrepreneurship. It was co-organised by two interesting groups the Yes Foundation (one of whose key people is an Indian American, Poonam Ahluwalia), and the Tallberg Foundation, a wellknown think-tank in Sweden. The trip expenses were sponsored by the organisers which was really nice of them, though I think they were hoping I would play a more active role than I did.

From Stockholm Airport, I drove down to the conference location by car with Thomas Bjelkeman-Petersson of Akvo.org, who's visited us in India a few times. It was a great drive through open sparsely populated countryside. A very welcome break from the crush and the dirt of Bangalore and India which gets to me.

There was a huge amount of infectious energy in the gathering ; so many people, especially youth (1500+), all trying to make the world a better place, all over the world.

Lots of particulars that bear a passing comment but maybe in a later post.

Some videos below:
1.) The Max hamburger chain in Sweden now tracks the carbon footprint of each kind of burger and lets you know !



2.) There was a lot of great music at the event:

Kerala percussion

Vibhat was in India and invited us to join him while he was in Kerala. I went with Siddhu, since Priya and kid are at her parents place. Vibhat's mom organised a cool music concert at the house. The video of of this. As a matter of fact this is pretty rare footage. This particular instrument is not common and is rarely played in public. The musicians here are students from Kala Mandalam -- a university for traditional arts in Kerala. We visited the place later, pretty impressive.
Let me know what you think of the music:

I tried a whole bunch of restaurants during my 'free period' when Priya and the baby were away. One other major find was the Kyra theater in Indiranagar, www.kyra.in which has all kinds of interesting events, though pretty inconsistent. Below video from a heavy metal concert speaks for itself. Quite a learning evening :-)

This kid is making quantum leaps in real time:

Kannada song

Very cool traditional Kannada song that you may appreciate even if you don't know the language. Its from the Voices from the Waters film festival. Video was taken by me, which explains the bad quality ...

Quite a remarkable video. It captures with a certain quiet clarity core aspects of American foreign policy, after cleaning away obfuscation and non-essentials.
Americans should see this video to understand how some people abroad perceive it.

Noam Chomsky would be happy.

Forwarded by zenrainman

(Arvind you can start vituperating now)

Addendum: I guess one thing is that this is somewhat dated. My personal theory is that the US is now in historic decline. However historical context does not hurt

Karsh Kale and Medieval Punditz

I saw them at a concert in Bangalore recently. I am all praise for them. Indian concert music seems to have come of age, sometime between the last time I saw something (back in 1992 odd at IITM :-) ) and now. The music is so fun. it draws on both the Indian classical music traditions as well as bollywood, western pop/rock/dance music and more. The above comments are based on this concert I went to, as also the Indian Ocean concert in Hyd and other exposures here and there.

See all the 4 videos I have of at http://www.youtube.com/user/ahminotep . Video quality is crappy and sound is not so great either, but if you are somewhat serious about music, its worth your time.