Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

The video above (via alt1040) explains Chatroulette better than I would.  My experience with it has been mixed, but it reminds me a lot of the old BBS/ICQ free-for-all 10 years ago.  I’ve read metaphors comparing it to TV zapping with people, but I think it’s more akin a people player in shuffle mode.  Some of the nice people I’ve found (after nexting all the flying male body parts) included:

• A bored Filipina (at 3 a.m. her time) asking what music was I playing (Nortec Collective, of course).
• A Dutch law student with a great sense of humour.
• A German dude interested in banking for development (we were chatting about Muhammad Yunus)
• Random male stranger asking questions on existential philosophy (my conclusion is he had watched The Matrix too many times).
• A Texan in his 50’s very interested to know my views on the Mexican drug violence situation.
• A French literature student just interested in a chat, also with a really nice sense of humour.
• A young Indian female doctor waiting for her night shift to start who gave me a couple of nice suggestions of Indian indie after I mentioned I collect “local rock” from all over the place.

Serendipituous, yes. Extreme, sometimes (but you can also next them or even better report them, jerks!). An interesting study of the human condition, absolutely.

Continuing with the theme of the previous post, RTVE published a documentary where they interviewed 12 Spanish families resident in Germany, Poland and Finland and asked them of their experiences in what has been described as the coldest winter in northern Europe in years.  Funnily enough, one of the families they chose are good friends of mine.

You can watch it (in Spanish) in their website here.

The current winter in Finland is the continuously coldest, snowiest I have ever experienced after 9 years here.  With temperatures averaging -10 (but reaching -27, without the windchill) and an amount of snowfall that is reaching a metre, the place looks and feels decidedly wintry.  I mean, there’s more snow here than in Lapland!

Cross-country skiing is possible in almost any sidewalk now, even after they clean them.

There's a car somewhere under that pile of snow

Icicles in a cave

Snowboarding slope in downtown

Ski tracks on the snow over a frozen bay.

Panorama of the bay between snowstorms

Colours of dusk in winter

The same spot as before, but in a snowstorm

A very controversial Brazilian film following the very violent exploits of Rio de Janeiro military police special forces, it reminded me a lot of situations I’m familiar with as a fellow Latin American.

Apologies for embedding the Brazilian Portuguese trailer to those of you who might not understand the language, but the English one is ridiculous, corny, and gives you completely the wrong idea about the pace, style and atmosphere of the movie.

Was in a lightning business trip to Geneva.  Nice little city with quite a big airport (obvious if you think of the amount of international organisations there.  The few pictures I was able to take are here.

Oh, Maemo, the promises you bring to nerds like me…

Mobile programmable computers have a new meaning now.

Finally had the chance to watch this French-Belgian-Moroccan co-production, and wasn’t disappointed.   The film tells the story of a contingent of North Africans who fight for the liberation of France in the Second World War.  The plot and psychological environment is quite interesting as they are quite patriotic for a homeland they have never seen (a scene of them singing the Marseillaise and the Song of the Africans is quite stinging), but are still treated like second-class citizens.

It is very refreshing to watch a WWII movie that doesn’t follow the typical American conventions, that’s for sure, even if I really like Saving Private Ryan.

Furthermore the exercise, the environment and the beauty of it all are gorgeous.

Even if it is geographically and culturally quite close to Helsinki, visiting Stockholm is always an interesting experience.  The city is much more cosmopolitan, people are generally more fashionable, and the riksvensk accent sounds quite peculiar to somebody used to the way Swedish is spoken across the Baltic.  Always a pleasure to visit, especially now that there is a good Mexican taquería very close to downtown (they even sell corn tortillas!).