Paddling for Power!!

Charging Corner: Antwerp Train Station, Antwerp, Belgium

The women were peddling away.  I wondered what they were doing. So, I asked….

'Oh, we are charging our cell phones.  But it charges only so long as you peddle'.  

What a great way, I thought for combining exercise with charing our phones.  I remember seeing exercise equipment in public parks in Thailand, which was used quite frequently by people.

While, I make it seem like these power centers were created for people to exercise, the truth is that they are created because they do not require providing electrical outlets.  They work in the same fashion as the lights on bicycles that get automatically charged during peddling.

Regardless, this is Europe's way of creating efficient tools for public's convenience.

And while we do feel powerful after exercising, in this case so do our mobile phones!! 

Google and Audrey and Image

May 4, 2014, when I logged on, I got this above image.  Instantly I knew who this was so went to imdb.com.  Sure enough, it was Audrey Hepburn's birthday.  That google would celebrate her, was not as surprising, as how quickly I knew just by looking at the profile-sketch that could be of a young woman from anywhere, who it was!!

Some images are imprinted in our minds.  May be that is why some religions question the image. And yet, image remains elusive.  If we did not have them, we will create them. May be that is what the rock paintings were.  Our ways to create images that would make sense out of this abstract emptiness.  May be that is what falling in love is about.  An image, that becomes synonymous with divinity for us. 

As much as I love images and see divine in idols in Indian temples, I also know that silence and meditation are increasingly important in our times.  

So, as much as I knew this was Audrey, I also looked at her, as if she was in contemplation, even meditation!! 

In this sense, this image itself became my meditation, and a way to send me to my chair for a few minutes of silence.  

Silence and imagery, with skill can be intertwined. 

Bike for Berries

Proudly showing her bike

And do notice the cherry trees in all their spring happiness, in the background. 

Ever since my bike got stolen last year, I look at bikes so wistfully. Not that I cannot afford it. But I have to have time and then proper equipment to haul it back to my neighborhood.  

But if I were to look at the good side, it has made me appreciate having a bike even more.  I am going to get a bike soon. But here is the best bike story, I ever heard.  Short, sturdy and sweet!

I know this gentle woman from a reading group I belong to. After the meeting, I along with another colleague were hanging around for a 'post meeting' light talk, when I broke the conversation in Swedish with, "That is a great bike.'

My colleague translated what I said, and she replied that she uses it all the time, even all through winter.

I understood about half of what she said.  And looked wistfully at the bike.

May be, sensing what I was thinking, she shared a story, which made me realize, once again, how people live so close to nature in Sweden.

My colleague translated it for me, in one sentence.  'She says that one summer, she picked berries which made her enough money to buy this bike.  The low-technology transportation, which does not contribute to environmental pollution, cost her 3,000 Kr (approximately 500 USD).

She must have picked berries in the forest, just around where she lives. What a beautiful example of nature providing for us!  The berries that grew on their own, in the wild, only using sun and water, that nature gives for free, and became a link between those who did not want to go berry-picking and someone who did not mind putting in the effort.  In the process, both sides benefited.  Those who got the berries, and the one who sold them, which allowed her an expensive purchase.

What did nature get?  Well, I hope, nature got a feather in its cap, which would motivate the decision makers to preserve it for generations to come. 

Deforestation is highly regulated in Sweden!!