Life of Kropell

Another trip to China – april 2011

Posted on 08.08.2011 by Kropell

I’ve decided to do something a bit different this time. Former posts are more or less a chronological description of various trips and events. I shot more than 6000 pictures in China, and I believe the whole story is a bit too much – at least for this blog …

This time I’ve picked some of my favorite shots and give a brief background about each photo.

Hutong Man

We started our round trip in Beijing. As usual we did a few of the “tourist” things in additions to our meetings with Taiji Masters, Monks and other dignitaries. The Hutong streets are areas where some of the traditional courtyard residences are kept as they were – more or less. I shot this picture from a bicycle taxi on our sightseeing trip through the narrow alleys.

Taiji at the Temple of Heaven

This little lady came to watch us do some Taiji in the park surrounding The Temple of Heaven. We met with our friends from The Beijing Taiji Association an early morning. Our exchange with BTA usually attract a lot of spectators and this time was no exception.

Beijing Taiji Master

This lady is one of the masters we met at Temple of Heaven. I found her Taiji particularly powerful …

Wild Goose Pagoda

Our next stop was Xian. The picture is taken at the Wild Goose Pagoda and the monk is preparing some sort of ceremony. Xian is famous for the amazing Terracotta Warriors found in a field outside the city and we did of course visit that site as well. I chose not to include any pictures from there – at least not in this post.

Xian dance show

The lady in the picture is part of a re-enactment of typical entertainment at the emperor’s court in 200 – 300 BC. Local historians have gone through old scrolls, paintings and other things from the era and the show is based on their findings and adapted for tourist entertainment.

Bird in Chengdu Peoples Park

The last picture is from The Peoples Park in Chengdu in the Sichuan province. We enjoyed a cup of tea at a local tea house and met up with our friend from last year; Master Mei. While there this little guy got my attention with some very nice song.

That’s it for now. I may return to this trip later, but probably connected to the Norwegian Taiji Senter web site.

Categories: Taiji, Travel | 2 Comments

Harrogate

Posted on 05.05.2011 by Kropell

I had one day on the ground after the trip to Austin and Boston before I entered another aircraft – bound for Harrogate, UK this time. Harrogate is a little bit out of the way and you normally fly to Leeds or Manchester and go by train to get there. I went there to attend the UKSG conference.

Harrogate is quite beautiful, but again I had little time to explore. The pictures are mainly from the immediate area around the hotel.

Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate

The Old Swan became famous when Agatha Christie was found there after her disappearance in December 1926. It’s a nice hotel with an atmosphere from “the olden days”.

Old Swan Hotel

Springtime in Harrogate

My next trip was an extended holiday in China! More about that later in my next few posts …

Categories: Photo diary, Travel | Tags: Harrogate | Leave a comment

Boston

Posted on 04.05.2011 by Kropell

Coming to Boston directly from Austin was literally a chilling experience. I checked the weather the week before I left for the US and Boston showed up with temperatures from 10 to 15 degrees Celcius. When I got there though the temperature was more like 2 to 5 degrees, which was a real shock coming from around 30 degrees in Austin. My first stop was consequently Macy’s where I was able to find a warm jacket to make it through my stay in Boston.

The schedule for my stay in Boston was – like in Austin – pretty tight. I arrived on a Friday, but a cold put me in bed most of Saturday and part of Sunday. Eventually I found some time to explore and snap a few pictures from icy cold Boston.

Copley

At the very centre of the city you find Copley with shopping, hotels and all the stuff you expect to find in a big city. I found several buildings in the city centre built in “castle style”. I guess there’s an explanation for this in the city history somewhere – I found them interesting.

Cheers

No visit to Boston without looking in on Cheers – at least no first visit. I’m almost sorry I went inside – it’s a real tourist trap and no trace of “where everybody know your name”. I guess I shouldn’t have expected it anyway …

Across the street from Cheers though I find a real treasure. Boston Common Park!

Boston Common

I enjoyed walking around the park taking in the atmosphere and admiring the scenery.

Boston Common

I was taken by this tree – it made me think of a dancer.

Riding the duck

My stay in Boston was way too short. There’re so much to see and so much left to do there! Hopefully I’ll be able to go back there too …

Categories: Photo diary, Travel | Tags: Boston | 2 Comments

Weird Austin

Posted on 04.05.2011 by Kropell

I arrived in Austin 24 hours behind schedule due to cancellations and delays. I missed the opening reception for the conference and the few hours I had planned for some sightseeing. I still found some time to shoot a few pictures during my days in Austin.

One of the first things I saw when I arrived at the airport was t-shirts and mugs saying “Keep Austin Weird”. Later I observed these everywhere in the city and learned that this is a motto for the citizens of Austin. A really funny one was a company called “Weird Realty” where you can find apartments for rent in Austin – their motto is of course “Rent weird”!

Austin on the lake

One of the activities at the conference brought us on a boat on the lake in the middle of down town Austin. One of the largest colonies of bats in America lives in one of the bridges crossing the lake and every day at sun down they come out to hunt for food – 750 000 of them!

Bats!

After the conference was over I met with a couple of friends who live in Austin. Lynnea and Brian have their own company called “The Squid Ink Kollective“. They design clothing – mainly t-shirts and sell them through their online store. They took me to a weird restaurant for a delicious dinner.

That’s more or less what I had time for outside the conference programme. I hope to go back one day and spend some more time there. Maybe during the next South by South West music festival?

Categories: Photo diary, Travel | Tags: Austin | 3 Comments

Washington DC

Posted on 06.02.2011 by Kropell

Back in November 2010 my colleague Runar and I went to DC for a conference and to meet with some people at The National Library of Medicine. We also had some time to explore the city though.

The thing that struck me about DC is that everywhere you look there is an iconic building, park or monument. For a guy like me who likes American movies, there’s a place from a movie almost everywhere! We did the walk around The National Mall of course with all the landmarks:

Capito Hill from the Washington Monument

Lincoln Memorial

Our hotel was close to Capitol Hill and we walked all the way from there to Georgetown and back. As you can see from the shots, the weather was absolutely beautiful.

Georgetown

Another one of the truly great attractions of DC are the museums. We visited quite a few, but my favorites were The Air and Space Museum and The National Gallery of Art.

Air and Space Museum

National Gallery of Art

I found it interesting that the National Gallery of Art had an exhibition of paintings by the famous Norwegian artist Edvard Munch while we were there. I’ve seen his pictures many times in museums and galleries back home, but this exhibition was one of the best. They had several versions of each painting and had interesting comments that put Munch’s work in a new perspective for me.

Last but not least on this trip; I met my “cousin” David. I’m not sure what the correct name for our relation would be. His mother is my second cousin. He’s a student at Georgtown and he met with us for dinner on my birthday! David turned out to be a great guy and if you’re curious about him; I suggest you visit his blog:
http://notjustwandering.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/edu-shmay-tion-or-what-i-never-thought-i-would-say/

That’s it for now. I know I don’t write much here, but I’ll try to be a bit better this year – promise! The way it looks now, I’ll be travelling to USA, China, Turkey and UK this year. I also hope to have time for some trips around Norway to visit family and friends.

Categories: Photo diary | Tags: Washington DC | 1 Comment

Amsterdam!

Posted on 12.10.2010 by Kropell

Taiji in negotiations - Photo: Kaat van Wonterghem

I was in Amsterdam last week attending the 12th European ICOLC conference (International Coalition of Library Consortia). This conference was particularly exciting for me because I was asked to give a speech on “Taiji as philosophy in negotiations”. If you’ve ever read this blog before you will know that I practice Taijiquan and that this is a big part of my life. I negotiate national agreements for access to medical journals and other online resources for a living and really love that too. To be asked by my friends and colleagues in ICOLC to talk about the connection between the two was just an amazing thing!

I’ve been part of the ICOLC community for a few years now and I have the greatest respect for the knowledge and experience represented in the group. I didn’t count exactly how many nationalities there were in the room, but most European countries, Scandinavia, Japan, Turkey, Canada and USA were there.

It was great! People seemed to enjoy themselves and participated enthusiastically in the small tasks and exercises that was part of the show. Questions were insightful and to the point and I just had the time of my life! Enough about that …

I arrived Sunday morning and was welcomed by sunny and warm weather. The hotel couldn’t check me in so I just grabbed my camera and a book and went out for a walk.

Café on the water in Amsterdam

I really liked the statue of this Multatuli character, but had to look him up in Wikipedia when I got home. After snapping the picture I found a table at the café in the background and sat down with my book for a couple of hours

After that I continued my walk around town and shot a few more pictures. Amsterdam is beautiful, the people there are really friendly and this is a place I definitively want to visit again!

Amsterdam

Categories: Photo diary, Travel | Tags: Amsterdam | 2 Comments

Friends, fish and a flock of seagulls

Posted on 30.09.2010 by Kropell

I went on a fishing trip a couple of weeks ago with my friends Kjetil, Sture and Torvald. We met in Bergen and drove north for about an hour. After a ride on a ferry we ended up on the island of Fedje located on the west coast of Norway. If you travel due west from Fedje the first place you’ll hit land is the Faroe Island or Iceland.

Early morning at Fedje harbour - going fishing

Pilot boat at Fedje traffic station

Fedje is very close to the approach to the Mongstad Refinery. Mongstad is the main refinery for north sea oil in Norway and there’s a lot of traffic with large ships. These are tough waters and authorities want to keep strict control to avoid disaster. Working the pilot boats is not a job for the faint hearted, these guys will go out in tough weather to pilot the ships safely to harbour.

We arrived Friday evening and Torvald made Sushi for all of us. He had a Sushi Making kit bought from Amazon.com and it worked great! Saturday was grey, rainy and a bit windy, but we got in the boat and went fishing anyway – I didn’t bring my camera though. There were lots of fish in the water and we brought back a selection of pollack, cod, mackerel, saithe and a couple of other species for which Google translate didn’t give me a satisfactory translation. Sture made the most amazing fish soup based on our catch of the day!

Torvald showing the catch of the day!

Sunday was absolutely beautiful! No wind – which is extremely rare at Fedje – and sunny. We got in the boat at went out to catch more fish.

Yours truly in the foreground with Sture and Kjetil

Sture pulling in 3 mackerels

Torvald pulled a "brosme" (don't have English translation)

Captain Torvald

One of the chores that comes with the package on a fishing trip is that you need to clean the fish. We decided to do that on the way back and this attracted a lot of seagulls. I’d just been reading up on how to use my camera and specifically how to take action photos. After tweaking the knobs and wheels on my Canon G10 I started snapping shots of anything moving. Torvald was helpful by throwing the fish leftovers in my direction, so most of the action was pretty close to where I was sitting in the boat.

Cleaning the fish

Seagulls hunting for the leftovers

Seagulls hunting for leftovers

Seagull at Fedje

Seagulls fighting over leftovers

That’s if from Fedje. It was an amazing trip and we’ll hopefully be doing something similar next year – either at Fedje or maybe somewhere else. Stay tuned …

Categories: Photo diary, Travel | Tags: Fedje | 2 Comments

Back to Il Convento

Posted on 20.09.2010 by Kropell

I went to Italy with my Taiji friends approximately one year ago. My impressions from that trip can be found in a blog post from October 2009.

We had to come back – for so many reasons. It’s a beautiful place; the monastery is situated just outside the village of Trevi in the Umbria province, about 2,5 hours bus ride from the Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome. The valley and the mountain side around Il Convento are covered by olive trees. There’s lots of nice paths to walk in the area to take in all the stunning views.

Live Mørstad is the person in charge of Il Convento and she makes everyone feel welcome and cared for. Her kitchen staff use mostly raw materials from the area to produce simple, but extremely tasty dishes. The food alone is worth the stay! This is what they had waiting for us in the garden when the bus arrived:

Welcome to Il Convento

After the refreshments we were taken for a tour of the monastery with Live as our guide. Her enthusiasm is contagious and both recent and ancient history of the place is very interesting indeed. Il Convento was built in 1158 and was visited St. Francis of Assisi.

Live Mørstad

Here’s a picture of the whole group taken by a small church located among the olive trees on the mountain side above the monastery.

The group

We had an amazing week practicing Taiji and Qigong at Il Convento. A day trip to Assisi was also part of the program, I brought the camera, but I didn’t take a single picture while we were there. I just had too many other things going on in my mind at the time.

There are however a few shots from our trip to Assisi in 2009 on my Flickr page.

On our second day we experienced a level 4 earthquake! I was relaxing in a chair on the lawn just after breakfast when I noticed a deep deep rumble and the ground started shaking. I could hear windows and furniture – in fact the whole monastery vibrate. It lasted about 10 seconds and then everything went quiet …

Taiji practice in the garden

Frode and Kristian taking a break by the olive trees

Relaxing by the pool

Frode playing with his balls ...

We’ve already booked Il Convento again for next year. It’ll be great to go back there … If you feel tempted to join us just keep an eye on our web site www. taiji.no. Information about the trip will be posted there in March or April 2011.

See you next year!

Categories: Photo diary, Taiji, Travel | Tags: Trevi, Umbria | Leave a comment

Travelling under the ash cloud – Edinburgh and Paris

Posted on 16.09.2010 by Kropell

After returning from my trip to China, I stayed on the ground for a bit less than 24 hours. During that time I slept a bit and packed for my next trip. The plan was to attend a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland and then go on to another conference in Chicago, Illinois and then stop for a meeting in Boston on my way home. In other words a real round trip! The stay in Chicago was supposed to last for almost 10 days with time for friends and some tourism.

- But nature wanted it differently …

The trip to Edinburgh went as planned and I had a great time at the conference. There was not much time to take pictures, but I managed to squeeze off a few:

Edinburgh

Spring flowers in Edinburgh

About 5 o’clock in the morning of April the 15th I woke up to the phone ringing in my hotel room. The night porter was surfing the net and had followed the development as a volcano erupted on Iceland. One of the developments was that ashes were spreading through the air space and airports in the south of Norway was closing. Airports in the UK and the northern parts of Europe were expected to follow suit. Bless the man for alerting me. I was booked on the 8 o’clock flight to London and he thought I could try to get out there early to catch a flight before the airport were closed.

The airport was closed. Thanks to the night porter though, I was out there early and was able to secure a seat on an early train to London. There was still a chance to catch that flight to Chicago later in the day from Heathrow! Approaching London I got an SMS saying that my flight was cancelled and that Heathrow was closed. Luckily I had my iPhone and checked the Internet for news about the ash cloud. Paris Charles du Gaulle was still open and to make a long story short; I was able to get on a train to Paris just 1,5 hours after arriving in London. My travel agent booked a flight from Paris to Chicago the following morning. Again cutting the story short; I ended up staying in Paris for about a week, before I was able to catch a ride on a bus back to Norway.

My last shots in this post are from Paris. It was springtime and the weather was absolutely beautiful!

Springtime in Paris

The last picture is kind of cool. From the roof of the tourist bus I spotted a loooong line of people waiting outside a building. I assumed it was an airline office, since people were lining up outside those offices all over town. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that they were waiting to get in to an exhibition based on the work of the famous Norwegian painter Edvard Munch!

Edvard Munch exhibition in Paris

This concludes my backlog of pictures. The posts coming up after this one are a bit more current …

Categories: Photo diary, Travel | Tags: Edingburgh, Paris | Leave a comment

China 2010 part 4 – Beijing

Posted on 07.09.2010 by Kropell

Beijing was the last stop so this is the last part the story. The first day in Beijing started in Jingshan Park (Coal Hill) just behind The Forbidden City. We met some of our friends from The Beijing Taiji Association led by Master Lee. In the picture below you can see our teacher Pamela Hiley with our delegation leader Zhi and Master Lee.

Pamela, Zhi and Master Lee

Zhi travelled with us from the very beginning and followed us the entire trip. He works for the Beijing People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. They helped us arrange the trip and Zhi did more than just an excellent job as our delegation leader and translator. He also became a great friend. We had the pleasure of seeing him again in Oslo this summer. He traveled with his boss Mr. Wang and the Chinese girls soccer team to participate in the annual Norway Cup soccer tournament in Oslo. We were very happy to present him with a birthday cake at Norsk Taiji Senter on his 40th birthday!

Taiji fan demonstration in Jingshan Park, Beijing

Taiji morning practice in Jingshan Park, Beijing

Chinese parks are great places to be – especially in the early hours. There’re so many things going on! Taiji, Qigong, Kung Fu, dancing, painting, calligraphy, music and much more. One of my favorites on this particular morning was this guy:

Early morning in Jingshan Park

After the morning practice in Jingshan Park we went to the Beijing Daoist Association. They reside in a small temple located in the Beijing business district. We were met by their senior priests and the Director of the association.

Beijing Daoist Association

The following discussion was just amazing! We told them about our travels in China, the places we had seen and our wish to study and learn more about the root of Taiji and the Daoism. They responded with great enthusiasm and it was extremely interesting to hear their reflections. Among other things, they told us much about the origin of the I Ching and Ba Gua that at least was new to me. One of the monks was an expert in Wushu or martial arts and he shared some of his knowledge about the origin of Daoist Taiji with us.

Beijing Daoist Association, martial arts demonstration

Before we left the Daoists, they treated us to lunch at a nearby restaurant. Another delicious meal in the company of great friends. I feel pretty sure that we will stay connected with our new friends at the Daoist Association.

Lunch with Beijing Daoist Association

The last stop for the day was reception at the Beijing People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. We were received by Executive Vice President, Mrs. Li Xiaoqiang and most of her management team. I believe we were treated more or less like an official delegation with a formal reception where speeches and gifts were exchanged over a nice cup of tea. After that they treated us to a magnificent dinner. It’s hard to describe the atmosphere as any different from a dinner with old friends.

Reception at Beijing People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries

Dinner at Beijing People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries

My last shots from our trip to China was from our visit to a hospital at the outskirts of Beijing – not far from the Great Wall of China. The director of the hospital Dr. Chen is also a master of Chen style Taiji and he made a profound impression on us when we visited him in 2008. Bjarte Hiley studied with him for a few months before he went to Wudang and we wanted to pay our respects before returning to Norway.

Visit with Dr. Chen

Dr. Chen took us on a tour of the hospital and showed us how they use both modern western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. He said that Chinese medicine often is superior in the treatment of chronic diseases. Modern medicine has saved many lives and improved the quality of life for many people, but the traditional medicine is still an important part of the treatment administered at the hospital.