One of the greatest resource sites I have found on the web is UBUweb (http://www.ubu.com/). It is a vast collection of sound vision and text spanning the creative work of hundreds of years and all the continents. The above image of poor Ling Ling is from the Found Art section of the UBUweb, there are also books that can be downloaded, recordings of some of the great and famous and the strange and unknown in the world of language, and critical works concerning much of what has passed as the avante gárde for the last century. And its all free!!!!!!!!!!!

I am not working too hard at the moment (well I am cooking and taking care of a child with an infected ear...long story, but I mean not doing to much in relation to university). I am reading Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. I bought it in a local -think Sweden- second hand shop and the shop person said "a book about cancer, how depressing". It is bawdy, funny and at times quite surrealist text. I can understand why it upset so many in 1934 (banned in the United States for 27 years!) as it a graphic account of how desperate people can become for the feeling of connectedness in what first appears as a bohemian potpourri (the Americans in Paris between the wars were really 20 years too late for that) but is actually a stage where people trade and buy their fantasies....or is that capitalism?
I shall be in Paris in August and shall have a memorial pernod for Henry...the old bastard.

The weekend has drawn to a close and the situation as it stands requires a summary, so here it is (all spelling of Swedish words have been anglicized as the å ä ö don’t show up on non-Svenska keyboards):
To begin with I have been accepted as a Doctoral student at the Department of Modern Languages, Umea University. I have posted this information to the Wallenberg Scholarship fund and there should be some sort of announcement on their website this week. I will be beginning my appointment on the 1st July.
The band I play with, Funk Service International is to play at the Trastock Festival in Skelleftea in July. I have spent most of today in the company of Adil Fadi from Funkservice, recording some heavily Gnaoua influenced music....perhaps next year we shall make it to Essaouira???
Finally here is a taste of my contribution to the Funkservice sound: It is
Sydney City Rain (right click to download the Mp3) a tune devised a year ago to evoke the feeling of walking down Burke Street (or Crown Street) into Taylor Square in the middle of Oxford Street in Sydney, Australia at about 6pm on a Friday evening with a pocket full of cash and the cafes and bars are full with those beginning to party and those finishing the working week and a warm rain has just fallen and the scent of Indian food and aftershave is in the air and you are walking to Central to catch a train up to Newtown to go to see some music at the Dispensary cafe or at the RSL...or perhaps walking to the graduating show at the National Art School in the old Darlinghurst Gaol...or perhaps a cheap laksa in china town, followed by a blurry night at the Bank Hotel in Newtown and the Imperial in Erskineville. Sydney 1992-99 was a great place to live. Enjoy!( I really need to stop thinking about music and do some work on this webdesign summer course!!)

The area I live in is close to the university here and as a result it becomes a ghost town during the summer holidays. This is good in a way as one does become a bit tired of year after year of the weekend drunk students roaming the alleys and singing strange swedish drinking songs (not to mention the sunday morning crystal lawns as the broken glass from windows and bottles lay all about the scene). However the energy of thousands of students living around us is good and interesting. They shall all return in three months I suppose.
I have been working on a webdesign subject, analysing this site:
http://www.kids earth.nasa.gov/ and what a boring excuse for a website it is..check it out.
The other thing Ive been doing is negotiating both Friendster and Orkut......After setting up a profile and surfing around a bit it starts to lose its appeal. Orkut seems more diverse and multinational in its make-up but I suppose it is dependant on who introduces you to the network. In my case with both Friendster and Orkut it was by two different 27year old American females..HOWEVER with orkut my American friend had been invited by an Iranian...this may have set a somewhat different trajectory. In the case of Friendster I seem to be surrounded by hard livin' American indie band fans single and in their 20's. I shall continue and see where it takes me...I need to annoy some of my friends with invites to the network.

Beginning to feel much better. The journey from Australia to the north of Sweden is a long one in more than just distance. I am returning to the more introspective climate of the sub-arctic, the gentle restraint of orderly queues and political debates where everyone agrees with each other despite their party differences. The grey green spray of mild summer days where teenagers wear clothes that you can only see on television in my home village of Goombungee. Back again and it feels good to be able to read and write in peace and quiet.
Here is an image from the recent journey to Oz:




Didge and Dog in Townsville

Home again and jetlagg is killing me. I awaken at 5am feeling really good and by lunch time I am so tired I can't see properly. I am trying to establish the old/new rhythm but I also have a bit to do so I can't just sleep all the time either. Summer is here in the north of sweden. Really pleasant it is to. Clear skies and sunshine and everything covering the earth is really really green. I have been completing the details for the Wallenberg Stipendium (scholarship) and begining a little webdesign course that will last about 5 weeks through the summer holidays. Also have some activities planned for when I feel more human as to the biorhythmic status.....until next time-

Back in Singapore at the moment on my way back home to Sweden. I arrived here two days ago and spent yesterday in the company of Don Bosco. We spent a lot of time discussing the state of the art. We visited a electronic arts group, Spell7, who are behind the Year of Living Digitally Festival. I took their Little India audio tour called Desire Paths, which was more like a location based interactive installation in real time than a tour. If anyone finds themselves in Singapore go to 65 Kerbau Road and partake in this beautiful interpretation of space.
I am really looking foward to getting home. This trip has been full of inspiration and I now wish to put some of the ideas and plans I have had (alone and with others) into material form. This summer is going to be excellent.