Michael Carøe Andersen

Month: November 2008

  • Request for colour photographs

    As you might know Ann is in London studying for her PhD. In her studies she could use your help:

    My name is Ann Fenech and I am a PhD student at University College London (UCL) within the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, where my work will involve a study of the lifetime of colour photographs.

    Colour photos have been around for almost 100 years but we still dont know much about the ongoing degradation processes. This is what I aim to study. However, for this study to be possible, I need as many different colour photographs as I can find on which I can run the required tests.

    This is where you can be of help: I would be very grateful if you could look through your photographs and see if you have any that you do not want to keep. My focus is on the chemical composition so the image in the photo is not important to me.

    If you happen to have any pictures please contact me and I will figure out a way to get them to me. I will be happy to reimburse you for the costs of posting the photographs.

    Kindest Regards

    Ann Fenech
    Centre for Sustainable Heritage
    The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL
    1-19 Torrington Place, Gower Street
    London WC1E 6BT

    Im sure good karma will go to those who help ;)


  • A weekend in London

    Us at Portobello market

    Last weekend I went to visit Ann in London. It’s really nice to have her closer so we get to see each other more often. It does mean that I dont get the boost of sun a trip to Malta would give to a pale guy like me :P Hopefully we’ll manage to make a trip to Malta for Easter. 

    In the meantime we enjoyed the sprawl of London. The picture above and below is from the Portobello Market in Notting Hill. As you can see it was a great day for strolling and the market was bustling with people along the almost two miles the road stretches.

    Portobello market

    London is getting into gear for the Christmas shopping and and there where lights up a lot of places. Here we make our way down Oxford Street, the big shopping street, in a painfully slow tempo. Looking at the city as it slowly sail by makes up for it.

    IMG_5672

    Saturday night we went to Camden Town to meet up with Jamie and Becky who used to live in Prague. They went back to London. (It was Jamie who had advised me on my Scotland itinerary and his parent’s house I stayed at in Glasgow).
    Jamie is a folk musician so we went out to hear him jam at a very local bar called The Golden Lion. It was good to see Jamie and Becky again and to hear their take on London. Jamie is at the back of this picture in stripes – this night he was playing violin, flute and guitar.

    IMG_5693

    While I was there I borrowed cousin Martin’s flat which was very appreciated. Ann has a lot more details about the weekend at her blog. The weekend was over fast and I’m now back in Prague.


  • Trip to the Vietnamese market

    Saturday we were a group of about 20 people from MeetInPrague who went to Sapa a Vietnamese village/market on the outskirts of Prague. The week before a huge fire had ravished one of the buildings in Sapa but still there was a lot of other places to see out there. The highlight was the lunch at a local restaurant.

    Most of the table

    Dominic who organized the event had with the help of his Vietnamese friend Mickey found this delicious drink. It is snakes and some other unidentifiable animals soaked in vodka – yummy! Some of the others tried it out. I was a chicken but tried a sip of one of the others when they didnt colapse after trying it.

    Dominic with the dead snake vodka

    One of the new faces at the trip was Karen the blogger from Empty Nest Expat. It was really cool to meet her as I have been following her blog over the last six months. She had never been to Prague until 10 days ago but since she saw pictures from the Velvet Revolution 19 years ago she knew she wanted to go here. So she waited until her daughters went to college, sold her house and all her stuff and moved here to become a language teacher. Way to go!


  • The American in Denmark

    The US ambasador to Denmark James P. Cain just published a book called Amerikaneren (The American) about his perspective of Denmark. His�ambassadorship is coming to an end with the change at the White House but during the three years he was in Denmark he went out an met a lot of regular people. Among other things he got on a bike and biking 2500 km meeting people all over Denmark – he even made a stop in Toftlund my tiny home town.

    One of the Danish TV shows made an interview with him (the interview is in English) where they talked about how he percieved Denmark. Some of the things he said was:

    It is a little hard for a stranger to feel welcome and accepted in Denmark – its a little tough to get comfortable in this society. […] I did come to understand that this society feel a bit insulated and under threat. It wants to keep the outside away. That creates some challenges for the society but also some challenges for newcomers to feel at home.

    This reminded me of a blog post and subsequent discussion recently at Bluefishs blog about what its like to live as a foreigner in Denmark.

    Denmark is a very homogeneous country and having experienced life elsewhere I would agree with Mr. Cain that the Danes are not always good at embrasing other cultures.

    http://politiken.dk/indland/article598282.ece

  • Thanksgiving in Prague

    Turkey!
    Last post was about Halloween, this post is about Thanksgiving and I should have made a post a week ago about the people of USA electing Barack Obama – what a historical moment! A lot of America going on I guess :)

    Kathleen’s parents from Long Island, New York were travelling Europe and stopped in Prague for a weeks time. Kathleen and her parents decided to throw us an early Thanksgiving Dinner (although it should have been the last thursday of November). We were very thankful anyways and had a great evening with amazing food. So as the tradition goes the dinner is a true palette of flavours. There were turkey, mash potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, beans, sweet potatoes, cauliflower with cheese and apple something. (Click the image below to see what is what) 

    Digging in

    After eating too much of the very well prepared meal the Renehan’s dished out with pumpkin pie and apple crust pie – more yummy stuff.

    Pumpkin pie

    I think I counted 18 people in the small flat with people sitting on cusions all over the flat. The limited space just made it that much cozier and I think everyone had a great night.

    People hardly had time to look up
    Hermann cracking jokes
    Let me tell you something funny

    Many thanks to Kathleen, Dan and Ann for their friendliness, delicious cooking and sharing this great American tradition with us.

    See the rest of the photos from Renehan’s Thanksgiving in Prague.

     

    Lat time I had Thanksgiving was three years ago when Femi, Chris and I went on the road from Michigan to North Carolina. Back then I was blogging in Danish but google does a decent job at translating it to English:

    • Thanksgiving Road Trip part I: read in Danish or English
    • Thanksgiving Road Trip part II: read in Danish or English


  • Halloween in Prague

    Its been two years since I last attended a Halloween party. So I was quite excited about this years celebration. I went as a viking and had found most of my gear at a thrift store.

    Me, the Viking

    We where a bunch of people from MeetInPrague that went out together. We started out with a couple of drinks at a bar and then headed on to theMonster Ball party.

    Kathleen in her little plane is probably my favourite this year.

    Kathleen in her airplane

    See the rest of my pictures from the night on Flickr.

    Update Nov 4th: Prague.tv has uploaded pictures from their photographers Ian Bull, Milk Shejk and Elle Driver. And it looks like the picture used at the City Beats post about Monster Ball are with my horns :)