I have not written here for ages, but I have been too busy to enjoy my life and work in Stockholm. In a few hours I am leaving for Tylösand and a proper Swedish midsummer with family and boyfriend.
Hopefully I will manage to keep this blog better updated this summer.
I have been in Stockholm exactly two weeks today and am starting to settle in. I love my job and am starting to feel at home in my apartment. I will get my stuff from Gothenburg in April so right now it is furnished with an inflatable bed and a TV and that is it. :)
Yesterday I went grocery shopping in the little shop 200 meters away. It is the kind of store that is expensive because it is so small, but it has one really good thing - organic options for almost all the things you can buy. 21 out of 51 things I bought were organic (KRAV). Some people ask why they should by organic, I just say "why not?". I feel better and so does the planet. That is worth paying a bit more for.
As I wrote here last week I have found a new job in Stockholm. On Tuesday I also bought an apartment in Stockholm. 200 meters from my office... This is what it looks like. I haven't even been there to see it since I am still in Gothenburg. Maria helped me and had a look at it. Moving in March 3rd, but the house warming party will have to wait a bit since I don't get my stuff until mid April when I get access to my current apartment in Gothenburg.
Me in my sari from Kerala. It was a gift from Manisha.
The parcel I sent home from India has finally arrived. They didn't even open in it customs. Stuff sent from India is always wrapped in strong cotton cloth for protection and then stitched. Looks cool, eh?
There is a lot of things a girl can do when she is bored and this is one of the more successful ideas I had. Yum!
I wrote a post about books a few weeks ago and here I am going to write about a very special one.
Muhammad Yunus received the 2006 Nobel peace prize for his work with micro finances to help the poor. He started out in a local village in his home country Bangladesh to lend money to the poorest of the poor and his ideas an methods have now spread all over the world, from Norway to the US to Latin America and Africa.
I read his biography "Banker to the poor" during my last weeks in India and I want to strongly recommend the book to anyone who reads my blog. It is not only the interesting story of one man and his bank, but a story about a great humanitarian. His belief in the poor and in their capacity is fantastic and he challenges the leading idea (at the time and still) that the poor are helpless and they need guidance. He says, and keeps fighting for his idea, that the poor only are poor because they lack money and opportunity. His idea is to provide the basic funding and then the poor are smart enough to know how to best make use of it. He is also the first to run a bank that offers credit to the poor, not the rich and actually has a higher rate of repayment than most traditional banks.
The book really challenged my worldview and it made me look a bit differently at some things. Another reason that the book stayed with me is Yunus himself. He is truly a great man and it is very inspiring to read about how someone fights for their vision.
I hope that some of you will get a bit inspired too and read the book. It is the kind of book that you feel like a better person when you've read it.
