Slow-mo sunday

Sunday mornings are the best, liters of latte and freshly pressed orange juice. Fat newspaper and soul music. Pure perfections like these:



Olafur Arnalds - Lojso from Astronaut Magazine on Vimeo.


KUSHO from Shinichi Maruyama on Vimeo.

Best of the best 2010

Collected this year's best albums inspired by NME, BBC, Guardian, Radio Helsinki and more. I also added some of my own favorites. If I would have to name 5 best albums of the year I would say Bonobo, The National, Robyn, Caribou and Gil Scott-Heron. At the moment most interesting, which popped from these lists are Egyptian Hip Hop, Maximum Balloon and Zola Jesus. From Finland nice beats by Kemmuru and Teflon Brothers. Click click.

Rocklands...

At the moment the hot spot to go bouldering is Eastern Finland, but as usual I'm late in trends sooo finally after planning and wishing for so many years the trip to South Africa is now booked and bought. Flight tix check, accommodation check, duration 29 days. Six months to go... Some drums for cold nights and while waiting here.

Snow, snö & lumi

Winter is actually pretty nice, maybe still a bit too cold for icecubing though. At the moment it is very beautiful and calm, and silent, therefore less words. It might be no words soon, if it is going to be a looooong winter. Playlist for the week, less electronics more guitar, but still devoted to pretty and beautiful :) 

Some mobile pics.

Cooold....

Snow is here and minus degrees. I'm freezing, I do not like winter, I used to like it but not anymore, it just lasts tooo long. This is just the beginning; we have still about four months left... Hopeless and depressing. One treatment for it is to plan next year's road trips: Switzerland, South Africa, Norway, France, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden or Finland? There is something behind The Atlantic as well. Maybe all? At least, it will be the first three and the last two in the list, maybe save the last one for a another year. Heello, I think my motivation for the winter just arrived. 

Of course there are some inspiring people who defy nature. Actually, if you'd give the thought a chance you might end up enjoying it, or then time gilds my memories again and it wasn't really so nice to do icecubing. It feels so good afterwards, and this I'm sure I remember correct. Yes, let the minus degree temperature record be broken this year! I think my level is only -5 degrees, feeling a bit ashamed to admit it concidering of being a citizen of the Nordic countries.  

A little playlist for the winter days and a beautiful and pretty :) song by Kate Nash.

Back to biz

As you might have seen my climbing has been pretty boring for the past weeks. Though, last week I started climbing again - jug fests at the gym. My finger feels pretty good, just need to have a long warm up and skip the tiny holds. I do not use tape, because I think you loose the sense and when you are climbing in controlled conditions indoors you can avoid the pain and not force the finger to painfull positions that you might do when having taped the finger. Preventing taping is of course good and I should've used it too before the injury to actually avoid it.

Climbing gyms aren’t really top class in Uppsala, not even middle class to be honest. But, you just have to be creative and find other ways to use them and benefit from them and the most important thing is we have blocks in the forrest. Anyways, one of my favorite forms of training indoors is doing the long traverse set. I usually do it during the lunch time, so I know the gym is empty. I listen to music and then I traverse for 45 minutes without rests including vertical, overhang and roof climbing, just my mula bandha with me. Sounds boring, I know. I don’t know if it improves my climbing either, but it does feel good. Just the movement, nothing else, simple and boring, but also one of the reasons why I got hooked in climbing in the first place.

Here is one of the playlists that I listen to while traversing, it is soft, melodic and pretty lovely :)   

http://open.spotify.com/user/padlady/playlist/2eAnzF7jcvbFQSG6Ugb3hK

Rjd2

Ramble John Krohn was entertaining us yesterday. The set was a very nice combo of music and visuals. Gathered some of his stuff here.