We Do Adventure

Yesterday as we we walking through the slush to the supermarket to buy water I had a thought. Having survived twelve days with just one tap in the house this had been turned off at 4pm. This was to enable repairs to start on whatever it was that needed fixing so we would get water back to the rest of the house. Our urgent requirement now was enough bottled water for essential washing and teeth cleaning. But this was not what was foremost in my mind. I was suddenly struck with the similarity between an unusually heavy winter and wartime. Several local people we know who have had a hard time over the last few weeks have said it reminded them of the early nineties. I have no first-hand experience of war so I'll take their word for it. I do know that the last thirteen days have been the first time in my life I have lived in a house without working sanitation . Washing has happened with a bucket and a bottle of water and we'll not talk about the toilet situation. Two weeks ago t...

Yesterday's news was, quite fairly, dominated by the passing of Steve Jobs. It made for sad reading on my MacBookPro over breakfast. I for one am grateful to the man who designed a computer that does the things I want to do without requiring me to understand how the computer does it. That it does it all in a well designed package that is a pleasure to work with is an obvious advantage. But the purpose of this post is not to big up Apple or their various iProducts. It is, instead, the tale of two contrasting meal times. If breakfast was a subdued affair, lunch took on a celebratory tone as we indulged in our first wraps purchased in Jajce. Not only has the local supermarket finally decided to took some Mexican food, they have done so by stocking more varieties of wrap than we've seen in the other towns we used to secure our supplies from. Long may this continue. So what's the most appropriate to finish this post? It has to be by saying: that's a wrap!

Let's pile on the the cliches; we are talking football after all. That game of two halves. The one where things always seem to be up there and probably at the end of the day! It's been described as a game that is't a matter of life and death, it's more important than that. Maybe it is, probably it isn't. Nevertheless, these days, many a manager mangles words like a would be philosopher while the stars of the pitch are schooled to deliver non-committal, controversy-free press conference performances a politician would be proud of. Taking their cue, this post will touch a little on the political and philosophical, which I hope makes up for the lack of anything more important. Tonight I played a little game. I typed 'Bosnia news' into Google, determined that I would blog about the first link it served up under its 'News for Bosnia news' heading. That was this link from ESPN Soccernet. I was the story I expected. Although I've been aware of th...

It might be a bad bit of British black humour but it’s tempting to look at the tragic news from Pakistan this morning and say: that’s just not cricket! Of course it is not a laughing matter. Sport is often held up to be an apolitical symbol of how we can all get along, although at times it seems hardly dissimilar to the colourful armies of old venturing into battle. And while occasionally a sports personality will use their position to make a political point you don’t expect them to have guns pointed and fired at them. It was only last night that we were discussing sports in our language lessons, trying, I think unsuccessfully, to explain cricket. It’s not a sport easily described, especially when using limited vocabulary in a new language. There is, of course, a huge common ground of football in this part of the world, although that can be dangerously tribalistic in this town – but I guess that’s not unlike Liverpool or Glasgow. As for a local cricket equivalent, perhaps it’s rukomet ...

We still log onto the BBC website to follow the news, but in doing so we’d be forgiven for thinking we live in a part of the world where nothing happens. Obviously that’s not true. However news from Bosnia Herzegovina is clearly not seen as a priority by Auntie’s editors. But doing a search today I turned up a video worth watching . It’s about the ongoing mine clearance, a project I didn’t realise was supposed to have been finished by next month. The country now has a ten year extension on this deadline. OK, if we're honest the video is not really 'worth watching' material; it's short and shallow and the accompanying text even more so. Neither do the subject matter justice. So what do you do if you want to find some local news but don’t speak local well enough to read the local papers or websites? Thanks to some Brits in Bosnia we found BalkanInsight.com , which seems to do the trick.

‘Yes, I love technology.’ Fans of Napoleon Dynamite will know the tune! Epic film; if a bit like Marmite , or should we say Vegemite as today is Australia Day? Not only that it’s Chinese New Year. And not only that it is the day we’ve become uncle and aunt for the second time. Our new nephew is almost directly due south of us, only just about as far south as you can be, unless you fancy an icy home with the penguins! It’ll be months before we meet the little fella but we’ve already seen him of Facebook. So while we’re thanks full for that, and the text message early this morning the following video serves to show negative side of technology. I can also broadcast to the world that I’ve got that embarrassing uncle thing pretty much down!