Photo from Invisible Children

It started out as a civil war in Uganda but today, more than 20 years later, the conflict continues as a terror regime where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continue to abduct children and mutilation and slaughter the local population. The LRA has caused the lives of thousands and dispalcement of millions of people in Uganda, DR. Congo and Sudan.

Invisible Children started out as a film project for three American guys and has turned into a grass-root organization trying to help the children affected by the conflict. It’s a conflict that hasn’t had much focus which is what the Invisible Children organization tries to do and one of the things discussed in the panel debate was how to bring attention to it.

The story is heartbreaking and what the organization is doing is really admirable in trying to give these kids a chance for an education and meaningful life. Until the conflict comes to an end it is worth reminding ourselves and our governments that we should not just stand by as this happens.

See the whole documentary Invisible Children: Rough cut.

To celebrate New Year’s Eve Ann and I joined Ann’s sister and boyfriend for a trip to the neighbor island of Gozo. I’ve been to Gozo a couple of times and always enjoy the quieter, green island for a break away from bustling Malta – this time it wasn’t that quiet tho.

Victoria, the biggest city on Gozo was putting on a New Year’s Eve party at two of the town’s squares with some local bands playing for the evening. We saw a number of bands/acts playing cover numbers and own songs. My two favorites were Carrie Haber and Airport Impressions.

There was a great atmosphere with the live music, lots of Gozitans out in their best clothes, beer and food stands and pleasant weather. A very different New Year for me without any Queen’s speech, cold snowy weather, fireworks or big bell for midnight but I really enjoyed the night.

The next day we went back to Malta – again a nice boat ride in good weather.

On the eve of the 22nd Ann and I made our way to Gatwick airport. We had a flight to Malta the next morning at 7.15 AM and didn’t want to count on public transport getting us out there in the morning as London was having severe traffic issues due to snow and ice. Lucky for us the the flight was almost and time and we made it to Malta without any problems.

While England and the rest of northern Europe was struggling/celebrating snow and ice we ended up in Malta’s warmest Christmas in more than 20 years with temperatures up to 24 degrees – nice!

On December 24th, while Ann was busy, I walked around the village she is from taking pictures of the Christmas decorated houses.

The last photo is a hand-painted picture on the back entrance to a bar that really have an aura of Christmas. As I walked by Christmas music was blasting out in the streets. Check out the front and side photos.

In the evening of the 24th we went to the village’s Christmas Procession where kids dressed as angels and shepherds walk the baby Jesus through the streets as they sing carols.

In the evening we went out with Ann’s siblings and partners to a nice restaurant on Vittoriosa Waterfront.

After that it was on to the university church where we went for midnight mass. The church was packed with people sitting outside watching the service on a big screen. We got a seat inside and watched the Maltese service which started with this kid retelling the Christmas story. Very cute.

Well I’m used to celebrating Christmas on the eve of the 24th but here it’s different so we had to let the gifts stay under the crib for another night before we could release the excitement.

The next morning we got stockings, opened gifts, played games, Wii and watched films.

An extra bonus is that Ann’s mum has orange trees in her garden so we could all start the day with a glass of fresh juice – delicious.

Merry Christmas!

10 years ago it was getting close to the Christmas break. I had finished high school six month earlier to work at a photo development lab to make some money. Previously I had made a website together with my dad for a couple of years but now I wanted my own domain so I could have my own website and email without having to use hotmail or any of the other free email services of that day.

In high school I had acquired the peculiar nickname Gelle among my friends and since it was short and I couldn’t think of anything else I picked that. Not that I really like the word – it looks and sound a bit like gele but I got it now, it’s fairly unique and it’s my username on most websites if I can get it.

The first thing I was really using the site for (except for a page of quotes about beers) was to write about the preparations before, and keep friends and family update during, a trip to USA for 3 month in 2000.

I have lost the actual updates I wrote during the trip and only the shell of the site is left.

The first front page from 1999 is again lost in history. After I came back from US in summer of 2000 I started university in Aalborg and this became my for next couple of years. A collection of links to small websites I’d made for myself and friends.

In 2005 I was heading to US again, this time for an internship in Ann Arbor so I created the blog you are reading in April 2005 and started blogging in Danish about my upcoming trip.

Blogging became a habit with about a post a week which I try to keep up. About a year and a half later I was back in Denmark and switched over to blogging in English.

The design of the blog has changed slightly every now while the tone of the blog has stayed more or less the same throughout the past 4 and a half years, I think. I have blogged a lot about place I have gone, things I have done and very little about my company, thoughts and reflections. And I think it will stay that way.

Who knows what will happen in the next decade but for some reason I doubt we’ll still be using domain names and URLs to find each other. If we do you’ll maybe find a strange 40-year-old(!) behind gelle.dk rambling about and taking pictures of whatever he comes across in his days.

Happy birthday gelle.dk :)

In Copenhagen I joined a bloggers dinner and learned about BarCamp through bloggers and in Prague I made a couple of Danish friends that I found through their blogs. I also met Empty Nested Karen and Minnesotan Al in Prague.

I’m trying to do the same in London but in London everything is so much bigger which is both good and bad. Good because you can find literally everything and all sorts of people, groups and activities. Bad because it easily becomes overwhelming and places and people are far apart. Nevertheless I’ve embarked on the London blogosphere and twittersphere.

Ann and I went to the Christmas gathering of a group called London Bloggers Meetup (#LBM) that organizes a monthly event for people who blog to meetup and chat.

The group was started two years ago by Andy and has gone from having a handful participants to having upwards of 100 now with the events getting booked out days or weeks before they take place. Here Andy is presenting one of the nights three speakers.

First speaker was a security expert from Symantec (who sponsored the bar tab), then followed one of the girls of Domestic Sluttery (they brought cookies!) talked about tips for bloggers and last was Arvind talking about Kiva – a microfinance project.

A great night and I got round to speak to a couple of bloggers like Jorgen, The Undercover Recruiter and Too Geeky Chris (and a couple I forgot, ups).

A few weeks later I went to West Hampstead a neighborhood 30 min walk away from here. There is an active and growing online community in West Hampstead that mainly engage on Twitter. Jonathan is the man behind the blog West Hampstead Life and he is also very active on Twitter where he has been the anchorman for a lot of events. I went to a meetup called a #WHampGather at Alice House a very cool pub/restaurant.

There were loads of people who turned up for the event, our corner was completely packed and the group was very divers. Again I met a lot of interesting people and had a good evening.

At both events there were prizes and gifts so from the bloggers meetup I came away with a copy of Symantics new anti virus program and the day after I won a lampshade and from the twitter event I won a cool Dot To Date calendar.

This morning I went up to the local Gladstone Park to try out my new camera and see out if I could figure out how to take snow shots.

Nice day!

In London
5th of November the Brits celebrate the Guy Fawkes failed attempt to blow up Parliament. We went to the local Roundwood Park to see a the fireworks. Before the show we grabbed some hotdogs and looked at all the kids fighting with light swords.

Trips to Denmark
In November I went on a round trip in Denmark partly for business but also to see friends and family. In Copenhagen I stayed with Mikkel who loves to cook (and I love to eat his food).

In Aalborg I visited Peter, Maria and little Oscar and met Martin for a beer or two at my favorite classy and trashy bars.

In Odder I had a playdate with my nephew and ended up at my parents place for a couple of days.

This Denmark trip ended with a big Christmas celebration in the barn of my aunt Solveig where the three cousins were celebrating Christmas big style. Always a big, fun party and this year cousin Rasmus was home on leave from his soldier duties in Afghanistan. Here are the three brothers Rasmus, Mogens and Christian.

Three weeks later I was back in Denmark again – this time with Ann. Since Ann and I are spending Christmas in Malta we went to exchange gifts and celebrate a mini-Christmas with my family with a nice dinner, gifts unwrapping, Lego building with Magnus and cookie making with my dad.

After the family stuff we went for a trip to Århus to see Christian, his wife and 6 month old son. Before that we went to The Old Town an open air museum where they have old buildings from all over Denmark that has been disassembled in their original spot and rebuilt in the museum.

Visits in London
Ann’s mum and sister came to visit us in London at the end of November. With them we went to see the musical Blood Brother with Melanie C. One of the other days we walked along Regent’s Canal to Camden Market.

My cousin Rasmus the soldier and his friend Daniel was passing through London so I spend a day walking around London with them and catching up.

A friend from high school Jan and his girlfriend Kristi came to London this weekend and I had a great time playing guide/discovering London with them as we walked through town on a nice winter Sunday.

With Jan and Kristi we made it to an evensong at Westminister Abbey. For the first Sunday of Advent, Ann and I had gone to St. Paul Cathedral (pictured above).

Getting out of London
We went to Canterbury in Kent for a Sunday to meet a friend of Ann. The weather was not the best but we got to see the medieval town and huge cathedral where the Archbishop of Canterbury resides.

With Ann’s family in London we took a trip to Oxford where we did Ashmolean Museum, Museum of Natural History, Museum of History of Science and Pitt Rivers Museum.

That was it for the highlights. As mentioned Malta is coming up for Christmas and I’m really looking forward to that :) Hopefully I’ll get around to writing another update or two before – if not – Merry Christmas!

It is the weekend of All Saints the time of remembering the dead. In a lighter spirit it’s also Halloween and time to scare and be scared. Thursday night Ann and I went to Union Chapel in Islington for a quite extraordinary service.

Union Chapel is a church built in Victorian Gothic style back in late 19th century. It is a working church with sermons every Sunday but it is also the host of other events. In order to pay for the restoration and upkeep of the building as well as increase access the church opened up for performing arts to use the place in 1991.

Union Chapel has hosted names like David Byrne, Noel Gallager, Damian Rice and even U2 made a surprise session there (click the links to get an idea of the atmosphere). Thursday night the church was taken over by Dracula!

Jameson the whiskey was hosting a Cult Film Club in the church so we got tickets and drinks for free – not a bad deal :)

The film they were showing was the Dracula of 1958 and as you can imagine the church was perfect for a Dracula setting.

Before the show started while people were getting drinks and popcorn a Dracula was on stage hanging and standing from a metal frame sometimes jumping off stage and sneaking around the back to scare people.
To top it all off an organ player was setting the right mood on the original Father Willies organ in the church – Spooky – in a very cool way!

See the official photos here. Yet again the blog/twitter of IanVisits was the one to alert me to an event, cheers!

A night of folk music and Guinness – not the worst way to start of a week :-)

Monday night we headed to The London Irish Centre in Camden. A festival called The Return to Camden Town celebrating Irish culture is currently going on in Camden and Jamie Smith (who we saw last year as well) was playing with his new band Smith: Byrnes: O’Sullivan and this was the release concert of their first CD.

There were two bands playing that night, the first one with was a guy playing different a instrument for almost every song with his band. This was a bit more traditional I guess and then there were Jamie and his friends playing a bit more upbeat with a drummer and guitar. I really enjoyed the music, it reminded me of my days back in high school when the folk festival was in town there.

I shot a video of the first song they played; Exotic Snowball. The sound in the video is not good so if you want to hear what it really sounds like go to their myspace profile and hear the song there.