Jogging - core human activity - the basics

Humans evolved to walk and run at low speed for long periods, so to compensate the drawbacks of the modern sedentary life-style we have to turn to the roots, and there is a lot of walking and jogging.

Its not necessary to do daily marathons, but 2-3 times per week for 30 min or 1 hour we must do some jogging and another 2-3 times per week for 2 or 3 hours we should walk. The best way to do this is to be barefoot or at least with some minimalistic foot-wear. While jogging, only our fore-foot should come in contact with the ground. This will teach us the correct posture and technique for natural running, so we can avoid pains, injuries and deformations, which nearly all modern people suffer.

Some food for the thought:
Jogging
Endurance running hypothesis

Topics for research of cultures and people

Happened that in my life I stumbled a few times on some odd and interesting people and their cultures and every time I was rather taken by surprise and didn't knew what exactly to look for and some time later, while recounting the experience I've been realizing that I've missed many interesting moments about them. So to avoid this happening in future I decided to put together list of topics in which I am personally interested in regard of researching specific cultures.

Also while I've been thinking about this topic it sprang in my mind the side project to collect information about some less known tribes and cultures, which information is often spread around the net in different places and often is wrong and contradictory. And the plan is that the points from this list will roughly correspond to separated posts about each ethnics/tribe I'm planning to do. The idea is eventually to have a full article, which will encompass all of these topics and this article will serve as complete source of information about the specific culture in one place. Ideally this has to be article in Wikipedia, but as I'll be unable for the moment to provide reliable sources it has to be put somewhere else and even if not properly sourced the information at least will be available in condensed form in one place. I'm not sure how exactly should be called such article, may be "Ethnographic study of X"? So I'll be grateful for some hint from more knowledgeable readers. Also I'd like some feedback about the list, what I missed, what I categorized wrongly, etc.

So, lets list these topics:
1. Language
2. Writing systems
3. Symbols
4. Clothing and how it is made
5. Utensils and how they are made and used
6. Tools and how they are made and used
7. Weapons and how they are made and used
8. Hunting and fishing tools and weapons, how they are made, used and by whom
9. What is hunted, when and how for each specific type of prey
10. Religion, belief system, superstitions, legends, myths, oral traditions, tales, etc
11. Customs and rituals, all particular ones listed, illustrated and explained
12. Marriage, coupling customs and rituals
13. Relations between sexes, duties and rights
14. Attitude to death, rituals and customs
15. Naming
16. Food, what is it, from where is taken, how is made, eaten, etc
17. Husbandry, what, how, by whom, when
18. Animals, what kinds, for what propose, how, by whom, where, when
19. Martial arts, training, rituals, competitions, tools/weapons
20. Festivals, celebrations
21. Songs
22. Dances
23. Free time, when, how
24. Daily life, breakdown by time, tasks, type of people
25. Annual and monthly changes, migrations
26. Work, which days, how long, from what to what time, breakdown by sex, age, trade
27. Attitude towards sex, customs, rituals
28. Rising children
29. Medicine, what, how is made, found, by who and how and by who is taken and given
30. Agriculture, what, how and for what propose is grown
31. Plants, what, how are collected or grown, how are harvested or found, how are processed and kept, for what propose, by whom
32. Housing, what is it, from what is made, how is made, where is made and by who is made
33. Water, how is found, kept, used, processed, when, by who
34. Fire, how is made, kept, used, when, by who
35. Laws, courts, authorities
36. Social hierarchy
37. Other materials used, when, how, etc
38. Decorations and motifs
39. Beauty and personal aesthetics
40. Physical description and particularities of the people from the culture

That is more or less what I am interested in the different cultures and this list is going to be the first approximation of my "Don't forget to find about ..." manual.

Thanks for reading and see you soon.

Nomad camp of Golok people, note right shoulder normally is exposed while working or sitting. (photo taken at the 1938–1939 German expedition to Tibet)

Paleo life-style - basics

In this video I am explaining some of the core ideas of my version of the paleo life-style. Mind that when we say "Paleo" it is simply rough approximation as most of the fruits and vegetables were pretty different even few centuries ago, but is the best we can do in urban setting. 

Essentially I am doing 1-2 hours of physical exercise a day, which consist of jogging between 30 and 60 min, several series of sit ups, push ups, squats, shadow fighting and more.

My daily diet consist of eating once (rarely twice) a day in the evening the following:

*grapefruit

*200-300g of meat (fish, chicken, pork, etc)

*half avocado scooped with spoon

*onion (garlic or something similar)

*juice from half lemon

*50g nuts (walnut, hazelnut, pecan, etc)

*random fruit or berry

*random vegetable

*banana

And as general note, most of the calories should come from meat

Below follows excerpt from the video:

I'd like to share some basics of my lifestyle. First I have to give you some background. Few years ago I used to be 120kg. Since then I dropped around 40kg which was about one third of my weight and I managed to maintain the muscles and improve my health with a simple combination of exercises and diet.

First I'd like to talk about the exercises. The basics are I'm doing everyday between 1 and 2 hours light exercises, which includes jogging between half and one hour, and some general exercises like kick boxing, push ups, sit ups etc. I'll describe in more details what and how exactly I'm doing in another blog. For now I'd like to concentrate on the other component which is the food.

There are several core elements that I'm eating every day – meat, grapefruit, banana, some fruits, berries, onions, nuts, lemon and avocado. Some of these thing may be changed in some of the days, but essentially that's all. I'll explain the reason in another blog.

The first thing that I'm normally eating is one grapefruit. It gives me a sense of fullness. The next is about 300gr of row meat, more often fish, with onion, lemon and half avocado. I normally eat after that some nuts, usually about 50gr and after that some berries, carrots. Some days I may eat one raw egg, which turned to be my favourite part. I like it's taste. Finally I eat a banana, which improves my digestion and generally because I like the taste.

This is my one and only meal most of the days and I'm eating it normally after 6pm. After few days you can get used to eat only one meal a day and all this is giving us much better sense of fullness then cooked food, hamburgers and so on. Probably the reason is that we've been design by Nature to eat this kind of things, without salt, sugar, and other processed food, and so our body doesn't receive wrong signals if we are full of if we have to gorge more for some reason.

Another thing that I wanted to say today is that I gave up smoking half year ago. I'm using Nicotinell lozenges in case I crave nicotine. The nicotine itself is not the bad part of cigarettes. The tar is. I feel big improvement in my health and well being.

These are the basics. In future blogs I'll be explaining in more details each one of the things that I'm doing and why I'm doing them.

A Walk In Wintry Swedish Forest - Bohusleden, Stora Mölnesjön - Christmas 2015

Here I'll share one of the better experiences I had in my life, the walks around Stora Mölnesjön and Vättlefjäll Natural reserve. The name of the track we used to follow is Bohusleden and I highly recommend to the visitors of Gothenburg to spare a day and see these lakes, regardless time of the year. Its equally beautiful in every season and while popular hiking trail, its still relatively less walked.

The Bohusleden trail starts (or at least passes close to) Rannebergen, a part of Angered suburb in Gothenburg, Sweden. Also there is the border of Vättlefjäll Natural reserve and the lake Stora Mölnesjön. This natural reserve is somewhat typical for Sweden place. One can clearly see the rocky ground, covered with relatively thin layer of soil and here and there fallen trees, which have the root system visible and one can see how it is spread very thin and wide over the boulders below. The natural reserve is pretty humid place (as most of Sweden) across the whole year and this means that there are always big swamp and bog areas, which are often difficult or even impossible to cross. Also it is good idea to be somewhat careful with the wild life as there are some dangerous animals as moose, bear and red deer during the winter or adder and mosquito during the summer. I guess making noise while walking is enough of deterrent for most of the bigger animals and spray to repel mosquitoes for the smaller. About snakes, the adder can be dangerous, but it rarely injects venom when biting and even then the venom is unlikely to kill healthy adult human, but still its a good idea to look at our feet when walking in the forests. Actually I plan in some future articles to cover more in detail the information about these animals. Also its worth to note that this place is not so far from the polar circle and in midwinter the day is pretty short, the sun rises above the horizon for something like two or three hours a day and by 3 o'clock its already dark. Having that in mind we can enjoy our walks around the lakes in Vättlefjäll, which during the summer months radiate the spirit of the Scandinavian nature and one nearly expects to run across some mythical forest creature like dwarf or hulder

So it has been snowing for few days and the fog was thick. As I said we went for a walk in the Vättlefjäll Natural reserve. Stora Mölnesjön was frozen, which is its usual state for this time of the year, however the continuous snowfalls we observed the last few years are not so usual. Anyway there were a few people having their walk and enjoying the scenery. Also we passed through few typical houses built in the outskirts of the reserve and the lake and I think that it should be very nice to live in this area. It is just 30 min away from the city centre but I have the feeling that the civilization is already far away. The temperature was well below zero, but there was something rather interesting, young local guys were taking bath in the icy waters of the lake in hole they cut in the ice. So, here we have few of the pictures from that day, enjoy!

First view of Stora Mölnesjön

Stora Mölnesjön swamp

Villas around Stora Mölnesjön

Bohusleden trail starts

Stora Mölnesjön view from the trail

Ice Bathing in Stora Mölnesjön

Thick Fog over Vättlefjäll

Mini-bridge at Stora Mölnesjön

Stora Mölnesjön, connection between the lakes

Bohusleden track passes sometimes over boulders

Bohusleden

Further the Bohusleden trail

At the Bohusleden trail one can see often these tree trunks used as bridges over swampy places or small brooks

Its tricky to cross one of these when its frozen, but lighter animals walk easily over the ice

One of the impossible to cross swamped areas

View of the frozen lake in the fog

Walk in the centre of Sofia (test video)

This video is not meant to be touristic guide, but rather it will try to give a feeling of what to expect to see when visiting Sofia. Also I'm learning now how to do videos, so the shaking camera and other weak points are some of these beginner's things. So I joined few short clips, which I had from before in one longer and played a bit with the video creator and this is the result. I learned a few things and I think the next videos will start to improve little by little.

White Long-headed Poppy (Blindeyes)

White Long-headed poppy - (Papaver dubium dubium L. var. albiflorum) called also Blindeyes from North-West Bulgaria, May 2016. Despite the white form being rarer variation of the typical red one, I found in this area only white and none of the red. Anyway, these white poppies are very beautiful and kind of unusually looking in the midst of the much more common red ones.

White Long-headed poppy - (Papaver dubium dubium L. var. albiflorum), called also Blindeyes

White Long-headed poppy, another view

Visit to Styrsö, Sweden

Few years ago I had a chance to visit Styrsö, small island close to the Swedish City of Gothenburg (Göteborg in Swedish), which can be reached with the Gothenburg's public transport net with no additional coast. It was just after 2008's Christmas and despite the cool weather (from 0C midday to -10C in late evening) everything was very charming and nice. The ambient was something that I started identifying with the country in general, somehow everything is calm, organised, purposeful and made to look nice. There is also touch of simplicity and all this combined with the nature and climate makes the atmosphere very particular. It's hard to describe it with one word or sentence, so I'd call it "One very Swedish feeling".

Red House  Styrsö, Sweden

I must mention here that this type of houses are not simply "generic red house", the paint is called Falu Rödfärg. It is an integral part of the Swedish culture and houses painted with Falu Rödfärg are one of the most iconic views from the country. If interested read more here: falurodfarg.com

Yellow House, Sweden

House Gothenburg

Styrsö Island House

House, Styrsö

Village's road, Styrsö Island, Sweden

Styrsö Village, many of the houses are further inside the owner's land, which gives them the "Forest House" feel

Styrsö cemetery, frozen and calm

Styrsö Sunset

Sunset Styrsö (my favourite picture of this series)

Paleo diet - minced pork

I've been asked to show some dishes from my version of the paleo diet. I'll have another video explaining all components of that diet, the meaning of them, why I am doing it, how I'm doing it, but for now I'll show just couple of dishes that I'll eat today. First and main meal is going to be minced pork, which I bought from the local shop, fresh pork with fat, minced. Next component is going to be fresh chopped onion and pepper, and parsley fresh and chopped also. Also we'll add an egg and couple of spices, black pepper and paprika. First we mix the egg and the mince. The mince is about 200 gr and the egg is about 70-80 gr. We mix until it's consistent. We'll eat this row, but the taste is not really different of runny eggs. It's quite common food. Also the minced pork is quite common to be eaten row. There are many national dishes in Europe and Asia that include row mince. Add a handful of fresh chopped onion, parsley, chopped onion and a bit of chopped pepper. One of the issues of this dish for people who are not accustomed to the paleo diet, and are used to eat salt daily, is that it is tasteless. To overcome this we can add some spices like black pepper or paprika. We need to spent about couple of weeks eating only raw food without salt and sugar so our sense of taste could sharpen and we'll perceive the normal raw meat as quite salty and tasty. Mix all ingredients well. We'll have about 300 gr of main meal at the end.

Red Persian Buttercup

These bright red buttercups were shining in the silver-green surrounding after the rain.

Single Tent-Cape paper and life-sized models

In some of the previous posts I showed models and use of my double Tent-Cape, but there was another manner of folding sheet of fabric in the form of tent, which I used when in need during the last 20 years. This type of tent uses square sheet of waterproofed fabric (tarp) with sizes 2x2m (which is most suitable for my height of 1.8m, but in a pinch I would use 1.8x1.8m/6x6ft). This tent is much shorter and not very comfortable, but is simpler, uses smaller square sheet and allow me to sit inside. This sheet can be used as hammock and rain-cape also.

The pitching up requires first to pin down with a peg one of the corners, after that to stretch the sheet and pin down the middle of the opposite side. After that fix down the pole, which is longer then the half of one of the sides, After that tie the front flap to the pole and preferably tie to top of the pole with string to peg in the ground, which will pull against the first 2 pegs.

I guess for somebody it may not be very clear this explanation and I'll do video of how the pitching up is done some of the next days.

Square sheet of some water/windproof fabric

Folding it, so we can find the middle of each side

Mark/fold the line between corner and middle of the corresponding side

Mark/fold the line between corner and middle of the corresponding side

Same for the other side

Another view to show better how it looks

Folding the line of the front flap

Sheet folded in the shape of the tent

For simulating pitching up, I used 2 pins to show where are the pegs, which will stretch and fix the sheet to the ground

For the pole which supports the tent I used toothpick. In reality it is a stick 1.4m long, from which 0.4m are nailed into the ground and is fixed with string/buttons/wire to the front flap. Also there can be used piece of string to pull the pole in the opposite of the pegs direction.

Another view

Real life sized model from tyvek (few months ago somebody wanted me to show him how it looks and I made this then and took picture)

Devil's Apple (S. linnaeanum) from Bni Bouayach, Morocco

I took these pictures an year ago during my visit to Morocco. While the quality is not great, the plant itself is interesting. I stumbled across few of these just outside of the village Bni Bouayach. The temperature was around 46C and the ground was completely dry and burning hot, but seems they were thriving there. I would assume it is a Devil's Apple (S. linnaeanum), but I am not 100% sure, so if I am wrong, correct me, please. It looks a bit like spiny tomato and is pretty easy to be mistaken with the wild eggplant, which is actually closely related species. Also it is worth mentioning that the species is poisonous, so be careful if you come across one.

Devil's Apple (S. linnaeanum) from Bni Bouayach, Morocco

Devil's Apple (S. linnaeanum), closer view

Walk along river Botunya

Video from my walk along river Botunya (spelled also Botunja or Botunia) during the spring. The mussels shown are probably Duck mussels (Anodonta anatina) (If I am wrong please correct me)