Tag: TED

The Bread

Posted by Vilius – February 16, 2009

I dedicate this post to my dearest friends Simas and Audronė who run a bakery of Lithuanian bread in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Today I ate most delicious dark bread in Hotel Pušynas in Druskininkai, Lithuania. It is such a joy to have a piece of bread in own hands and appreciate its quality, fragrance and taste.

I have never baked bread myself, only cakes at most. My brother Vytenis used to bake when he was studying in USA. I remember visiting him and helping in the process and eating afterwards.

Banana Bread by Vytenis

My wife Lina in her childhood was helping grandmother shaping bread, before it was pushed in the oven.

Good friends Sarah and Gregou now in down-under Sidney are baking bread and have huuuge book of recipes I had pleasure to look though.

There is amazing quality of bread baked in Salantai town in Lithuania. Huge loafs of bread, enough for a family for a week.

Friend Jolita lived in the same dormitory as I in Denmark, and she shared her work at Danish Technical University on preventing bread to age, or to grow fungus.

Last Friday while driving for business I watched the following TED talk by Peter Reinhart from TASTE3 conference on bread baking. It made me excited, thinking and appreciating. I invite you to watch it as well and re-discover your own connection to what bread is to you and how it keeps transforming as it always did in material and spiritual way, along with technologies involved in making it tasty and healthy.

Note: Language sometimes can get too specific for non-native English speakers.

Thank you my life and the powers above for providing me with delicious bread today!

Television for me

Posted by Vilius – December 19, 2007

Back in 2003, just before starting engaging in my PhD studies at DTU, I drafted on my website how my life would look like after 2006:

“Finish PhD, leave Denmark for Lithuania, start living settled life, get married, have kids, watch TV.. you know, stuff to do.. :) ”

It was a wild guess, kind of a dream. Something, what would really be nice to have. Friends till 2006 laughed and seemed puzzled how come I can do a 5 year planning? I do not know how, I just did it. Surprisingly, it works quite amazingly precise!

Now, after finishing PhD, returning to Lithuania, starting living settled life and working on romantic relationship, I see one aspect of the vision I do not like any more. It is TV. Or at least television and a TV set I was imagining back in 2003.

Right now I am against television. I do not wish to have one at home. When I visit someone, I turn off TV set as soon as I am allowed to.

The reasons simply are:

  • When TV set is on, people stare at it. It is a big big sucker of attention.
  • The value of the television content is low. Movies on fixed broadcast times interrupted with ads, news covering many horrible and negative issues, bringing bad emotions.

So, what I do about it?

I promote TV, where one chooses the content, selects positive, inspirational shows, new ideas. This means, that I watch myself and suggest to others:

Why ever I would need to switch on a TV set when I have this great content, being constantly published at the rate higher than I can consume? Do not forget about podcasts, learnoutloud.com, BBC, audited texts, and audio books for traffic jams situations, airport waits, and long travels.

For sure, movies on a hardrive and in cinemas will be here forever too, for one’s need to get into disconnection mode.

If you exploring, get inspired by services and projects which I do not use as: Joost, GigaOm’s newteevee. They are changing and fighting TV habbits of last decades quite successfully.

And I believe it is only for good, viewer has to be in total control what he watches.

Hopefully, by the time I have kids and want them to learn from TV programs (the value I discovered from Malcolm Gladwell’s books) , I will be able to get a good service via online channels too – which would allow me to forget TV set completely.