It's been hot lately and I made a discovery on Berlin's Große Hamburger Str. One of those Arabic imbisses sells water that seems to be of Arabic origin.

Reading the fine print:

PRODUCED AND BOTTLED BY
GULF PURE WATER CO. (SUPER GULF) UMM AL QUWAIN, UAE.

Now that doesn't make much sense. To transport bottled water from one of the most arid places in the world to a city that's drowning in its own ground water.

A visit to the Super Gulf website further enlights you about the design values of this globalised product:

Our unique bottle design is the result of day’s work of our Japanese engineers. The aim was to have a bottle, which is easy to hold in hand. To make it different, you will find three small mountains inside the bottle at the bottom.

All this reminded me of the "I am Bedu" scene in Lawrence of Arabia. To close this matter, let me pull a quote from an essay I found on website Hub O' Love

There is a poignant scene in the 1962 David Lean motion picture, Lawrence of Arabia in which Lawrence's guide offers Lawrence a drink of water. As Lawrence is about to drink he asks, "You do not drink?" - "I am Bedu" replies the guide. Lawrence promptly pours the water back into the canteen and says; "I will drink when you drink."

Materialwise, balancing between mobility and the quality of life is juggling. One bottleneck is the books. Sound system is another.

I had been eyeing for Harman Kardon Soundsticks for a while, but eventually changed my mind and invested in a pair of reasonably priced Edirol nearfield micro monitors. First of all, being cubic in form instead of some alien design they fit better to a Türkenkoffer. They also offer some professionality placebo and compensate the lack of subwoofer with a smart technique that deals with the overtones of low frequencies. I have a wishful theory that psychoacoustically generated bass tones penetrate neighbours' walls to a lesser success.

Well, they are no Genelecs of course, but they do make some music sound better (and some worse) than it used to be. I had no idea that technology could have such an effect to the reception. It has a direct impact on playlist choices. In general, especially Norwegian music sounds really good with these.

Now playing: Nils Petter Molvær - Tløn