Madventures/Blog

1. Ryan asks about your music tastes, what are your favorite groups and artists (and if you know the band Quarashi)?

Brett Wolgemuth also  wants to know what’s on your playlists, so let’s play a game of DJ Shuffle – hit random on your mp3 player and fess up what 3 songs come up first.

TUNNA: I’m omnivorous about music.

For me music might be anything from Hardcore punk to Shamanistic chanting. It depends on the mood and the moment. Swedish pop in the morning, downbeat chill-out when I’m working, Mano Negra for a party, electro for everything, Finnish folk music when I’m homesick.

If I want to get rid of the stress I either listen to Tibetan prayer chants or go to a Psytrance forest party and dance my stress away. It really depends on the mood.

Damn, I don’t have my player with me right now. Let’s do this some other time, okay?

About Quarashi? I am afraid I don’t know any Icelandic hip-hop groups. We have pretty nice underground rap scene here in Finland as well. Most of them rap in Finnish though, so all you English speakers you won’t probably get much out of them.

RIKU: I’m old skool. Mostly it’s maybe reggae, something like Sugar Minott, but it could be also Miles Davis or Gene Vincent or Public Enemy or Bruce Springsteen or Dick Dale.

I’m not that much into electronic music, but then again some Viral Radio dubstep in Amsterdam or just hanging out as a fly on the wall in a jungle trance party has been really brain-opening…

When I’m traveling, I try to grab some local tunes with me. I’m not a world music expert by any means so I ask around. Nothing beats some decent Bollywood Masala mixtape or Manish Vyas when traveling in India.

In Africa, it’s been (of course) Fela Kuti or some other west coast artist – last time I found Afia Mala in Togo. She’s great!

And when I’m homesick, I want to listen to Finnish language.

My all time favourite is Dave “Isokynä” Lindholm, Finland’s answer to Bob Dylan (even though he’s better songwriter than Dylan, I think). Also it’s been weird to listen to Finnish Lapland’s indigenous Sami people’s songs when recovering from Ayahuasca in the Amazonian rainforest.

Nowadays, the best music in Finnish is hip hop, in that genre I might even recognize some newer artists. Here’s one of my favorites (there’s plenty of fantastic linguistics around in this scene in Finland): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ1IAlFeqPw

Quarashi – I had never heard of these Icelanders until now. Gotta check them out!

My iPod…let’s see the lottery results:

1. Lou Reed – Caroline Says I

2. Björk – Who Is It?

3. The Doors – The Unknown Soldier

Have to admit, I skipped Björk in 20 secs…

2. Jahcure wonders if you will ever visit Honduras, especially the tropical island of Utila?

TUNNA: Unfortunately we haven’t been to Central-America at all. I think it could really be one of the options for Madventures in the future!

We travel by intuition, choosing the places we visit using intuition. Honduras has always sounded very interesting and tempting to me.

After a quick wikipedia-ing Utila, it absolutely looks like a place I could imagine hanging up my hammock for a couple of months!

RIKU: Haven’t been traveling much in Central America, so should some day go to Honduras, too!

3. Maddy has a question for Riku: My boyfriend and I were wondering – we see you heat up the filter on your cigarettes before you start smoking them, what is the reason? We are curious!

TUNNA: Riku got that ridiculous habit while doing time in a Russian jail.

RIKU: Yeah, it is a ridiculous habit but not from prison. It stuck with me on those glory days of high school, when I – like the most of us – started smoking because we wanted to be popular among our peers. A very eighties move.

Then again, I guess it sterilizes the filter a bit, so when traveling in the tropics, it might even prevent from diarrhea!

There’s so many positive sides to smoking!

4. What is your opinion on couchsurfing?

RIKU: Hospitality exchange is definitely recommended. There’s Couchsurfing,

Hospitality Club, Servas etc etc, but it could be any network you like – for example people you’ve met virtually and who share the same interest, same hobby etc.

TUNNA: Couchsurfing is a great way to travel! When you visit a different culture or a foreign country that way, you get much deeper connection with local friends and reach completely another level.

I wouldn’t travel anywhere anymore without getting to know somebody beforehand.

5. Was the placenta for real? Isn’t that illegal?

TUNNA: Placenta is one of the most mythical human organs. In our culture many people never see it, even when they give birth. In the west this magical support system of a baby will be disposed as pathological and biohazard waste. For me it seems somehow inappropriate and ungrateful for this organ, which has been keeping the baby alive, to be dumped in the waste bin.

In many cultures Placenta is treated with respect and honor.

All cultures have different beliefs about the placenta. Many 
considered it the baby’s caretaker — in the Ural Mountains when the
tribes clothed the newborn, they also gave the placenta a little shirt.

In Siberia the soul of the placenta visited the babies in their sleep.

But Maori women of New Zealand buried the placenta immediately after childbirth, so it couldn’t harm the child. In Norway, mothers attacked the placenta with knives, believing it to be a terrifying monstrosity that must be killed.

In many cultures, placenta was preserved and saved for the child to eat when he or she reached one year birthday.

For me the thought of eating placenta was really gross in the beginning but when I read more about it, I found that it was actually a great opportunity for me to give some respect to this magical and mythical organ.

I’ve always hated the taste of liver and other inner organs. Placenta tasted exactly like that but much stronger, and the thought of eating human flesh didn’t do it much easier. Though it wasn’t the easiest snack to swallow, it really was a kinda holy moment for me to ingest it.

After eating it I got a strong rush from it and felt like being high, maybe because of adrenalin, but most probably because Placenta is very, very nutritious, superfood in its very meaning! If you are expecting a baby, I strongly recommend to give it a go!

RIKU: Fortunately it’s not illegal – why should you not be allowed to eat your own or your loved one’s placenta?

Actually this scene has had some activity in the 70’s & 80’s, at least that’s what the nurses told me when I picked up the one donated to us. They said it wasn’t rare that the placenta was kept in a fridge before the mother left the hospital and packed the organ with her.

Here’s some philosophy and great recipes:

http://www.mothers35plus.co.uk/placenta-recipes.htm