As I wrote in a few posts back, my year got off to a good start in terms of ticking off the goals I set for this year. I signed up for Russian classes and went to Florida for a weekend in January, which took care of two of my bubbles on the 2014 mind map. Another one of my goals for this year is to improve my photography. As I think I wrote earlier, I recently bought a Canon G15, which my photographer friend, Anna Thorbjörnsson recommended me to start with and which has more functions than a compact camera without being too complicated. I used a similar camera when I was in Central Asia last year and although there is still much to wish for in the quality of my pictures, I recently submitted a few to two photo competitions at my work. And believe it or not but one of my photos was actually selected as one of four to be displayed at a conference on urban inclusion this week! It actually turned out quite well when they enlarged it into a poster. A good motivation for me to work more on my photography! Here is the original, from a market in Osh, Kyrgyzstan.

I’m especially happy that this photo was selected given my believe in integrating rural with urban. Food markets are a good example of where rural and urban meet. Here, both are mutually dependent: the rural inhabitants need food markets for economic opportunities and the urban inhabitants need the food markets to maintain good health and high quality of life. Well-designed cities can ensure the interest of both.