The startup life in Ethiopia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuQDyugVc2U Above is my very first experiment in making a timelapse video. It captures the team from Ethiopian educational media company Whiz Kids Workshop setting up a classroom library as part…
Keep readingFilm on the Pulse Pilot in Ahmedabad
http://youtu.be/2hUJSSNizls Above is a short film my teammate Karl Oscar Teien put together of some of the key stages we went through in our pilot of the Pulse Active Food…
Keep readingI’m back in India.
That’s right, again. A couple months ago I got recruited by a couple classmates to spend the last module of my master’s program in Ahmedabad to help run a pilot…
Keep reading“Fortress” by MJ Cyr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tRsNbBw04c Last weekend my old friend MJ Cyr came to the Bay Area to perform the amazing songs she has been making based on the writings of the Baha’i Faith.…
Keep readingAnnouncing Apraila Murkha
In March 2011 I was living in Panchgani, India doing some work with the Baha’i Academy. At that same time my mother was doing community development work with the Baha’is…
Keep readingPledge to Professor Mike Edwards
http://youtu.be/8VtQ1RSVtqI This is a video from the last module in my Master of Social Entrepreneurship program at Hult International Business School. I worked a couple of my classmates to organize…
Keep readingBenoit-James-Seleger family GIF
I just moved down to San Francisco for grad school and before I left Ottawa in the wee hours of Sunday morning my family got together for a photo shoot…
Keep readingThe Brothers Farr sing for ‘Abdu’l-Baha in Montreal
Yesterday members of the Baha’i community were invited to join the congregation of St. James United Church in downtown Montreal for special Sunday service. It was nearly 100 years ago…
Keep readingStatus updates from a bike tour (and friendship) unravelling
Right now my friend Eric Farr (of Honeyman and the Brothers Farr and the Hidden Words) is working with the International Development and Relief Foundation and his main job is running…
Keep readingClip from the Benny Show featuring Carmel
This is something I made a couple weeks ago with my niece and nephew to invite their friends to attend my niece Carmel’s upcoming second birthday party.
Keep readingPilgrimage to Bhopal
Late in the night of 2 December 1984 poor safety measures led to the release of 27 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas from a pesticide plant owned by Union…
Keep readingHappy Anniversary, Clobin
Where many friends engage in public conversations with one another over Facebook and Twitter to make sure everyone knows who they are talking to and about what, my BFF Chloë…
Keep reading‘Something so important’
About a year ago I put together this video while I was working directly with the Otesha Project as Programs Director. To develop content for an upcoming fundraiser a number…
Keep readingPerformance of ‘Radiant Heart’ by Iain Nabil
Iain Nabil Ferguson is a fellow Canadian who has been serving at the Baha’i House of Worship here in New Delhi for the past few months. He sings a number…
Keep readingAnna’s presentation
Last post I shared some photos of demonstrators at India Gate on the evening anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare walked out of Tihar jail to begin his public fast to demand…
Keep readingAnti-corruption demonstrations in New Delhi
If you haven’t been in India or purposefully following the news here, it’s possible that you might have finally heard about the intense conversation about corruption that is going on…
Keep readingWhy I don’t really use Twitter: It’s doomed.
As everyone on the Internet has probably already heard, my BFF Chloe Filson recently accused me of being awful at Twitter on her popular egg-pun website Real Life Artist. As you…
Keep readingThe Baha’i Academy (where I have been for the past two months)
I have always been fascinated by how Baha’i and Baha’i-inspired organizations tend to evolve so drastically to meet changing conditions and build on experience. The Baha’i Academy is a perfect example.…
Keep readingWORST ANNIVERSARY EVER
This Saturday 14 May 2011 will mark the completion of a full three years behind bars for six of the seven Iranians who had been serving as ad hoc administrators…
Keep readingMy 2006 correspondence with the Prime Minister’s Office
Back in my university days I used to read the National Post. Not because I liked it – in fact, I hate that paper. I read it because copies were…
Keep readingTo vote or to not not vote
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is once again applying to renew his contract with the people of Canada, but there are a handful of other guys that think that they…
Keep readingThree beautiful songs from the Hidden Words
The Hidden Words is a new Montreal Baha’i indie supergroup fronted by Alden Penner (of the Unicorns and the Clues) with Jamie Thompson (of the Unicorns and Islands), Eric and…
Keep readingI don’t understand hockey.
So I moved back to India where I can not understand cricket instead. This fifth entry in the ongoing series comes in GIF form thanks to secret collaborator Josh Weber…
Keep readingA short film about sports
If I don’t understand football, curling, or even marathon running – there is no way I am going to understand the sport that the majority of the planet has long written…
Keep readingA Magic Show by Parmesh
Every 19 days Baha’i communities all over the globe get together for an event called the Nineteen Day Feast. The Feast generally consists of collective worship, consultation and socializing -…
Keep readingHappy Naw-Rúz!
Yesterday at Lucky Snacks and Lucky Stores in Panchgani, India. What is Naw-Rúz?
Keep reading‘The Convictions of Leonard McKinley’ by Brendan McLeod
While spending the day at a district police station waiting for some residency papers earleir this week, I had the chance to finish a great little novel I’d like to…
Keep readingZach Miloff’s account of the earthquake
On the morning of Friday March 11th I arrived in Singapore to visit with some dear friends for a one day stopover between Japan and India. After a long day…
Keep readingMore GIFs from Japan
Normally I try to take a few photos when I visit new places to try to capture some of what it was like to be there. Japan is too weird…
Keep readingSome GIFs from Japan
A couple days ago I left Ottawa and I am currently in Japan for a few days on my way back to India. I’m staying with one of my home-town…
Keep readingIntimate performance of From the Dirt by Honeyman and the Brothers Farr
In response to my selections of the best of Honeyman and the Brothers Farr, a character by the name of Viamoana Heyman had this to say: “UMMM not including From the Dirt??? My friend…
Keep readingA story about how every day on an Otesha tour is insane
My friends at the Otesha Project inform me that applications are now open for this year’s slate of tours and I thought I would share a story from way back…
Keep readingThe best of Honeyman and the Brothers Farr so far
A review of my blog’s stats reveals that an earlier post on the band Honeyman and the Brothers Farr has been one of my most popular. This has much less…
Keep readingPhotos from Oujé-Bougoumou, Northern Quebec
Yesterday was Take Your Son To Work (Just As Long As He Doesn’t Touch Anything And Takes Some Pictures) Day for my father, which is cool, because yesterday also happened…
Keep readingThis year’s World Religion Day celebration in Ottawa is going to dig deeper
Over the past few weeks I have been working with a committee of the Baha’i Community of Ottawa to organize Ottawa’s World Religion Day celebration. World Religion Day is in…
Keep readingI don’t understand memes.
But I do think that two imitators should count for something. Click here to see the original series.
Keep readingThe BRQ
Like many organizations and movements, we at the Otesha Project love acronyms. We use them for our tours, our partner organizations and even for each other. One new one is the…
Keep readingI don’t understand dungeons and dragons.
[This is the fourth in a series by myself and Jennifer Valberg of me not understanding things.]
Keep readingMy Name is Khan (2010)
A long time ago, the first time an Indian in India started to look around and find that many of his or her friends and loved ones were all of…
Keep readingI don’t understand marathon.
[This is the third in a series of images of me not understanding different sports.] Sure, I run – but those gel packs, the shiny blankets, the bleeding nipples, and…
Keep readingSholay (1975)
This post is the second in an ongoing series of reviews of popular Bollywood movies. The first was of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. One method I have been using to…
Keep readingAndrew
What started yesterday as just another phone call from a cycling and performing team during a quiet day in the office has become the most tragic event in the history…
Keep reading“…and no one got chased out of town by angry pitchfork-wielding townsfolk.”
Last week I was interviewed for an article in Here Magazine about the Otesha Project cycling and performing tour we will be launching next week from Fredericton, New Brunswick. It…
Keep readingComic about the distribution of awesome
My BFF Chloe Filson has finally started a blog called Real Life Artist, and as could be expected, it’s way better than mine. She has started to post short comic…
Keep readingNEW FEATURE: Reviews of Bollywood movies
About a year ago a colleague of mine invited me to join her to a movie night at a friend’s place. She forwarded me the invitation and I saw that…
Keep readingSometimes we do funny things at work
For a long time I have thought that I work in a pretty fun office. In fact, I have come to believe that the main difference between my colleagues and…
Keep readingDo the prank you wish to see in the world.
A discussion at work about Google’s rich history of clever April Fools’ pranks this earlier week resulted in the following announcement to be made on the Otesha Project’s front page…
Keep readingSaskamatoonamawan
Did you ever think that you were the type of person who wouldn’t ever make conversation by talking about the weather? The weather always happens and it usually the same…
Keep readingGo see Avatar
I finally saw James Cameron’s epic new film Avatar with my father and uncle this afternoon and we found it both visually and thematically striking. Yes it was just the…
Keep readingPeace and Environment News article on Ottawa Baha’i community’s environmental action
Literally dozens of Ottawa residents might find themselves reading my words as they grab a copy this month’s (November/December 2009) of the free newsletter Peace and Environment News (PEN) published…
Keep readingWas that you on TV?
Yes. I’m the one with the big hair, the helmet and the engraved hunk of plastic. Watch it here. I was accepting the hunk of plastic on behalf of the…
Keep readingEnvironment geeks unite!
I have just returned to Ottawa from Madison, Wisconsin by way of Toronto, Buffalo , Chicago and Milwaukee to present another version of my research on hope and faith in…
Keep readingI don’t understand football.
But you know who does? Scott Valberg – that’s who. He understands football so well that he has been playing football for the Queen’s University Gaels for more than five…
Keep readingBaha’i Geeks and Environmentalists Unite!
In the past 48 hours, I have traveled by bike, hybrid car, regular car, greyhound, subway, train, taxi and foot to get from Tatamagouche, through Amherst, Sackville, Fredericton, Montreal, Ottawa,…
Keep readingA last night of firsts
Between the ages of 14 and 17, staying up all night and into the next day was my idea of a great time. Me and my best friend Seamus McGrath…
Keep readingCharlatan article on the Baha’i Faith on campus
Click on the image above to read the online version of an article I was interviewed for on what is like to practice the Baha’i Faith at Carleton University as…
Keep readingHolding back the alien vampire-zombies on Blue Team One: The Toronto Regional Baha’i Conference
Two weeks before Toronto’s Regional Baha’i Conference (one of 41 across the world) , I received an e-mail from Albert Wong asking if I would be a member of the…
Keep readingThe Middle Easy
Faced with the decision to stop over in either London or Bahrain on my way back home, I had to ask myself, as we all do from time to time,…
Keep readingMerry GIS Day!
Yes, it’s that time of the year again, people. Right in the middle of Geography Awareness Week geographers the world over are gathering with their professors and students to ring…
Keep readingWorking at the prayer factory
I have finally posted to flickr my set of photos from my month serving at the Baha’i House of Worship in New Delhi, India. Along with some unusual photos of…
Keep readingThe Low Carbon Diet Calculator, ‘Abdu’l-Baha and Meat
The great thing about studying ecology is that in every class and lecture everything we look at is relevant and important to our daily lives. I know the anthropologists, sociologists…
Keep readingReturn to Yasothon
All of my 2003-2004 Baha’i youth year of service was to be in Macau, China but visa problems eventually led the government of that city to kick me out. While…
Keep readingWhat exactly it was that I was doing in Thailand (again) + Chiang Mai photos posted
THEN / NOW While I was in the geopolitical neighborhood this year I had the chance to offer a month of service with the Baha’i community of Thailand, one of…
Keep readingThakham village photos posted
Click here to see a handful of shots from my visit to Thakham village near Chiang Mai, Thailand. It features pictures of the village’s youngsters, its oldsters and nothing in…
Keep readingSongkran video + Bangkok photos posted
Posted in this new set of photos are photos from Bangkok are images of Bangkok, some of its contents and several from this year’s Songkran festival. Songkran takes place over…
Keep readingAn Old Woman Woman Who Swallowed a Fly-type situation
There was a Canadian boy who played with dye, He didn’t take off his glasses first – I don’t know why, perhaps he’ll die. – There was a Canadian boy…
Keep readingKo Samet Pictures Posted
While I may technically be back in Canada now, and did not have the chance to post any content for the past few weeks, don’t think for a second that…
Keep readingThe End of an Internship
My internship is over and I have just posted a new set of pictures from the debriefing in Delhi that reunited six of the seven interns sent to India by…
Keep readingUniversity of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad Photos Posted
Within a few weeks from my arrival to the university that was to become my home for the past six months, I began to get a handle on it and…
Keep readingNaw-Ruz Greeting Video and Naw-Ruz in General
My beloved Flickr has just added video functionality so I am posting here the video Naw-Ruz greeting video I was commissioned by the Ottawa holy day celebration master Sherrie Yazdani…
Keep readingBelguam Photos Posted
Back in September when I learned that I was going to go to some place in India called Dharwad, it was rare to find anyone who had heard of the…
Keep readingUgar Photos Posted
In December I spent a day in a town further North in Karnataka that sold its soul to the sugar industry – sort of like how Macau has to gambling…
Keep readingMadapur Village Photos Posted
Before I leave it, I am going to post a few sets of photos from the great state of Karnataka like this one of images from the village of Madapur.…
Keep readingB W Seleger et al.
Over the past month my new nephew has been making the rounds, winning the hearts all those who have the chance to meet him with relaxed, dynamic personality. Here are…
Keep readingMy ridiculous 2004 fasting article
The Baha’i world is now on day twelve of the nineteen day fast. The one nineteenth of the year when we abstain from food and liquids while the sun is…
Keep readingBangalore Photos: A Photographic Retrospective in Photos of Bangalore
Don’t let the title of this post and your gullibility to anything written in a blog fool you, Bangalore still exists, arguably more now than ever before. But as I am leaving…
Keep readingOne Nineteenth
The chilly mornings and nights and windy days over here have made way for unbearable heat. That must signal that one nineteenth of the year in which Baha’i Bloggers and…
Keep readingPoop 101
A couple posts ago as I told you about about the research I am doing on a waste water stream in Hubli, Karnataka, and we started to think about the…
Keep readingThe Life of Benjamin William Seleger
It will always be easy for my family to remember when Julie and Fanfan announced to us that they were expecting. It was Father’s Day and Julie and Fanfan invited…
Keep readingWhat exactly it is that I am doing now
Dharwad’s twin city is Hubli, or the Commercial Capital of Karnataka to those who live around here and have never been to Bangalore. All of the domestic sewage, storm water…
Keep readingAjanta to Jaipur to Delhi to Oblivion
(Journey North Begins, Paris to Bangalore to Dharwad, Dharwad to Belguam to Panchgani, Panchgani to Mahableshwar to Pune to Ajanta) Like a kid in a candy store. After the monks ran out…
Keep readingPanchgani to Mahableshwar to Pune to Ajanta
The present has a tendency to move much faster than my capacity to report on the past, so I am going to try to pick up the pace some. I have just returned from a second…
Keep readingDharwad to Belguam to Panchgani
*Note the above post title only lists our destinations, one must pass through innumerable places on the way. Overnight buses and trains are a great way to both save money on hotels…
Keep readingIndia kicked our behinds
Or more accurately – India kicked us in the stomachs. That’s what happens when two scrawny Canadians try to take on the biggest country in the world. When I say big,…
Keep readingJourney North Begins
During the summer of 2005 I did an internship with the Olinga Foundation in Ghana, West Africa. Most of the time I lived and worked in Accra, the capital city,…
Keep readingThe Life and Works of Honeyman and the Brothers Farr
Last year in a presentation about the critical academic approach of political ecology, a classmate observed that its main advocates do not do enough to forward their approach – which…
Keep readingMerry Diwali
Just when you were thinking that it was really time this blog stopped milking a trip I went on weeks ago now, here is one more set of photos from…
Keep readingReturn to NEDI – oops, I mean NETTC
The third and last stop of my personal pilgrimage through Panchgani was to my parent’s workplace and the buildings my father helped to build when we were there. In…
Keep readingReturn to old house
1997 2007 After hitting my old school during the first day of my visit to Panchgani, next stop along the road was my family’s old house. The plan…
Keep readingReturn to New Era High School
The last three posts on my return to Panchgani have manged to generate some interest in my humble blog, bringing many first time visitors and mention on couple other websites, including…
Keep readingThe Search for Sureka III
[This is the third part of a three-part story. Click here to start from the beginning.] Where we left off in the last installment, I had somehow been found by Sureka…
Keep readingThe Search for Sureka II
[This the second of a three-part story. Click here to read the first part.] I arrived in Panchgani yesterday morning and took the full self guided Benoit-James Historical Panchgani Tour. That will…
Keep readingReturn to Panchgani
In the 2004 movie Swades, Shahrukh Khan, the ‘King of Bollywood’, stars as the handsome map-loving scientist who returns to India to reunite with his childhood maid. He rents a comically large…
Keep readingShivalli photos posted
Please proceed to my flickr site for 20 new photos from the very photogenic village of Shivalli. This batch has a number of photos from the inside of two very…
Keep readingInamungal photos posted
This little boy asked me to pass this message on to you: “I swear that if you people don’t go to Samuel Benoit’s flickr site right now to look at…
Keep readingWhat exactly it is that I am doing here
Before I left Canada, my stock answer to the question was that I was going to be contributing to research pertaining to water quality and agricultural sustainability, but further questions…
Keep readingFirst 19 Day Feast in Dharwad
One of the very cool things about Baha’i communities around the world is that they tend to take the form of the culture they are in, this is especially so…
Keep readingLearned things
The following is a list of some of the many things have I learned, most of them the hard way, during my journey to India and in my first week…
Keep readingKrishi Mela 2007
Special regard must be paid to agriculture. -Baha’u’llah, Tablets 90 When I arrived to the campus of the University of Agricultural Sciences on the 30th, my new home for the…
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Samuel Benoit 