30 March, 2006
Cold Turkey
After much reflection, I’ve decided to go down sans ordinateur! Oh lala, quelle horreur! Actually, I hope going cold turkey will re-establish a balance between my enthusiasm and obsession with blogging, bloglines and news sites (here and here), as well as free up some time to spend with the children or in quiet occupation.
I am bringing down some work: the rough London Live (the sequel to Sydney Soap) treatment, some topics for the Red Tent blog to write, and an ideas book to expand. All can be done on paper and then transferred onto a digital medium at a later point in time. Back to the basics, it’s going to be nice.
29 March, 2006
Light Years Away
28 March, 2006
Half excited, half worried
By all accounts, Grenadians' natural resiliency and nature's resiliency are very much in evidence already. Many predicted it would take up to ten years for the island to get back on its feet again. Hats off!
25 March, 2006
When to Unsubscribe
I made up my subscription list about half a year ago, and at any one time, I read the entries to 20-30 blogs daily, but only about 10 of them remain constant on my list. The other ten to twenty blogs vary according to whether or not their content can hold my interest and whether the bloggers’ behaviour is acceptable to my sensitivities. Indeed, sometimes the bloggers just decide to stop blogging, but mostly, if the content of the blog posts steps over one of my “trash” borderlines, and then I unsubscribe (i.e., delete key) the blog from the list.
Here is a list of my trash borderlines:
- A blogger proudly announces that he is a staunch conservative from way on back and, as far as he is concerned, there shouldn’t be any gun control in the States: the more gun carriers, the merrier. (Trash factor: immediate)
- The blog has so many co-authors that every day’s input on just one blog is ten to twenty posts. I just reallyreally don’t have the time to wade through all that stuff. The information I gather from reading blogs doesn’t replace proper news sites. What I do, as in the case of the Huffington Post blog, is to just keep monitoring one or two bloggers on the blogs list. (Trash factor: over a longer period of time).
- With personal blogs of people I do not know, but whose ideas and daily occurrences I find interesting, there are three faux pas they shouldn’t transgress. First, start lamenting about the weather (admittedly a transgression I have been occasionally guilty of). Become obsessed about their health, or lack of: this includes both mental and physical health (I really don’t want to know how many forms of Prosac there are in this world). In the case of foreigners-living-in-other-countries blogs, when the only character descriptions of people you encounter in the blogger’s entries are those of people who are stupid, rude, or lazy, then something has gone wrong with the blogger’s perspective. (Trash factor: give it a while, for anyone can lose their way, yet rest assured, when the point comes you’ll know).
- With personal blogs of friends and family members: if you find out disturbing, critical or intimate details of their lives and they haven’t bothered to communicate these facts to you directly, there is something intrinsically wrong in your relationship, and no vicarious acquirement of facts is going to change this. (Trash factor: immediate).
22 March, 2006
New collages
19 March, 2006
Rize (movie)
Usually, the only glimpse I get of this culture is through commercial music and film. The “success stories” are rigged-up portrayals of people like Snoop Dog, 50 Cent, Nate Dog, Ja Rule, Busta Rhymes, etc.
I am both fascinated and in awe sometimes with their music. Equally, I am often fascinated and appalled by their excessive show of wealth and the flagrant waste in lifestyles.
It is not that I believe everyone has to be a philanthropist. Instead, acquiring large sums of money brings with it new responsibilities and new opportunities. Whether these fellows like it or not, they are role models for many people. I can’t figure out what a hip-hop star is trying to say when he proudly announces that he owns 36 slick, expensive cars. This is not a judgement call, it’s just… what does he do with so many cars?
Some of the people in Rize showed tremendous grace of character, richness of spirit, and profound understanding of the trials of everyday man. In my estimate, they put all of the Hollywood rappers to shame.
Warning: downtime needed
16 March, 2006
Toffee pull
Reflecting back on matters, it is apparent that there are still a lot of loose ends that have to be picked up. Such a process is really a toffee pull. I wish I knew of a more enjoyable way of doing this.
13 March, 2006
Taking the Plunge
Finally, I bit the bullet and set up the new computer at work, which has been sitting unpacked in the corner for the last three or four weeks. The only reason I haven’t fired up the new mean-machine is the fact of having to set up and configure everything again.
No matter what anyone says (i.e. one of the computer science students who convinced me to take the plunge), it is hours and hours before the computer is in the same condition (good or bad) as the last computer was, let alone proving what a fine thing it is and thank-heavens-aren’t-you-glad-you dumped the old computer.
It doesn’t matter that everything is faster or “prettier” (e.g., a new keyboard) or even bigger (e.g. memory, which is a good thing because my “organic hard disk” is suffering these days, let me tell you). A half a day of work lost, and the thing is only chugging along slowly. Still have to install a long list of programs, download other programs, set up some program options, make up my desktop… ok, all just minor things, but it is still very annoying!
11 March, 2006
Mess of slush and snow and dirty water
It was reported in the news that there have been hundreds of car accidents in the last few days. The city workers are on strike. Tension mounts.
However, my experience is that the number of accidents is not necessarily solely due to the poor road conditions but lousy winter drivers. They just don’t “get” how zero visibility, icy streets, and grimy, slushy, slippery conditions can force you to drive more slowly or even cancel plans for an outing. It is like people here just do not want to believe weather rules.
Enough.
It’s birthday party time today. I am off to buy some balloons and other kitschy decorations. Our daughter turned eleven this week.
Today’s party agenda is: 14:00 guests arrive, birthday cake and cookie celebration, watch Spy Kids I on DVD, out to our local Italian Ice Cream Café for ice cream, Spy Kids II on DVD, a short break for party games (accent on short), off to the restaurant for their children’s special, parents pick up their daughters at 19:30.
09 March, 2006
New school project
There is a great new web cooperation and mobile learning project in the works. One of the English teachers in a local high school wants to substitute/replace/augment the whole tenth-grade English year curriculum (currently taken from a school book) with a project which would enable the students to study and qualify for the Cambridge BEC (Business English Certificate). At the end of the school year, the students would receive their normal school grades and an application form to write their Cambridge BEC in a separate institute.
All four parallel classes will participate in the project if all goes well. The students will be blogging all their assignments and research work. They will also use KiMM software, Moles and Mini Moles, to create multimedia interactive questionnaires and go on mobile learning field trips (e.g. European Union trade policy bare bones: where does the shelf-produce in your local supermarket come from).
08 March, 2006
International Women’s Day
My husband, a heart-felt Italian, extended well wishes to me and my like this morning, as I made my way to work. My colleague’s husband comes from ex-East
So I extend warm wishes of the day my female colleagues and all others who celebrate this day.
07 March, 2006
The Red Tent Blog Sneak Preview
I’ve been trying to get The Red Tent Blog up-and-running. Initially, that is two and a half weeks ago, I thought it would be “nice” to launch the blog on the International Women’s Day, which is a big deal here in
I am in a quandary about what to do; we, the four initiators of the blog, are not ready to launch. There is still so much we have to do… just about everything. So, I decided on a link here for my friends and family and blog-readers-I-don’t-know to get a peek at the very-much-under-construction Red Tent blog. Just so you can get a feel of what it is going to be. Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.
05 March, 2006
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
01 March, 2006
Candy Snatchers II
The regional section of our city’s newspaper also remarked on the dubious behaviour of the men-in-orange. Apparently, they were not there on an extended coffee break, which is what I had assumed, but was too polite to mention in my blog. No, instead, they were there officially, on tax payers’ money, to clean up after the parade.
It is not often that we wee citizens witness the unbridled enthusiasm of our city workers: obviously, these gents decided to get a head-start on their clean up duties and began scooping up the candy even before their wrappers could be discarded by thoughtless littering children and other parade spectators.
Yet, to be fair, these gents, or their colleagues, do a fantastic job of cleaning up any evidence of foolhardy messy joy-making after all the numerous public celebrations (i.e. a city of parades and outdoor markets and fairs) throughout the year. You should see, for instance, how fantastic they manage to make the city streets look after New Year’s Eve. Roads that were previously a sticky mess of cardboard remains (from all the firecrackers) and littered with empty bottles or broken glass, return to pristine condition within a day of the celebrations.
So, to all the city workers of Luebeck, here’s one tax payer who says, “Snatch all the candy you want out from under the nose of children, you’ve earned the privilege.”