Gender, ICTs and the sixteen days

One focus in this year's sixteen days of activism (among the many hundreds the one with the most attractive interface) is on the relationship between communications technologies and violence against women. I haven't taken up the challenge to blog the ICT-VAW link over the days between International Day for the (Ongoing) Elimination of Violence Against Women and Human Rights Day, but I know a Jen who has:

http://www.inthecompanyofwolves.blogspot.com/

See also the site around which this is based:

http://www.takebackthetech.net/

One long discovery of links between things I had never thought connected. No time for more detail - go and discover!

food and sweat and bedhopping

Okay, now to leave work for a minute. I'm getting my IUDs mixed up with my IDUs, and I've spilled tea my application to the Bureau for Prepositionless Verbing and Lexicontrivance. Time for a break.

As far away from work as I have felt recently was probably in the middle of this:

On sunday night, me and my sisters went to Vienna (yes, abroad) for a gig or two. Until I didn't, I thought the Eastpak Antidote Tour might be a whole bunch of groups with Eastern European roots touring together, but actually Eastpak make bags and stuff. They made my bag, in fact, and I like my bag a lot. Can't find the MadeIn, but kudos to whichever EPZ low-status low-security low-wage dayjobber made it. Gogol Bordello were fusiontastic! My officemate laughed when I said I was going to see a New York based Ukrainian Gypsy Punk band, but that's her natural reaction to slight confusion. Haven't moshed fraslong as. And front man man had a system of a down streak in his oh so punk trousers. and that photo makes me seem about seven feet tall.

They were the third band. The first was Bedouin Sound Clash, who were really very good but suffered from being the first band who nobody was there to see. Apparently Robert likes them, so here's looking at you, kid:

They played a little Clash medley at the end which started with the guns of brixton. hooray!

Disco Ensemble were fun, and the drummer enjoyed himself. Danko Jones came on stage with fists, asked us if we were rocknrollers, told us we should therefore like to fuck, and introduced his next song, about having unprotected sex with white girls. I almost cried, but it gave some kind of background to the statistics i read all day.

The other side of Joe and Esme's trip was food, mostly:

Plate for Hungry Man

Before:

After:

And so on. Langos for breakfast, all good. I tried to do that again this morning, but none were available : (

Then on Monday, Hana came from prague, and it was all even gooder. I who never have meetings, had two meetings that afternoon, and worked as far as possible around visiting lovelies, but still had to work. which was Bad.

And it was all just great. even the sleep deprivation following me around this week takes my mind off all the work i suddenly have. I now feel able to talk about it. I'm participating in an in-depth review of an upcoming youth policy document I've been helping to prepare, and I have to provide a critical gender-based perspective as well as presenting unifem's work in the region. I felt out of my depth, but i feel a bit better today. i wrote a cute little workplan, very helpful. And i have promised me a trip once a week to the hot chocolate shop on michalska:

And friends from London met friends here, which brought a little bit of a sense that there is some overlap between the squares of my life. That's useful for me, especially since I am planning to stay in Blava for at least a couple of months in the new year. depends on the work situation - i won't probably have work with unifem, but there are other options. the odd part time thing, maybe work for the british council or the right wing english language newspaper. Or become an escort - not many tall blonde men here.

but most likely i'll try to find some part time work with the UN based on my experience, and teach some english to actually make any money. there are also a couple of organisations i would like to spend some time with. Maybe I'll even learn Slovak.

That's all for now. Feel free to talk to me via the comment boards.

the world's priorities, as exhibited through google

google results are an indicator of what the world thinks important.

today's disappointing result:

The Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation comes in second to the British Greyhound Racing Foundation. tsk.

i am knitting a scarf of great superficial ugliness

As promised:

Bangkor Watt (or Atopo'this Mou(ntain). Tell me you miss me).

Went to Banksy's for tea, but he doesn't like being photographed.

~ i realise i didn't take many photos. sorry. and i'm not posting the one of the elephant staring at the tiger's cleavage ~

First off, an apology: iäm sorry to have not bloggu€ so much recently. my home internet access has been buggered, and anyway i am hardly there. i have also been wokring rather a lot at work, and not wanting to stare even more at the screen... but mostly i have been neglectful, and i can do nothing but apologise. i promise i have been thinking iäd like to tell them that... also apologies for the irregularities in this post ß german kezboard, zou see. z is y, and vice versa. itäs too much of a job to adjust mz semi touch tzping...

first things first, i was in the united kingdom brieflz, and it was one of the best weeks of mz life. i will post some pictures at some pointö iäm not going to bother sazing a lot about it ß those who i saw were there, and those not, i am sad about. i will just saz, jessie, good luck in melbourne, was too short to see zou, but a lot better than nothing.

mz housemates are or are not alcoholics, and are having an all daz partz todaz. we dropped in but thez werenät there, the antisocial bastards. thez have made me a refugee though, and i have been taking great advantage of the hospitalitz of amrei and marina, in the flat where i lived with will. for people who donät drink incredible amounts of alcohol, it is a problem to start drinking at ten in the morning. it leaves zou with a hangover at three in the afternoon, which isnät mz idea of a saturdaz. nor is it in mz vocabularz to bring home some pussz ß thez are prettz nice guzs, but we are miles apart in some wazs. so i take refuge here, where we last night had wonderful central asian food and multinational companz (english aside, russian speakers were in the majortz ß itäs verz strange having the best grasp of the language we use, but being the least linguisticallz capable person in the room). thez also have lots of tea here. sandorn is mz favourite.

speaking of tea, we discovered a tea house two dazs ago called at the funnz elephant (u veseleho slona). it was wonderful, and we will go back on wednesdaz to see a fakir juggle fire on nails... these little places pop out of the concretework of bratislava now and then ß tonight we are going to see if... with slovak subtitles at the decent cinema (not the one that showed snakes on a muthafucking plane). (which makes me think of this ß scroll down to Max Goldbergäs interests on the left.)

todaz there were manz birds migrating, hundreds and hundreds, going east toward budapest, mazbe down the danube for a trip eventuallz south. is their decision to leave made bz language, or do thez have some kind of impulse szstem, genetiacallz knowing when the group is large enough_ how does the individual bird decide to wait for the next group_ wonderful to watch them, milkz wazed across the width of the skz.

iäm being antisocial. so i will stop now. work is going well, i will have mz work on turkez finished bz the end of the week coming, and then, who knows what. since it turns out i will reeeallz have to do a masteräs degree at some point, it is undeniablz good to have in depth knowledge of a countrz situation. iäm not sazing i will necessarilz want to work on turkez in the future, but the experience has been superb. i am also looking toward the nonßgovernmental sector next, i think ß among other things, i had a long chat with a senior person at one of the agencies, who said her sincere advice was not to go into the UN aged less than 45, so iäm just more than halfwaz there... apparentlz the learning curve stops the moment zou sign a proper contract. still, unifem is better than manz, i think.

iäd also like to give another plug to this blog, mostlz cos it deserves more commentual activitz than it gets.

finallzÖ one aspect of zesterdaz evening was a dolma masterclass bz our uybek and russian friends. quote of the evening came from another uybek, sazing that where he came from, thez wraped their dolma in garbage. ah, language. i promise i will be sick of zou one daz.

(soon to be) absent friends

what different paths people's lives take...

also, saw dancer in the dark the other day. what a completely unexpected film.

a flock of tiny white butterflies

this is the view out of my window as of five minutes ago:




it's gorgeously crisp out.

i am, indeed, back in bratston after an amazing week back home and away. i will write more about that when less exhausted. feel like i've been away a month - i'm asking people for things with end of november deadlines. speaking of dead, isn't it entirely inappropriate for pw botha to get a state funeral? de clerk i could understand, but this seems so wrong that there isn't even an analogy i can think of that isn't entirely trivial-offensive.

so in order to not be trivial or offensive, and to see how many of you actually read this, i want to run a competition open until friday noon, as many songs as possible involving funerals, racism or the state in the title. answers on the comments board please.