PTSD

Genealogy of a blog, part the second

Yes, there are spelling errors, and yes, some of these things don't seem to have anything to do with blogging. But they're all part of the process. If you get bored, you can skim. Okay, back to the emails:

Priya:

hehe...just had a meeting with my "supervisor" here, a rather scary danish man who talks like he is the english queen's husband but was told that my project is " very interesting but in its formative stage" (yes, i know that) but he seemed rather pleased with it. i didn't know anything at all so am quite sure he thinks all nepalis are total idiots. prob not a false thought. apparently i just go see him whenever i want and he seems to think i know more than i do, which is problematic. i really need to talk to WeberMan!

no, no visits to ireland, mainly because i need to send off my passport to get a new one as soon as i get my social security number here (which seems to take forever but then i'm on free health insurance after that! yay!) and i need a visa for everywhere. spent around 7$ paying for a pint (pints seem to be bigger though that is probably wishful thinking) of carlsberg yesterday and have decided there will be not much drinking here at all. prob a good thing.

would be good if you could send me a disposable cvs camera (digital?). i could pay you for it later :-)

the other thing i can't find here is a converter for the plug. the plugs here have two round holes (rather like nepal) so my american version does not fit. this means i have done no work on my huge, heavy laptop since i got here. and i am annoyed esp since i lugged it around. am going to go out today to try find a converter (apparently there MAY be shops in the city which sell it). so am sneaking out early today since shops close at 5pm here.

whose methodology were you discussing? i was trying to tell the bloke here that it is rather difficult doing weird discourse stuff in american uni since we are not big on that. though i think my talk with him was fairly useless since it just made me realise how little i know about my project.

overall, aalborg is rather fun. i think yous would like it. it's small enough to get about on foot everywhere but big enough that it's a city. the public transport being efficient is rather scary since i am unused to it.

but, help me with this--why am i doing nepal and northern ireland? why northern ireland in particular since it appears to be a specific case of british-NI thing and not relatable to nepal now? eh? i don't know and i had nothing to say. i really know nothing. i am a total idiot who's being funded for being a total idiot. grrr.

well, enough self-pitying whingeing for now. i am sure more will follow. say hi to Patient Husband, as usual. yous should come visit me!!

Elizabeth:

re: adapter--you can also order one from Amazon (I love amazon. they just sent me a stack of new books on liberation theology so that I can use Farmer in my research.) prob wd also be good for background on ireland

camera will be on its way as soon as i have an address (hint hint)

didn't we talk about why Ireland at some point? I seem to remember something about the location not being the important thing, but rather the similar use of discourse and some repetition of terms and arguments? Maybe this was in the dean's class, or maybe after a chat with WeberMan? the impression I had was that the media today is doing very similar things with Nepal that the British did with Ireland, showing that the discourse could in fact be transposed onto seemingly unrelated conflicts with the same effects?

could be wrong, but I think that's accurate--I remember being interested (and TF paying attention) bc it was Ireland and bc I wish I cd use Foucault and discourse analysis without snickering.

if this is the point, then your issues with not knowing Ireland are solved--what you need to know are the tropes and repetitions between the two. or not. I think you were just flustered by scary dane

can't remember whose methodology was being discussed. there was great talk of survey research and "replication of results" and so I tuned out early. quant makes my eyes glaze over (but I love complex systems, which is all math and algorythms.) guess its bc quant is math lite, and TF should just be honest and call itself qual with percentages.

ps. my friend A sends this interesting tidbit: apparently, in Hungary, bus means F**K. she was greatly amused by turist farts. but then, who wouldn't be? gotta love translation.

Priya:

i loved it that you sent me the trivia at ri-ra invite to me too. yes, i would love to come but am too busy being rude and avoiding social occasions. went out wed night to weird student union place. no clean-cut Danish types around at all, esp none that looked like they had a clean toilet (my biggest goal in life right now considering i live in flat with scary bathroom).
anyway, on wed night, after the student union thing, i left early (had the 9am meeting with scary prof) but then found out my key does not work and had to wait outside in the rain for nearly half an hour until flatmate (thankfully) came back. felt like the only homeless person in denmark as i cowered until the awning of the door and people looked at me pityingly as they passed by.
tonight, there is a party at this german/british guy's place. he reminds me of IntLaw’s mate D and is also called D. i do not think i am going because i am too bored and not social enough and then i have my first danish lesson. Am planning on adding Danish to the many widely spoken languages I know
thought the hungarian thing of A's was v funny. once i have a camera, i'll take a pic of turist farten and other relevant things including the HUGE burger king in the centre of the quaint city centre.

btw, another amusing thing: postmen/women ride around on these little red bicycles around town. Is that not quaint?

oh, what is the irish web site with all the troubles stuff in it? just goes to show how little i know these things. though i must admit it was rather nice to tell the scary prof that i wasn't during comparisons and be immediately understood. phew. though i don't know what it is that i AM doing.

ps: we should write something. i really want to get something published (you already have) and feel like a slacker since i am the only one of us who has not. c'mon! think of a topic we could do together. i have lots of time to do that here esp when it gets warmer and i can stay at uni longer.

Elizabeth:

much partying for a weeknight--doesn't anybody work over there? although I could ask the same thing here--I came out of a meeting w/ DialogueMan on friday afternoon and found TheoryGuy, WeberMan, and RandomProf hanging out in the coffee place talking about who knows what. as a guess, I'd say sports, since the conversation rapidly included baseball tryouts and the OSU women's basketball team getting free dental care. as well as SystemGuru and raccoon rabies. yep, even the useless time-wasting conversations aren't always fun(ny).

are you having trouble with the paychecks? I told M I'd check around and see who else was getting less money this term. thought I'd start with our cohort and work my way down.

a camera will be on the way next week (sometime) as soon as I figure out what to send and shipping, etc. I don't know what the th could mean, so expect it to show up at the office (is it possible that you work at an airline, or is SPIRIT really what the place is called?)

no takers on the Tuesday thing, so you won't be missing anything. Millionaire says weekends are better, and suggested that I resume planning things to do together. bc it went so well the last time, I'm sure. so we'll see, given my almost complete disinterest in being a party planner, how much we get together. I do need to get dvds back, so I'll probably manage to get together w/ Millionaire at least once.

the irish sites:
CAIN
BBC
EuroDocs

First is an academic site with bkgd articles, etc. Second is the bbc standard intro and history, and the third has a bunch of links to primary documents and other sites. I like the third one the best, but then my training is history and they don't go for articles when an old dingy piece of paper is available instead. Preferably in a dead and complicated language.

Don't worry about the long rambling emails--they're certainly more entertaining than wildlife diseases and pathogen mapping, which are the other things I get emails on...

You're right, we should do an article--but what on? I'm open to thoughts, since I'm woefully behind on attendance and presenting at conferences, as well as publishing and passing comps. Maybe there's a security conference coming up that we could go to?

Waiting for StructureMan to sing off on the proxy form—he gave it back to me but forgot to say which term it was for, and so the library is now involved, which means that it’ll never get done (they’ve lost two out of three books I requested for DialogueMan in the last semester.)

good luck with the danes, and Patient Husband says hi--

Priya:

for him to "sing"....??? got this vision of StructureMan singing some randy (hehe) beer drinking song. an image that will remain etched in my mind for a while now.
oh, btw, thanks heaps. will tell him about it tomorrow when i do my weekly emailing.
it's freezing cold here and first danish lesson was rather dull. don't know if i will continue with it after all since hte usefulness (or lack thereof) of danish prob equates with nepali and does not have the added benefit of being used to talk to family :-)
thanks again. why are you writing on racoon epidemics? think of a topic for us to work on!!!

Elizabeth:

give me a break, I was in a hurry.

Writing about raccoons bc the presentation in epidemiology last week was on pathogen spread description using spatial modeling (much more exciting than it sounds). We have to write up certain lectures for grading--in an effort to force the science students to communicate with non-scientists, I think. But I kept putting it off bc it's a topic that is related to my dissertation, and I was trying to figure out just how it's done. Now I've got too much info for the length of the paper, and had to leave all the best parts out.

posted by Elizabeth @ 11:56 AM