PTSD

Genealogy of a blog, part the third

I thought about thinking of some intellectual Shakespearian phrase to put up here but then realised that would take up far too much time from my usual pasttime of reading tabloids online. So here's Genealogy, Part III

Priya:

sat through a 3 hour talk yesterday on social changes in romania and thought about Anomie a lot. when i come back, at this rate, i will know more about romania than i ever need to.

just wanted to let you know that i emailed WeberMan this long, rambling (i never seem to write any other kind) email putting all my eggs in one basket and asking him to help me find a committee. yes, i reckon that was cheeky and prob the reason that he has not yet responded and it's been 3 days! he is usually prompt with his responses which makes me believe a) he is pissed off at my request, b) he is just busy for ISA (but he could have written a one liner saying that), c) he is not really interested and is ignoring me (which would be also better expressed in an email, in my opinion, rather than making me wait and wait and wait). have realised that no one here would be on my committee since my supervisor here (whom, thankfully, i don't have to meet too often) is a total globalisation guy and is pushing my project to be some sort of globalisation thingy and is also going on about how northern ireland is different and shouldn't be paired up with "far eastern country like nepal". hmm. at this rate, StructureMan is looking good and I like StructureMan since he’s always been nice to me :-)

so, mainly this email was a whinge. enjoy the upcoming weekend. the weather prediction here is for snow, snow and more snow but one of the others (the Romanian bloke again--see what I said about Romania above) is having a "pancake party" at his place before he leaves next week and that will mean trudging through snow on sunday. but, hopefully, pancakes will be worth it.
have realised that i can't make a universal generalisation about pancakes either since (surprisingly) nepali and polish versions are similar (milk, eggs, flour and sometimes sugar) while the british version apparently consists of milk, eggs, flour and other seasonings like salt, pepper, etc. was rather surprised that even pancakes are not universal, damn it.

just finished reading "social construction: a reader" (of which the theoretical parts were useful though it was packed with the usual suspects of witty, shotter, gergen, rorty and rom harre) and am in the middle of patrick grant's literature, rhetoric and violence in northern ireland, which i find immensely useless since it seems to look at violence as a "thing" and at the other tools as something which represent it. grrr.

thanks for the links to the northern irish stuff.

have discovered that my home address is

Aalborg
Denmark

which is shorter and easier to write. with true danish efficiency, have been registered on their social service system and am now able to avail myself of the free services of a doctor if i so need.

well, another long ramble over for now. i should write to others too (i do but not as often--we should really discuss that article we are writing together though WeberMan's lack of response makes me worry. what if i never have a committee? what if i never finish my phd? how will i subsist in the next semester? Why doesn’t the USA have social security for foreign students?)

a big hello to Patient Husband. hope there's been no recurrence of colds and other winter-related ailments...


Elizabeth:

Sorry about the delay--still slightly in shock from WeberMan committee episode, with the addition of SystemGuru's rather painful systems analysis class (fun modeling software and games! but at 8:10, so very tired all through class and therefore made complete nut of myself during surprise introduction). SystemGuru thinks I'm a twit, but is humoring me bc RandomStudent is enthusiastic. I think.

He's probably holed up on ISA stuff--I know he said that you should get hold of him (I'm under the impression that I was to tell you that), so there's little point in ignoring you. You'll probably have similar committee problems to mine--but WeberMAn has a pretty firm grip on who's doing what, so when he re-emerges from ISA hibernation (wrong word--paranoia? psychosis?) he'll have a list I would think.

I'm highly annoyed at scheduling--first presentation I've really been interested in all semester is scheduled for the same time as DialogueMan's trip to the cathedral. No chatting about smallpox and networking for me. Damn.

Brits just have weird pancakes. Everybody else does them the same, or close to. I have a british cookbook that suggests putting chili on (ugh).

Tell confused advisor "bite me" and write about whatever you want. Why do people think discourse analysis is comparative studies? This is not a difficult concept, right?

BTW, WeberMan has informed me that my modeling efforts are a form of interpretive research, so our methodologies may not be so far apart after all...

more later (including address, I promise!)

Priya (mass email):

sorry for the mass mail but i thought that i would be repeating the same thing to yous anyway so why write four times, eh?

hope everything is going well and yous have managed to get together. i wonder why we don't just sit about and drink and discuss things all that often over there? is it because we all live too far away? or that we are not really interested? i don't know. but, the uni here is rather like australia in that people seem to gather about in their offices, often seem to have wine about and just discuss stuff. maybe also because since shops close at 530pm and books are v expensive, there really isn't much else to do! Oh, but pubs are open later (till 1am on weekdays) but then the beer is v expensive (over 8$ for anything that is not Danish).

have spent the past week thinking of Millionaire's question as to what i am doing here. i don't really know. i am supposed to be doing the northern ireland section of my proposal (don't ask) but i seem to spend 90% of the time defending my methodological stance (which i apparently have). but then i have not been doing much work since my brother (foster, one of many) is getting married next week (in london, hence i am not going to ISA and i think i have been kicked out of the ISA for ever now since i never heard back from them when i wrote saying i couldn't go).

also, and i think Anomie will find this funny: i think i am now a mini expert on romania since last week, horatio (am still highly amused by the name) the romanian guy gave a 2 hour talk on romania and social changes during transition, etc. and then he had another talk about the history of romania (and moldova and what not) and then invited us over to his place where we had home made romanian alcohol called suiika (? that is what it sounded like--tasted fruity and strong) and pancakes which he made out of thin air (well, without a mix is what i mean). it was all romania all the way last week. and the pancakes were superb :-)

tomorrow is going to be freezing cold and i am joining my colleagues to go to the tip of denmark. it is one hour and a bit away by train and is all sandy and stuff. and very cold. i guess i could wait till summer but obviously any excuse not to work is being taken. besides, "the tip of denmark" sounds so exotic and not to be missed.

also, IntLaw, what about the turist farts? my latest word here is slut. there are sluts everywhere. but in danish, slut apparently means final sale or something like that so huge signs of SLUT!!!! is not to be confused with their opinion of each other's behaviour.

and, elizabeth, i found this quote when reading about bush's trip to europe.

The president appeared to have gone overboard with his new touchy-feely social worker persona - talking of himself and Jacques "working together to help spread medicines necessary to cure illness".

what was he on about? is it an example of security/medicine discourses intertwining a la my new favourite man Charles Tilly (well, his later works, that is)? Processes/Possibilties/Potentialities??? I like alliteration!

more later. this has turned out to be a long email after all. i will be back in a few months anyway and i do realise that, while i really like denmark, i miss the USA too (cheap books and movies, esp! and, from august, little sister also in the same country :-)). the food, etc here is cheaper and better so will prob end up being a nice round nepali person when i come back :-)

ps: Anomie, enjoy ISA. I really wanted to go since it was in Hawaii!!! and lots of people i used to know from australia were going to be there. ahhh...beaches. you'll have to write about it when you come back.


Elizabeth:

I like the group email format--saves time and the effort of looking up email addresses...

I like the sitting around talking about projects, theory, etc., but find that people's eyes begin to glaze over when I mention rinderpest, influenza, etc.--also, diseases and food/drink are not a good combination, and system analysis is less than interesting to pretty much anybody but me...so we'd be forced to rely on someone with a sexy project to provide the subject matter...although the Post just had an article on avian influenza and how it's not such a great thing (duh...)

Too bad about ISA...maybe just send them some chocolate and they'll forgive you? Or a nice card, and a bottle of wine...send enough wine, and they'll forget you weren't there!

I try not to pay too much attention to what Bush says...but yeah, I'd say that he's conflating science / security (alliteration, there!) discourses in an effort to join otherwise unrelated efforts. Funny thing about the social worker title--usually social workers can't dispense medicines, but the idea of Bush as an MD (who actually can) is a little too frightening to contemplate. I was also amused at the idea of "spreading" medicines like some sort of virus...

Priya:

we should really write a paper together! c'mon! science/security is a good start. how about it?

Elizabeth:
Fine with me--how about something on the way that security discourse can prevent the possibility of political cooperation in health crises. We'd need a couple (at least) of specific examples...

Unrelated, first article has appeared in Law Journal. I’m unable to reread it, but they’ve sent many copies to me for some unknown purpose. Currently handing them out right and left in an effort to make the box light enough to carry home, since all such boxes are delivered to the office. V boring discussion of legal transplants and NAFTA, and the translation wasn’t stellar, but I didn’t have time to correct the one they sent me. Oh well.

Priya:
what? where? why? will i understand if i read it? will have to borrow journal off you

For a paper that needed a lot of editing before it went in (but yay it's in anyway!), see Borderlands
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/issues/vol3no3.html

I am on the right column somewhere down...and the other reviewer is also a Priya.

ps: this american guy asked me out just now (I think since I am unused to social norms) since he said "are you doing anything for dinner?" and followed it up with asking if I wanted to go have it with him. Me, pretty much blew him off (is that the right use of the term or am I meaning something completely utterly different here?) by saying yes and then chickening out when I saw how cold it was (it is sleeting).

Trying to improve my social skills but failing miserably,

PPS: i reckon illnesses should be fun to talk about. these people i have been talking to here do boring political participation, EU institutions rubbish and we still manage to talk...

Elizabeth:

I'll have to read the article--you're ok as long as you include the "off" at the end. Without it, you really shouldn't be engaging in that sort of activity with someone you just met...

I agree, disease is interesting and political participation mostly filler--but that's just me. Whereas you have the whole terrorism issue, which EVERYBODY thinks is cool.

in case you're wasting time...here's a project I could get behind...
Thousand Bars

posted by Priya @ 9:54 AM