You'll be allright for as long as you're not in rubber thongs

It was a promising start for the journey, despite my initial fears that 60 minutes between arrival at the infamous Terminal 5 and departure towards Melbourne (via Hong Kong) from Terminal 4 at Heathrow was cutting it a tad fine. The transfer guide in the seat pocket onboard the BA flight Manchester-Heathrow advised passengers to allow 120 minutes to transfer between T5 and T4. An hour would have just about done it, but as it happened, the Qantas flight to Hong Kong was delayed by almost an hour. A fact I discovered only after having legged it to the gate thinking I have minutes to spare.

This second leg of the journey was gruesome. Mercifully, I had a window seat and the two seats next to me were occupied by a very nice Dutch couple in their 50’s, no screaming children anywhere near.

The problems started some time after the main meal: “greek beef” with very suspicious mini bottle of red wine with a long list of additives. I want to know why wine always tastes shocking during flights, is it just the quality of the wine (sub-standard) or is there something about serving wine at that altitude/atmosphere that is best avoided? After the food was served, coffees drunk and everyone snug in their seats somewhere over Russia the crew switched the lights off and it was time to go to sleep. The moon shone beautifully on the landscape way down below, we were following the silver ribbon of a river which reflected the moon remarkably brightly. There was fat chance of me catching any sleep. My body clock knew it was only 17:00 GMT.

Up until that point I hadn’t familiarised with the in-flight entertainment kit, I had been too busy reading “Le Dossier” (or how to survive the English) and the Rough Guide to Melbourne, making mental notes as I went along. Now I was stuck. I could read no longer, the plane was dark and the only thing to do (apart from sleeping) was to watch “on demand” films or documentaries. My headphones wrapped in plastic, the remote control stuck on the side of the armrest, I fiddled with each for a while but soon understood I was not going to find the socket for the headphones in the dark and gave up.Thankfully I had my Mp3 player to keep me company.

My legs were aching, I hadn’t had a chance to go for a walk along the corridor, and now I really wanted to but the nice Dutch couple next to me were in slumber land - I couldn’t bring myself to disturb them.

By the time the lights were switched on again, breakfast about to be served, I was stiff, tired, achy and just about to fall asleep.

Breakfast, my friends, was an extraordinary affair, not in any positive sense. “Baked egg” with some unidentifiable objects which were supposedly imitating sausages, a rubbery piece of bacon all sitting in a pool of what can only be described as brine. My analysis is that the whole affair came from a tin. The Dutch couple next to me were grunting their approval and discussed the green matter that formed part of the “baked egg” experience. Yep, spinach, yum-yum, tuck in.

A refuel and a welcome stretch of legs in Hong Kong, and it was back to the business of flying. Disappointingly didn’t see much of Hong Kong, it was very foggy (or smoggy) so visibility was nil. Could just about make out high rise buildings and steep mountain sides in the distance.

On arrival in Melbourne I somehow knew I wasn’t going to be reunited with my luggage. Reluctantly I made my way to the carousel only to confirm that my fears were indeed correct. “Was it a tight connection in London” the operative asked me. Well, it could have been, I said, but the flight was delayed by an hour so there should have been plenty of time to get all the bags onboard. To apologise for the inconvenience, Qantas gave me a little pouch containing the following items:

Qantas pyjamas consisting of a t-shirt and boxer shorts; toothbrush; toothpaste; comb; shower gel; deodorant; body lotion; and disposable razor.

It is now Sunday morning and I am yet to be reunited with my luggage.All the free pyjamas in the world are not going to make up for this inconvenience. After four uses, the bristles are coming off the complimentary toothbrush.

It is not funny.

Although, sourcing a pair of shoes to allow myself to dine respectably Saturday evening, I enquired at a shoe stall at the famous Queen Victoria Market what sort of footwear one gets away with in these parts.

“For as long as you’re not wearing rubber thongs, you’ll be all right” she said.

OK, that was funny. I told the friendly assistant not to worry, that I had no intention of wearing rubber thongs for dinner.

For information, “rubber thongs” refer to flip flops of the Havaianas kind. For further information, Ozzie people do widely go about their business wearing rubber thongs in the city. I also spotted several pairs of naked feet in Melbourne yesterday (it was +29 degrees and very humid, but still).

Great stuff

What I love about the internet generally is that so much great stuff is out there. Yeah, sure, there is the dark side too, but for those who wish to impose major restrictions on t'internet, I say one can't have one's cake and eat it, too.

You can make as much or as little as you like of the internet, but there is a burgeoning debate amongst the internet literati about its impact on society, for better or for worse.

See for yourself, I'm going to rip Paul Canning's handiwork here, but I'm sure he won't mind as in keeping with good academic practice, credit belongs to those who deserve it... Canning quotes the Technology Liberation Front as the original source, which appears to be accurate if you care to follow the link.

The typology below summarises the main advocates within the "optimist" and "pessimist" camps as regards the world wide web:

Adherents & Their Books / Writings

Internet Optimist	Internet Pessimists
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks	Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail and “Free!”	Lee Siegel, Against the Machine
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody	Nick Carr, The Big Switch
Cass Sunstein, Infotopia	Cass Sunstein, Republic.com
Don Tapscott, Wikinomics	Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited
Kevin Kelly & Wired mag in general	Alex Iskold, “The Danger of Free”
Mike Masnick & TechDirt blog	Mark Cuban

And here’s a rough sketch of the major beliefs or key themes that separate these two schools of thinking about the impact of the Internet on our culture and economy:

Beliefs / Themes

Internet Optimists	Internet Pessimists
Culture / Social
Net is Participatory	Net is Polarizing
Net yields Personalization	Net yields Fragmentation
a “Global village”	Balkanization
Heterogeneity / Diversity of Thought	Homogeneity / Close-mindedness
Net breeds pro-democratic tendencies	Net breeds anti-democratic tendencies
Tool of liberation & empowerment	Tool of frequent misuse & abuse
Economics / Business
Benefits of “free” (“Free” = future of media / business)	Costs of “free” (“Free” = end of media / business)
Increasing importance of “Gift economy”	Continuing importance of property rights, profits, firms
“Wiki” model = wisdom of crowds; power of collective intelligence	“Wiki” model = stupidity of crowds; errors of collective intelligence
Mass collaboration	Individual effort

You can make your own mind up about who you choose to believe. All I can say is that I never really believed in the polarisation of such debates, even though I love the above typology for it points out the fickleness of what is widely considered as "knowledge".

Remember, the pond you fish in determines the fish you catch.

I nearly got killed twice this morning

This was an atypical morning: it wasn't raining, there wasn't much traffic around and the cycle was actually more enjoyable than my average 2.5 mile commute to the campus. I was humming along to Liz Green on my MP3 player.

Until I reached Upper Brook Street, that is. Now, Upper Brook Street behind St Mary's hospital is hardly enjoyable at the best of times to cycle along, but this was shocking altogether.

There I faced horrid traffic, a continous line of cars inching forward as far as the eye can see, leaving a very narrow strip of road to pedal along and a very thick cloud of exhaust fumes to breath in. The traffic had ground to a halt, but as I and a handful of other fellow cyclists kept on going in between the kerb and the cars, a passenger decides to vacate a vehicle right in front of me and opens the door wide just as I'm passing. Thanks to my reflexes which were quicker than a greased lighting a collision was avoided. I don't quite know how I did it.

Phew.

I continue, peeved, reach a set of traffic lights (red, bummer). As the lights change, the car next to me (with Russian plates, I might add) decides he wants to go left really quickly before the other cars start moving (because he's in the wrong lane for turning and no, he's not even indicating). However, I am in a quick mood today and move forwards quite fast, too. Screeching of breaks, bike and car, and again by some miracle I didn't get mowed down.

At this juncture, I want to shout abuse at all the effin' stupid motorists spoiling my perfectly pleasant morning.

I hope they bring in the congestion charge soon.

Hit 'em hard I say, make them pay for their sins!

I can't not comment on this

Oh, alas! Finland has been put on the world map again, for the same ghastly reason it hit the headlines last time: another Virginia Tech style school massacre. I first heard about in on Radio 4 while having breakfast this morning.

In the afternoon I log onto hs.fi (Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest newspaper in Finland) to find out more. Apart from a de facto description of how the events had unfolded, what the police & rescue services had confirmed as true and the death toll, there wasn't much there to chew on. No commentary, nothing at all to discuss this, let's face it, DISASTER of an international scale, #2.

I log onto the Guardian website, and I get this commentary. I get discussion - hooray! Perhaps he is just hypothesising, but a British academic resident in Finland is trying to speculate the reason(s) behind this repeated tragedy and thus making a contribution to the much needed debate on this topic.

Everyone who knows me well also knows how I keep praising the British media particularly for not just reporting plain old facts, but also providing oftentimes poignant social commentary. They sometimes overdo the commentary bordering on vacuous speculation, but nevertheless I welcome this public debate. It's up to the individual to be critical about the quality of the debate.

A wider discussion will perhaps follow in the aftermath of the incident in Finland. One would hope.

What Edward Dutton says in his article in the Guardian could be summarised as: Finnish men are depressed, violent, dangerous and incapable of expressing their feelings. This is backed up by the high suicide rates among men as well as the frequency of domestic violence. Finns (particularly the men) are also over-sensitive and lack in confidence. What a dire species!

Having lived in the country for 23 years, as opposed to Dutton's 3, I think I can reflect on this with some insight. I don't think the crisis of masculinity in Finland is quite as wide-spread as Dutton implies. I would have to agree however that the whole suicide thing can't be dismissed. I would argue that most people in Finland know someone who has either killed themselves or someone whose family has been affected by this. I personally know two families where the father took his own life, in both cases in the home and subsequently discovered by family members.

I'm not too convinced however that there is a link between the school shootings and the suicidal tendencies among Finnish males. Why? Well, suicides have always been quite common in Finland, to the point of being traditional. (Yeah, that sounds pretty bad I know.) These murderous shootings strike me as a very different kind of act of violence.

I may be jumping into rash conclusions but I honestly think these are a breed of copycat killings, a macabre side effect of globalisation. Young minds seem to be particularly at risk - the cluster of young people's suicides in Wales earlier this year springs to mind as an example.

In the Finnish case I do think the unhealthy glorification of American culture has got a big part to play in this. Dutton also mentions this fixation on America in his article, but sort of fails to join the dots. Guns are readily available and socially acceptable in Finland - gun ownership at 12% of the population is the third highest in the world after the U.S. of A. and Yemen (yikes!), the BBC told us on the 10 o'clock news (N.B. I haven't checked this data, the Guardian says Finland is in the top 5 in the world). To think that there are more guns per capita in Finland than in, erm, say Afghanistan, or any other part of the world where insurgency is rife, sends a cold shiver down my spine. Perhaps this is largely due to the very active hunting scene mainly in rural communities (they've got to cull an annual quota of moose otherwise the animals would take over the country). But clearly that sort of thing makes the country very susceptible to all things gun-related.

Maybe I should calm my nerves by thinking that these figures report legally held and licenced firearms, conversely illegal weapons in Finland are probably very rare? Gun violence as we know it in the major cities of Britain doesn't seem to happen in Finland. I don't suspect it offers any consolation to the families of those killed by Matti Juhani Saari that his gun was legal.

This is something the nation has got to think about long and hard in the weeks and months to come.

On a lighter note, I wonder would the British government consider a change of status for all resident (female) Finns in the UK based on the great perils in their homeland? Maybe I should seek asylum here, claming to be escaping the threat of domestic violence and random shootings that I would be subjected to in my native country by my countrymen?

The dreaded third year

When I started this on this journey approximately 2 years ago, I thought I had forever and a day to get it all done and dusted. At the end of the first year I do vaguely remember thinking to myself "oh, that went quickly". Now, at the end of the second year, I am filled with terror at the thought that I should have a first draft of the entire thesis by Easter.

Is it even possible, I ask myself? Only time will tell. What has made me very conscious of the merciless passage of time is the fact that NOW is the time to start thinking about post-phd options. Wwwhhhhaaaattttt???!!!! I want to cry out, surely I need to only focus on getting the doctoral thesis written, and not worry about what comes after, until, well, at least until I have something by way of a first draft handed in?

But that's not the way it goes. My supervisor has been dropping hints ever since Spring this year about post-doctoral opportunities, and if I want to take that option seriously an application to the research council should be cobbled together (I mean, carefully grafted) some time soon after Christmas.

So thinking about these options I have done, and no surprise it turns out to be a combination of a tangled web of interdependencies and whatever opportunities might be there at the time. In principle, there are two options to choose between:

(i) the academic route; or
(ii) the non-academic route.

Let's call the academic/non-academic continuum the X-axis.

On the Y-axis we have:

(i) UK-based; or
(ii) international career.

You can see where this is heading, a multitude of options ranging from civil service, post-doctoral fellowship to, yes, return to local government. Civil service, post-doctoral fellowship or other research-related positions for that matter could be materialised almost anywhere in Europe, the research option even beyond this continent.

Taking small decisions like, which shoes to wear, can be difficult for me at the best of times, so navigating my way through the choppy waters of career development is a challenge, to put it mildly. Commitment, that's what is required of me, to one route or another - particularly on the X-axis.

I let you know how I get on.

In the meantime, to keep this blog even mildly interesting i.e. offer something more relevant to read than my personal navel-gazing, I've decided to ask two people to do a guest post each, on the same topic: The Party Conference. Yep, two of my associates are indeed soaking up the atmosphere (err, and no doubt a good measure of the sponsored booze) whilst rubbing shoulders with the incumbent political elite.

I shall ask them both to divulge some details about inside party gossip and their respective experiences. I also expect a thorough appraisal of the wine offerings: was it all Italian Pinot Grigio and cheap New World Chardonnay and Merlot, or was there something more interesting to wet your throat with, like a Viognier or an Albarino... or a Shiraz from the Barossa Valley if you must leave Europe? It should be jolly interesting from an ethnographic point of view.

I let you know how I get on with that one, too.

The Spider, the Blizzard and the Which?!?

Who would have thought that the streets of Liverpool could be filled with magic and fantasy, reminiscent of the wondrous land of Narnia?

No, I didn't think so either, but a trip there on Saturday certainly paid off, for La Princesse worked its magic on the crowds that had gathered to witness the spectacle. For a 50-foot mechanical spider, La Princesse was full of grace, somehow delicate yet awesome. You had to be there, really, to appreciate the moment when she conjured up a snow storm, but you could watch the video clip below to get an idea...





From Liverpool I headed up North to the Yorkshire Dales to spend the night in a place called Malham. Due to the Very Heavy Rain we have been experiencing of late just about everywhere in the country, the river running through the village was ripe to burst its banks, as you can see from the picture (left). The local newspapers had been speculating about it, too, but thankfully Malham was spared, by the skin of its teeth!

The next day our entourage of 6 ladies explored the delights of Skipton, which included an eccletic mix of sheep shearing and an arts and crafts market where we flogged the jewellery made by the mother-in-law of one of our number.

Maybe it was the fresh air, the high altitude, or the surreal giant spider and her snowstorm, but somehow I managed to commit to a 6.00 am run around Ladybarn Park Monday morning. You will not be surprised that I made this promise Saturday night over a lovely dinner of game pie, a log fire crackling in the corner and a glass of warming red wine under my nose.

Tonight I have to set the alarm for 5.30 am in order to "enjoy" a predictably damp bike ride to Withington, and a jog around a soggy park before the rooster crows?

No news

This is not really meant to be a political blog, there are those out there who would beat me six-nil in that game so I'll keep this to a minimum.

I just need to say that the tail end of the summer season is really bad for news.

On Monday, Newsnight put on a full debate between the three main parties over this alleged f(r)iction between No 10 and 11 Downing Street, and what the Chancellor said/didn't say about the economy in his first-ever "residential interview" with a Guardian journalist at the weekend.

I watched the news item in disbelief as I had read the said article, in full, featured in the weekend supplement of the Guardian. I can only say that the vibe I got was one of whole-hearted support for the PM, and of a long-standing friendship which seems to be in short supply these days on the top tier of government. And as for the "doomsday" comments about the economy, surely Mr Darling was just trying to appear honest and therefore earn some trust with the electorate? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

This was such a blatant hyped up news item that it made me despair. And I'm always going on about how brilliant the British media are.

Adding to that, last night (Newsnight, again) there was a very, very lengthy footage from this Arctic research team carrying out analysis of seawater below the ice cap to determine the extent of carbon dioxide trapped in our oceans. They had rifles and all to defend themselves against the hungry polar bears who hang out in that neck of the woods. All fascinating stuff, but at that hour of the night I really struggled to stay awake through this very comprehensive science report which was an obvious attempt just to fill a 15-minute gap(ing hole) in the programme.

Speaking of rifles, there's the issue of the Republican convention which, again, has been such a non-news item. It is clearly imperative for the world to know that the gun-wielding would-be VP of the US of A has an unmarried teenage daughter five months pregnant (shock, horror)? It is obviously worth our while on this side of the water to worry our heads with the state of the said daughter, and the potential uproar amongst the social conservatives her current predicament may cause. Right. It was also hugely enlightening to see Mr McCain on the 10 o'clock news tonight getting off his private jet, greeting his family first on the tarmac and then making a very special effort to give Mrs Palin and her family a big hug, including the wretched teenage daughter, AND - wait for it - the father of the unborn embarrassement, the boyfriend whom Mr McCain was enthusiastically patting on the arm in a very Alfa Male fashion so as to show his unequivocal support for the lad. Well done, boy!

Maybe I've been in the UK for too long, but really, the pregnancy of someone aged 17 hardly even qualifies as a teenage pregnancy in the British sense. At 17 you've practically finished school and all that, you're free to fill as many prams as you like. At least you won't be queuing up for IVF treatment in 20 years' time and using up those scarce public resources. [Note to self: unmarried and childless at 32, please show some restraint on this topic!]

Watching the news these days is only marginally better than lowering yourself to the level of Big Brother, Jerry Springer, or some other utterly repulsive form of "entertainment".

I do wait eagerly for the Labour Party conference to kick off in Manchester, maybe then we'll get some coverage on the national news about policy and the way forward?