If you ask me, ‘hybrid’ meetings and conferences are a disaster, certainly if you’re one of the online participants. But online-only gigs work well enough, particularly when most of the others in the ‘room’ are located in Canada. So let’s proclaim from the upstairs office, instead: from where we get to look at the little details of other people’s offices.
This picture epitomises the week, not just the day. This is what ‘research leave’ means for me, at least this time round. I could tell you what it all means but it would be out of context and take too long. If too dulled out by it all you could, like me, get annoyed by the little speck of whatever between columns F and G and try to wipe it off — but it will be there forever, at least digitally.
I am not having a dig at UNESCO, activities with whom have, in the past, led me to some interesting places (like Siberia for instance). But this wasn’t one of those. The generally somnolent look of the people depicted on screen here — including myself, managing to not look like I am taking a photograph at this point in time — suggests that this ‘test session’ for an online gig taking place in two weeks’ time was not the most exciting way to get through the post-lunch slot on a Friday afternoon.
A whole morning spent sitting in my office, talking to my Mac (with a vague assumption that there might be some people listening out there in Zoombie-land). This is what we call ‘teaching’, these days. Overseen by Mr. Jack Nicholson, whose image (or perhaps, more precisely, R. P. McMurphy’s) makes its third appearance on the blog (see also here and here) — as many as my mother, by now. Well, it is a very good movie. And book.
Being 42 