OJ's weblog

Xmas time is here!

2011-11-30T21:22:00.002+01:00

...which always makes the city so much more fun!!! There are decorations everywhere, Xmas markets (I kid you not: 5 or 6 on the way home from work), and a merry spirit! I have to say though, and I don't say this often, it is not quite cold enough right now... Xmas markets are to be enjoyed with cold hands, and preferably some snow, like in the past years. Right now, temperatures rise to around 8-9 degrees during the day: far too warm for a real xmas market feeling!

In any case, for the past bit of time I have not really been able to enjoy Berlin anyway, since I have been travelling. I spent 4 days in Barcelona (20° and sunny: lovely!) for a conference, and some work with a potential co-author. I then returned for about 18 hours, to attend a workshop I was organizing on a new project proposal, before hopping back onto a plane to go to Brussels. We spent the weekend with M&L who live in Brussels, and G who came over from Milano. It was great fun, with lots of boozing and board games and other bits of fun! On Sunday night Fedor returned to Berlin, and I stayed as I was presenting in a seminar in Leuven. That was successful as well (and oh my, Leuven is so cute!) and I came back into Berlin last night. That also means that, according My Flightmemory, I finish the year with around 75,633 km of flying, a little down from last year when I flew about 78000 km.

For next year, I already have some 45000km of flights booked: I will go to Chicago for the American Economic Association in the first week of January and then we're going on vacation, for a short period of, ehm, 7 weeks... We're flying to Kuala Lumpur via Cairo and then on to Yangon, Myanmar (assuming we get the visa: I sent our passports off to the Embassy today). We will stay in Myanmar for around 24 days, then return to Malaysia and Singapore for a week or so, before going to Indonesia for the final 2 (1/2) weeks. Doesn't sound too bad, right?

Obviously, this trip is our attempt of avoiding Winter (leaving mid-January, returning in March) because we actually decided to stay in Berlin for now! I have today informed my boss that I would like to stay, given the quasi-promotion he has offered and the fact that, actually, I really enjoy what I do!!! (I may not enjoy the Institute that much, but I think I can avoid most of the shit fairly easily). So for those of you interested in coming to visit: there is no rush! ;-)))

Tschüßi,
OJ

November

2011-11-08T22:08:00.002+01:00

Wow, what a month! I don't even know where to start. Let's just summarize:
- China was awesome. I didn't get to see the Great Wall, as I missed my connecting flight in Frankfurt. But I did get to see Number 16 of The List (The Forbidden City) and had an interesting experience at this military conference in Wuhan.
- Greifswald turns out to be a lovely little town. Old Hanseatic League, well-preserved, etc. The conference was pretty interesting, and I got the opportunity to visit the Nazi rocket factory of Peenemünde.
- Halloween was fun as always! We were dressed as Jakob and Edward from Twilight (although I only managed to get one of my contacts in) and there were lots of people who adhere to our Haunted Hollywood theme (and a few who didn't).
- The weather has been brilliant! (relatively speaking, that is, given that it is November)
- I said 'no' to a job offer... In Thailand... With pain in my heart, I must admit!!! But unfortunately, the job offer wasn't simply imperfect, it was terrible... So the search continues! (another interview didn't come to anything)
- Last week, my brother and his wife came to visit. The weather was absolutely brilliant, and we went to visit Charlottenburg park, which was really really pretty!!!

Now over the next weeks, I am going to Barcelona for a few days, Brussels/Leuven for a few days and seemed to have to go to Bonn for a job thing (I booked the ticket and everything, and was then told the test was taking place in Berlin anyway... bugger!). So in between lots of work, there is still a few bits of fun to be had!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Lazy Sunday

2011-10-09T15:43:00.002+02:00

...and loving it!

Last weekend, thanks to Reunification Day, we were able to spend a long weekend in the Netherlands. And it was lovely! We partied with Jochen, visited friends, saw allllll the familly (mine in Assen, Fedor's in Nijmegen) and were merry all around! It was great to actually have a reasonable amount of time with everyone, and the weather was simply gorgeous, so that was pleasant too. Oh, and another great thing: the trip back Nijmegen-Berlin in only 5.5 hours... That made me a happy pumpkin!

So this week ended up being a short one, with only 4 days of work, and a rather unproductive one, unfortunately. This week is the "anniversary" of Germany's tenth year in Afghanistan, so there was a lot of media attention to that. In order to celebrate this, we re-hashed our numbers from last year, and we ended up getting a lot of email from journalists, concerned citizens etc. I even got a phone call from someone whom I thought was a journalist, but turned out to be an army representative, to ask about our numbers: oops!

This weekend was supposed to be really lazy. We had dinner with Fedor's friend Wouter on Friday night, and yesterday consisted of Shopping: supermarkets, shoe shops and most importantly... Halloween shops! I know, it sounds a little too early, but with me being away to China next weekend, and Greifswald the weekend after, this really was the last opportunity. So we got all the stuff we need for our fantastique costumes... :-)))) This year, our party actually has a theme, which makes it a bit more of a challenge for people: Haunted Hollywood. Come dressed as your favourite dead celebrity! So looking forward to that!

I am also still working on creating the perfect cupcakes, but progress is slow, I must admit... Anyway, I will be leaving for China on Tuesday, let's see whether I can pick up some more cupcake inspiration there! (somehow, I doubt it, but hey, it's worth trying!

Tschüßi,
OJ

September blues

2011-09-21T20:50:00.003+02:00

Our trip to the US was pretty cool, if not a little longer than originally planned, but rather than repeating everything, I suggest to check out Fedor's blog for more info on the trip. I will just add that I also had a superdupercool time.

Except for the fact that, while on vacation, we found out that the new job in Nepal fell through. So, this is now no longer the new job in Nepal. Instead, we're still in Berlin! It really sucks, since I stopped applying for jobs as the Nepal opportunity was moving forward, but on the other hand, they did seem a little disorganized and bureaucratic, so maybe it is for the best in the end.... (oh, and that earthquake a few days ago also makes me feel a little queasy). However, it opens up the Big Question: Und Jetzt? The answer: I don't know yet.

Anyway, that was pretty shitty, but there have been a few pleasant things to distract from that shittiness. We had visitors with whom we had a lot of fun, we went to Milano last weekend to see all our old friends, and the weather has been surprisingly pleasant the last few days. So it it really is not all bad! I even managed to convince the head of department to allow me to go to a conference in Wuhan, China. So in a few weeks I will be able to spend 3 days sightseeing in Beijing, and to visit Wuhan too. That is, if I manage to get the visa, which is what I spent half a day trying to do today:

A colleague asked me yesterday whether I was sure whether I'd be able to get the visa at the Embassy, or whether I should actually go to the Consulate. So I looked it up and found this was actually true. I thus googled for the address, which was somewhere out near Schönefeld Airport. So this morning, after the gym, I wanted to go there, but realised I forgot my wallet at home. So I borrowed a little money from a colleague to pay for my train ticket. I then left for the consulate, but upon my arrival at Schöneweide station, I realised I obviously needed to pay for the visa as well, and that I really did need my wallet. After some contemplation, I returned home, picked up my wallet and went back to Schöneweide to go to the Brückenstraße. Upon arriving at the building, I realised, the Consulate was not there at all, but that Brückenstrasse was probably a really common street name. And yes, a phone call cleared it up: the Consulate is actually in the same building as the Embassy, just in a side entrance. And it is on the way from home to work!!! Of course, by now it was about to close so I wasn't able to go. On the way back to the office, I also managed to enter a wrong train, to make matters even worse and I finally got back to the institute after a MORE THAN THREE HOUR journey on the train.

Without a visa.

FUCK.

Anyway, I'll give it yet another try tomorrow morning. I hope it will work, because I need my passport back before next weekend, when we're coming to the Netherlands... I assume that my Murphy's Law experience of today will be over my tomorrow and that everything is going to be fine. Right? Right????

Tschüßi,
OJ

Irene...

2011-08-30T23:40:00.001+02:00

We are on vacation! And a much longer vacation than planned at the start of the trip... How does that work? All thanks to Irene (with a little help of Delta along the way). We flew to New York a week ago, rented a car and started a slow drive up to Canada. We stayed at Sleepy Hollow (famous for the cemetery), visited the Dutchess County Fair (the biggest and most famous fair in NY State, after the State Fair) with friends of mine and drove through the Catskills, the Adirondacks and the Finger Lakes Region. In between, we visited the university towns of New Paltz (SUNY New Paltz) and Ithaca (Cornell), as well as Seneca Falls: the birthplace of the American women's movement. It was all lovely!

The last night before crossing to Canada was spent in Buffalo (what an absolute shithole), and we went on to visit Niagara Falls from both the US and Canada sides (my 43rd world wonder; Fedor's 39th) and on Thursday, we went to Nissrine's wedding at a winery in the Canadian Niagara region: it was stunning!!! So beautiful, such lovely people, simply great to have been there!!!!

Around the same time, the first news reports about Irene making it all the way up to New York started popping up. We drove back to NYC in one go on Friday, going against the majority of the traffic, which was full of people evacuating from NYC. Oh my, was I happy to get rid of the rental car, before anything bad could happen! Thankfully, we were staying with friends in Brooklyn (just outside the mandatory evacuation zone) with their two kids.

On Saturday, with the underground shut down and those people still in the city in some sort of giddy anticipation, we made sure to gather the last bits and bobs before the storm hit: 2 gallons (8 litres) of milk, 20 bagels, a few kgs of fresh produce, filling up all buckets and vessels with water, batteries, flashlights, etc, and then we waited.

and waited

and waited

and waited

I mean, it was stormy, don't get me wrong, but at no point did it actually feel like a hurricane. The next morning, it still didn't look too bad. By the afternoon, we went for a walk to the park, where there indeed was more damage: uprooted trees, huge branches all over the place, etc. But it still looked more like a bad storm than like a hurricane in my book!

Anyway, we were originally supposed to fly out on Sunday night, but our flight was (obviously) cancelled. However, apparently things are going rather well for Delta, so they didn't have a lot of free space in their flights over the next days and the earliest time we get to fly out is Friday! In other words: five days of New York City, which will be paid for by Delta (they don't know this yet, but they will)... I'm not sure whether I am happy or sad (happy seems to be the prevailing emotion, particularly now that it is sunny and pleasantly warm). We moved into a hotel (in order not to bother K & A too much: 4*, 2 blocks from Central Park, Midtown Manhattan and we are going to have a grand time!!!

So I bid thee goodbye, from New York City!
Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Update: we managed to get a flight that goes out on Thursday night instead, which is nice because we're expecting friends for the weekend, and it would suck if they couldnt come...

wtf@weather

2011-08-09T18:38:00.000+02:00

I know it is totally tacky to be complaining about the weather this Summer, but come on! This is getting ridiculous!!! I mean, the fact that, well, there was no Summer is one thing, but the weather for the past week or so has just been outright crazy!

Example, yesterday: I leave the house at 7.45 when it is dry. As soon as I get on my bike, it starts raining. I get to the gym (soaking wet), exercise and when I come out, there isn't a cloud to be seen. During the morning, I don't pay attention, because I'm working but at my planned lunch time (12.30), it is raining torrentially. Lunch is postponed (unrelated to the weather) by half an hour and by the time we go outside, it's simply glorious! The whole afternoon is spent opening the window when it is sunny and warm in the office and closing them again when the wind is blowing all my documents through the office or the rain is threatening to soak my computer... in the evening, it is dark and thundery until 19hr, but by 19.05 there isn't a cloud to be seen. This is driving me nuts!

/rant

Anyways, it's been a few relatively quiet weeks at the office. I've been tying up loose ends with the possibility of leaving at rather short notice, and I must say that this has been quite productive. I had another publication accepted (woohooo) and finished some long-suffering projects as well. So that's all good. Unfortunately, there is STILL NO NEWS on the job-front, but there should be a final outcome this week (or next week at the latest). Trust me: I'm not liking it anymore than you are...

Oh, I just realised that there is one thing I hadn't mentioned yet: we had an arson attack at our house 2 weeks ago... Someone set fire to the strollers in the staircase. For some photos and a detailed description, see Fedor's blog. I must say, it was quite a stressful experience and I hope they catch the fcking bastards. Anyway, my brother and his wife were visiting at the time, so they must've gotten a bit of an odd idea about Berlin :-S. Afterwards, my former Research Assistant Matt and his boyfriend came to stay with us for a few days, which was very nice. But since their departure, we have had two weekends WITHOUT VISITORS: It has been glorious. In fact, I would say even a little boring. I have (and yes, I say this with a little shame), taken up baking... Really, Fedor should be the one commenting, but the red-berries cheese cake was glorious, and this weekend's Real English Scones with clotted cream and jam was quite delicious too... :-))))

The fact that Sundays have recently been around 16° and very rainy have something to do with my new-ish baking obsession...

Cross your fingers for good news on the job front...

Tschüßi,
OJ

Not as bad as they say!

2011-07-22T15:53:00.002+02:00

Recenlty I've had two wisdom teeth removed, twice... Uhm, rephrasing that: they removed two wisdom teeth last week, and did the other two the day before yesterday. And after all the horrible stories I had heard, last week's were a piece of cake! Okay, there was some swelling, there was some blood coming out of different orifices (well, nose and moth, mostly), but I felt I was quite able to go back to work three days later, as long as I wouldn't laugh, grimace or exert myself.

This week, however, I realised that last week's experience was actually relatively severe: Now I have much less swelling and 24 hours after the surgery, I felt like was ready to go back to work!!! Oh, and only blood coming out of my mouth this time, and not too much of it at that... However, following doctor's orders means I have to apply cooling semi-continously for the first three days, and since there is no freezer available at work, I have to stay at home. The fact that it is pissing it down with rain and that cycling to work would have been terribly unpleasant is only tangentially related to that! (in fact, I had a check-up at the dentist at 9am, so I got soaking wet anyway, twice).

Before all this teethy happiness, we had Lou, Micky and Gerry visiting us two weeks ago. We had a fabulous time, mostly Karaoke-based. Of course karaoke at Mauerpark, but also a proper night in a proper karaoke-bar. Absolutely hilarious: I had never realised that doing karaoke was this much fun!!! It'll be a keeper.

In between, I've been really busy with travelling and work: After Bristol, there was Amsterdam for a conference, Frankfurt for the medical check and an unannounced trip to Brussels to replace my boss at some networking meeting. And of course, in the meantime, other requests and things pile up as well... At least my colleague Marc has returned, so I can dump some things in his lap too...

Regarding Kathmandu: no news yet. Tuesday, I will be doing a Skype interview, hopefully there will be some real news after that!!! Let's wait and see (I am getting impatient: Fedor is being driven up the walls)

Tschüßi,
OJ

Nr 42

2011-06-20T20:25:00.002+02:00

I seem to have picked up a habit of visiting World Wonders in torrential downpours... I am writing this in a KLM plane that is returning me from a business trip to Bristol, which I used as an opportunity to visit Stonehenge, my 42nd Wonder of the World (at Nr 78 according to Hillman). And like Delphi three weeks ago, it was absolutely pissing it down when we tried to make our way around the monument. Unlike Delphi, though, it was also absolutely FREEZING! Who knew a trip to England in the second half of June would be accompanied with 11 degrees and quasi-hail blowing across the planes... Anyway, no problem: I saw the henge (which according to Wikipedia (and my colleague Adam) is NOT actually a henge, although the Stonehenge people were not particularly forthcoming with that information in their audiotour. Admittedly, I did not actually listen to the audiotour as I was incredibly cold and wet...) so that counts! I also managed to visit Bristol, which I had never seen before and I must say it is quite pleasant.

In other news, we have booked a trip to a friend's wedding in Niagara, Ontario in August! We will fly into NYC and make our way through NY State to then tick off another Wonder (the Falls) and go to her wedding. Afterwards, we drive back to NYC, spend a weekend there and return to Berlin. It is going to be fabulous! In other "other news", I just had a paper accepted (conditional on a few very minor changes) in the Journal of Peace Research!!!! This is a top-5 journal in Political Science, so I am very excited about this, as you can imagine... Even more excitement is happening on the job front: I will return to Frankfurt this week for a physical examination and after passing that hurdle, a final decision will be made about my potential new job... Right now, it seems about 90% certain I will get it, but just to be sure, I am going to be keeping the suspense a bit longer: Suffice it to say that it is going to be in a country far, far away!

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Potential job in Kathmandu: moving steadily ahead... Will be undergoing a medical exam real soon and then it only requires the consent of one more person...

Loving all these 3-day weekends!

2011-06-13T15:50:00.002+02:00

This week, Bart & Tineke came to visit us: we had a lot of fun, visiting biergartens and enjoying the weather... The World Cultures' Carnaval also took place this weekend, so we took the opportunity to see the parade and all that: good times were had! Last weekend, Jorryt and Lilian came over (not pregnant, for a change), and we visited biergartens and had a jolly good time!

That also included finishing the Berliner Mauerweg! We did it, the whole 160 kms... I should organize a bunch of photos at some point, but let's just say it is absolutely worth doing it, because you get to see some parts of Berlin that you would never randomly encounter... :-)

I also finally had the opportunity to do a Berliner Unterwelten Tour in one of the WW2 bunkers. A really interesting tour inside an old gas tower, later converted to a bunker, then converted to an old people's home, a hotel, a homeless' shelter et cetera. Fascinating stuff... That was with my colleagues, with whom we had our annual retreat (accept that there was no budget, so we couldnt actually retreat anywhere to and ended up staying in Berlin).

And as for the latest news: I had a job interview and it went really well. I have to decide whether I really want it and then they are going to decide whether to offer it to me... Exciting times, but also difficult times because the job's location isn't particularly convenient for Fedor and for the probability of him finding a job... It's in Kathmandu, Nepal... Stay tuned and I will keep you updated!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Athens photos!

2011-06-02T15:19:00.002+02:00

As promised, here are a few photos...

Oh, and in answer to Esther's recent question: I have a job interview on Tuesday. The interview is in Germany, but the job brings me about 6500km closer to where you are!
Tschüßi,
OJ

Athens!

2011-05-31T21:17:00.001+02:00

Wow, that was a lovely trip to Greece! The flight to Athens, and subsequent bus trip to Volos gave me a 7-hour meeting with my boss... Totally awesome, because now I could make him read everything I wanted to and we could discuss it in extreme detail. It was great... Anyway, when we got to Volos finally, the workshop was actually pretty interesting. It was very small (like, 8 people), but it was absolutely interesting. On Friday, Fedor arrived (he flew directly to Volos, without having to do the Athens thing) and we had dinner at night. We had hoped to be able to go to Delphi on Saturday, but it was simply too complicated, so instead we took the 6.15 train to Athens. Unfortunately, it turned out that everything closes at 3pm (every day, apparently), but we managed to tick a few boxes, including the Acropolis, which was Fedor's 37th Wonder of the World). On Sunday, we did Keraimikos and then went to Delphi after all.
That is, on the way there the bus broke down. When we finally did arrive, we quietly ambled to the actual site, to hear there that it was closing at 3pm too (we arrived at 14.35). PANIC! Unfortunately, it also started pissing it down: an absolute deluge! Anyway, we ran across the site anyway (to generic disappointment: the views are great though), doing Fedor's 38th and my 41st Wonder of the World. The weather cleared up again, but we failed to get onto the 4pm bus (full). Rather, we hid from further deluges by drinking beer in a local bar and made it back in the evening.
Monday, we started by going to the Monastery of Daphni. Very cool, particularly because it was being reconstructed and somebody took us up onto the stands and scaffolding and we were able to admire the mosaics from very close. It was super! And a UNESCO World Heritage site... Unforunately, our trip to the Archeological Museum was useless, as it was closed... It felt like dejá vu to me, with the Museum having been closed for my entire period of living there, back in 02/03. It was great to be back though...
I am writing this in the airplane back to Berlin, and will post it on Blogger later. Laptops are good... Tonight, we will be saying goodbye to Carlos, my Argentinean colleague and coauthor. It is a sad day :-(((((((

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Photos to follow

Oh such a perfect day!

2011-05-22T11:38:00.002+02:00

Apart from the fact that Fedor has to teach one class (he started at 11am), today is the perfect Sunday: I am meeting him in an hour to take the train to Greibnitzsee, from where we will continue our journey along the former Wall. approximatel 90km or so down, 70 to go. I am sure we will find a few biergartens, to soak in the Sun (although it is currently clouding over, but I am going to ignore that) and afterwards, we are going to see Haydn's Die Schöpfung in the Berliner Dom. Life is good!

Yesterday we helped some friends move (well, carry IKEA boxes up 4 1/2 flights of stairs, that is) and had a Birthday-BBQ. One of those: "omg, we're getting old" moments. It was only about a minute before we got there when Fedor told me: you know what, it could be one of those children-and-dogs-and-family-fun kinda parties actually... The thought hadn't crosse either of our minds, but of course: people in our age group have children. Maybe not when they are phd students, postdocs or language teachers living in different countries, but this was a party by a Germany person with other Germans... And yes, indeed, children, dogs, the works! Anyway, it was good fun: just an odd realisation that this is the kind of party that most of our Dutch friends in the Netherlands would also be throwing by now...

For the rest, it's been interviews central the past week. We have some positions open, and I have taken up the role of hiring advisor, spending lots of time with my boss interviewing candidates via the phone or in live interviews: some odd people out there! And it takes up a whole lot of energy! Anyway, should only be three more or so this week and basta... Anyway, the coming weeks should be nice and relaxed. Two three-day weeks (in terms of office work at least). I am flying to Athens with my boss on Thursday, making our way to the town of Volos, where there is a one-day workshop on Friday. Then on Friday, Fedor will fly in to Volos and we will hopefully make it down to Delphi and then on to Athens, returning to Berlin on Monday night. Should be fun!

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Once we finish the whole Berliner Mauerweg, I will post some photos. The previous leg I actually forgot to bring my camera, but I will not repeat that mistake today!

Rambling along

2011-05-05T19:15:00.001+02:00

Happy liberation day! In the Netherlands that is… I guess you could call it Defeat Day here in Germany, but in fact: it is simply the case that nobody cares. Anyway, it is a sunny day with the temperature finally reaching agreeable heights again (although it was below 0 overnight). The weather really is crazy, with 25° at some times, and 10° max temperatures on other days! Anyway, we are in an upswing again, so I am looking forward to the weekend!

Recently, we’ve been having quite a bit of fun: lots of visitors, a fair few visits to the local Biergarten and a few holidays in between. Like last week, when we went for another fun Queen’s Day event at the embassy. This time, we did not get embarrassingly drunk (Pieter and Nicole: we miss you guys!), which was good, because it turns out that I am on the list of “Zichtbare Nederlanders”: visible Dutch people (not to be mistaken with visibly Dutch people). This explains why we were actually sent an invitation without asking for anything, rather than having to beg for one like previous years… The week before that, it was Easter. Double fun, because not only was it a four-day-weekend (and wow, four-day-weekends are FANTASTIC), it was also a full-on parents’ weekend, with both my parents, as well as Fedor’s Mum+1 coming to visit. Lots of fun was had, board games were played, Potsdam was visited, Biergartens were enjoyed, etc. It was simply great! They all left on Easter Sunday, which gave us the opportunity to start doing something we had planned for quite a while (nope, not Spring cleaning):

The Berliner Mauerweg! It is a cycling/walking path that follows the path of the Berlin Wall (link). We started off near our house, in Mauerpark and managed to do a good chunk of the 160 km that is the total length of the way. We actually made it all the way to Staaken (going anti-clockwise, obviously), which is 56 kilometers off the whole length of the way. It is a beautiful trip, coming by the lakes, through the forests, across agricultural land, wealthy suburbs and many other interesting places. I am looking forward to doing the rest of the way (it is also a great way of getting to know some different Biergartens…)
Anyway, no news yet on jobs or our future!

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS OMG, I was in the Economist!!!!! LINK

NATO's in town

2011-04-15T17:20:00.003+02:00

And it is a hassle! Half the city is closed down, in order for a few ministers to be able to drive through... Poor Fedor nearly arrived late to work yesterday after ending up on the wrong side of the road and not being allowed to cross the road for ten minutes! Anyway, they should be leaving today, so I hope thing will get back to normal.

Oh, and guess who else was in town? The Queen!!! But since it was raining a lot this week, most of her programme went down the drain (haha). I am enjoying the Schadenfreude, because Fedor and I had wanted to go the official reception at the Embassy, but there was a lottery and we lost. So I am happy she got rained on! Anyway, that is not going to stop us from going to the Queen's Day Reception of course, because who can say no to free booze and Dutch snacks? Particularly because, for the first time, I actually received an invitation without having to ask for one: they sent it to me without prompting! I am particularly looking forward to the oysters and the fresh stroopwafels.

Anyway, before that is happening (in 2 weeks), we still have two more weekends, full of family! This weekend, Fedor's father is coming and next weekend we are going to have my parents, as well as Fedor's mum (+man). So lots of fun is going to be had!

For the rest, this week has been fairly quiet. Lots of worries about the new management possibly wanting to close the department, which causes some anxieties among my colleagues, but the danger seems to be waning now... I have been sending out a bunch of applications again as well on four different continents, so let's see whether anything comes from it. The problem with many of these applications is that the recruiting periods are incredibly long. I mean, the World Bank's YPP and the EU recruitment both have cycled of about 12-15 months, which is simply crazy, but even many other jobs take months to decide anything! Oh well, like I always say: let's wait and see!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Weeeeeeeekend!

2011-04-09T17:28:00.002+02:00

And it's nice and sunny! So: life is good... :-)

The past week was the week of the final policy workshop of my main project, and it was great! We had about 25 people there, including representatives from the German parliament, the World Bank and a bunch of Embassies. It was a good way of getting some policy feedback regarding our results and we were shown lots of appreciation (it was also a big ego boost, which is pretty cool). After that, I took a few hours of on Tuesday morning, because I was absolutely exhausted: the workshop was stressful, we're having some debate on a different policy report, which was also very stressful and Fedor's brothers were visiting last weekend, which wasn't so much stressful, but quite alcohol-infused.

This weekend, on the other hand, is visitor-free. So we took the opportunity to go drinking with friends yesterday, will do so again today and tomorrow. Enjoying the weather, doing groceries, finishing the tax forms and all that boring stuff. But that is fine, because we ARE boring...

Anyway, in other news: I do not have a new job yet! But I am sending out lots of applications, so I have some hope that I will soon have some news to tell you. Oh, at least there has been some other good news: my publication in the Journal of Development Studies came out (it was accepted last year, but there is always a lag before it gets published) and the German journal KYKLOS accepted another paper of mine. So good news all around!

Let's hope the coming week will bring more good news... :-)))

Tschüßi,
OJ

Spring is here!

2011-03-27T17:11:00.004+02:00

... well, not really. It was about -6 last night, but it is sunny and when you are covered from the wind, the temperature is absolutely bearable!!!

Anyway, work has been terrible, but the worst part is coming to an end soon: next week is our big press conference and policy workshop, which is going to mean an end to most of the stress. Of course, the other stress is the job-hunt, which is not going particularly well, mainly because I dont have time to look for interesting jobs... Oh well, now that spring is sort-of-arriving, I really don't mind being here!

By the way, while I write that, I just realise that in three days, it will be my 2-year anniversary of living in Berlin. Reason for a party?

Since Manchester, we've been entertaining guests and doing fun things with friends: it's been pretty good actually! And I spent a week in Montreal. A beautiful city if there ever was one... It was fantastic to be able to meet up with people from the field, but even better to meet up with Nissrine, who came up from Toronto and whom I hadnt seen for about 3 years. And I also met up with Simon and his bf, who showed me some parts of Montreal that I didnt get a chance to see yet...

Here are a few photos to get an impression of my trip:

Finally, and I have done this before, but the song continues to be incredibly appropriate for the time of year:

Tschüßi,
OJ

Manchester

2011-03-08T23:23:00.002+01:00

We spent the weekend in Manchester, in order to meet up with my old friend Matt. Manchester is quite a cool place: interesting modern architecture and a lot of old buildings... And of course: the nightlife... After a little foray into a Lesbian club (oopsy, wrong club), we found the right place to be. Fun times in Manchester! We stayed at an alcohol- and TV-free muslem-run hotel, which was quite lovely, right off the Curry Mile...

Anyway, it was a lovely weekend. This week is another week of plentiful work (I lost 1.3 trillion $ of my estimate for the costs of conflict today due to a data construction error... oopsy again!). The coming weekend is going to be about Italian visitors, with Jen, Massi and Kate coming to visit. I cannot wait! And then afterwards, I'm off to Montreal for 5 days: enjoying the cold and the snow (apparently).

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS And I managed to make Fedor happy: I'm going to Greece for a conference in May and he is coming with, so he can finally see Athens! Hope it's in a better state than last time I was there.... (2002-03)

New Favorite Film

2011-02-22T20:58:00.002+01:00

btw, I am utterly smitten with this film: All You Need Is Love (that is the english title, anyway). It is sweet, sad and utterly hilarious. It's in our movie collection among such classics as this one, this one and this one..

Maybe I should do a proper movie review post someday soon? Hmmm, let's think about it. But for now, if you have a chance, check out All You Need Is Love...
Tschüßi,
OJ

no visitors

2011-02-19T18:05:00.003+01:00

A weekend without visitors! It is quite a moment to enjoy, although this obviously implied having to spend a few extra hours cleaning, then going to the gym and doing groceries, so it was still quite busy, but it is nice to be able to sit here and not to have to entertain (although, dont get me wrong: we love having visitors. But not-having them is nice for a change....). It also gives us the opportunity to finally visit the Historical Museum (tomorrow).

At work this week was a bit chaotic. An emergency department meeting was called to inform us that there was some talk of the department being closed down. As expected, this led to a bit of panic among my colleagues although it all turned out to be overstated. We heard on Thursday that, at least for the next 2 years, the department will not be shut down... This was naturally celebrated with a Pony Bar visit leading to lots of alcohol use... :-)

Anyway, not much to tell, otherwise. Last weekend's visit by Steef and Cindy was fun, if a little exhausting (how we ended up drinking until 6am on a Friday night without even going out is beyond me!). For the rest, I am going to be preparing for another week of work, with some serious cold coming our way (lows of -12, with a wind chill to make it feel like -19 apparently, and highs around -4 (-10): great... I thought this bloody winter was over!!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Back in Berlin for the next few weeks

2011-02-09T23:04:00.003+01:00

A fun trip to Dublin to meet with some PhD mates, back to Berlin, on to Oxford and London for a presentation at Brunel University, working with my coauthors and lunch with my cousin, back to Berlin and then off to Hamburg for an eighties party... Did I mention that I am happy to be staying put for a few weeks?

Anyway, it was all good fun. It was great to be in Ireland for the first time (depending on how you count, my appr. 50th country I ever visited!) and to meet up with all oud buddies. We even managed to meet up with Brian, who was a colleague of Fedor's in Milano and who returned to Dublin with his wife Elisa. Here is a picture of the whole gang (excl Brian) in front of the cafe founded by Fedor's former boss Caroline

The trip to Hamburg was another opportunity to see a new city, with Nicole joining us as so often! Hamburg really is a very pretty city. I love the modern architecture by the port, particularly in combination with the old classical buildings nearby. The only issue with the city that we noticed now (and which is apparently a constant problem there) is the WEATHER. It rained nearly continuously during our visit, but we didn't let that dampen our spirits!!!
The other main reason for going there was that Stephie was celebrating her 30th birthday by organising an eighties party! Obviously, we never let a good opportunity to get dressed up pass us by and we immediatel got our act together and adjusted to the theme...

Anyway, lots of fun ensued!

This week has been a busy one. With my coauthors in London, we are trying to create a final draft for our paper on governance and piracy, and I have been working on a Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Peace Research. Unfortunately, I do not agree with the referees very much so I am trying to florally express my reasons why they ought to be ignored... Let's see!

In the meanwhile, the institute is getting quite some press coverage with the institute's president "deciding to take a leave of absence" (/cynicism) recently and me spending most of my spare time looking for alternative employment: fun times indeed! Anyway, I have renewed my website and starting sending out a few applications here and there... Let'S see!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Ethiopian photos!

2011-01-26T21:04:00.003+01:00

See, now that I am back, I feel like I should be posting! First, I noticed that the number of visitors to this blog have not actually dropped very much during the time that I didn't post anything. To be precise, the number of visitors has actually been increasing!!!

So I did some basic statistical analysis, with N=25 monthly observations and at first sight, the correlation appears to be negative between the number of posts and the number of visits to my blog. The correlation coefficient is about -0.32 and regressing posts on visits gives a negative coefficient with a p-value of 0.12, so pretty close to significance!

However, when controlling for a linear time trend, the effect of posts becomes a lot smaller. While still negative, it is no longer anywhere close to being significant. Finally, after eyeballing the data, I think it is important to control for the month of January. I am guessing it may have something to do with my birthday, or with people being interested after xmas holidays or something, but January appears to attract a lot of visitors. Adding a January-dummy (which is highly significant, as is the time trend), the number of posts finally has a positive impact on the number of visits. So that is good to know: you do actually like it when I post something. Thanks for that!

Anyway, apart from that little geeky intermezzo, here are some of the promised photos from our Ethiopian holiday:

Summary: It was AMAZING.

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS We're off to Dublin for the weekend for a mini Bocconi reunion! Afterwards, I'm off to London for work and then we go to Hamburg for a party next weekend!

Better and badder than ever before!

2011-01-23T14:57:00.002+01:00

In answer to Gerwin: no, this blog has not died. It was temporarily comatose, that is all! But it has been revived...

What happened in the meantime? Well, I guess that would be too much to explain! In summary:
- Bavaria (incl Oktoberfest): awesome! And 1 Hillman Wonder!
- Washington DC: twice, always nice to be there
- New York: good times!
- Marie & Tom's wedding in the Netherlands: a lot of fun
- Brussels: acting like an expert at the NATO Headquarters
- vacationing in Ethiopia: superb!!! (I will post some photos later. No wonders, except that we got stuck in Istanbul, so 2 wonders for Fedor)
- Poznan: great to see Dominik, but I am not sure I would want to move there (it's pretty enough though)

Hmmm, when summarising half a year, it feels travel is the main focus: of course we also received visitors, worked, had parties (Halloween was supercool), etc.

Of course, this begs the question? Why try and revive this blog now? Well, probably because I want to share with you that I made my debute on BBC World last Friday. In a live interview on the flagship programme GMT... Being broadcast in the US on BBC America, in the UK on BBC2 and in the rest of the world on BBC World.

In summary: OH MY GOD, it was absolutely nerve-wrecking!!!! But also supercool, so that made me happy. And I learned something: if I ever see people doing live tv interviews again: respect! It is really not as easy as it seems!

Anyways, I'm back!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS I realised that I have spent the past 7 New Year's Eves in 6 different countries! I think I would like to continue doing so!

Autumn? In August???

2010-08-29T16:22:00.003+02:00

Well, I think the weekend that Andrea, Nynke and Ryanne were here (see last post) was the final pleasant weekend of the year. I mean, not so strange after all, considering it's already August, right? :-(((((

Anyway, despite the weather, good times have been had. My brother and his wife came over for a lovely weekend, during the Berlin beer festival, so we had a great time. This time, they decided not to bring their children to the beer festival, which was probably a wise decision... (Last year's visit). The weekend after, my parents came to visit. It was wonderful to see them, although they were not particularly lucky with the weather either. They are great visitors though, insisting on organising their own day-programme, giving us the opportunity to go to IKEA...

After that weekend, Fedor started his CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) course, which actually takes up nearly as much time as promised. It is nice to both be in a serious working mood, although it would be nice if Fedor managed to free up his weekends a little... Oh well, too bad! Anyway, it's halfway now, so he only has 2 more fulltime weeks to go.

Last weekend, Fedor and I took the train to go to the Netherlands for the wedding of Joost and Kim. It was another beach party (like Bart and Tineke) and they were also lucky with the weather! The bride was gorgeous (and pregnant), the groom was drunk (unlike the bride) and the guests were merry: it was a perfect party!

Unfortunately, our trip back to Berlin didnt go quite as planned. We finally arrived home at about 2am (with 2.5 hours delay) and after repacking my suitcase, I only had about 2.5 hours to sleep. And being naturally stressed about this, I only slept for 1 hour.... At 5.30am, my taxi arrived to take me to the airport to fly to Glasgow for the European Economic Association. Thankfully, I arrived in time, because my presentation was in the first session on the first day. It went very well. For the next few days, I had the opportunity to meet with many old friends, meet many new ones, see some interesting sessions and enjoy Glasgow. And enjoying Glasgow is what I did! I have not got the photos from camera yet, so that will follow soon(ish), but I can tell that on the days it wasnt raining, Glasgow really is quite pleasant!

Anyway, I got home on Friday, in time to go out with Fedor's CELTA mates and to have dinner with Nicole and Pieter last night. Today some housework, and back to work tomorrow!

Talking about work, before Glasgow, I spent two weeks working on a project with my pirate-friend Anja, who works at my institute part-time. And in these two weeks, we produced nearly an entire paper. And not only is it nearly finished, it is also BEAUTIFUL. We have very, very high hopes for this paper, because it has a simple and appealing narrative and it just looks very, very promising. As soon as it comes out as a Discussion Paper (hopefully in a week or two), I will provide a link to it and tell you a little bit about it. It is just so incredibly cool, I am quite in love with it... :-)))))

For now, I say:
Tschüßi,
OJ

2010-08-03T22:16:00.005+02:00

With the husband out and about tonight, I have some time to update my blog! First, to answer Gerwin, "yes, this will definitely involve a new city". I mean, the main reason why I want to change jobs is because I would like to live somewhere where the weather is at least bareable for more than 2 months per year (today, for example: 18° and rain: it's August...).

Anyway, during the past weekend, the weather was actually quite enjoyable, which was great because Andrea, Nynke and Ryanne came over from the Netherlands. We managed to spend some time on the beach (one of the many city beaches) and enjoyed the city's sights...

This was also Pieter's last weekend: he had to go back to the Netherlands, so we won't be taking any more fun weekend trips with him and Nicole for a while... At least Nicole is still here, so we can enjoy her company occassionally!

Anyway, for the rest there is fairly little to say. Thursday, my brother Lars and his wife are arriving for the weekend. I am totally looking forward to it, because it is going to be Berlin Beerfest and it is gonna be a lot of fun! Also, I am hoping my brother is going to be able to cure my laptop of some of its ills an viruses and so on.

By the way, I ran into this videothis video recently. It is a beautiful video of a slow-motion lightning strike! Watch it and be amazed!

Tschüßi,
OJ

ARRRRRRR

2010-07-25T14:17:00.002+02:00

Summer is over, apparently. From the lovely temperatures in the past weeks, the temperature dropped to about 20-21° for the foreseeable future. :-( I mean, it could be worse, but it is quite a setback!

The past week was mainly work-involved. I had my "target talk" on Tuesday where I told my boss that I would be looking for a new job at the end of my current project. He was very sad, but he did understand me (and of course, it has nothing to do with the job or with him, so that is nice too). For the rest, I have been able to do a bit of work on a new piracy project that I am looking to do some time soon and finalise the Afghanistan paper. Finally, I also attended the PhD defence of one of my colleagues: It is interesting to see the difference between a Dutch, an Italian and a German PhD defence: I really was very lucky in Italy, I have to say!!!

This weekend, a friend of Fedor is visiting with his girlfriend. Because the weather is kinda shitty, we have mostly been playing card games etc. Right now, they are sleeping (at 14.30 in the afternoon.......), so I cannot vacuum the flat. Oh well, I guess we'll just continue living in this dust bowl!

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS My god, that Love Parade thing in Duisburg is really awful... It reminds me of the celebration of 20 years Mauerfall last year when I was on such a huge festival with Ellen and Kim and we nearly got crushed as well: it was quite scary, but at least nobody died that day!!!

oopsy!

2010-07-18T22:12:00.003+02:00

It started off with the wedding party, then I was out of town for other events for about 3 weeks, and then I had so much to catch up with that I just couldn't be bothered. Mwah, weak, weak, weak excuse, eh?

Well, let's just give a quick summary:

The wedding party was amazing!!! It was fantastic to have all our friends there, particularly because there were so many people there from different walks of life and different parts of our lives. It was simply fantastic to see them alltogether. Some I hadnt seen for years (Jo, my flatmate in Australia) and some I had just seen a few days before (my colleagues in Berlin): I was happy they were all there! And we were so incredibly lucky, with fantastic weather and a perfect location. It is simply incomprehensible how happy it all made me (us). Anyay, photos are available on Fedor's blog.

The weekend after, we travelled to the Netherlands again, for the wedding of Bart and Tineke. A beautiful party at a beach club made for a great location to celebrate. And it was cool to spend some time with them, as well as Joost and Kim, who will be our next wedding destination in the Netherlands in August. We also had the opportunity to meet up with some friends in Amsterdam before coming back to Berlin, so that was convenient.

The weeks after, I didn't spend a lot of time in Berlin. I first spend nearly a week in Turkey, going to a conference, meeting some interesting people and enjoying the lovely weather. Next, I went to France to work with my coauthor (and to enjoy some of the French delights like the food and the drinks!). Following that, I went to Amsterdam for yet another conference. For that trip, it was particularly great that I had the opportunity to spend some time with BarD, meet his new boyfriend and go partying. It was lovely to be in Amsterdam for those few days, but I was also very happy when I came home again and didn't have to venture out anymore... Except that, a week later, I went on a 2-day trip with my colleagues to Bad Saarow: a team-building event... Like last year, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but was actually a lot of fun...

Since then, we had Maartje and Edin over for one weekend, and then Fedor went on a few weekend trips (revenge for my "being away" for a few weeks?). Last weekend, he was in Prague with his mother, while I had Marie and Tom over for some fun times. This weekend, I was actually truly home alone, with Fedor being in Milano and me not having any visitors!!! While a bit lonely, it did give me the opportunity to do those things I have been needing to do for a while. Like proper cleaning, taxes, tanning etc... But I will be happy when he is back though.... (hopefully in half an hour or so!)

Anyways, apart from that general overview, I have to say that we have been having some good times. The weather has been amazing!!! I mean, one could nearly say the temperature has been a bit excessive (the 38° thing wasnt too much fun, working on the top floor under a flat roof and not having any aircon), but anything is better than the Winter, right? Obviously, the World Cup has been a lot of fun too, although I was away for most of it, I did manage to enjoy some of the matches. Most of our matches were spent at Kulturbrauerei, around the corner from our house, where there was a large concentration of Dutch people:

In other fun news, I have been having some discussions with the German tax office. Our marriage is not being recognised and I am obviously protesting that decision (it makes a fairly large tax difference), but so far I have not been particularly successful. Although I think I have now managed to get the decision-making process stalled until there is a final outcome from a court case currently going for the High Court, which should solve our problems... Anyway, in the meantime, they already gave me 2400 euros (yeah I know, it is not actually a gift: I simply paid too much in the first place) and I am fighting to get some more back. It is really quite exhilarating to try and fight with the system: I love it!!! Tomorrow, I will be sending them another three letters (one to protest the preliminary tax outcome, one to protest the preliminary outcome of Fedor's and one to protest the fact that we were forced to file separately: good times!!!).

Right, now that is about enough. The coming weeks will contain lots of work, and hopefully some more warm days: I love it!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

36 billion Euros

2010-05-24T18:18:00.002+02:00

That is what the war in Afghanistan costs the German tax payers. And an annual cost of about 3 billion, contrasted with the 1 billion that the government claims. Clearly, enough for quite a bit of a controversy! The news came out last Thursday, with news areticles in Spiegel Onlin, Manager Magazine and many others. I am particularly proud of the interview in Spiegel Online and the fact that a weapons company lost 5% of its value, apparently thanks to our report. That is just supercool, right? In the Netherlands, I got a large article in NRC Handelsblad (page 5, last Friday), so I am very proud!!!

Anywys, for the rest all is well. The real report is only coming out on Wednesday, so that is when we can expect some proper controversy... Let's see what happens! In the meantime, we entertained Mignon and Sander during this long weekend and made some use of the fairly nice weather. Particularly yesterday was glorious, with the Karneval der Kulturen der Welt: a large intercultural festival with a parade and everything. It was a lot of fun! Today, I also managed to squeeze in some time to finish the Alte Nationalgalerie. Another Museumsinsel attraction ticked off. After Bode Museum (4 visits), Pergamon (4 visits) and the Altes Museum (2 visits). Tonight: game night with Nicole and Pieter. Woohoo! And next weekend: Dresden!

Good times, I say!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Afghanistan

2010-05-09T20:49:00.003+02:00

Last week, my boss received a phone call from a journalist: whether we would be able to to estimate the costs of the German participation in the war in Afghanistan. Together, we decided to say "yes, sure", which led to my longest and most intensive work week since, well, I guess the exam time during my first PhD year! I have even given up on my principle that I do not work during the weekend: I spent two Sundays in the office already! I mean, the 9-21 working days during the week are one thing, but Sundays??? Anyway, the deadline for the numbers is tomorrow and for the final report on Wednesday.... It looks like it will make quite a splash when our report comes out, with several media outlets already planning to take up the results. It is a particularly interesting time to discuss this, with several large government expenditure programmes under discussion (Greece bailout, for example). I am quite sure the government is not going to be particularly excited to be told that they have already spent more than the German share of the bailout on fighting a war in Afghanistan.... And I guess our message of "the numbers provided by the government regarding the costs of the conflict are off by a factor 5" will not go down to well either!

Anyway, the need to come up with a trustworthy estimate that can stand the scrutiny of the Ministries of Finance and Defence have been keeping me at work for quite some time... I promise to provide links to the research when it is published!

In other news, the Queen's Day party at the Embassy was a lot of fun again. And once more, too much alcohol was consumed, although it was not quite as bad as it was last year... Las weekend, we had some friends over from the Netherlands: Cobie and Peter. It also happened to be Labour Day, which is commonly celebrated with music, beer and rioting, so we spent quite some time in Kreuzberg:

In all honesty, we did not in fact participate in any riots, to everyone's relief. It was great to see them though, and we rediscovered the joys of playing Cluedo! I always thought that game was kinda stupid, but it really is not that bad!!! (*shock*). This weekend was (yet another) visitor-free one. Instead, we did have Nicole, Pieter and Kristy over for dinner. I finally made Costarican ceviche, which is an absolutely delicious fish-lime dish.

This week is thankfully short. On Thursday, it is Ascension Day (which in Germany is also Men Day, apparently) and in order to compensate for my Sundays of work, I am taking the Friday off as well. This works out well, because Fedor's mum will be here with her boyfriend: we will be able to spend some time together! Now all I have to do is last until Wednesday and finalise my research report...

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS I don't want to share any specific numbers yet regarding the cost of the war effort, but it suffices to say that the cost is expressed in the tens of billions of euros...

End of April

2010-04-24T17:12:00.003+02:00

It is nearly the end of April, and I have to say that it was mostly disappointing in terms of weather. Last year, when I had arrived on one of the last days of March, April was simply glorious. Unfortunately, it has not been as great this year. But, a significant upshot is the fact that most of the fairly rare nice weather appears to be taking place in the weekend! Last weekend, for example, was simply amazing. We spent a lovely Sunday afternoon in Mauerpark, watching the Open Air Karaoke and drinking beer (before retiring to the Prater Biergarten to drink some more beer). And this weekend again appears to have found the road to loveliness!

Did anything important happen recently? Nah, not really. My paper was accepted for the European Economic Association meeting in Glasgow in August, so that was a nice surprise. I mean, previous experiences in Scotland in August notwithstanding, I have been told that the weather there can occassionally be rather pleasant! So that should be lots of fun (and a great opportunity to meet many old friends). In fact, overall, this Summer appears ot be one of mucho travelling. Next month, we will be visiting Dresden with Nicole and Pieter. Then in June, it will be Dalen (NL) for our own party, Den Haag for a wedding, probably Turkey (or otherwise Hannover) for a conference, possibly Clermont-Ferrand for a research visit and finally Amsterdam for a conference. July will have the department retreat, August the trip to Glasgow and September Munich (and possibly possibly possibly Tanzania). My conclusion: good times!

At work, all is quite well. I have a little sad that my intern, who worked her hass off for 3 months has returned to her University, so that it is now just me and my Research Asisstant. But in May I should be getting a new intern temporarily, who will be succeeded by new ones in July and September. As for any results of my research: that is debatable. The Global Economic Costs of Conflict? Well, I have a number, but it has a high margin of uncertainty (VERY high) and still changes a lot whenever I change some of my underlying assumptions. But, just to give you an indicator. Right now it looks as follows: if there was no, and had never been any, civil conflict, the world would have had a GDP in 2000 that would be approximately 1.5 trillion dollars higher. That is $1,500,000,000,000 for the year 2000.

This week is going to be a nice one. The weather has cleared up, I will have lots of opportunities to go to the gym (yes, I have managed to get into a rhythm of visiting the gym 3x per week! I feel very proud...), on Wednesday there will be the lavish party at the Embassy again to celebrate Queen's Day (where I got VERY drunk last year), and on Thursday, friends arrive who will spend the weekend with us. And who will celebrate the first of May with us. Labour Day has a longstanding tradition of urban rioting in Berlin, so it is quite a sight to be seen!

In another amazing development: the German tax office required only ONE week to reject our tax declaration! On the grounds that our marriage is clearly not enshrined in law and we thus cannot file jointly. My first protest against the German Tax Office is already on its way! (apparently, one has to ritually protest the decision three times, before we can go to court: High Court, here we come!!!)

Now, just to finish off, here are two old pictures that I wanted to share (because I havent been posting any pictures lately):
Sunset on the Ssese Islands in Uganda (2004?)
Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican (the darkness of the picture reminds me of the evils of the catholic church: I love it!) (2006?)

Tschüßi,
OJ

Bode Museum II

2010-04-11T18:21:00.001+02:00

Well, that whole Spring thing has been fairly disappointing so far. But I guess we should keep hope and wait for the real thing to arrive finally, right? Last week, during the loooooong Easter weekend (which in Germany means both the Friday and the Monday off work), we had some opportunity to enjoy the weather. We laid in the park shortly (it was cooold) and had our first Weiße beers in the Beergarden (it was cooooooooold), so I guess it could have been worse! It was also the weekend of Jochen's visit with his new (well, new for us, not for him) Italian girlfriend Viola. Great to meet her and we spent a lot of time drinking, eating, eating and eating. So I say: good times!

My working week was graced by having the opportunity to discuss with a potential co-author about our new project on Pirates. I love myself some good pirate things, so it was a great to be able to discuss our new project with her. Then this weekend has been a quiet one. Like I have said before, we are significantly less popular in Berlin than we were in Milano, so we do not get as many visitors. Not such bad news, because it gave us the opportunity to have dinner with Nicole and Pieter and see their new house. Obviously, copious amounts of alcohol were consumed, but we still managed to get up reasonably early today to once again go to the Bode Museum. It is an amazing museum, with impressive architecture, but it is also very big. We have now covered one floor and a little bit, in our two visits. One more floor to go!!!

This week? Nothing special, just working. And next weekend? Again, no visitors!

Ohne Titel

2010-03-27T15:39:00.002+01:00

Having survived this terrible winter without ever getting sick, it only seems befitting that the moment Spring starts kicking in, I get a terrible cold. So I did last Sunday, and only since yesterday, I am starting to feel okay again. I mean, it still is only a cold, but it did bother me quite a bit. Particularly because I actually needed to work quite a lot (deadline on Monday). I have some first numbers resulting from my main research project! The numbers dont mean anything yet, really, but this first estimation puts the costs of all conflict between 1960 and 1999 at an estimated 1.5 trillion dollars. I reckon it is still a major underestimation, so I will be cranking that number up a bit further!

On Wednesday, we joined Nicole and some friends to go to another Pub quiz (last time, the three of us were an embarrassing failure), but this time with a twist. Or actually, two twists. First, it was in German. Second, it was a "glamour-themed" pub quiz, presented by a drag queen in one of the gay bars around the corner. Well, as you may have guessed: our knowledge regarding German glamour themes was rather inadequate.... :-))) We only knew 1.5 questions (where "we" refers to Nicole in particular. I think the most shocking thing is actually that there were people/teams who actually had 18 out of 20 questions correct... With questions like "who is designing the wedding dress of Princess Victoria of Sweden" and "What celebrity was on the t-shirt of Oliver Kahn when he was spotted in a Bavarian Biergarten last year?", it seems hard to do well!

On Thursday, Fedor's brothers arrived for a weekend-in-Berlin. Fedor is delighted to have them around, and it is a good reason to drink and eat well. So we did/do! Tomorrow morning, Hascar (Fedor's oldest brother) will be running the Berlin half-marathon, so we are hoping for some nice weather. And in the afternoon, they will be taking the train back to the Netherlands. Currently, the boys are all out in the city, so I have some time to relax and work more on my tax returns. It is said that 50% of all tax law in the world is written in German, because it is so complicated. And I must say that I am indeed having a pretty tough time, despite using some handy software that is making it all a lot easier. But it looks like it will work out with a nice taxback, so that will be delightful!

Oh, and next week is Easter, so a 4-day weekend! Looking forward to it already, let's hope there will be some nice weather....

Tschüßi,
OJ

As promised!

2010-03-20T17:36:00.001+01:00

Washington DC: my god, there is sooo much snow!!!!

This is at the hotel, during blizzard 2.0

Thankfully, I finally did make it to Milano. Where I got to see the Duomo naked for the first time!!!! (as in: no scaffolding)

And we had good times, including at Massi and Jen's, where we made Massi very happy with a bottle of scorpion-infused whiskey from Laos (btw: it was rather disgusting)

Back in Berlin, during one of our after-work trips to our regular haunt: Pony Bar!

And finally, Wittenberg with Nicole and Pieter

Now I really go back into the kitchen!

Spring is here!

2010-03-20T17:06:00.002+01:00

So, I guess I have just been suffering a winter depression over the last 6/7 weeks, which is why I have not been updating my blog. It certainly wasnt because of an overdose of visitors, because in fact there have not been all that many... Anyway, I will give a short recap. And after finishing this, I will just add a little post with photos that give a nice overview of life.

First of all, spring is here! Finally. Because wow, this was a heavy winter. Heavy enough for us to decide that Berlin is definitely not our city of choice for the rest of our lives. I mean, the occassionally -20 (or colder) is bad, but I think it has been the 2 1/2 months of snow cover that really did my head in. But it is fine now, because it hasn't snowed for nearly a week and in fact temperatures have risen substantially (of course it is rainy and a bit lousy, but hey!).

What have we been doing? So, after I finally managed to get out of bloody Washington DC, I finally made it to Milano on Friday afternoon, where Fedor joined me too. We had a great weekend, but unfortunately I did not actually manage to do the work that I was supposed to have been doing with Idil. So I went back 2 weeks ago for 3 days to get that over with. Furthermore, Matt came over from Coventry to see us, and Linda was supposed to come from the Netherlands but couldnt because she was injured :-((((.

In the meantime, of course there has been work-work-work-work (and a bit of play every now and then). Some of my work is progressing steadily, some of it is not progressing at all and some of it is going really well. I am quite lucky to have a posse working for/with me, consisting of a Research Assistant and an intern, so that relieves some of the work. Overall, I guess I can say it is going quite well, actually!

I know this post is a bit varied and has some unrelated bits and pieces, but oh well, that is just the way it is. I recently realised that I have been living in Germany for nearly a year and that I still havent bought (or missed) the Lonely Planet for Germany! How terrible is that! It means (and this is true) that we have not been doing nearly enough sightseeing. One of the reasons for that is of course that there is already so much to see in Berlin itself that we do not need to go out of the city, and another is the fact that Brandenburg etc is not nearly as packed with pretty places to visit as Lombardia was... Anyway, apart from our days visit to Potsdam last year, we hadnt really seen anything yet. Until last weekend that is! We joined up with Nicole and Pieter (who have a car) and went to Wittenberg: the birthplace of Protestantism (you know, with Luther and all that), as well as the printing press! And it was quite a cute city. At least, the city centre was. The surroundings consist of chemical industry and half-abandoned ugly towns, but the city centre was pretty. The weather wasnt great (got hit by a blizzard on the way home), but it was great to get out of the city for once. Should do that again!

Well, I think I have now written about enough. I should go back to cooking anyway: we are having some of my colleagues over for dinner tonight...

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Party Planning for June 5 is going superbly! It is gonna be awesome!
PPS Photos will follow shortly...

SO BORED...

2010-02-11T04:06:00.001+01:00

After yet another day spent at the Dulles Holiday Inn, I am now officially BORED. This whole "blizzard-thing" is really not much fun anymore...

Oh, I didn't mention earlier that I had to go to Washington DC? Well, my boss asked me last week whether I could attend some job interviews in Washington, and I couldnt really say no. So I left for DC on Saturday, and I had not paid any attention to any weather forecasts, as I had been very very busy beforehand. So at Frankfurt airport, I ran into my colleague who had left a day earlier but got stuck overnight in Frankfurt. We departed Frankfurt together, but finally heard that Blizzard 2010 was still hitting Dulles International Airport and we had to divert to New York. The excitement of going to NY was shortlived by the time we found out that Lufthansa was putting us up in a hotel somewhere out on Long Island... Finally, on Sunday, we made it to DC, but unfortunately, our job market candidates did not! So only two candidates were interviewed, with us struggling through the 60 cm of snow that covered DC. Sidenote: Helix Hotel in DC is AWESOME.
Monday night at 2am, I received a phonecall from Lufthansa, informing me my flight had been cancelled. A lot of rebooking ensued, but I finally got booked on a flight going to Newark early afternoon on Tuesday, before Snowmaggedon 2.0 was gonna hit. But by the time I made it to the airport (75$ taxi ride), all flights had already been cancelled.... So I got put up in the Dulles Holiday Inn for the night. Today, the blizzard 2.0 started hitting really hard, so there was not even any way to get back to the city: I spent another day at the Holiday Inn. Tomorrow, I should be able to get out of here though!
Unfortunately, that does mean that I missed out on the two days of work I was going to put in with Idil, in Milano (if I make it to Europe at all), which sucks!!!
Anyways, before the trip to DC, we had Meghan and John over for a visit, and it was great to see them. BBefore that, Adama came to Berlin for a few days, so we could work on a new project that seems rather promising. Finally, before that, my workshop was a great success. We had a large number of impressive, interesting researchers and a great programme to boost!
All in all, it has been a great few weeks, with lots of interesting things going on!!!
For the story of our honeymoon, promised earlier, check out Fedors blog...
Tschüßi,
OJ

We survived!

2010-01-26T23:38:00.002+01:00

I will provide more details soon, but I just wanted to share with you that we just returned to Berlin today and we had an absolutely fabulous time!!!

Photographic summary available here.

The best part? No illness (well, two days towards the end, but that hardly counts). And of course, great food, nice weather and lovely people.... More info to come soon!

Tschüßi,
OJ

The Last Shout (of 2009, that is)

2009-12-29T18:23:00.002+01:00

Xmas was awesome! My brother and his family were here, and we ate, drank and were merry for 5 days, which was great! Xmas dinner was quite successful, despite the shopping FAIL when I tried to buy artichokes and a few other problems. I am not sure what my highlights were, but the chocolate trifle was great. As was the lobster. And the garlic soup. Hmmmm, difficult to say, basically... Rather surprisingly, the only thing my nieces really liked was the garlic soup! Oh well, I attribute their refusal of tuna carpaccio, goats cheese fondue etc to a lack of experience and simply assume it does not reflect my cooking skills! ;-)

Obviously, in addition to eating, there were presents, and everyone was happy with what they received. Well, maybe I shouldnt speak on behalf of others, but at least I was very happy with mine! For photos, go to Facebook or to Fedor's blog.

On Sunday, they all left and we had some time to clean up the house and relax, which was nice for a change. I went back to work yesterday and today, to try and finish as many things as possible, which has been fairly successful. My paper is finished, the research project that I am quasi-supervising is in its final stages, my Workshop (taking place on 1-2 February) is nearly completely organised (the only thing still missing is funds to pay for it, but I am sure this will work out somehow), and I am ready to go on holiday.

Because tomorrow, we fly to Bangkok!!! For four weeks of Sun and Heat and Temples and Beach and Food and Culture etc etc etc. I am totally looking forward to it, and to fleeing from the Berlin cold. We will fly out of Frankfurt, so we have a 13.00 train to get to Frankfurt, so we even have time to take it slowly tomorrow morning. So for that reason we start our holidays by going to see Avatar in 3D tonight (recommendation by my brother and his wife). I hope it is going to be great!!!

So, the only thing still left for me to do is to wish everyone a great 2010! Think of us while we are lying on a nice comfy warm beach and you are suffering in the freezing cold. :-))))))))

Tschüßi,
OJ

It's the most Wonderful Time... of the year...

2009-12-21T19:35:00.000+01:00

It's nearly xmas! And it is absolutely FREEZING. Well, it was, anyway. Between Thursday and Monday morning, the temperature didnt come above -10, with windchill making it feel like a good -20 (during the day, that is). As my colleague Kati pointed out "oh, and it's not even winter yet"... oh god, I hadnt realised Berlin was going to be THIS bad! Anyway, since this morning it is a balmy -2 (windchill: -8), so it's nearly time to get our shorts out again...

We have had some snow as well, but not really a lot. not more than a few centimetres basicaylly, which is convenient as I, obviously, still cycle everywhere. I did join in with the rest of civilisation and purchase a hat, despite the obviously negative consequences this has for my hair... But it really is too cold otherwise!

Anyways, more visitors during recent weekends. Last weekend, Stefanie and Cobus were here, and this weekend Rosie and Ness were here (they were actually here for two Rammstein concerts, but stayed at our place: we did not see much of them). Tonite we are meeting with my friend Linlin who lives in China but is in Berlin for a few days, and tomorrow with Jochen, who is over from Groningen for a week or so to visit family. And then on Wednesday, xmas properly starts: My brother and his family will arrive! I am really looking forward to it, and to making lots of nice food etc. It will be lovely, I am sure!

In addition to the visitors etc, there has obviously been some work as well. Last week, I spent 2 days in Geneva for an Expert Workshop on Armed Violence Indicators. It was quite interesting, and a good place to meet many important people. Thanks UNDP, for inviting me! And for paying for the ticket (wtf, what idiot would pay 1000€ to fly Berlin-Geneva and back???). I did learn at least one thing new: the UN has an Office for Outerspace Affairs. How cool is that? Anyway, it was nice to see Geneva (I had never been there) and to meet people, but I was quite sad to arrive in Frankfurt to find that I had missed my connecting flight and to find that I was going to end up having to spend the night in Frankfurt. Oh well, shit happens, but it was all quite stressful and I really would have preferred to get home!

For the rest, my main activities these days are related to the organisation of my Workshop, which is taking place on February 1-2. Rather inconveniently, we will be on our honeymoon the month before the workshop takes place (I will be back at work on January 28th), so everything has to be taken care off right now. And that is quite a hassle! But I am sure it is going to be great: We are having people coming over from the US, UK, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, India, Egypt, etc... So a nice international group, indeed!

Right, now that is it for now. Merry xmas to everyone and try not to get snowed in!
Tschüßi,
OJ

update from the bed!

2009-12-06T13:20:00.000+01:00

Wow, that was quite a while again. We have had so many visitors, and so many other things to do though! Jorryt and Lilian (and their Unborn), Suuz and BarD and Felix and Annaig. It was all great fun and good to see everyone (see pictures at the end of this post). But to be honest, and that is meant in the nicest way possible, I am most excited about the current weekend: our free weekend!!! The first one in a looooooooong while. So now it is Sunday, 1pm, and I am in bed, updating my blog. And loving it!!! And oh, btw, this update is coming to you from an EEE notebook: my new computer, that is!

Fedor's ancient computer finally died, 2 days ago (it had been a long time coming), so we bought a new one. But because we didnt really want to spend much money, we decided to go for one of this mini netbooks (its about half the size of a normal laptop), which is my computer now, and Fedor has my old one. It takes some getting used to, but it really isnt all that bad. And it really is a lot more convenient for taking around with me. So I am quite satisfied. (oh, and it only cost 249 euros, that is also a big bonus).

Anyways, the first time I will have the opportunity to take it with me is next week, when I go to Geneva for 3 days, for a meeting with some people from the UNDP and others (an expert meeting on the role of violence in the accomplisment of the Millenium Development Goals: pretty cool, actually). Oh, while talking about work: Did I mention I had a paper accepted in Journal for Development Studies? And a Revise&Resubmit at Journal of Conflict Resolution? Well, I do! And I am very happy about it. Oh, and 3 Discussion Papers, which can be found on the DIW website, if you are interested.

Just a short summary of other things we have recently done: xmas party from work, which was fun. And booking our honeymoon (oh yeah, I forgot to mention: we will fly to Bangkok on the 30th of December, spend 4 weeks in Thailand-Cambodia-Laos and get back to Berlin on the 26th. And we are soooooooooooooo much looking forward to it. Particularly given the CRAPPY weather in Berlin...)

Tschüß,
OJ

Married, part 2

2009-11-06T20:22:00.001+01:00

So, now I have a bit more time to elaborate on the whole "marrying thing". We had always said that we wanted to elope and get married in secret. So when I asked him to marry me, on June 1, we immediately started planning where to do so. Unfortunately, not all countries are as enlightened as the Netherlands, and it was actually not easy to find an appropriate country (ie, one with equal marriage rights, that also allowed foreigners to get married). In the end we realised the Netherlands would really just be the easiest way to go. So we did!

We decided on a date (our 5-year anniversary), a location (Naarden, because it is so pretty), and asked our parents to come and witness the event. They were very happpy about our plans and excited to be part of the gang. So, over the months, we made all the other preparations (clothes, rings, all that) and last week came to the Netherlands. Fedor's father also celebrated his 60th the same weekend, so we didnt even have to make up an excuse about coming to the Netherlands. We drove to Naarden on thursday, and welcomed our parents to the hotel on Friday. It was a gorgeous beautiful day, so we walked through the town a bit before the actual ceremony.

The ceremony was beautiful. The lady performing the marriage was sweet, funny and just really cool. So that was pleasant. After the ceremony, saying the yesses and exchanging rings, we enjoyed the town for some more time. In the evening, we started with a wine tasting and then went to a beautiful restaurant called Het Arsenaal, which belongs to the reasonably well known Dutch chef Paul Fagel. And the food was amazing! Afterwards, we afterpartied in the bridal suite (well, our room) in the hotel, until receiving a call from reception about complaining customers regarding the noise... (ooooooops!).

The next day we went to Nijmegen and celebrated Fedor's fathers bday. It was great to see all his family and all that, so we were happy. On Sunday, we drove back to Berlin (in terrible weather: it took us 8 hours!!!).

This week has been lots of partying, with some work thrown into the mix every now and then. I must saz I am very happy that it is weekend though! Tomorrow morning we fly to Venice, in order to go visit friends in Trieste. We will be back on Monday in Berlin, in time to celebrate the 20 years of Mauerfall. It is going to be HUGE!

Anyways, here are a few more pictures from the wedding. More can be found HERE

Tschuessi,
OJ

MARRIED

2009-11-02T16:02:00.002+01:00

Last Friday, Fedor and I got married in the beautiful town of Naarden. Don't be insulted if you weren't told in advance, because only our parents were. Here is one picture of the beautiful day, more will follow later!

Tschüßi,
OJ

DC Photos

2009-10-28T08:30:00.000+01:00

So, here is just a small preview of the photos. It was such lovely weather (except for the first days I was there), so the pictures turned out very nice as well... For more photos, go HERE, to see the rest.

The flight back was fine, and we had a nice weekend with Fedor's little brother and his girlfriend (uhm, not Fedor's girlfriend, obviously...). And today we are celebrating Fedor's birthday. Where by "celebrating", I mean "giving a kiss and a prezzy, and maybe eat something nice today"...

Tschuessi!
OJ

Observation

2009-10-23T04:30:00.001+02:00

Call me cynical, but it feels very wrong to discuss development/conflict issues, while sitting in a fancy expensive restaurant in Washington DC, sleeping in a 450$/night hotel, and hearing people complaining about this one time, when the business class was full, and, omg, they had to fly coach !!! I mean, i know this is what the development industry is like, but I had never seen it from up close. If this meeting yesterday had not taken place, the could have saved 20-30,000€ or so and helped poor people with it: what do you think would have been more effective?

Anyway, I have networked a lot, both yesterday and today and had a great time in general. But that is not really why i got into the topic in the first place though...

One more day of networking and going to meetings, and in the evening I am flying back to Europe.

Howdy,
OJ

photo post!!!

2009-10-21T04:03:00.005+02:00

So, as promised, finally some pictures! So, here are pictures from the UK.
Matt and me in the Cotswolds:

The Canterbury Cathedral

Canterbury

Then from our holidays in Italy:
The Cathedral of Orvieto:

Undrground in the catacombs of Perugia:

Elsewhere in Perugia (i think)

Assisi:

The Monti Sibillini National Park (view from our hotel window)

Sardegna:
One of the many beaches near the house!

Just to show how much fun we had!

Back in Berlin, Ellen and Kim visiting:

OMG, a giant!!! part of the clebrations for German Day of Unification

With a little young lady giantess as well

peeing all over the pavement by the side of the Brandenburger Tor...

Weekend after, Stephie!

And going out with her, and Nicole and Kristy

Right, that was just a smaaaaaaaaaaall summary...
Howdy,
OJ

News from DC

2009-10-21T03:42:00.002+02:00

So, here is the news from DC!

Actually, there is also sort-of news from before-DC. We had my friend Stephie over for a visit during the weekend, and it was great to see her. The weather was nice in Berlin (at least for 1 day), and we saw lots of the city. Once again, I promise to upload pictures. Except that this time, I actually have time to do so immediately, and I will.

The week after Stephie's visit was quite busy. I had several important deadlines coming up and I fulfilled all of them. So that was quite delightful. Particularly the completion of a paper that had been commissioned by someone publishing an Oxford Handbook had been weighing on my shoulders for along time and I was happy to have completed it.

Anyways, this week I am in Washington DC. For events, but mainly for networking. It started off rather negatively-turned-positively. My Air France flights was overbooked and I got bumped off the flight. And given that this was a 6.45 flight, I obviously wasnt happy about about it. However, when it turned out they were able to put me on a different flight (through BMI Baby and British Airways) that got me to DC with only a 45 minute delay, that relieved my mood. particularly when finding out that I was eligible for the "getting-bumped" compensation anyway! Unfortunately I wasnt completely awake in the morning and chose the 300€ cash reward, instead of the 500€ Air France-KLM voucher, but it is still a nice bonus!!!

When I did get to DC, the weather turned out to be quite horrible, so I spent a few hours in the Washington Plaza hotel, before meeting with my cousin Megan who lives in Arlington. We had dinner together and talked a lot. On Sunday, I met with my friend Jorida for brunch and a bunch of her friends. This was a great networking opportunity (well, sort of). In the evening I had dinner with my friend Macha who works at the Dutch Embassy.

Yesterday (Monday), I had time for sightseeing, and the weather was absolutely amazing. So that was fantastic, and I saw many of the beautiful sights DC has to offer. The trees and their autumny colours are particularly impressive right now... Dinner in the evening with my colleague Kati who arrived as well. Today I moved hotels and I am now staying in the Mayflower Hotel in DC (and am I glad I dont have to pay the 450$ per night it costs). Tomorrow the Real work starts during the German Development Day at the World Bank. We will be presenting some things there, including what was my Job Market Paper. Very exciting! On Thursday there is a Policy Forum and gala dinner, here at the Mayflower, organised by IZA. Finally, on Friday, I will have meetings at World Bank, SAIS and Georgetown Uni, before taking the night flight back to Paris and then to Berlin. busy, busy busy!

Now, as I am in my hotel anyway, I certainly will have time to upload old pictures. And I will! The DC pictures will follow (I would promise next week, when i am back in Germany, but that is probably not too realistic, eh).

Howdy!
OJ

busy nights

2009-10-08T23:05:00.002+02:00

So, Fedor is now going to fitness on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I work extra late on those days. Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to German course (which starts really early: 18.15!), and Fridays we have visitors, or Fedor is working late.

All I am trying to say: we only see each other 2 hours a day, and that kinda ruins my efforts to write anything here.

But, good news: I am still alive!

The Italy holiday was gorgeous, particularly our stay with friends on Sardegna. it was great to see our friends again, and to meet many new people. It was absolutely fantastic, and also to have a quick visit to Milano and say hi to my Bocconi mates. The weekend after was the weekend of my highschool reunion, which a lot of people actually think is kind of a lame concept. Even Fedor said he wouldnt go if there was one of his class! Anyway, I am different and I loooooooved it! So great to hear about so many people and to find out what everyone is doing now (and of course to see their baby pictures). I mean, 10 years after the final exam: it really is kind of a big thing!

Anyways, that was obviously in the Netherlands so I took a train ride there to visit and came back again on Sunday night. The weekend after was the Tag der Deutsche Einheit (National Reunification Day) and our friends Ellen and Kim from Rotterdam were visiting. We had a fantastic weekend, which much food and much enjoyment. I even managed to drag them to the local big gay monthly celebration at Kino International. Tomorrow, it will be my Groningen friend Stephie who lives in Duesseldorf now. Another weekend of partying will ensue!

Anyway, in the meantime I have also been quite busy with work, but I wont bore you with the details. Let me suffice it to say that I have had 2 DIW discussion papers published in the past weeks (nrs 921 and 927, if anyone is interested), and I have 3 important deadlines coming up within the next 7 days. Lovely! And oh, in 9 days, I will be flying to Washington DC to present work at the World Bank, and meet with many other people for "networking" and all that. Stress!!!

When I have time (and the desire to do so), I will post a picture post soon to show the things we have been up to recently!

Tschuessi!
OJ

Urlaub!!!

2009-09-11T19:44:00.002+02:00

I had a neat little trip to England, I must say. I went to visit my old friend Matt in Coventry, which was absolutely lovely. Particularly our Sunday trip to the Cotswalds was grand!!! it is this gorgeous traditionally english-looking area. Simply stunning! For some photos, see facebook.

I then continued on to Canterbury for a conference. Conflict and Complexity. Let's put it this way: it was very, uhm, interdisciplinary. I turned out to be one of only two economists, and for the rest there was a total mishmash of random people. Varying from self-declared spies and linguists looking for expressions of empathy to people working with UK Airforce space as art objects and complexity theorists (don't ask me what complexity theory is. I have been trying to find out, but without success...). All in all, it was actually a very enjoyable and interesting conference.

On Wednesday I returned and enjoyed two days of rather stressful work (dont get me started, there are all these projects that seem to be running at the same time but not in the same direction). And now it is HOLIDAY!

We will fly to Roma tomorrow, and enjoy two days there. Then we rent a car and visit Umbria. On Friday we fly to Sardegna for a party weekend with friends and we finish off with one day of Milano! I cannot wait!!!

We will be back in 10 days!

Tschuessi,
OJ

So hungry

2009-08-31T20:38:00.002+02:00

Another week with the hospital-prescribed diet that lacks all forms of substance, as well as vitamins. Now I really am very hungry... But I guess it is all for a greater good!

Well, that is what I thought anyway. Last Friday i was gonna hear the results, to see whether there really was any point to this diet. Unfortunately, after waiting for 3 hours, the doctor told me that he would not have any time for me that day. wtf?

Today, I did manage to see him and he informed me that, unfortunately, they didnt really find anything in particular, apart from the inflammation in the esophagus, for which they have no real explanation. Oh, and the diet: he doesnt really care, so "why dont you just continue the diet for another three or four WEEKS, and then start relaxing it a little". four weeks???? Are u insane? (oh yeah, those weeks would also include our holiday in Italy where I definitely will not be able to eat ANYTHING). I think I may have to have my own variation of the doctor's rules...

Oh well, on to happier topics: I did practically nothing at work last week, being mostly preoccupied with food. But during the weekend, on Saturday, we managed to go to Tristan und Isolde by Wagner, which was playing in the State Opera House. While it was enjoyable, I must admit it was also a little long: 5.5 hours of opera is a bit much... Afterwards, my friend Nicole who had joined us at the opera came to our place and we drank and chatted merrily until 4am. Well, lets put it this way: we chatted merrily and Fedor and Nicole drank merrily... *sigh*

On Sunday, then, we cycled to Spandau, which was supposed to be quite a pleasant suburb. While it was good to have seen it, we were not particularly impressed. The Citadel is not all that, the old town is kinda small (it really is only one street) and the medieval part of the city consists of one building and a piece of wall. And the way there is basically one big industrial zone, so it was not particularly impressive. But at least we have done it, on our last free Sunday before winter!

Oh wait, no, winter already started. At least that is what it seemd like last night, while I was sitting there in my warmest biggest jumper and still being cold... tomorrow's forecast says 31 degrees again though, so I guess Winter is on hold again!

Tschuessi!
OJ

PS Fedor had a job interview! And it went well...

German hospitals...

2009-08-24T19:27:00.000+02:00

...are really not bad! Possibly tainted by my experience with an Italian hospital before (real story: I came out of surgery and was told: "it is very important to drink a lot of water, and you can buy water from the machine in the hallway"), but I must say that it was not too bad at all, overall. Of course I had the bad luck of being in the hospital on the hottest day of the year, so it was bloody hot, but you really cannot blame the hospital for that! The food was kinda crappy, but that was more due to the compulsory rice-potatoes-water diet than to anything else!

Oh yeah, regarding conclusions: we'll get back to you about that. They found a few other things, which they think may be correlated to the allergy/infection, but I have to wait until Friday to get the final results for that. Anyway, I will leave out the unpleasant details, I guess. One little interesting fact is that, at least until Friday, I will be on a rather strict diet. No fun things for me! Such as fruits, fish, nuts, alcohol, most dairy, sweets, spices, tomatoes, etc, etc, etc. Oh well, at least I am home!

During my 4 days in the hospital, Fedor was joined by his mother and her boyfriend, so he was not entirely lonely. I also saw them in the hospital on Wednesday, but on Thursday they returned to the Netherlands. I came home on Friday, in time for the arrival of Joost and Kim from the Netherlands in the evening. We had a great weekend together, although it probably would have been slightly more enjoyable had I been able to fully participate (very depressing to go to a Biergarten and drink water. Seriously. Or to go to a breakfast buffet with lots of lovely foods and only being able to eat bread, cucumbur and salt), and we had some lovely weather for it. Sunday afternoon, they left again (photos will follow later, I guess), and Fedor and I FINALLY managed to go and see the latest Harry Potter movie. It was pretty good!

Today, I was back at work again, going through administrative stuff that had piled up in my absence and designing a flyer for my work project. Our team assistant is totally convinced I should have gone into designing instead of economics... :-) Oh well, maybe I'll do that in my next life!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Hospital!

2009-08-18T00:01:00.002+02:00

A week of relatively low-key visitors. That is, after my brother and family, fedor's father arrived with his girlfriend but they were staying on a camping ground in Potsdam, so we didnt see them too much... They did of course come to Berlin a few times, and we went to see them in Potsdam on Saturday (nice bike ride, but 35 kms at 10am, with a mild hangover is not fun!), which is an absolutely gorgeous city btw...

Tomorrow our next guests arrive: Fedors Mum and her boyfriend. They stay until Thursday, then from Friday to Sunday we have friends of mine and from Monday til Thursday we have friends of Fedor again. Hotel Fe&OJ is in business!

However, this is all slightly interrupted by the fact that I will be taken to hospital tomorrow. The allergy-thing is not going quite perfectly and I visited the emergency ward last week. Now I will be admitted tomorrow so they can start testing what is actually wrong. I should (hopefully) be out before the weekend, so dont worry about me! It will give me time to read some books that I have been wanting to read for a long time... That is worth something, no?

Tschüßi,
OJ

just a few pictures

2009-08-10T23:03:00.001+02:00

Well, here are just a few pictures of things. This is our Friends wall in the hallway, with the pictures hanging of a Fishnet.

And here are some pictures of the awesome visit of my brother and the family!!!

Tschüßi,OJ

Okay, tired now

2009-08-09T19:11:00.001+02:00

Well, well, well. As I wrote previously, the visitors' Circus has started. Fedor's Mum stazed with us for a few days. We drank a lot, we visited the Pergamon Museum (a first for me) and ate lots of good food (I have favourite dishes at all 10 restaurants within a 50 meter vicinity of our house now). Of course, I also had to work in the meantime, but at least during the weekend we were able to hang out with all of us together. She stayed until Tuesday afternoon, partly overlapping with Maartje, who arrived on Tuesday Morning.

With her we continued drinking more cocktails, and I went out for lunch with her on the day that Fedor had his first Job (well, he entertained an old guy for 2 hours, kind of practicing english with him). She only stayed til Thursday, when she left at an ungodly hour.
The next day, my friend Idil from arrived from Milano. It was great to see her and to catch up on all the gossip! We ate a lot (again), and enjoyed a lovely day out on Saturday at Schloss Charlottenburg.

It was another site I hadnt seen (well, at least not in the past 15 years), and it was great to be there. The gardens in particular, are AMAZING. On Monday and Tuesday, Idil had to kind of entertain herself, which was made easier by the fact taht Summer finally started in Berlin!!! The weather was simply stunning, and Idil had a good time seeing the city. Tuesday evening, she departed.
On Wednesday, my brother, his wife and their two daughters arrived. They were staying until this morning and it was absolutely great to have them over! The kiddos are absolutely gorgeous (hopefully there will be some photos later, once my sister-in-law has sent them to me), and good times were definitely had. Again, I didnt participate in the day programmes, but one of the highlights was apparently the fountain on Museeninsel, as it was actually visited twice! In the evenings, we drank. And ate. This was made more convenient by the IKEA visit we made on Thursday where we also bought a monitor (baby-alarm-system; babyfoon), so we could sit in a restaurant nearby (finally got to try the Chinese across the street) and still be in touch with the kids! we also played many games.
On Saturday, after a plentiful breakfast around the corner, the parents went into town and we had the kids for the afternoon. Afterwards, we went to the Berlin Beer Festival (with 2.2km of beergarten: the biggest in the world!) on Karl Marx Allee. It was fantastic, but of course we could not stay long because the kids had to go to bed. Next year, my brother and his wife are planning to come over again for the Festival, but without their children...
This morning, they managed (with difficulty) to pack everything back into the car and set off for the Netherlands. We then cleaned the whole house and finished constructing the last of the new IKEA furniture. Our hallway is finally finished!!! I am so happy... We have two little pieces of furniture with shelves, for footwear and bags etc, and a gorgeous courtain kind of construction in front of what we refer to as our basement. Very, very, VERY satisfied!

On the health front, doing pretty ok. The belly inspection found a small infection, but nothing a bunch of pills won't cure. The allergy (we still assume it is that) on the other hand shows no signs of abating. I have an appointment for an inspection at the Academic Hospital in November. However, my doctor says I cannot continue taking the current medication until then, so he has tried to arrange something for me at a different hospital. The solution of which is that, apparently, I will have to actually go to the Emergency Ward.... Strange, strange German system (what the heck are they doing with the 500€ a month that I am paying in!), but I guess that for hospitals, the saying holds: when in Berlin, act as the Berliners...

Tschüßi,OJ

New toilet!!!

2009-07-22T20:59:00.001+02:00

The past weeks have flown by again. I have spent a lot of time finishing the toilet and now it looks absolutely amazing. Here are the pre- and post- pictures:

Doesnt it look absolutely amazing? I am so happy my brother was able to come and help a few weeks ago with the floors though, because I would so not have been able to do that myself....

Anyways, more pictures are available here

Last weekend, my highschool friend Bastiaan and his new girlfriend came to visit and we had an absolutely fabulous time! The weather could have been a bit better, but we managed to see some of Berlin and enjoy ourselves immensely with drinking, playing games and not getting enough sleep.

The visitors' season is now seriously starting, with Fedor's Mum arriving on Saturday and staying until Tuesday, after which another friend will be here from Tue until Thu and Idil will visit from Milan from Thu until Tue. After that, there are two days of rest and my oldest brother and his family will come over! I am really excited about having so many visitors, but it certainly is a good thing that Fedor still has not found a job yet!!!

On the health front, things are fluctuating a bit. I have several things, but it is an allergy that is bothering me most. When I first had it, the doctor gave me medication and I felt great again afterwards, but last week (culminating on Sunday night), it came back with a vengeance (in summary: completely swollen head, red spots everywhere, swollen limbs and terrible muscle aches). I have different medication now, but as we have no idea what I might be allergic to, these are also not working quite as well as they should. In addition to the allergy thing, I am having a belly inspection tomorrow for which I have been on a no-fiber or many other things diet for a week. Which is (1) inconvenient and (2) awfully depressing. Today is different though: today I am not allowed to eat anything at all...

Oh well, I am sure everything will be fine, and at least I am getting my money's worth out of the German Health System!

Tschüßi,OJ

Greece-visitors-cocktails, and all that...

2009-07-10T20:08:00.001+02:00

Finally some time to write on the blog. In the past weeks, we have been further decorating the flat (not a lot of work on that account) and working (at least, I have been). I went to Thessaloniki, Greece, for a conference for some days, 2 weeks ago, together with my friend/colleague Cathérine. That was great: the weather was nice, the conference was interesting and the people were a lot of fun!

So that got me all charged up for returning to work with a vengeance afterwards. I have been trying to juggle a whole lot of things, research, proposals, etc etc. Unfortunately, my first proposal I wrote back in April was rejected :-(((( But hey, it was a learning experience!

In the meantime, we have also had our first real visitor coming to stay: our friend Tatiana. She wanted to visit the modern art museum, and therefore came to stay with us. It was nice to see her, but damned, I am NOT into modern art!!! It was pretty awful, in fact.... Oh well, it was a learning experience!

The last weekend, we went to see my brother and his family who are staying in a holidaypark about 75 km north of Berlin. It was nice to be out of the city and to play with the kids and all that. Two days ago, in return, they came to visit us in Berlin! This was great, because my brother, the Handyman he is, was able to help me with some flat reconstruction. in fact, the one thing that bothered me most about our flat was the toilet: it is small, dark and unpleasant. But thanks to my brother's efforts, it now has an absolutely amazing floor and a new toilet. Just wait until the weekend, when I will paint the walls etc, and it will be fantastic!!! I guess that is the positive part from the fact that our friends Jorryt and Lilian are not coming due to a medical emergency..... :´(((((((

Anyways, for the rest there isnt much to comment. Yesterday I taught a class on ethnolinguistic heterogeneity at the Humboldt University, which was actually quite enjoyable (yes, rather surprising indeed). And then we went to go to a Pub Quiz: I LOOOOOOVE pub quizzes!!! Unfortunately, and embarrassingly so, we actually were LAST! Oh well, shit happens. Today, I have been not so well, and have gone to see some doctors. Let's assume everything will be fine (I have 3 kinds of medication already!), I will inform you more about this, later.........

Tschüßi.OJ

photo post

2009-06-21T21:53:00.003+02:00

As promised, here are some photos:
First, from our Housewarming party (it was a cocktail party: "Stock The Bar", which would have worked very well if we hadnt been drinking cocktails all night long!)

Then another thing, that I hadnt written about yet. I had a work retreat: we went to a hotel outside Berlin, where we listened to presentations, got quite drunk and went on this train thing (that was actually kinda cool!)

The day after the housewarming we went with Cathérine and Jean-Pierre to the sand sculpture festival near the Hauptbahnhof, called SANDsation. It was pretty interesting, although we were collectively hungover....

And finally, this week there was a big power outage at work, so no work could be done. Instead, we went to the Prater Biergarten and drank beers in the sun. Pas de problème!!!

Tschuessi!
Dr.OJ

You've got mail (well, a new post at least)

2009-06-15T22:33:00.001+02:00

Oh my, so many things to tell, so little time to tell them. It has been absolutely ages since I posted and so much has happened in the meantime. Well, I guess I will stick to a summary of events. I will post pictures later, because many of the things that happened deserve a picture to be shown!
So, the most important thing that happened was my trip to Milan in order to defend my Dissertation. It went really well and I am now officially Dr. OJ! Obviously, this was very exciting and I am very happy about it. It was also my opportunity to see Fedor again for the first time in about a month, so happy feelings all around! To add to the feeling of excitement, it turned out that my driving licence was finished! So I am not only Dr OJ, but I am now Dr OJ with a patente di guida!
Over the next days, friends and family from the Netherlands started arriving (including my brother and his wife, my parents, and Fedor's mum and brother), in order to attend the GRADUATION PARTY.

Ever since arriving in Milano (well, after realising it was a possibility, I mean), I have been wanting to celebrate my graduation in a tram. In Milano it is possible to rent a party tram which drives around the city and in which you can just party!!! So we did. Of course, as always, there was some bureaucratic hassle involved (including the Transportation Agency calling a few days before asking whether it was okay to postpone the party by a week... Huh? NO!!!), but it was absolutely AWESOME. It was bloody hot, but we had lots of drinks to compensate for that and simpy had an amazing party, with all my friends there!!! Afterwards, we had a serious afterparty at our house (to the dismay of our neighbours of course) and went to bed drunk and happy...

Sundaynight after the party, it was time for me to return to Berlin and to our gorgeous flat there. After another week of work, my parents arrived to see the new Berlin house. They were as excited as I am, and I was happy to be able to show them the great neighbourhood. They also brought some of the presents I had received in Milan the week before (which they had brought to the Netherlands in the meantime). AND I got a really nice new painting that complements our living room very well. The next day, they left again (taking with them the presents for my niece and nephew who are both turning 4 these days). The next evening, the next GREAT event happened: Fedor arrived in Berlin! I was so happy to be able to show him our new house, which he had seen only shortly before. Of course our furniture had still not arrived, but at least the 2500€ spent on IKEA make it all look highly furnished already!

The next weeks were spent waiting for our furniture to arrive. But, Italians being Italians, many excuses were found why the furniture could not be delivered yet. My favourite one was the "Oh sorry, the truck with furniture was stopped at the Swiss border, which caused a 3-day delay". Really, 3 days? Anyway, I was getting very frustrated with them, but finally, last week, the furniture really did arrive. All 86 boxes were accounted for and the great unpacking could begin.

And a great unpacking it was indeed: bloody hell, I didnt remember we had this much stuff! It turns out we are going to have to buy more furniture to be able to put away everything! Oh well, IKEA, here we come. AGAIN...

But anyway, so far, it looks absolutely great, as you can see on these pictures:

Now that our furniture was finally here, it was also time for our HOUSEWARMING party! That happened last Saturday, with a "stock the bar" theme. Well, I can say that the bar was definitely stocked. Unfortunately (well, I guess it is also sign of a good party) most of the bar was unstocked again during the same night! Many, many cocktails were drunk, and lots of fun was had! It truly was a great party, and a great opportunity for Fedor to meet many of my friends here (and the completely random people that were there and that nobody seemed to know).

Sunday consisted of a serious cleaning effort and a hangover-reducing trip to the Sand Sculpture festival at Hauptbahnhof (and a few beers on the artificial beach.....).

What can I say: Life is good!!!!!

Tschüß,
Dr. OJ

PS More pictures will follow. For further pictures of the house, go here

From a bar...

2009-05-09T22:47:00.001+02:00

I have no internet at home!!! I mean, not to make up an excuse or anything, but it really is kinda difficult to update one's blog when one has no internet at home. I am not quite sure whether my boss would agree that updating my blog is part of a regular work activity (then again, my boss is never there, so how would he find out?). Anyways, I am at the cafe across the street from our home right now, where there is free wireless.

I moved! Into our new house, that is. Our amazingly awesome new house, that is.... The first night was quite random (I had bought a mattress, but I didnt actually have anything else at all). But on Saturday (as in, last week), my friend Cathérine went to IKEA with me to help me buy some stuff for our house. About 2000 euros worth of stuff, that is.... After taking the furniture taxi home, I had another bunch of friends and colleagues helping me carry it up (fourth floor....) and even put it all together! It was fantastic! The biggest challenge, however, turned out to be already inside the flat. I bought the previous renter's wardrobe, but it was in the wrong room. However, it was too big to move, so I wanted to take it apart.

Easier said than done!

I finally managed to take the last pieces apart on Thursday and spent about 3 hours yesterday putting it back together in the right room. But I managed!!!

Today, I have been painting. All day. Well, that is, for about nine hours. Only the hallway needs painting (a horrible shade of blue on the woodwork), but it is surprisingly much work. Panelled doors are soooo not the way to go! Anyways, I have done about 3/4ths of the red, and done the first layer for all the white, so I just need to do the second layer. It is starting to look really well!!!

Anyways, there have been some non-house related things as well. The night before Queens's Day, I partied at the embassy (and got a rather drunk.....), last Sunday I went to my first Biergarten with my Milanese friend Gerry (he was visiting friends), etc. In conclusion: good times were had!

Tschuess,
OJ

Ibid.

2009-04-23T23:51:00.002+02:00

Hmmm, it's interesting to see how bad i've been with updating my blog. There are some strong arguments in favour of updating it a lot: I am in Berlin and do many new things that I am excited about and that I really want to share. Second, I am here without Fedor, so I am actually quite bored: that should be giving me mucho extra time to update my blog.

Alas, I guess it just isnt the case!

Anyways, here I am, after all. I have been back to Milano for Easter, because Fe's Mum was visiting, and I wanted to see her (and Fedor, of course!). We had a lovely time of drinking, and I had some time to hang out with others as well. I also had an opportunity to pick up my drivers' licence... haha, that was a joke of course, because Italy wouldn't be Italy if there wasnt some reason why my licence wasnt finished. So, the reason this time was as follows: yes, well, it's true you requested it early February and it should be finished after about 7 weeks, but for an undefined reason, the request wasnt registered until march 17, so the licence wont be finished before May.... WHAT????? "Thank you for visiting: please call on us again!". Oh well, I will be in Milano for my defence anyway, so I can do it then. It is just a bit inconvenient with the whole moving etc, because I would have liked to be able to pick some stuff up from IKEA with a rental car... oh well...

The weekend after (as in, last weekend), Fedor came to Berlino. It was great to have him here, so I could share some of my enthusiasm for this city with him. While he was relatively unlucky with the weather, we still had an opportunity to walk around a lot and see some nice parts of Berlin:

And while Fedor was here, I was also able to show him our NEW FLAT!!! It is absolutely stunning: huge, renovated, great area (in fact, across the road from where I am now...), simply PERFECT (and seriously, I am not even exaggerating). But in order to fill up the 108 m2, we are going to be needing a LOT of furniture! So we also spent an afternoon at IKEA, sitting on sofas, and lying on beds. After I get the key of the flat on Sunday, I will go to IKEA on Monday night and order all the stuff, so we will have a furnished flat after that!!!! Than the waiting is simply for our stuff from Milano (and more importantly, Fedor himself) and we are all settled for our new life!!!!!

OJ=happy!

Tschüßi!
OJ

PS Also, work is fine: Today I finally met my boss!!! He is very energetic and nice...

Housessss

2009-04-08T23:34:00.003+02:00

So, as promised, let me start with a few photos of my temporary place. It is in a gorgeous area, with all these beautiful houses, and I love it here! This is my building:

These are the two rooms (one is more sort of a live-in kitchen. Of course, there is also a huge bathroom (with bathtub) and all that....

And here is the view from the house, towards Kolwitzplatz. Quite lively, eh?

However, this is obviously only a temporary flat, so I am looking for something more definitive. During the weekend I saw 3 places: 2 horrible, one in a bad location. This was sort of the moment I started realising that I am quite spoilt with my current flat, and that I really should be looking for something near here.

I did see one other flat, kinda close, but it was still too far away (in between I cancelled a few that, with the additional info, were too far away as well). Then there was one flat, which on the website looked AMAZING. And it's in the parallel street from where I am now. But it was really quite disappointing. No view into the street, kinda cramped, just not great. This morning, I saw a nice flat quite closeby. But it doesnt fulfil all the Fedor-criteria (the Fedor-criteria being: affordable, with balcony, old-style building, 3 rooms, nice). In fact, it didnt have a balcony and the building was quite ugly from the street side. Inside, it was all renovated and all that, but it just wasnt quite the thing.

This evening, however, I may have encountered the perfect flat! Nice area, close to metro, 3 big rooms, kitchen present, French Balcony, affordable. BUT (there always is a but), a total of 55 people responded to the ad, so it really is a question whether we may have a chance. Tomorrow evening, I will see two more: a loft in a renovated factory and a 108 square meter place in the same street I am right now that was offered to us in a more direct manner (so no 54 people to compete with). I have a bunch of other appointments for next week still, but I am already starting to lose the overview.... There are lots of nice places! But it's too difficult to choose!!!!

Anyway, after seeing those places tomorrow, I will fly back to Italy for a few days: I am totally looking forward to that!!! Mostly to see Fedor, but also to see Milano, and finally, of course, to go the Licence Office and see whether my driver's licence is already done...........

Tschüß!
Olaf

PS I think it is time for me to admit that 4 years in Italy has been a waste for me linguistically. A week in Germany and I already feel a lot more comfortable having conversations with people, include phone conversations with strangers, IN GERMAN, than i ever did about talking IN ITALIAN on the phone even to people I know!

Ich bin ein Berliner

2009-04-05T22:23:00.002+02:00

Well, that is, I am trying.... And not doing such a bad job, I guess! On Monday, I came to Berlin, where I stayed with my friend Dominik for a few days. From the day I arrived in Berlin (mind you, I am not suggesting causality here), the weather has been great. Sunny and getting progressively warmer (22 degrees yesterday), so I have really enjoyed my first days here. I started work on Wednesday, obviously feeling very nervous about that. But it was totally unnecessary: the colleagues are great and very welcoming. We went out drinking (way too much) on Wednesday night, and really had a good time. It's a cool group of colleagues: all are young, and it's very international (American, Argentinean, Dutch, German, etc). And funnily enough, most of the men working there are gay! I am not sure what the heck that is all about, but it's a pretty funny coincedence...

On Friday, I moved into my new (temporary) place. The appartment is about 60 square meters, and it is in one of the coolest neighbourhoods I have ever seen! All renovated old buildings, looooooooots of bars and restaurants, and many trees and greenery. It's absolutely fantastic! Of course, i am still looking for a permanent flat, but if it could be anything in this area, I would be totally happy! This weekend, I have been looking at some flats, but all of them were pretty shit (one was very cute, but in a pretty terrible area of town, so NO). Oh well, there is no hurry!

Yesterday, I also had a chance to meet up with a friend of mine from Groningen, who happens to be living in Berlin as well. And I went to a big dance party in the Kino International: the old eastern Berlin big Cinema complex. Another great feature of berlin: you can go dancing until 4AM and then take the metro home, because the metros actually go all night!

Anyway, I guess you can see that I am really quite excited about everything. I hope to upload some pictures soon...

Tschüß!
Olaf

The Last Supper(s)

2009-03-29T15:21:00.002+02:00

So, during my Last Weekend in Milan, I did not use the opportunity to finally, finally go and see the famous Last Supper. I know, it's shameful, but Fedor went and he said it was quite underwhelming. Also, it's expensive and you have to book 2 months in advance. So you know what? Never mind!

Instead, I did my own Last Supper. Twice! On Friday we went for Pizza, and then on to the Vineria. It was an enjoyable evening and there was some good company! Then yesterday, I sort of had another Last Supper, going with a bunch of people to a nice Japanese restaurant: another great night!

So now I am really preparing to go. Packing the necessary stuff, trying to remember what I have to bring, etc etc. It's gonna be great!

Anyway, here are some things I have come across recently that I though were interesting:
- Sometimes you read something, and it's simply unbelievable. Here is a piece about some quotes of the Republican who might well be the Presidential candidate in 2012:LINK
- But sometimes you come across stuff that is simply hilarious. Like the Golden Oldie of the Philipine prisoners performing Mickael Jackson's Thriller:

- And if you're up for another really funny song, follow this link for an Oded Gross original!

Ciao/Tschüß,,
OJ

the Last Things

2009-03-27T20:19:00.000+01:00

It has been a week of lasts. My last meal at ARCI (it was fantastic: swordfish and aubergine pasta!!!), my last Reading Group (well, I actually skipped the last-last one, because I wanted to go to ARCI), my last seminar (actually quite interesting. I will miss some pretty amazing seminars, unfortunately). And my last (and admittedly also first) visit to San Siro! I know, some of you must think it is a shame it has taken me so long to go, but I never really had a true incentive before to go. But last weekend, Idil and I finally went to see a match: Inter vs Reggina. And [i]we [/i]won!!! 3 vs 0: it wasnt a very exciting match, basically... Here are some pics, to prove I really was there!

Furthermore, we also had Fedor's father (+donna) visiting last weekend, with whom I merely spent the evening programme. Fedor entertained them during the day, so that gave me some time to relax (and go to San Siro), which was pleasant. Let me think, what else have I done? I have been unpacking my office, and transfering everything home. Oh, and very importantly, I found a house in Berlin for the first month!!! I think I wrote previously about the flat I thought I had found, but which fell through. Well, now I have found something for real. The girl living there seems very nice, and the flat is in a great location. So I don't have to worry about that anymore, which is quite a relief.

My drivers' licence, on the other hand, is another story. Apparently it is not finished yet, so I am trying to find out whether Fedor can pick it up, or whether the office might be open on Good Friday (when I am going to be here for 2 days). It is all a bit of a hassle. Not as much hassle as the Internet company, but that is a wholly different story...

Anyway, I am just writing this post because I am meeting some friends (in fact, I believe it might be quite a few friends) for a pizza in 20 minutes and I wasnt sure what to do in the meantime: writing a blog post seemed like a good idea! Fedor is away for the weekend, to Frankfurt and he returns Monday morning. It'll be nice to see him for a moment, because on Monday Evening the moment is finally here: I will become ein Berliner!!!

Ciao/Tschüß,
OJ

SanFran for a day

2009-03-17T22:03:00.002+01:00

Well, that was a bit of a crazy weekend. On Friday, I had to get up very early in order to catch my flight to Amsterdam and then on to San Francisco. It was my first KLM flight ever and it was pretty cool: quite strange to get to speak Dutch to stewardesses all the time... But some good movies (Slumdog was pretty ok, but I was not totally overwhelmed), plenty of drinks and no problem with vegetarian food. Oh and the best of all: a return flight Milan-SF for 377 euros....

Anyway, when I got there, I headed to my hotel and dropped off my stuff, before going to see Agnieszka and Kuba, my friends who live in San Francisco. Their oldest, Julia, was very excited to see me (I stayed with them for a few days when I was there in January), and I got to take a peek at their newborn Robert. And we got to talk a bit, until the moment that the time difference caught up with me and I just wanted to pass out. The next morning, I got up early to go to my conference (seriously, an 8AM starting time for a conference on Saturday is NOT NORMAL, is it???) at San Francisco Statue University. The conference was very interesting, with many interesting topics, and some amazing speakers. All in all, it was totally worth the travelling time. In the evening, I just about managed to visit a nice sushi restaurant before passing out again at early o'clock... Sunday I had a stroll around the city and managed to finally buy the last missing part of Asimov's Foundation series (The Second Foundation has been a goal of mine at bookshops for about 5 years already). After my little walk, i went back to the Airport and flew back to Milano. yes, it was a crazily short visit, but who cares: it was useful and I don't pay for it!

Today I went back to work, but I was still a bit tired, so not overly productive. I managed to clean up my office, so it will be easier for me to move my stuff back to home now (I normally live under a mountain of papers: not anymore!). It'll also help to have a clean office when I have my German class tomorrow (Fedor's present for xmas was a mini-course in a language-of-my-choosing), so that is pretty cool. Talking about Germany, I had found a place to live for the first month, but something went horribly wrong (in other words: the guy turned out to be completely nuts, as certified by my token German friend Felix) and now I don't have a flat anymore. Anyway, it won't be too difficult to find something, I think...

Oh, and for any Facebook users out there: goddammit, the new new Facebook sucks, doesn't it? Let's hope they Facebook engineers start using their brains and either change it back or enable us to make some individualised changes (like blocking those stupid fcking quizzes from popping up in the newsfeed).

Ciao,
OJ

Just some ramblings

2009-03-07T17:19:00.003+01:00

Driver's Licence: the Saga continues.

The licencing office called me this week, because there was something wrong with one of the documents. That is, I had to make three separate payments to them, and the way this works in Italy is as follows: you go to a post office, and fill in a slip of paper. This slip of paper is then processed by the post office (of course you also have to pay for them to process it, but that's obvious). You then get two receipts for having paid. Now for all of the payments I made, I left one of the receipts at the Licencing Office (in fact, the lady there choose which one she was gonna keep). But it turns out that these are not exactly 100% identical. I still don't know exactly what the difference is, but there is one word different, or something along those lines. And she had to wrong slip for one of my payments. So I spent another 2.5 hours (it was busy in the metro) to get there and come back to give her the right f.ing piece of paper! Of course, we'll have to see whether the whole thing is finally going to work out or not: that's still completely unknown. Although my old licence has now officially expired, so if I don't get the Italian one, I'm f.ed.

For the rest, the week has been work-work-work. I have started working on a new project that I really would like to start to get going before moving to Berlin (omg, only 23 days left!), so I'm pretty busy with that. It's all pretty sad here, anyway, with lots of people leaving. Louisa had her goodbye a week-and-a-half ago, because she's moved to Trieste. Gili had her goodbye this week, because she moved back to Israel. It's getting quiet here... Our Costarican friends are leaving at the end of the year as well. Another friend of mine, however, will actually be moving to Milan probably, as he was offered an assistant professorship here. So that's cool (and we'll have a place to stay that way!).

Anyway, that's about all I have to say for now. I want you all to check out Meghan's website, with a cool blog and an online shop for the clothes she designs: It's HERE. Tomorrow, we're gonna go to Genova, as I haven't gone there yet in the 3.5 years of living in Milano and this will be the last opportunity. Because things are pretty tightly packed during the next weeks: I will go to San Francisco for a conference next weekend (yes, I know it's insane: I will be in San Francisco for a grand total of 46 hours), Fedor's father is visiting the weekend after and Fedor will be in Frankfurt the weekend after that with a friend. And then it's time for me to leave............

Ciao,
OJ

PS The weather is fantastic right now!!! Sunny, relatively warm: that is one thing I'm gonna miss about Milano!

Berlin, here I come

2009-03-01T13:20:00.002+01:00

OK, so I lied to you. I did not in fact post immediately after deciding to accept the job. In fact, it's more than a week ago when I took the job, and only now do I write to you here.

I HAVE A JOB!!!

Yes, it is now officially true: I am getting old and I have a job. Awesome. Anyways, so, logistically, this means the following: Per April 1, I will be post-doctoral researcher at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, working on a project named "Calculating the Global Costs of Conflict" (yes, it's really, really interesting!). So I will also be moving there of course, per March 30. Fedor, however, still has a job to do here in Milano, so he will stay in Milano until June 1. That's ok, because it gives me a bit of extra time to find a house, and we can do the relocation in a slightly more relaxed way. Oh, but btw, if anybody happens to hear something about a job in Berlin for Fedor, let us know!

Of course I will be coming up and down from Berlin to Milano a few times (for Easter, for example), but in principle I will be ein Berliner from April 1.

But before it's that far, I still have plenty of things to do. I started working on a new paper, I submitted some papers to journals, I have lots of reading group meetings to attend: it's all quite busy. But there is also time for fun. Like last weekend, which we spend in Cocconato, on a Couples Weekend! I know it's pathetic, but we went to this Agroturismo for the weekend, with five couples (and a dog) and we ate and drank and ate and drank until we, well, were full of food and drinks, basically...

Picture time:

Yesterday we had a lovely dinner with our Costarican friends and now we have started counting the days until I leave...

Ciao,
OJ

Und jetzt?

2009-02-19T21:33:00.003+01:00

Well, wasn't that the week-and-a-half? As posted earlier, I went to Berlin for a job market presentation at the German Institute for Economic Research. It went really well, and it turns out I know even more people at that institute than I thought! Several friends of mine actually work there, and I even did my kind-of-interview (because the department head was ill) with a guy I had met several times before. After returning from Berlin on Thursday, I had half a day of running around trying to arrange things in Milan, before taking the afternoon flight with Fedor to Bremen. In Bremen, in the middle of some-sort-of-a-blizzard, we rented a car and drove to Groningen to celebrate Jorryt and Lilian's wedding. They secretly (well, not for us) got married in Sydney (more info) and threw a big party to celebrate this. We were happy to participate in the event and enjoyed a great party!
The next day, we did our Northern-Netherlands-round, visiting both my brothers and my parents: it was nice to see everyone, especially the little kids. Isn't it amazing how fast they grow? Anyway, we might have to go back again in June because my niece Leah specifically invited us to come to her birthday and it's impossible to say no to her!
On Sunday, we drove back to Bremen and came back to Milan. In the meanwhile, I had received a message from the department head that he would like to talk to me on the phone and we made an appointment for Tuesday. So we spoke for about an hour and in the end, I was offered a job!

What?

Yes, I was offered a job!!! And it's an amazingly interesting project to work on, with some great colleagues in a brilliant place. So I am currently considering it (and discussing some of the aspects of the job), but it is highly likely that our next station is going to be BERLIN! And in fact, it is also a rather speedy change as well: If I accept the job, I will start April 1.....

(and no, it's not a joke)

So that's the great news of the day! I am totally excited, because the project is really interesting. I will discuss the project a bit more extensively when I accept the offer...

In other news, I paid another visit to the bloody-buggery-bastardy licence office and was surprisingly effective. The lady at the desk was very insecure whether she was doing the right thing, but I managed to leave behind all my documents and I received a 60-day temporary licence. Supposedly, I will be able to pick up my new licence (if all goes well) in six weeks! (just in time, before leaving the country!). Also in other news, we're going on a couples weekend in Piemonte this weekend and I am totally looking forward to it! We'll be with five couples going to relax and enjoy some wine, food and each other's company. I feel extremely burgerlijk, but oh well: shit happens!!!

That was all the good news for now, I will definitely tell more about this job, once I have decided to accept the offer...

Ciao,
OJ

EDIT: In fact, I checked and I didn't post before I was going to go to Berlin for an interview. Oh well, there you have it, anyway...

I may have lost the battle...

2009-02-09T20:36:00.004+01:00

.... but may still win the war!

OJ vs Italian bureaucracy, round 15: "driver's licence edition"

Today, I made another valiant attempt at getting an Italian driver's licence and failed. I did manage to get extremely close though, and I hope that next time I may manage! Anyway, the story:

I have a Dutch licence and it's expering in a few weeks. But thanks to European standardisation etc, one must replace a licence at the place of residence (as opposed to place of nationality), as long as one is within the EU. This means I have to get an Italian licence. So, I initiated some internet searching months ago and found many scary stories. However, when I found the website of the local Licence Office, it all seemed fairly straightforward. Seemed, that is.

Stage one was getting a doctor's declaration, so some time ago, i tried to make an appointment. However, an appointment could only be made with a translation of my current licence and a stamp from the Consulate. So I called the Consulate who told me that was impossible. However, apparently, they made a deal with the Licence Office that a Dutch "declaration of validity", together with the "declaration of validity regarding the declaration of validity" (I kid thee not) from the Consulate, would be sufficient. So, I requested the Dutch DoV, which obviously had to be done by mail, and cannot be done via the internet. However, i wasn't willing to give up too easily and continued my internet-search until I found, on the Ministery of Transportation website, an official list of documents that did NOT include the aforementioned documents.

So, I tried the doctor's office again, this time not really particularly mentioning that it was a licence conversion that I was looking for. And yes, success: appointment made! Of course, this means the payment of 36€ for the doctor, 14€ in tax, 9€ for the licence office and 29€ for the licence office (plus the transaction costs for all these separate contributions that can only be done in post offices), but I managed to see him. Of course, he then realised I did not have a translation or DoV, so he at first refused to sign. But thanks to my print of the ministery's website, I was able to convince him to sign anyway. Victory was mine!!!!

Unfortunately, the Licence Office is actually outside Milan, so I tried to double check whether I had all the documents by calling them several times, but to no avail (IF they answer the phone, they randomly hang up as soon as you ask a question: it's very odd). So this morning, I went for the office directly. Good news: it was open. Good news nr 2: I only had to queue for 1 hour, good news nr 3: my documents were COMPLETE...

Wait, what? I have never heard that before at an Italian office when I get there for the first time... I thought I was going to faint from surprise!!! "Sure", the kind lady says, "you can come and pick up your new licence in a month or so", and gets ready to staple my licence to the request... Uh, wait, what? Staple my licence to the request? Are you crazy, I need my licence!!! And no, a temporary replacement licence is not enough: I am renting a car in Germany this weekend...

"Oh well, in that case: come back another time, and we'll see whether your documents are complete then..."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I was SO close! By next week, when I will make the next attempt, I am sure they will have come up with 10 new documents for me to bring etc... And I was SO close now....... *sigh*

Running tally for my Italian licence: 110€

Ciao,
OJ

ATMosfera, here we go!

2009-02-07T18:27:00.001+01:00

We were lucky to be able to go on the ATMosfera this weekend already, because when Fedor called them to make a reservation, it turned out they had just had a cancellation moments before. So yesterday, we made our way to Castello, from where our trip departed. And I must say, it really is pretty cool! Awfully decadent of course, but pretty cool nonetheless. It's a 2.5 hour journey through Milan, seeing some of the nice places here and in the meantime you get nice food (I had the fish dinner, Fedor the meat) and wine! Absolutely worth doing, although considering the cost, probably not something we'll be doing again!
Just a few pictures (and yes, it was pissing it down with rain: it's been pissing down rain for about 3 weeks now. Don't get me started!)

The rest of the week has been pretty relaxed. With the burden of the dissertation of my shoulders, the burden of finding a job has become a little heavier, but it has also become my main focus. Wednesday, I'll be flying to Berlin, to do my job presentation at the DIW... Let's see where that will lead... In the meantime, while it isn't leading anywhere, I just send more applications everywhere!
Tonite we're going to do pizza with a bunch of friends, which will be nice. It'll include a friend of mine from Minnesota who is here to do his job talk for an Assistant Professor position at Bocconi.

Oh, and contrary to this week, I have actually remembered some of the things I have read this week that I though might be interesting. Here are some cool links:
- Italians propose to ban foreign food, because "foreigners are willing to work hard and that is unfair competition" LINK
- Now that the paper version of my PhD is finished, I guess I have to focus on expressing my dissertation through....... dance! Read more HERE
- Research shows that cows-with-names give more milk than cows that do not get their own identity..... My friend Felix, however, wonders whether the increase in production warrants the amount of effort of having to learn your cows' names... LINK
Well, I am sure there were other things I wanted to mention, but this'll have to be it for now!
Ciao,
OJ

...and it's DONE

2009-02-01T18:08:00.002+01:00

Woohoooo, on Friday, I have finally handed in my dissertation: it is DONE. And wow, it is quite a relief, I must say! Of course there are many other things to worry about, but having this dissertation out of the way is really a great boost for me. Now I still have to wait until the defense, which for bureacratic reasons has been postponed until May. I don't really mind, because my getting-paid is contingent on my not-having-defended-my-thesis-yet, so this postponement is not a problem for me at all! Some day soon i will upload the whole thesis on this blog so all you interested people (ie NO-ONE) can read the thing for yourself...

Of course the first thing I did after finishing was to get ill. Part of a long-lasting tradition, Felix brought another killer German virus (the Felix Virus) and I was one of its first victims. However, this did not stop me (or Felix) from celebrating both our birthdays last Friday with a great party in a bar nearby. I got exceedingly wasted (hey, I was also celebrating my dissertation hand-in, so I had a good excuse), similar to last weekend's movie night with Lou and Micky, so I ended up spending the whole saturday nursing my headache and generic misery... HOWEVER, I did get an absolutely awesome present from my mates: Dinner for two in the ATMosfera, which is the driving tram-restaurant operated by the Milan transport authority. Very, very, very cool! I have been wanting to go in te ATMosfera for ages, but never had the opportunity until now! Of course, Fedor is also very happy about it...

For the rest, all is quite well. I am in a bit of a low for my Italy-love, which has to do with the university bureaucracy and lack of communication. Another interesting one was some christian extremist begging letter I received this week. I get them all the time (it's Italy after all), but this was directed personally at me. However, it had the exact typo in my name that our internet provider Fastweb also has. In other words, that means that Fastweb, despite the contract that SPECIFICALLY FORBIDS it, sold our addresses to some christian extremist organsation. That really, really pisses me off!!! And in Italy, it is highly illegal as well, because they have some really strict privacy legislation here...

Which reminds me, thinking of legislation: i am having to renew my drivers' licence. But long live the European Union, licences have been standardized and as a result, you have to get your new licence in your country of residence. So that means, I have to get an Italian licence. But obviously, that is easier said than done! So far, I have not come much closer to the licence, despite several attempts and several trips (to the Consulate, for example). However, this Tuesday, I do have my appointment with the Medico. Of course, you need a medical certificate to have your licence renewed (uhm, what? Wtf is the medico supposed to do? Noone knows! It is just a way to get 50 euros of the people, adding further to the running cost of renewal). Anyway, I am very frustrated about this bureaucratic bullshit in Italy: I'll keep you posted how this is doing...

Ciao,
OJ

PS WHAT DA FUCK?

PPS Hmmm, I found some more interesting links recently, but now I cant remember. Mental note to self: post links immediately when you find them!

6 more days...

2009-01-24T17:58:00.002+01:00

... until I have to hand in my dissertation. And yes, I'll be fine. Of course it's not finished yet, but let's be realistic: it'll never ever be truely finished (well, that is, until it's been published in Econometrica or the AER........). Anyways, I'm dotting the i's and something-ing the t's (I dont remember the saying and i'm too lazy to look it up right now. Maybe it's "crossing"?).

Of course there is also the little job-hunting thing going on at the same time, but I'm kinda keeping that on hold for now. Although I did finally hear from the job interview in Paris, back in November: The infamous "there were several very strong candidates, and it was a difficult choice, but we regret to inform you that... blabla". Well, at least I know now, and I'm still proud I was among the last 13. One of the interviews I had in San Francisco also definitively said NO to me, but I have not heard from all yet. This could mean that they are simply not looking anymore, but it could also mean that they have arranged for first-round fly-outs while possibly organising another round if they don't manage to hire anyone among their first-rounders. I don't know, but we'll see!

About the job market, I was in London last week, as well. There was a job market seminar thing going on there, consisting of poster presentations and representatives of different universities going around looking into whom to interview. It was all highly confusing and unpleasant, in all honesty, so I was quite happy when it was over. I spoke to some people, and we'll see whether anything comes of that... It was a nice trip though, anyway, with Fedor (who came with me) being able to meet up with friends and me meeting up with my cousin and lots of friends as well. And it was our first time ever of staying at a Hilton Hotel (hey! It just happened to be the cheapest option nearby...), which was very pleasant. The room may have been tiny, but the AMAZING breakfast compensated for that...

Oh, and it's been my birthday as well in the meantime. We'll be partying the night away on the 30th, when I'll celebrate it together with Felix and i will also celebrate having handed in my dissertation that day......

Ciao,
OJ

Job Market: Fun For the Family!

2009-01-14T22:50:00.003+01:00

To start with, I am VERY happy right now. After a month long struggle, having to run some programmes on my computer that re-did the analysis in my third paper in a rather different way, I FINALLY got the result today. And not only does the previously found result still hold, it is bigger and better and stronger and clearer than EVER BEFORE!!! I had been quite worried about this thing, because if the results would not be the same, I would've had to find a damned good explanation before finishing my dissertation. And as the final deadline is on January 30th (ie, in 16 days), this would obviously not have been so great....

Anywayssssss, on to more topical things. Xmas with Werner and José was, as expected, great! We had a lot of fun together and of course a great xmas meal. Particularly the Portuguese [i]vongole[/i] (ie clams or cockles), using the recipe of my friend Marta, were AMAZING! I think I am officially a vongole-fan... anyways, after xmas, there were a few days of work (at home, as the university was closed), before flying to San Francisco, via NYC and Salt Lake City. Unexpectedly, everything went well and I actually made it to SF in time for New Years Eve. however, I was completely exhausted and didnt do much. Also, the friends I was staying with were very, very pregnant (which reminds me: happy day of birth to little Robert who arrived in the world today! We are having a little baby-boom around us. With 3 kids born in the past 2 weeks and 3 new people telling us they were pregnant as well....).

San Francisco was, of course, beautiful as ever before.

However, I wasn't there for its beauty, but instead for its Job Market. The annual American Economic Association meeting took place in SF this year and the annual Job Market is directly associated with that. I had number of interviews, some of which went better than others, and it was all quite stressfull and unsettling. Visiting university representatives in their hotel suites, where the interviews were taking place, and running through the city, meeting up at the Hilton with lots of random acquaintances: it was crazy! However, it has sorted to some effect already, having already been called back by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin, who invited me to Berlin in February for the next (and supposedly final) stage of the application process. So maaaaaybe, we might end up moving to Berlino!
Anyways, at the end of the job market, I had rented a car with which I drove to Yosemite National Park (my 34th wonder from the Hillman List), which is absolutely stunning!

I had two days of driving through the park and doing lots and lots of hiking and it was great. F.ing cold, but great. Lots of snow and all, but great... The hotel I had was also very pleasant, with 2 large double beds and free internet (for less than 50€ per night), so it was a great success. Driving back to San Francisco wasn't much fun (very small car between lots of big trucks + I hate driving + it was really busy around SF), but at least I survived. Quite cool is the fact that fuel really is ridiculously underpriced in the US. For my nearly 1000km of travel in really mountainous (fuel-burning) areas, I only spent about 25€ of fuel!!!

After that nice experience, I took a night flight to New York City, where I had the day to spend. Of course, i started of with collecting my 35th wonder: the New York Skyline:

Seen here from the Top of The Rock (ie the Rockefeller Center). I then went to Time Square and to meet up with my cousin Juli, her husband and their newborn (about 6 months old: jeepers creepers, we really are in the middle of a baby-boom). Then Central Park and back to the Airport for my night flight back to Milano. Obviously, by the time I got home I was veeeeerrrry happy to see Fedor, but also verrrrrryyyy jetlagged. But by the time I could go to Uni again (Monday) I had mostly gotten over that (the jetlag, that is).
So this week has been all about work, work, work, continuing to try and finish the aforementioned analysis and preparing my poster presentation for the London Job Market, which is where we'll be going on Friday. London Hilton, here we come!!!

Ciao,
OJ

Placeholder

2009-01-14T11:58:00.002+01:00

I am just posting here to let you know that I am alive! I hope to be able to post more extensively tonite. In summary, Job Market was fun and interesting, I had a great trip and some good interviews. One call-back for a fly-out so far... A fly-out to... (moment of tension to build up the surprise)........ Berlin! (ok, probably not as impressive as possibly hoped for, but I'm pretty happy about it!).

Anyways, tonite I will post more (if Fedor really will go to the swimming pool as promised, that is...)

xmas holidays are nearly here!

2008-12-22T21:54:00.002+01:00

Two-and-a-half weeks of agony have gone by. The agony of being on the job market, that is. The OECD in Paris still has not got back to me. In response to me asking, I was told that the final decision had not yet been made. For now, i am still taking that as a kind-of-positive sign (it's not NO...), but I guess hope is not great on that front. And, in all honesty, the number of interviews in San Francisco is also kinda disappointing. I'll obviously continue blaming the market, and the fact that I'm in the wrong field (which, by the way, is definitely true....) to be succesful. Oh well, I'll just have to do my best in those few interviews I have. And after all, it could have been worse! I could have had none... Anyways, my forced xmas holidays are nearly starting (due to the fact that the university is closed between 24dec and 2jan), so it's all quite rushed right now to finish as much as possible before then. Of course, in-the-house, there is also much to do, such as preparing for xmas dinner! Friends of Fedor are coming over, and it will be up to me to prepare an 11-course xmas dinner (details follow afterwards)...

One thing I hadnt posted about yet is our trip to Sicily, a week ago. It was one of my xmas presents to Fedor: a return trip to Trapani, Sicily (I HEART Ryanair). While we had a lot of fun, and had some fantastic food, the trip was not quite the success it could have been. Sicily is not a place to be in December, while relying on public transport. And we did, because Trapani itself is not all that interesting, so Fedor had selected 3 things around Trapani he wanted to do. And while we tried hard, getting up early and exhausting all options (bus, train, walking), we ended up with a total score of ONE of THREE. Even Meatloaf would agree, that one out of three is actually pretty bad... So for any future visitors to Sicily: RENT A CAR. it's not that expensive, and it makes things so much easier!

However, as for the things we DID see:

In the background, you can see the mountain Erice, with on top of it the old town of Erice, one of the places we wanted to go. However, after trying a first bus station, we found this huge field of asphalt. Apparently a bus station of some kind, except that no buses seemed to have been there for at least two years. In the end, after walking for quite some time, we did make it to the mountain, but when we got there the funicular was out of service, due to strong wind (it's an ISLAND, for crying out loud! Of course it's windy. And it wasnt all that windy, anyway!) and climbing the whole mountain on foot was a bit much for us.

So we, once again, returned to the train station, where we spent quite a lot of time, in general! At least, they had a lovely little tropical garden, as you can see...

Finally, we did make it to Segesta (dont ask about the way back though.....), which was pretty amazing. It's in the middle of nowhere and constists of an old Greek temple and this city, with theatre on top of a large hill, from which you can see very far across the island. Here, as opposed to Erice, it actually WAS windy... Anyway, it was a beautiful place to be and totally worth it.

However, let me repeat it, for future reference: rent a car.

And I have taken this lesson to heart for some of my future trips and decided to rent a car when I am going to visit Yosemite in two weeks. Doing that on public transport is bound to be absolute hell, so a rental is definitely going to be a better plan! This is part of my trip to the AEA meeting in San Francisco for the Job Market. I will be in San Francisco from december 31 until January 6. Then I go to Yosemite and fly out on the 8th, to New York. I will have a whole day in NYC and take the night flight back to Milan in order to arrive back on the 10th. It'll be lovely! And I will have short week to recover from that trip, before going to the London job market the week after, from the 16th until the 19th (that will be the first time Fedor is actually going to join me on any of my business trips!).

So enough travelling in the near future!!!

For now, however, I will wish everyone happy holidays and a nice and quiet (or not, whatever you want) xmas!!!!

Ciao,
OJ

Immacolata

2008-12-08T14:31:00.002+01:00

Happy immocolata everyone! That is, the day of Madonna's Immaculate Collection (uhm, or Conception: I never know which one) and therefore, a forced Free Day! At least this year, the holiday of San Ambrogio was on a Sunday (yesterday), so that was not an additional free day. Oh well, while I would have preferred to be working right now, I guess having a three-day-weekend is not too bad either! It has given me the opportunity to put up all the xmas decorations and make our xmas card for this year.

Particularly the decorating-thing was quite a crisis. I had decided to finally go for a more subdued and traditional xmas tree this year, instead of the horrible collection of light and colour that I usually apply. But, it turned out, that all my neutral xmas lights didnt work anymore! Can you say drama? Anyways, I bought new ones and quickly decorated the tree into a lovely red-white-silve ensemble. And we managed to buy the first xmas presents as well, so it all looks lovely now!

Yesterday, we also got the opportunity to enjoy the O Bej, o bej, market: the yearly San Ambrogio-related event with lots of stalls selling food and other goodies. But, strangely enough, NO mulled wine this year!!!! (ie gluehwein, vin brulée or vin chaud). Quite a disappointment, I must say. Oh well, we enjoyed some on Saturday already, home-brewn and gorgeous!

From the Job Market, there has been no news, apart from the odd rejection here and there (oh, you think that just because I know nothing about Urband Development and India, that makes me an undesirable candidate for working on your Urban Development Project in Hyderabad, India??? Well, FINE! I don't even WANT to work for you anymore!). So in the meanwhile, i just continue labouring on my dissertation and assisting the students that come to me by the dozen nowadays...

Ciao,
OJ

Back from Paris

2008-11-30T18:59:00.002+01:00

While Fedor is trying to communicate through Skype in the background, I have time to write something here. The whole Skype thing is pretty random... I know lots of people who use it a lot, and they enjoy it lots, but I have never been able to get into it. Whenever I try to connect, it doesnt work or there is something annoying going on. Skype is simply not my thing. And apparently, this has rubbed off on Fedor, because his communication isnt going very smoothly either....

Anyways, I have spent the last weeks sending more applications, as well as some tutoring and a bit of teaching etc. All in all, it wasnt half-bad! But last week, we went for a trip to the Netherlands, where my brothers and I had organised a surprise sort of party for my mother, who is turning 60. She was indeed surprised (as she should) to see all of us and we had a really good time. It was particularly enjoyable to have to cycle in the snow and walk around in the snow etc....... :-S

Anyways, afterwards, Fedor flew back to Milan and I went to Maastricht, where I was going to go to a conference. I stayed in one of the nicest hotels that I have ever been in (special price, from 200 for 57 euros a night!) and the conference was fairly interesting. I met a few people, and was able to present my paper on education in the Basque region, which I hadnt done often before. On Tuesday, however, directly after my presentation I had to run to catch a train to Paris! Because I had a REAL job interview!!! For the most awesome job EVER at the OECD Development Centre. The interview happened in the afternoon and it went pretty well!!! However, there are a total of 13 candidates, so I am still not giving myself a great chance of making it... But we'll know next week!

After returning, there were again more things that needed to be done, which is fine. But I also received my first interview request for during the ASSA/AEA meetings in San Francisco in January!!!! For a job at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin!!! Again, we'll wait to see what's happening!

Anyway, let me just go and try to help Fedor get his skype sorted (btw, we saw Madame Butterfly yesterday in a theatre yesterday and it was great! We also went to Caroline's goodbye party and got a bit drunk: that was great too!!!)

Ciao,
OJ

photo-post!

2008-11-09T13:54:00.002+01:00

Here is finally, the long promised photo-post. Basically just a summary of all the things we've been doing that were worth taking pictures of...
First of all, we went to India:
The first photos are from Chittogarh

The desert town of Jaisalmer:

The Taj Mahal in Agra:

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The erotic temples of Kajuraho:

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The Golden Temple of Amritsar:

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The holy windscroll-thingies of the Tibetan Budhist temple in McLeod Ganj:

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McLeod Ganj:

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Mode of transportation (and this was a relatively quiet one!):

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After returning from India, early October, we went for a wine-tasting weekend in Morbegno:

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And on the way back, we went to Lago di Como (the North part though, where neither Fedor nor me had ever been):

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Shortly after, Marie and Stephie came to visit and we had a lot of fun, taking funny pictures everywhere:

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Oh, and as you can see, we were lucky with the weather as well:

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on top of Duomo:

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Then after, Fedor and i went to the Netherlands to see our new nephews. Here is just one photo, of me with my new nephew Ruben, as well as Leah and Daanç

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One week after returning from the Netherlands, BarD and his friend Selina came over, here at the Cimitero Monumentaleç

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Once again, we went to Comoç

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And then, Halloween cameç

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Finally, recently the new University Building was officially opened (as was the academic year, at the same time), by President Napolitano and Chairman of the European Commission Baroso (woohooo, I saw another president!). For this momentous occassion, there were a few things organised at the university, and we went to a lovely concert where they were playing Astor Piazzolla music (did I mention I LOVE Piazzolla??? Well, i do!). Additionally, it turns out that our new building has won an apparently rather prestigious award, as well: linky. Anyways, here are a few pictures of the amazing new building:

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(oh, and indeed, these are the pictures taken by the organisation blabla, not my own, etc)

Well, that was a summary of the past months, in pictures. If more comes to mind, I'll expand this post....

Ciao!
OJ

too much

2008-11-09T13:23:00.002+01:00

Many great things, too many to write about! We went to the Netherlands, to see our new nephews, we had several visitos (Marie and Stephie and later on BarD and Selina): it was just all too much fun!

And in the meantime, I have obviously been writing writing writing, applying, applying, applying... Just over 50 letters sent now, and so far, I have had 2 positive replies (that is, replies that allow me to continue into the next stage of the application process), so I am going to be in Paris in 2 weeks for my first real fly-out interview!!! And that is for an absolutely amazing job, so I am already completely nervous!

Of course, during the past weeks, we also had Fedor's birthday, which was lovely, and Halloween, which was even amazing! I will upload the pictures (and this time, I really will, because I have not got much to do today), so you can see how amazing it was...

Oh, and before it's too late: hurray, Obama won the elections! (yeah I know, it's a bit late now, isn't it?). anyways, that was just a realllllly quick summary, I think I'll just summarise in pictures in a separate post now. That is, if I manage to download the picture-upload-software....

Ciao!!!
OJ

1st interview done

2008-10-08T22:09:00.002+02:00

Time flies when you're really frigging busy, doesn't it? Short summary: I'm cured! Finally! And without having to do the hospital visit, which I really, really wasn't looking forward to... for the rest, I have only occupied myself with my preparations for my first real grown-up job interview!
These preparations consisted of getting some serious grips on the current financial crisis and a thorough knowledge of macroeconomics. I must say that all of this has been quite interesting from an economist's perspective. Things are really happening so fast and unexpectedly, it really was quite interesting to be forced to spend two weeks just reading about this entire crisis. Anyways, this all concluded into my doing this interview today with the IMF recruitment team. It didn't go very well, but I still think it was a very useful experience, so I am quite satisfied.
Now I can focus on sending out more and more applications. And preparing myself for my oral exam next Wednesday!

Last weekend, we spent the weekend in the lovely town of Morbegno with a couple of friends. There was a wine-tasting weekend, and we went around to lots of wine cellars tasting different wines (obviously, they all tasted the same after the first 5 or so.....). And it was so much fun! We were very lucky with the weather, and we enjoyed a sunny day and quiet night in Morbegno. On Sunday, we drove to Lago di Como and lunch by the lakeside: it was rather beautiful, I must say!!!

I still haven't worked out the pictures uploading thing to work so smoothly, so once again, I will refer you to Facebook$, to see them...

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Gerwin and Marjolein on all their great news. As for Gerwins comment on the last post, I am willing to tell you that my applications go to a large variety of institutions, varying from the sort-of training programmes at IMF, World Bank and OECD to junior research positions at research outfits like OECD, UN, etc, as well as academic positions (Uni of Hong Kong, Boston College, Washington State Tacoma, Toronto, Montreal, Georgetown, etc). You'll probably hear more about all of these by the time I start getting interviews (IF I'll get any!!!). I did book my trip to San Francisco for the job market interviews during the American Economic Association meeting there in early January...

Anyways, enjoy your week! I will do the same, particularly with my friends Stephie and Marie coming over this weekend....

Ciao,
OJ

just a few things

2008-09-24T22:26:00.003+02:00

I have a new laptop!!! My brother and his wife came over two weeks ago and they brought me a new laptop, after I had finally given up on ever being able to revive the old one, that darn thing. Anyways, the new one is an emachines, so that is a top brand (hence the 399€ price tag).

I also, more importantly, have a new nephew! My other brother's wife gave birth to Ruben yesterday and I am therefore now a quadruple uncle! It also means, I have won my bet in the race between my brother and Fedor's brother, who is also expecting a child one of these days... So that's all great news!

Over the past few weeks, I have been quite busy. There was the not-overly-interesting conference in Copenhagen (at least I managed to meet up with my friend Rasmus) and the oh-so-important Third Year Workshop. But mostly I have been starting the finalisation of my PhD. That is, getting prepared for all the things that are still to be done, such as my oral exams, handing in the dissertation etc. And the most important part of the finalisation of my PhD is, of course, finding a job!

So far, I have sent only a handful or so applications, but I have been preparing for the biggest bunch to be sent late october. This whole application process, though, takes surprisingly much time! All these different places want different documents, different cv styles and of course different cover letters. That way, it seems as if I have to do everything 100 times, even for just 10 applications... Anyway, it keeps me off the streets, I guess!

Something kinda funny:

more music charts

Finally, our little health issues are not improving much. Fedor is officially cured now after his third visit to our family doctor. My situation, however, is not too good yet. After the first visit, I took 5 pills a day, after the second visit, I was taking 14 pills a day and now, after going for the third time this Tuesday, I have a different kind of antibiotics that I take twice a day. And in two weeks, I will go to the hospital..... I'm afraid you'll hear more about this...

Ciao,
OJ

We're Back!

2008-09-02T16:36:00.003+02:00

OK, actually, we've been back for quite a while already, but I haven't had time to post before. My laptop is still broken (the BigBro Laptop Repair Service is coming over next weekend), so I am sharing Fedors laptop all the time. Except at work, where I should obviously be doing other things, such as....uhm, well....working!

However, given the (un)fortunate event of being at Bocconi, the internal network has just gone down again, as a result of which I cannot access any of my required documents anymore. So while I am waiting for the repair-people to start working on it, I finally have time to write my update here.

Let me start by saying that a probably more detailed account is available at Fedor's Weblog, because he has actually been updating during the trip. Additionally, as I am at my Uni computer now I cannot add any of the photos either. However, I can refer you to Facebook, where the all photos (about 130: sorry) can be viewed from HERE, HERE and HERE. I will probably post some photos myself as well at a later point, hopefully after my laptop has been repaired...

Anyways, India! It was definitely an interesting trip, if not always equally pleasant... We started of in Hot, Sweaty, Humid Mumbai (after a short visit to pleasant and gorgeous Helsinki), which was overwhelming and impressive. As we were meeting Felix and Annaig, friends from Milan in the Rajasthani city of Udaipur a few days later, our first days were hurried and resultingly not overly pleasant. Obviously we had flown in during the night and then spent all day in Mumbai. That night we took a night train to Ahmedabad, where we arrived early-morning. Another full day in Ahmedabad before taking another night train to Udaipur... When we arrived we were smelly, sleep-deprived and generally grumpy, but that was nothing a good shower couldnt solve! And of course the company of Felix and Annaig!!!

After spending a great day with them, they left and we went on a trip to the deserted mountain top city of Chittogarh. This was our first really sunny day and we had some great photo opportunities. The day after, we took a bus through the mountains and a nature reserve (and an awful Monsoon downpour) to Jodhpur. Jodhpur is famous for its towering fortress and its fabrics and spices. The fortress is indeed impressive and we were kinda tricked into buying some nice fabrics that are utterly unusable for us... The following day we took another bus trip towards Jaisalmer, the desert town that is close to the border with Pakistan. Another impressive fortress, and some of the friendliest people that we met during the entire trip. Jaisalmer was also the location of the cheapest hotel we stayed in (€3.75 for a double room with private bathroom and somewhat of a view in a friendly hotel with a swimming pool.....not bad, eh?).

In the original plan, we had planned to go directly north from Jaisalmer upto Amritsar, but it turned out that this was much less convenient than planned, so instead we took a night train to Jaipur and immediately afterwards a train journey to Agra, so that in about 20 hours, we were suddenly another 1000 kms down the road! Unfortunately, the Taj Mahal (World Wonder number 1 of this trip) is closed on Fridays, but we did manage to get some pretty pictures from across the river and beyond. In all honesty, we didn't mind not having to spend €23 euros to enter the Taj Mahal, because it is simply outrageously overpriced. We did, on the other hand, visit the Agra Fort and that was truly impressive (and had some more great views).

As Agra really is not a place you want to spend too much time, we left again the next morning and made our way (via train and Bouncy Bouncy Bus) to the small town of Khajuraho, another 10 hours down the road. This town is known for its amazing, ancient, temples, largely decorated with rather explicit depictions from the Kamasutra (that according to the descriptions obviously are NOT a sign of "moral depravity", but should be seen as works of art from a long-gone civilisation... Obviously, while we were respectful and thoughtful of the artfulness of it all, you cannot really expect people to be serious when you put statues of guys fucking horses on your temple, really......

After enjoying these temples for 2 days, we took an afternoon bus to the small town of Mahoba, from where we joined the night train towards Varanasi (World Wonder Nr 2 of this trip!). Varanasi: what can I say? It is absolutely filthy, filled with excrements, dead bodies, sick people and beggars. The smell is awful, any ritual is usually swamped with tourists and the it's incredibly humid. In conclusion: we were not overly fond of it..... In fact, we were very happy to be able to leave after two days. Wading through a foot of rain/poo in the streets, we finally made it to the train station and got a train out: NOT a good experience... The 28 hour train ride (1200 km) in the 5th class to get us out of there, filled with people without manners who would not stop staring, was also not a great experience either. When we finally got to our destination, Amritsar, both Fedor and I had uncontrollable Delhi Bellies, which we had so far been spared) and the two days in Amritsar were mostly spent on the toilet. We did of course make it to the Golden Temple of Amritsar (World Wonder Nr 3 of this trip!), which is an absolutely amazing sight... The rest of Amritsar, likewise seemed like a clean, pleasant and, importantly, hassle-free city!

The next stage of our journey was into the mountains. We took a bus from Amritsar to Pathankot and then onwards via Dharmsala to McLeod Ganj. And as it turned out, McLeod Ganj is our favourite place in India by miles! It is absolutely gorgeous, high in the mountains (about 1800 meters high), with mixed foggy and sunny times. The town is populated mostly by Tibetan refugees (the Tibetan government-in-exile is based there), who are friendly, hassle-free and don't try to cheat you in every move. Also important is their lax attitude regarding alcohol usage, so it is indeed possible to buy beer there! Around McLeod Ganj we made some long walks and in the evenings we enjoyed the excellent Tibetan food and the relaxed athmosphere. Finally, we also managed to do quite some shopping there....

Unfortunately, all good times come to an end, so after two nights we had to leave. We tried to take the "toy train" from Kangra back to Pathankot, but apparently "one of the bridges had collapsed", so we were forced to take the bus back to Pathankot, from where we took a night train to Delhi.

By this time, both Fedor and myself were getting a bit travel weary, but we still managed to enjoy some of the sights that Delhi has to offer. Particularly the Lotus Temple and Tomb of Umayden were impressive. The Red Fort, on the other hand, was very underwhelming and disappointing... One evening we met up with Fedor's friend Shruti, an Indian english teacher from Milan who was in Delhi to get married. We narrowly missed the wedding, but it was fun to meet her anyway. She showed us her house and her sweet sweet mother cooked us a yummie meal. After 3 days of Delhi, it was time for us to leave again and we took the super-fast and super-luxurious (both relatively of course) train to Mumbai (1400 km in 16 hours: not bad....), in which we could finally relax a bit. The final day was spent in Mumbai, doing those things we hadn't done during the first visit, particularly Elephanta Island. Unfortunately, the whole day was absolutely drenched in rain and Fedor was starting to seriously suffer from a Delhi Belly, so we did not manage to enjoy that day a lot.

During the evening, we decided to go to the Airport already, because we were supposed to fly in the morning and couldn't be bothered to have to negotiate a taxi fare at 4AM. Afterwards, this may not have been such a good idea, because Fedor fell very ill, with high fever and uncontrollable shaking. Additionally, our flight was delayed by four hours, so Mumbai Airport may not have been the best place to be. By the time we finally made it to Helsinki, our flight to Milan had already left and we thus had to stay overnight in Helsinki. Now being both sick as dogs, with stomach cramps and uncontrollable diarrhea, the idea of going home had been a much more appealing option, but alas, it simply wasn't in the cards...

Instead we got home on Monday morning, where we quickly tried to pick up our normal lives again. The funny Delhi Bellies, however, have not subsided and we started medication, including different kinds of antibiotics this weekend, after consulting our doctor. This sort of post-trip unhealthiness certainly does cast a bit of a gloom over the trip, although it certainly was very enjoyable. Let's hope we'll be well soon and can get on again. During the past week, we also had a guest over, my friend Jochen who was in Milan for a big conference that was being held at my University, so he was quite some distraction as well!

I will be going to Copenhagen from Thursday to Saturday for a conference, which will be a nice little trip, and in the meantime I am doing some serious job hunting. Now let's see whether the technicians have already repaired the network so I can actually access my own CV...

Photos will follow later I hope!

Ciao,
OJ

Off to India

2008-07-28T12:07:00.002+02:00

Just two more days before we're off to India! And I am so ready for it... Particularly because I finally heard last week that I will receive an extension of my scholarship into next year! So that means I am not going to be starving just yet! woohooo, and it's a bigger scholarship than I've been receiving these past years, that's also quite pleasant.
For the rest, it's been lots and lots of working, as always. And a few Indian movies, to get into the mood (if you ever have a chance, Love Story 2050 is a must-see!). Additionally, we have also been out partying a few times of course, among which was a curry-bollywood night at our friend Louisa's place last Saturday... And a (free) concert of the Latvian Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra at the Villa Reale last week.
The best concert that we've recently seen, however, was the Roberto Fonseca Group from Cuba, who also performed at the Villa Reale, last Thursday. You've got to love the Milano municipality for organizing lots and lots of stuff during Summer to entertain the few people who are actually in town... During August, however, even the Municipality takes some time off, but in September they are back with a vengeance with another month-long music festival!
Anyways, I'm sure it's gonna be a long time before the next update, because we're off to India!!!! (oh, and I've once again broken my laptop, so that also doesn't quite improve my posting abilities...)
Ciao,
OJ

pfffffffff

2008-07-12T19:02:00.002+02:00

Well, where do I start? I'l go with chronology I guess: that seems like the right way to approach the last month or so.
I had already mentioned my trip to a conference in Tunisia and that it was quite impressive (the country, not the conference). I did not, however, add any photos yet, so here are just a few little impressions:

So, after returning to Italy and finally receiving my luggage, I was off to Turkey. One night in Istanbul, with a friend, and then a bus trip to Ankara, where I attended the 12th Annual Conference on Economics and Security. It was, in fact, my first conference that really concerned the topic that I am working on, which made it a really interesting experience of course. There were some very interesting papers and I received a lot of positive comments about my work. So that was very satisfying. The conference was nice enough to also organize a one-day trip to Cappadocia, which is the Number 30 according to the Hillman Wonders list, so definitely unmissable! And it truly is impressive. An unusual geographical formation, combined with centuries of lost civilizations: pretty impressive! And the underground city was definitely not bad either! Just some photos:

Finally, I returned by bus to Istanbul, from where I flew back to Milano and finally saw Fedor again. Those few days in Milan were very busy though. Two papers had to be finished before the end of July and therefore had to be finished before my next departure, 3 days later. So I worked, worked and worked and managed to complete most of my work. I was also present to enjoy the whooping that Italy gave to France in the Eurocup, so that was kinda nice (although the match really sucked, obviously). Then on the 18th, I flew on Lufthansa (my Air One flight had been cancelled: I wasn't very flight-lucky around this period), via Frankfurt to Boston!
A truly amazing city, combining the big-city American architecture, with lots of parks and open spaces and not all that many people around. I could stay with friends, and enjoyed the city for 3 days, including visits to the graves of some of the Founding Fathers, Little Italy and Harvard, and seeing my Milan ex-flatmate Meghan and celebrating Fernanda's birthday...
After those few days, I travelled to Providence, Rhode Island, in order to attend the IHS's Graduate Workshop on Social Change (also referred to as Libertarian Summer Camp). An unusual experience, I must admit. Never before have I spent much time with lots of self-confessed libertarians, particularly those coming from the fields of Political Theory, philosophy or Philosophical History... And a fair few of the attendees were either serious assholes (ie die-hard libertarians) or simply insane (trust me on that one: don't ask). But there were also a few great people, and I must say that a lot of the lectures I heard were in fact very interesting and thought-provoking. While I do not agree with all of what was being said, I at least found it interesting to experience. And I did have an excellent time with some of the people I met there whom I now consider to be my friends. Among them, the (according to the NY Times) "prolific young liberal author" James Poulos and many others.
After a week of enjoying this (and trust me, not getting a lot of sleep), I was quite ready to go home! I spent one more night in Boston with Max and Jessica (just in time to see Max of to hospital with an acute appendicitis), before flying back to Milano. Just some pictures of my US trip:

Back in Milano, Fedor had some friends over from the Netherlands for that weekend and I enjoyed an afternoon and evening with them, in the sweltering heat that had overcome Milano by then. However, I did have to get up at 4AM the next morning again to fly to Amsterdam, for the Jan Tinbergen Peace Science Conference. I got there just after it had already begun and enjoyed 3 more days of presentations and socialising. However, I must honestly admit that with the lack-of-sleep, the jetlag and the general exhaustion, this conference was not as useful for me as it could have been if I had gone there well-rested. But it was good to see some of the people that I had met before on previous conferences, as well as friends from Groningen. And I did get some positive comments on my paper as well, including interest from an author who works on very similar topics. So I was quite satisfied, overall.

After three days of that, I finally was able to go home and sleeeeeeeeep.

The past week or so has been a little more relaxed. Working, working, working, trying to get some papers finished obviously takes up some time, but it's not too bad. I did have The Phonecall yesterday, which is (partially) going to determine whether or not I am getting a scholarship extension next year. I'm going to hear the result for that next week, so please cross your fingers for me!!!

On the social front, last night was the goodbye dinner for Elena and Lin Lin, who have both graduated and are moving to other Universities (oh, how I wish I was amongst them!!!). And today, we slept late and did nothing: perfect!

Ciao,
OJ

PS 18 days until India!
PPS Click for more photos from Tunisia, Turkey or the United States

back-for-a-moment

2008-06-09T19:24:00.002+02:00

Tunisia is beautiful!!! I had a very good time there, even though the conference was not as interesting as I could have hoped for. Carthage, Sidi Bou Said and the Bardo Museum, however, are pretty amazing, so it was totally worth it. Or so I thought... Because on the way back (silly me, for flying Alitalia), my luggage got lost. So for the past few days, I have been trying to get it back, as it contains a lot of stuff (such as my phone recharger, but also my good shirts etc) that I am going to need at the next conferenence in Ankara, Turkey and for which I will be leaving, uhm, TOMORROW! So now there is quite a problem, if I don't have my luggage.... Well, the last time I have spoken to them I was informed that my luggage will in fact arrive tonite still, and they promised it would be before 22.00, so I will still have some time to wash it as well...

Let's see! It is a little unfortunate though that I am not able to go and see the match Netherlands-Italy in a bar, although my Italian friends are probably going to have quite an opportunity to ridiculize me, anyway... (although, just for support, I did predict in our pool that it will be 1-0 for the Netherlands....).

Also, I have had the doubtable pleasure today to visit the Dutch Consulate for the first time! I had to request a new passport, which I am truly hoping will arrive fairly soon. But, you never know... (although it's Dutch bureaucracy, which is not nearly as bad as the Italian one, so it should be fine!). Anyway, my passport is actually still valid until January, but Fedor and I have just booked our Summer Holiday and the destination country requires the passport to be valid for another 6 months at the moment of arrival. Unfortuantely, mine would only be valid for 5 months and 23 days.... Oh, by the way, the destination is........ India!!! Woohooo, very much looking forward to that, as well.

Anyways, just a quick update, and before you know it, I am on my way to Turkey. For those who may be interested, HERE is an unorganised bunch of photos from Tunisia... It's too much hassle to put them in this post, so if you're interested, just click on that link...

Ciao,
OJ

Family weekend etc

2008-05-30T20:39:00.002+02:00

Well, that was an interesting weekend last week! On Thursday night, I flew into Amsterdam, and took the train to Groningen. I was staying at my brother' place and while I had some difficulty reaching him, I finally did manage to do so. The next morning I had enough time to look at little Hannah (8 months old now) and give presents to Leah (sort of early for her third birthday next week). As usual, she managed to pick the cheapest nonsensical present to be most excited about and she spent the entire visit blowing bubbles...

I was very happy to also meet up with my other brother, his pregnant wife (next child: September) and little Daan, in order to give him presents for his upcoming third birthday as well! After this first dose of family, Marielle was so nice to bring me to the train station in Assen, where I realised that I had left my jacket, wallet and passport in Groningen. So, with an hour's delay (yes, I am a retard, I know), I finally arrived in Nijmegen at about 16.00, where I was met by Fedor's mother's boyfriend Rob. Together with his daughter, we then continued to Wellerlooi, for the long-awaited Family Weekend of Fedor's family.
I am not the biggest family guy, in all honesty, but I most certainly did have a great time! A LOT of alcohol was consumed and many games were played. I missed out on the Eurovision Song Contest, but it was absolutely worth it.

It was particularly cool to see Fedor's soon sister-in-law (the wedding is in three weeks), who is getting more an more pregnant...

(more photos can be found here)
Anyway, on Sunday, Fedor and I returned to good old Milano, where we had a nother busy week of work. I've been working my ass off to get as far as possible on the paper I am writing together with my friend Idil and I am rather confident we are going to make it in time! The deadline is the end of June, but neither of us has a lot of time available in June... In my case, this is due to my slightly overloaded Conference Schedule during that month, as posted previously. It may be some time before you hear from me again, because I'm not around a lot. Tuesday, it starts with a very early flight from Milano to Tunis...
But don't worry, in the famous words of A.S.: I'll be back...

Ciao,
OJ

updating 101

2008-05-15T22:35:00.002+02:00

There is no excuse, there really isn't. Except that I've been working my ass off and had other things on my mind. That is the only excuse for not updating for so long.

However, there is quite a lot to say now (you've got to appreciate the small things, eh?). First of all, the move to the new building has been a complete success. I am sharing an office with my friend and we love it! It's light, there is air, air-conditioning and some sort of view (well, not really). I'm very happy about my new office! The occassional electricity interruption notwithstanding, I am also finding myself to be able to work quite well there. I will soon take some pictures and post them, because it certainly is quite a sight!

Two weeks ago (I believe) we had Matt and Anthony over from England. It was an exhausting weekend, with faaaaaaar too much to drink, but plenty of fun was had! As it was their xth time in Milan, we had to perform some alternative activities, and I think we succeeded rather well. After a Mongolian meal on Friday with other friends, we picked them up from the train station and spent the rest of the night drinking. On Saturday, after long considerations, we decided to go to Como and to pedalo for some time

At night, we went out with friends and got outrageously drunk (well, I did, anyway), so we slept late on Sunday again as well... But when we finally got up, we managed to go to Vigevano, the cute little town after which our street was called. It's a lovely place, with a gigantic castle and equally impressive Piazza right in the middle of it. While we only spent a short time there, it was nice to be away from Milan for some hours!

The next morning, the boys went back to England and rest returned to our casa. Rest, and a loooooot of work, but that's okay.

I have also finally got my schedule for my OJ-goes-Global World Tour. I will do 4 continents in 3 weeks, starting June 3rd (Tunisia) and finally finishing in Amsterdam (until July 2nd), visiting 4 different conferences. I am looking forward to it, although poor Fedor will surely miss me a lot (and probably enjoy the relaxing freedom i will give him too). Anyway, before that we have a few other things to look forward to: This weekend, our long-awaited quasi-annual Spring Party takes place: the International Stereotypes Party. I am looking forward to it very much and I really hope it will be successful! If it is, it's going to be absolutely insane...

Next weekend, we will be in the Netherlands, for a family weekend of Fedor's family. That is surely going to be a few enjoyable days of relaxing, drinking and playing games: sounds pretty good, no?

Anyways, in conclusion, there is still lots to do and I will do it now.
Ciao,
OJ

Boxes, boxes, boxes

2008-04-26T18:57:00.002+02:00

This week has been fairly quiet. We presented the very, very early version of our work on Tuesday, and it went rather well. The rest of the (short) week was spent packing boxes etc.: The University has been constructing a new building for years and finally, FINALLY, it's nearly finished. That is, the 5th floor is now finished, and that's where I (and most of my friends) well be. So during these days, starting last Wednesday, the whole University is basically moving, which means packing lots of boxes, sorting through many, many, many old exams and old books and hoping that all is going to go well. In principle, from Tuesday on, my new office is supposed to be in the Via Roentgen, but you never know what may go wrong. My computer may get lost, my boxes may get lost, I may not be able to find my office (5-d2-08 is my office nr: what does that mean? No idea), et cetera. Adventures, that's what I call them!
Anyway, the week was a bit shorter than normal due to the fact that last Friday was Liberation Day! Remember, the day that Italy got liberated from the Germans? Hmmm, a slightly odd perspective, but that's how it is here. And on that day, everything is closed, incl. University. So it was also a free day for me. Which was good, because my parents came to town Thursday Night (on their way to the South), and we had a good time with them, drinking, eating, drinking, so it was good not to have to wake up too early.
Then on Friday Night, we had a Rubik's Cube Party (everyone had to come with items of clothing in the colors of the Rubik's Cube and through cloth-trading, make sure you're all wearing just one colour at the end of the night: very cool party theme). Unfortunately, this is Italy and Italians are not so good in the "look-like-a-jackass-but-just-dont-give-a-fuck"-department, so the theme wasn't overly successful. I did manage to end up in full orange garments though.... :-D My own photos aren't so great (click here for photos), but I'm hoping to see some other ones and I will post them when I do see them.
Today is just a nice quiet day: the weather is lovely, we have no obligations, it's perfect! Same for tomorrow, and we're loving it!
ciao,
OJ

Izmir et al.

2008-04-20T12:21:00.002+02:00

So, last Saturday I did not even have to get up so ridiculously early to be able to catch my Alitalia flight to Istanbul. It really was quite relaxing just to calmly go to Malpensa and fly there. In Istanbul, a convenient connection brought me to Izmir (after I had noticed that Istanbul is the most outrageously prices airport ever. It's about twice as expensive as Malpensa, and Malpensa is already not-so-cheap. I also noticed that I really hate indoors-smoking. How is it possible to enjoy your teeny-tiny 7 euro sandwich when everyone around you is smoking cigarettes? It's foul!!!). Anyways, I arrived that night and went to the hotel.
The next day, there was trip organised to visit Ephesos, the House of the Holy Virgin (right....) and the little wine village of Sirince. An absolutely lovely day, where I really got to know a few people.

In summary, good times were had! In the evening, it was time for the conference dinner, followed by some drinks in town. Of course, as always with these kind of things, a few drinks turned into too many drinks and it was seriously difficult to get up the next morning. I had no chocie though, as the conference was the next day. After the first few presentations, I felt much better though and I made it through the day alright.
Unfortunately, the presentations I saw were mostly not very interesting to me. Either the level was simply too low (this was a mixed undergrad-graduate conference) or the topic was far away. I did seriously enjoy a paper by an Italian PhD student from the University of Namur, though, and I got a little bit of feedback on my own paper.
At the end of these presentations, it was time for the official celebration of the founding of the University. It was similar to last year, with long-winded speeches and lots of dancing performances. The nationalistic flag-waving and reverence of Ataturk is still something I cannot get used to, though (and yes, that was an understatement, but i don't want to insult my Turkish friends by embellishing on the topic). Oh well, afterwards a nice dinner was had and we hit the town again...

The next morning, I got a ride from one of the guys in order to get to the airport at 6.30am. Mid-morning, I arrived in Istanbul again where I met up with another conference participant and her friend.

I think I am finally convinced that Istanbul truly is a beautiful city, and I enjoyed walking around and visiting the spice market etc. In the evening, Alitalia brought me home again, where Fedor was awaiting my return.

The rest of the week has been hard work, preparing my Political Economics students for their exam on Friday and running lots of computer programs to make sure we have some results before Tuesday, when Idil is going to present our joint work for the first time (and no, there is no paper yet, and not really any results: don't get me started!). Finally, i also got some grading done and went into the weekend absolutely exhausted!
But satisfied.

Uhm, is there anything else I should add now? I did have a meeting with Chris Blattman, an absolutely amazing and interesting economist who is extremely well-travelled and knowledgeable: it gave me happy feelings! Oh, and one more thing: I am moving offices next week or so. There is a new building for the University (which is absolutely unfinished), and I will be sharing an office there with Idil and someone else: it'll be great!

Ciao,
OJ

New in da house!

2008-04-05T19:02:00.001+02:00

Now also available in a professional formate: ME

click here to see!

Ciao,
OJ

bits and pieces of news

2008-04-02T23:42:00.004+02:00

It's because G. asked that I am posting this. No real news yet from the interview. It seems they are positive, but some minor problems have arisen. Next week there should be more news. Which means I am unfortunately going to miss the conference in Amsterdam.... that's too bad. But to compensate for that, I did get accepted for a conference in Tunisa, early June and invited to attend a week-long seminar at Brown University at the end of June (which I will attend, if I do not get the desired result from the job interview).

So all in all, things seem pretty good, eh? For the rest, I'm very busy, making sure I am all prepared before next week's conference in Izmir, Turkey. And Bart and Tineke were here last weekend and it was lovely! The weather was gorgeous and we enjoyed the city and the antiques market a lot!

I'll keep you posted on further developments!
Ciao,
OJ

PS This was the 300th entry into my blog... And while I am not going to present statistics as fancy as G., I will point out to you that my speed is declining significantly. The first 100 was reached after about 6 months. I reached 200 after about 12 months, but to reach 300, I needed a total of 32 months! It's pathetic, isn't it?

poverino....

2008-03-27T00:00:00.001+01:00

Poor Fedor. The funny Dutch people in Eindhoven had some sort of power failure at the airport and his flight got cancelled. So after a lot of calling, messaging and other hassle, his only way of getting back here in time for work tomorrow was by train. So he's in the night train right now from the Netherlands to Milano.

That's what you get for flying Ryanair! If your flight is cancelled, you're on your own... aka: you're f*cked.

Oh well, I will welcome him with all his stuff at the train station tomorrow morning so he can go straight to work!

Ciao,
OJ

blog changes

2008-03-24T16:55:00.001+01:00

Well, what do you think? Slightly different colour scheme compared to before, but I must say that I am rather satisfied. The only thing that unfortunately has not survived these changes was the randomised blog-title-picture :-(

But I will look into it to see whether I'm gonna be able to repair that too!

A Very Happy Easter!

2008-03-24T11:26:00.002+01:00

Happy Easter! A very happy Easter, in fact: lots of good news recently... I had a job inteview (by phone) for a fellowship program for this Summer, and I will hear the result from that in about a week... I was absolutely dead nervous, obviously, for the interview, but it seemed to have gone quite well!
Additionally, I had my paper accepted at 2 conferences (in Zurich and Amsterdam), although I am not sure yet I am actually going to make it to either of them, but it's always nice to hear that someone is interested, isn't it? Finally, as mentioned before, in 3 weeks, I will be in Izmir again for the weekend for a conference...

So, that was all the good news. For the rest it's been work, work, work (yesss, finally some results for my latest paper: a cooperative effort) and some R&R in between. Fedor's father and his father's girlfriend were in Milano last week. It was quite relaxing for me, because I had a very good excuse not to participate in the Day Entertainment Program... Instead I relaxed and cycled! With Fedors new bycicle, I went on a real trip to investigate the end-of-Milan! That is, I cycled down the Naviglio Grande until I was in the fields.... About 45 minutes of cycling, but it totally felt like I was back in the Netherlands. Look at this picture:

This week-end is, if possible, even more relaxed. On Saturday it was a bit stressfull, because Jorge and Diana (Costa Rican friends of ours) came for dinner and of course I had to match their excellent Costa Rican meal they made for us last month. So I spent the whole day making an entire Japanese meal. And it was a great success!!! So I was very happy about that. Fedor was not as happy, the next morning, because he had to get up early to fly to the Netherlands to see La Famiglia. But I am sure that all the festitivies in the Netherlands will cheer him up, despite his little hang-over... Anyways, I am having 2 very relaxed days, without Fedor here and the University doors locked for Easter! I watched three movies yesterday, while stuffing myself with sushi left-overs: it was lovely! Today, I may make another bycicle tour again, because the weather is gorgeous...

Now, those were my happy thoughts for the day. I will finish with a buckload of pictures of all the things that I hadn't posted pictures of yet.

downtown Porto

View from Cathedral over the river in Porto

Old City in Porto

Fedor, Nuno and Marta in the Museum Gardens

My brothers by Lake Como

Kim and Joost at the Cimitero Monumentale

Ciao,
OJ

PS I wil try and do something about this horrible colour scheme. But I'm not making any promises......

bugger

2008-03-10T22:34:00.004+01:00

Well, somehow, I am not able to change the text color anymore. Instead, I've had to change the background. Sorry for those people who are color blind or otherwise visually impaired, I bet it's completely unreadible now. I hope to soon find out how to get back to original state (which I never wanted to change in the first place: bloody blogger!)
Ciao,
OJ

summary...

2008-03-09T16:54:00.001+01:00

Well, it seems to have been quite a while since I updated... And for some odd reason, blogspot decided that Black on Blue would be an improvement, it seems... I will correct this asap, once I find out how to do so. However, since I am downloading some movies right now, I have zero-speed when trying to do things online, so I can't do it immediately. This is also the reason why I am not adding any photos here. If you want to see photos from some of the things I will describe later, just check them out on Facebook or Volkskrant Reizen... And maybe I will add some later on, anyway.

Now, I can't believe I didn't even write anything about Porto yet! That trip seems ages ago already, even though it was only about 2 weeks ago. It was realllllly nice to see Marta (and Nuno) again and they were excellent hosts! They showed us all of Porto, which I should say is a beautiful city. It could use some paint and a good cleaning, but overall, it's very charming. But of course, for us it was mostly the hosts that made it best. We ate very, very well (fresh seafood: wooohooo) and went to a Port tasting in one of the cellars. We enjoyed some walking on the beach and a glass of wine looking out on the sea. I can imagine why Marta always says she wouldn't want to leave that city! One thing I did learn, however, is that it is possible to get a jetlag from only 1 hour time difference! Admittedly, it wasn't the time difference, but the fact that our flight was terribly early. Basically, we arrived at 8AM local time and had already been awake for six hours by then! This meant we could really enjoy the whole weekend, but it also meant we were totally wrecked at the end of it.
After returning there was another whole week of work to enjoy before, last weekend, my brothers arrived. It was very cool to see them and they were lucky with the weather. On Sunday, the temperature in Milan reached some 25°C, which is uncommon for Northern Italy on March 1! We went to Como that day and enjoyed the weather, the ice creams and the views from the top of the mountain. It was awesome! Also, they brought a new harddisk for Fedor's computer, which Jorryt had arranged somehow. So now Fedor has his own computer again: VERY NICE...
And............... I'm going to be an uncle again! Niels is expecting another child in September, which means that in my competition with Fedor, I will then be leading 4-0! Beat that! Seriously though, it's very cool and it'll be another good reason to go the Netherlands again in October or so...
The past week, I continued working and received word that my negotiations with the a conference in Izmir were successful: they are paying for my entire trip, including the flights, so I will be in Izmir during the 2nd weekend of April! I can hardly wait!
This weekend, Joost and Kim arrived from Rotterdam, to spend some time here, before taking the train to Firenze this morning. We had a lot of fun, meeting with other friends of mine and walking through town. They had been here before, but that was during Easter (last year) and many things were closed that time. So we had to do the Cimitero Monumentale still, as well as Hightech. I think they enjoyed it a lot too, as did we. Although, to be honest, I don't mind the fact that they left quite early today and we basically have an entire Sunday with each other, not doing much. Very Relaxing...
Particularly because it will give us the chance to FINALLY watch The Godfather tonight. Why make 3-hour movies? It is so inconvenient for people who have to work etc! We've had these since my birthday and never actually had 3 hours of time to watch even just the first part. But today we will!
Ciao,
OJ

Seriously...

2008-02-22T20:05:00.003+01:00

Wow, I found out yesterday that the fact that the government fell in January is probably gonna end up costing me about a 1000 euros!!! The 2008 budget included a proposal to increase our scholarship by some 140 euros a month (remember it's about 800 euros a month right now) and even though it has been approved by the parliament and the Senate, there is now no executive in charge to sign the bill. So we're gonna have to wait for the elections, which will probably be won by Berlusconi. And since he's not so big on Universities (he's generally not big on institutions or people that do not agree with him), he will chuck the bill out of the window for sure! So Prodi's fall is going to cost us the scholarship increase. Amounting to something in the order of 1000 euros.... :-(((((((

On to happier topics: we went to an Eritrean restaurant yesterday. And I can tell everyone, it's something you should really try! It was a great experience, which has been described before as "eating pancakes with goulash, with your hands". While this kinda covers it, it doesn't quite describe the entire experience. Definitely a good idea though!

And on to even happier topics: we're going to visit Marta in Porto this weekend. The flight leaves at an absolutely ungodly hour (6.30 AM: that means getting up at 3.30 AM), but I am sure we're gonna have a great time, nonetheless!

That's all I wanted to share today!
Ciao,
OJ

Valentine's Day!

2008-02-18T20:57:00.002+01:00

A short Summary of what's been happening: work, work, work, my Mother-in-Law came to visit (woohoo, I received Rome, season 2, as a belated bday present!), lots of sun and great weather and more work. And of course, Valentine's Day:

Well, to be honest, we did't really partake in the whole Valentine's tradition and we didn't particularly celebrate it. We did, however, go to Verona for the weekend! And Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet, is also known as the city of love, so we sort of turned it into a Valentine's weekend-trip. I had used hotelclub (see link on the right-hand side) to book a 4-star hotel for only 53 euros and it was fantastic! An enormous room, nice little thingies and an amazing breakfast: it was gooood!

The weather wasn't great, unfortunately. Cloudy mornings, sunny afternoons, but with rather low temperatures. But that didn't stop us from going around the city and visiting all the interesting sights!

We returned to Milan Sunday night, very satisfied.

In other news, did I mention I presented my second paper? Well, I did and it was received reasonably well. Currently, my supervisors are looking at it and I am waiting for several conferences to respond. It's looking good! I have also started working on my third paper (within the PhD): a cooperative project this time... So now starts the final phase of my PhD, I guess. I am trying to arrange my oral examinations before Summer and I am really aiming to hand in the dissertation before February 1. We'll see.

The week ahead: Thursday we're going to an Eritrean restaurant! Some friends recently went, and were very enthusiastic. So we're going on Thursday, with some other friends of ours. I cannot wait! Then on Saturday, we're flying to Porto, to visit Marta! It will be lovely, and the weather is forecast to be really good too, so that should be very enjoyable. Either way, it'll be great to see Marta, even when it's not sunny!!!

Yes, I realise this post is completely messy and makes no sense. Oh well, shit happens, I cannot be bothered to go through it and let it make more sense...
Ciao,
OJ

Happy Bday....

2008-01-29T22:00:00.000+01:00

It's the season to be older.... I wonder if anyone ever researched whether there is a correlation between birth month and probability to do a PhD (actually, I know some research which does look at birth quarter and education achievement, but not on PhD level), because in my PhD it seems that by far the greatest majority is born between mid-January and May. This means: lots of celebrations. Last weekend was Felix's turn, but he decided against celebrating it. Obviously, we didn't accept this and we (well, I) organised a surprise party for him this weekend. And it was fun! Unfortunately, I did forget to bring my new party-camera I got on my own bday. So no interesting photos of the event...
For the rest it's been hard work to finish my paper before a few conference deadlines. And I managed! The first version of my second PhD-paper is now finished! "Measuring Ethno-Linguistic Affinity Between Nations": in the theatres near YOU! Well, the latter part may not be true, but I will be submitting this paper to a number of conferences (Ankara, Tunis, Amsterdam, Zurich, Athens): we'll see what's going to happen... But I must say that I am rather satisfied about the speed with which this paper has been written. I got the idea in November, so it only took about 3 months. And while it is not completely finished of course, the body of it should be just about finished. I will present it at the Graduate Seminar Series at Bocconi on Monday: let's see what people think...
I have also started brainstorming about the next paper, and it might be a cooperative work! Let's see where that goes...
Fedor and I do not see each other a lot, because we both work a lot. But at least we have the weekends together! Not for long anymore, because the bookings are starting to come in seriously now. February: fully booked. March: fully booked. April: 1 or 2 free weekends. May: fully booked. It's hard being this popular, isn't it???
This weekend: Fedor's mother. That should definitely be fun!
Ciao,
OJ

Happy bday to me!

2008-01-20T15:44:00.000+01:00

Well, happy birthday to me! As I mentioned in my previous post, I actually celebrated my birthday for the first time in years! And it was lovely!!! I am absolutely doing it again next year. I found a newly opened hip bar near the University and celebrated it there with some 40-ish people present. What can I say: pictures say more than words, so I'll just post a collage of photos and you can see for yourself:

So, that should give a nice overview of what the party was like. My friend Maja had put herself in charge of taking photos and she did an admirable job! 335 photos in one night!

Although, admittedly, Fedor took the last photo, on the way home when I may have been slightly drunk, but apparently convinced that this was an absolutely gorgeous object and that I would not come home until he took a photo of me with the object:

Oh well, what can I say? It was a good party!

Yesterday, we did very little and simply watched some movies. One more movie tip of the week: Go West, an absolutely amazing movie about a gay Muslim-serbian couple who have to flee Sarajevo and are hiding in a small town in Bosnia. Not the most upbeat film you'll ever see, but certainly very interesting!
Ciao,
OJ

Just some things

2008-01-15T21:34:00.000+01:00

We were in Coventry last weekend, to see Matt and Antony. A four-hour delay on the way there, meant that we had to miss out on the restaurant we were supposed to go on Friday. Instead we stayed at home and talked and drank a lot: it was lovely. The next morning, Fedor got the English Breakfast he had been looking forward to for weeks, and so did I. Of course we got to a slow start, but finally we managed to get out of the house, on the way to the city known for its ceramic and its sauce....

Do you already know which one I mean?

Do you?

Really, seriously: do you?

Well, it was Worcester. An interesting cute little town, with an amazing cathedral and a cute city centre...

We spent a few hours walking around in the city centre and take in all the sights. It wasn't too cold and more surprisingly, it wasn't raining, so this was very enjoyable. Matt is very good at making sure we see all the cities in the entire area (previously checked of: Cambridge, Oxford, Coventry, Birmingham, Stratford, Rugby and obviously London). At night, we went out in Coventry and the next morning we flew back to Milan. It was a very enjoyable trip, and it was good to see them again. And to see their new house, which I (bad friend, I know) hadn't even realised they moved into...

Apart from that, it's been lots of work recently. Still aiming for a January 31st deadline to finish a not-so-preliminary version of my current paper and I am still hopeful to make it... And additionally, I have been spending lots of time clearing up other people's examinations mess. Some things at Bocconi are really amazingly unorganised: A group of students who had a midterm exam, but got asked a question that wasn't part of the curriculum, sure that happens. But if you collectively forget to solve this problem and ignore it when people warn you about it, that's not very nice. It gets worse though: If these students (who haven't gotten their final grade for their midterm yet) then get their exam about the rest of the curriculum, you obviously make sure that no such mistake can happen again, right? So I did that, and made sure that the questions were appropriate. Unfortunately, my advice was heeded and instead some of the exercises were added or changed. Result: Students get a 5-question exam, of which 3 questions are not actually part of the curriculum... Of the 2 questions they did get, one was so badly translated from Italian that it was impossible to answer and the other one was an extension of the material they had never seen before and could not possibly know either.

Does this sound like a mess to you? It gets worse: the responible professors are all out of town and no-one else knows what is going on.

Luckily for the students, I do. Which causes a significant upward shift in their expected grades.... This has been my time-consuming good deed of the month!

Ciao,
OJ
PS I am celebrating my birthday this year for the first time in yeeeeeears: I am actually looking forward to it!

Just rambling on...

2008-01-05T16:34:00.000+01:00

With Fedor not having to work, I am rarely home alone anymore. And it just feels a bit odd sitting next to him writing my blog. Particularly since, despite Jorryt's best efforts, his computer is now in an even sorrier state than it was before. The only thing that still runs (most of the time, not always) is a dressed down Linux version with which he can access the internet. That's it. Not so nice...

Anyways, right now Fedor's away shopping, so I have time to update my blog. Happy New Year!!! Buon Anno!!! I can't believe it's already 2008. Anyways, it's the way things go, isn't it? Time passes and the years come and go: goodbye 2007, welcome 2008! Now that I mention 2007, Christmas was a lot of fun. I think most of my courses were received well, but more importantly: we had a lot of fun! Obviously, we also had a bit too much to drink, but it was not nearly as bad as some of the christmas dinners I have organised in the past (I have half a mind of adding a picture that clearly depicts how terribly wrong things can go when drinking too much for christmas, but I have promised the person in question never to show those photos to anyone, so I won't...). Interluding the entire christmas dinners were plenty of presents. It's a fun way of spending your time in between courses: unwrapping presents! Both Jorryt and Lilian seemd very pleased with their set of presents (Lilian's new sparkly golden high-heeled shoes fit remarkably well....) and so were Fedor and I, of course! I received CD's of Sarah Brightman and the 1960's Italian singer Mina (who is AMAZING), as well as my long-desired Angels in America DVD. I only had the downloaded copy, but it's so amazing that I really wanted to have the DVD as well. Finally, two of my other presents really stand out: a chocolate fondue fountain (seriously, we now have a chocolate fondue fountain: how frigging awesome is that?) and a book I had been looking for for a long time: The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (you know, the guy who invented economics), which is an obvious must-have for any economist.
Of course, like last time when Jorryt and Lilian visited, we went on another little trip. This time, we rented a car and drove to the north-western Italian region of Valle d'Aosta (apparently the smallest and wealthiest region of Italy). It's an Alpine region, where there are apparently excellent skiing opportunities and some amazing landscapes. Of course a trip with Jorryt and Lilian isn't complete without a Hillman Wonder to see, and luckily there's the Matterhorn on the border of Italy and Switzerland to see. Or Mount Deer, as they called it in Italian (Monte Cervino).

After seeing that and playing in the snow for a bit (small bit), we had lunch in a ski resort before continuing to the regional capital Aosta. A cute little town, where it was very, very cold, so we didn't stick around very long.

The trip back to Milan was not very far (it's only about 2 hours away, really), but the fog was quite dangerous. At one point, we could hardly see the road markings, never mind about road signs or other traffic participants... I was extremely glad not to be driving (thanks to Jorryt). In the end, we made it home safely and in time to enjoy playing some more games as we do often...
The next morning, Jorryt and Lilian left and I decided to go back to work, and because my own building was closed, I went to my old office, where I was hoping to be able to use a computer. I felt very lucky when it turned out that not only were there computers available, there was even heating! That's the first time between xmas and new year that the university actually doesn't switch of the heating system... Unfortunately, they did decide to (temporarily) switch of the network, making it impossible for me to access both the internet and my own documents. Conclusion: little work was done...
Oh well, a few days later the network was back online and I have been doing quite a bit of work since then. Of course not many people are in the University, although it started picking up again the past 2 days (mind you, both 1st and 2nd year students have exams starting on Monday. So they ought to be back).
New Year's Eve was spent at the house of Belinda and Enrico, who returned from their honeymoon in the morning, after getting stuck in Dubai (piece of advice: if you're not European, make sure to bring your Permit of Stay when you leave the European Union...). It was a pretty good night and we got home around 4-ish.

Finally, we've had snow.
...
...
...
It was disgusting. It rain-snowed on Thursday and actually snowed on Thursday night. Friday during the day, it may have looked fairly pretty, if it wasn't for the rain that was falling, and the fact that the snow had already turned into one big muddy quasi-frozen Margherita. Slush, that is.
I'm glad that's over, anyway, and temperatures should be up again soon!

Ciao,
OJ

PS Movie Tip of the day: The History Boys. A BBC production based on the play that ran at the Royal Theatre in London in 2004. Absolutely excellent movie and interestingly enough, using the same cast as the play. Absolute must-see!

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-24T15:22:00.000+01:00

So, the holidays have started. Of course, just my luck, I have been sick for about a week now. However, I feel I am recovering now, and I am ready to start cooking. Actually, I have already started cooking this weekend, but the majority of it will take place tomorrow (and the day after). My 10-course meal is looking to be absolutely lovely, I truly believe. I even managed to get fresh tuna this year, in order to make my tuna carpaccio! So that should certainly delight Jorryt and Lilian, who will be arriving in an hour or so.
And of course christmas is also about unwrapping presents, because our tree is absolutely covered in presents, right now, so there will be quite a bit of that to do as well!

Unfortunately, we're not having a white xmas :-( Unless foggy white also counts, because it's been quasi-foggy all day long today... Anyways, to compensate for the lack of snow, we'll go to towards the Alps on Thursday, using the car we're renting for that day. So, that'll be a lot of fun too!

Anyways, all I wanted to do right now is wish everyone happy holidays!!!
Ciao,
OJ