Archive for January, 2006
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I have 13 days left in Louvain-la-Neuve.
Reasons why I like the place and I am gonna be looking forward to be coming back in May:
- very nice poeple from my corridor;
- a lovely sound of a city clock at every hour;
- insipring office;);
Why I am looking forward to going home:
- will not be cold anymore and will sleep better (I won’t have to think of buying earplugs everytime I go to bed).
By Nana | January 31, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, Personal | 1 Comment »
Ian Saved the Day
Right after I wrote a post about intellectual blockage, I talked to Ian. It helped a lot.
We were discussing options for qualitative interview analysis. Right after the phone call, I started to work. And it’s getting on very well, I must say.
First, I printed off the transcriptions of interviews, and started to reading them thru. At the same time, I am marking an important citations and putting them in additional document, which serves as some kind of category note. Quite some categories has already emerged and I put significant citations from the informants (the researchers who participated in the experiment) in each category.
Later on, I will also use QCA analysis, but more about that when I do so.
I just wanted to say: Thank you, Ian:)
By Nana | January 27, 2006 | Topics: PhD, Research | 2 Comments »
Intellectual Blockade
has eaten the whole Yesterday and already started chewing on Today … started to work at 9am and what have I done so far? Erm, khm … amm, boooo.
Today I really had a strange dream. Although I risk that my coefficient of weirdness (as my friend David calles it) will increase heavily, I feel like writing down a part of it:
I was a little Jewish boy, hiding in almost empty room apart from long shelves covered with green blankets. There were few other little boys in the room, around 8 or 9 years old. We all were covered with blankets. Then “they” entered the room, I was afraid “they” would notice me. Someone began pulling my leg and I was certain I had been cought. But the other little boy, who appeared to be a little German boy, pretended it was his leg. “They” said something and left. I was safe.
Hmmm, weird, huh? To add some more weirdness to the whole thing, today it is a Holocaust Memorial Day I as found out on news this morning. Maybe I was a little Jewish boy in my previous life. Or I simply sleep too much;)
Anyway, I better find out how I will come across this blockade. I try to analyse and interpret the data from the first experiment, and I don’t exactly have a clear idea of where to start. I have ten reports from the researchers, ten interviews with them, data from timeline, survey data about researchers work plus a number of logs from our communication during the experiment.
Where to begin? What to do with all these data? I had so many ideas before but now I seem to be quite confused. Ok, I will read .. reading always helps when intellectual blockade takes over …
By Nana | January 27, 2006 | Topics: Personal, PhD | 2 Comments »
Missed by 1 DAY
I was in the middle of sailing last summer, when I first heard they were coming to Slovenia. I nearly exploded out of happiness. Good that it was water nearby. Then soon after that, time of disillusionment came. In fact, on March 22nd, they would rather skip Ljubljana and go to Zagreb. Ok, Zagreb would be, I thought.
Then I found out this piece of info:
Wed, Jun 14th, 2006
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Central Bezigrad Stadium
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh
They will come and play literarily 500 metres from where I live and I will be in …. Belgium again. Just coming back on 15th. 1 5 t h I’ll be still able to feel the scent of them!
Ok, Zagreb - 22nd March will be.
Oh, btw, this Sunday they will stop by in Antwerp, very close … such a tease;)
By Nana | January 25, 2006 | Topics: Personal | 3 Comments »
Paranoia is my friend.
General guidelines for security:
1. Do not assume anything. / Ne predpostavljaj ničesar.
2. Trust no-one, nothing. / Nikomur, nilčemur ne zaupaj.
3. Nothing is secure. / Nič ni varno.
4. Security is a trade-off with usability. / Večja varnost
pomeni manjšo udobnost.
5. Paranoia is your friend. / Paranoja je tvoja prijateljica.
These guidelines I read today on slidedshow my friend sent me. They apply to Internet security.
But at the moment I am sitting in the office. And it all applies to me. Paranoid to leave. Why? We had a drink with friends from the corridor, and got late. I had to go back to the office to pick up my laptop. The building is closed so you can only come in with a card. A guy ran after me that he had to enter as well. Then he went exactly on the same floor as I, and asking me questions. He left the elevator for the same direction as I did. Then he went straight forward and I turned left to my corridor. Now I am sitting in my office for an hour already, afraid to leave. I guess I am being paranoid, but I keep wondering: what if it was a hoax. What if he is waiting for me at the corner? I am sure was not .. but still .. I am such a chicken now. Can’t leave.
UPDATE:
I came home safe;). But this morning I told the story to my colleagues from the corridor and they told me no such guy works here in the corridor neither on this floor. So, the guy apparently lied to me about working on the same floor but don’t know what his intentions were.
Anyway, next time, I will be 100% more careful: “Sorry, sir, but you will have to use your own card to enter!”
By Nana | January 24, 2006 | Topics: Personal | 2 Comments »
Pecheresse
Yesterday I took an afternoon off and went to Brussels. My friend David, who is currently living and lecturing at CU in Budapest, came to pick me up at Bruxelles Central. He played a city guide until the rain forced us to go in the first bar. I had a chocolat chaud. David almost fell of the chair when he heard my pronunciation of it. Oh well, am not exactly a Francophone. He warned me a while ago I should have at least learnt a few French words to use them at conferences and papers … according to his theory it increases one’s coefficient of intellectualness when doing so. He promised he would supplied me with basic vocabulary.
Then we continued our tour de Bruxelles, ending up drinking beer. No matter how I didn’t like beer and I had it at most five times in my life, I couldn’t get away without drinking it. I was recommended a fruit beer Pecheresse. Mmmmmm, it was really of good taste.
Bruxelles’s Persistence of Time
A funny little sculpture of a pissing dwarf Manneken Pis
Manneken Pis in a bit disclosed way
Blimey, they stole the Double-Decker! Look, Look, did this double decker lose its way? Back to London you go …
By Nana | January 22, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, Personal | No Comments »
Order Pizza
An absolute must see.
Mind the speakers;)
And then you might want to try this;)
If you want to know more, read this (for Slovene readers), or this (for Slovene and English readers).
By Nana | January 20, 2006 | Topics: Tech | 3 Comments »
A Strange Habit
which I developed here in Louvain-la-Neuve is that during every night (and it has almost been a week now) I wake up for a couple of hours, then I fall back to sleep and don’t wake up at least until 8am. Really strange for me, as I usually sleep like a baby straight for 8 hours or so, plus I am an early bird, waking up latest at 7am. So I thought this nite I should have made the most out of it and I started to read. I read for nearly an hour, felt sleepy again and there I was … back into sweet dreams.
Otherwise, I am quite satisfied with my work. The isolation does me good.
By Nana | January 18, 2006 | Topics: Personal, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Short Notes about Louvain-la-Neuve
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incredibly lots of couples around here (on my 5 minutes walk form home to the office I usually run into three or four);
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very few people speak English (apart from uni people);
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market all over the place Tuesdays and Saturdays;
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all the restaurants (and they are all over the place) are completely full at evenings;
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only one dog and one cat observed up until now;
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a very nice sound (like somebody would be playing the zither) of a city clock (I assume) at every hour;
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everyone speaks French and I have a firm feeling I am the only person who doesn’t;
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only one big supermarket in the whole city, which is a part of a big shopping centre, called E’splanade;
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delicious bread.
By Nana | January 16, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, Personal | No Comments »
Working Sunday
My initial plans for today were visiting Brussels but as I was quite productive yesterday I thought I should have continued working. Now, I partly regret and partly not regret the decision. I have boiling water under way again - I guess I need some balance. When I really feel the heat for work, then it is absolute. Yesterday, after about 9 hours of work I went home and continued reading - it was the new edited book of Christine Hine. I got stuck with the epilogue, written by Nicholas W. Jankowski and Martine van Selm. The authors discuss about agenda for Internet research and in accordance with methodological innovation concept, they report a gap exactly on the spot where my PhD could come in - the lack of research designs for incorporating three major paradigms within social science, or on a method level the lack of mixed methods designs suitable for Internet research. And this is exactly the thing I have been dealing with in the last year.
So, I put the book aside, tried to fall asleep but didn’t work. The ideas inside my head were chasing my sleep, questions kept popping up. Awful. Now, I am sleepy and much less productive then yesterday.
I took a walk around the lake, which is only a few minutes away from my office. The proof that Louvain-la-Neuve is a lot of nature, too;)
The ducks
Trees in the water
By Nana | January 15, 2006 | Topics: Academic books, Les Voyages, PhD | 3 Comments »
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