Archive for July, 2006
What else happened?
I met an incredible person Marie-Helene, I had a great post-conference time in London but this I will write when I write my 1000 for today … being a bit behind;)
By Nana | July 30, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, PhD | No Comments »
Oxford Research Methods Festival
After the Cambridge conference, I spent some days in London, working at LSE library. I managed to write my 1000 words a day and was getting more and more excited about upcoming Research Methods Festival, held at St. Catherine College in Oxford. Research methods festival … not a conference or a workshop but a festival. It was in fact more of a conference format but in a very dynamic and relaxed way, holding many concurrent sessions on very exciting topics (actually so many concurrent that I was confused most of the time which to attend as I wanted to hear them all).
In the end, I listened to sessions dealing with challenges in ethnography, innovations in qualitative research, ethical issues in social research, CAQDAS software and quality, anonymity & confidentiality, publishing, mixed methods, and QCA.
Again, some new faces appeared to my citations, such as Julia Brannen, Sara Delamont, Dave Byrne, Paul Atkinson and I also had an opportunity to meet Charles Ragin. Now, scrolling down my PhD has became a much more pleasant business;) Every time I run into Paul Atkinson quote, for instance, I start laughing out loud as I remember how he sketched a young doctor who decided to submit a book proposal to a publisher. Or I hear his scream “nooooooo” when he gave us advices on how to cope with publication rejections. All of them are very nice and approachable persons, indeed.
Well, neither Research Methds Festival 2008 will be left out of my schedule!
And, my Research Methods Library is richer for 23 books and journals. Some of them I bought in a splendid bookshop shown on the pictures below, some on the two conferences, and some in Waterstones in London in the section Second Hand, where I usually get to buy some interesting original works of classics.
I wish I had at least 10% of this at home;)
By Nana | July 30, 2006 | Topics: Conferences, PhD | 1 Comment »
2nd Mixed Methods Conference 2006, Cambridge, UK
was a real stunner. The sessions covered a great variety of topics, from most heated philosophical and methodological issues and new tools & methods in mixed methods research to more applied, policy and action oriented topics, such as using mixed methods approach in health, nursing, education and evaluation research. There were sessions also on gender issues, researching young people, language & culture, decision making etcetera. Indeed many interesting issues were debated and presented by a core group of scholars, practitioners and researchers dealing with mixed methods.
At the last year conference, the presenters were mainly from health and nursing disciplines whilst this year this was more balanced as people from variety of other disciplines presented their works.
What I liked, amongst all the new knowledge I accumulated there, is that I was able to put faces to names I am citing all over the PhD, such as Abas Tashakkori, Jane & Nigel Fielding, Donna Mertens, Niki Plano, Alan Bryman, Martin Bulmer, Anthony Onwuegbuzie, Lynne Giddings, and others. Max Bergman and John Creswell were there already last year, along with my co-supervisor David Morgan.
There was also a very lovely moment, when after the conference dinner some of us went to the auditorium, where professor John Creswell played a piano for us. It put a special touch to the conference. It was really kind of him to share his passion for music with us.
All in all, it was a very enriching experience in academic and sociable terms. I am already looking forward to Mixed Methods Conference 2007!
By Nana | July 30, 2006 | Topics: Conferences, PhD | No Comments »
I would like to find some time
to post about all the interesting stuff that happened in the last two weeks, but currently I am loaded with the final lap of the PhD writing plus preparation for upcoming summer school.
By Nana | July 26, 2006 | Topics: Ljubljana Summer School, PhD | No Comments »
EasyJet leads by the nose
Not only that they cancelled two of my flights without informing me beforehand, but they also have a very sophisticated way of getting rid of costumers on the phone.
On Friday, when I spoke with them about my cancellations, a lady said: “I am going to put 314 pounds on your account as a compensation for cancellations.” If you look at their terms and conditions, indeed an amount of 240 Euros per cancelled flight is mentioned.
So that lady asked me my credit card details, supposedly doing a transfer whilst I was on the line. She says: “Well, it just went through.”
I still haven’s seen those 314 pounds. I think it’s ethically compromising to get rid of customers like that, but they have their way. Let us see where it will lead them.
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Updates on very nice mixed methods conference in Cambridge and London these days follows.
By Nana | July 14, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages | 2 Comments »
EasyJet Nightmare continues
I just found out today’s flight, which should happen in less then 4 hours, has been cancelled - like on Sunday, nobody informed me and this time I found out form Slovenian Aerodrom Brnik website.
Will tell more later, currently I am dealing with these very impolite people to reschedule …
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UPDATE:
Well, I am suppose to be flying out on Sunday now, but how can I have any trust left in them. Also, my returned flight has been cancelled - not that they told me, but Brnik information desk told me that EeasyJet cancelled the following dates in JULY, on the line Ljubljana - Stansted or vice versa:
2, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24, 28, 31
I know, would be extremely nice if EasyJet actually informed any of the passengers as well, instead of letting us finding out 2 or 3 hours prior to our departure time.
Mind you that to reschedule flights I had to call +448706000000 in the UK. Crazy! Well, I told them to call me back at their expences, of course.
They should change their “Thank you for flying with us today.” into ” Good luck if flying with us today!”;)))
By Nana | July 7, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages | 4 Comments »
EasyJet Nightmare
I left London yesterday morning, going to Stansted Airport to take an EasyJet flight home till Friday, when I am going back to the UK. I arrived at check-in at 11am for the one o’clock flight. There was no sign of check-in-Ljubljana point. So I went to one of the other check-ins asking where was the check in for LJB flight.
Lady: Well, you can check in anywhere, also with me ..
Bojana: Ok, cool …
EasyJet lady: ohh, I forgot … but Ljubljana flight has been cancelled
Bojana: Whaaaaaaat??????
From this point on, the nightmare began. There were 12 Slovenian people of us, and couple of English. Have you seen the TERMINAL? There was a slight resemblance;)) There were all these EasyJet people at the Customer Information point, but all of them were only “handling agents” apparently not being able to do a thing, apart from telling us that the next flight was on Tuesday.
Well, the fact that they did not inform us about cancellation made it even harder. They were not open to any discussion, constantly repeating that the are only “handling agents”. Ok, after some hours we were able to speak *on the phone* to some kind of manager in Luton. Richard something, who was stubborn, was trying to persuade us that we received those emails that were supposed to be sent out on 27th of July. None of us got those emails, plus there were people amongst us that left Ljubljana only on 28th which they would never have done, had they known the flight had been cancelled.
Anyway, that Richard kept saying he can not do a thing, and I kept repeating we would have not settled for any less than getting back home on Sunday, even if they had have to order a private jet. They cancelled the flight, we were not notified about it and they should have dealt with consequences in order.
Step by step, hour by hour, talking to loads of “handling agents” and Richard, we managed to book the flight from Gatwick to Venice at 6pm, getting just the last free seats - what a luck! OK, then we needed the transportation first from Stansted to Gatwick and then from Venice to Ljubljana. They wanted to send us on a train and again we did not agree. We requested a bus from one airport to another and then one to our final destination - from Venice to Ljubljana (there was no other transport anyway late at nite).
The flight was cancelled *due to operational reasons* which we all knew were too few passengers, so was not cancelled due to any higher power and they were obliged by their own terms and conditions to ensure us to get to our final destination.
To make a long, but really long and traumatising and tiring story short, by 5pm approximately, we managed to negotiate the transport from Stansted to Gatwick, the food vouchers, and the transport from Venice to Ljubljana. All 12 of us, who really performed as a team, were persistant untill the end. Loads of blah blah, tons of stupid excuses and ignorant behaviour from their side, talking to many “handling agents”, Richard and some Alex, we finnaly made it. Got home at 3 am. I still have a headache, especially when I think that I need to take their flight back to London on Friday.
Apparently four of us were university people, employed at UL, and we had all been to London for projects or a workshop, which means we will get the tickets reimbursed. We could have taken Adria. But we did not, as we are of opinion that it does not matter whether it is EC money, our money or UL money, we should not be wasting it. Well, lesson learned.
I am (or was until recently) a frequent passenger on EasyJet and did not had a bad experience before. But this really outweighted all the trust I had in them. We had to fight to get to Ljubljana, they were quite happy with leaving us in London till Tuesday. Their attitude was highly disturbing, like we were a piece of luggage … like if we had have no obligations and places to be today …
On Friday, I will call to the airport to check whether the flight is still shceduled;) And even then I won’t be quite certain.
By Nana | July 3, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages | 3 Comments »
London in the Summer Time …
Summerset house water joy …
Little Venice evening on a bicycle …
By Nana | July 3, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages | No Comments »
Left Belgium
for London, where we had a thematic network meeting at LSE.
I would like to thank to all my friends at UCLouvain for very nice time I had in the past months among them; to Benoit for his intellectual input in my writing up, Anne-Sylvie to driving me back to Court-Saint-Etienne in the last two weeks, Caroline for a great farevell cake, Lieven for this nice t-shirt on comparative religions (see below;)), Airo for his tour around Leuven, and Regis, Pierre, Virginie, Ward, Gaelle and Guilia for dinner parties, nice chats and just being around. Merci beaucoup, cher amis! I can’t wait to greet you all in a few weeks time in Ljubljana.
This is well worth reading;)
My favourite: Existentialism: What is shit anyway?
By Nana | July 3, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, Personal | No Comments »