Les Voyages
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Yesterday and today, I woke up in a beautiful sunny morning. I find it very weird that at 8am there is still dark outside and at nine, when I head for office, there are only a few people outside. The scene is pretty much like Ljubljana at 5am. In accordance with this, I was still sleepy even at 10am.
Yesterday I even took some pictures:
This picture was taken in their information centre and it shows the area before Louvain was built in the seventies.
The city plan, obviously;)
Louvain-la-Neuve happened;)
Three levels of Louvain-la-Neuve
The ground level
Walking streets …
The building, where my working space is located.
Off to work I go!
By Nana | January 14, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, Personal | 2 Comments »
The phenomenon of Louvain-la-Neuve
Yesterday evening I arrived to Louvain-la-Neuve all the way from London. The Eurostar train was quite comfortable to travel with and I was pleasantly surprised at the Brussels train station, when I wanted to buy a ticket to Louvain-la-Neuve. The ticket guy had told me I didn’t have to buy any extra ticket but could go to any Belgium station with a Eurostar ticket.
Then, upon arrival, I somehow realised that my ignorance of French could be quite a challenge. The first encounter was a nice proof of that. I wanted to find out where Bia Bouquet (the street where I live) is. The guy only spoke French and I not a word of it … but then luckily I bumped into a girl who knew a few words in English and I found my way ‘home’.
The next morning, which is today;), I went on another adventure - I had to find the CMC (Centre de Politique Comparee) and my new office. With each step further into the heart of Louvain-la-Neuve I began to realise it was no ordinary town. My assumptions were confirmed at lunch time, when my friend took me to a stroll across the city. He explained the concept behind the town. The centre is actually based on Leonardo da Vinci’s idea about showing what is nice and hiding what is not. The town thus appears as a three-level department store. On the underground level (-1), there are car parks and ways in (roads, trains). Then the ground level (0) it’s only pedestrian. It is the place where people meet, socialize, walk etc. Above that (+1), there are places to live (apartments) and work (offices). Really an impressive structure!
Photos to be taken and published soon;)
By Nana | January 12, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, Personal, PhD | No Comments »
Heading for Belgium
In a few days, I will be ‘moving’ to Louvain-la-Neuve, where I will be a visiting researcher at UCL for a month. I am really excited to find out more about the town just over 20 years old with university 581 years old. How is that?
So, here is the story of Lovain-la-Neuve: Chatolic University of Lovain is a name for two parallel institutions of higher education; one giving instruction in Dutch, the other in French. The original university, the oldest in Belgium, was founded by a bull issued by Pope Martin V in 1425. In 1970 the university was reorganized as two parallel autonomous institutions, one being the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Dutch) and the other Université Catholique de Louvain (French). And that’s how a new town emerged as almost exlusively student town as apparently half of its population is currently attending the university and the other half are former students.
Today, I asked my friend whether I should have brought my running shoes and he replied: “Sure, it’s a great place to run, it’s full of pedestrian alleys and footpaths, and also a very large sports centre, and swimming pools, and a nice forest nearby, + a path around a lake, too, etc.” Now tell me, who wouldn’t be excited over such answer?
5 Nights to go;)) … oh no, six, + one in London (I couldn’t go anywhere in this world bypassing London;))
By Nana | January 5, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages, PhD, Research | 3 Comments »
Heaven For Writing
If I had this library in Ljubljana … if I only had it for the next year or so …
By Nana | August 11, 2005 | Topics: Academic books, Les Voyages, PhD | No Comments »
New Explosions in London
only minor explosions, three tube stations, one bus, one injured, read more one bbc news.
Hmmm, what is this? Two weeks after the bombing someone is trying to scare Londoners again? Oh well, now that I managed to get rid of the temperature, will I have to be worried about the bombs? I don’t think so. Let’s work on;))
By Nana | July 21, 2005 | Topics: Les Voyages, Uncategorized | No Comments »
On An Opening of a Gallery and On Running a Temperature
Yesterday evening, one of my temporary housemates (Oliver) here in London invited me to an gallery opening. Like the other two housemates (Hannah and Steve, who designed the logo for this gallery), he is an art student, interested in impact of ICT on art creation and its dissemination. Yesterday opening didn’t have anything to do with his web interests tho. Instead, he helped to build the gallery. The current exhibition is called Beautiful Seedy, featured by Steve McIntrye. At first, it seemed a bit odd, a vibrator and a phallus drawer. Then I read the accompanying and I like the idea behind the drawers. As the artists says:
“The sexual content of the work is intentionally interactive, opening a drawer by means of a phallus or a vibrator is an ironic gesture towards the upsurge in sexually based material and modern society. We live in an era of Pornographic Chic, where the use of sexual images is prevalent in everything: from clothing to the release of a new song … “
Nice drawers, huh?
Then I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night, shaking and quivering all over my body. At first I thought that the weather had gotten worse but then I realised was me. I measured my body temperature and what a pleasant surprise: 39,5. In London. What could I want more?? What an appropriate timing. Well, I didn’t wait for another moment but got up and took some medicine I had brought with me. Then I got myself tucked up in bed and started to sweat … so right now I think am doing much better. Oh well, am not gonna let the temperature spoil my plans;))
UPDATE
The temperature still here … a bit lower tho but I haven’t been able to do anything substential today. What a nuisance!
By Nana | July 17, 2005 | Topics: Les Voyages | No Comments »
Too Hot To Work
After all the conferences in the last week I am finally based here in London and I should start working on my papers, PhD and stuff. But instead I try to find ways how to cope with the heat here. It’s waaaay too hot. Well, I will have to find a solution, I guess.
So, basically, here there’s no trace of what happened last week (well, apart from the stations, which are still guarded by the police and there are flowers for those who lost their lives there). People live a very normal life, sweating on buses, rushing to work, laughing in the pubs, enjoying sales, etc.
So … rushing off to the library …
By Nana | July 14, 2005 | Topics: Les Voyages | No Comments »
Safe In Oxford
Hmmm … to all who sent me all the sms messages and emails: thanks for your concern. Luckily enough, I am in Oxford at the moment and won’t be going back to London till Sunday. Then I hope things will get back to normal. Tho here in Oxford people appears to be mad chilled … nobody seems to be bothered with what happened in London this morning … well, at least it looks like that. I keep getting smss whether I am ok and where am I. Seems to me that the rest of the world is in much greater panic about what’s happening around here than can actually be felt here.
My conference has just started and my presentation was good this morning. Most of the participants here are philosophers so the comments were quite interesting. One for example said: you know, there is no such thing as quantitative data, all data is in fact qualitative. Wow, I need to have a conversations with him. And the other one said: You know, a qualitative methodology is positivist one as well. And there was another comment on how all social science methodology is rubbish and that there is a completely different approach to research. I like all three of them and hope to have some fruitfull discussions in the following days.
In the afternoon me and Jana went to do some strolling thru the city, which btw is extremely appealing. And I found a fantastic book which I happened to forget in a toilet in the cinema … then I needed to rush back and at my surprise it was still there. Well, people probably don’t find a big excitement in social research methods book from Clive Seale … Actually it’s a very good reader.
Will keep in touch …
By Nana | July 7, 2005 | Topics: Conferences, Les Voyages | No Comments »
La Vita e Bella. Indeed!
So … for the last two weeks I didn’t post anything … cos I wasn’t connected … I was swimming and diving instead … IF. ONLY.
But I did get a little taste of it, actually. I spent five days at Dugi otok (Long Island, Isola Lunga … ) at Dalmatian Coast in the end of April and the beginning of the May. It was hilarious! Great weather + bit of diving + bit of swimming + loads of reading (must be fiction, preferably Kundera) + even more sleeping + add some fresh sea food = the magic formula to recharge one’s power.
Wasn’t too difficult to compute, really;))
By Nana | May 11, 2005 | Topics: Les Voyages | No Comments »
More of GOR
The third presentation on this session addressed the future of blogging. Author (Rasco Perschke) introduced a new technique for analysing blogs, called COM (communication-oriented modelling). We can use it for describing a large-scale communication networks, focusing on “message to message” relations, or for social variability and different levels of connectability. COM theory is a social theory, concentrating on messages and communication operations (inception and reception). Authors made a study of linking, since links are the central elements of weblog posting. They looked at how links were integrated into blogs entries. The last presentation I listened to in this session was a very interesting Jan Schmidt’s presentation on Blogging as social action. Firstly, he introduced various styles of blogging: private journals, expert communication, corporate communication and political communication. Then he introduced how a blogging episode is framed by various structural elements, such as codes, rules and relations. Those interested can find the whole stuff here.
After lunchtime I went to listen to session Digital Divide & Digital Inequality, which included three presentation (one of them was Vesna’s Advanced Measuring of Digital Divide). But in was particularly intrigued by the one on Non users of internet, presented by Maren Hartmann. She conceptualised the internet non-user as a research category. They don’t use internet due to lack of trust, luck of abilities, they either have no need or desire. To find out more about non-users, please read this report from Pew Internet.
The last three sessions I listened to on Tuesday were session on Website evaluation, session on Interaction Processes in Online Groups and last one Response rates in Online Surveys. The most impressive presentations: Uwe Matzat on Theory of relational signals in online groups and Adam Joinson (who also chaired the blogger session) with Personalisation, authentication and self-disclosure in self-administered web surveys. Well, this one was really something. That nice British accent, a cup of coffee and very relaxed appearance made it the winner of the conference for me;)). Tho I must not forget Lars with his progress indicators and Katja’s meta-analysis. I was really tired by the end of the day so I made very little or no notes at all. But after the first day, I was very happy with the conference. A delicious conference dinner was a nice closure to it.
To be continued …
By Nana | April 1, 2005 | Topics: Conferences, Les Voyages | No Comments »
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