GraZing

It's been two weeks since I arrived in Austria and since then, I have been getting into the rhythm of life in Graz, which is approximately 200km south of Vienna.

So far, so good I must say. It might be too early to say for sure, but I have the impression that this city has a lovely fusion of German, Italian, and Eastern European sensibilities. For example, Venice is often mentioned as a 'doable weekend trip' from Graz. Golly.

The Institute (IAS-STS) is a great place to work so far. It's filled with intellectually curious and open people from all over the world.... kind of like an Austrian STS version of Hogwarts... or rather like the X-Mansion of Charles Xavier... ;) It's proving an ideal place to dissertate.

When I first arrived, shellshocked from re-entering Eurospace (and the crazy journey previously mentioned), I got a transit pass to get around the city. It allowed me to take the trams and buses all around. However, I really missed the cycling I did in the Netherlands, and as I got to know the city better, decided to get a bike. The local preference is for fatter tires, given the terrain, so my bike is a cute little thing with a basket on the back (handy for groceries, though not for giving rides like in NL!). The bikes are also less numerous so though the law does not demand people wear helmets, there is enough traffic mixture to warrant wearing a helmet. Given my dissertation is still swirling around in my noggin, worth the 24 euro investment to protect, non? Through trial and error, I've since found some traffic calmed routes that avoid tram lines (and all the ugliness that can ensue from heavy traffic).

Speaking of getting around, I got myself a Vorteilscard, which is the ÖBB system discount card for trains. It was pretty easy to get at the station, and allows for 45% discount for journeys right off the bat. Given that I needed to book my journey to Geneva, I already made up the price of the card with this one booking. No Austrian bank account needed (cough cough). Only my Meldezettel (residence registration) and passport.

My own flat is on the "right side" (meaning facing downstream, and West on the map) of the Mur, and what one might call a "spacebox." My studio in Seoul was 246 square feet, which had been an exercise in efficient living, but this one even more compact at 161 square feet (15 square metres, for the metric-minded:) I've now managed to make things a little cozier and start to even like how everything is within arms reach... though my shower is literally a porcelain square but at least it's my own. It's in a primarily Turkish neighbourhood, which means no shortage of döner kebab places on a Sunday (when most things in the city would close). There are lots of casinos around the city, and places that say "Interactive Games" are often gambling of some sort with a video interface.

Opening hours for shops and services are what is normally expected for smaller cities in these parts. Shops usually keep 9am-6pm business hours, and things slow down on Saturdays (sometimes shops open in the mornings 9am-12pm), and on Sunday, only some shops are open at all. Luckily I had Delft life prepare me for this rhythm.

Food deserves its own paragraph too. It fills me with immense joy that food is once again a social thing. I am familiarizing myself not only with Austrian food, but Styrian specialties specific to the region, like pumpkin seed oil! And living within the embrace of the "good coffee belt" (which I am told ends when one travels north of Munich) is such a blessing during dissertation time. So civilized, during what can be a pretty mind-warping time.

More soon! The most exciting stuff is yet to come.

Constructing Amusement (in Airports) 2010/2011 - a review of the last little while

So. It's been a journey, channeling a boomerang and winging myself from living in Delft, Netherlands, to Vancouver, Canada for Christmas, and then to living in Graz, Austria.

Admittedly it was difficult to wrest myself from the comforting holiday cheer of friends and family in my hometown of Vancouver BC, but here I am, despite some pretty 'amazing' events, mostly to do with airport drama. Here is the link to my flickr set called "Dramatic flying."

Yes, I too was caught in the European airport debacle of December 2010. The Netherlands was slammed with a bout of snow that crippled its train system just enough to make getting to Schiphol from Delft a little more than interesting, and once at the airport the cascade of fail delayed or canceled flights and I did not make my connection in Frankfurt.

Once in Frankfurt, as covered by BBC World News, airports were shutting down altogether and the thought of not getting home for Christmas was a scary reality I was not willing to entertain at the time. After lining up for hours and making friends along the way, I managed to get waitlisted for the next flight to Vancouver and put up in Rüsselsheim just outside of Frankfurt for the night in order to try again the next morning. The next day, I lucked out and was able to get on the flight to Vancouver and arrive only 24 hrs later than planned. Lucky compared to others who had to camp out for 3-5 days or more during that time.

The two weeks in Vancouver were great. Hitting the ground running, I was meeting with colleagues at SFU the day after arriving, looking only a -little- insane. The rest of the time was seeing the friends and family I could leading up to Christmas and New Year... not to mention pigging out on some serious Vancouver food!

And then it was time to leave. Little did I know the adventure was just beginning (again). Commence airport jargon: Right out of YVR, the flight was delayed by more than an hour on the tarmac. So I missed my connection to FRA by a few minutes in YYZ. Pretty brutal. So I got rerouted and placed on a flight to MUC 1.5 hrs later. Kudos to the YYZ crew. Then after landing in MUC, had to clear passport control and hoof it make a connection to GRZ. Didn't have a ticket printed for that one, so that took more time and so another couple and I were the last ones being bussed to the little plane destined for Graz. The climax of the journey was that this little plane landed (the important thing) but then the cabin started filling with blue smoke because something had caught fire! We all evacuated onto the tarmac relatively calmly, while the fire engines, polizei etc came around. Wasn't exactly the welcome wagon I was hoping for in Graz but at least no one was hurt.

And then, well... considering all the events, my luggage didn't have time to catch up with me so it arrived 24 hrs later. Not bad in hindsight but you can imagine at the time I was quite beside myself. ;)

The rest of the week in Graz was comparatively easy! The first week of January in Austria is taken up with New Year's and Epiphany so the city has only really gotten going today. I have been settling in with all the 'housekeeping issues,' getting to know the Institute where I will be spending the next 3 months, and getting my bearings with the rest of the city. People in general here are disarmingly friendly and always willing to help. Things are organized and logistics are pretty easy to wrap one's head around. It's as though people believe your time is valuable here and they try not to waste it. How refreshing is that?

Things are off to a good start and I think I will like it here. As I mentioned to some, it is not lost on me that securing the time and space to write and reflect (in an intellectually stimulating environment no less) is indeed a privilege. And thus commences the second chapter of my "European (dissertation) finishing school."

Here's to a smooth, productive, and ~efficient~ New Year for all!

Delft life and Gothenburg in a week

So far, so good. It's been an eventful three weeks and promises only to get busier with the research end of things.

The month began with me (finally) checking out of my hotel, and heading to the university to do my lecture. The staff here have access to faculty bicycles that can be checked out for the day to get around the expansive campus. The lecture room happened to indeed be on the other side of campus and I only half-regret that my rocky attempt to take off on a bicycle too big for me, with a laptop strapped to my back was not documented. Perhaps for the best that only a few Dutch students witnessed this ;) I managed to eventually get going on it (don't ask) and it does get the heart going before lecture!

The students in the cross-cultural management course are a sharp bunch and we had a lively discussion afterwards about game addiction and what it means from a policy standpoint. I enjoy this group quite a bit, and have in subsequent weeks gotten into a mentorship role, providing feedback on their final projects, etc.

Home life: I'm living in a convenient apartment in the heart of Delft. It's a beautiful building built in 1899 and designed by architect Versteeg. Yes, I live in a tourist attraction. So I'm not adopting the traditional Dutch manner of leaving my curtains open, especially while tourists may be inclined take pictures that include my mundane activities!

While wrangling the predictable intricacies of doing research at the university, figuring out home life has been interesting. Little things, like how paper recycling is on Tuesdays and paper piles are left out in seemingly random spots with no designated bins (at least where I am). And then general garbage is out on Wednesdays, again with the little piles. Plastics get included in the general garbage, while glass and metal are a little ways off with bins at city hall and/or the supermarket. And so on, and so on. Figuring out the idiosyncrasies of the trains and how credit cards in general are viewed with suspicion (and not accepted in many places!) has also been an adventure of sorts.

Distances have also gotten closer, with the recent acquisition of a bicycle. After riding on the rack of yet another kind friend, I decided that enough was enough and in a way, a bicycle here is participation in society. It reminded me of how opting into games was a similar ticket to social life in other cultures! Bikes. Games. Hmm.

One week to AoIR in Sweden. I'm presenting the afternoon of my birthday, if you care to take a look at the program it's here>>

Happy Lunar New Year

Well, it's approaching lunar new year. The year 4705 officially begins on February 18.
Friend's blogs and such have reminded me of it, along with my parents saying we "MUST have dinner."
The timing changes every year, according to the 'moon' cycles. It's the year of the Pig, which are both my mother and brother. While this celebration has it's own rituals and lists of must-dos, I look at it as a second run at the New Year's resolutions I made more than 1 month ago--and that was to do everything bit by bit so as to avoid getting overwhelmed.

Take two :)
On the move:
I suppose I have come out of this last little while quite alright, having survived a move amidst demands that were anything but amenable to such lifestyle liminality. I made sure to do a little at once, have a checklist, and... and... and. But, when the time came to actually move, I was still in a state of OMG! My laptop had gone 'boom' and refused to turn on... so that was in the shop. Any grad student who has gone through this will know what an eye-twitching experience that was in itself. And the deadlines, the people across oceans who had no idea of the upside-down cake that was my life, were none the wiser. Ha. At least it was better than last year.
One could always say, "It could have been much worse," and one does. The actual day of the move was beautiful and sunny, and my piano didn't make a crunching sound while being jostled about. And I don't -think- I lost anything... it's just still in boxes and/or strewn about my less than "House and Home" looking place right now.
On customs:
It's normally taboo to do things like clean or cut one's hair while lunar new year is happening--on the premise that one could 'sweep the luck right out the door' or similar sentiments. Ideally, all your haircutting, new clothes, cleaning and other radical changes happen before new years. Like many customs, I can see why they exist--you want to get all that stuff out of the way before a celebration if humanly possible. But life overrules custom in this case (or should)!

Some lifestyle improvements since the move:

• It's now a steady 45-minute, one-bus commute into downtown from where I live. Really strange, when you consider that I used to live practically downtown but traffic made it a much more frustrating 30-minute journey to work (especially with the trench that used to be Cambie Street). Now, I get to settle in for the ride and get some book-learnin' done.
• Because the community is student-oriented, the transit is pretty good, with routes leading off the hill to almost anywhere in the GVRD.
• It used to be a real drag to commute -up- to the Burnaby campus for anything, but now that I live here it's great. Somewhat like an 'alpine getaway' now after a hard day slogging through work downtown.
• I'm now within striking distance of friends who do not live downtown so I get to see them more often.
• It's quiet, but not too quiet.

I'm being interviewed by some people for a documentary on video game players, so I'd best be off. More on that, this, and the other... you know where to find me.