step out of the rush

I think some people are not sure whether to get bigly chilled this year.

For the love of all that is good,

Fat Freddy's Drop

Big Chill, chickens, where's the room for doubt?

chladnicka

We have a new fridge. The old one was fine - had indeed recently been cleaned. I can only guess that as a fairly new EU member, Slovakia has got round to contributing to the union's fridge mountain. Moreover, the new fridge doesn't close as well as the old one, which will lead to electricity wastage when people don't shut it properly.

While I'm on the subject, several taps at the UN building get left running because they need a wrench to turn off (I have brought this to the attention of the homo sapiens in charge of such matters... "Taps are complicated and expensive").

When I was 35% younger I used to spend a lot of time on the www.fadetoblack.com message board, where fridgemagnet was one of my favourite posters.

Postscript: searching for 'black hole europe' led me to read of CERN being taken to court in Hawaii for possibly creating a black hole in the Large Hadron Collider, thereby eating the world. It sounds like an excellent solution to the problem of existence; I imagine that dying in a black hole would be very quick, and therefore acceptably painless. (And who knows if we would actually die? Maybe we would be spat out reformulated in another dimension new galaxy, intergalactic planetary...)

Beat corruption - and live in Bratislava!

I want to urge you to advertise this job far and wide, and encourage you to apply if it looks good.

Policy Analyst (Human Rights and Justice)

It will be an interesting post and requires remarkably little experience, only two years'. Let me know if you're interested (although that is not a condition for applying!).

possiblz the most imnportant thing ever

none of us is convinced, in this skeptical day and age, of the importance of important things. but one thing is not relative, explicable or faddish. and that one thing is plural.

apples for everyone are playing a very important gig which i won't be at, and i hope beyond reason that some of you will go. not just dave hat, as he is in the band and that doesn't count.

the gig is

• at surface unsigned festival, tufnell park tube, boston music rooms 178 Junction Road, London, N19 5QQ
• this wednesday night at nine
• obviously going to be great. obvious at least to those who have seen an apples gig before.

sam - rally some troops. contact dave for a cheap ticket.

A beer by the path by the wood by the river

Anyone else sunburned yet this year? My shoulders, knees and elbows, got caught sunbathing by the reservoir, with water all the way to Samorin, just near the excellent Danubiana art gallery. At least I assume it's a reservoir, its banks are concrete. Samorin looks from that distance like a moonbase, with big white buildings (standard sixties population-influx housing) and a water tower or something looking all sci-fi.

The gallery and the view are on the cycle path toward Gabcikovo, where I and I went for a fine bike ride-picnic-gallery visit yesterday. The head of the Hungarian coalition party was there with half his daughters, and most other people were German (Austrian), it seemed. But it's a wicked gallery, very spacious and nice light (especially on a sun-only day like yesterday). The exhibition at the moment has excellent paintings and makings by the excellent Kemeny-Szereme couple. Never heard of them, but they seem quite famous and I have the feeling my grandparents will be able to tell me things about them.

I can give some photos, but of ZK's work, there are a few good photos here, and of MKS's here. I liked her paintings in particular, (for me) people too busy having mundane lives to worry about it. Although it's sad, like walking around Lewisham shopping centre thinking that without some kind of inspiration, this is where all our global development efforts are leading. (Except they aren't because the (human/natural)world won't allow (structurally/environmentally) the spread of Lewisham's living standards to the whole world.)

I've been forgetting to listen to the radio for weeks, but I'm back on NPR now, specifically on All Songs Considered. It reminds me of some recurrent habit of making long lists of music to obtain after such listenings. It started with Invicta FM, sadly with long gaps. Of note from today: Madvillain, Television, and Gnarls Barkley. And memories of the Magnetic Fields. There was also an awkward interview-guest DJ spot with Thom Yorke; I liked his habit of skipping through the tracks to find what he wanted.

And since I like the idea of being paid to go up mountains, you can give money to Rachel to do that here.

An observation on corruption

In a report about corruption in Montenegro, I saw the interesting observation that a contributory factor to relatively high and stubborn corruption is

a small population where it is almost a statistical certainty that persons in key leadership positions will be related

Presumably also, there will be plenty of family ties between the government and the mafia. We know from something to be published shortly on my website that there are a large number of small arms floating around, presumably making Christmas a rather tense affair.

mid-slither

All I have done since I came in is use energy. I turnded on the computer, which is slowly, loudly rendering a movie uploadable. I put bread in the toaster, and I have boiled a kettle (must dash and make cuppa). I have now put the toaster on again, after which I will probably use some hot water in shaving. But it's all okay, because I went for a totally carbon-free bike ride, down to the Danubiana art gallery (as it turned out: -be, not -ben). Except... I picked some flowers. Okay, defenceless eco-vandal. And now I'm carbonally writing about it.

Ilona took my camera to Transylvania; since she does not arrive back until late this evening, I couldn't take said camera on my bike ride, but if I had, I would have shown pictures of:

• a dog and its reflection gambolling along the bank of the canal
• a roadkill snake, squished in mid-slither and sss-shaped but perfectly flat
• (possibly) my bike chain against a background of the big machinery used to control the locks at the reservoir (thus proving that things which look similar can have different applications)
  

Even with a camera I couldn't have taken a picture of the special shit-squared sewage scent from the plant five minutes down the cycle path from my street, but I'm sure you have the means to imagine. Typical Bratislavan planning non-sense. Otherwise, the path is a good one, almost entirely intact with a minimum of potholes and several good watering holes along the way. And with Spring arriving in earnest in the last days, very well used this afternoon. Sadly, in contrast to its fine outoftown cycling, there is not a single bike rack in the centre of the city. I even asked a policeman. Maybe I'll write to the city government.

Last: I just finished reading With their backs to the world, by Asne Seierstad, about Serbian people, which was by turns depressing and more depressing, albeit with a few lighter moments. Entirely journalist, neither introduced nor concluded, just presented. I wish I'd read it before we wrote our Serbia report. The nutcases lead normal lives, and the superstars are frail and not 100% sympathetic. And Robert Mugabe does yoga every morning, and Vitler was a hedgetarian...

Take these words, rearrange any set of them in any order, and assign a UN High Representative

What is the logic behind a UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and the Small Island Developing States?

The body is evil and must be punished

1) Slovak word of the day is bolest', for what my thighs, arse and hamstrings are feeling. Yesterday morning I played squash for the first time, and will definitely play again. It is a gruelling game which requires you to save for new knees for your second fifty years, but extremely satisfying. I think I probably came last in the tournament, but it was none the less thrilling for that. I also suck at ping pong, but I've played that before so can say it with some certainty. After cycling home, I fell into bed and headbuzz lost out to body mutiny; I slept the sleep of the greedy, right in the middle of the day. Now, having decided the hair of the dog was the best cure and cycled ten kilometres, I am in a hot bath getting tender. But I taught myself to cycle with no hands, so all is very good.

2) If you'll allow the contrivance, Tibet is supposedly quite a spiritual place, so let us call it the soul, in contrast to material, mechnical China, which can be the body. So, Beijing: what should be done? For basic side-taking, it's hard to not go for the underdog, but that is made more complicated when every ethnic Han Chinese shop in Lhasa is burned to the ground by the cuddly people of unfree Tibet. Don't get me wrong, I think Free Tibet is right - a group more or less clearly defined, having suffered decades of foul suppression by an infinitely more powerful neighbour, should have the right to its (monkocratic) self-setermination. And since the Tibetans aren't even asking for independence, rather autonomy (presumably meaning being left entorely to their own thing and bargaining with China on an equalish footing), Chinese intransigence loses the ethical battle for me. (Yes, they're worried about the rest of the empire splitting up, but I'm not one for big countries; the more splitting up, under federal structures, the better.)

But the tone with which Tibet is approached is somewhat disappointing, like the more black and white attitudes you hear toward Kosova, or Palestine, or any of the number of less sexy cases. Maybe it's a selfish and aesthetics-based view of the world but I much prefer arguments to be made thoughtfully and with a view to solving a problem. Recognising that more will inevitably be created in so doing (viz a thousand examples, including the last time the West boycotted the Olympics, due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to get rid of the people who then launched jihad on said West).

Eventually you realise that everyone is bad in the right circumstances. I thought There Will Be Blood was a fine film, and it made this point among others very nicely.

(Regarding the persecution of Han Chinese by ethnic Tibetans recently, what can we do other than deplore all violence? And where does that leave those throwing off their yokes? In Estonia, Russians who were settled there by the Soviet leadership are now legally, in an EU country, second-class citizens - but on the other hand, all they have to do is learn Estonian: easy, right?)

More pics, oops-lost:

We started in La Herradura with Jess and Sam.

and went through snow

A characteristic pose.


I'm bereft, Joe has left, Prague, Berlin and home ag'in. But at least I have some pictures from his stay.


From Skalnate Pleso, last weekend, after a gorgeous hike and before a glass of hot wine. We ran into the colleague responsible for localising the MDGs. UNDP is everywhere.


In Stary Smokovec, waiting for the train and writing postcards.


The tastiest thing about the canteen we kept ending up in. The restaurant Koliba, just over the train track, is the one to look for. Albas Koliba is also good; Albus nightclub is not.

We were in Budapest during International Pillow Fight Club, armed with cameras but sadly not with pillows.

Flab dog in the ducksnow.

The Gomboc is the second Hungarian invention to reach the front cover of The Mathematical Intelligencer, the first being the Rubik cube.

After Palestrina, at the totally wicked Palace of Arts in Budapest (also the location of the Gomboc above). The opera was very interestingly produced, and the singers were excellent. What's more, the story (16th century Catholic politics) was a good one for opera, I think.

Joe at the castle.