It's all over, and I am back in Pressburg. We stumbled across a horse race this afternoon. Ilona bet on Senita, who came first. My Kragulec came fourth. In no particular order:
Geneva has a big fountain in its lake, which has been running for a hundred something years and which is a very pleasant feature. Like many lovely things, it started life as a mistake.
Attending a technical UN conference was predictably an experience which broadened my mind. Maybe not in ways I would have expected - by far the most attractive aspect was the jolly academic cameraderie of the demographic experts, which maybe bodes well since I will study Demography and Health in the autumn. The subtitle of the Generations and Gender Programme conference was "Towards Policies Based on Better Knowledge", but there was a lot on knowledge and not so much on policy. Their potential to come across as a navel-gazing group with no values was tempered by the impassioned call during the closing session from the very impressive John Hobcraft for the scientific community to remember their role as providing a basis for valuable social policy making; given the large-scale disinterest of the policy community, they could be forgiven for treating the event as a chance merely to talk among themselves, but thankfully this closing comment and that from the UNECE's director or general secretary, following that from the UNFPA representative, suggested that the estrangement of the policy and data aspects of the conference might be addressed in the design of future events.
My presentation went okay. The previous midnight, at home, it went better, but no matter. I learned a great deal in the process (this has to happen in a real forum because I failed to get involved in a debating group at university - word to anyone in the position not to make that mistake), not least that I may fluster myself by trying to respond to the chair's joke in his introduction. But maybe a bit of humour is worth a bit of fluster. In all, the attempt to get policy makers to include young people in developing policy which targets them fell a little foul of the aforementioned lack of interest from the national delegates (although the woman from the Council of Europe was sincerely interested and had some good ideas). Which means if anything happens in the continuing saga of UNFPA's youth policy review, it will probably be led from the international technical support side rather than the national
All the above is academic though, as I am embarking someday soon on a new life as a particle physicist - the proper tour of CERN wasn't even available, but the standing exhibition was enough. The joys of maths and the immensity of scale (large and small), the beauty of the precision of the engineering, the sound of cow-bells clanging in the field opposite Site B. And the distance (measured, of course, in light years) from the frustrations of trying to make social policy. So yes, any day now...
Any suggestions welcome as to how a prospective country director for Amnesty International could propose to spend 4000 euros on a one-year project. It seems rather a little to me...
Photos soon.
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6 comments:
Of course - I did know why you were in Geneva, I was just being temporarily dense. I'm glad it went well. Did you get chance to see much of Geneva socially, besides the fountain? (Leisurely is in fact the more accurate word here, but I like socially; I like the idea that the place would interact with you as much as you with it.)
4000 euros does seem very little for a project that long.
My CERN moment - fashion students' degree show at Newcastle Poly: seemed much more appealing than plant biology!
Intrigued to know what the humorous intro was...
I spent rather a long time at the CERN exhibit, so spent less time than I might've socialising with Geneva. That said, I made a pretty good tour of its old town. A lot of very nice design shops, lots of lovely material objects for the home and life; very expensive.
And I saw the Palace des Nations, which is pretty famous among Geneva's buildings. Saw, walked around, all the rest. Ate in, got lost in etc.
For humorous read relatively humorous - Maybe it's because governments don't care about young people, said the chair; I'm happy that at least I have been integrated into this panel said the Chris. Cringe said those audience members who were awake. Fluster fluster Good day, said Chris, I am here to present ET CETera.
I'd like to be a physicist as well. It seems like a glorious way of being. Unfortunately I don't have the skills for it, only the interest.
Also its a bit like fiddling while rome burns, but then again maybe so is making art.
You're probably doing the right thing doing what your doing. Although, as you know, I am suspicious as to whether the UN and such things will yet play the possitive role they could or continue to do negative things or ineffective things, with many of their aims being... well the sort of thing that makes fire not puts it out. But its easy for me up here on the mountain playing my fiddle.
If anyones going to be a firefighter for jesus (the original socialist, innit) its probably going to be you.
Mind you, presentations in Geneva, that's a bit conventional.
Not wanting to de-power my own attempt at "humour" there, but IO'm with scaffolder: what was the joke?
Ah... I see you did say what the humour was, it just threw me cos it doesn't seem to have been the chair who made the humour, but the chris. The joke wasn't bad as such, though less a joke and instead a good point. I read this article the other day that totally attacked the idea of youth parliaments or consultation because kids aren't old enough to understand things... I wondered who on earth was old enough to understand things, and if the youth didn't have more of an idea of what is happening to the youth than those people who are theoretically old enough to understand things but practically have no exposure to the CURRENT concerns of the young.
It didn't matter how loud I shouted though Macel Berlins was still nowhere near me.
Oh, hang on, re-reading the exhange again it seems that the chair was joking, in a very odd and accurate way. Of course, no chair would say: "Maybe it's because governments don't care about young people" and mean it unless they were chairing a personal discussion or they were Boris Johnson (sorry, I must be wrong the ol' BJ does care about kids, so much that he wants to make kids who have problems with school go into school on saturdays to have extra lessons in how to behave... nice!)
I think being flustered can be forgiven due to the nature of the chairs joke. It seems to me to have been very oddly pitched, although maybe it was all in the tone of voice.
At the surface unsigned gig I mentioned into the mic that the audience full of uncomfortable making cheering and raised hands (they were voting for us you see) looked like a Nazi Rally. It doesn't seem to have done much damage, mostly cos the cheering drowned it out, but I still maintain that such a response was justified. I mean, what do you say when people behave oddly at you? You can't bow if you're a band and if you are supposed to stay on stage and people are being daft what do you do to stop feeling sheepish?
What would help is all is remote controlled audiences that react as they are mean't to and thus do not put off the people who are giving them presentations or gigs.
Goosey, I find your example very odd - what's strange about fans at a gig raising their arms and cheering for the band on stage? I'm well up for making people consider their actions in a different light, martian's-eye views and all. (Although it seems a little risky when those in question aren't just cheering but are pushing you toward stardom!) When at rallies, I feel a bit uncomfortable looking at people chant about whatever they chant about. Or rather, the most striking aspect is always the similarity between war-stopping or World Bank bashing protests and rallies on other, mutually exclusive activities, NF or whatever, football chants, the bits in church services where everyone mumbles the same thing. They all have something sinister and disappointing about them. In true bio-structuralist form(!), I guess it says that people and social organisms are very similar undearneath, only distinguished by the window-dressing of allegiances or agendas.
Audiences are oppressive, and they have codes of behaviour. Seeing Winton Marsalas at the Royal Albert Hall was (great, but also) very frustrating: an RAH audience Does Not move. At all. the very occasional nodding head, and goodness knows how many tensed up buttocks and silenced hips dying to show that they can hear the music.
The time I most hated audiences was at the end of "Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder", a dance piece by Yasmeen Godder. She is an Israeli choreographer and this piece had a major theme of the suffereing and humiliation of life with checkpoints. Of course it was much deeper than that, with a lot of references to pain within individual relatinoships as well as the larger scale, and all delivered with maybe the most precise, smooth dancing I have ever seen. In short, both form and content were captivating and moving. It ended with a woman crying-scraming very loud and hysterically with her boyfriend dying in her arms. A very strong climax, the stage dark apart from the two of them, all other dancers gone - it was 'over', except that she was continuing this incredible grief. In that moment, there was no wronger audience reaction than to start clapping and whistling. We should have all left quietly, or what. But they clapped and cheered and I couldn't fathom that we had just spent an hour watching the same thing. Maybe I'm snobbishly projecting, but pretty much everyone else had missed the point.
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