Less Rest

Minimal truths

2010-02-08T16:52:00.001-08:00

Upon reflection, I think one could encapsulate my personality into the following:
Ockham's razor
Schrödinger's cat
p=mv

These are things I believe. Things I think about. A lot. Things that pretty thoroughly guide how I experience the world.

Put another way,
(Ockham's razor) + (Schrödinger's cat) + (p=mv) = Beth

Book Club

2010-01-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

Definitely my favorite part of the day. A genuinely good group of people, and I look forward to this monthly gathering.

The Big Burn is a great book, fwiw.

LearnMakeCupcake!

2010-01-06T21:28:00.001-08:00

Favorite part of today:
Meeting with new research group and talking about exciting project: building a makerbot and using the building process as a way to explore and document how non technical folks can learn technical skills.

Best part of the meeting: the name they came up with for the project blog:
LearnMakeCupcake! Check us out.

Comments!

2010-01-06T09:52:00.000-08:00

It's only 9:53 am, but I think it's going to be hard to beat my joy at discovering comments on the last post. Thanks!

Also, thanks for letting us know your favorite parts!

Six hours of teaching in a day

2010-01-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

It sounded like a good idea at the time. Double up my teaching in winter quarter. No formal classes in spring to allow for some fieldwork. It also sounded like a good idea at the time to schedule the classes for the same day. One undergrad, 2 hours, 2/week. One grad, 4 hours 1/week. Which equals six hours of classroom teaching on Tuesdays.

Got home around 10:30 pm, houseguest was there watching The Bachelor on her computer. Sucked into the drama while I wanted for teaching adrenalin to drain from my veins.

Fell asleep before I had time to blog.

Best thing about today (which is really yesterday): the undergrad class is that under-the-radar interdisciplinary course I mentioned in previous post. First meeting today. Students sat silent and confused at start of class. Why are there strangers from another department sitting next to me?? After a couple hours of conversations: laughter and connections.

What was the best thing about today?

2010-01-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

Historically speaking, I may be among the world's worst bloggers.
Not that I intend to completely change that. But I have a friend who has some of the best rituals with her kids. After a day out and about, she'll call out "who had fun at the party?' or "who had fun on the hike?' or whatever the event was. And hands go up in a communal and visible expression of satisfaction, happiness, joy.

I've also heard her ask "what was your favorite part of today?" which I think is an amazing way to teach your kids to be reflective about the good things in their life. It's also a lesson most of us could use a refresher course in if the hallway chitchat in my part of the universe is any indication.

So I'm going to try that.
What was my favorite part of today?

I worked on syllabi for most of the day. It was a long process, and often frustrating. But my favorite part of the day was probably meeting with Ruth with whom I'm going to team-teach an under-the-radar interdisciplinary course this quarter. We're trying to get students from my department (HCDE) and hers (CSE) working together on projects, and it's a total kludge, with some students enrolled for 2 credits, others for 5, with a false high cap in one course so we could get a room large enough to meet in, and juggled meeting times, and...well, just a parade of fixits. But now that the syllabus is almost finished, I'm super excited about our experiment! Who knows how this is going to work out, but it's an attempt to do something fantastic.

I also started book club book today, and it's extraordinarily well-written: The Big Burn.

What was your favorite part of the day?

Starbus power issue

2009-03-21T01:21:00.000-07:00

So we get some info from our interview Friday evening, but it looks like it's not going to be a carrier/transmitter issue. The new sim card doesn't seem to be solving the problem, and the band on which the local companies broadcast had indeed been one that Waylon was testing on. So, it looks like it's time to resolder and change capacitance. This is sub optimal -- more work for Waylon than is ideal, but he's optimistic about the solution.

He and Erica go shopping Saturday morning for a soldering iron, capacitors, heat shrink tubing, and other fun things. He's upstairs soldering now.

Today is Nawruz, which is a major holiday. We we were trying to wrap up work by 2 so we could go downtown and take in some of the festivities. Schedule is slipping a bit, but we should be able to head out in a bit.

More on the overall day (including our training in usability testing!) later.

Getting on the bus

2009-03-21T00:25:00.000-07:00

Meet with Chad at 9am to talk about the interview protocol for the study he, Rebecca, and Aidai are conducting. Discussion of sampling methods, recruitment, etc.

Team meets with local researchers at 10, and now approved for interviews with Russian documents, we set out to talk to some bus riders around town. We meet with the local team, and establish a sampling methodology. We choose three neighborhoods, one largely in the center, one on the southern edge of the city, and one on the northern edge near a major bazaar called Dordoi. We mark the spots on Erica's map, then discuss timing for the interviews. We decide on morning commute time, midday, and evening commute time.

Then a conversation about recruitment for our different usability tests and how to schedule them.

A couple hours later, Mirgul and Indira head to the university. Aidai heads home to take care of some errands. The rest of us head to lunch.

After lunch, Odina, Ruth and I meet up with Indira to begin interviewing bus riders. We stop into an Internet cafe to print off the consent and information forms. It's a cafe that's part of the local chain, Shmel (honeybee). There is, curiously enough, a little gambling casino which seems to be part of the business, primarily slot machines, but a gaming table or two as well. On the way to meet Indira, we get lost. Call Indira. She says, I am at a bus stop on Moscovska and Bolkambaeva. We look around, also at a bus stop on Moscovska and Bolkambaeva. We ask yet another person whether we are at Bolkambaeva, and indeed we are. We start describing to each other what we see around us. Eventually we realize we are standing on Pravda, not Moscovska. So we trek a couple large Soviet blocks further west, and eventually we find her at an even larger bus stop. Definitely a good choice for our interviews.

Rebecca and Chad head off to meet with Aidai and start their interview study. First stop: Internet cafe.

Meanwhile, Erica and Waylon have headed back to the hotel so they can look at pictures on the Internet of capacitors. Mirgul has texted me with the name of a store that carries electronic components, and Waylon is at the point where the problem with the starboxes has been narrowed down to two: either a power draw associated with differential transmitter protocols for different carriers (so he's going to try a sim card from a third GSM carrier) or it's ultimately a problem with power on the box which will mean some soldering and changing the capacitance of the boxes. So Erica is off to reconnoiter to see if the store has what Waylon will need if the last possible other explanation fails to fix things. I've already forgotten the word for capacitor in Russian.

While she's out, Erica also picks up some stickers for our computer keyboards to overlay the letters with the cyrillic alphabet to (a) make life for our translators easier, and (b) make the keyboards accessible for our usability participants. She also gets a recharge card for our phones since we're using a brand new carrier and all the kiosks we've tried outside of major stores don't yet carry recharge cards for that company.

Cynthia spends the afternoon at the hotel working on her prototype, Anthony works on language stuff on the server and updating the server version so it's current, and Waylon continues to troubleshoot with the boxes.

After three interviews with bus riders, Indira, Odina, Ruth and I head back to the hotel to type up notes and see how the interviews went, and talk about whether we are getting the richness of data we need. On the way back, we take a bunch of pictures, and someone sees a little shop (essentially housed in a temporary shelter-turned store) called Babushkas Incorporated. Someone snaps a picture, and we are amused by the sign. Let's go in! It's a small room, filled with crocheted, knitted, and felted items -- lots of booties and slippers, socks and hats. We ask the woman at the counter about the shop. She explains that it's a cooperative of about 300 retired older women -- babushkas -- who knit and crochet and set up this shop together to supplement their pensions. I've got lots of Russian blood in me, and I really kind of already look like a babushka, so how can I help but be delighted and proceed to drop a bunch of cash on behalf of the babushkas.

Back to the hotel. Odina and Indira write up interview notes. Erica comes back around the same time. More meetings. Then we review the notes. We talk about effectiveness of the prompts. Three changes suggested. Chad, Rebecca and Aidai are still in the field.

I have a 6pm meeting scheduled at Beta stores cafe with brand manager for one of the newer mobile companies and a friend of his who works for what essentially seems to be a consulting/vc firm. Cynthia and Ruth are both going to come to talk about the applications we're testing. Ruth gets detailed info from Waylon about the technical problems to see if we can get any relevant information from these folks that might help with the troubleshooting. Erica is going to meet with Mirgul at 7 to do some rider interviews. Odina and Indira are going to do more interviews as well. But at the last minute we swap locations and Odina and Indira head to the neighborhood south of the center. Erica suggests that Mirgul has had a long day, and perhaps we should just do the rider interviews tomorrow.

So three of us head to Beta, two more off doing interviews, the rest at hotel working on various tasks. Cynthia, Ruth and I have a fantastic conversation with Bolot and his friend. We talk for well over an hour and a half and only finally say goodbye when repeated phone calls from the rest of the group pull us away. They are both really interested in starbus and its possibilities, and we have a terrific chat about limitations of the current tech, possible models for sustainability, and other mobile applications that might find a good home in Kyrgyzstan.

Dinner happens around 7.30ish, at Chaihona Jalalabad, traditional food, and a restaurant where, during the summer, you can sit up on traditional platforms covered with pillows. Those are outside, though, and it's a little cold for that right now. Rebecca is a bit tired since she just arrived, so she and Chad have dinner closer to the hotel at Steinbrau, and the rest of us have some soup, different salads, very tasty shashlik, and too much nan. Green tea. Back to the hotel. There is a party in the central meeting room where we have been hanging out working. Older couples and individuals dancing to a mix of Central Asian and remixed western music. I think I hear an Abba remix as I head up to my room.

Saturday: an 8.30 breakfast meeting to share schedules for the day. Local researchers showing up 9 and 9.30.

Cynthia, Ruth and I have a fantastic conversation with Bolot and his friend. We talk for over an hour and half and only finally say goodbye when repeated phone calls from the rest of the group pull us away. They are both really interested in starbus and it's possibilities, and we have a terrific chat about limitations of current tech, possible

Morning with MoSoSo

2009-03-19T19:49:00.000-07:00

Sun is trying to shine on the snowscape outside. The mountains are visible in stunning whiteness. It's altitude-cold.

Woke up early, got some work done in the 5 am quiet. Found Cynthia at breakfast around 8 am and we caught up on how her work on the mobile social software has been going. She's finishing up the prototype of an SMS-based directory listing/rating system with which users can define shared directories with friends and family. The usability testing is scheduled to start Sunday or Monday. She's still working on the XML parts, her husband back home is working on a Flash demo, and we potentially have a working model showing up using the MSRI SMS toolkit.

We figured redundancy was a good goal since nothing ever works quite as one expects out here. So at this point search is functional. Add and edit will be functional on Sunday. And if not, her alternate plan is to do a hack job based on the results of the usability test. mmmm...hack jobs. Also, right now from anywhere you can go to all the screens in the system, and she's implemented novice and expert modes to accommodate SMS annoyances, I mean limitations. She's setting up the demo right now, and I'm going to take a look. And Chad just came down for our 9 am meeting to go over his interview protocol before the local researchers arrive for our 10 am training/briefing/planning.

I think our third day has officially begun.

Technical Problems, and Snow

2009-03-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

At some point the rain last night turned to snow, and we woke up to a very lovely, very white Bishkek. We watched snow fall and worked through the morning, meeting with one of the local researchers, dealing with translations of human subjects documents, scheduling for the three studies, and waiting for Aidai's arrival from Israel.

Documents sent off, Aidai arrives, we lunch at a Turkish place across from the mosque down the street. The city is surely beautiful in the snow, but my feet are wet and cold. Last week it was in the 60s.

Erica, Chad and I go off to a meeting at a local NGO that tracks media and technology issues, and Odina, Cynthia, and Aidai go off to the American University of Central Asia to meet with two students who are helping us out. Their goal is to plan recruitment strategies for the three studies, and make some headway on assembling teams for different tasks. Cynthia brings along the database of survey results to help resolve sampling issues. Waylon continues to work on debugging the *boxes which still aren't working.

Meanwhile, our meeting at Internews is helpful in identifying other folks for us to talk to (my main goal in the visit), and we get some good feedback on the *bus project. The usefulness of the system for riders is apparent, but the question of the benefit to drivers is more questionable. We talk about the structure of the marshrutka system, and the interplay of municipal authorities with the private companies that run routes, and the drivers who follow the routes. The routes are related to the bus routes established by the city, but since there aren't enough buses to run the routes, the marshrutkas fill the ridership gap by providing much of the actual transport.

There are city buses on the street, but they are few in number and rider demand vastly outweighs what the city buses can provide. We are told tens or dozens of companies operate the routes, and that licensing authority comes from the mayor's office and/or the Ministry of Transportation and Communication. We have been cautioned that it might be difficult to find people with whom we can talk about the general structure of the system. We've gotten a few different versions of how the different stakeholders are related, but more details emerge from various conversations.

Waylon is dealing with more hardware problems than anticipated. The sim cards will work on the debug board, but not when in the *boxes. He left one of the boxes running over lunch, and only about 27 of the 35 sent messages went through. This is much lower reliability than we had in the states. There's also the issue of the boxes just stopping working at odd intervals. He's been playing with the debugging, I learned the word for screwdriver as we borrowed tools from the hotel for him to take apart one of the boards, and right now he's focusing on the possibility of different antenna strength between the debug board and the boxes. Also, there's the possibility that the sim cards are working on a different band which is producing a different power draw than when we were in the states. Reworking the power source for the boxes is not an ideal scenario. We are currently thinking about where in Bishkek one goes to purchase capacitors.

We sent off the translations of consent documents to UW, and we are waiting on that approval before beginning any interviews. Since I don't have access to a scanner for the signed cover sheet, I printed neatly on the form and took a photo of it. Cynthia reduced the size for email friendly -- especially since our email access here is metered by MB rather than time. Eleven documents and the cover sheet took several minutes to be happily sent.

Late afternoon, back at the hotel, hammering through the research protocols, sampling, recruitment strategies, etc. We're considering different neighborhoods to conduct interviews with riders as well as interviews for the Internet study. The map of Bishkek is coming in very handy. We are tired. Jet lag catches us up. Dinner at a semi-Uzbek restaurant. Now back at the hotel. I'm staring at my email, wondering if I'll hear back from UW IRB before I fall into sleep. If I miss the chance to respond during this workday in Seattle, then we're set back 24 hours.

Ruth, Anthony, and Rebecca arrive tonight at 3 am. I'm leaving them notes about tomorrow's schedule, big bottles of water, and some snacks.

Should be sleeping

2009-03-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

mmm...1 am wakeup call from jetlag. Working on to-do list for tomorrow. No email in the building where my room is located, so working offline to make lists, sending some text messages to the states for some assistance. Trains rumbling by. They clatter differently on the tracks. I'm a girl who used to live 20 feet from a train line up the west bank of the Hudson, so I know my train rumbles. This is a very different sound. More jagged and a more metallic rhythm.

The rain keeps falling. Familiar Seattle sound of the patter on roofs. The wind has calmed. Earlier it was whipping, a kind of running-down-the-mountains howl, into the valley where we are. Not a windstorm howl, or even the Wyoming wind howls I remember from days there. But intent and like an agitated conversation.

Dinner at the guest house as we all stumbled through an early evening fog of jetlag. Kudos to Erica for the suggestion.

Data collection begins

2009-03-18T02:51:00.000-07:00

The sunny day has turned to a cold rain, and in the background there's a train.

Our guest house is right next to train tracks, and the rumble isn't so bad -- it's the middle of the night shrieking whistles that are more notable.

We managed to get ourselves together, have lunch, change some money. Met with 6 potential local research assistants. Right now, Odina and Chad are out researching mobile providers and plans, and they'll be back eventually with 15 sim cards: 10 for our team to use for the week, and 5 for the starboxes and server to process thousands of text messages. I'm hemorrhaging cash already.

Erica and Cynthia are out with a handheld GPS, traveling the city and marking locations so we can populate the database for user testing. It looked like a more fun task before the downpour began.

Waylon is having some quality time with the starboxes and the server.

I'm working on hiring local assistants and getting documents translated so we can send them back to the University for IRB approval. English docs are all approved, but any translations also need to be reviewed.

Morning in Bishkek

2009-03-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

The sun is unexpectedly shining. This could bode well for the jetlag battle.
Shockingly, no raised eyebrows at any of the checkpoints about our hardware.
Ran into the first wave of the crew at the Istanbul airport. They found a pretty swank place to camp out for the long, long layover. Well done!
Sparse flight to Bishkek meant we all pounced on our own rows once the doors closed. A much needed nap.
Now sort of awake. Odina arrived from Tashkent. Local folks come by in an hour or so for us to figure out how to assemble the team.
So, what we're doing:
1. Testing a mobile SMS directory that allows people to list and rate businesses, and define shared directories with friends and families. Usability tests of a flash mockup and a working SMS model (with luck; that's coming with the next crew).
2. Testing hardware/software designed to create a grassroots information infrastructure for users of public transportation. A GPS/SMS module that lives on a shared transportation vehicle, runs a prediction algorithm, and sends SMS messages to a server. A user then sends an SMS to the same server asking when their next bus will arrive. Potentially handy when there is a lack of posted bus schedules; especially potentially handy for inter-city transportation in areas with shared, informal transport options (incl for farmers). Paper and prototype being presented at ICTD2009.
3. Trying to figure out why, when it comes to Internet, if you build it users don't necessarily come. Internet growth over the years of our project has not exactly flatlined, but growth is slow and glacial. Availability has increased, but not necessarily usage. We're kind of curious about this.

More later.

Schipol...sunny and showerific

2009-03-17T00:16:00.000-07:00

Made it to Amsterdam where I am currently in the lounge, enjoying free wifi and waiting for my name to be called for a shower. Flight was not so bad, lots of movies I hadn't seen (primarily because I haven't seen a movie off a plane in about 4 or 5 months), and a little nap squeezed in. Two more flights to go, but this is the longest layover.

I'm starting to schedule meetings for when we get on the ground. And figure out the round robin of tests and interviews for the three different research projects we have going. Of course, much depends on what happens when we pop a local sim card into the servers for our two systems. Who doesn't love a little suspense?

I haven't yet talked about what we're actually going to be doing.
Suspense, remember?

Ready, Set...

2009-03-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

Sitting in Seatac, chronicling in my mind the things I've forgotten to pack. Most crucial thus far: the bag of swag Waylon got from the CSE department. Hmm....we'll try to get the crew flying out Wednesday to help us fix this.

So this is the start of 10 day adventure with 10 folks, testing some hardware and software we've developed based on the social science research done by the CAICT project over the years. We have a terrific crew of undergrads, graduate students, staff, and faculty from UW, plus a UW grad and a grad student from Israel joining us on our adventure.

Since my regular blog got disappeared, I'll blog here for the duration. It's quick and easy, even if it makes me look technolame (which I am, actually).

I'm off to Amsterdam and then Istanbul where I'll meet up with the rest of the first wave, and then we fly into Bishkek together for a 3 am arrival on Wednesday. Hooray! I love the 3 am arrivals. Almost as much as I love the 3 am departures.

Ok, going to churn through some email before boarding. More on the other end from Amsterdam.

Catching up

2007-08-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a long, long time. Lots happened since May.
Let's see if I can remember it all.

I went to Maker Faire in San Mateo.
I went to Banff for the WWW conference.
Then I went to Kyrgyzstan for some consulting.
Then I went to FOO camp in Sebastopol.
I wrapped up my stint at Microsoft Research.
Then I went to Beijing.
Then I went to Defcon in Vegas.

I think back in April I went to San Jose for CHI. I feel like there was another Bay Area trip in there somewhere, but I can't remember.

Pictures of most of this on flickr.

Soon I start the commute to Cambridge for a fellowship at Harvard's Berkman Center.

I'm still getting the hang of sabbatical.

My current aspiration is to spend a sunny afternoon in a park reading a paperback novel. It's good to have goals.

New discourse communities

2007-05-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was ToorCon Seattle, a beta version of the full ToorCon down in San Diego. It was also my second attempt to learn some vocabulary in a new field. At Shmoocon I had Bre to explore with, and he was back in Seattle for this event. It's very good to have another non-native speaker traveling along in order to help navigate.

Headed down to Maker Faire this weekend, where I will get to see David and Sarah (yay!) and San (yay again!).

In other news, I'm diving into python and the wonderful world of SMS. Here is one of the coolest scaffolds out there -- an SMS toolkit for folks who want to build an SMS service. Developed at Microsoft Research India; it's pretty amazing. But check the license before you use it to launch your next startup!

Sabbatical hair

2007-05-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

Hair that says I'm on time off." Such was my hairdresser's assessment.

Iilwy

2007-05-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

More MoSoSo
I'm in Like with You

I'm so not the target demo, I lied about my age. For the first time since I was a kid parading around with a fake id to get into clubs.

I still want to see creative MoSoSo not centered around the hookup.

I'm in Banff at the moment, at the W3C Conference, where I gave a paper on my research group's work on mobile social software for the developing world. The paper is on our website, but mainly we want to think about scaffolding tasks of everyday life with MoSoSo -- not just in the developing world. Not that drinking and flirting aren't awesome daily tasks. But there's a bit more to the everyday.

Isn't there?

rehearsal vs. performance

2007-05-06T23:09:00.000-07:00

learning vs. teaching

work vs. play

rehearsal vs. performance

Mo MoSoSo

2007-04-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

An amazing compendium of social networking sites, including MoSoSo.

Btw, the 18 months story is migrating. If you want to read it, let me know and I'll tell you where to find it.

Where the time goes

2007-03-09T17:03:00.000-08:00

For the past few months my life has experienced a bit of rerouting, straight down Aurora Ave and to a little place called the Public N3rd Area.

Last weekend, we had a test launch for a high altitude weather balloon carrying excessive amounts of electronics.

Bre's podcast:
http://make.blip.tv/file/160562/

Photos:
http://flickr.com/photos/bre/sets/72157594555041128/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/85547276@N00/sets/72157594579242095/
http://weak.org/gallery/events/ahab_march_2007

or just look for tags ahab and balloonsinspace on flickr

Our wiki is at balloon.pbwiki.com

video from the payload, pointing down during launch (fast forward through first few minutes before it reaches the air)
http://tracker.dxpedition.net/ballooncvs.avi

We were foiled by bad weather, but we rallied with the test. Next launch is planned for April 7/8.

I'm having more fun than I can remember having for a long time. And I'm learning more than I did in any pursuit of a degree.

When I walked out of class yesterday, I talked to a friend. And I said this:
I'm done teaching for 18 months.
I'm going to spend the next 18 months learning.

I hope PNA is where much of that will happen.

Magic begins

2007-03-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

Today is my last day at work for a while. As I mentioned in the last post.

It feels nothing short of magic, to be where I am right now.

Where I was last night, though, was out with some friends, and carrying around a magic wand that seems somewhat emblematic of what I'm feeling.

The wand might very well be the best score ever from helping a friend move. Wednesday night I am helping Bre pack up for his move to NYC. Odds and ends mercilessly tossed to the street corner as giveaways. But then he finds a magic wand. And offers it to me. At first, I consider giving it to a friend's daughter. Then, I decide I need a little magic in my life. So it's with me for the time being. I took it to class yesterday. I had it in my purse when I met a friend for dinner, and then went to meet some folks later that evening at another bar. And before I could say anything about it, at each site someone would ask almost immediately, "is that a magic wand in your bag?" The magic must indeed be palpable, even from a distance.

So I am taking great pleasure in going up to people and asking them if they have a wish (they can keep it secret if they want), and waving my magic wand. Granting wishes seems like a fine way to share the delight of my new adventure. I feel like the luckiest girl on earth, a little startled at how I came to be staring at this amazing gift of 18 months. Eighteen months. Imagine. *Everything* can change in 18 months. I expect everything will.

Stay tuned. And watch.

Avalanche of the quarter

2007-03-09T16:37:00.001-08:00

The term got the better of me, as it often does. Time to catch up. Several posts at once...

But the HCI class was, well...amazing. We started out with a bunch of flickr assignments that had the students out taking photos of:
tech used as part of everyday routines
things being used in the manner for which they were not designed
ubicomp about which they had some curiosity

If you want to see some of their sets, check out the contacts for flickr user tc319 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/friends/)

The students did an amazing job with a syllabus that really asked them to do some unusual things. One of the assignments was a fieldtrip of their choosing. Left totally open-ended, their task was to go out into the world and learn something about how people use info/comm technology, and then to come back and tell us what they learned. Fieldtrips included visits to the new Seattle Sculpture Park, the Weird Science Fair, the Telephone Museum (aka, Museum of Telecommunications), 911 Media Arts Center, and other cool places and events in town.

They did lots of presentations -- on class readings, readings they found on their own, their design projects. And we had some amazing guest speakers, including 3ric and Pablos from the Shmoo Group, Christina Drummond who is Seattle director of the ACLU program on Technology and Freedom, and Emma Rose from AnthroTech. I took one group over to Microsoft Research one day because their project had some overlaps with Aura, and some students came down to the Public N3rd Area on various weekends. It was a pretty amazing quarter. And I even got a round of applause on the last day.
There's an abbreviated version of the syllabus at courses.washington.edu/tc319/syllabus.html if you want to see any details. The readings actually worked *really* well.

It was a great class. Really great. A terrific way to start the next 18 months.

Yes, 18 months of sabbatical is what starts after today.
Well, 3 months at Microsoft Research. Then 15 months of sabbatical. But, 18 months away from my everyday routine.

I have, um, literally been hopping with excitement. It makes people laugh-- to see me standing there, talking or listening, and then suddenly give a little hop in the air. Their laughter, however, doesn't hold a candle to the absolute, sheer exhilaration I feel.

Children of Men

2007-01-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

I just saw Children of Men.

Um.

I'm not sure whether I should go home and slit my wrists or go home and procreate.

Upcoming: Memphis

2007-01-11T22:11:00.000-08:00

Off to Memphis tomorrow for the National Conference for Media Reform where I'll be working with the folks from Games for Change to help introduce media reform and advocacy organizations to how they can use games to advance their agenda and reach their respective audiences.

Seattle being so very far away from everything else and it taking an entire day to get there, (I couldn't miss work today, and I am way too old to take a two-flight red-eye), I'll only actually be able to make it there for a day. But it should be a fascinating day, and I'm excited to see where the conversations will lead.

As for the lengthy travel time, all I can say is thank god for upgrades.

HCI readings

2007-01-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

Still working on the syllabus.
Finding the right amount (and kind) of readings.
Vannavar Bush.
Emma forwarded a rec from a list for a 1955 book, Henry Dreyfuss and his _Designing for People_ which sounds pretty interesting.

I've got a passel of readings from CHI proceedings. And excerpts from the usual suspects.

Still needed: a couple good pieces on RFID.

NYE gaming

2006-12-31T11:54:00.000-08:00

I am generally a little confused by NYE and how to mark the day, and often I will have a party, but I'm still recovering (and cleaning) from my party last Saturday. So this year I'm going to actually accept an invitation that's landed in my inbox for a few years now. I went to a Fourth of July version a few years ago, but apparently the tradition for the hosts started with NYE. It's the 19th annual NYE gaming party, hosted by Pavel and Kathleen.

I've met Pavel a few times over the years -- our paths crossed from MUD and MOO days. And when he first relocated from Silicon Valley to Seattle I managed to corral him for a guest lecture in one of my classes. (As I recall, his house was flooding during the lecture, but he valiently carried on.)

The 4th of July version that I attended was pretty darn fun, and I remember being introduced for the first time to the game Carcasonne (which until then I knew of only as the medieval walled town in France near which I rented a house with some friends several summers ago), a low-tech, locally produced cardish game with a spy theme (maybe called Secret Agent? I don't quite remember), and some puzzles that made my brain ache.

So this should be fun. My friend and I are going to stop by a Russian themed party (maybe they're serving polonium??) for the first part of the evening, and then onward to games. Seems like a good way to start a new year; I don't do resolutions, but if I did, remembering to play more would be the only resolution I'd be willing to entertain.

Return of the prodigal kitties

2006-12-29T22:17:00.000-08:00

Last year I fostered two kittens for a friend.

It's a slightly complicated story: my habitual pet/house-sitter and friend Matthew, upon the death of my cat, tried to convince me to take in a kitten or two from a litter borne by a stray his family had taken in. I wasn't quite ready to re-catify, so I encouraged him to take them. He wasn't able to have pets where he lived, although he was looking for a new place. So I offered to foster them while he continued his house-hunting. Five months later -- after I got to enjoy all the cuteness of kittens and they had crossed over into the destructive teenage phase -- I handed them off to Matthew and they took up residence in his new condo.

This week they're back.

Matthew headed out of town, and I stuck around trying to piece together a syllabus for a new class on human-computer interaction that I start teaching as of January 4th. So we reversed roles and I became his pet-sitter, and the kittens have returned for a week of vacation at Beth's place.

My god.

Okay. They're cute. Don't get me wrong. They are adorable and sweet and after they got past being freaked out and hiding under my bed for two days, they remembered the tremendous joy of racing full speed up and down the steps (preferably underneath the feet of someone trying to go downstairs).

But good lord are they destructive. They're still kittens at heart, only now they are *lots* bigger. And they clearly have very little concept of their own strength. It's actually great to have them here, but I have had to do quite a bit of sweeping up of shattered bits and mopping up of spilled things. On the other hand, the kitty love at unpredictable hours is pretty darn nice.

If they would stand still long enough, I'd take a picture and post it.

And oh yeah, the HCI class is taking shape, and I'm getting pretty darn excited about teaching it. Links when they're ready.

Helsinki Santa Rampage

2006-12-26T20:25:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I sampled a local event, Santarchy. (A few hundred people dressed up as Santa, roaming city streets and partaking in various kinds of revelry). Taken by the charms of Santa Anarchy, I did a little background reading, and found there were similar events in a handful of cities, including -- coincidence! -- Helsinki on the very night I was going to be there. So with some help from someone I ran into at the Seattle version (thanks, Danyel!), I got a hold of the flier with the Helsinki event info and showed up.

The Helsinki version of Santarchy is a little different than the Seattle version. First, the name: Santa Rampage. Second, the scale: a couple dozen guys who all went to school together. But they very graciously got past the "who are you and why are you here??" stage (although they had a harder time getting past the 'How did you find out about us and know to show up at this public park?" stage) and let me tag along as they toured Helsinki, a smaller crowd than Seattle's but no less boisterous. Drinking, bowling, ice skating -- and then, presumably karaoking, but by then there was no way I could keep up with a bunch of Finns drinking.

You can see some photos . And I now have my very own Santa suit, thanks to the very generous, Swedish-speaking Finns of Santa Rampage.

I can now report, by the way, that Finnish bowling is pretty much the same as American bowling (i.e. I was able to bowl equally pitifully in a foreign language), with the exception of completely incomprehensible signage. I know a little bit of a lot of languages, but Finnish had me reduced to utter illiteracy to the point where using a public restroom was anxiety producing. What's the word for 'men'? for 'women'?? Seeing a familiar alphabet but being completely unable to recognize any root words definitely made an impression. Add that to the very few hours of diffused twilight that constitutes "daytime" and this was the most disorienting trip I've taken in quite a while.

Too long layovers (and a bit on WoW)

2006-12-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

Exhausted in the Copenhagen airport. Waiting forever for a connecting flight to Tampere. Scouring the airport for power.
It's a skillset all its own, finding the elusive (unoccupied) power outlet. I just scored one near a seat, so I don't even have to sit on the floor. Happy day.

I was just going through my notes from summer fieldwork, looking for good snippets from interviews with gamers for my talk tomorrow. Probably the most interesting thing that emerged is the way games serve as the main impetus for public space gatherings. Even in Uzbekistan, which is arguably the most private of the countries in the region, young people gather to talk about games. In some cases, it's the only public discourse of which they're part.

And I have to admit I am riveted by the stories of the city-wide LANs for playing World of Warcraft.

If you're a WOW player, you can imagine what it would be like to have your experience of that game and its world shaped by a playing environment where, on a busy night, the server hosts about 100 players. Sounds like a pretty lonely version of Azeroth. No wonder they schedule playing time with their friends. Not much chance of a pick-up group under those circumstances. But I think that the small population must change all kinds of game dynamics, from auction house activities to guild formation and instances.

And just trying to navigate between Russian/Uzbek terminology for the game and English teminology was a research problem all its own....how do you translate griefing??

Upcoming: Finland

2006-12-04T16:37:00.001-08:00

Next week I'm off to Tampere, Finland to give a talk at the games and storytelling series which is sponsored by several folks including the Hypermedia Lab at the University of Tampere and the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki.

Playing Off the Beaten Path...I'm going to talk about games based on fieldwork I've done in the developing world for the past several years.

I have some interviews to do in Helsinki for another project, so I'll spend a couple days there, too. Brrr....

Any tips on fun things to do in Helsinki much appreciated.

Is your cell phone a listening device?

2006-12-03T11:06:00.000-08:00

One of our researchers in Uzbekistan came back after a recent trip with the following story:

A family gathered in the home. An educated, elite family. Not so far from ties to the government.
The head of the household tells everyone to put their cellphones on the table and switch them off.
Then he scoops up all the phones and puts them in another room.
Comes back.
"Now," he says. "Okay, now it is safe to talk about politics."

I thought it was a case of misplaced paranoia about technology in a place where, admittedly, you need to be careful what you say in front of who. But they yesterday I read this about the FBI using powered off cellphones as listening devices, and I had to rethink the Uzbekistan story.

Fish or cut bait

2006-12-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

My friend David is probably lucky he doesn't live close by anymore, or he might have had me on his doorstep this morning with a few choice words.

I was a reluctant blogger, and finally capitulated to David's relentlessly pro-blogging arguments. But since I haven't posted for several months, I suspect my feelings towards the whole blogging enterprise are pretty clear. Until I discovered that this damn, dead blog comes up as one of the first hits on google for my name. What I thought I could keep a nice, quiet little backwater of conversation...no dice. Given the nature of online traces, I'm stuck on this track for now.

So.

Time to fish.

Digital Second Amendment

2006-08-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'm fixated on privacy.

I was watching a friend do a little hacking a couple months ago, and as I watched the pokeing and prodding at servers around the world (nothing illegal, just demonstrating technique!), I realized that basically this person had superpowers.

I was jealous.

Very Jealous.

While I stewed over my thoroughly lame skill set in comparison, I also started thinking about security issues. And so as our lives move increasingly into digital domains, and increasingly substantial chunks of our well being are wrapped up in electronic traces, everyday citizens remain pretty clueless about how to protect themselves. I started browsing computer security shelves in bookstores. The tools are designed for enterprise systems, the audience is businesses or institutions -- not much is directed to the end user (aka, me!). What I want is transparency. I want to know how to protect myself. I want to know who has access to what information about me, what my vulnerabilities are in the electronic sphere. Actually, I'd be pretty happy if I could tell if my front door is locked.

But it turns out that I don't know how to do the equivalent of scanning a dark street at night to see if it's one I'll walk down alone. I also don't know how to check to make sure my wallet is still in my pocket. And I don't know how to draw my blinds, or lock my windows. I don't know how to see if someone is following me, or if there is a huge gaping hole in the roof of my house from a windstorm. I'm not stupid, and I'm pretty good at figuring things out. I think that I have as much of a need as any large institution to make sure I'm protected. And I think I've decided that I want the ability to protect myself. I don't know of many tools, though, that make it possible for individuals without specialized skill to ensure their own electronic security. On one bookstore trip I found a book called Security and Usability. I'm looking for more around this conversation.

This is not to say that my car can't be stolen or my house broken into. I'm not looking for any sort of guaranteed protection. But I at least want to know when someone has rifled through my stuff.

Summer rites

2006-08-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to heed advice and blog from Seattle as well as from the road.

We'll see how that goes.

I've been re-entering life slowly after my last trip. It was a terrific trip from a research standpoint, but for some reason it took a lot out of me and I'm taking a signficant amount of time to recover.

But I'm also enjoying summer. Which, in Seattle, is about as good as it comes.

One day blackberry picking with my friend Will at a park near the water, getting gouged repeatedly by thorns that look like something out of a horror movie, flagging down a passing ice cream truck for a little refreshment. Despite the scratches that still mar my skin, there's nothing quite like cradling a handful of berries and feeling them still warm from the sun against your skin. Then, of course, mashing them to a pulp hours later to make jam.

A few days later over at my colleague Karen's house, climbing her ladder to pluck apples from an early-season tree. Taking a break from the ladder at some point and climbing the tree -- I can't remember the last time I did that. Bags full of apples sitting in the corner of my kitchen, one batch of gingered applesauce down, about three nights of canning left to go.

Long walks, a trip to the locks, and back in the groove of the bike commute to work.

I love summer so much.

My first bribe!!

2006-08-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

Trying to leave Tajikistan it finally happened. After six long years of traveling in and out and around Central Asia, I finally got to pay my first real bribe! This was a major milestone for me. Most of my friends have harrowing bribery stories, but I had never been shaken down, not once. Not in the city, not in rural areas, not in airports (well, there was that once in the airport in Tashkent, but that guy had his own desk and it was pratically a semi-official transaction. This one, well, this was the real deal).

If Erica were here she would interject (rightly so), "well, we *did* break the law."

Okay. So we did.

But, it's a stupid law. Plus, we didn't mean to break it. Plus, we thought about it and we did think we were on the right side (barely) of the law. But apparently not.

We're at the airport in Dushanbe, and we finally make it to the front of the glacial passport control line. Erica -- the one who actually speaks the language -- is going first. She is asked a couple questions, she answers, the woman checking passports is about to let her go. And then a guard who was sitting outside her booth walks forward. Where is your registration certificate, he asks...

So, in this region (with the exception of Kyrgyzstan for citizens of certain countries) you have to register with the local police when you get to town. You generally have three days in which to register. Local OVIR offices are notoriously bureaurocratic, but it's just one of the hassles of traveling in the region. It's especially a hassle when you want to stay with friends in an apartment, but I have my workarounds for that and I usually go to a hotel I've stayed at in the past and they kindly help me out. Because when you stay in a hotel, generally they register you and you get a slip of paper or they put your name in a book or some such. Well, we had three days in which to register in Dushanbe. We spent the first night at the Hotel Tajikistan, so we figured we were registered for that night. After that we rented an apartment where we stayed for three nights. But we talked it over at brunch on Sunday and decided we were probably okay because we had registration for our first night from the hotel, and then we would be at the three-day max in the apartment. One more day and we would have had to go to OVIR, but we genuinely (mostly) thought we were okay.

So, at the airport the guard is having an earnest conversation with Erica about her (soon to be discovered "our") missing registration certificates. We stayed at the Hotel Tajikistan, she says to the officer. I offer to show the receipt from the hotel. But it turns out the Hotel Tajikistan is the one hotel of all the hotels I have stayed at in five countries in Central Asia that does *not* automatically register you. Apparently you have to request it and pay an additional fee. It never occured to us that we'd have to ask to be registered, since the hotel knows that all foreigners need registration with OVIR. So Erica is having an intense conversation with the airport official who tells her that we have broken the law and that he is required to arrest us. We will be taken away from the airport, and we will miss our plane. Now, I really need to be on that flight to Bishkek since I leave to return to the US the following day, and there are only 3 or 4 flights per week from Dushanbe to Bishkek. So she tells him that we are leaving for America the next day, we cannot miss our plane. His eyes are smiling, this guard. At no point do we have actual visions of Midnight Express running through our minds, but the possibility of real inconvenience does float by. "Should I arrest you?" he asks Erica finally. "I certainly hope not," she responds. So we are given the choice of being arrested, missing our plane, and paying a US$400 fine, or not being arrested, not missing our plane, and paying US$150 "with no receipt."

Erica says "that sounds better."
"Better for who?" the officer asks.
"Better for everyone," she responds.
And he smiles.

She turns to me and says, "It is being suggested that you put $150 in your passport and they will come and check your passport later."

So I pull out my money belt, extract the money, slip it in my passport, and then we proceed to the next line. But someone else is going to check my passport in this line, so I slip the money back into my pocket. We get to the waiting room and we are both having a really hard time keeping a straight face. "My first bribe!" I exclaim to her excitedly. "Mine, too!" she says. We are biting back grins that seem downright unseemly when one is being extorted. So I slip the money back into my passport now and we are waiting for our officer friend to come collect the cash. We wait. And wait. He does not come. Eventually the flight is called and the line forms at the glass doors. We get in line, still wondering when our cash will be disappeared. We move close to the door, and it looks like we are about to leave the terminal, get led out onto the tarmac for the walk to the plane, when Erica suggests I take the money out of my passport since I am about to hand my passport to yet another person. Good point. So I slip the cash back into my pocket. And just then a guard (not the same one) appears from behind the divider with passport control and strides up to me, takes my passport, opens it, and of course finds no cash. He harumphs at me, points energetically at my open passport in his hands and says "In here!" and then he stalks away. I sheepishly slip the money out of my pocket and back into my passport. Hey, I'm new at this bribing thing! So he eventually comes back, collects my passport, disappears for a few minutes, and comes back with my passport and our customs forms (the excuse for needing to come back to get my passport).

And we head out to the tarmac to climb the stairs to our yak-40.

About those customs forms....There's a good chance we were scouted out before we ever got to passport control. While I was leaning on the table filling out the form -- which requires you to put down what kind of currencies you have and how much of each -- a very friendly guard came up and stood on the opposite side of the table, looking over the side at my form as I was writing, smiling down as he watched me intently. As I was writing that I had Kyrgyz som, Tajik somani, and, oh yeah, US dollars -- 500 of them. He asked us some questions that I didn't pay attention to, but later found out that he was asking if we spoke Russian. I think if we didn't speak Russian we wouldn't have been worth the trouble.

So, I parted with $150, which is probably about 5 months worth of salary for that guy.

The only question now is how I explain the expenditure to the department fiscal person when I file my trip expense.

no coke, no smile?

2006-08-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

I've been back over a week now, but my blogging took a pause...

So, it turns out Tajikistan is a country without coca-cola. At least in the capital. A couple days into the visit Erica and I both commented that wasn't it odd there were no big bottles of coke on the tables set for parties at the restaurants...Fanta, sure. But no Coca-Cola. Instead...RC Cola.

It was also remarkable how much Dushanbe reminded us of Uzbekistan a few years ago. Lots more women in traditional dress, but so much similarity, more than in Kyrgyzstan. Even linguistically.

One thing that several people mentioned to us in conversation is that during the civil war many many people left the city. Ethnic Russians headed to Russia, Tajiks who left for other parts of the country or to emigrate did so in large numbers. And what happened is that the people from the villages moved into the city. So although Dushanbe is the capital, the residents are drawn heavily from rural areas. Apparently it makes for an interesting cultural mix. The big city population doesn't necessarily reflect so-called big city mentality.

It's just like Italy!

2006-07-31T04:06:00.009-07:00

This is the only place I’ve been in Central Asia where I’ve experienced any kind of come-ons by strangers. When I lived in Uzbekistan, my theory was that a modicum of moderate dress meant that I benefited from the cultural attitudes towards women that prevented approaching strangers in the street– and that worked just fine. It was nothing like Italy, or Portugal, where I’ve experienced men propositioning me or making suggestive comments on the street. But yesterday, Erica and I and a western man who lives in Dushanbe we walking down the park that divides the boulevard near our apartment. We pass a bench of three older men, with white beards, skullcaps, traditional dress. Assalom Aleikum, one of the says. Aleikum Assalom, Erica politely responds. One then says Mojyena? [which is a Russian word which translates ‘is it possible?’] Our stride doesn't break and none of the men on the bench speak further, and we are left to puzzle over the meaning of a question we have no desire to understand further.

After dinner last night, Erica and I are walking back to the apartment, crossing the same park in the middle of the boulevard to make the turn to our street. A man falls into step behind us, addressing us in Russian. “Ladies, are you bored? Is it too boring? Are you bored?” Then he says “be careful there is a car” because we are of course crossing the road as one does here, one lane at a time or just stepping into the street and adjusting one’s pace to wait for the car in the next lane to go by. (of course, I wouldn't have understood any of that exchange other than the car warning, but Erica's excellent Russian once again helped out.)

Neither incident had any menace, but they were just curiously unusual for the region.

Dining out

2006-07-31T04:06:00.007-07:00

Our brunch Sunday was at the expat hangout which had great cappuccinos but was ridiculously expensive. We finally ventured out for dinner around 7:30 or so, intending to walk by a place we saw on our way to the bazaar to check it out. But we got sidetracked by a festive sounding outdoor place, and then we realized someone somewhere had mentioned it to us, so we took a seat and had a really lovely, somewhat Iranian meal on a patio next to a stagnant fountain. Neither of us wants to continue with the malarial medicine, so we weren’t thrilled with the mosquitoes. But the music was really good (genuine live music, not the Bishkek kind where “live music” is the advertisement for karaoke), the food was tasty (although I find the prevalence of mayonnaise in a region of intermittent refrigeration somewhat puzzling), and we were back in the realm of $4 meals. Plus we got to watch a group of 50ish folks dancing with great enthusiasm, causing us to speculate why it is in America that dancing is seen as an activity for the young.

still riveted by the satellite tv

2006-07-31T04:06:00.006-07:00

The array of stations is amazing. There are channels from Russia, Kazakhstan, China (including CCTV news which is China news broadcast in English), France, Spain, Portugal, a whole Italian section, Libya, Qatar, Saudia Arabia, Yemen (which was broadcasting what looked like a school play; there were three characters on stage, 2 men and a woman, and the woman was wearing a full burka, so when she spoke you couldn’t really hear her lines), Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Sudan (which was broadcasting a show of a guy sitting at a news anchor-like desk with an old school laptop open in front of him who was giving some sort of computer instruction with screenshots popping up in back of him), Oman, a station called El Iraqia (we thought that might be Iraq), Algeria, Egypt (Nile News – 2 channels’ worth), of course Al Jazeera, a truly dizzying array of sex voice chat advertisements from around the world, and a puzzling number of music video channels also from around the world. Apparently the music video is the international language.

More trouble with telecom

2006-07-31T04:06:00.005-07:00

On the way to the bazaar we saw some pay phones, and I of course had to take some pictures. I’m an odd kind of tourist, constantly snapping pictures, but largely of signs of Internet or phone services, or phones on the street, etc. Many of the pay phones on the street look decrepit, or are missing actual phones. But we saw close to the bazaar a series of pay phone booths (they are not really booths, but the half enclosure you see in the US most often), with the pay phones that hang on the back of the booth missing or clearly inoperative. But a phone that looks like what you find in an apartment or a shop – just a regular phone that usually gets plugged into a land line -- is tethered to the bottom part of the platform, and people are making calls from it. I’m still not sure whose line it is, or what the pay scheme is, but that’s a question to get answered tomorrow.

stocking up for the apartment

2006-07-31T04:06:00.004-07:00

Erica and I went to the Green Bazaar this afternoon for some supplies for the apartment. Toilet paper, water, fruit, that sort of thing. We got some amazing nectarines and grapes and figs, some fresh nan (bread), some tea, eggs, and cheese. During our walk through the bazaar and shopping, we picked up an entourage of young boys who really wanted to carry our stuff for us, convinced our bags were too heavy for us. The entourage got a little annoying, but they were very good natured. And at one point Erica tried to give one of them a one somani note, but he waved her away and looked rather offended. It appeared he wanted to earn the money, not just be given it as a handout.

The bazaar was similar to the ones we had both shopped in before, especially in Uzbekistan. Incredible fruits and vegetables this time of year, the dried fruits and nuts, the clothing section, the hardware section with old pipes and rubber boots and jars and random molded plastic car parts, the fifteen kinds of honey in old jars. But neither of us had ever picked up a train of young boys before. And there were more men that I recall from other bazaars, although the produce parts were still dominated by women. But we rounded a corner in the hardware section (this is all outside, in the hot summer sun, though some parts are covered), and a row of men were standing on a concrete slab facing one way. It appeared to be prayer time.

There were more local goods, and the old Soviet things I recall from Uzbekistan back in 2000. There were lots of chickpeas and lentils, lots of cloth for traditional clothing which the women wear here more than I’ve seen in any other Central Asian capital, not as much of the imported goods from China that can be seen all over Bishkek, and the occasional pair of men playing checkers behind a produce stand.

Satellite TV near the Afghan border

2006-07-31T04:06:00.003-07:00

Dushanbe is relatively close to Afghanistan. Maybe 100 km. We were warned about heroin use being rampant since so much of the drug trade apparently funnels through here. But we’ve seen no evidence of that – unless you count the Mercedes and Audis that roam the streets.

We relocated from the Hotel Tajikistan to an apartment we rented in the city center. Less than half the price and much more comfortable than the former Intourist megacomplex. So we had brunch with an expat in Dushanbe, then retired back to our luxurious new digs to wilt in the heat for a bit. And then we got the satellite tv working. Oh, hooray. I’ve been a little starved for news, so I was very happy to get to some bbc. And so we found the channel, and started watching, and the attack on the UN building in Beruit unfolded before us, a response to the Israeli attack on Qata that killed dozens of children. It was horrifying and amazing to watch the demonstration grow, and advance, and eventually surge through the gates of the UN building. (Not to mention surreal moments like the cameras pan of the crowd and the various flags being carried that included one with a hammer and sickle.) One of the BBC reporters got into the building with a camera rolling, so we saw footage of people with baseball bats going at glass doors, kicking chairs, clearly venting overflowing anger. There was violence, but it looked like the expression of frustration rather than…well…something more random. So we watched for some time as the protest escalated, and then the camera pulled back, and we could see a Muslim cleric gesturing at the crowd from near the entrance to the building. There were guards there, too – apparently from the Lebanese militia. The cleric was gesturing broadly, his arms swinging wide, directing people. From the camera vantage point it was difficult at first to discern, but then it became clear he was turning people from the building, urging them to head towards the square to continue the protest without the violence. The reporter narrated the change in the crowd’s mood. It was amazing and distressing to watch that event unfold, but we also felt lucky that we got to see it as we did, uncertain of whether it would even be covered in the US press.

the sims (no, not the game)

2006-07-31T04:06:00.002-07:00

Once we were settled at the hotel, we went out for lunch. My first errands: change money, then get a sim card. The first few places we walked into to change we located in electronics shops. Just a small window in a sea of cell phones and accessories and motherboards mounted on the wall like displays on mannequins of the latest fashions. The change places in Bishkek, at least the small cluster around TSUM (state department store) were, by contrast, located in jewelry shops. A little insight into what kind of major purchases people make with some regularity…

To get the sim they needed a passport. Also different from Kyrgyzstan where a small vendor at the bazaar happily sold me two sim cards with no identity check. We had lots of plans to choose from, but I went for the prepay from Babilon mobile. Full service – they put the sim in for me, dialed in and did the pin. Had some trouble with the phone, asked if it was from America. No, I said, from the Netherlands (I purchased it in the Amsterdam airport on my way over since my other travel phone has been dying the last few trips). So they tried again, got it registered, called me from the shop phone to make sure it was working, then wrote down my phone number for me, and then showed me how to check my balance. A really nice start to the visit here.

Dushanbe

2006-07-31T04:06:00.001-07:00

Flying over the Pamirs is kind of breathtaking. Someday I want to see them up close.

As we landed at the Dushanbe airport under a cloudless blue sky, I could see a series of military jets underneath the airplane hanger equivalent of a carport, only arced. And as the airplane taxied towards stairs that would be rolled up to the plane so we could alight and board the bus which would take us to the terminal, the flagger on the runway appeared out my window. He was grasping what looked like giant old-school flyswatters, or maybe ping-pong paddles with longer handles – one red and one green – the bicycle he had ridden out to the middle of the runway laying on its side behind him.

This is the first time I’ve been to a place that was recently in war. The guidebook says Dushanbe is the prettiest of the Central Asian capitals, which seemed improbable given the many year civil war and the city-wide curfew that existed until 2002, but it’s true. The architecture here is amazing, the roads are in great shape in the city (the main boulevard was repaved last week for the visit of the presidents of Iran and Afghanistan, but apparently the road was fine before that), the fountains are all working, and the streetlights get turned on at night. We’re both a little puzzled and are trying to figure this place out.

Some estimates say that up to 50% of the country's economic activity is related to the opium that flows through. I have no idea if that bears any relationship to the truth.

There are, of course, still remnants of the war. It destroyed the city’s water filtration system, so the water comes directly from the river. That means silt and pebbles and plant matter can flow from the faucet. And it also destroyed the city’s heating system, though that’s not such an issue for us visiting when the temps are in the 105 range.

Karabalta

2006-07-31T04:06:00.000-07:00

Last week, in Kyrgyzstan, we did some of our design ethnography work in a place outside the capital. For various logistical reasons we ended up in a city called Karabalta, relatively close to Bishkek. Although we didn’t know it at the time, we found out the day before our visit that Karabalta was a twin city, that half of it was one of the old closed Soviet cities (uranium close by), the cities that had no names but we known only by numbers, like postboxes, so were sometimes called Pochtayali (I’m massacaring that Russian word, I know).

We ended up walking around what had been the closed city, and it was a little slice of the CCCP. Hammer and sickle statuary, including a giant art nuveaux one. A large, silver Lenin, still in a place of honor in the park. Street names and murals remained, and we stayed in a sports stadium that had dorm-like rooms (girls in one room, boys in another) for about $2.50 per bed with a bathroom that defies words, and a shower downstairs that one arranged ahead of time. We were told when we “checked in” that it took an hour for the hot water to be ready, then that was enough for 2-3 people, then it would take another hour to be ready again. We showered in stages. An old man leads you downstairs to a hallway, down which is a large locker room with a smaller room inside with the spigot. He explains that he will lock the metal grate at the entrance to the hallway behind you as a safety measure, and when you are done, you must rattle the bars of the grate and call for him and he will come let you out. Generally speaking, I try not to think about fire codes when I am in this region.

I showered with my shoes on.

Caption this picture

2006-07-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

Emma had the brilliant suggestion of a caption-writing contest.
Winner gets a Central Asian treasure.

The Tien Shan

2006-07-24T19:56:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, the group of students from American University in Central Asia who are helping us with our research arranged an outing for us in the mountains. Kyrgyzstan is known for its mountains, and it's a little shameful that this is my fourth trip and I haven't yet been to see them (or to Lake Issykul, but that's another matter I hope to resolve sometime soon). So they showed up in the morning and we went over the project, then someone left to go get the driver. It was amashrutka driver who apparently ditched his route for the day. One of the students had met him earlier that day and decided he seemed like a nice guy, so we piled into his van, stopped for fruit and drinks on the way out of town, then headed to Ala-Archa, a national park near Bishkek. The mountains were, to say it utterly inadequately, impressive. Glacial, towering, sharply steep...the Tien Shan. We walked up a bit dragging food (Erica carring a ginormous watermelon that made her biceps sore), a Central Asia grill, and what seemed like two sheeps' worth of meat.

We found a perfect spot on the banks of a rushing, gray, glacial river...cold, cold, and the perfect refrigeration for our drinks and melon.

The students from AUCA set up the grill and charcoal, and we had a long afternoon of shashlik...a little too long since the amount of meat was probably more appropriate for the garrison of soldiers we encountered in the woods on our walk. So we were there till past 7pm, waiting for the skewers of meat to cook, feeling the evening cool rapidly as the sun went behind the mountains, but utterly enjoying the remarkable surroundings.

Bishkek!

2006-07-24T19:44:00.000-07:00

So here we are, four days into a week of research designed to culiminate in some ideas for mobile social software for the developing world. I'm blogging from my "bed" on the livingroom couch in the apartment I'm sharing with three UW students on a 28.8 dialup connection, and luxuriating in the fact that it's nearly 9am and I haven't yet had to rush out to an Internet cafe to print out consent forms for an impending interview.

We're having a great time. Although the apartment situation has some reality show overtones, things are running remarkably smoothly. Tomorrow we hop into a mashrutka (share minibus) for a trip to a town called Karabata, a former industrial town somewhere near the border of Kazakhstan, about 2 hours away. We’ll do a second round of interviews there, and then spend the night (our team of 4 and the 3 translators) in a 2 room apartment, then hop another share minbus back to town. One student, Mark, goes home that night, and then we do a day of debrief, then Emma heads home and Erica and I are off to Tajikistan.

The city looks great, at least in the center where we have been spending our time. Lots of new stores, good streets, new cars – BMWs and Audis and Mercedes – and it is thoroughly unclear where, exactly, the money is coming from. There’s still lots of shuttle traders going back and forth to China (and flying back and forth to Korea), but there is clearly wealth here and no one seems able to account for it. The best explanation we’ve heard is international aid – but that hardly accounts for a GDP. When we get out to the region we’ll see a more realistic picture of the country which should be telling.

I've always found Bishkek the friendliest Central Asian city, and it's definitely living up to that reputation. Things here can be downright easy. Erica pointed me to the most amazingly efficient travel agency (Kyrgyz Concept, if you find youself in Bishkek; they rock), shopping is transparent and pleasant, and although the city seems to slow a bit in the heat, there's a lovely rhythym to life here.

Etiquette question

2006-07-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

I just got off a conference call with some folks in India. As we were waiting for the call to start, my colleague Chris and I were doing some morning news surfing, and I was reading about the series of bomb blasts that hit the commuter railway in Mumbai. The call was taking longer to set up than anticipated, and we speculated that, although our conference was scheduled with people in Delhi, no doubt the rash of attacks had slowed the evening commute there as well. Once the call began, we wanted to communicate our awareness and empathy about the attacks. But we looked at each other blankly, not quite sure what the etiquette was, or what kind of social platitude one uses for expressing condolences over terrorist attacks. Any suggestions?

Liminal travel

2006-07-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

The thing about Central Asia (which is the focus of much of my research , is that it's not easily shelved. I don't mean that it's a region that shouldn't be ignored (which is true, but not the point here), but that it's sort of in the middle of everything.

Central Asia straddles most of the boundaries used to demarcate the world. Go to BBC or CNN or the NYTimes, and look at their world map. Where would you click to get the news about Kyrgyzstan? Or, more relevantly for me, what shelf do you look on in the travel section of the bookstore to see if Lonely Planet has a new edition of their Central Asia volume? Is it under Asia? Middle East? Eastern Europe? Turns out everyone makes their own choice, because it's a liminal place. It cascades chaotically across our neat geographical boundaries, it aligns with different sections of the colored map depending on who's doing the drawing.

I'm now used to the fact that this project takes more time to coordinate than many others I've worked on, that it has a unique set of demands that are a tremendous drain on time. But for heaven's sake. I know where the travel section is in the bookstore. Finding the book should have taken less than five minutes, not required me to finally give up (do they really not have it? Or is it just not the shelves I have checked? Because if I were looking for a book on Italy, I'd pretty much know immediately whether or not they had it. Either it would be on the shelf under Europe or it wouldn't. But maybe Central Asia is here somewhere, on some shelf, somewhere, but I just can't find it because I don't know how they've chosen to categorize it here) and seek out someone working at the boosktore so they could check their stock and see if it is out there somewhere.

I'm off to Bishkek in a little over a week. For some design ethnography research. It should be a fantastic trip. You'll hear more about that soon.

Yes, the NYT is a newspaper

2006-07-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

I called the university library last week. I'd read something in the New York Times that I wanted to share with a grad student. But I'd read it over the weekend, in my paper version, and I couldn't remember the author. I had a vague idea it was an op-ed piece. And although I am a subscriber and so am eligible for the so-called Times Select service, I've thus far refused to sign up for it because I haven't found a way to anonymize my reading of Time Select pieces (whereas my 13-year-old login for the electronic NYT website isn't associated with my real name). In a flight of paranoia, I've decided I don't want my reading habits tracked to my real name. So, no Times Select for me. But I want to get this piece for Emma. So I call the library to see if we have university access to Times Select. We have access to the Times archive via our library subscriptions, but I'd need to know something like the title or the author to track down the piece. On the other hand, all I know is "it was in Sunday's edition." A difficult search criteria given the way library databases are built.

A young man answers the phone. I explain my problem. He thinks for a moment, then says he doesn't know, but he'll forward me to the microfilm and periodicals person. But first he pauses, to make sure he's transferring me to the right person. "The NYT is a newspaper, right?"

Sauri

2006-07-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

The final piece of my trip to Kenya was a one-day visit to a place called Sauri. A small village in western Kenya, near Lake Victoria, Sauri is one of the Millenium Project Villages run by the Earth Institute at Columbia. I made the visit as a favor to some folks I knew who were interested in learning about the village, and since they knew I was on my way to Kenya, they asked if I could stop by during my trip. I only had a day, but it was amazing how many interviews one can pack into daylight hours.

Ouko and I flew out together to Kisumu early in the morning, and we met with the head of the local office in town. Then we were scheduled to head out to the field office. When we came downstairs to head to the truck, there was a woman waiting at the office, a professor emeritus from Columbia who worked on family planning. She was on her way to Uganda, but wanted to visit Sauri first. So she hopped into the truck with us for the drive out to the village. When we got to the field office (where we were going to check on some reported problems with their Internet connectivity), there was a guy from Britain who currently teaches agriculture in Uganda who also was in the area and had heard about the project, and wanted to take a look. So he jumped in the truck with us, too. By the time we got to the first meeting in the village, we also met up with two members of the Kenyan office of ActionAid. We'd turned into quite an entourage, but I got the impression that wasn't uncommon.

We met with the coordinating committe of the village, saw the health clinic, visited the primary school, talked with some teachers, saw the new kitchen and learned about the school feeding program, saw the electricity that had been run to the school and the giant transformer stranded on the front lawn waiting for the right engineer to come by and step down the power, met with the agricultural committee, talked with the infrastructure guy, visited a water project, saw the impressive corn crop that had benefited from improved seeds and fertilizer, and then met with some folks outside of the village. It was a very interesting day, and Ouko and I learned a surprising amount in a short time span.

I'm not going to write much more about it here, at least not now. But feel free to contact me if you want to know more.

The trouble with telecom

2006-07-09T15:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I hosted a going away party for my friend David and his partner Sarah. David, who is the person who harassed me until I started this blog, has now informed me that I am in grave, grave danger for my long absence from posting. So, like a chastened student, I will post:

Still with Kenya on my mind, and thinking about all the things that contribute to development...one thing I learned from that recent trip was the really crucial role communications technologies play in just getting things done. I'm not talking anything fancy, but just being able to place a phone call makes all the difference.

Several years ago I complained to a friend that while I was pretty good at travelling, the one thing that completely baffles me is telecom on the road. Figuring out how to use a pay phone (this was before cell phones) and what numbers to dial is one of those undocumented pieces of local lore. Sure, the Lonely Planet has some tips, but they're not always current. These days, I have given up trying. I buy my local sim, pop it in my phone, and then go up to a stranger and hold out the phone with the simple words, "can you please help me?" I'll hand them the local number and ask them what I need to dial. In some places (Kyryzstan comes to mind), the prefix you have to dial varies depending on the recipient's cell carrier. Which means when you get someone's phone number, you have to ask them whose sim they have. If you live there long enough, you start to recognize the prefixes as proprietary to one carrier or another. But if you're in the country for 3 or 4 days, it's not exactly a transparent process.

So in Kenya, while cell phones are popular, the cost of making a call is still prohibitive. Something on the order of US$0.30 per minute.That's cell to cell. Go from cell to landline and the cost skyrockets. So much for the promise of leapfrogging technologies. A person doing research there said that the sheer economic barrier of making a call means she makes choices every day about what kind of things don't have to get done that day. And it's not like everyone is checking email all the time. And it's not like Nairobi is so quick and easy to navigate across town that face-to-face communications are the answer.

And as for Internet, leaving aside South Africa, there's no cable connection in sub-Saharan Africa for Internet connectivity. It's all satellite, which means it's all ridiculously, horrifyingly expensive. That's old news to many of my colleagues, I know. But I still think it bears repeating.

Safari/Adventure

2006-06-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

So apparently the word safari in swahili means adventure.

We had an adventure.

Imagine the Mara...endless grasslands of the Great Rift Valley...the next ecosystem down from the Serengeti...land of zebras and elephants and giraffes and impalas and warthogs and, oh yeah, lions.
Now, imagine late afternoon. The prime time for a safari drive. When all the animals come out...
Now imagine a dirt road through the national preserve, a small van amidst the grasslands...
Now imagine the driver of the van turning around and asking a passenger "do you know what this light means?"
That passenger didn't know. But I did. "It's the check engine light," I said.

Imagine an engine overheating. Imagine the radiator hissing. Imagine the two passengers nearest the engine (an engine which resides under the front passenger seat) getting blasted by the scalding heat of the steam as the radiator cap is loosed and leaping from the van out onto the dirt road that runs through the grasslands and it is late afternoon when all the animals come out.

Imagine these two passengers staring off into the grass looking for rustling as the driver and the passenger who happened to have formerly been captain of a fishing boat in Alaska try to fix the engine. Imagine the seven passengers digging through their backpacks to find out whatever bottles of water they have so the driver can empty them into the radiator.

Imagine a van limping along the road at 15 km/hour for about 7 minutes until the engine overheats.

Scenario repeats.

Four times over.

Passing vans are stopped and asked for donations of water.

Eventually we reach the river and fill up all the empty bottles. A long slow drive to the hotel begins, but now we are to the point where the hotel knows we are on the way.

A full moon is rising over the distant escarpment. Dusk is falling.

Now imagine a flat tire.

Imagine all the passengers out on the dirt road that runs through the grasslands and it is late afternoon when all the animals come out. Actually, by now it is evening. Dusk about to turn into night. All together now, pull the luggage from the back, pull out a spare, all hands lift up the side of the van so the jack can be positioned, tire changed in haste, luggage thrown back in the van as passengers still eye the grass for telltale rustling as dusk deepens.

I will say that the next morning when we were able to do the game drive we saw a staggering number of animals, including lions (and lionesses, later in the afternoon), elephants, hippos, giraffes, and pretty much everything else in the park. And yes, I am taking pictures and will post indiscriminently when I return.

Safari adventure. I recommend it.

Name that tune

2006-06-10T07:08:00.001-07:00

At breakfast with some of the folks from Kenya and DRC the second morning, our conversation about politics was interrupted when the guitarists from the evening before walked by the dining room and talk turned to music and singing. Most of the conversation was in Swahili, so I asked for some clarification.
“Congolese sing very well. Perhaps he will sing for you if you ask,” a Kenyan says of our DRC colleague. And then looks at me.
“I am a terrible singer. I can’t sing to save my life,” I say. [ those of you who know me know who dreadfully true that is]
And at that point we return to our conversation about a man who used to be a minister in the government.
“Why is he no longer minister?” I ask.
“Well, when you are minister, you must know how to sing. To sing the tune of the government,” one of my companions says.
And then another adds, “Like you, he could not sing to save his life.”

What do you use Flickr for?

2006-06-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

I made my presentation the first day of the workshop. Since we had gotten a late start, everything was time compressed, so I had about 10 minutes. Basically, I talked about involving community members in data collection and dissemination efforts (leverage those social networks!) and a variety of technologies that could be used in disaster relief and humanitarian aid efforts. I ran through a bunch of Web 2.0 technologies and mobile phone services that might be useful given the range of projects people in the room were working on, including using Flickr as a way of helping affected populations reunite with family members or identify injured…etc. When you’ve got populations spread out over large areas, children who are separated from their families and difficult to identify, it seems like this might be a viable way to leverage community input to track down family members and others.

Sleeping quarters

2006-06-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

Our hotel is quite posh, and the rooms are in two and three-story stacks perched along the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, up above Lake Naivasha. An amazing view, and turndown service includes loosening the cascades of white mosquito netting canopied around the bed. Very romantic. And reassuring since I didn’t pack my deet.

The first evening, walking back to my room with Christine, the woman who happened to be next door, we picked our way carefully down the steps leading to our entrances. Up the path the other way we saw an askari (guard) standing silently in silhouette, his radio squawking. A large dog was in the shadows next to him, just as still and silent. Christine and I made note together, a fully approving note. Remoteness can be both security and vulnerability.

I woke us this morning to the sun rising over the Great Rift Valley. Nice. But as I pulled open my curtains my attention was grabbed by two small yet clearly well-fed kitties on my porch. About Vanessa size (for those who knew her), but much more robust. I wondered what had drawn them there, and was mostly hoping they had chowed down on whatever it was.

The Great Rift Valley

2006-06-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

We made the drive from Nairobi to Lake Naivasha, and the road out of town took us variously through posh upper end neighborhoods and then slums, then back to posh, and etc. etc.

Not far into the drive we got a great view of Mt. Longmont, a former volcano, which quickly opened into a remarkably breathtaking view of the Great Rift Valley. It’s improbable, the feeling of being here. I got the same feeling I had when driving from Almaty to Bishkek and watching the sun set over the steppes – being thrown unexpectedly into massively significant geography that I pretty much had no idea existed until just then.

I think my favorite thing we saw – other than the group of baboons that crossed the road in front of us, halting our minibus for a few moments, was the yellow fever acacia tree. It’s an acacia (favored snack of giraffes) with a yellow-green bark that is almost florescent. The name, I’m told, comes from the British settlers who first though malaria was caused by those trees. The trees do, however, grow near water…

We were warned the last stretch of road was bad, but after Cambodia, it was like superhighway all the way.

Do I look like the kind of woman who would walk the check?

2006-06-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

Just checked out of our nairobi hotel, about to pile into minibuses for the trek to Lake Naivasha. Only to be told that the guy flying in from Sudan was delayed. So now a crowd out front is debating whether we wait the hour for him to get through the traffic from the airport.

Meanwhile, the routine for checking out of the hotel went something like this. Long wait in line at cashier. Pay bill with visa. Get slip with room number. Show slip to guard at door before being able to leave hotel. It was sort of like checking out at Costco.

Games kids play

2006-06-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

So when Ouko and I were doing our circuit of Nairobi internet cafes, I mentioned that I also was curiosu about game arcades that might attract kids. This would be part of my work that looks at games as the technological entry point for kids. So after a few visits to cybers, we headed toward an arcade that he remembered from his childhood. It took a while to find it, and it was in one of the buildings off a main street. We walked down three dingy flights of stairs well underground and stepped into the 1970s. No xboxes or nintendo here; this was space invaders and pacman and pinball galore. Arcade games that had been there over 25 years, with the scuffs and grime to vouch for their age. About five men in their 20s or 30s hanging around the pool table, and a sign on the door saying absolutely no children would be allowed in without their parents consent.

I was told the place would be full of kids once school let out. Without parental consent.

That infamous traffic!

2006-06-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

I think Nairobi is supposed to have dreadful traffic. I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard people complaining. I still think the worst I've experienced, though, is the "leave three hours to get to the airport" in Bangkok.

So last night we headed out to dinner, a bunch of folks from the workshop piled into a couple cabs. Me and my colleague Mark, a prof from USC and his wife, a public health professor from Kinshasa, and a woman in the aid community in Zambia. And Ouko joined us later. It was 7ish, and rush hour was full upon us. So was darkness. (One thing about being basically on top of the equator; the days are pretty darn short when compared to summertime in Seattle.) The cab took a detour off the main road to avoid traffic, a quick right turn across incoming traffic (left side of the road drive in Kenya), up what looked like a residential road that climbed a hill. And there were two men with guns (as Mark noted, very large guns, looked like machine guns) waving the car over, and there were spikes in the road. Traffic police, I assumed. The cab driver started to pull over then thought better of it, maybe not wanting to risk a possible "fee" request. So then he pulled back into the road and accelerated. The man with the machine gun ran after him, yelling something. The cab driver laughed and yelled back, waving his arm. The police officer was impressively persistent, reaching into the car through the open window to grab the driver as he manuevered the car back on the road. The cabbie shook him off and drove, still laughing. The debrief Mark got in response to his questions was somewhat unsatisfying. Were they really police or not, he wanted to know. Consensus is that they were, and that they were there to help catch carjackers (common in Nairobi), but that they might have been looking for a salary supplement as well.

At dinner, still curious, I asked the public health professor what the conversation consisted of during those few moments. Apparently the police officer was telling the driver to stop or he would shoot. The driver was laughing and saying go ahead then, and shoot.

Nairobbery

2006-06-07T12:25:00.001-07:00

(a long post, accumulation of a couple days)
I was in Bangkok a few weeks ago, and I got to meet up with my friend Ivan. When I told him I was headed to Kenya, he clued me in on the nickname for the capitol. So I dutifully packed one of those under-the-clothes money belts and suited up during my stopover in Amsterdam. (mid-journey routine: wash face, have double cafe creme, find wifi, take malaria meds, pick up miscellaneous tech gadgets at Schipol duty free). It turns out that the fashion thing about low fitting jeans doesn't work out so well when you've got a money belt strapped around your waist. Think of the Monica thong issue and you'll get the picture.

It was an easy trip overall -- empty seats next to me on both planes (hallelujah!), and a really smooth visa-on-arrival and ride actually waiting at the airport. A really nice woman named Elizabeth and a guy whose name I never learned drove me into town, and I got some quick Swahili lessons -- all of which I'm sure my jetlagged brain will forget overnight. As we rode into town I saw stars in the sky. I don't know why I was so startled by that (too much travel to megalopolises maybe). Nairobi is high up, about 5000 feet, and the air is cool. I had dinner outside, some local beer, and read some of Jeff Sachs' book. There's wifi in a relatively grim hotel room, so I'm not sure whether or not to complain. I may have to post a pic of the bathroom, though.

Oh, why am I here? Primarily to attend a workshop on ICTs and humanitarian relief. With a side visit to a place called Sauri.

Today I spent sometime in downtown Nairobi with Ouko, a former MIT colleague of my friend Mike's. I wanted to get a blitz introduction to public ICT usage in Nairobi, so we visited a bunch of Internet cafes. I learned a new noun: “cybers” they are called here. We started at a highbrow center in the basement of a banking high rise catering to businesspeople – well, they used to get a lot of students, but when they started blocking P2P sites, the students evaporated. Then we went to a place a few blocks away in another highrise, walking up four floors, past the soaring chorus of lunchtime religious celebrants, to a crowded, cluttered place full of loiterers, emailers, and people in pursuit of online dating. In the hallway of the building outside was a guy who’d started a VoIP calling business, and we chatted a bit about his clients and business model, and the varying costs of calling different countries. Canada is the cheapest, he said, at about 2 shillings per minute. I asked which country was the most expensive, and was told it was Somalia, a country that actually shares a border with Kenya. It’s about 65 shillings per minute to call the country next door.

it begins...

2006-06-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

My friend David has been pestering me to start a blog for, well...a long time. I've finally succumbed. I'm still not entirely sure about this, but since yet another person chimed in last night that I really really need to have a blog, I'm willing to give it a try if only to stop the helpful advice.

I'm leaving for Kenya tomorrow, stuck in my office late tonight finishing up grades for the end of the quarter and various and sundry tasks associated with my research in Central Asia (see depts.washington.edu/caict for a really out-of-date website thin on details, but check back end of June for some real stuff).

Basically, travel is a huge chunk of what I do these days. I've got my routine pretty well down, and good stocks of zithro and hand sanitizer. But I took a break from grading yesterday to go out and make some last minute trip purchases, including some anti-malarial pills. I had a bunch left over from Cambodia last summer, but needed a few more for this trip. So I went to a pharmacy near my office and was about to hand over the scrip, when it occured to me to ask a question. Those of you who aren't in Washington state might not know this, but we're one of the states that lets pharmacists dispense Plan B (aka the morning after pill) without a doctor's prescription. But the ready availability of Plan B is increasingly under fire. So I asked the pharmacist if they dispensed Plan B. He said no, but dodged the question with some ramble about doctor's profile that I couldn't understand. So I stared at him a moment and then gently removed my malarone prescription from his hand. "I'll get this filled somewhere else," I said. And when I found a pharmacy where they said yes, they did dispense Plan B (and did I need some), I said no, I didn't need it, but I didn't want to give my business to someone who was reneging on their professional duty to provide health services.