Children of Men

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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?

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

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

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

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!!

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.