Category Archives: personal

ethnocentrism, journalism, media, Nation-States, nationalism, Orientalism, patriotism, personal, Places, ramblings, rants

Ethnocentrism and Toponymy (Draft Notes)

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This one is more of a rant. At least, it’s about a pet peeve. But I don’t think I’ll flesh it out unless I feel really motivated.

Basically, I wish people used more precise terms to designate different parts of the world and I can’t help but feel that there’s some ethnocentrism involved in the placenames used by many people including (or especially) journalists.

It’s really not about political correctness. It’s about accuracy, precision, clarity.

Terms I tend to like:

  • West Asia
  • Southwest Asia
  • Central Asia
  • Eurasia
  • North Asia
  • East Asia
  • South Asia
  • Southeast Asia
  • North Africa
  • West Africa
  • Central Africa
  • East Africa
  • Southern Africa
  • Northeastern Africa
  • Northwestern North America
  • Northeastern North America
  • Northeastern United States
  • Southeastern United States
  • Southwestern United States
  • Continental United States
  • Continental Europe
  • Southeastern Europe
  • South America

Term use I find just a bit tricky but still fit, for mostly historical reasons. I just wish they were more precise.

  • Americas
  • Europe
  • Central Europe
  • Eastern Europe
  • Western Europe
  • Northern Europe
  • Southern Europe
  • Scandinavia
  • Baltic
  • Balkans
  • New England
  • North America
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
  • MidWest
  • The North
  • The South
  • Central America
  • Caribbean
  • Antilles
  • Oceania

I also get slightly annoyed at the reliance on country names, especially in mainstream media, but I do understand why they seem so important to journalists and news-guzzlers.

Terms which rapidly get problematic:

  • “America” (Is it the continent, the “United States of,” or the very concept of the “New World?”)
  • Bible Belt
  • Sunbelt
  • Rust Belt
  • Middle America
  • Orient
  • Occident
  • The West
  • Black Africa («Afrique Noire»)
  • Latin America
  • Levant
  • Far East
  • Near East
  • Middle East

Of course, “Middle East” is the one I find most problematic. Not only has its meaning shifted over the years but it’s one of those terms which hides more than it reveals. Oh, sure, I enjoy ambiguity. But I like ambiguity when it’s purposeful, obvious. Honest. The type of ambiguity afforded “Middle East” is more than Orientalism. It’s halfhearted neo-colonialism.

Ah, well.

Apple, enthusiasm, iPod, naïveté, PDAs, personal, ramblings, Tech

Confessions of a Naïve Tech Enthusiast (Old Draft)

5 Comments

I’m doing a bit of housecleaning. This is an old post I had in my drafts. Moved to Austin in the meantime, blogged about other things…

Dunno that I’ll finish this one. Should have REROed. In a way, it’s the prelude to my ultimate handheld post.

I keep dreaming of different devices which would enhance my personal and professional experience. Not that I’m really a gadget geek. But technology has, to a large extent, been part of improvements in my life.

Though I would hesitate to call “addictive” my relation to computer technology, I certainly tend to depend on it quite a bit.

Some context.

Ok, ok! A lot of context.

Let’s go back. Waaaaay back. To the summer of 1993. I was 21, then, and had already been a Mac-head for more than six years. Without being a complete fanboy of Apple Computers, I guess I was easily impressed by many of its products. During a trip to Cape Cod that summer, I got to read an issue of USA Today. In that issue, I read a review of a new class of computers, the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). I still remember how I felt. It might not have been my first “tech-induced epiphany” but it was one of the most intense. I not only started drifting off (which was easy enough to do, as I was in the back seat of my mother’s car), I actually started perceiving what my life could be with one of those devices.

Of course, I could afford any of them. Even when it became possible for me to purchase such a device, it remained financially irrational for me to spend that money on a single device, no matter how life-changing it might have been.

Shortly after discovering the existence of PDAs, and still during the summer of 1993, I discovered the existence of the Internet. Actually, it’s all a bit blurry at this point and it’s possible that I may have heard of the Internet before reading that epiphany-inducing USA Today article. Point is, though, that the Internet, not the PDA, changed my life at that point.

Whatever my computing experience had been until that point is hard to remember because the ‘Net changed everything. I know about specific computers I had been using until that point (from a ViC20 to an SE/30). I do remember long evenings spent typing from my handwritten notes taken during lectures. I still get a weird feeling thinking about a few sleepless nights spent playing simple strategy and card games on my father’s old Mac Plus. But I just can’t remember I could live without the ‘Net. I wasn’t thinking the same way.

Not too long after getting my first email account (on Université de Montréal’s Mistral server, running IRIX), the ‘Net helped me land my first real job: research assistant at a speech synthesis lab in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In late 1993 or early 1994, I had sent an email to a prominent ethnomusicologist about applying to the graduate program where she was and mentioned something about computer-based acoustic analysis, having taken a few courses in acoustics. She told me about Signalyze, a demo version of which was available through a Gopher server for that Swiss lab. While looking at that Gopher server, I became interested in the lab’s research projects and contacted Eric Keller, head of that lab and the main developer for Signalyze. I was already planning on spending that summer in Switzerland, working at my father’s cousin’s crêperie, so I thought spending some time in Lausanne interacting with members of Keller’s lab was a good idea. I was just finishing my bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Université de Montréal (with a focus on linguistic anthropology and ethnomusicology). So I was interested in doing something related to sound analysis in musical or speech contexts. Keller asked for my résumé and offered me paid work at his lab for the summer. I ended up spending both that summer and the whole 1994-1995 academic year working at this lab, being paid more than some of my mentors in Montreal.

Technologically-speaking, my life in Switzerland was rather intense. I was spending 15 hours a day in front of a computer, doing acoustic analysis of speech sounds. This computer was a Mac IIvx which had once belonged to UQÀM. A very funny coincidence is that the Mac IIvx I was using had become the source of part of the funding for a fellowship at UQÀM. After I met the incredible woman who became my wife, she received that fellowship.

As this computer had a fast connection to the Internet, I became used to constantly having online access. I was mostly using it to send and receive emails, including messages to and from mailing-lists, but I also got to dabble in HTML a bit and did spend some time on the still burgeoning World Wide Web. I also used a few instant messaging systems but I was still focused on email. In fact, I started using email messages to schedule quick coffee breaks with a friend of mine who was working one floor below me.

This 15-months stay in Switzerland is also when I first got a chance to use a laptop. A friend of my father had lent me his laptop so I could work on a translation contract during weekends. Though this laptop (a PowerBook 170, IIRC) wasn’t very powerful, it did give me a vague idea of what mobile computing might be like.

Coming back to Quebec about my Swiss experience, I began my master’s degree in linguistic anthropology. After looking at different options, I bought a PowerMac 7200 through a friend of mine. That 7200 (and the PowerMac 7300 which followed it) greatly enhanced my stationary computing experience. I probably wasn’t thinking about mobile and handheld devices that much, at that time, but I was still interested in mobile computing.

Things started to change in 1997. At that time, I received a Newton MessagePad 130 through the AECP (Apple Educational Consultant Program). This was a great device. Too big for most pockets. But very nice in almost every other respect. While my handwriting is hard to read by most humans, the Newton’s handwriting did quite a decent job at recognising it. I also became quite adept in Graffiti, Palm Inc.’s handwriting recognition software based on a constructed script from uppercase latin alphabet. I was able to take notes during lectures and conferences. For a while, I carried my Newton anywhere. But it was so bulky that I eventually gave up. I just stopped carrying my Newton around. At one point, I even lent it to a friend who tried it out for a while. But I wasn’t a PDA user anymore. I still needed the perfect PDA. But the Newton wasn’t it.

In early 1998, I went to Mali for the first time. Before I went, I bought a portable cassette recorder to record interviews and some musical performances.

When I moved to Bloomington, IN in September 1998 to do my Ph.D. coursework, I literally had no computer at home. As I had done for a long time during my bachelor’s degree, I spent long hours in computer labs on campus. The computers themselves were quite good (and updated fairly regularly) and IU had one of the best Internet connections available.

In mid-to-late 2001, when rumours of an Apple-branded portable device started surfacing, I was getting ready for my main ethnographic and ethnomusicological fieldwork trip to Mali.

I kept thinking about different tools to use in the field. For some reason, portable equipment for computing and recording was strangely important for me. I still had my Newton MP130. And I was planning on using it in the field. Except if something radically better came along. So I was hoping for the mysterious handheld device Apple was launching to be something of a Newton replacement. Sure, I knew that Steve Jobs had always hated the Newton, apparently for personal reasons. But I secretly hoped that he would come to his senses and allow Apple to revolutionise the handheld market it had spearheaded back in 1993. When I learnt that the device might be related to audio, I thought that it might be both a PDA and an audio device. More importantly for me, I thought that it would have some recording capabilities, making it the ideal field research tool for ethnographers and ethnomusicologists. I was waiting impatiently for the announcement and, like some others, was disappointed by the initial release, especially when I learnt that the iPod didn’t have any recording capabilities. Soon after this, I bought the main devices which would accompany me in my main field trip to Mali: an Apple iBook (Dual USB) laptop with Combo Drive, a HandSpring Visor Deluxe PDA, a Sony MZ-R37 MiniDisc recorder, and a Sony ECM-MS907 microphone. I used all of these extensively throughout my field trip and, though Internet access was spotty, being able to regularly send and receive messages from my iBook was very beneficial for my research practises. I left the MiniDisc recorder and microphone with Yoro Sidibe, the main person with whom I was working in the field, and had to buy other equipment on my way back.

By mid-2004, I bought a used iPod through eBay. I was still living in Montreal but was moving to South Bend, IN, where I was going to spend a year on a teaching fellowship. To make things easier and cheaper, I had the eBay seller send the iPod to my future office in South Bend. When I arrived in South Bend a month or so later, I finally took possession of my first ever iPod. It was an iPod 2G 20GB with FireWire. It came in a rather big box which also included: the original AC adapter, two extra adapters (including a car one), two pouches, the original headphones, and the original remote control.

My iBook (Dual USB) only had a 10GB hard drive so most of my MP3s were on CD-Rs that I had burnt for use with a CD-MP3 player (at the time, a Rio Volt that I had received as a gift a few years prior). I had also brought in my CD collection, in CD Projects (and similar) carrying cases. Hundreds of CDs, a rather heavy and voluminous burden.

I eventually got a good part of my CD collection on the iPod. And I rediscovered music.

Funny to say, for an ethnomusicologist. But pretty realistic. I had lost touch with this type of private music listening. As convenient as it was to use, my Rio Volt didn’t really enable me to connect with music. It merely allowed me to carry some music with me.

Fairly early on, during my first iPod’s career as my main music device, the remote control started acting funny. Sometimes, it would reboot the iPod for no reason. Using the headphones directly (without the remote control), I didn’t have that problem. Though I know very little about electronics, it seemed to me that something was wrong in the connection between the remote control and the jack. I asked the prior owner who said he never had had a problem with the remote control. I resorted to not using the remote control and went on my happy way to iPod happiness for almost two years. Apple was releasing new iPod models and I would have liked to own them, but my finances wouldn’t allow me to purchase one of them and my iPod 2G was still giving me a lot of pleasure.

When Apple introduced podcast support in mid-2005, I became something of a podcast addict. I subscribed to tons of podcasts and was enjoying the iTunes/iPod integration to its fullest potential. A portion of my music MP3 collection was still taking the largest amount of disk space on my iPod but I was spending more time listening to podcasts than listening to MP3s from my personal collection.

In early 2006, I finally transformed my whole CD collection to MP3s thanks to the large hard drive (160GB) in the refurbished emachines H3070 that I had to buy to replace my then-defunct iBook. The complete collection took over 90GB and it took me quite a while to sort it all out. In fact, large chunks of this MP3 collection remain unexplored to this day. My main “active” collection represents about 15GB, which did fit on my iPod’s 20GB hard drive with enough room for lots of podcasts. So, despite being quite outdated by that time, my iPod 2G was giving a lot of pleasure.

Then, in mid-2006, I started having problems with the headphone jack on this iPod. Come to think of it, I probably had problems with that headphone jack before that time, but it was never enough of a problem to detract me from enjoying my iPod. By mid-2006, however, I was frequently losing sound in one headphone because the jack was moving around. My music- and podcast-listening life wasn’t as happy as it had been. And I started looking elsewhere for audio devices.

Which is how I came to buy an iRiver H120, in July, 2006.

Should follow this post up, at some point

academics, adaptation, Anthropology, comment-fishing, culture, humor, nostalgia, personal, ramblings, shameless plug

Third Culture Humor

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Speaking of Third Culture people sharing some traits, Jordan Weeks’s Blogger profile links to the following page:

American Embassy School / American International School New Delhi, India, AIS/AES Alumni News

It’s one of those Jeff Foxworthy-type humorous lists of traits which might be shared by some group of people. In this case, the list is adapted from a Facebook group about Third Culture children. As it happens to be a group which I joined a while ago, those connections also work for the Small World Effect.

Anyhoo, I kind of like the list itself. Not because it’s unbelievably funny. But because I can relate to many of these things.

For instance, the following traits are quite relevant in my case:

  1. You flew before you could walk.
    • First airplane trip at six months.
  2. You have a passport, but no driver’s license.
    • Actually, I have two passports. And the fact that I don’t have a driver’s license is a matter of much discussion with people who are “unlike me” in this Third Culture sense. Because I dreamt just last night about getting a driver’s license, this item is probably the one which caught my eye and incited me to blog the list.
  3. You feel that multiple passports would be appropriate.
    • I do think multiple passports are appropriate in the current situation. But I do look forward to a post-national world in which citizenships and passports are irrelevant.
  4. Your life story uses the phrase “Then we went to…” five times (or six, or seven times…).
    • Technically, 21 times since December 2000, and several times before that. But I mostly moved alone and during my adult life.
  5. Living out of a suitcase, you find, has it pros.
    • Yeah, I kinda like living in boxes. I also enjoy the fact that this move to Austin might be my last one. Still, I do enjoy the lifestyle of the semi-nomad.
  6. You realize it really is a small world, after all.
  7. You can’t answer the question: “Where are you from?”
    • Well, I can, and my answer doesn’t need to be too complex. But it does get complicated when people actually try to understand who I am.
  8. Once you get home you miss your adopted home and vice versa
    • Oh, yes! It gets silly, actually. The curse of living in different places is that you always miss the other places. This one seems to be a big one for a lot of people.
  9. National Geographic (OR THE TRAVEL CHANNEL) makes you homesick.
    • Maybe not those specific examples, but still. I get homesick about Mali, even though I didn’t spend that much time there. And Mali does get on “exotic tv” fairly often.
  10. Rain on a tile patio – or a corrugated metal roof – is one of the most wonderful sounds in the world.
    • Again, because of Mali.
  11. You got to go home twice a year …that’s if you’re lucky.
    • This one might be very common but it still has been quite true of my life during the past 14 years.
  12. When something unusual happens and it just doesn’t seem to phase you as being something unordinary.
    • This one might just have to do with being an anthropologist. But it was pretty much true when I was a kid (and I associated it with being a “stateless person” («apatride»).
  13. You sort your friends by continent.
    • This one is technically true and kind of funny. But it’s not as relevant as some of the other ones because it’s more of a practical issue.
  14. You don’t think it’s strange that you haven’t talked to your best friend in a while because you know you will always have a unique bond.
    • I don’t even think you need to travel for this to happen but it’s certainly true for me. Though, it does influence my conception of who my BFF might be.
  15. Half of your phone calls are unintelligible to those around you.
    • This one is rather easy as a French-speaker living in Austin. But still.
  16. You are a pro packer, or at least have done it many times.
    • I was thinking about this a little while ago. Not only in terms of moving from one place to the other but also through being a child of divorce going to see his father every other weekend…

The following items are probably less relevant but they do fit, to a certain extent.

  1. You start to keep your experiences overseas to yourself because people look at you as though you are spoiled for having the opportunity to indulge in a new culture… sad.
    • The anthro’s curse.
  2. A friend talks about their dreams of traveling to across the world to a secluded country and you can give them all the best restaurants and places to visit. You’re like the traveler guidebook.
    • I enjoy doing it when I can, even just for the jetsetter factor, but I don’t do it much (because of the jetsetter factor).
  3. You have little or no contact with the locals but are best friends with people across the globe.
    • Pretty true in Austin so far, but it doesn’t look like it’ll remain the case for very long.
  4. You wake up in one country thinking you are in another.
    • Less frequent, nowadays. It tended to happen more frequently, earlier in life, because I wasn’t as used to moving.
  5. You don’t know where home is.
    • Not really accurate but there is this sense of disenfranchisement on the way back.
  6. You don’t feel at home at home anymore.
    • Sure. But temporary.
  7. When you start introducing yourself followed by your country of origin….
    • Because of my accent in English, this one is a given. And vice-versa: because of this “quirk,” I enjoy keeping my accent intact.
  8. You literally have real friends (not facebook friends) from different schools all over the nation on your friends list.
    • Depends which nation and it has more to do with being an academic.
  9. You have best friends in 5 different countries.
    • See BFF issue above but it’s still kind of true. At least for four countries on three continents.
  10. When you return to the States you are overwhelmed with the number of choices in a grocery store.
    • A Midwesterner friend of mine alerted me about this one, a few years ago and I did experience it in Canada on my way back from Mali or even from Canada to the United States. But it’s not that durable.
  11. You live at school, work in the tropics, and go home for vacation.
    • One of those common things for academics.
  12. You speak two (or more) languages but can’t spell in any of them.
    • I’m not too bad a speller, actually.
  13. You automatically take off your shoes as soon as you get home.
    • Is that supposed to be unusual?
  14. You think VISA is a document stamped in your passport, and not a plastic card you carry in your wallet.
    • In many contexts, sure.
  15. You hate subtitles because you know there is someone that can make an accurate translation.. you!
    • Any bilingual feels this, I’m sure. And it does spill over to languages you don’t in fact know, as you know the feeling too strongly not to get it elsewhere. For instance, in this interview with Larry Lessig on Danish TV.
  16. You watch a movie set in a ‘foreign country’, and you know what the nationals are really saying into the camera.
    • Pretty much the same idea, but with the added exoticism of the “National Geographic eye.”
  17. You have a time zone map next to your telephone.
    • Not really but, like many others, I do have to memorize some timezones.
  18. Your second major is in a foreign language you already speak.
    • Not really the case for me. But I did end up using English as one of my foreign language requirements in graduate school and the other one is also related to my Ph.D. minor.
  19. Your wardrobe can only handle two seasons: wet and dry.
    • This one might happen here in Austin, actually. But I might just end up wearing the same clothes yearlong.
  20. You speak with authority on the quality of airline travel.
    • Kind of similar to the jetsetter factor above. Although, I do enjoy talking about differences in airplane food.
  21. When you carry converters because you actually realize there are different types of outlets.
    • Don’t we all realize this?
  22. You don’t even bother to change your watch when traveling.
    • Well, I do bother changing it but I wish there were more devices which automatically switch.
  23. When you were in middle school you could walk into a bar and order a drink without being questioned.
    • France was like that when I spent time there but I’ve never really lived there for an extended period of time.
  24. You are afraid to go back to visit your school because you know no one will be there whom you used to know, they all moved.
    • Actually, in my case, it was more about being surprized that people still lived there.
  25. You have the opportunity to intern at your Embassy/High Commission without any qualifications.
    • Not really close but I did think about doing it and it seemed like there might be ways to make it work.
  26. You got sick a lot and often had food poisoning.
    • Actually, I might have avoided food poisoning because of a diverse diet. But I did get sick for months while in Mali. Not really sure what it was, though. Might not have been the food after all.

So… I can somehow relate to about half of the 83 traits listed in the “International School” I’m taking these from. Yet my life hasn’t been that of an International School student. Or, really, that of a typical “Third Culture kid.” But as a “stateless person” («apatride») since childhood, as someone who did get to travel intercontinentally early on, as an anthropologist, and as an academic, I can relate to many of these traits.

I guess there’s a few I might add (though not phrased as elegantly):

  1. You often thought you might have recognized someone until you realized that this person is unlikely to have travelled along with you.
  2. You start a casual conversation with someone you knew years ago to realize after ten minutes that the last time you met was in a completely different part of the world.
  3. You actually don’t mind being told that you have an accent (including in your native language).
  4. You’ve had conversations in three languages or more, including situations in which you only understood one of the languages spoken.
  5. (Corollary of previous item) You’re fine with not understanding what people around you are saying.
  6. You don’t remember exactly where some aspect of your behavior might have been deemed normal.
  7. Members of a local community you just entered find you more “normal” than local people.
  8. You’re surprized when a flight takes less than six hours.
  9. You find National Geographic too exoticizing but you find mainstream media quite foreign.
  10. While moving to a new city, you get multiple “flashbacks” from very disparate places.
  11. You don’t really know what’s exotic to whom, anymore.
  12. You can’t remember what was the main language of a dream you’ve just had.
  13. You know exactly that feeling described in L’auberge espagnole of the unfamiliar rapidly becoming familiar when you move to a new place. (You know, the Urquinaona and Mandelieu section.)
  14. You don’t get impressed by well-traveled people.
  15. You never need to take on an act because you’re never completely sure who you are anyway.
  16. You’ve made friends in places where newcomers aren’t welcome.
  17. You actually don’t care so much about where you live but you do care quite a bit about how you live.
  18. You have a hard time acting like a tourist. Except in your hometown.
  19. You prefer meeting new people to seeing well-known landmarks.
  20. You can quickly find your way around any city, sometimes more easily than locals would.
  21. You spent your honeymoon visiting half a dozen places yet you didn’t spend a single night in a hotel room or in a campground.
  22. You get a Chowhound’s sense of what’s the best thing to eat at almost any place you visit.
  23. You don’t need a garage but you do need a guest room.
  24. You’ve presented the wrong passport to a border officer.
  25. You’re fluent in a number of varieties of your native language and this “quirk” carries on to your second or third language.
  26. You make a point not to spend too much time with people who “come from the same place” as you yet you do enjoy their company on occasion.
  27. You wonder why people around you find unacceptable something you thought was pretty commonplace.
  28. You’ve been back-and-forth enough that you’ve noticed a lot of changes in places wherre you’ve been yet you’re actually pretty neutral about these changes.
  29. Homesickness, nostalgia, saudade, “sweet sorrow” all refer to things you know so well that you’re sure you’d miss them. Yup, you might get nostalgic about nostalgia.
  30. You feel at home just about anywhere. Everywhere you go, you just fit. But, in a way, you don’t exactly remember what it feels like to be home.

    If other people can relate to the same set of things, maybe I’m not as weird as I’ve been told I am.

    One thing I feel weird about is that some of these traits sound self-aggrandizing. I kind of “left my humility at the door when I came in” but I still feel that associating myself with some of these things may make me sound like a self-serving snob.

    Ah, well…

    adaptation, Austin, Beer, Coffee, culture, Food, foodies, Montreal, personal, ramblings, restaurants, Texas

    Reviewing Austin

    11 Comments

    Been in Austin for ten days. Using Google Maps and Google Earth, had planned to go to some places in town, especially coffee and beer places.Currently sitting on the patio at Spider House, sipping a rather nice weizen from Live Oak Brewing. Coming in after spending time at Flipnotics, another patio-worthy café. Not that it’s so warm (13°C/55°F) but it’s fun to be on a patio in late December.  Been updating my map of “Places of interest in Austin.” Added a few things, changed the color of markers for places I’ve visited. Google Maps Some quick observations.

    • Still can’t help but compare with other places. Keep getting “flashes” from many different places. That’s probably what you get when you move 21 times in almost exactly seven years.
    • The city was quite empty, the last few days. Typical of a college town. Things seem much better today.
    • Good potential for a real coffee scene but, so far, the only two places where coffee was good were JP’s Java and Caffè Medici. These were the top two recommended places in Austin for coffee and espresso, on CoffeeGeek. Not disappointed with either place.
    • The beer scene is interesting, overall. Texas has very restrictive beer laws but Texas micros and brewpubs are doing interesting things. Will finally meet some members of the Zealots brewclub tonight. Should be fun to talk about beer. Some of my favorites so far, Real Ale Roggenbier, Uncle Billy’s Bitchin’ Camaro, and this here Live Oak Hefeweisse.
    • Maybe I just prefer pulled pork over beef brisket but, so far, I’ve had some really nice pulled pork and the beef brisket has been relatively uninteresting. Can’t wait until I start barbecuing on my own.
    • Someone said Austin was a slacker town. Not hard to believe. And it can be fun to be in a place where slacking is ok. For one thing, servers aren’t constantly harassing me to order drinks.
    • There seems to be something of a “town and gown” issue, here. Maybe not as much as in Bloomington. But still. It seems like students control part of the town (the cafés/bars) and “normal people” are found elsewhere. One big difference with Bloomington is that people of different ages do seem to mingle, to a certain extent. 
    • Though we’re luckily located in an ideal part of town for public transportation, Austin really is a car-city. The MidWest is already pretty intense in terms of car-emphasis, Austin is more car-oriented than I expected. For instance, car drivers pay no attention to pedestrians even when turning left while the “walking” light is on. And it might have more to do with the weather than anything else but there seems to be more SUVs and less bicycles than I’d see in the MidWest.
    • Public transportation is cheap and rather useful downtown. It seems not to work so well for anyone living at any distance from downtown. There are some free routes, a bus connects the airport with both UT and downtown, and the monthly pass is nice (10$ for 31 days, starting at any point).
    • Because the city is spread out, it does seem difficult to do things without a car. Haven’t really felt the need for a car yet and we’ve been lucky enough to get help from a car-owning friend last weekend. Yet a pedestrian lifestyle seems a bit difficult to sustain in Austin. At the same time, the downtown area is relatively small and weather is less of a problem at this point than it could be in Montreal. People keep telling us that the heat of the summer will surely force us to get a car with air conditioning. We’ll see.
    • Grocery stores are a bit difficult to get to but they seem rather interesting. By decreasing order of preference, so far: Central Market,  H-E-B, Whole Foods. Whole Foods has a good selection for certain products, but it’s quite expensive. Central Market seems to have as good a selection for most things yet its prices are rather decent. At H-E-B, we were able to buy some things (produce especially) for much cheaper than what we might pay in Montreal (where food is very inexpensive). Even though it makes a lot of sense in terms of regional differences, it’s still funny to see that tomatoes or cranberries are much more expensive here than in Montreal while oranges and avocados are significantly cheaper. Overall, we’ll be finding ways not to spend too much on grocery.
    • On average, restaurants cost about the same thing as they would in small U.S. cities: less expensive than in Boston but more expensive than in Montreal. Unsurprisingly, Mexican and barbecue restaurants seem to offer the best “bang for the buck.” And there are some places for inexpensive all you can eat pizza. While it’s not the type of food the typical foodie would brag about, it’s nice to have the option.
    • Won’t say much about people’s attitudes because it easily gets me to go into “ethnographic fieldwork mode,” which isn’t what I want to do tonight. Let’s just say that it’s part of the adaptation.  Not “culture shock.” Just, getting to learn how to behave in a new city.
    • Despite the lack of snow and the scattered palm trees, it doesn’t so much feel like a Southern city. Maybe because most Austinites come from other parts of the country. Similarly, it doesn’t really feel like Texas. Maybe the town and gown division has something to do with this.
    • There are some nice things to look at but the overall visual aspect of the city isn’t necessarily made to impress. Maybe just my own biases but, to me, Austin looks more like South Bend, Moncton, or Springfield than like New Orleans, Boston, or Chicago.

    Overall, an interesting experience so far. Can’t say I really got the pulse of the city, though.

    Austin, personal, ramblings

    Port-Based "Sangria"

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    Ok, it doesn’t really taste like sangria. But it’s a similar drink. And it’s pretty nice, IMHO.

    A bit of ruby port, some fresh ginger, lime juice, and orange juice. Haven’t measured the proportions but the result is pretty close to what I thought it’d be. It’d work rather well with “Christmas spices” like dry ginger and cinnamon.

    While living in NoHo, MA, I bought a bottle of very inexpensive ruby port at Whole Foods. Can’t remember the brand but it was simply delicious. Better than most Tawny ports, IMHO. And much less expensive than almost any wine. So I became interested in ruby port.

    Tried a few other rubies. Including some that was sold in Quebec. For almost three times the price of what I bought in Massachusetts. And not as pleasurable.

    Today (Christmas Eve), I went to a liquor store right here in Austin with the definite intention of buying ruby port. Got some Taylor and some Fairbanks. The Fairbanks was even cheaper than the Taylor and, as it so happens, I prefer it. There’s something to these ruby ports that I find quite nice. Can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s related to “freshness.” They do taste “green” but in a nice way. This Fairbanks ruby port I got is still not exactly what I’m looking for, but it’s pretty nice.

    I started mixing the Taylor with some lime juice. Then thought about sangria, so I added orange juice and fresh ginger. Quite a nice mix. Summery.

    Quite fitting for my first snowless Christmas in years.

    Anyhoo… As I’m here, all alone on Christmas Eve, I thought I’d blog about my experiments and experience.

    Fun!

    Blogging, Coffee, Facebook, memes, personal, playfulness, podcasts, politics, Quiet Revolution, randomness, social networking, tagging

    Keeping Up With the Loshes

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    Elizabeth Losh has tagged me:

    virtualpolitik: Pieces of Eight

    I actually feel honoured. I met Losh randomly, on a rather high-profile blog she contributes to. I simply posted a comment. And here I am, tagged by a high-profile blogger (and, it seems, a very interesting person).

    This “meme” seems to be about revealing eight random things about yourself. As silly as this may sound, I like the idea.

    What Losh did was pretty neat. She used eight (presumably consecutive tracks on her iPod Shuffle as inspiration for her facts. Since I can’t get coolness points for doing the same thing, I’ll reverse the randomness factor by using Losh’s facts as inspiration for mine. I’ll then associate some music with every fact.

    1. My family has never been into partisan politics and none of us has been very faithful to a political party. I did attend, as a child, a meeting of Parti Québécois during the 1980 referendum. (Stéphane Venne, Le début d’un temps nouveau, Renée Claude)
    2. Though I’m not a sports fan by any stretch of the imagination, the only time in my life I skipped school was to see the parade when the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley cup in 1986. There was a riot later that day, IIRC. (Dolores Claman, The Hockey Theme)
    3. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I archive episodes that I want to blog about. I only use a very small fraction of those archives. Guess I should find an easy way to nanoblog based on podcast episodes. Too bad iTunes doesn’t have any blogging/sharing feature. (Fabio FZero, Samba do Aeroporto, Gerador Zero)
    4. I pretty much never had a hero. My role models have been my mother, my paternal grandmother, and my wife. No wonder my “PersonalDNA” has me at the 72th percentile for femininity and at the 10th percentile for masculinity. (Claude Dubois, Femme de rêve)
    5. I never got my driver’s license. As surprising as it may sound, not driving hasn’t been so much of an issue for me, even in car-intense parts of the United States. (Tracy Chapman, Fast Car)
    6. The comment I originally left on one of Losh’s blog entries was about addictions. I don’t think that I’m addicted to anything. There’s a number of things I do quite regularly (drink coffee, play solitaire on a PDA, spend time online…) but none of them I ever feel compelled to do. (Robert Palmer, Addicted to Love)
    7. Though I haven’t been baptized, I’m culturally Catholic meaning that I probably behave like a Catholic by mere virtue of having been raised in Catholic Quebec during the end of the Quiet Revolution. (Jacques Brel, Les Flamingants)
    8. Among the first things which tickled my philosophical curiosity was thinking about an infinite universe. I kept thinking about what would lie beyond the Universe. I was quite young (10yo) and didn’t know much about (astro)physics. I still wonder about the grander scheme of things. (Nancy Hamilton/Morgan Lewis, How High The Moon, Ella Fitzgerald)

    (Can anyone guess what took me longer while preparing this entry?)
    Now, who should follow this meme? Here’s a list of people I’m tagging:

    Sydney Hutchinson, Mireille Caissy, Jean Crawford, Yara El-Ghadban, Erin McLeod, Aurora Flewwelling-Skup, Hélène Recule, asphaire

    (Notice a pattern, here?)

    Let’s see who goes along.

    confessions, Ethnography, personal, ramblings, surveys, voice

    Voice and Empathy

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    Full disclosure. I do surveys. On the phone. For a marketing research firm.

    No, no! Not a telemarketing firm! A research firm which uses survey results to improve the quality of the service offered by a client. Huge difference.

    No, you most likely have not hung up on me. Very few people have done so and the readership of this blog is not such that it would be even remotely likely that you, dear reader, could be one of those few respondents who did hang up on me.

    Why do I do it? Well, yes, it’s a job. A summer job, to be precise. But I could be doing (and have been doing) any number of other jobs. Yet, as an ethnographer, I felt compelled to give surveys a try. And I’m glad I did.

    I actually did phone surveys as a summer job in 2005. Did it for the very reason that, while teaching ethnographic topics, I had been comparing ethnography with surveys even though I had never done surveys myself. Doing surveys on the phone seemed like a great way to learn more about those methods while getting an income at the same time. It worked like a charm.

    Seems like I’m not the only one to think along those lines as I know at least two other anthropologists who are working at phone survey centres.

    How do I like it? It’s really not so bad. The call centre where I work has a relatively nice atmosphere. More specifically, the supervisor and monitor provide exactly the type of supervision we need. Lots of positive feedback. Negative feedback is always given in a thoughtful manner. Both are very understanding and trusting with people who are serious at what they do. And there’s actually a notion of teamwork instead of competition.

    I also learn a lot about myself. Not completely new things. Validation of what I thought of myself.

    One is voice. My voice happens to be a valuable tool. Oh, I did notice this before. When I was in high school, some people kept telling me that I should become a news anchor or radio announcer because of my voice. The fact that I still had more of a European accent probably counted but it also had to do with actual voice quality. People thought I had a radio voice.

    As shallow as it sounds, I do like my speaking voice. Not that it’s “the best voice ever” or that people stop me to tell me about my voice. But I do like the way I sound, overall. My voice used to be more pleasing than it is now. My GERD has had some detrimental effects on my voice. Especially my singing voice. But my voice is still pleasing enough that I receive positive feedback about it, on occasion.

    The thing about my voice isn’t that it’s so good. But it’s a versatile voice and I do use it as a tool. It seems that I can adapt it to different situations, which is very useful.

    Given my interests in acoustic anthropology, it should be no surprise that I think about voice fairly frequently. After all, I’m an audio guy. Like Steven Feld in Music Grooves, I wonder about the voice work of those women working for erotic phone lines. It would, in fact, be fascinating to do an ethnographic study of those workers, with a focus on voice work.

    As anyone can guess, voice can also be quite important in teaching. I’m as much of an auditory learner as one can be. So, while teaching, I tend to use my voice for effect instead of other tools. It seems to work rather well with some people but I need to enhance my other teaching methods.

    The other main thing doing phone surveys has taught me about myself is how empathetic I can get. Again, I knew this beforehand. I’m the kind of person who has a hard time watching a comedy about someone getting in all sorts of bad situations (“cringe” movies and such). I literally feel for them. When I watched The Sixth Sense, I felt the bullet enter my body.

    Oh, sure. We’re all like that. But I get the feeling that my empathy levels are a bit extreme, at times.

    Hannah Arendt would probably have said some negative things about this “personality trait” of mine. But I’ve learned to accept it.

    What does this have to do with doing surveys on the phone? Quite a bit, actually. There are projects on which I can be very productive, mostly because of empathy. People hear that I care. Because I do care. A few other projects, I’m almost unable to do because of empathy. I need to get the feeling that those surveys can actually help improve the service people get. And I loathe being annoying to people.

    On almost every survey I do at my current workplace, I can be very empathetic and it works very well. But I just worked on a project which was clearly annoying to respondents and it made me shrivel. The effect was quite intense. I had to take a long walk on my way back from work because I had realised something important about myself.

    Hence this blog entry.

    Academia, academic publishing, activism, collaborative learning, Concordia University, enthusiasm, idealism, open access, personal, Teaching

    Concordia and Open Access Self-Archiving

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    Fascinating talk:

    News@Concordia: Stevan Harnad, Maximizing Concordia University’s Research Impact, April 25

    Reactions were varied but some of us were able to have a very good chat after the talk. For one thing, it helped me understand the whole “Green OA” issue in a new light. As an idealist non-tenured faculty, I tend to get dreamy about the possibilities for the next step in the Open Access movement. Including in terms of pedagogy and community outreach. But Harnad’s talk really put the focus on the “knowledge ecology” involved in this world of unlimited resources.

    To me, Concordia is an interesting case. So far, the university’s online visibility has been quite low, self-archiving is quite rare among Concordia researchers, and people tend to focus on the logistics. But Concordia seems to be on a mission to redefine itself in the broader frame of “forward-looking institutions of higher learning.” Contrary to McGill (Concordia’s “neighbour”), Concordia focuses on such things as flexibility, diversity, community outreach and, yes, even rebranding (which some people dislike). Sure, much of it might be “corporate-speak” to increase enrollment. But the point is, Concordia seems to truly cherish the diversity of its enrolled students. In fact, it’s not positioning itself as the “so elite, just being admitted is enough to get a job” model typical of certain prestigious institutions in the United States. Some people at Concordia are making sure that the message of “going forward to meet new challenges” is heard.

    It’s no secret that I like Concordia. As my second semester there comes to an end and as I reflect on my time there, I tend to see this university as a place where true learning can occur. I may only teach one more semester there before I move to Austin so I will enjoy it to the last drop. And, who knows, I might find as many things to like in Texas once I’m settled there.

    If Concordia can increase its visibility by engaging itself on the OA route, I’m all for it.