Well, I put together my massive dossier for the European Parliament job today, and sent it off to the applications centre in Luxembourg by registered mail. Apart from the application form itself, an extra 13 pages; two with my publications and earlier job history, four degree certificates, my current job contract, latest pay slip, last payslip from previous job and photocopies of both passports. We’ll see what happens.

Meantime a Moldovan on-line political science journal has very kindly put me on their advisory board, which is very nice of them, though I have to make sure it’s OK with my employers. And another small academic centre in the Balkans has offered to make me a Fellow, which I suppose will look OK on the CV for when the time comes. And a colleague has persuaded his father, who is a professor of Brecht studies in Utah, to invite me to Salt Lake City to give a lecture in the autumn. That is very cool indeed.

I had to cancel going to a conference about Moldova in the Hague today to stay in Brussels and try and finish the long-postponed Moldova report. Didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Basically trying to tweak the text so that it doesn’t offend liberal Russians but does offend conservatives. Not easy. I’m going to Moscow on Thrusday and Friday and will no doubt find out more there…