Enjoying a good hour or so of surfing on the ´net at a Viennese hotel where despite the rather minimal facilities they give guests free Web time.

Catching up with Queen of Wands. It´s great, but a bit slow-moving, so I save it up for weeks between reads. Fun stuff over the last month or so but only really comprehensible if you´ver read it from the start.

A somewhat bizarre meeting with dubious ex-Yugoslav businessman tonight. Mostly my colleague speaking the language formerly known as Serbo-Croat (which I can mostly understand) with occasional interjections from me in French (which I sort-of speak but my colleague doesn´t understand). Eventually I gave up and came back to the hotel to surf for free.

More meetings tomorrow. Back home on Tuesday, thank heavens.

I just discovered that the Guardian coverage of the Hugo awards cited my page on this year’s nominees! Bounce!

Off to Austria now for a three-day staff meeting, topped and tailed by talks with OSCE diplomats.

Someone just sent me a rude email about the web page where I compare the results of the BBC Big Read Best 100 Books with two other lists to spot which books made it to more than one of the lists. My correspondent, whose name is similar to that of a Simpsons character, said:

If you’re going to be a critic learn to count. Crime and Cunishment is on all 3 lists.

So I had no choice but to reply:

If you’re going to send offensive messages, you should learn to spell “Punishment”. It is, after all, on all three lists.

Three major tasks to do for today and just one of them has been completed; it’s already 1730.

But I managed a slightly strange lunch with a senior Finnish diplomat, and a cup of tea with the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Also I bought a Dorling Kindersley book yesterday about how to Organise Your Life. Very much needed; I ploughed through it last night and found it full of good advice. Why does nobody ever teach you these things at school?

Someone emailed me to ask why I wrote this web page.

I was inspired to do it during a visit to DC last October. I was having lunch at McCormick & Schmidt’s on K Street, where they have a full run of presidential portraits on display, and noticed that the bearded presidents were more chronologically concentrated.than I had expected. The next morning I was given breakfast at the American Bar Association’s headquarters in a room with a portrait of Charles Evan Hughes on display, and of course his beard was rather splendid; I wondered if he was the last serious bearded candidate. And indeed, on further research, it turned out he was.

The person who sent the message also asked about Martin Van Buren’s sideburns, but I’ve added my response on that point to the page itself.

I’ve met Wesley Clark a couple of times. He’s a very intelligent bloke who understands that there is a world outside the United States. He doesn’t have a beard either.

My explorers account was stuffed for days with the Sobig virus.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith is very good.

Even thinking about work makes me feel very tired.

I had 950 unread emails in my inbox when I got back.

Rather pleased by this!

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Bard Ranger

Alignment:
Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered ‘normal’.

Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Primary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Secondary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.

Deity:
Oghma is the Neutral Good god of knowledge and invention. He is also known as the Binder of What is Known, and is the Patron of Bards. His followers believe that knowledge reigns supreme, and is the basis for everything else that is done. They wear white shirts and pants, with a black and gold braided vest, and a small, box-like hat. All priests of Oghma are known as Loremasters. Oghma’s symbol is a scroll.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

Closest 50 non-Friends for :
1: , 2: , 3: , 4: , 5: , 6: , 7: , 8: , 9: , 10: , 11: , 12: , 13: , 14: , 15: , 16: , 17: , 18: , 19: , 20: , 21: , 22: , 23: , 24: , 25: , 26: , 27: , 28: , 29: , 30: , 31: , 32: , 33: , 34: , 35: , 36: , 37: , 38: , 39: , 40: , 41: , 42: , 43: , 44: , 45: , 46: , 47: , 48: , 49: , 50:

Thanks to the inimitable Paul Crowley.

Relaxing in the ancestral home for the next three weeks. Suddenly beginning to realise just how much pressure I was under at work before the holiday.

And for some bizarre reason I can’t read my work email from here. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.

It seems my grandmother’s uncle was Attorney-General of the United States and founded the Council on Foreign Relations. I had no idea.

Just managed to fit in a little bookshopping along with work-type meetings in London. Tracked down the Fantasy Centre in Islington – actually a little smaller than I expected, but that’s because they don’t bother stocking the “cheap stuff”. Looked in at New Worlds/Murder One as well. I’m sure things never used to be this expensive. But I picked up Hell’s Cartographers and three of the four James White books on my Irish sf list at the former, and the Ted Chiang collection and latest Dozois Year’s Best SF at the latter.

Must go catch train back to in-laws in Kidderminster now. Going to Ireland for three weeks on Thursday.

My god, it got me completely right!

Hurrah! Like the author you are a Lib Dem! A
perpetual minority, you will enter elections
with the ethos that it’s the taking part that
counts. Believing student politics to be
corrupt and unaccountable, you will spend
enchanting Saturday nights scribbling away at
constitutional amendments in your room.

What sort of student politician are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

So I met them at the conference I was at in Athens in May and they said, can you speak at a conference for us in Serbia mid-July? and I said, sure.

But they called and said the July date was off. Then they called again last week and said, could I do Montenegro, last week of September? And I said yes, but I was planning to go to a science fiction convention that weekend, so I couldn’t stay for the whole thing.

Then I thought again and emailed them and said, if it’s that big a deal, is there any problem with my asing a speaker’s fee? And they said, well we can’t quite do that, but we can fly you to Dublin from Montenegro and back to Brussels at our expense after you’ve spoken at our conference.

It’s a deal.

‘Bye bye, you maddening piece of crap’
Well well, a person who knows stuff! Yay! we could
use more of you-people that actually enjoy the
books and how they’re written. You know your
stuff! Go you!

Do you really know the works of Mr. Tolkien? (Slightly Hard) (With Images!)
brought to you by Quizilla

My favourite Tolkien test is this one.

Serbia report finally published; Bosnia report going out today; Moldova report undergoing final editing by me; only three others to do before going on holiday in eleven, count them, eleven days.

Can’t come soon enough.

Look, when I said I wanted the damn thing trimmed from 100 pages to 50 pages before I started editing it, I did not mean that it was OK for you to increase it to 120 pages before demanding that I devote the next week to cleaning it up. Why is this difficult for you to understand?

At the French Embassy reception for Bastille Day on Monday I bumped into my old friend Pete. I knew him in Bosnia five years ago where he had a variety of jobs in the international community and fell in love with my landlady’s daughter. (Lots of people fell in love with her, but she didn’t reciprocate.) Then last November when I went back to Bosnia for a weekend I saw Pete again, also back for the weekend. The landlady’s daughter was away, studying in London. But on Monday Pete looked blissfully happy with a Georgian lady on his arm, who he hopes to persuade to come back to the UK with him in the winter. Good for him.

My work email is completely screwed. The systems guys were migrating to a new system over the weekend but one of the consequences seems to be that I can’t read it from out of the office as I normally can. Apparently yesterday afternoon there were 260 unread messages waiting for me. I bet it will be 400 by the time I get back tomorrow.

Great exchange of the day yesterday:

Me: So what can you tell us about the peace process in South Ossetia?
Senior international official: Apart from the fact that we have achieved nothing since April 2000?

I was talking to a young American colleague last week before coming out to Tbilisi. He asked me casually if Eduard Shevardnadze had been at all well known in international politics before he became President of Georgia.

Boggle.

I mean, he is a bright kid, has done a degree in political science and is doing a master’s in international relations. But it brought home to me forcefuilly something I first realised back in 1989; that some day I will be telling my children what Communism *was*.

Apart from that, Georgia is charming, and a little threatening. Most memorable exchange yesterday:

Me: Aren’t you a little worried by the apparent climate of political violence in this country?
Senior government official: What do you mean? I have no such information about political violence.

Shades of Claude Rains: “I am shocked! shocked! to discover that gambling going on in here!”

Going to Georgia for the first time in my life on Sunday, and I’ve been trying to learn the alphabet. საკართველო is sakartvelo, meaning “Georgia”. შევარდნაძე is Shevardnadze.

I think it will be a long haul.

Thanks to for linking to the previous entry! Our man got a fax from the Interior Ministry this afternoon saying that his visa has been extended for a year. So all is well. Apart from my toe which is still throbbing.

I just had an ingrowing toenail out. A minor problem for years, and then it flared up again last week, so I went in to the local hospital (same one where U was born) on Thursday afternoon for a bit of surgery. I was looking forward to a day of sitting quietly at home with my throbbing foot up on Friday. But it was not to be.

Just as I was setting off to get my toe done, I got a call from my head of office in Belgrade. I began by reassuring him that I was sending him my revisions to his latest draft report on the dodgy activities of the new Serbian government. He then informed me that the Interior Ministry had just given him three days to leave the country; his application to renew his visa and work permit had been rejected because he is the subject of an investigation by the secret police. We were not particularly surprised by the last bit but it was the first time we'd had it officially confirmed.

We pulled out all the stops of course, and the manoeuvre I was most pleased with was one I pulled off by remote control. The Interior Minister is the leader of a small political party which was actually applying to join the European Liberal grouping at a meeting in London yesterday. I primed the former and current leaders of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland with the news, and they forced the Minister to make a public commitment in front of all the European Liberal party leaders that he would rescind the decision.

Though this had not yet been formally notified to our man in Belgrade by close of play last night, I now feel fairly confident that we'll get it reversed and he can stay. The Serbian Prime Minister went on TV last night to say that it was a simple administrative error, that our man had been registered as the head of a business not an NGO, and he was sure it could all be sorted out. Of course the bit about his being registered as a businessman was not true; but let us charitably assume that the Prime Minister was misinformed and not just making things up to save face.

Meantime my foot had been throbbing away all day. And I am planning a quiet Saturday, to make up for the quiet Friday I should have had yesterday and missed.

Today’s dramatic work news was that a bloke who was supposed to start with us on Monday has instead taken a job as Vice-Chancellor of a Canadian university.

It’s rather a shock to realise that someone who would have been my hierarchical equal (OK, he would have been first among equals, but still) in the organisation is also eligible for Vice-Chancellorships.

Quite a good day. Bike ride with F in the morning to the Heverlee war cemetery – and we saw two red squirrels! Then a brief visit to B’s school for the annual garden party. Then (leaving B with babysitter) a goodbye party for two Canadian friends of Anne’s who are returning across the Atlantic. Then another goodbye party for a friend of mine who’s about to spend a year in Washington. And it turns out she’s a science fiction fan! Four years I’ve known her and didn’t have a clue. And F was very well-behaved throughout, though is now creating bedtime problems. U has just fallen asleep on my lap as I typed this.

B has dragged me downstairs for one of her midnight feasts, so I can at least catch up with this meme from a few weeks back. To my surprise I’ve seen 31 of these.

1 Godfather, The (1972)
2 Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
3 Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
4 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
5 Schindler’s List (1993)
6 Citizen Kane (1941)
7 Casablanca (1942)
8 Seven Samurai (1954)
9 Star Wars (1977)
10 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
11 Memento (2000)
12 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
13 Rear Window (1954)
14 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
15 Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
17 Usual Suspects, The (1995)
18 Amelie (2001)
19 Pulp Fiction (1994)
20 North by Northwest (1959)
21 Psycho (1960)
22 Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
23 12 Angry Men (1957)
24 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
25 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
26 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
27 Goodfellas (1990)
28 American Beauty (1999)
29 Vertigo (1958)
30 Pianist, The (2002)
31 Sunset Blvd. (1950)
32 Apocalypse Now (1979)
33 Some Like It Hot (1959)
34 Matrix, The (1999)
35 To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
36 Taxi Driver (1976)
37 Third Man, The (1949)
38 Paths of Glory (1957)
39 Fight Club (1999)
40 Boot, Das (1981)
41 L.A. Confidential (1997)
42 Double Indenity (1944)
43 Chinatown (1974)
44 Requiem for a Dream (2000)
45 Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
46 Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
47 Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)
48 Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001) (aka: Spirited away, for those who don’t know 🙂 this is the japanese name)
49 Saving Private Ryan (1998)
50 All About Eve (1950)
51 M (1931)
52 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
53 Raging Bull (1980)
54 Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
55 Se7en (1995)
56 Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)
57 Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
58 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
59 Vita e bella, La (1997)
60 American History X (1998)
61 Sting, The (1973)
62 Touch of Evil (1958)
63 Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)
64 Alien (1979)
65 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
66 Rashemon (1950)
67 Leon (1994)
68 Annie Hall (1977)
69 Great Escape, The (1963)
70 Clockwork Orange, A (1971)
71 Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
72 Reservoir Dogs (1992)
73 Sixth Sense, The (1999)
74 Jaws (1975)
75 Amadeus (1984)
76 On the Waterfront (1954)
77 Ran (1985)
78 Braveheart (1995)
79 High Noon (1952)
80 Fargo (1996)
81 Blade Runner (1982)
82 Apartment, The (1960)
83 Aliens (1986)
84 Toy Story 2 (1999)
85 Strangers on a Train (1951)
86 Modern Times (1936)
87 Shining, The (1980)
88 Donnie Darko (2001)
89 Duck Soup (1933)
90 Princess Bride, The (1987)
91 Lola rennt (1998) (aka, “Run Lola Run” in the american version)
92 City Lights (1931)
93 General, The (1927)
94 Metropolis (1927)
95 Searchers, The (1956)
96 Full Metal Jacket
97 Notorious (1946)
98 Manhattan (1979)
99 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
100 Graduate, The (1967)

comments that I am being rather kind about historical fiction when I suggest reading it for style rather than accuracy. I’ve thought about this at lngth, mainly in the course of futile debate on the usenet group humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare with one Paul Crowley (not but a much less mellow Irish gentleman of the same name).

In particular, I found myself wrestling at various stages with Crowley’s statement that Shakespeare had an unparallelled “sense of history”. For me this statement is clearly false; the “historical” plays are full of inaccuracies for dramatic effect, eg the characters of Richard III, Macbeth and Brutus, the clocks in Julius Caesar, etc. This doesn’t make them bad plays; the point is the characterisation and the drama, not the accuracy of the setting. Crowley may have meant something different by it but I never became clear what that might be.

Now, of course, to make a convincing story the author does have to engage with his or her audience’s level of knowledge about the setting. Connie Willis’s otherwise excellent story “Fire Watch” is ruined for me not because of her portrayal of 1940’s London, which is no doubt rigorously researched and fully accurate, but because of her depiction of mid-21st century Oxford which is completely implausible. The result was that I spent most of the story picking up on the deliberate hints about the fate of St Paul’s and at the same time wondering what the author was trying to hint about the fate of Oxford. By making her future Oxford so similar to yer standard 20th century US campus, Willis no doubt intended to propel her readers from a familiar environment into an war-torn city, and it probably succeeds for most of them. For this Oxbridge graduate who grew up in Belfast, it just didn’t work.

But I try not to let that happen to me too often. As an sf reader I read stories at least in part for the imagination and vividness of the setting. In the case of a “real” setting that the author has not directly experienced, like the 12th century, Ancient Rome, Willis’ Oxford or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars, it’s a more difficult task to pull off, but the rewards are the greater when they do.

I’ve started screening CVs for our imminent vacancy in Kosovo. Found two applicants that looked moderately promising, noticed they both lived in the same city, called a friend in said city to see if she knew them. Turns out the two are married to each other! But submitted applications quite independently – though when I looked more closely I realised they had put the same home phone number. Interesting possibilities arise of two-for-the-price-of-one or some form of job share… but there are other candidates who need to be taken into consideration as well.

Just finished The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, having bought it changing planes in Zurich last weekend after I lost the only other unread book I’d brought on my trip (also because it was on the BBC Big Read list). I was pleasantly surprised. The setting is my favourite century, the 12th, in a fictional county of southern England between Hampshire and Sussex, and the topic is human relations and architecture. There were a couple of annoying historical inaccuracies – everyone in the book speaks English, and hardly anyone French; the story of the White Ship is brought in rather gratuitously as a plot device, and the character of Thomas a Becket at the end seems to me very different from what we know of the real one. But one should read historical fiction for style rather than accuracy, and this one passes that test.

Well, I like the Job and Likely To Win bits!

You’re Thailand!
Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you, you have a long history of rising above adversity.  Recent adversity has led to questions about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a number of tourists and admirers.  And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good meal whenever it’s called for.  Good enough to make people cry.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Hmm. I like “calmer and more independent” and “cook a good meal” but not sure I really like the sentence in between…

Yesterday was a pretty grim day, due almost entirely to lack of sleep the night before with Bridget keeping us awake from before 1 o’clock till after 4. Today is her sixth birthday, and she basically has the abilities of a two-year-old.

Last night was much better though. And yesterday picked up during the day – looks like I will get three papers on the EU and the Balkans published tomorrow, just before the Thessaloniki summit, and I got an opinion piece finished for IWPR.

Back from four days in Macedonia and Kosovo, mainly talking to my team in the Balkans (including Bosnia and Serbia) but with time out also for dinner on Saturday with two Kosovar intellectuals, and meetings on Thursday with senior government officials in Macedonia.

I do like Macedonia. I first visited in 1997, spending ten days travelling around Macedonia on behalf of my then employers persuading the local pols of the merits of multiparty democracy. Since then I’ve been back at least once a year, including another ten-day trip in the middle of the conflict in 2001. I played a minor but I hope positive part in the creation of the Ohrid Peace Agreement that year; I was the first person to publish the infamous Prizren Document in May, and also published an analysis of the draft peace agreement, leaked to me from an American source, in early July in one of the Macedonian magazines (which also meant I was able to be the first person to do an analysis of the final text when it was agreed in August). There is half a sentence in the peace agreement (the end of $3.3 in the main text, reinforced by the second and third bullet points of Annex B$4) which was actually my idea, as far as I know (see Section III, page 27 of a report I helped write)– at least I don’t know of any other person who suggested it before me. This was the radical thought that in any given Macedonian town, the mayor and the chief of police should talk to each other occasionally.

Ohrid itself, where I went on Thursday and stayed to yesterday, remains an underexploited jewel of a medieval city, perched on the edge of the eponymous lake. Unfortunately I had some difficulty in getting really tasty specimens of the famous local trout in the restaurants. But in general it was a good time. And good to take a detour to visit Kosovo again, which is always full of interesting developments. Now back in the office and still loads of work to do…

Forging ahead on the work that Must Be Done before I depart for a long weekend in Macedonia and Kosovo tomorrow morning.

Rather shocked today by news from my Balkan contacts that a couple who are friends of mine have split up acrimoniously, amid a welter of public accusations of domestic violence. Pretty awful circumstances anyway, and then for it to hit the (notoriously bitchy) local press makes it much worse for all concerned. They both worked in the same NGO, and I’d been to several conferences there organised by them, plus taking my entire family out there last summer; happy memories of splashing around with them and their two small children in the hotel swimming pool, and (as is so often the case) I had no idea that there might be any problems.

I see from press reports that he has lost his job for sure, and I’d be surprised if she has stuck around (since she’s from Western Europe in the first place). So since I don’t have a home address for either of them, and the work contacts are presumably no good any more, it will probably be a very long time before I hear from either of them again. An awful shame; he’s a very bright chap but clearly has vicious character flaws, and she is very nice and deserved much better.