Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog

[ from the dept. ]

Today I heard the first Christmas advert for Christmas 2004. And it’s not even July. Funnily enough it was for a restaurant: Book your Christmas party now! I am just wondering why they are broadca

[ from the dept. ]

Everything seems okay. Have been away for some days. Nothing exciting seems to happen at the moment here. Am thinking about stopping this blog for the next year till the G8 is over, as getting slowly paranoid.
(But not only me, can tell you!)
Besides, the server where this blog is hosted might be going down soon.

[ from the dept. ]

The last days have been brainblasting and very exhausting. The Edinburgh Radical Bookfair was on the last days, and it was good. My personal highlights was the event on Saturday afternoon about the media misinformation and propaghanda. A new book was presented about Israel, which definitely rocks and certainly is one of the best books ever published about this topic, and I can say that without even having read it.
It has just been published, and came fresh from the press to the bookfair.
Its title is:Bad News from Israel. And what makes this book so special, is that it had taken 3 years to write it, and is based on intensive research in several countries. And it is per se not about the Israel- Palestinian conflict as the main point of view, but how it is portrayed by the media, and what problems the audience and the journalists face in the conflict.

On Thursday the news got announced, that the next G8 meeting in 2005 will in fact be in Scotland, that means about an hour drive away from Edinburgh.
There are already some websites about protesting against the G8 meeting next year. One is the Dissent website, and then there is also another one on enrager.

Also, Indymedia Scotland new website has been first nominated, and now shortlisted for The New Statesman Media Award 2004. It is quite good and comforting to know that it is the same award Indymedia UK received some years ago, too.
I was pretty astonished about the nomination and shortlist, because the Indymedia Scotland website is just up and working since May basically, and we still haven’t got yet everything sorted out and wanted to take our time and make decisions slowly. However, I am quite happy about the appreciation and compliment to the website.

The other really grapping event of the Bookfair was this mornings dicussion about feminism and the middle east. It was one of the best discussions I have heard the last few years. A woman from Iran, a woman from Iraq and a woman from Palestine, all three of them highly educated and actively participating in feminist and women’s groups in the three countries were so knowledgable and passionate about their believes and on the other hand so honest, too, it was impressive. Especially the talk of the Iraqi woman about the Equal Rights for Women in Iraq group was faszinating.

So, these are just few of the events happening the last days. Unfortunately I am so tired, I can’t write much more.

[ from the dept. ]

The cat has finished its hungerstrike and this morning I was nearly arrested. Getting up this morning I was just reading about an action at BAE so I just hopped along there.
It all seemed to be pretty calm and relaxed but as soon as I started to take pictures, the police started chasing me to tell me either to stop taking pictures or to get arrested at once.
This never happened to me before, and not in Edinburgh, Scotland.

[ from the dept. ]

The cat is pestering me. It has gone on hungerstrike. It does not like the cheap ordinary food, and is boycotting it, but it’s now pestering me to give it multinational corporation cat food. It has this look in its face : "What – you really expect me to eat THAT?" and then it just turns its back to me and disappears behind the sofa untill it gets Whiskas.

[ from the dept. ]

Yes, yes, yes the boring time of the year has arrived. Everybody is in holidays or comes back from holidays or is planning holidays.
The best is, since yesterday, life is much more exciting because I have got a cat for a month, whilst a friend of mine is on holidays. And finally after tidying up, i managed to find in the allotment application form which I had last seen 2 years ago. Well, the waiting time for a plot is about 4-6 years, and for a garage it is even more, at the moment it is 7 years. The office stated he would backdate it, but couldn’
t promise he could backdate the application for 2 years.
Most of the reduction of the waiting list happens by neglicance rather than “real” one after the other vacancy being filled – there is hardly any turnover. So if you forget to send back your yearly “I want to stay on the waiting list”- slip then you can start queuing again.
So, see, being mean, I could state the waiting lists for garages and allotment plots were shorter in the GDR than in Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.
And of course it was cheaper.
When I first moved into my student accomodation post GDR i only paid less that 20 quid = 30 euros = 30 dollars a month. A single room was 40 quid a month. And in the GDR i was told student accomodation was less than 3 quid a month. The only other problem was, you couldn’t study what you wanted, haeh, as a normal person, especially if you were female and non-party member. Female, because you did not go to the military to show off your partiotism.
Anyway, at least there is no more forced Marxism-Leninism courses at university. But I am lucky as it was all before my time, I just got told and read about it. Still, it continues to be fascinating.
Another astonishing – well more or less exciting thing is the blocked toilet in my neighbours flat. It is so incredibly disgusting.
And if he reads it (and I am sure he does), I have to speak a very strong word now: You need to sort out your toilet! It only gets worse!
I mean, to be true I totally blocked my toilet once with potatoe mash. This is actually nearly as good as cement, so in case you are unsure how to sabotage your nearest McDonalds toilets…

[ from the dept. ]

The last days were boring. It seems it’s summer and everybody disappears into holidays or has exams or whatever.

I did not make to send it the application for the dream job. First of all I wouldn’t have got it anyway. objective chances are probably 1:10 000 or something. Because the bad thing about dream jobs is that there are a lot of people apart from me, who want the same job, too. And when i discussed the application with some friends and gave it to them to read, basically they mentioned that the content is good as always, but the writing style is not good enough for that particular job.
Which is true, even though I tried to persuade that it is intentional and deliberately being inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s short and simple sentence, but they did not buy it, because of too many repetitions and limited vocabulary, which many foreign language speakers are prone to.

Well, now i know why I like Indymedia so much; because the content matters much more than the style, and nobody critises, but the collaborative feature writing style ensures a minimal quality nevertheless.
The feature about the Edinburgh STUDENT newspaper has now 122 comments. More to be expected, because it is more a debatting piece and it seems to be an unresolvable issue.Apparantly the Student newspaper made some jokes about the Gaelic language, which sparked of a row of complaints and comments on Indymedia Scotland.

Anyway I particularly liked the comment of the editor of the student newspaper saying: “And to those who decry our version of journalism: where did you get this information? From an independent site that allows anyone to post an article, no matter how ill- researched or biased?”.
Because, yes, I like Indymedia, and I like that everybody can post.
Somebody responded: “Doh! Yeah actually Mike that’s the frigging point of Indymedia – its about wrestling control from the press – student or otherwise that published racist ‘satire’ like you.”.
Well, whilst I don’t share the classification as “rascist satire” I have to admit I like the respone of “indymedia wrestling control from the press”.

Anyway back to problems with the job application, it is always like hiding who you really are, and trying to fill up the gaps in the life with something more acceptable by society.

[ from the dept. ]

I have found a job offer for my perfect dream job. At the moment I am trying to apply, but am just a bit down and low because I know the perspectives to actually get that job might not be too good, due to my f***** up work and educational history the last years. I am sure somebody else gets it. But if it makes sense I have to apply anyway, because otherwise I might be wondering my whole life if I had missed a little opportunity to do something even more usefull than what I am occasionally doing now and to change once again my life completely and radically. In a way it is quite odd, because it seems every 4-5 years my life seems to change so dramatically that I seemed to have lived several lives instead of one already. And I am still in my twenties! Sometimes I wonder what would happen when and if I would have kids, if that would be a “No turning point” in my life and all the excitement of an open future would be pressed into a straight forward line, replacing all the activism with looking after somebody else for a decade or two.
Sometimes I wonder if it is better or worse to have kid(s) as an activist?