It took moving overseas to find the world news.

Back in Australia I was introduced to ABC Newsradio by a friend, and enjoyed the ‘world perspective’ that was often sorely lacking–but that was because at night it cut to BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands. As the daughter of migrants from a country that wasn’t economically or politically important to Australia, it meant that the piecemeal bits of news that we could get from ‘home’ either came in the form of major disasters or ‘amusing’ trivia. There is an economy of information in the local and national press, a demand and supply curve that can only fit in so many pages of doom and gloom before they have to call out for more advertisers, most whom probably don’t want to share page space with doom and gloom in the first.

So the internet was a boon for myself as an information seeker, particularly when I started to listen to the foreign radio–Radio France Internationale for a broad world coverage that included Africa and the Middle East (that was not just about the war of the time), Radio Nacional de Espana for Spain and Latin America. And with the study of new languages came a new appreciation of the intricacies of how culture shapes perceptions. And, dare I say it–how perceptions, in a way, shape culture.

My Australian upbringing, in comparison, feels very sunny, isolated–not so much naive, but that separation by kilometres and oceans and history probably has a real bearing on its laidback culture. I miss it–on the other hand I just feel lucky to have been raised in such a place, and the day to day realities I face now remind me not to take these things for granted.

It’s drive, but on a different planet.

It’s six on a Monday morning and I’m back in the laboratory with a couple of techs, everyone focused, concentrating on their tasks at hand (except for me, I guess–I’m blogging, aren’t I?). And I wonder what drives us–what drives them. I think we all have different motivations, some because this–being here, slogging away at their investigative task. Someone once told me that it takes a certain kind of mind to want to do this, a certain kind of personality–which is true of all vocations, I think, even those that I can’t understand or don’t particularly like are perfectly fitted to the people who exemplify what is the very best of their professions.

More on this later, when I get home–something’s pushing at me to try and write this out, to try and speak what it is that I’m feeling, but things are finally clicking along now with the work thing and I need to catch that wave.

Melbourne and Prague, Modern and Modernising.

So far the trip to Melbourne has been low-key and enjoyable; just the way that I like it. I have only accidentally run into a couple of people so far, but they were people that I was glad to meet again.

I had lunch with a former mentor who advised me through the difficult process of choosing between fields–I seem to have defied him a bit by choosing interdisciplinary fields, but I have still made a promise to him and to our former work that I will finish what I have started in this new life in Prague. Although my direction is not quite in the area of molecular neuroscience anymore, I still want to go back and finish the work that we had started–it’s unanswered questions that still haunt me, still keep me up at night. And despite my best attempts to explain my ventures into science policy to a friend just recently, I am still puzzling this one out for myself–I think perhaps I have gone into an outreach and policy direction because I am not objective enough about the science that I perform in labs, because I am still yet to learn not to fight for access and education and distribution to those who need it the most. As much as I want to stay rational and objective, at the same time this little, stubborn voice of ‘justice’ (whatever that is, whichever philosopher I follow, whatever tradition notions of justice may lie within) that says: ‘reason’ got us so far, but to get further in a humane way, considerations of consequences and effects need to accompany our work. It depends on who is advising me at the time; according to some this will always hold me back, some others say it could mean I venture further.

I don’t yet know, but what I do know is that I enjoy following in the footsteps of my mentors and learning from their wisdom and their experience. Sometimes I think I am happier just being their oral historian, writing their stories of how politics and society suppressed their work, and to connect others whose joint work could result in new and exciting fields of study. Maybe I’m just not confident in my own abilities, definitely I’m not a genius, perhaps I am best working as a conduit.

The Czech Republic is still an emerging economy; aside from the BRICs economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China), countries such as Czech are still establishing themselves, still working things out. I find it motivating to work in emerging economies; what’s that quote about the shoulders of giants? “If I have seen further, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. In recent days I have made some arguments for non-conventional, cutting edge science, and why I chose this mixed field over the more stable, established areas, and it’s not out of disrespect. It’s because in combinations and collaborations, so many more possibilities unravel.

Meanwhile, I have commented in recent days that Melbourne has changed a little bit, but only superficially. The stalwart of a cafe that was with me in my University of Melbourne days has been remodelled, and indeed, renamed.

Had coffee with a former colleague at a place in Melbourne called ‘World’ the other day; apparently you get discounts if you’re a ‘local’ and say a certain phrase to identify you as one. I have this sneaking suspicion it is probably going to be a sentence like ‘I am a world citizen’. Because why else would a coffeehouse want to call itself World in the first place, and ask if you’re a local?

Integration …

Foreigner integration in the Czech Republic below EU average.

More shortly; I have to dash off to uni.

11th Forum 2000, Prague

Here’s an interesting headline that’s causing ripples in the discussion forums: A call from Prague: Dictators, go to hell.

The purpose of the Forum 2000 is actually quite relevant and important–the media coverage leaves something left to be desired, though. Or perhaps that was the intention–tacit ’support’? I am nonplussed.

Kdo něco dělá, většinou taky něco zkazí.

Today’s heading translates into the English as: ‘Those who take action make mistakes sometimes’. (From an article about recognition of the Mašín brothers and Milan Paumer, Mašínové, Paumer a hrdinství , Adam Drda,   Hospodáŕské noviny)

I still find difficulty with articles, but it’s interesting (and ironic?) that this was the first line I comprehended right off the bat.

Meanwhile–random–why is the Portugese radio playing that tango piece for which I still haven’t found a source for yet? That tune drives me mad if only because I haven’t yet heard it in full …

In the streets.

Melbourne had the gangland wars, something which is apparently being glamourised to the extent of a ‘blockbuster’ television show that shall remain unnamed. It’s not unnamed because I support the Victorian ban, but because I remember dining in that restaurant a couple of weeks before one of the last shootings, and driving past the occasional funeral of a gangland member and taking quiet note of the expensive cars, the sharp suits–and the throngs of police officers supervising the event. It seems strange that it is suddenly being turned into some ‘hot’ television show, if only because it was a reality for so long–even as an observer. While I am curious about its origins, I’m not sure if I would ever want to succumb to the celebrity and watch the show; there is the question of fictionalisation, for one, and for another, wondering if consumerism implies tacit support.

Prague is full of layers and histories. On the gangland war front, it has something a little deeper, a little more sinister: something involving the Caucasian, Armenian and Chechen mafias. On Saturday afternoon there was a shooting on Pařížská street, [details: Lidové noviny (Czech); iDNES.cz (Czech, with photograph from ČTK)] One of the main details of the press coverage is the focus that the victims were Russian-speaking–which can mean any part of the former Soviet Union, but it seems like the kind of ‘label’ that I remember from frequent multicultural clashes back in the good old western suburbs of Melbourne.

Prague has meant a daily, almost permanent reliance on Czech and sometimes German in my day to day existence, although it is very obvious that I’m not from Central Europe and am often spoken to (and ripped off, until they realise I can speak Czech) in English. And it’s understandable, given the region’s past history under Soviet control, that the Russian language would be viewed with suspicion. (It also makes me wonder if I should hide that Russian original of Anna Karenina that I have on my shelves next to the French, English and Czech … or I ought to have mentioned in a public blog at all). As an outsider, the ‘label’ is interesting. ‘Russian-speaking’ casts aspersions on an entire regional bloc, as well as references history and current political and criminal activities–a similar label I used to see substituted in the Australian press would be ‘of ethnic appearance’ after it was deemed too inflammatory to label suspected criminals with a specific national tag.

There are things you pick up on the streets that you just don’t find in textbooks or even cultural classes–the kinds of things that would be too politically incorrect or sensitive to raise. What exactly this particular intercultural war is about, I don’t know yet, but I do want to understand more about it. As a linguist I really quite enjoy the Russian language–indeed, for my ‘International Year of Languages’ project it is one of those that I am scrubbing up on (as well as several others), but it does make Prague and several other former Warsaw Pact regions sensitive regions to try and speak it in.

Also, can anyone give me any details or background on the mafia in Trieste? Apparently I shocked my mother by the fact that I love it there (and as an architecture/history/cultural melting pot buff, it is another place I can’t resist: a port town, a former holding of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a place where it is natural to hear Italian or Slovenian or German …)