New adventures

Tallinn, Estonia

Getting to a country where you have no clue about the local language is tough. Buying food is tough: what exactly am I buying? I just figured out how the announcements on the bus work. I get names and streets confused all the time, I can’t pronounce anything correctly. It has never happened to me before (maybe in Paris… Yes, I’m being sarcastic). It is also absolutely my fault, because the lack of time impeded me to get a grasp of this difficult language.

Now, in the streets of Tallinn, I hear more Russian than many here admit. Right now, a lady is saying да и нет on the phone.

The modern European feeling is mixed with the Soviet-era apartment blocks and the cute and medieval old town.

Clean and tourist-friendly, this small capital city could teach a lot to many West European cities. Its long summer days are about to start and humidity has allowed the flowers to bloom.

My part-time job will be the first of the new adventures. Some activities are still ongoing, like the preparation of a co-authored book chapter, a long paper, and 4 presentations about them.

These are going to be, again, very busy months. And the blog activity will be the first to suffer. Also because the e-magazines with which I am collaborating (The Hidden Transcript and VostokCable) would probably prefer that I devoted my time to writing for them.

Recent Past and Near Future

Glasgow, UK 

The fact that I’ve let this blog go even under one post per month can be a huge disappointment – or a great relief – for my few followers. I have now a few related announcements to make in order to explain my past and future absence from this platform. The absence will be interrupted by wordy posts, however. Because I can’t keep my promises.

– Collaboration with The Hidden Transcript (student-run online magazine)

• Article on Bulgaria’s protests on energy prices and the successive end of the GERB government
• Article on the outcome of the Italian elections
• Article on the passing of Hugo Chávez and March 5th

For forthcoming articles, refer to the page http://thehiddentranscript.com/author/paolo/

– Conferences, roundtables, workshops in the next 2 months

• Dublin, DCU – Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies (IARCEES) Conference
  
  • presentation of a paper on Pipelines and Hegemony in the Caspian Region (a neo-Gramscian appraisal)

• London, UCL – School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) and Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) Roundtable on “Energy and Institutions”
  • presentation on Pipeline politics and Energy Security in the Caspian (the case of Kurmangazy)

• Cambridge, UK – British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) and International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES) Congress
  • panelist and discussant for panel 3.4 “EU Energy Security since 2004: Import Dependency and Russian Gas Supplies for an Expanding Union”

A couple of book reviews will also be coming along.

Creative Chaos Award

Ragusa, Italy

Yes, It looks like a chain, a very American experience. However, I like the absurdity in the wording and in the structure of the award, so here are my responses and my nominees:

Here are the rules for the Creative Chaos Award:

1. You must tell 3 completely weird things about your habits. If you claim to have no weird habits, you’re lying and we’ll have to send an investigative team for further analysis.

2. You must tell why you look at the “glass half full” scenario and ask “what? No coffee?”

3. Complete any one of the following essay questions:

A. You find yourself in a desolate place when your car breaks down. You have no cell phone service, no Walmart (I know, GASP, right?), and only a candy bar for food. It is 150 miles to the closest town. What color are your pants and why?

B. You find yourself having to ride an elevator quite frequently. How do you pass the time to show off your creativity?

4. Then you are to nominate 3/5 random people and let them know.

5. Make sure to show proper gratitude to the person who nominated you whether that is to shower them with gifts, prizes, and cash or to see that they are put into a clown costume and photographed for internet mocking.

6. Make sure to post the award somewhere other than the underside of the toilet seat.

A chaotic award?

The 3 completely weird things about my habits are:

1. I am terrified by Teletubbies.

2. I don’t dance!

3. I love olive oil, but I dislike olives.

You must tell why you look at the “glass half full” scenario and ask “what? No coffee?”

No, first of all, it’d be a mug. And it’d be People’s Café’s Caramel Macchiato, all steamy and sweet… What?! No internet connection? I’m outta here!

The reply to the question is:

A. You find yourself in a desolate place when your car breaks down. You have no cell phone service, no Walmart (I know, GASP, right?), and only a candy bar for food. It is 150 miles to the closest town. What color are your pants and why?

I’ve never seen a Walmart after spending a year and a half in the United States (Bay Area and DC). Also, I’ve never purchased any goods from Starbucks, although I free-rode a few times for their restrooms. Uh, GASP! That’s where I forgot my pants!

My three nominees are:

1. Calvin After Cal – the first blog I started following

2. Musings on Moscow, Comments on Kazakhstan – interesting read on my next steps as a world traveller

3. hoopaddicted – wanna talk sports? that’s the way to do it!

 

Thank you, Dear Kitty for the nomination!

my bit(e) of gratitude

The Long Summer

Giarre (Italy, home)

This will be a personal post. Yes, I’m just procrastinating everything else I’m supposed to write to ramble on an impromptu blog post instead. This crazy long summer has prevented me from sitting down and think as much as I want. May’s low-key start gave me the impression I could use some of my free time to keep a blog and have it up-to-date. Then I got busier and busier and it’s almost been a month since my last post.

However, much has been accomplished. My 70 days in the U.S. gave me any job-hunting, job-finding, job-declining experiences and many good friendly hugs. I just got back into the oven..ehm.. Sicily, without jetlag (or luggage) and I feel like using my time to write as much as I can, both to fulfill my promises and duties, and to channel my need to keep in touch with the other side of the Atlantic.

The newest things to keep an eye on from me are several: I’ll be co-writing a big paper on Bulgaria and its energy issues (nuclear, dependency on Russia…); next week, the first of 6 contribution to an Italian geopolitics journal will be published (on Poland, Bulgaria, and their shale gas game); in a week or two, I’ll write a book review for a very interesting volume that came out last month that collects a series of chapters by some among the top experts on Russian-EU-FSU foreign and energy policy experts (which is basically the same topic as my thesis).

Uh, my thesis, I forgot to mention. My (very serious) face is on the back cover of a book now. You can find it online through a bunch of book dealers like Amazon, MoreBooks… Please, if you’re still a student, I would very much appreciate your lobbying at your local library for their purchase of the book as it might be of interest for many students approaching the topic of energy and foreign policy especially in the Former Soviet Union. Or just ask the publisher for an electronic (free) review copy.

Moreover, I still have to start off another (more professional) blog on energy and politics, which is fully set up, fortunately. And, now that I know how to, I will be playing with mapping and geographic softwares in order to make all of the above more appealing for the thirsty-of-georeference eyes. And that’s all, not.