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UAE: first impressions
well, specifically al ain, which is where we are at the moment, staying with my mother. we arrived 2am thursday night, had a much needed chill and a chat on her balcony and then crashed.
friday was a bit of an orientation day and we did a few drives around the city and some errands. it was holy day so just about everything was empty even if it was open until later in the day. we had a siesta in the afternoon and headed out to al ain mall for some dinner in the evening - where we got stuck in traffic and could hardly find a park. the place was packed, there was full on entertainment, kids on the ice-skating rink and lots to take in.
yesterday (saturday) we headed up to dubai for the day, which was great. the drive is easy and takes just over an hour from here. we managed to see a few camels on the way so i was quite pleased! once in dubai we checked out the new dubai mall (amazing) which has a huge aquarium and an ice-skating rink. it was so spacious and lovely we didn’t want to leave! however, after that we headed off to a restaurant in jumeirah - sort of beachfront-ish suburb - to a new zealand-run cafe called the lime tree cafe, where we met up with my friend sophie for lunch. after lunch it was down to have a look at the beach and the famous Burj-Al-Arab. by this time it was getting late in the afternoon so we decided to head back and do a bit of planning for what we’d do later in the week.
so far it has been absolutely amazing to be here. it’s pretty hot but you’re mostly in air-conditioning so it’s only as you go between places you really notice. al ain isn’t humid so that is good - really noticed the difference in dubai. when we’d leave places, my glasses would fog up! hot breezes are something that takes a bit of getting used to as well.
i love hearing the calls to the mosques and that there is a mosque every 700 metres. the emirati look beautiful and so elegant in their dishdasha and abayat. the houses are amazing to look at and the architecture is so different here - not a wooden building to be seen! there is a rooster which lives somewhere nearby here and crows pretty much 24/7 so not sure what his deal is.
the driving is pretty scary. we’re going to get a rental car today as my mum is back at work during the week - not really looking forward to it!
today we’re going to do some exploring (and likely more mall-ing - have never been in a place where it is so normal to hang out in a mall but they’re so lovely i’m just going with it) so should be good.
“”Kafka would have had a Twitter feed! And so would have Hemingway, and so would have Virgil, and so would have Sappho. It’s a tool for writing. Heraclitus would have had a fucking Twitter feed.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, now that the other half writes—all the jocks and high-school girls and video store employees and D-list celebrities—it seems comparable only to a kind of police action that the people who once thought they were the chosen writers, that they were this generation’s idea-smiths, are now so up in arms.
Those other people—those everyday people who weren’t supposed to have thoughts, who aren’t known for reading David Foster Wallace or Dostoevsky or James Joyce, those overlooked people from whom we buy groceries, who fix our cars, clean our houses, and vote differently than we do—weren’t supposed to become writers.
Now that suburban housewives in Missouri are letting their thoughts be known via Twitter, it’s as if writing itself is thought to be under attack, invaded from all sides by the unwashed masses whose thoughts have not been sanctioned as Literature™.
In many ways, I’m reminded of Truman Capote’s infamous put-down of Jack Kerouac: ‘That’s not writing, it’s typing.’
So there seem to be quite a lot of assumptions at work here, with so many class, political, and even gender implications for who is allowed to speak, who we are meant to listen to, who can write, how they are permitted to do so, in what social contexts writing is meant to occur, and what topics can be legitimately addressed by others, that I’d hope a much longer discussion about this might someday take place. Until then, we get Maureen Dowd.
BLDGBLOG: How the Other Half Writes: In Defense of Twitter (via langer) (via krislane)
apply this to blogging, personal websites, just about anything that happens online that someone is sure to be ridiculing, downplaying or complaining about.
stop making excuses
there are two groups of people ruining it for everyone else:
- cynics
- cowards
one day the internet may just be broken links and recycled aggregations of sponsored advertorials. it might be something we reminisce about, like cassette tapes and those lumbering sets of encyclopedia britannica we all used to page through when we researched school assignments.
when you look back do you want to remember that your contribution was snarky commentary, a website last updated in 2006 (or worse, 2001) or… nothing? because you were too busy scoffing at other people to do something of your own, something better, an example of ‘being online’ in a way you think is more authentic?
& to the rest of you: you don’t need to know how to use twitter - you just need to start by typing the update in the box. you don’t need to know how to blog - you just need to write a thought, a story, a call for action in the box.
just put things on the internet.
use spaces in ways that make sense to you.
stop making excuses.
McSweeney's: Secure Website Authentification Questions.
Just another reason McSweeney’s is awesome (via aja)
- What is your mother’s maiden name?
- What is your older sister’s favorite Monopoly game piece?
- Who did your paternal grandfather vote for in the 1956 presidential election?
- Why did you choose a liberal-arts degree when your entire family urged you to go into finance?
- In what year did you begin working on your novel?
- How many weeks away was graduation when you dropped out of college?
- What was your score on the civil-service employment exam?
- Where were you sitting when your girlfriend told you she was pregnant?
- Where did you never end up going for your honeymoon?
- In what year did you begin working for the post office?
- What is the name of the hedge-fund manager your ex-wife married?
- How many hours did it take you to drink that bottle of Jack Daniel’s yesterday?
- What time was it when, in a drunken rage, you threw your novel into the fire?
- If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?
stage right
she crouches at the edge of the stage: poised, predatory.
over the duration of rehearsals, the show breaks down to a list of parts - her focus is the smooth, effortless machinations of a successful backstage crew. there is only time, even beats, in between acts; props to be laid out for the next part; a responsibility to eliminate any element of surprise for the performers.
she holds the props to lay out for the next act. the moment comes and a silent gun fires. she counts the beats of music which wash over the gap, moves through the passage, sets up the stage and resumes the starting position for the next round.
the audience barely notices, but there are two performances here tonight.
The Cult of Done Manifesto
via krislane
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more.
“ If websites continue to disappear in the same way as those on President Bush and the Sydney Olympics - perhaps exacerbated by the current economic climate that is killing companies - the memory of the nation disappears too. Historians and citizens of the future will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st century.”
a poem by cameron hockly
the silence is humming
(or is that the stereo)
(or is that the neighbours)
(or is that the traffic)
the silence is humming
stronger than the ring
that remains
when noise has faded
the hum of silence
music to fall asleep to
(music to dream to)
“”We live in imaginary worlds. We live in the world of the possible, a possible world. We have no time for the shortcomings of the present. We take the best of the past and present and combine them with the possible future and recombine them for still more possible futures. This is our world, the fourth.
We are dreamers, idealists, romantics - interlopers, charlatans, scoundrels. We are cartographers, spies and architects. We map out these worlds silently and post blueprints up around the city, nameless. We resist categories, genres, the totalizing project of identity politics. We are cultural assassins, perverts, retards. We alternate fiction for fact, fact for fiction, without explanation or defense. There is beauty in the ad lib, in the improvisation of culture and life.
[extracted from a long piece in a back issue of OFR magazine, now offline] (via megpickard)
this reminds me of ‘poetic terrorism’ and i like it.
thoughts on webstock
the third webstock has come and gone, leaving me feeling bereft (as the passing of all great things do).
when we left auckland wednesday night i felt exhausted, a frazzled string of christmas lights. i don’t think i was the only one. over the 2 days of the conference it was as if each section of cord and each bulb slowly untangled itself and re-lit. by friday night i was tired but energised.
webstock is often a time of excitement just for the fact that personal or potential heroes attend. i met derek powazek and gave him a copy of my art zine, skeleton. for long time readers (or anyone who isn’t blind) i’ve often quoted derek and have always held his words on personal websites to be a manifesto of sorts. the unfortunate thing is that often in these situations one can’t think of much more to impart than gratitude for what the person does. sometimes it just doesn’t seem enough.
webstock is many things to many people but it is more than just a web conference. darren compares it to TED; it is more about concepts, creativity and inspiration than just demonstrations of technique by top players (though there is a bit of that in there too for those who are looking for that).
the presentations were fantastic and artfully segued between topics & the creation of themes; many carefully balanced between teaching and dangling questions, opening up ideas and pushing the audience to make their own choices. for many presenters i typed as fast as i possibly could; for others there was the chance to reflect and absorb their message.
i feel like this year i left with a sense of being able to now choose my own adventure more than ever before. many speakers touched on what’s happening in the world right now - many things won’t last & won’t hold but i think more than destruction it has to push us to be more, do more & make more. complacence just isn’t workable. criticism has to be a spark, not a dead end. both ze frank’s session and tash hall’s closing words brought me to tears - there is so much that happens online that can almost be discounted or overlooked but in so many ways it’s a big, beautiful, chaotic cathedral.
we have the capability to make positive change and now more than ever, the internet has to help save the world.
