Hot & bothered

Shwee... been slow...

A most magical last weekend at Origin festival, followed by a week of itching. Believe, possibly... finally... sandfleabites that haunted many party goers may finally be healing. And just possibly managed to not get my whole house infested as I somewhat feared earlier in the week. May be too soon to tell but so far at least I don't seem to have any new bites...

Still pretty stiff-backed tho - not sure whether from 3 days & nights of quite vigorous dancing, about 600km on the road to Agulhas and back on Wednesday, or my perhaps not too ideally heighted workchair & desk at home. Or perhaps even my bed though really hoping it's not that... hmmm...

Anyway, a little overwhelmed right now I must admit. Workstuff's really gotto be done - most notably the Agulhas project - assessing the social impacts of expanded public works programme (EPWP) implemented by SANParks on poverty relief in surrounding communities. Had a planning meeting with park managers on Wednesday that went down well. Now a preliminary progress report on activities to date along with fieldwork tools to be developed due in less than a week. So best get on with that... Then some weeks of fieldwork in the not too distant future. Promises to be quite an adventure - to be staying all by my lonesome in a mammoth historic old farm mansion that's just been renovated. About 30km from civilisation, the last 15 km along a dusty gravel road. Exciting stuff. (Having confirmed that there's at least some (though slow) wireless netconnectivity out there it should most likely not be too unbareably isolated and lonely...)

Should also be getting on with the studystuff - now the idea of reciprocity through generalised exchange across cyberspace, and more specifically in the alternate currency environment of particularly the Cape Town Talent Exchange, and more broadly the Community Exchange system in general is pretty fixed as topic for the thesis. But how to expand on that... hmmm... will require some serious thought and much more interaction with exchange participants.

And thenthere's the Cairo conference - funding confirmed. Still waiting for detail about travel arrangements. Much look forward to wander the streets of Cairo again, thouh be it only briefly. But that requires still writing the paper to be presented at the conference. Hmmm... Roughly concerning monitoring and evaluation of South Africa's population policy. Somewhat similar to something I presented in Denver last year, but definitely still needs some work to adapt, update, make more relevant for this conference, and also much shorter than what Denver proved to be way too much for way too little time.

So... those be the things to focus on. Any moment soon... Meanwhile I'm melting... Summer really is quite completely upon us - more so in the past 2 days than any others in recent months. Still with gusts of wind (one of which crashed a window yesterday. Just had that fixed. Also had my car washed this morning. Way overdue. But oh so lovely now - all clean inside and out like she hasn't been in... would say 'months', but 'years' may be more accurate... So, at least something constructive has been done on this heated day. Also washed some dished and packed away some clean laundy. Arbitrar tasks one might say, but these too have been... erm... somewhat overdue one might say... Now there's still the matter of the 'office-corner' of my li'l bachelor's tower pad. The corner I've somehow neglected to address in all recent attempts at housecleaning (few and far between as those have been.) But tja.. .this corner - completely swamped with papers and documents and a bunch'o otherstuff I really have no idea what exactly to do with. Some boxes to just stuff it all into might be handy right now. Alternatively a concerted effort at figuring out what's what and then deriving a plan for a place to put it all. Oi... not quite sure where to start really...

Guess the only way is to "just do it"... Perhaps a li'l bit'o external order might filter into psyche too and boost inspiration to get to the most uregent priorities of SANParks, community currencies and conference paper...

Any moment now... Really...