I’ve not posted, because I’ve not had much to report.

Did make a tower of a burger though.

Its obvious, though, I’m no food photographer.

A former student (and now friend) of mine is spending a semester in the UK as part of his PhD studies in Australia.

We met in Birmingham and wandered around a little to see the sights while talking about teaching and research.

Show on map

The cities in the English Midlands are useful places to visit for those if us who are students of business — they are home, of course, to the first industrial revolution. No thinking about national, social, organisational or technological change can be complete without some attention to what happened in these cities.

Some of the former riches and grandure is clearly visible (as of course is the new wealth, though I haven’t shown that).

One of the highlights was the interior of the Old Joint Stock pub where we had a tasty upmarket pub lunch (not photograhed because every one was eating).

Alas, with the UK’s creaky regional rail system, it takes a bit longer to get there than it should.

Now, back to work for me.

I have been back in the UK about two weeks now and my time has been spent getting back into the routine of work in the office, settling into my new place and catching up with friends and on sleep.

Perhaps the hardest bit has been settling into a new routine at home. Some mornings I wake and can be working by 530. Others its a struggle to get out of bed before 8. I’d rather the former than the latter.

From next week some time I should be able to have my worldly goods brought out of storage. I’m looking forward to being reacquainted with my stereo, coffee machine and cooking equipment. Its all been in storage for about 18 months while I have been living out of a suitcase.

Anyway, I need to do some more reading for tomorrow’s meetings and think about dinner. Hopefully more regular posts from now on.

I am in Xi’an primarily to investigate bringing my students here–check hotels, see what activities might be suitable, etc.

It is a great place to visit, capital to 12 or 13 dynasties (I can’t remember exactly) and clearly different to the south of China in all sorts of tangible and intangible ways (food, weather, industry, etc).

A secondary purpose is to catch up with a former student and friend now teaching here. We have been working on some research ideas via email and it will be nice to discuss them face-to-face.

Anyway, its an almost perfect day outside, so it won’t be much of a chore to investigate some sites that may be relevant to my students.

I have had three busy days travelling, and quite a few to come. The travel is for three reasons–to make arrangements for my students’ field trip starting later this month, have some research meetings and to represent the university in education fairs.

For the first, I visited Yiwu for the first time and was impressed by the scale of the wholesale markets and thinking its emblematic of Chinese industrial cities, decided to take my students there, which meant time searching for a hotel, negotiating room rates, etc. Thankfully, I had arranged for a Nottingham graduate and friend to meet me and a colleague there and that helped the process no end.

Last year my students loved the stopover in beautiful Hangzhou, so we went there on Sunday, had a great lunch at a famous restaurant and booked the Hangzhou hotel.

Today was a busy day in Shanghai, checking out a new hotel for our visit here, a research meeting and research presentation. Nice end to the afternoon catching up with a friend in marketing research.

Tomorrow its off to Xi’an, where I hope to take my students and some more research meetings. Friday to Beijing for the education fair and catchup with Nottingham alumni and friends.

No photo posts until I’m back in Ningbo.

As my friends and students know, I’m interested in the way that new technology changes our relationships (not just with people, but with institutions and existing technology). One of the tenets of postindustrial / postmodern / network society is that new communications technology both fragments traditional society and enables new (non-geographic) social arrangements.

We might also hope that it can be used to keep past, geographic connections alive as parties move. To this end, I have begun an experiment with twitter. Twitter is, for want of a better term, a micro-blogging and notification tool. It enables people to let others know what they are doing. It can, for example, be used to post location (for frequent travellers), meeting status (as a form of presence management), notify of new blog posts or other activities. Updates to twitter (and notifications of others’ updates) can happen on the web, through plugins (such as the one I added to the right), by SMS or IM.

Let me know if you use it.

I found another photo that shows just how enormous our dessert was yesterday.

And a photo from the inside of the cafe.

Its time for a little time off, second semester teaching has finished, though there is a stack of marking to be done first thing in the new year. I’ve headed to Athens to rest a little, take some photos, enjoy the better weather and try and catch up with friends and relatives.

Today the weather was perfect, sunny all day warmish. Very enjoyable. I went to the centre of Athens with three others (and friend and her two friends) for lunch. The streets were crowded, everyone having the same idea as us.

The centre of Athens has improved significantly since I first started coming regularly. Many of the streets are now pedestrianised, cafes and shops are everywhere, but intermingled with Athens’ long history. I managed to capture some sense of how busy the streets were.

This photo shows Ermou street leading to Syntagma Square (the white building in the background is the parliament).

After wandering the streets a little looking for a place to eat that served good food and also had a table, we had a great long lunch discussing various things (gossiping about mutual acquaintances, life in higher education, etc).

A real treat was some somewhat traditional Greek dessert after. This consisted of some traditional sweets with chocolate and a mountain of icecream (in traditional flavour). Altogether very, very sweet. The weather was still warm enough to sit on the street and more than one group stopped and stared at the size of plate. Brave though we were, we couldn’t finish.

After dessert I need to walk off my calories and keep the type two diabetes at bay for a while. The area under the parliament was perhaps even more busy, packed with people looking at the lights and children’s amusements.

After the metro ride closer to home, I had a little time to kill and played with longer exposures. This last shot was taken with the camera resting on the ground and exposure set to 10 seconds. Its not terribly interesting, but has a sense of “I’ve been doing battle with Jedi” about it.

Good night.

]]> http://mitussis.net/2007/12/23/time-off-in-athens/feed/ 3 http://mitussis.net/2007/07/31/new-places-in-shanghai/ http://mitussis.net/2007/07/31/new-places-in-shanghai/#comments Tue, 31 Jul 2007 19:31:39 +0000 Darryn Mitussis http://www.mitussis.net/?p=101

On the weekend I managed to see a few new places and revisit a few old ones and relax with friends, including one making a short trip from abroad. Originally, I’d planned only a quick work trip, but this was expanded at the last minute. This weekends planned trip might have to shrink as a result.

Technorati Tags: architecture, China

One of the new places I visited was a complex in the old town part of Shanghai, not far from the Bund.

I’d been to the area before but not gone inside a newish the complex, built in the old style, but with lighting too garish for my liking. The highlight though was some rather tasty dumplings; hopefully I’ll be able to find the store again.

In Asia (especially, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai) the advertising is often impressive in scale.

This is not a good photo (a quick snap at the traffic lights). However, it does highlight the size of this electronic billboard. It sits a the eastern end of the pedestrianised part of Nanjing Dong Lu.

Shanghai is has its share of contrasts, and I enjoy looking for them. Fuxing Park is in the old French concession and is rather beautiful with the roses out. Its clearly a European designed park, with open spaces, very square, short hedges, etc.

Moving south from Fuxing park along Sinan Lu are some lovely stretches with widish streets, tree lined and some magnificent old houses.

At the bottom of Sinan Lu is a new art and entertainment area with many small arty shops selling leather goods, photographs, paintings and so on. There are some nice cafes in the area and we wasted a good afternoon relaxing in one, reading and watching people in the heat.

Part way through the day, apparently the hottest in 60 years, it really poured.

Tropical rain never ceases to create a sense of awe in me. I find it very relaxing to listen to the rain, watch it and feel the splatter as the earth and air cools. Best under cover though.

Having finished the undergraduate marking I’ve had time to sneak in a quick trip to Xi’an on the way to Beijing for work. While here I’ve caught up with a favourite former student, a good friend passing through on business and, of course, seen some of the history and culture of Xi’an. I also had something of a business mission, because I’m thinking of bringing next year’s MScIB Overseas Project students here.

Technorati Tags: China, photography

Xi’an is historically important because it was the capital for a number (11 or 13, I can’t remember) of dynasties. Its located at the intersection of a number of rivers (most of which now seem to be dry).

The city is surrounded by the most impressive city wall that I have ever seen. Its very tall and very broad and largely intact. The top of the wall constitutes a broad promenade, though presumably built with less leisurely activities in mind.

Its also a city that has more prominent traditional architecture than I have seen in the big modernising Chinese cities. Partly this is because of a series of towers and the wall which help define the inner city.

The are also plenty of old buildings and many of the new ones have reasonably tastefully hints of the traditional.

The historical highlight, though, are the terracotta warriors. That they constitute an important historical site and are somewhat out-of-bounds does moderate the effect somewhat, the museum and display is really impressive.

Three pits are on display with the soldiers in various states of repair. This is partly as a consequence of the restoration work and partly as a consequence of their partial destruction when they were buried in advance of an invasion.

There are a couple of interesting artistic facts about the soldiers. First, each terracotta soldier is modeled on a real soldier, so the facial features are unique. Second, the artistic style is different to that of European sculpture. The Chinese accentuate the facial features to give each solider his individual and regional identity. In the European classical tradition, sculptures are more about an ideal type and the emphasis is on the form of the body. So, while the classical Greek and Roman sculpture has very clearly defined muscle form, shows the bones in hands etc, this is not present in the terracotta soldiers, or even in their horses.

Finally, no report, however brief, on a trip in China is complete without a comment on the food. In Xi’an it really was to my taste. Because of both the weather and the long Islamic tradition in the region, beef and lamb are much more common. The food is spicy, but not has hot as in Chongqing. Lots of BBQed meat. Really very tasty. Also, much to my liking, there seems to be a decent tradition of eating sweats (I’m nibbling on some candied walnuts as I write this).