Wow, two weeks is certainly taking a lot longer than it used to, either that or deadlines are just not what they used to be. What I am trying to say is that my partner has still not submitted. Another week, apparently.
Pass the sljivovica!

Long time no see...

Well, I have not been very active with my postings. Another thing to feel guilty about. Writing a PhD, you get used to that feeling. I will try to do better. On both counts!

Currently juggling work (part-time) and PhD (part-time), and hoping to get the balance right. Not much time for life outside those two activities. Apologising to my friends for at least another year or two of this status quo - although I have been told it doesn't get any better even after the PhD. Articles, conference papers, books to write...Still, I have to feel like there is some sort of light at the end of the tunnel!

Academia certainly is for the masochists.

Anyway, my partner is finishing up his PhD currently. Two weeks to go, so his thesis has taken precedence in the household. I've been proof-reading, formatting, Endnoting...basically, accumulating some serious brownie points I intend to cash in on when I get to the same stage! I look forward to there being one thesis less in the house.

Have got a cafepress shop going to make t-shirts with academic humour/frustrations. It seems to be a fairly niche market (and there is pretty much nothing out there for us to buy to express our inner angst) so we decided to make our own. It's at www.cafepress.com/academus, if anyone is curious.

Bruce Lee in Mostar

A bronze of martial arts legend Bruce Lee has been erected in the Bosnian city of Mostar - a day before a second statue of him is unveiled in Hong Kong. The life-size 1.68 metre statue depicts the Chinese-American actor in a typical defensive fighting position. Hong Kong unveils its own statue of the kung-fu star on Sunday, at a ceremony to be attended by Lee's widow Linda. The Mostar unveiling was attended by the ambassadors of China and Germany, both of whom assisted the project. The city witnessed fierce fighting between rival ethnic factions in the 1992-95 war.

It remains split with Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs still deeply divided. Lee was chosen by organisers as a symbol of the fight against ethnic divisions. "We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats," said Veselin Gatalo of the youth group Urban Movement Mostar. "But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee." Lee, who died in 1973 at the age of 32, was born in the US but moved to Hong Kong as a child. The statue there will be unveiled on what would have been the Enter the Dragon star's 65th birthday.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/4474316.stm
Published: 2005/11/26 17:43:16 GMT

Welcome...

Just a short post to welcome curious passers-by. Rants and raves about 'that part of the world' coming soon. Leaving you now with a quote from Boris Buden. Where am I from? Don't ask because I don't know anymore!

"I feel …stupid when under ‘country of birth’ today I must write ‘Croatia’. That is simply not true. I was not born in Croatia, but in Yugoslavia. And even if I can appreciate that the states in which I live are changing, I cannot comprehend why the states in which I was born must also be changed. These paradoxes reveal that a person in this region controls nothing anymore, not even one’s past. Who knows in which country I will yet have to be born."

[and since I'm a good little academic, the source of this reference is - Igor Marković, “I Come From Post-Yugoslavia” (interview with Boris Buden), Independent, Novi Sad, no.236, 2nd September 1997]

Adieu...