Cold Summer

I got back from Rome last night. I had a wonderful time staying with my glorious friend Sara Pine and her mother and stepfather. We walked an enormous amount and ate an enormous amount. It was very hot and very humid; there is nothing quite like dripping sweat. Italy won a World Cup match while we were there, it was great watching all the celebrations. I walked through the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basillica, the Colloseum, the Spanish steps, the Jewish Ghetto, and the Forum during my two full days there so I venture to say that we made the most of it. Sara is intent on learning Italian now and she may even move to Venice in early September. I'm writing on my flatmate's computer now (there isn't wireless or an available connection here either though that should change in the next week or so) but I'll have pictures posted tomorrow most likely.

I've found a new place to live. Glasgow, my newest city, is on the West coast of Scotland even though it's a fifty minute train ride from Edinburgh, the East coast. No wonder I'm so much more comfortable here, I've always been a West coast girl.

I live in a neighborhood called Pollockshields in a two bedroom tenement with a 33 year-old woman named Kate Deeming. She's an American filmmaker and performance artist who has lived in Scotland for 7 years, after getting her Masters in theatre here. Kate owns the flat that we live in so it's very well maintained, clean, spacious, and beautiful. She reserves the bedroom that I'm living in for visiting artists: the rent is great, the room is beautiful and the bed is very comfortable. Today we walked to the organic green grocer's and a bread shop together near the flat and cooked dinner together. She fried sea bass and I roasted my potatoes and made a blue cheese/balsamic vinegar salad. She's very spiritual and talkative; she reminds me a great deal of Allison actually. When I came by to look at the place she was baking chocolate chip cookies. Today her staff (she's an Easy Going Boss at a film company) came over for breakfast and I got some great pancakes out of it.

So after getting a fix of Justin, finding a beautiful and stimulating place to live, getting a fix of Sara, and coming home to pancakes... I feel much better. I picked up a paying gig from Nokia while I was in Helsinki so I'm even making a wee bit more money this month than I thought I would be. So rest easy, I'm safe and adjusting to the Other Side a lot better now.

The one rather unexpected development that has slowly dawned on me is that I really am happy to be an American. I'm also pretty spoiled by it. I never considered myself to be a privileged member of society but I see now that the bottom line in the US is fabulous. In small cities we can get high-speed internet, fruit and vegetables, running water, working amenities, and a washer/dryer set. The things we (or I at least) have always taken for granted are the most obvious. I always assumed that the rest of the developed world had a similar standard of living. What a critically untrue assumption! Though I still don't agree with our foreign policy, or a lot of our civil policies for that matter, I have a greater appreciation for the efficient, self-regulating, logical, and luxurious systems of human management that we do have in the US. We are so lucky and so much richer than the rest of the world. It blows my mind and fills my heart with gratitude for my circumstance of birth.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just read this article in the Los Angeles Times online about cell phones that double as tracking devices and display the location of the phone on a map: "Sprint Family Locator, which debuted in April, is just one of many newly released cellular services that use global positioning satellites — originally developed for military use — to allow family members to keep tabs on each other via their phones. Disney Mobile, which opened for business earlier this month, includes child tracking among its basic features. Verizon Wireless' Chaperone service lets parents enclose up to 10 areas in virtual fencing, and to receive a text message if their children breach a boundary." (LA Times)

Justin uses a laptop version of similar tracking called Plazes that tracks which wi-fi network he's logged onto and displays it online with help of Google maps. In that way I can see which hotel he's staying at in Brazil next week and we can watch the dizzying travel paths of our friend and sometimes employer Joi Ito. The person-as-object difference between identity-as-phone and identity-as-laptop is crucial though. Much as it pains him, Justin is not always online but there is a good bet that if he's in the US he has his phone. This is much more true of the average American teenager for whom having their cell phone is tantamount to carrying a wallet or a driver's license. Our friend Jyri is developing a program that uses mobile tracking as a social networking tool, more like carrying a chat room or interactive MySpace friends list in your pocket than a National Security Agent.

But whereas the reaction to Plazes and to Jyri's project is more of a "Neato!" and less of a "Creepy!" the teens being tracked by their parents through this technology feel that they have a right to geographic privacy that is being revoked: "The argument that it's OK to track kids because it'll keep a few of them from being kidnapped or making mischief is specious reasoning, says 17-year-old Katt Hemman, from Hutchinson, Kan. It's the same argument that the Bush administration makes in defending warrantless wiretapping, she says. A marginal increase in safety isn't worth forfeiting our civil rights, and adults who balk at being spied on and then turn around and spy themselves are hypocrites." (LA Times)

As eloquent as Katt Hemman's criticism of the Big Brother Generation is, I wonder if she knows that her and her peers' MySpace profiles are searchable on the web. In fact one of the top hits for the search "Merci Hammon" on Google is a comment on Justin's profile from my best friend Miriam Harris in which Mim only mentions me by my first name. Another friend, Dannah Boyd, has studied MySpace as the new town square saying that before recent history, kids could hang out in malls or other public spaces but that now parental fears of the physical public space have relegated kids to hanging out in TheirSpaces. So teens are still relating the very personal information that they would while huddled in groups at Starbucks but it's now searchable on the web. And many of them post pictures with beer bottles, joints, and cigarettes in hand and don't know how easy that photographic evidence is to access.

Another recent news article pointed to the use of Google to search MySpace by potential employers. Even marginally closed systems like Facebook (where you need an approved university email address to create or view accounts) are being accessed by interns on behalf of their employers. So now you might not be asked back for a second interview because the head of HR just saw a picture of you smoking a blunt on your Myspace picture roll and not because you're an otherwise unqualified candidate.

So Mom knows where you are at 2am? So you know where your perpetually misplaced cell phone was last left? It may feel like an infringement of autonomy but the location of one personal object should be the least of teens' worries.

I think that my children will be perpetually trackable, and probably because they're wearing clothing that transmits signals to their school, social, and home networks not just about their location but about who they're with and what objects are around them. Whereas it was my parents' responsibility to have relationships with my social network (friends, parents of friends, neighbors, and teachers) in order to parent me, it will be my generation's responsibility to resist the temptation of total networked surveillance in order to maintain a healthy distance from our children.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It never gets dark there, so weird. I spoke some Russian but it didn't go over so well. I've always heard that if you speak of the native language in the country that you're in, the native speakers will "appreciate it." There was uh... none of that. Sometimes, people would sigh and roll their eyes at me. That's mostly how commerce in Russia seemed to run anyway, a lot of sighs and some aggressive yelling.

But who cares about attitude: It was beautiful! We were only there for one full day and stayed in the city center so the architecture that we saw was mostly mammoth palace-like buildings. Here are some cases in point:

I have to go now but I love you all and I'll post more later.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It was not at all my fault. Over the last 13 days that I've been living at 18 Kirk Street I've noticed a few peculiar things. Four of the four people who lived there when I moved in were all suddenly moving out. This guy Steve, in particular, was clearly moving out to get off a sinking ship. I'd bring these letters from the Scottish government that I'd found strewn around the flat to his attention. The letters said the flat was due for 1500 pounds of back Council taxes. His response was: "Yeah that's why I'm moving out, this place is f---ed, it's best to just leave." Another girl, Elena, said she'd been living there for four months and had never once paid these taxes or the amenities.

So I spoke to the woman who took Steve's room, Judy, and we decided we'd better go down to the management company this afternoon and sort it all out. While wandering around the flat this morning I found an opened letter from the management company stating that the flat was due 1500 pounds in unpaid rent. Judy and I left for the management company's office soon after that.

The people we spoke to at the company said that we were living at 18 Kirk Street illegally. Infraction the first: the former tenants should have filed change of tenant forms with us and with the company at least a week before anyone moved anywhere. Infraction the second: the former tenants were not allowed, in this case, to relinquish tenancy because their collective lease is less than 6 months from completion.

Then the management dude says: "Did either of you already put in deposits?"

Judy turns to look at me and grimaces. I'm like, "Yeah... yeah I did. And the girl I gave it to is in Spain somewhere right now."

So after hearing that we had to go back to the flat and repack all of our very recently unpacked items, we decided to go to the letting agency and have a look at what's available now. The woman at the letting agency said that it's illegal in Scotland to have a short-term let but that some companies (not them however) will allow their tenants to sublet.

She suggested that we look on the internet for another place to live. "But that's how we got into this mess in the first place!!!" we both exclaimed. "Oh yeah... Well there's Festival Lets, but they'd kick you out in August to charge the people who are here for the festivals about 2000 pounds a month."

I don't know what I'm going to. I'm going to Finland/Russia in about 8 hours, I've moved my stuff back into the flat above the office where I work, but there is no hot water in this flat, so I can't really stay here for more than a few nights. And a few days after I get back from Finland I'm going to Rome for four days.

This is just the latest in a string of bad experiences in Edinburgh for me. I don't have any friends or any way to meet young people yet, short of approaching strangers on the street or in the parks... which has occurred to me to do. The people that I have met go out and drink for entertainment, and that's just not fun for me. I have never seen people drink so much, and I've been friends with people whose drinking shocked me. It's digusting really, for that to be what you do when you're not working, you know? Really - what's the point?

The food is god-awful as well as expensive. Hahaha - and I don't know why this bothers me so much but the people are really ugly.

Yeah... I don't know what to do. But I basically have to put off those decisions until I'm back from travelling, which won't be for another two weeks.

Stupid ugly people. Ha... geez.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This hill is called Arthur's Seat. It was very foggy.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Programme. So much better than program. Also because program always reminds me of "pogrom" and nobody wants that.

Here is what I did at work today, a redesign of a section in our poor, mutilated little website:

If you'd like to see how the site would function just click on the picture and you'll be taken to its source on Flickr. I have little digital sticky notes all over the damn thang. "Drift" is a music (or "sonic art" as some of these people like to call it) collection that goes back past 2000.

Also at work, I drank coffee, updated the existing New Media Scotland site, and drew out plans for other websites. I like to draw out the websites on white printer paper with a black Uniball Vision micro-sized pen before I make them. In the case of the redesign for the New Media stuff I also wrote out how I want the site to behave. Justin told me about this method - I think he called it back-programming or blind-programming or something.

Today I will go home and finish a drawing.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It feels awful to be away from my better half. Intellectually and economically I agree with what I'm doing here: making myself a more viable creative media-maker. Whatever that means! But so far (and I've only been here for a little over a week) I feel bored and alone. My flatmates are mostly nice guys but they wait tables until very late at night and most days I'm asleep with the lights on and my fingers between pages of Rushdie by the time they get home. And I get bored of partying quickly these days. At first it was like "Time off after a year and a half of school, heck yeah!" Now it's like "Oh my god I am so bored I wish I had more work to do." I wish that my internship was full-time. My boss Cezanne and I spoke this afternoon about what my mission this summer will be and I'm going to improve their web design, podcast, and maybe even streamline their databases. I'll definitely learn a few more programs than I knew before coming here and be able to say that I worked for a non-profit European arts organisation. These are things that I will appreciate in the long-term view. Maybe I've been spoiled by living with someone who is constantly intellectually and emotionally stimulating me. I find myself almost saying things "to Justin" and then having to stop myself because I am the only one of us who is here. I guess living in a foreign country away from the love of my life and the family I could never manage without is like a lot of so-called improvements: It'll hurt like hell but look great.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 04:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I got a bank account at the Royal Bank of Scotland with the help of the organisation that also got me a working visa. My flatmate from Spain had to wait six months to get a bank account. Edinburgh is pretty anti-foreigner, at least if you immigrate here. What I miss about the US (in addition to people) is the modern conveniences that I have taken for granted my whole life. Few places let you use a debit/credit card because of the huge fees they get charged by the credit companies. In addition, it will take more than two weeks for the Royal Bank to send me an ATM card but I am too "new" to get a debit card. I don't even want to ask if they have online banking.

But at least now I have a temporary National Insurance number (emergency medical care is fully covered by this, even for an American, because of the visa type) and a place to deposit chzzzecks.

Also, I have cut off my dreadlocks. If there's a betting pool on how long I would last, I demand a 50% share of the winnings.

Motivated by what Charity tells me to do (still!) I style it like a mohawk:

It's warmer in Edinburgh now, today I was sweating on my walk to work. So not much "to report" (as the Halls would say) but some humdrummy stuff. I hope you all have a good day!

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just booked a flight to meet my friend Sara Pine (the girl who came to my birthday brunch with us) and her parents in Rome from June 24th-28th.

Rome! Holy crap!

This trip will be about a week after I get back from St. Petersburg/Helsinki with Justin. The flight was only $150 American dollars too, out of Glasgow - a forty minute train ride away.

Yay! The adventure-seeking continues. Ready-fire-aim.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The morning I moved into my room: I picked up my (now clean) clothes from the laundrette and later found 3 intact (now clean) 20 pounds English in the pocket of the jeans I put on. I bought bedding and hangers, organized my effects, and am now writing at my desk. I went to grocer's called Fruit Heaven around the corner from my building and to a supermarket and made myself a healthy dinner and drank a litre of cranberry juice.

I miss Justin a lot (babe - I found my mouth guard and have it in right now) but I'm drawing and reading and keeping my head busy instead of mooning. Some mooning is okay though.

Here are before and after pictures of my bedroom:

There is a fat yellow cat that is clean, soft, and friendly who greeted me at the door of building and followed me up three flights of stairs. To reward him for his loyalty I stopped to pet and coo at him every few steps. He reminded me of a mixture of Arthur and Duke, as fat as Arthur and colored orange tabby like Duke. Irresistible! I'm going to name him Justin.

OK I promise not to write something like that on this journal again - I don't want to gross y'all out. But I really am going to call the cat that.

I'm really loving walking around to do stuff. All the shops (for bedding and groceries) were within one block of me so I went on three trips (lunch, bedding, groceries) around the neighborhood. My flatmate Daniel told Justin that this is a working class neighborhood so a lot of the people are local. But Daniel is the one Scottish person - the others are Spanish, Italian, English, and Australian. There are actually a lot of Muslim and black people in this neighborhood with Scottish accents so I must be in the right area.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)