Apart from reflections on the nihilism of travelling there is not much to add at this point, except perhaps the drawings I made with my g-note. While in Shanghai, I took the opportunity to explore my new gadget.
We went to Malaga, where I presented my paper — serious games in a social context.
When the Game-On conference was finished, we took the train to Sevilla, to see some more of southern Spain.
After a year of traveling this should be an easy thing, but somehow I could not find my whereabouts, so to speak, and I kept longing to go back home, to study societal issues from a more safe intellectual distance instead of being confronted with a modernized Spain, which showed so many failing efforts to be green and responsible but where it proved hard in the end to find any decent tapas, as they used to be.
Shared bicycles combined with intensive traffic in the narrow streets. Combo-mania and an immense variety of menus in the mostly modernized bars, making the fast food places seem a relief of simplicity.
What was in the mind of the planners and policy makers when they sacrificed the old Spain, or is my memory failing me?
A final day at the beach, with sunshine, and the prospect of going home brought me in a better mood, and, just having read Interaction Ritual by Ervin Goffman, made me enjoy the chats over beer and chips in sunny Malaga.
from g-note
after a long trip we went back to shanghai, and as I reported in facebook … suffering from a mild traveller’s fatigue, I enjoy my time reading books, ranging from complex adaptive systems, sources of power in decision making, to moral values of science, beyond freedom and dignity, reinforcement today! Next on my list: random walks and the evolution of lying.
In part this was in preparation for the workshop china dream, for which the sketch gives a visualization of the dreamer, taking the time to rest and reflect on issues of daily life, against the background of urban setting(s). Another utopia?
My advice: dream on!
It seems time to become serious again, though. Again? Well …
from g-note
[from facebook] in summary: travel(s) in tribal china — a romantic challenge, indeed.
and we enjoyed the tribal music — from our host in 大理: small path music
from g-note
[from facebook]: … and not to forget, at some place(s) we attract(ed) (too much) attention, resulting in (serious) drinking game(s), which I must admit I sometimes lost, getting utterly drunk in a tribal setting, where the men carry guns and knives and the woman have a flower in their hair.
from g-note
[taken from facebook]: climbing the hills to circumvent the visitors tax, eating the local food, exploring this beautiful still largely unknown country, watching my steps, with safety as a priority (安全 第一), with my wife and two year old daughter, who is starting to speak the language better than I will likely ever be able to do, romantic indeed, yet I am even looking forward to the luxury of our home in Amsterdam, and some serious. (game) work, as another challenge…
from g-note
Taking up travelling again, after a one month break back in the Netherlands, we started, apart from a short stay in Shanghai, in the south-east of China, where the first free production zone was created, Shenzen and Guangzhou, the origin of many (sometimes poorly made) products. Looking out from the window of our guesthouse, the busy street(s), the shops and the traffic, I was looking forward to explore rural China, away from urban noise, to find inspiration for what I later identified as the china dream(s).
from g-note
Due to visa problems, with as the main cause that the indian consulate officer did look at chinese people as — not clean, we decided to travel in china instead, in retrospect a good choice, since our daughter just entered the period of acquiring language, with her (at the time of writing) speaking fluent chinese, whereas my chinese is still stammering and broken, despite my daily practice of a 100 character(s) per day.
from g-note
taking T = tempation, R = reward, P = punishment and S = sucker, this leads in general to a sub-optimal outcome, as the nash-equilibrium in for example the prisoner’s dilemma(s), unless we twist thr utility value function(s) to allow S = saint, or strive for a pareto-equilibrium which gives, although unstable, maximal benefit for all, if enforced by either regulations, politiness or altruism. [taken from Barash (2003), see reference(s) and resource(s)]
from my g-note
being for the first time in thailand, I realized that travelling is different from a holiday, it is more like research, or as I phrased it – I am not here to look at the monuments but for the water flooding the street(s) – almost regretting the phrase when it became really serious, as on our second visit, in november, when the flood(s) gave rise to epidemics in bangkok.
from my g-note
 | china dream(s) | Æli… on traveling perspective(s) |
Æliens 