Wednesday, November 1

 

 

White frost glistened on the pavements and roads as I left the house. I walked down to the bus stop and waited for a 93 or 97 in the frozen air.

I spent the morning going through all the material for Topic 9 for the Nobanet e-learning course. Originally I had a team of three around me but now, through illness and overwork, I will play solo next week in Copenhagen. The material did not amount to much, so I went through the structure of the topic, worked out the sort of material that we will need, and set about finding it.

By lunchtime I had all the material I needed. I booked some time on Friday to record a lecture for the theory section, and some time tomorrow to write the little essays that will link all the material together and hopefully make it all make sense.

In the afternoon I proofread an article of Matteo’s titled Persona and Parrhesia. I confess that I looked up the last word in the title.According to Wikipedia

his Ancient Greek word has three different forms, as related by Michel Foucault: parrhesia, is a noun, meaning “free speech”; parrhesiazomai, a verb, means “to use parrhesia”; and a parrhesiastes is one who uses parrhesia, for example “one who speaks the truth to power”.

This took about two hours, and made for an interesting period of reading. After this, and partly inspired by the reading, I went through my digital copies of essays about McLuhan, in preparation for the start of the Digital Mediascapes course tomorrow. I did some more interesting reading, and then looked through my slideshows. I realised that the second one needed remaking, and blocked in some time tomorrow afternoon to try to do this.

Nathalie and I had a conversation about a possible project that has arisen from her discussion with the Swedish editor at Monday’s conference. Then, at 16:10, I left the building.

I met Naa at the bowling alley in Töölö at 16:50 for my delayed Father’s Day present: an hour of bowling. We managed four games in sixty minutes. I got 100 or more in three of them and 96 on one. Naa won the final game with a score of 115, the biggest score of the afternoon. We both agreed that I need more practice before the Arcada Bowling Championship at the end of the month, and arranged to meet here again in two weeks’ time.

We decide to go home through Rautatientori, and wait three minutes for the number 10 tram. Looking out the window as it approaches the main post office I see one of those compound views, composed partly of the view outside and partly of reflections from inside the tram.

On the stairs down to the metro I will decide I want a milkshake and Naa will agree that she wants one too. We will stop in Hesburger.