Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Getting stuff done beyond the archives, what a novel concept

3 hours interviewing, 2 hours planning, 0.5 hours emailing, page count = 140

Please welcome this week's monitor, Piotr "Kapi" Kapiszewski, in Oakland. He's my fellow Berkeleyan Diana's husband, and he knows what it's like to deal with fieldwork and more data than you can handle. Welcome, Kapi!

Had a fantastic interview this morning with Maria Victoria Llorente, a scholar of the Colombian police who currently runs Fundación Ideas para la Paz, a think tank doing important work on security and conflict in Colombia. We had a lot to talk about as folks who've worked in both academia and civil society.

My cousin Gerardo has identified someone who may be able to work with me as a research assistant, and continue gathering data after I leave. I meet with her tomorrow morning, so this afternoon I prepared a summary of my project and a sketch of a workplan in Spanish. If all goes well, we'll go to the Police Museum and the National Archive after we meet to get started on the data collection.

Tonight we're going to see Millonarios play Sao Paulo in the quarterfinals of the Copa Sudamericana. My grandmother, my father and I all bleed the red of Santa Fe, the eternal, hapless rival of Millonarios, so this is a bit like going, as a Mets fan, to watch the Yankees play the Indians in the playoffs. I'll do my best not to cheer for Sao Paulo, especially as I enjoy my life and my limbs and would like to keep all of them. On the other hand, it's awfully satisfying to see the Red Sox in the World Series, just for the pain it causes the Yankees.

I wasn't able to upload some of my pictures from Medellín yesterday, so here they are. Most are from the Plaza Botero downtown, featuring that artists' sculptures, and one is from a metro station in the east of the city.












1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great news on finding a potential research assistant. During her research Diana was fortunate enough to find many great ones and continues to work with them to this day. Having them is really very helpful.

Good job on keeping the work hours despite all the destractions and on the interview.

Very cool pictures of Medellin... got any more?