I’m coming to you live from the Ottawa Congress Center, where I am participating in the International Cooperation Days 2004, organized by CIDA. Today I’ve heard lectures about the UN Millenium Development Goals, which is the main focus of the conference, both in general, and focused on education and international health. In education, WUSC presented [...]

I love libraries, and I practically grew up in one. Whenever my mother didn’t know where I was, she would call the kind librarians at Hamar Public Library (the white building), and they’d usually found me in a comfortable couch reading a book. I knew them all by name, and I still drop by once [...]

In my endless search for internships, I spent a while last night looking at different UN sub-organizations, and read up a bit on the topic of how to get a job there. I thought others might be interested, so here are the major pathways into the UN system, as far as I can ascertain (this [...]

A Survey of Chinese Peasants is a book that was released while I was in China, and created a huge stir. Originally it was meant to be banned, but somehow the book, which is hugely critical of the communist party – but mostly the power-abusive local cadres in rural villages – made it out in [...]

The elections are over in Kazakhstan, in fact they were about two weeks ago, but never too late to write a few words. Politics in Central Asia is, though usually very interesting and sometimes quite incestous, rarely reported in big headlines. The four countries that I’ve been to and know a bit about, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, [...]