The first part of this post is here.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy… 2013 was very intense and challenging year, but if you happen to follow me on Facebook it might looked like that my life is more about play than work. No it’s not, but I also don’t want to be a dull boy )
After paying a tribute to Bondi beach in Sydney…
…I stopped by at Gold Coast on my way to Brisbane.
That’s actually my first photo in Australia. A good exercise in construction of reality. I spent on a beach about 10 minutes, but once you post this photo on Facebook, people think that that’s how my PhD fieldwork looks like.
I wasn’t able to visit Australia without meeting some unique inhabitants of this country. That is a Tasmanian Devil.
Platypus is my favourite creature.
While visiting Nairobi I also couldn’t ignore that the capital of Kenya is a home not only to people. Black Rhino in Nairobi National park.
The park is a unique place where you can see all the elements of the chain of food in the same area just in few minutes.
Meeting the King.
One who followed me online could think that I am doing PhD in zoology.
I found my true love in Nairobi. But unfortunately my flat in London is too small for my love.
In this case I was not sure if the love is mutual, so I decided that I will have to live without kissing cheetah.
This Graffiti in Melbourne reminded that “All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.”
This year I decided that I can’t live in London without experiencing its cultural life. One of amazing discoveries was “The Globe” theatre. It has an image of tourist attraction, but actually it’s amazing. I really enjoyed the experience of standing close to the stage and literally smelling the actors. On the photo the daughters of King Lear talk to the audience before starting their journey to death. But most of all I really liked “The Tempest” (I also watched another “Tempest” in Moscow). “The Drowned Man” was another magic experience of the year in the world of theatre.
Not only theatre… I never really like opera, but “Tosca” in the Royal Opera was a real magic. I also watched “The Magic Flute” and “Carmen”.
The best musician of the year on my list is the amazing Alina Ibragimova. She is magnificent. I saw here twice. This concert in Barbican was one of the best in my life. She played magic Baltic music.
The artist of the year is definitely Charles Aznavour. It is amazing how this legendary singer, almost 90 years old, was full of energy and was able to share this energy with hundreds of people in the Royal Albert Hall.
I also went to Sydney opera, not for opera, but theatre. The building is amazing, but the performance was one of the worse I ever saw :)
Some performance had also very personal meaning. Here on the scene – a father and daughter, a couple of great Russian artists – an actor Veneamin Smekhov and his daughter Alike. “12 months of tango” is a very special performance that is based on Russian poetry and classical songs. Veneamin and Alika are also my relatives so I was very happy to be able to visit this performance in Moscow.
Sometimes, performances and music were kind of unexpected… When I was on my way to TV channel Dozhd, I suddenly saw these Russian cadets who were performing exercises and singing under extremely heavy rain near the main church of Russia.
The most amazing exhibition of the year is “Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum” in British Museum. It was a space of frozen time, a unique visit to the past that was brought to us thanks to a terrible disaster.
It was fascinating culture full of freedom, nobility. wildness and creativity. Today we would call them “the creative class”.
Another unique world that I could experience this year is the unique world of Jonathan Swift. Visiting St. Patrick Cathedral in Dublin was actually visiting a home of a person who created new worlds.
Let me conclude with this great message that I saw in front of a Church in Melbourne. The first part of 2013 blog post ended with a point about balance between writing and doing. I would like to finish the second part with emphasising importance of the balance between the work and the play. I tried to develop my own formula for this balance and maintain this balance in 2013. But there is also another balance – the balance between making your own sins and respecting the sins of others. Perhaps that’s a balance to work on for the next year )
I am a doctoral student in London School of Economics (LSE). I work on a PhD about the Internet's role in time of natural disasters.
I was born in Russia, lived in Israel and the U.S. and currently based in UK. But actually I am a citizen of British Airways and resident of Starbucks who lives in a space of flows and conducts daily mass-self communication.
I am not sure if it gets colder or we face warming, if it's glocal or global, if it's day or night, but it's swarming outside. Sometimes it looks like chaos, but actually it has some order. And even if the complexity of system means that there is nothing to do but to follow the chaotic swarms, I still believe in the power of individual to shape the structure. For this purpose we should engage critically with global swarming flows. This blog is a space of my self-reflexivity.
Runet Echo