It's been quiet on the blog for a while - the reason why is that I have been busy preparing my travel to the US. The US embassy, as it turned out, gave me a visa with no problems, and even sent it to me the day after my visit to the embassy. So I was able to leave on August 8th as planned. Level 1 of my research leave game completed.

Arriving at the USA (after 100 mins of various security checks in Atlanta airport), I immediately started the key quest which is an very important part of the initial level 2 quests ("settling down"). I got through (with some difficulty) to my new "landlord" who met me at the lobby of my new home, and gave me the keys to where I'm now living, a unit on the 14th floor of high-rise apartment building (20 floors!) romantically named "The Windsor over Peachtree" right in the middle of town. Getting the keys to my office the next day turned out to be somewhat more difficult as all the keys had already "dropped" (using game lingo here), so had to come back the day after for a new one, and luckily the academic officer had been replenished and could give me one. It's fun how such small objects can mean so much to you, isn't it? Two keys and I almost feel like a complete 100% native resident of Atlanta.

So here I am writing this in my new temporary office at the School of Literature, Communication and Culture (lcc.gatech.edu) at Georgia Institute of Technology. My internet connection has now been fixed, so Im ready to go ahead and work. Wonderful.

Oh by the way, I've also been busy managing the DAC conference, stupid me had booked my ticket for the same day as the deadline of submissions. Effectively, this means that right up to I left and from the moment I set foot in my US apartment (which luckily had a high-speed internet connection which worked right away..) I have been busy granting extensions, mailing with the academic officer, frantically trying to cover up for the not-so-well functioning paper database etc. Bad timing.

Hence, it was only yesterday that I got started on my "etnographic" self-study project for the fall: the project of moblogging my stay in order to see what moblogging "feels like" and how turning from a more "textual" way of thinking (wording experience, as I do when I think of blog posts to my "old" blogs) to a more visual way of thinking (finding images which can express an experience, an emotion, or a point) will affect my patterns of communication. So here goes, my first moblog:
BlogAtlanta(this is actually just a showcase of the last posts, the real moblog is at albino gorilla).

- I expect most of the action will be going on there in the weeks to come.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 20:09