The point of this blog
Here's what I aim at with this blog.
First of all there's our family and friends I want to keep informed of our life. There's so little time to write to each of you separately on a regular basis, and I find this no less painful than you do. Also, producing little bits and pieces every couple of days will hopefully prove to be less time consuming and less strenuous than the synthetic efforts required when you try to summarise your life over previous weeks or months over and over again for different sets of friends and family in different languages.
Obviously there's also the wish to record our experiences, not least for ourselves and the children. Little by little, my wife A. and I have managed to have the life abroad we wanted, which we find interesting and fulfilling, never dull, although with its difficult moments as well (see our recent adventures with M.). What adds to this urge to record our life is the very peculiar context we live in, an African country as poor as can be and, with about a dozen attempted coup d'états over the past decade, politically not stable at all. The last one, which brought to power the present Head of State, was in March 2003, so statistically speaking we should have one again before long....
And then there's the simple pleasure of writing, which I have always cherished. I will abuse this blog to produce the occasional pseudo-intellectual reflection, just to keep myself happy. Nevertheless I hope that writing a blog instead of a personal diary will help me put some discipline in my rants and musings and make me try to produce something of slightly more than purely personal interest.
As our family and friends include people from several nationalities, I will probaably continue to write in English in order to avoid double work. I feel sorry for those who would prefer me to write in Dutch, my mother tongue. Actually my mother is among those, maar ik hou je natuurlijk ook via de telefoon op de hoogte mam! It's also a disadvantage as I can't be as eloquent/funny/piercing etc. as I hope I am in my native language. In fact, since I have started to work almost 100% in French a year ago I can just feel my English is going downhill. Perhaps a bit of daily practice will push it uphill again. But it will continue to be marred by batavisms and the typical direct coarse Dutch loudmouth style. So be it...
Emilian
First of all there's our family and friends I want to keep informed of our life. There's so little time to write to each of you separately on a regular basis, and I find this no less painful than you do. Also, producing little bits and pieces every couple of days will hopefully prove to be less time consuming and less strenuous than the synthetic efforts required when you try to summarise your life over previous weeks or months over and over again for different sets of friends and family in different languages.
Obviously there's also the wish to record our experiences, not least for ourselves and the children. Little by little, my wife A. and I have managed to have the life abroad we wanted, which we find interesting and fulfilling, never dull, although with its difficult moments as well (see our recent adventures with M.). What adds to this urge to record our life is the very peculiar context we live in, an African country as poor as can be and, with about a dozen attempted coup d'états over the past decade, politically not stable at all. The last one, which brought to power the present Head of State, was in March 2003, so statistically speaking we should have one again before long....
And then there's the simple pleasure of writing, which I have always cherished. I will abuse this blog to produce the occasional pseudo-intellectual reflection, just to keep myself happy. Nevertheless I hope that writing a blog instead of a personal diary will help me put some discipline in my rants and musings and make me try to produce something of slightly more than purely personal interest.
As our family and friends include people from several nationalities, I will probaably continue to write in English in order to avoid double work. I feel sorry for those who would prefer me to write in Dutch, my mother tongue. Actually my mother is among those, maar ik hou je natuurlijk ook via de telefoon op de hoogte mam! It's also a disadvantage as I can't be as eloquent/funny/piercing etc. as I hope I am in my native language. In fact, since I have started to work almost 100% in French a year ago I can just feel my English is going downhill. Perhaps a bit of daily practice will push it uphill again. But it will continue to be marred by batavisms and the typical direct coarse Dutch loudmouth style. So be it...
Emilian
posted by Emilian at Sunday, October 09, 2005
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