Kampala: The beginnings.

Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all ages; I believe it is time for me to recap my daily occurrences at the First Review Conference of the Rome Statute in beautiful Kampala, Uganda. While technically I am writing this on day two, I felt it necessary to split up each day's activities, so day two's post will be forthcoming.

I began my first ever trek to the "mother land," as they say, at Schiphol Airport, where I boarded this classy KLM branded Airbus A330, headed to Entebbe Airport, Uganda.

From Kampala 31 May 2010

I arrived in Uganda after dark, to a beautiful night sky, with more stars than I have seen in ages, as Amsterdam is severely lacking in that respect. Severely. From there, I took a taxi to my hotel, thoughtfully provided by the ICC. This resulted in one of the most exciting taxi rides I ever took part in. I realize I said this many moons ago about Roman taxis, but Uganda takes it to an entirely new level. In addition to driving on the wrong side of the road, as a policy (thanks to the filthy English), there appears to be no real traffic regulations in this country. Everything seems to be dictated by the size of the vehicle. If there is a string of cars ahead of you, you apparently just jump in the other lane and honk at oncoming traffic until they get out of your way. All later bus rides have proven to be carried out with the same methods. I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed this aspect of the trip, although some of my colleagues might feel differently.

Anyways, I arrived at my hotel, all safe and sound and checked in to this nice little room,

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

with this equally nice patio, just outside my door. I'm reasonably certain we will be required to have some sort of drunken lawyer party, with many foolish shenanigans at some point this week. It's almost a requirement on any business trip, or so I've been lead to believe.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

After a lovely dinner with a few of my Legal Tools colleagues at the hotel's Indian restaurant, it was time to retire to bed, as it would be an early morning.

Day One

Day one started out with our nice little breakfast at the hotel (side note: bananas in the country are freaking outstanding. They taste much different than those in the US or Holland). After which, we boarded a crazy little bus/van type thing, provided graciously by the ICC. I'm told that they were bought up by the bus company from China after they were done with them. I'm not sure what that says about this place, taking second hand Chinese buses, but it got the job done, with aplomb. I've grown to love the little things. Below you can see the quaint little fella from the inside. I'll try to get an exterior shot later on.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

From there was about a thirty minute ride to the Speke Resort and Conference Center on the shores of beautiful Lake Victoria, the second or third largest fresh water lake in the world, depending on how one measures a lake (apparently there is some debate regarding Lake Michigan and Huron being one lake or two, but that's neither here nor there, as they say). Anyways, here's a shot of the lake from the entrance of the resort. It seems way too classy for laid back country folk such as myself, but I'm willing to adapt.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

After getting all registered and receiving my misspelled badge (apparently my name only has one "t," according to the good people at the ICC, but I'm willing to let that slide) we were got the LTOP table all setup ready to promote the shit out of Legal Tools.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

The day was quite nice, although I was unable to sit in on most of the Plenary sessions, due mostly to a miscalculation by the Ugandan Government regarding the size of the main hall and the fact that we needed to man the LTOP table most of the time, but the first two day's Plenary sessions weren't all that exciting anyways. No big loss there. I got to meet lots of people from all over this crazy planet, which was nice, and I even ran into my former supervisor from my first go around at the ICTY, which was a great treat. I even got a compliment from a nice Ugandan fellow from some NGO who "likes my attire." He even took my business card, although that was due to an interest on legal tools. However, I like to believe he just wanted to know the name of my suit guy (jokes on him, it was a cheap department store suit). Who knew I had some sense of style? Thanks Manda and Ka.

The rest of the day was full of promoting legal tools with one short period were I very nearly made quite the media blunder. As it turns out, it's not a good idea to be completely honest when being asked questions about the ICC at such an event. Especially when you have a tenuous official connection to said court. Luckily, I recalled that you can tell reporters not to quote you, and they can't really do anything about it, so long as they don't know your name to begin with. Thankfully I had my badge hidden under my jacket.

We ended day one with a nice meal outside, right near the lake. The sound of the bugs outside and the warmth and humidity made me miss south Louisiana terribly. A lot of little things about this place reminds me of home, mostly the climate and the nice, friendly people.

That is all from day one, but I guarantee there will be more very soon, perhaps tomorrow morning, if I can drag my ass out of bed in time to write something.

As always, I will leave you with a bit of a photo essay from the first day. Enjoy.

Our table is guarded by these two fellas, which is comforting.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

This is just a shot of the sky that I thought was nice. I don't really have anything clever to say about it. Apologies.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

Really, what's better than lunch outside under a tent?

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

Perhaps some freaking delicious west African Ginger Brew to go along with it. Sadly, there was not actual beer there, but this will do. I assume they didn't want a bunch of drunk, rowdy diplomats on their hands, which is understandable.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

Various shots at the resort and of the trip there from the city. Again, I got nothing clever...perhaps I'm not as clever as I once thought.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

Finally, there was a stampede of diplomats coming right for us.

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

Thankfully the Ugandan military was there. (in the truck in the background)

From Kampala - 31 May 2010

With that, I shall leave you. But rest assured, there will be more. Oh yes, there will be more, whether you like it or not.

Matt

The Return

Greetings one and all. This is more of a teaser of my return, as time is of the essence. Many new and exciting things have happened these days, all of which will come later. The most important of these, which has inspired me to return to this format, is the fact that I have a new job, working at the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law, http://www.hiil.org

While this is exciting for me, the biggest news is that the good people at HiiL found it necessary to send me on a business trip this week in beautiful Kampala, Uganda for the Rome Statute Review Conference, http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=review

Read up on it and I will have a proper post up soon. In the mean time, I have to get to the airport and catch my plane, so I shall bid you adieu.

More to come, later today.

Matt

Heading out of town

Greetings and salutations to all my fans. I sincerely apologize for the severe lack of posts these days. Sadly, I have no excuse other than being, as Coach Black would say, a lazy ass. Also, I did nothing to top the last adventure, as the beer quest is tough to top.
But in recent weeks many mildly exciting events have occurred here in the Amsterdam. In late November, I drug a whole pile of Europeans out to see the Real McKenzies play some quality Scotch-Irish punk rock. Clearly they thoroughly enjoyed the Cannuck quintet, who wouldn't. Sadly no photos were taken by me at that event, but I assure you that good, nay great times were had by all.
A couple of weeks later, a couple of friends and I went out to go see a moving picture, which was a disastrous affair. As I may have noted earlier, my bicycle was stolen and my friends wanted to cycle over. Naturally this required to borrow one from another kind friend. Not 400 meters (that's right, metric numbers. These damned Europeans are already getting in my head) from home, something goes horribly wrong. I step on a pedal and there is a pop and now the pedals do nothing. At this point we still have a bit of time, but it's pushing it, so I call another kind friend and he lets me borrow his bike. One would assume at this point everything that can go wrong has, but if you make that assumption, you clearly don't know me well. On the was to the theater, some Dutch lady puts her trash at the curb and proceeds to dart into the bicycle lane right in front of me. I take evasive maneuvers, but to no avail, as she went the same direction. I proceed to crash directly over her, pinning her under the bike, as I take a tumble over the bars and proceed to skid across the sidewalk and the many rain puddles it contains. While no one was really injured, this was not a pleasant experience. When I finally regain my composure and hop on the bike again, my friends are far ahead. They had no idea anything had happened and thought I was right behind. I catch up, and we make our way to the movies. After another accident involving my friend and the back of an Audi, we finally arrive at the theater. Granted we were 20 minutes late, but that is just in time to see a movie after all the trailers and commercials. Unfortunately the Dutch do not see it this way, as the ticket counter is closed and they refuse to sell us tickets. Bloody savages. Thankfully there was a bar attached to the theater in which we could drown our sorrows.
Following that bit of excitement, not much else happened. Exams came and went and everybody in the building seems to have bailed out of town for Christmas, leaving me as one of the last survivors.
I head back to the U.S. for Christmas and most of January, so don't expect much in the way of posts, although I'm sure you don't as my posting has been sporadic at best.
Everybody have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and the like.
Now I leave you, as always with a few photos.


This is a tree which seems to be growing in a shopping cart. I'm not sure why it exists, but I like it.


And now we have the racistest ass Holiday tradition I have ever seen. I give you Zwarte Piet, Sinterklaas's (Saint Nicholas) "helper" (formerly his slave) from Africa. It's quite the shocking thing to see, and I was already initiated into this last year. Read up on Mr. Piet on our lovely friend Wikipedia by clicking here. He consists of a bunch of white Dutch people dressed in black face, and everybody in this country love him. The little kiddies will run towards him and scream with glee when every they see Piet.



Here we have a lovely bust of L. Ron Hubbard on display at the Scientology center. The existence of this has given me unending joy as I walk back home from class every day.

This, apparently is how they get large items into homes here. Every building has a hook hanging out from the top and you just wench everything up through the windows. Quite the process, but it's a must as nothing of any size will make it up these tiny stairs.


And finally, I give you frightening snow. The cold at this point was killing me inside. Luckily I will be in the relative warmth of Baton Rouge later today


More to come.

The one in which a Welshman and an American drive 300km to get some beer.

I have heard about the so called best beer in the world for a few years now. According to many credible bodies, the beer brewed by the monks of St. Sixtus of Westvleteren make the finest beer in all the land (you can see it here and here. The rub is that you cannot by this beer in stores. You actually have to call ahead and reserve the beer and drive up to the abby and pick it up (click here for the complex instructions). Needless to say, I was all over that kind of adventure.

After many many attempts to call in and make a reservation, I finally got through and ordered three crates (one for Daf and two for me) ready for pick up on Oct 30. After nearly a week of waiting, the day finally came. Because you can only pick it up in a car, as there are not accessible train stations, we rented a small car and headed out. As I quickly learned, Europeans have a much different definition of small car than we do. I give you the Hyundai i30, ladies and gentlemen.



That's 1400 cc's of raw, winding power and about 7 foot of car. It was the smallest car I have ever been involved with. Surprisingly enough, it was reasonably roomy inside, considering.

From there we headed out for Belgium. With the assistance of the nice British lady inside the navigation system, we made it in about three hours. Unfortunately there were no high speeds seen in my last drive in Europe, as the Belgians restrict speed more so than zee Germans.

After a long winding road we had hoped to see leading to the monastery, we come to out destination. I'm not going to say we were disappointed, but I had kind of hoped to see a bunch of thatched roofs and monks dressed in robes (non Klan outfits for those of you out there that might be confused). But It just looked like they were selling it out of their garage. Which is nice in it's own way.
Below is the line for the beer, which I'm sure is like that all day


And we finally had a "boot" full of delicious beer.


We stuck around the village a while and grabbed a bite to eat and a drink of another abby beer, which was delicious as well. We then went to the market and picked up a ton more beers from the region, so the Westvleteren would last longer. The ones I have tried so far have been excellent. Due to the quality of all these beers, I will never again slander the supposed country of Belgium again.

Here's the trunk at the end of the day


Needless to say, it was a great day, that might just be repeated in the future.

Crazy days

Greetings and salutations to all my adoring fans. I know it has been a while, but crazy times are these. I had exams all last week which took up a big chunk of my time, as one expects. As of now, I'm reasonably certain I did well, but I will find out in a couple of weeks if that confidence is justified. If I botch one, it will cut short my trip back home by a couple of weeks, so let's hope all goes well. For all the praying types out there, I'll take all the help I can get.

Some exciting career type business going on last week after exams as well. I met my friend Cindy from law school in the Hague and we ran on up to the ICC to have a chat about the Court and make a contact there. I have never been one for the whole networking business, but it seemed to go well. I just had to turn on the southern charm a bit, which Europeans seem to love, as well as my extensive knowledge of International Criminal Law. I knew those would come in handy at some point, just never at the same time. In addition to some helpful tips, I learned that I really need to learn French now and fast. My last attempts at new languages have all ended in disaster, which leads me to believe I don't have the mental capacity for this, but, as they say, third time is the charm.

Other than that, the last month hasn't been all that exciting. Lots of schoolin' and drinking. I learned many things, including that Australians frikin love jambalaya, as do many other nationalities, and the French refuse to leave the titles of movies alone.

That's all I got for now, but I promise a good story this weekend. And I will now bid you adieu with the customary set of photos.

Could it be? Delicious crawfish? Why yes, it is. And it found a happy home in my jambalaya.

even though they weren't LA crawfish, they was still mighty tasty.


This was in the stall of one of the bathrooms in the Law building. As you can see from the spelling, education is valued here. Also, some jackass wrote "Vote Ron Paul" on the same door. He clearly knows how to reach large blocks of U.S. voters.


This is the nice view from the Public Library. By far the nicest public library I have ever seen.


The carnival was in town at the Dam Square. I was eager to see how Dutch carnies compared to their American counterparts. Alas, I never found out, as it was during exams.



That's right. A table nailed to the ceiling. Those crazy Dutch bar owners.

And finally, this little guy used to have grapes in his hand. We thought he would enjoy beer and a cigarette much more. He seemed more than pleased with the change.


That's all folks. More to come.

Still Around

No worries. I am indeed still alive, despite the slovenly manner in which I have updated this blog. I assure you, as I have in the past, updates will be more frequent and of a higher quality.

The past couple of weeks her in Holland have been excellent. I have made many friends from far off and exotic places like Whales and Germany. Exciting, I know.
School has been going great, aside from a bad case of the lazy ass one day this week. This crazy two block semester means that exams and assignments are sneaking up on me in a hurry, but I'll survive.

As for the homestead. I actually really like my apartment. The tiny little thing is growing on me. The building is great as well. A big group of us students have become close and hang out at the corner bar a lot. Also, this little guy is apparently our unofficial building pet.



Nobody knows his name, but he hangs out behind the building around the bicycle parking all day, occasionally crying for food. He is clearly well fed, which is why he stays around, I'm sure.

Last weekend, a big group of us from the Narwal (the name given to either this building or the neighborhood, I haven't figured out which one just yet) went out to the beach on Zandvoort which was good fun. On the walk to the train station, Dafydd and I spotted this odd looking fellow.



There is so much to say about this man. I don't even know where to begin. So much spandex on one human being. Where do you get a pink do rag anyway? Baffling.

From that little distraction, we were off to the beach. Which was quite nice. I was expecting it to be cold as it was the previous few days, but went anyway, despite my best judgment. Luckily, I was dead wrong. It was a beautiful day for the beach.

I wasn't sure about this beach, but we come to the stairs and catch the first glimpse, and it was nice.




But, if you notice off in the distance, is this



A nice big sailing ship, which we spent most of the next couple of hours hatching a scheme to pirate it. It was quite a complex plan, which involved the hijacking of no less than two other smaller boats, in order to get to that one. Alas, as the beer flowed, we lost interest and never fulfilled out dreams of being rogue mariners.

Later on, I spotted this tenacious fellow. He was trying to surf the saddest set of waves I have ever seen, but damned if he wasn't getting up on a few. You have to kind of admire that.



Towards the end of the evening, we left the beach, where me and Dafydd split from the group to meet up with some other folk, where we proceeded to get a right bit inebriated and involved in some light petty theft, if you can call it that. None the less, good times were had by all involved. All in all, it was a good Saturday in Holland.

And now, I must be off to continue my studies. But I assure you, there will be more to come.

I am no longer bicycleless

Now I can be everywhere and unstoppable, as I finally secured a bicycle. And after much headache, it is now fully functional. Behold



It's no looker, but it gets the job done.

Other than the cycling business, a lot has gone on this past week. I began classes, which has been exciting. All of my lecturers are Dutch, which I didn't really expect, but perhaps should have considering I'm studying at a Dutch university. I think I'm going to enjoy this semester. It's very nice to exclusively study exactly what you want.

My buddy, Paolo showed me around the university and a bit of the town, and directed me towards the oddly named book store. It was really just a regular ass book store and not one devoted to the sales of text and school books, which made it a bit difficult, luckily I had a native to guide me. Below is said oddly named bookstore, which I now know how to pronounce, but cant pull off spelling it phonetically, so you will just have to guess.



After getting all set up and getting back into the groove of school, I wandered around town a bit. My neighbourhood, Haarlemmerdijk seems to be nice. It has a ton of shops and a market every Saturday.



It's no Adams Avenue, but it will do just fine.

On Friday, a few of us from the building went to our corner bar for some drinks. CJ, an American I have befriended here is half Dutch and his father was in town for some sort of college reunion. Thus we went out to the Spui to see if we could scrounge up a few free drinks from his dad and his buddies at the bar they were at. When we finally arrive after getting a bit lost, the bartender says he is closing up shop and isn't serving anymore. He claims he was sick, but I think he didn't want to serve a few Americans and a Welshman, the racist bastard.
After this slight, he points us to a couple of bars, one of which he calls a punk bar and have very cheap beer. Naturally, I am intrigued and insist on going for both the punk and the cheap beers. You can't really beat that.
Thus we spend the wee hours of the morning with a bunch of Dutch punks. Good times were had by all. A few days later, I am walking back home and stumble upon this place in the daylight.



Oddly enough, there is no stage, but I will have to return.

That is all for week two, but I leave you with a few photos, naturally.

I saw this and thought it was a classy piece of graffiti, then I translated it and it became so much more glorious. I don't know who did it, but I admire him to no end. It translates to "we are everywhere and unstoppable."


Here is De Krijtberg R.K. Kerk St. Franciscus Xaverius, the big Catholic Church in Amsterdam. From what I understand, it was made in 1883. Don't worry Moms, I will investigate into the church further, per our agreement.


Below is the Dam Palace, where the Queen lived when she lived in Amsterdam, before high tailing it to the Hague. She still stays here when in Amsterdam, but it's not or ordinary residence.


Finally, I think Chevrolet needs to reevaluate its strategy in Europe.


More to come,
Matt