jeudi, septembre 14, 2006 13 Sept: The Event officially begins today - not with a bang, as everyone expected, but the main thing today was that the Press Centre opened. This is important because it means that all accredited press may now roam freely within their allowed areas, which is basically everywhere except for the private offices of Bank and Fund staff - and even then IF they have managed to arrange an interview, they may put forth a request to be escorted up there (they must surrender their pass in order to do so.)A little note about these passes - they're colour-coded, bar-coded and tagged with writing in the front, behind, with little logos of this and that which mean various things to various people. It's great fun watching the security guards on the restricted floors trying to peer discreetly at your pass to see if you've REALLY got access to the floor or not. They hang around your navel, so I'm alway wondering if I have lint or food on my shirt ot not. Which brings me to another thing: I thought I had no time to eat when I first started working. I was wrong. Now I know what it means to have no time to eat. My whole office laments the fact that the toilet is so far away - 5m away from our office. Woo hoo! Long walk away - but we really don't have time for it! But I'm learning a lot - there's a lot of things that I'm seeing for the first time in action. I've read about a lot of stuff, and read OF other stuff, but to actually see a message being crafted, drafted, worded with "Language", released to the press, then being inverted, converted, translated, mutated, violated, ripped apart, misconstrued... it's amazing, and I'm having the time ofmy life working alongside colleagues from all sorts of places like the USA, UK, France, Italy (and that's just my current temporary office), India, Pakistan, Germany, Chad... I feel so blessed. My assistants who have been co-opted from various places in the ministries (MFA, MOM, HPB, and other stat boards) have been so great as well - they have been so helpful and such pleasant people to work with that apart from the issues that are plaguing the centre (which has become Political Science 101 central), I am continuing to enjoy what I'm doing. I think that my bosses could afford to chill out a little (this is not my regular boss, who is a fantastic guy), but everyone's so high strung that I think some of them are at the breaking point tonight, so I vamoosed before anything erupted.
Some of the CSOs had planned a protest against the ban in Singapore at 12 noon, and they did it. They beeped their badges in, and stood tall in their t-shirts and their little surgical masks over their mouths, which read "No Voice". I actually have one of those masks, keeping it as a souvenir (or until I can get a good picture of it, then I'll... auction it or something.) I didn't have my camera with me, but I have pictures from my crappy phone camera! Only 30 people protested, and there were SO much press that you could not see over anything - it was just a sea of cameras and lightbulbs.
Hopefully it'll get better after this, because the press has taken it as far as it can go - the CSOs have done their protests, they've staged their mass walk-out, so basically the story has run its course: there's nothing left in the toothpaste, so they have to stop squeezing. [Work is fun III] |
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