THREE MOBILE

I have my mobile account with Three. There was a reason for that at the time. Other members of my family were on three and we got free phone calls between us. That is no longer an imperative as most packages now include national phone calls irrespective of the operator at the othr end.

I'm on a €30 a month package. But I like to keep a little money in the account in case I get caught up in calls not coverd by the package.

Up to recently I had €23 under this heading.

And then one day it when I looked, it had gone. I was trying to figure out what calls I might have made that had eaten away at my store but couldn't think of any. A quick look at my log (but only for the last two months) didn't show any call charges.

So I took to Twitter, which is usually a place to get a prompt response because it's public, to ask Three about my money's disappearance. I got a quick response, transferred over to Direct Messaging and quickly got the explanation that Three had stolen my money.

They don't describe it that way of course. Apparently it had been there for 180 days and their terms of reference allow them to snitch it if it is unused by the end of that period.

Top Up Expiry

Effective from 1st December 2020, any top up credit on your account will expire after 180 days. Your Three Prepay account credit will expire 180 days from the date that your account was last topped up. For any pre-existing credit on your account as of 1 December 2020, the expiry date for that credit will start from 1 December 2020. If you do not use your top up credit or add another top up credit within the 180 days, the credit will expire and your balance will be set to zero. When you top up again, your expiry date will be 180 days from this new date.

Now the implication here is that I should have read the terms of reference more carefully, but really, you don't expect such bad a faith provisions to be included and even after reading them you don't normally think back when you decide to leave a bit of spare cash in the account for emergencies. For God's sake, I'm giving them €30 a month as it is.

Moreover, the piece appears to be badly drafted and does not justify them snitching my money.

I consider this provision, as it is drafted and implemented to be unfair and in bad faith.

I must check and see what is available from other providers.

FALLEN LEAVES

Click on any image for a larger version.

This post is an extract from a report I did in 2014 of a visit to the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

One of the exhibits I reported on was entitled Fallen Leaves in a Void and it made a very bit impression on me.

When I came home, I found it was too emotional an item to write up straight away, but when I did get round to it, crying my way through writing it, I realised that including the item next door to it, on the olive tree, would add a whole new level of meaning, and clicking on the link in my text on that item would break your heart.

Little did I realise that the events of the October HAMAS attack and the subsequent collective punishment/genocide would endow my report with an even deeper meaning. Its relevance over the last decade reminds us that this whole business started with the 1948 NAKBA the completion of which looks to be at hand.

This is a truly creative and provocative piece. Some 10,000 faces punched out of steel are scattered on the ground. The work is dedicated not only to Jews killed in the holocaust, but to all victims of violence and war.

You are invited to walk over the faces and listen to the sounds they make as they shift beneath your feet.

This is what you see in front of you as you try to keep your balance.

And this is what you nearly fall on top of.

It is hard to convey the emotional impact of this place. The noises made by the shifting faces remind you both of screams, varying in pitch and volume depending on the sizes and shapes of the faces making them, and of something like a clanking tank running over fleeing victims. It is quite unnerving.

Then, in the middle distance, a shaft of light which turns the faces to gold. What does it mean? Hope amid despair? Gold from the teeth of the dead? Just plain Shekels? Even more unnerving

And then there is the olive tree. Presented here as a symbol of fertility and peace. Visitors can write a wish or prayer for placing on the tree.

Unfortunately, the olive tree for me has become a symbol of the wanton destruction of the livelihood of Palestinians on the West Bank by illegal settlers. So this item brought me up a bit short.

And then a mental exercise suggested itself to me and I would like you to go back to the beginning of the Fallen Leaves and slowly go through the sequence again. Only this time, still being true to the artist's wider conception, imagine they are the faces of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Even more unnerving.

NEW YORKER CARTOONS

Click on any image for a larger version

This is a lovely present Leentje got me for Christmas. She knows me too well and my preoccupation with cartoons. Unlike her father, Albert, I can't draw and am reduced to either appreciating the cartoons of others or messing around on Photoshop to make a point.

I should add that these two volumes weigh a ton, so I am leaving a volume open on a stand to flick through a few more pages from time to time.

My intention is to share some of the cartoons that I most appreciate here with you as I read the volumes. As I don't want this post to be too long I'll have to be extra selective and just include the crème de la crème.

"What's the next best medicine?"

I used to be a great fan of the Readers' Digest when I was young and they had a cartoon/joke section entitled "Laughter is the best Medicine". It's actually true and I have never forgotten it.

Speaking as a photographer, I think this joke is on the photographer. Love it.

"I'm turning into my mother."

This is a work of genius. I have seen it before but didn't know where it came from. A moving picture in two dimensions. It reminds me of the EBRD logo competition. Jacques Attali announced the competition for a logo and specified there should be no birds. This was because the French acronym for the Bank is "La Berd" and he foresaw all sort of smart remarks being made about flying on one wing and so on if there was a bird in the logo. Well the entry that won it was simple, two interlocking links in a chain inside a circle representing the globe. In my view, the absolute best of the entries.

But you can never be up to these arty farties. See what you think.

"I'll be damned. It says. 'Cogito ergo sum'".

This from 1958, anticipating AI in a big way, and we're not all the way there yet. Anticipates Arthur Clarke by a decade. "Open the Hatch, HAL!".

"Nice, but we'll need an environmental-impact study, a warranty, recall bulletins, recycling facilities, and twenty-four-hour customer support."

This one speaks its own volumes. Have we too much red tape, or too little. Is the tape the right colour or should it just be black and white like the Keffiyeh?

BOOK: THE COLLEGE OF EUROPE 1948-1998

Click on any image for a larger version

I had heard there was a book on the history of the College of Europe, so when I was there for the 40th anniversary of my graduation I enquired about it. "Sure, I think we have a second copy, I'll go and check." I don't know if they were going to sell or give it to me, no matter. I was dying to read it. But no, just like the Album/Yearbook of my original stay, it couldn't be found.

Then, the other day I Googled it, and lo and behold, there it was. Scanned by the College up to its website and downloadable.

The wait was unfortunate, but certainly worth it. It is a remarkable book, extremely well researched and very well written. I found it fascinating and full of resonances. I was there just short of the middle of the fifty year period covered by the book. Before me was the College in formation and after me its developement to close to today's model.

Residence: Sint-jakobsstraat 41

The book stresses the benefits and impact of living together. In my day we all lived in a single residence, including the Rector. But then we were only 54 students. By 1998 there were around 250, but the College wisely spread these around a number of residences in the city. One big residence would decrease intimacy and a sense of community.

The red line is my year.

The male:female balance seems to have improved since my day. We were males 4:1 females. By 1998 this had significantly evened out, but with females in the ascendant.

Jan Tinbergen. Flying Professor & Nobel Prize Winner

A serious lesson learned in the early days was that then you could not assemble a top quality resident academic staff because simply there was nowhere to go. In a bigger institution you could hope to work your way up the food chain but not there. So reliance was placed on the "flying professor" corps. A large number of professors/lecturers were recruited as visiting academics. So, you got the cream of universities, and even the EC administration, passing through and shedding their knowledge. Even my friend and co-Comenien(ne) Dame Helen Wallace gets a mention for being part of this corps. (P.45)

And the idea of Academic Assistants was gaining ground along the way. These would be students who were employed immediately after graduation to help the student body and manage the "flying corps", keeping their feet on the ground, so to speak, and ensuring they observed consistency with College policy and content in their teaching. Jacques Chabert was one of those in my year (P.46). It was Jacques who gave me the words of "La Charlotte" which could be rendered as a bawdy rugby song or a tragedy in the style of Racine's "Andromaque".

Click on image for a larger version

This table shows the numbers and national composition of students during each five years over the period. I noted that there was one Irish before me (Desmond Murphy, 1963/4) but I'm fairly sure he was not financed by the Irish state as I was. So I think my claim to have been the first "official" Irish student probably still holds. (P.129)

Dining room - Sint-jakobsstraat

The College has retained its language policy from its foundation. Students are expected to be more or less fluent in English and French. There had been pressure from the Germans to add German but the view was that requiring three languages would be too much, and God knows, how would you ever get the French to drop French. I can tell you from my later EBRD experience that they'd prefer to pay a visit to Madame La Guillotine. There was also pressure at one stage to add Flemish but acquiring this would be a transitory advantage at best. Both German and Flemish (Dutch) can be learned or perfected in the language lab these days. In my year the German students generally sat at a separate table to draw attention to their ambitions for the language.

Eventually the College started awarding degrees. David McWilliams, for example, got his MA there. But initially at least this idea was blocked by the universities who didn't want to be upstaged. In my day you just got a Certificate in Advanced European Studies. I think, if you managed to stay on for a second year you got a Diploma. The book makes it clear that the College valued its independence and it pursued this over degree-awarding capacity over the years.

I was surprised to read that the "Bruggeling, Honoris Causa" practice was introduced during this period. I had thought it a later addition. The idea is marketed as "Honorary Bruges Citizenship" and is awarded to every graduating student each year. I, who predated the practice, applied for a retrospective award of "Honorary Bruges Citizenship", only having to grovel when it was pointed out to me in no uncertain terms that there had only been six awards of actual Honorary Bruges Citizenship in the history of the City, and these included the first founder-Rector of the College and the General who liberated Bruges after WWII. So what was this thing then? It was patiently explained to me that it was simply a souvenir piece of paper on which the City of Bruges recognised that you had resided there for an academic year. So now you know.

Three of my Professors:
Lory (history), Brugmans (l'Idée Europénne), Kormoss (Geography)

And how would I describe the College. Well the nearest I can get is an EC/EU Seminary. It's not like a university where you would expect a diversity of views right across the positive-negative spectrum. It is a training ground for missionaries for the "European (EU) Idea".

Click on image for a larger verson.

There is a handy chronological list of Promotions with corresponding student numbers. (P.210/11)

On my return from my fiftieth anniversary trip I set up a blog with posts describing my own academic year in the College in 1967/8.

While I was in Brugge for that anniversary I spent most of my waking hours taking photos of Brugge 2018, visiting places I had omitted while I was there at the College fifty years before. I set many of these out in a separate blog with commentary.