Sometimes I do not find time to journal all the things that I wish I could record to remember. Here are some scatted notes and thoughts –
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I felt exhausted in Milan. I had been consuming maximum culture. Fabian paces himself and kept up his energy.
We stayed in a bnb in a cheap neighborhood. I suppose it was seedy. It was the first time in my life seeing an automated dildo vending machine on the street, so apparently the price we were paying put us in the sort of neighborhood where people walk by at all hours and need such things. It was easy for us to see whatever we wanted. We saw the Duomo. We did other things.
We took the train to Lake Como near the conference and stayed in a really sleepy town one night before. We had not anticipated how sleepy it actually was. There was not a single restaurant in town, so despite being in a beautiful place, we were trapped without food for the night. Whatever – not eating makes for a more memorable experience than eating, so we looked at the lake and nibbled a bit on our traveling snacks.
Fabian was with me for the first day of the conference and I introduced him to wiki-friends. We toured the conference town then he left. I liked having him there, because Wikipedia people are important to me, and I felt like it would be good for me to introduce Fabian to them.
On Friday 24 June I attended the “Asia meetup” and the “Bangladesh meetup” at Wikimania. In previous Wikimania conferences there had been an India meetup, and certainly there were many Indian people here, but somehow people decided to combine all Asian countries for this conference. I would not have recommended this, but actually, Asian countries in the Wikimedia community face similar challenges, and I think that it was productive to meet together. The representatives of Iran, India, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, and Taiwan happened to be most outspoken in my opinion, but I also know that Indonesian contributors are influential. Chinese people not resident in China also are influential.
I went to all sorts of events. I had all sorts of conversations. From one perspective I regret not having capacity to write more, because I feel like in the future I might want to reflect on my notes and experience. From another perspective, maybe my memory of neglecting my journal this time will inspire me to create better notes in the future.