Sign of life

It has been a while since I last wrote on my blog. Has it been laziness, busyness or lack of inspiration? Or maybe a combination of all three? Yes maybe. I am pretty much past the excitement of my first few weeks here. But I consider that normal. I have felt it before in Sweden and Australia. After a while things start to loose their shine and brilliance, work becomes work, and you get into your daily routines. Yes even in New York! It is probably a good sign too. It means I have adapted to my new live here and that I am slowly becoming a New Yorker. Nevertheless, there are still enough exciting things to write about, like the arrival of my sister today. Many more visitors will follow the coming weeks, so I have to get myself on the horse again. Once you start writing you have to keep going... 

For now, I will leave you with my latest entry on our interns weblog. Here it is.

Life back to normal

Everything is pretty much back to normal since last week. Laura left a week ago and it took me a couple of days of getting used to being alone again. It was great to have her here with me, especially on my birthday. She has been here a few times before, so we decided to avoid most of the touristy places. The weather was nice and sunny most of the time, so we just went for long nice walks and I showed her some nice parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. We also went to some nice restaurants, little cafes, bars, and we attended a beautiful dance show in the Lincoln Center. It felt like a mini holiday. Another great surprise was a three day visit by Tijmen (my KLM friend) and Dave, another good friend of mine from back home. Laura met with them during the day and I met with them after work.

They also came to see me at work one day and the funniest thing happened. We were sitting outside in the sun during lunchtime and I was telling them that our Princes Maxima was visiting the UN, as she is the Secretary General's advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development. She had given a speech the day before at the Finance for Development Conference. Then we started talking about her in general and that same time I noticed her walking across the street from us. I stood up and said, "look, look, look, I think that's Maxima!" Then we all walked up closer and saw that it was her. She was surrounded by maybe four people and she was carrying some documents. She looked really relaxed and there was no royal aura surrounding her. It all went really fast, so we did not get the chance to talk to her or take a picture. Nevertheless, it was an unforgettable moment.

I also showed the guys the office and they met with my boss and some of my colleagues. The atmosphere and work ethic in the office has much improved since we made the necessary changes. Everyone has been attending tons of meetings and some projects have finally taken off. I have attended two interesting panel discussions myself  hosted by New York University. One was on the International Criminal Court and the United States. And the other one was on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. I especially enjoyed the first one as it had Stephen Rapp as one of the keynote speakers. He is currently the US State Department's ambassador at large for War Crimes Issues. I have been reading a lot about the ICC since I started working at GPF and it inspired me to write something on our new interns blog about the ICC applying double standards with respect to African countries. You can read it here.

We also have weekly vodcasts now on our website in which we inform the public about our latest posted articles and activities going on at the UN. Last week it was my turn to stand in front of the camera. You can watch it here. I am also in an other video for future interns which was filmed during my first week at GPF. I kept it quiet until now as I felt a bit embarrassed. It is not the best video in terms of editing, but you can watch it here.

Enjoy!