Sick but still here...

Life has been pretty miserable for the last three weeks, as since mid-November I have had a bad bout of flu, and a severe upper respiratory tract infection. I have energy again now, but a distressing cough, and it's not responding quickly to antiobiotics and prednisilone. Soon, i hope, as on December 16th, we fly via Singapore to New Zealand, for three weeks in summer weather. I can't wait.

Today, my partner and I go for an early Christmas meal with her family. On the way there, we're going for some serious book buying at Border's, near Leicester, in England's East Midlands. My idea of paradise...

Shouldn't you be asleep?

It's after midnight, and I've been stumbling about on the net. If anyone reads this, ask yourself if you should be awake still. I know I shouldn't.

Back in the U.K...

i'm back in the U.K. now, after a week in Canada, at a Knowledge Brokering Workshop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and meeting people in knowledge brokeing and knowledge transfer, in toronto. Exhausted me, but it was a really useful trip.

Sorting and sifting stuff ...

I'm sorting stuff in my study, and found a newspaper cutting from 1993, with the enticing prediction "Half the world under 24 by 2001". I think I hoped I might be in that half of the population...

However, life is attractively busy. In two weeks time I go to Canada for knowledge brokering workshops in Nova Scotia, and trips to Toronto and Montreal. I've never been to Canada at all, so this is a real pleasure. Also just been accepted for a distance learning MSc in knowledge management. We go to New Zealand in about 10 weeks time.

Managing knowledge - a slide show

Yesterday I gave a slide show [PowerPoint] on managing knowledge. It was just to a small group at Leeds University, but they liked the combination of good photos with short captions, succinct text and select references. I can improve it, for future sessions, and Susan Hamer suggested I take it to Canada on my trip there next month.

I'm not making entries regularly enough...

[Sigh] It's quite difficult to put up meaningful entries regularly, and I'm not managing very well.

Even weekly posting should be possible...perhaps with news of work, books I'm reading, etc? If it wasn't so late, I would write more tonight, but I ought to be in bed.

Awesome sights and sounds

Following the terrorist attacks in London today I am struck by the awesome sights and sounds, the eye witness accounts, of the dead and wounded, the ripped open bus, cordoned off streets, and the unique image of thousands of people walking quietly home, or, in a bizarre view, abandoning cars near Heathrow Airport, and dragging bags along the hard shoulder in attempts to reach flights. It was the first time I can recall clips from private citizens picture phones being used in news stories.

Hearing of the attacks while at work in Leeds, my colleagues and I spent much of the morning half attending to work, half to the breaking news. I phoned my sister, brother in law and nephew, first in central London ( where they have apartments), then in Devon, their family home. They were in Devon, to my relief. When I spoke to my partner around 3 p.m, she had not even heard about the bombings, having been in interviewing work all day, and immediately wanted to make sure her sister, nephew and niece in London were all OK, too.

In something of an imitation of our actions on 9/11, we sat at home in the evening watching some of the news bulletins and piecing together the events. Twenty four hours earlier, it seemed so euphoric after London's 2012 Olympics award, now, so soon, that euphoria has evaporated in the blasts,smoke and flames. It will return, but the anticipation will always be tinged with memories of these events of 7 July.

Promises, promises...

Back in May I said I would put up a weekly entry - sorry, I haven't done it. Now, mid-June, I can have another start.

Knowledge brokering and management work is very busy right now, and the priority is to project myself more to my colleagues, explaining more what I do and how I can support their work. I'm not a pushy type, more a back-room sort, but having undertaken a 360 degree feedback thing recently, I have learned that I am seen as too much in the background. Will I go too far the other way to compensate?

Watch this space...

Time to make a realistic promise...

After an absence of nearly two months from the blog, it's time for me to make a realistic promise to write a new entry at least once a week.

I am relieved that the general election is over, and that the Labour government was returned, although I would have preferred a larger majority, as, no doubt would Tony Blair. He is likely to be a hostage to the self-destructive whims of left-wingers and serial dissenters, MPs who would rather be 'pure' than be in power.

Turning to work, I await a visit on Monday & Tuesday by Irving Gold, Director of Knowledge Transfer & Knowledge Brokering at the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. He's coming to dinner with us in East Morton on Tuesday evening. We should have the chance to discuss my proposed visit to Canada in October.

Today is a day of sunshine and showers, and I have done 3 loads of washing, two of which have dried. Again, I turn to the neverending task of sorting my study and its clutter. This is one of the few places where I have failed to make a successful system for keeping things in order. One day...

Roger's Blog updated...

Yesterday was the first day of spring when I could sit outside in the sun and find it warm. I finished reading 'Small Island', the lovely book by Andrea Levy, and then dipped into a book of Songs and Poems of Queen Salote of Tonga. Today has been grey and about 5 to 7 degrees cooler.

We have completed our flight bookings for our December 2005/January 2006 trip to New Zealand. Now we've begun to book accommodation, with our first three nights at Villa Bruce, in Paihia, and five nights over Christmas, at the farmstay Tara Valley, near Rotorua.These are places we know well now, and know the people.

The Paihia days will allow us to go to Whangarei to see the house we bought there last July, a house we have seen only in photos. How I long for the day when we can go and live there...

A whole bunch of articles...

The March issue of Journal of Nursing Management has a lot of interesting content, and the following is a selection of them. If you have access to the journal on-line or as hard copy, you may follow up to get the articles, but if not, please feel free to e-mail me at Leeds University and I will forward the ones you request.

Hendel T, M Fish & V Galon(2005) 'Leadership style and choice of strategy in conflict management aamong Israeli nurse managers in general hospitals, Journal of Nursing Management [JNM] V.13 No 2 :pp137-146.

Henderson A, S Winch, R Henney et al (2005) 'Working from the inside', an infrastructure for the continuing development of nurses' professional clinical practice, JNM V. 13 No.2,pp106-110.

Murphy L (2005) Transformational leadership: a cascading chain reaction, JNM V.13 No.2,pp128-136.

Nilsson K, & U S Larsson(2005)Conceptions of gender - a study of female and male head nurses' statements, JNM V.13 No.2,pp179-186.

Rutherford J, J Leigh, J Monk & C Murray (2005) Creating an organizational infrastructure to develop and support new nursing roles - a framework for debate, JNM V.13 No.2,pp97-105.

Suominen T, Savikko N et al (2005) Work empowerment as experienced by head nurses, JNM V.13 No.2,pp147-153.

Quiet times...turbulent times.

Quiet times recently: a week ago I had a tooth extraction, and have had a terrible time for a week, lots of pain, just feeling awful. I had forgotten what a shock to the system a dental extraction is - like an assault. Today, for the first time since before the event, I have energy enough for anything else than trying to manage the pain. I was able to read a short book, "Rain" by Kirsty Gunn, and listen to some music, Brahms' First Symphony.

This is a piece of music forever associated with my last year in high school. I heard it first while lying in the Botanical Garden in Wellington, New Zealand, in August 1968,just when the Russian tanks moved into Czechoslovakia. I was in Wellington for a selection course for the New Zealand Volunteer Servce Abroad [VSA] scheme. Those seemed like quiet days in turbulent times.

Silent, but not inactive...

For two weeks, I have been silent on these pages, but not inactive. Much of the time I am at work, the University of Leeds, but on 14 January (my birthday) and 15-16 January, I went away with my partner Heather, for a mystery weekend. We stayed in Bakewell, in the Derbyshire Peak District. It's a rugged but tranquil place, and a great place to be based for a short break.

Now I'm back at work, and spending January sorting my files, getting rid of unnecessary papers, and doing some good reading:

My brother in law, Tony Gould, has published a new book, "Don't Fence Me In: From Curse to Cure. Leprosy in Modern Times"[published by Bloomsbury], and I have begun to read and enjoy it. It's likely this reference to it will be picked up, as naturally he is monitoring reviews and references to it, and I said I would, too, in the course of my knowledge management work. Additionally, I shall resume use of my blog as a place to share my work.

NHS HealthSpace on the www

This is an interesting innovation from the UK's National Health Service "HealthSpace is a secure place on the internet where you can store all your personal health information."

Alternative American Sites

During the U.S. Presidential Elections, I looked at several alternative sites, including:
American Prospect Online
Liberal Oasis
Ms Magazine

More from the Sri Lanka Blog- Focus on the big picture

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Focus on the big picture

If you haven't yet been to... StumbleUpon

If you haven't yet been to StumbleUpon ... you should try it...StumbleUpon Reviews

One of my favourites: Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

As well as posting links relating to the South East Asia tsunami disaster, I want to continue some regular items of knowledge management. Arts and Letters Daily is one of my favourite sites, and I look at it every day for chance new material. I've given the link to my colleagues and friends, and most people become enthusiastic, too. It's one of those sites that grows on you. Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

A good idea: Councils plan to twin with tsunami towns

This is such a good idea, a really good way to ensure the relief work is embedded in civil society:SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society | Councils plan to twin with tsunami towns

More from the Sri Lanka blogger- From war to the wave

Here's the link to another Guardian blog from the aid worker in Sri Lanka Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | From war to the wave

Asian disaster - Getting knowledge No. 4: Sri Lanka Blog

Here's a blog direct from a former AOL News editor, now working for an aid organisation in Sri Lanka Sri Lanka Blog

Google Digital Library - more comment

Once again, Tara Calishain [ResearchBuzz] points to a goodie - very pertinent questions from librarians on one of Google's new big projects, the digitisation of many book collections. Google

Asian disaster - getting knowledge: No. 3.

The following link is a great weblog for tracking the aid work, and finding ways to give effective help:
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami