Doha/Bosphorus Update; Italy; Jpod Arrives

Thank goodness the Geneva sojourn will soon be over -- I can't keep up with all the blogging! Ok, so first of all, as those of you in the know are already well aware, the negotiations collapsed at the WTO. And I'm sure you all wondered to yourselves, is this Lauren's fault? Yes, I take full blame. And, as I am too lazy to describe the event in detail, I am pasting below an email I sent just after the talks met with their demise Tuesday evening, which seems to capture all the important points (sorry Ted, I'm afraid this blog entry will be a bit of a let-down for you):

Luckily, I got your t-shirts [I picked up some souvenir Doha t-shirts for those nerdy enough to request them....no offense -- I got one too!] just before the impending doom came crashing down. Actually, I was rather expecting to hear a loud boom when this happened, but instead it sounded more like a bunch of bureaucrats blabbing away on cell phones.
I stayed until around 8pm or so, waiting for the real excitement and the official statements to be made, and after about 2 hours of doing nothing but waiting (and sweating -- do you know that the WTO has no air conditioning?? shouldn't the world trade system have provided us with this by now?) i listened to lamy talk for a mere 5 minutes or so at the informal trade negotiating committee to say he was not opening the floor for comments (although for some reason nath got to put his 2 cents/rupees in). i skipped happy hour for this? it was a little disappointing, but hopefully i'll get to hear some fighting or at least some kind of finger pointing tomorrow morning when the committee meets again.

ok, end of email communique. as for the epilogue, i did attend the TNC the next day, which was overly diplomatic and boring, with everyone agreeing that "now is not the time for finger-pointing". I completely disagree. It was the perfect time for finger pointing, and mine was aimed squarely at India. I don't think I should be a diplomat.

Pictured here is me and two of my colleagues watching Kamal Nath (the Indian Trade minister) talk the press On Monday afternoon. He is saying that he feels very optimistic about the talks. We look relatively unconvinced.

On to the Bosphorus update: actually, there is no update, just lots of pictures provided by the professional photographers we hired to follow us around Istanbul (my parents).



















Since then, my job has ended (2 days after the big collapse. Coincidence?) and I have been trying to pack in all the Europe I can. Last weekend four friends and I drove to Cinque Terre in Italy. It was, as anticipated, very gorgeous, and even more touristy. We went sea kayaking, did a moderate amount of hiking (I'm glad most of my friends are as lazy as me!) and floated in the Mediterranean. It was fabulous.

Now I'm back in Geneva, where my friend Jared arrived yesterevening to help me live out my last week in Switzerland in style. I will demand a guest blog entry from him if he ever wakes up. Today we biked to Yvoire, after a leisurely breakfast. Tonight he is very excited about a planned trip to the Migros.