belfast

i arrived in belfast on saturday morning, on the same flight as matt and erin. matt and i were staying in the europa (the most-bombed hotel in belfast, apparently), and erin and most other people were staying in the hilton (where the conference was being held). after a shower and a bit of rest, matt and i met up to explore and find some food. i had my first - and only - dish of fish and chips in the UK. the verdict: overrated.

the reason i was in belfast at all was to attend the international harm reduction conference. the conference started on sunday evening and ended on thursday evening. i went to maybe seven sessions - more like six, actually. that's a ridiculously low number of sessions to go to for a conference of that size. the first couple of days i was finishing work i had brought with me from new york; after that, i was too tired to go to morning sessions and had to sit in our OSI booth some of the time. it seems not work the entry fee (400 pounds--that's like $800 now!), but i realize that the point of most of those functions is really meeting people and networking, and i think i did a pretty good job of that. harm reduction isn't really what i do at all, but by going to sessions and talking to people i think i learned quite a bit. i'm still not sure i agree with everything it stands for, and i'm confused about what it means for drug markets and whatnot, but at least i'm more informed now and can talk about it like a non-idiot. i'm not going to go into any more detail about it here, but you can ask me about it if you want to know more.

a bunch of cool and not-so-cool stuff happened around the conference. i got to know erin, and she's pretty fucking cool. i got to know matt, and he's pretty cool too. i met some really important iranians, some of whom were quite creepy; i'm always a little creeped out by hard-line iranian men in positions of power. i realized that australians are just cooler than most of the rest of the world. maybe it's something in their water. i am really very good at organizing conferences and making things run smoothly, despite the best efforts of my boss (not that he tries to make life difficult; rather, he just doesn't think about it.) i found that it's not that difficult to make connections (professional, personal, whatever) with people if you just listen to what they have to say and talk about what you know.

we went on a mural tour around belfast on friday before flying out to london. eight of us got two cool british taxis (big black cars with two real seats and two fold-out seats) with two cool irish drivers, and we went around both the protestant and catholic sides of the city. there's actually a wall between them--in places, it's about five or six stories high. it's called the peace wall because it's meant to keep peace by dividing the two warring groups. so the protestants, also known as loyalists, are pro-british and want northern ireland to continue to be part of the united kingdom. there are a bunch of murals painted of the martyrs (according to the loyalists) on the sides of all these houses, complete with rifles that look like they're always pointed at you. it's an incredible sight, standing in the middle of this housing complex with these constant reminders of violence all around. it's the same on the catholic, republican, unionist side--billboards for sinn fein, memorial gardens for civilians murdered by the other side, wire protective fences covering the porches of houses from bombs thrown over the wall. i can't imagine what it's like to grow up around that. so we left belfast on a contemplative note. overall, i'd give the trip a 7.