All posts filed under: Uncategorised

Writing A Doctoral Dissertation And Running A Marathon: Personal Reflections On Similar Experiences Part II

27 May 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

0 – 20 km: start slowly, find your pace. The first step of the writing process has been the preparation of the dissertation outline with number of chapters, an estimated number of pages, and the main references to be used in the different sections. I found this initial step easy since the articles and project reports I had already written helped to think the dissertation structure. I have to admit that I started with too […]

Writing A Doctoral Dissertation And Running A Marathon: Personal Reflections On Similar Experiences Part I

27 May 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

During ten months, from February to November 2006, I have been writing my doctoral dissertation at the University of Tampere. Simon Down, a lecturer from the University of Newcastle who gave a presentation in a two day seminar at the University of Vaasa in April 2006, described the PhD as the most intense period of the academic life of an individual. During those months I have been thinking about a metaphor that could describe this […]

Marathon almost over!

27 May 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

The marathon is almost over. The PhD dissertation is now back in Tampere to be edited for the book and web pubblications. It gives an odd feeling to be so close to the end and to see, at the same time, that the day of the public defense is real and approaching quickly. In the next days I will post some of my reflections on the process of writing a PhD dissertation that I hope […]

What Modernity?

25 May 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

I have attended an interesting seminar about the Chinese experience in the transition to market economy with socialist characteristics. The aim of the seminar was to help Vietnamese scholars and researchers, who usually claim to be 10 years behind China in terms of social and economic development, to reflect on the challenges that the transition poses to Vietnam today. One of the conclusions of the seminar is that Vietnam is committed to modernization and market […]

Morning Rituals

19 April 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Every morning I put Olga on the back seat of my bicycle and bring her to the kindergarten which is just behind our block. I struggle with the traffic and get onto the gate of the school. Get Olga down form her seat, unfasten her helmet, unfasten mine. Get her on my lap and start to walk her to her class at the end of the corridor. Passing in front of the other classrooms we […]

Visits to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

31 March 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Today we went for a walk in front of the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. A huge gray stone building that the Soviet Union offered to to Vietnam. We did not enter to see “uncle Ho” as they remember him here in Vietnam, but we walk on the huge cement-paved-parade-road-square that is in front of the mausoleum. The place is quite austere. Not a piece of paper on the ground. The green area on the side […]

Time And Change

27 March 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Arnaldo in Hanoi. Today I attended a workshop where I heard something that made me think. It is now two months that I started my work here in Hanoi and I am still in the process of understanding the structure, currents, streams of my working environment. A work environment which, as the whole society, is under the influence of two main forces: State and Party. All this is new to me. To be in the […]

Ha Noi – one month

2 March 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Ha Noi. One month. I look from the window of my office at the 12th floor of the Vietnam Academy for Social Sciences. Hi see high rising buildings that are being built all around the town. I hear the beat of the town, the ten of thousands of motorbikes and the car of this town which has about 2ml inhabitants. The sky has been gray most of the time. It is winter time and as […]