Anna-Maj, Saman, Glenn, Beckham, etc.

Snow

It hasn't snowed since 1986. But today it snowed in Rome.

Ourlet invisible and globalization

In France they call it ourlet invisible, in Sweden it’s apparently called osynlig fållsöm, it may be called something like invisible hem seem in English, but I really don’t know. Learning about this thing, whatever it is called, may be the most unexpected Saturday night activity yet. But when a suit gets worn out, a man got to do what a man got to do.

So I am staying at home. Being tired after today’s IKEA trip. I have never been this frequently to IKEA before. I think it’s due to Rome and its habit of being extremely Italian. It may be the least globalized capital in the Western world. Which in many aspects is a good thing; it’s still quite genuine, there isn’t a single Starbucks in the entire town, and the McDonalds have abandoned the red color and adapted a dark green shade which matches the surroundings. But I am sorry to say that I am part of a globalized generation. I want variety. And I am fed up with pizzas and pastas. Therefore I found myself, once again, in the IKEA store craving for kaviar, daim and fläderblomssaft. I don’t even eat these things very often at home. But here these visits functions as very welcomed spiracles (yes I had to look up that word at www.tyda.se).

Talking about globalization, I am currently reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo. It was released in the 90’s, but today it’s probably more relevant than ever. It describes how large global corporations control our society. How public squares transforms into private shopping malls, were political rallies and public information is controlled or banned. How the cultural offerings are governed and censured by corporate empires controlling the entire supply chains of the movies we watch and the books we read. How the manufacturers of our running shoes and flat screen TVs force workers to abortions or move factories from Northern to Southern China to cut wages in half, wages that already were less than half of the official wages necessary for existence. And. So. On.

Reading this it feels bizarre making a trip to just another global corporation this weekend’s big happening. Especially as IKEA introduced the world to another concept I am not very fond of: mass consumption of furniture. Not sustainable at all.

The Architecture - part 2

This is the second part of the architecture posts, featuring photos from last weekend. My cousin showed me the important architecture of Rome, sites seldom visited by the ordinary hordes of tourists. It was cold, rainy, windy and very interesting. Today David wandered the streets of Rome himself. I joined him in the evening and we visited Pompi, or il Regno del Tiramisù as they call it. So we had some pretty good tiramisu.

My supervisor Jean Francois is leaving for Haiti this Thursday. Hopefully this will not influence my projects too much, and I think I can handle most of the projects myself by now. Jean Francois can probably guide me via e-mails in between.

Enjoy the photos. Pay attention to the placement of the carousel. Plain stupid. And the flying pillar. Plain strange.

The Architecture - part 1

I am not a snow-eating Viking, not at all

I want to go out and run. But I have a sore throat, so I am sitting indoor. And it is freezing cold. The locals tell me not to complain, as I am from Sweden and we are supposed to be tough Vikings eating snow for breakfast. But I have never had snow for breakfast, and in Sweden we keep it warm and comfortable indoors. In Rome, insulation and double pane windows are unheard of. Heating is only turned on a few hours a day, and the kitchen is placed on the balcony. So even if it is 10-15 degrees and sunny outside, I am cold. And I feel I do have the right to complain about it.

I am happy to announce that in a week my cousin David will pay me a visit. He will be here for a few days due to a school project. He is studying architecture. I hope he will show me the important and famous architecture of Rome. And I will show him the best pizza places. Then, on February 26, my girlfriend Anna-Maj will visit me, along with her sisters. I hope she will come again during my Easter vacation. As that wasn’t enough, my friend Saman will come to Rome in the beginning of March. We will probably go and see AS Roma – AC Milan. I suppose Serie A is a must when living six months in Rome. Hopefully the weather is warmer during these visits.

Below are some photos from a night out last weekend. Courtesy to my fellow WFP Swede Christopher for letting me use his high definition mobile photos. I did bring my Nikon, but the battery was exhausted. Too bad as I was hoping to use some newly acquired photography skills. I have been reading about exposure compensation, white-balance, ISO equivalency and shutter-speed. I have no idea what these words actually mean, but I know a little bit about how to change them to improve the photo. Or at least I know how to change them, and if I'm lucky the photo improves.


A hole in the roof. Pantheon.
People waiting in line. And they are not Swedes.
Pizzeria da Baffetto serves the best pizzas in Rome.
To the left you see a little bit of my 4 cheeses pizza. It was pretty good.
After Pantheon, Spanish steps, Fontana di Trevi, Pizzeria da Baffetto and an Irish pub, the night ends and the happy Swedes say good bye. I am the tall guy, the shorties are Jens and Ida. They are volounteers at FAO and WFP, respectively. In the background you can see the enormous Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II.

Haiti

The situation on Haiti has of course impacted work on WFP quite a bit. As I'm in the logistics division, some of my closest colleagues are very much involved. Several are working day and night on site in Haiti, coordinating the logistics not only for WFP operations but also for the whole UN organization and humanitarian partners, as WFP is the lead agency of the so called Logistics Cluster. Many colleagues left behind in the office have also been working close to 24/7. I haven't been involved myself, and understandable my ongoing projects aren't really top priority at the moment. But it is definitely very interesting to see such a huge operation from the inside, and the outstanding effort to save lives. The will to go to Haiti and help on site has been tremendous, not even close to all WFP staff that have volunteered have been available to go. When I leave WFP and go on in my life, as large humanitarian disasters struck the world I will immediately think about my friends at WFP, and have at least some perception of the huge food distribution machinery that instantly kicks in.

Some WFP staff didn’t survive the quake. Among the survivors there are some incredible stories, one of them you can read here, it’s about how a WFP staff dug three of his kids out – alive.

Sono è I'uomo

I thought I might as well learn Italian. So now I've had my first class at http://www.livemocha.com/users/post_register. As you can see, it was very successful.

La bambina è bassa.

La donna è grasso.

Il bambino è povero.

What I do

Rome is warm and sunny and does its best to welcome me back from Christmas vacation. Yesterday it was 42 degrees warmer than in my childhood town in Sweden. Unreal.

One of the main reasons of this blog is to use it as a job diary. I believe it can be useful in the end, as I’ll have to write a report of my time in Rome because of the scholarship I am receiving. So far I haven’t written much about my work, but today’s blog post is dedicated to this. Currently I am involved in about 10-20 projects, and here I’ll briefly present a few of them.

As mentioned earlier, I am involved in rolling out a new fleet management system. In this project, I am primarily responsible for creating a system for common IDs of truck spare parts, for example to facilitate cross-checking between warehouses. Currently I am outlining the requirements of this solution, in terms of time frame and what must be provided by the country offices.

Furthermore, I am continuing work on new fleet renewal/expansion strategies. It is quite complicated to find funding for truck procurement in an organization such as WFP, as donations often are earmarked for special operations and a short time frame. Therefore, large long-time investments such as trucks procurements can be complicated. Earlier I have written concept notes on the long-term perspective, i.e. strategies for replacing trucks procured from now on. Right now I am working on solutions applicable in the near future, and pros and cons of different options in various scenarios (such as emergency operations, new projects, renewal of current fleet, etc.). I find this project very interesting as it is concrete and gives a good insight in the problems created by the restrictions a humanitarian organization faces; the financial perspective is certainly quite different from the commercial sector.

Third, I am currently brainstorming concepts for decreasing the environmental impact of our truck operations. I am studying policies, initiatives and solutions of other UN organizations, our partners and the commercial sector, in order to learn and find best practices. From this material I try to see what is applicable to us, what we need to find out to move on, etc. This is very stimulating as it is tightly connected to my environmental interest and I feel I can contribute with new knowledge to the unit.

I am also working on the business requirements of a tool related to the truck database I finished in December. We are trying to develop a simple tool that can assist fleet managers in all other country offices in case they are interested in purchasing new trucks. Step-by-step the tool shall tell the user if there is a valid need for truck procurements, what trucks are available for what price, the resulting extra running costs implicated by truck fleet augmentation and realistic options for financing. Hopefully, such a tool can provide the user with a quick holistic view of truck procurement and its implications.