JaunsCorner.com Blog

The End

No, it definitely was not my favorite day today.

For the third time in a row, I could not fall asleep right away (which meas: For about two hours, shortening my nap down to three hours in length). I first tried to fall asleep using my AM Radio - I wonder if those thingies are forbidden in Tunisia, since it was actually easy to catch true world news featuring everything the country would probably have prefered not to be broadcasted (Sorry President Ben Ali).
But it was not my radio making me close my ears; it was The Twain Reader, which is one of my very favorite podcasts. They are reading The adventures of Tom Sawyer right now and although the chapters are posted in a rather slow frequency, I urge you to check it out- especially if you can’t sleep in Tunisia!

It is the phone waking me up at 4:10 AM, some minutes before my alarm clock would have tried doing the same. A single, unfriendly “Good Morning” is what the guy has to say, then, he hangs up; some seconds later, I hear the phone ringing in the neighbouring room, where another team member is placed. The conclusion I draw from that makes me rather mad: “Someone from my team must have had the great idea to wake us up by phone; but no one told me about that. A thought enters my brain and refuses to leave: “Yes, it is time to end this trip!”

I get up, offer my guide dog some weird smelling water from the sink - he doesn’t drink, which I can understand. The next moments I spend putting everything that seems like belonging to me, including the hotel soap and shower gel, into my suitcase. About 25 minutes too early, I am standing in the lobby, approaching the reception desk to check out. Before the trip, we were inform that everyone was responsible to pay for their hotels on their own and that we would get the money refunded some day. So I check out and hand my master card over to the receptionist. “You don’t pay, do you?”, he says; “of course I do”, I reply, and “Didn’t expect the poor blind could handle his credit card, did you” I think. After a few minutes of making calls and doing some stuff with all kinds of paper, the receptionist says “No it is OK, somebody else did pay for you”. “ah yeah?” - I say; obviously the team member did the job for us all and again, I didn’t know anything; feeling more stupid than before, this thought I mentioned before says: “See, I was right”, and pushes itself more into the foreground of my brain.

While we are waiting for the Consul to arrive, another receptionist greets me and my guide dog, which makes my mood better again. Great to see that some of the Tunisian people are actually more open and normal towards my dog than at the beginning - obviously it was worth it having Leo with me.

The airport is not too much of a pleasure. Due to me being tired, I’m just not into those “Oh, what a cute dog do you have here! What’s his name? Can I touch him? Oh, you’re-such-A-Good-Boy” conversations; but it seems that exactly today, the whole airport staff and all passengers seem to be here just to have talks like that; I get them in at least four different languages, every two minutes on average, and am about to shout some words which I better don’t quote here, when finally entering the plane.

At the same time, there are two great surprises as well. First, we hear that the airplane will fly to Zurich directly, not doing any stop in Geneva. This means that I might be home about one or two hours earlier than I expected. TWO HOURS MORE SLEEP - ain’t that a blessing or what?

The other surprise is revealed slep by step which we get closer to this plane. Nobody, except us, seem to think of Leo having to wear a muzzle today. I did try to put the Gentle Leader on him shortly before going through security. But after noticing how much my guide dog refuses having it on, I was asked by the Consul to put it back off and just take it out when requested.
Well - nobody requests it this moring. The seat I got placed in is absolutely uncomfortable for both, Leo and me, but somehow we manage to fit in there and although my seat neighbour kept on telling that my guide dog was constantly moving, I guess that he did get some sleep.
I, by the way, slept too, until another of the Swiss Delegation Members, who certainly meant no harm, came along the isle to ask “So - where Is Leo Now?”

And then - we finally landed at Zurich Unique Airport, Home, Switzerland.
“Good! Finally! Let’s just run off, take a train and… Oh NOPE! Where is Leo’s Badge? Can somebody please get it from the airplane?”
Yes, somebody can and my world gets back into some kind of harmony.

Because a team member wants to film René and Leo once more, I am asked to not hold on to anybody’s arm. I am also asked to push the non-braille buttons in the elevators and am not answered my question about which floor we have to go to at all - must probably be funy, at least if you are not tired.

Later, when Leo makes a misstake and I give him an training impact, I hear a comment like “Oh, animal lovers will hate to watch that scene”; this is the point I decide to question the movie.
After me having to get a ticket which I don’t need from a ticket vending machine which I can’t use, we sit down in a café and discuss the issue.

It seemed to me as if Access For All, which I went with to the WSIS 2005 selected Leo, my guide dog, and me, his handler, to be the most important figures in their filmed documentation of the event. One or two days ago, I also discovered A German Press Release originally posted by Access For All and announcing that Leo, the guide dog, would report live and daily from WSIS in Tunis on Access For All’s web page. Now both, us being in published films and on web pages, would be all right with me - if we get informed about it in advance. Unfortunately, this did not happen; an internet search engine, not an Access For All Staff Member, told me about my dog sending daily reports, including a bit more than a few ‘remarks’ on delicate topics, such as the Human Rights Situation in Tunisia. Also, “Leo’s” reports on his own treatment were kinda limited to the rather difficult moments - you do, for example, not find a word about the Tunisians actually approaching and playing with him. All of this and the fact that I felt tired and kept busy for some projects I did not have a clue about, caused a very important, though short and at least something like settling talk. We agreed on me being informed before anything would be done with the filmed material. I pray that my words were not hurting anybody, but just being as honest as I was supposd to be when I signed the employment contract with this company.

Then, I am being brought to the train. We don’t make a picture of Leo on the Scale at a check-in desk - obviously everybody noticed my tiredness meanwhile.

Sitting in the train home, I suddenly hear people talking about us: “See? HE has a guide dog. HE assists HIM because HE cannot see. HE tells HIM when and how to leave the train… Blah Bblah Bblah”; nobody approaches me to actually ask - instead, they just talk.
immediately, the thought from this morning leaves. Instead, another thought enters my brain: “Welcome To Switzerland!”; and wondering if I should prefer stupid-talking Switzerland or terribly-scared Tunisia, I troubedly fall asleep.

At home: I unpack my suitcase and check mail, which isn’t much surprising - at least, I got my Open University Student Card, which reminds me of being a student.
Then, I let Leo have his run in the forest. Yes, we are back home!

“Rainin’ You”

OK, let’s try to summarize it like this:

Well, yes. It was definitely worth going to Tunisia. It also was worth it going with this company, this delegation and for this country. There is stuff left to do and I hope, me, my Labrador and the rest of the world will be able to let this summit be a step forward - and so on, and so on, and so on.

To end, I thought I would let you know the song that, for some reason, was spinning around in my weird mind throughout the week. It does not have anything to do with the WSIS 2005, neither with the , my country, my Company, not even with TunisAir…

It is a song by my favorite country artist, Brad Paisley, taken from his newest album “Time Well Wasted” and is called “Rainin’ You” (I hope this link takes you to its lyrics). Although I cannot actually associate it with anything summit-specific, it is still a greatest song. I hope you like it as much as I do; and as much as I liked making Tunisia sick.

(sorry for delivering this one so late; Today was very busy and I did not have the time to write it in time)
I must admit that I hardly remember anything of this Friday.
I do remember clearly though that I slept bad again, which I had in common with Leo, my guide dog. He spent a lot of the night wandering around in my room, probably stil wishing to get a little more dry after his bath from Thursday.

When finally being fallen asleep, my alarm clock couldn’t manage to wake me back up and so, a nervous knock on my door had to do this job.
After a rather fast breakfast, we got to the exhibition halls of WSIS 2005 and spent once again a lot of time waiting, for clients in general, and especially for the Vice President of Switzerland, Moritz Leuenberger. While I was waiting, I discovered that a huge bunch of emails was being delivered to my inbox multiple hours delayed but without any error message - I guess the Secret Service of Tunisia’s President Ben Ali (which I of course hereby send kindest greets from non-censored Switzerland to) must have checked them or whatever.

Well, Mr. Leuenberger then arrived kind of unexpectedly early. To prevent him from having to kneel under the table, we even took Leo’s Posto basket next to my chair, where everyone could see it - and if I got this right, the side effect was that the number of Tunisian and similar visitors at our stand got kind of reduced.

To my pleasure, Ben Segalshowed up once or twice throughout the day, checking how successful my computer’s BOINC Block Chewing went. I also got visited by CERN’s Secretary-General, who wanted to see an accessibility demo as well; ut unfortunately, he came in the moment when I went outside with Leo and we must have kept missing each other since then - well, I guess I will visit him in Geneva one day or whatever

Another great guest was an original Sheikh from Qatar. Before he arrived, I got told that being with him would be a greatest photo subject. He then turned out to be a very great man, talking a high-class English like nobody else did when checking our stand out so far. He was, as he told me, full heartedly impressed with the work we did wished us all the best. He even left a business ard and said that we might want to figure out possibilities of helping the disabled in his country getting access to new technology.

But besides those and other pretty nice guests, there was really not much going on this last Friday and I felt how hanging around at this desk was more and more getting tiring.

Finally, the moment came when I was asked to pack my bag and leave for the hotel. So for the last time, we run through the long passage-ways of Kram Exhibition Park; Leo left a last pile of Well-You-Know-What on the construction work area outside the gates; then, we entered the bus.

The evening ended with the Event in the Home Residence of the Swiss Embassador in Tunisia. This residence is even more next door to Tunisia’s President Ben Ali than our hotel, so you only can get through if you show your passports. But still, the security check went actually rather fast, compared to other examples given in this diary.

And Nope, they indeed did not have any dates. Instead, my plate got filled and re-filled and re-re-filled with all kinds of vegetables,cheese and bred; later, they offered a great selection of cakes for dessert. But much more than the food I appreciated to meet some more people; a couple of them I actually knew from Switzerland - so we had those “What? You Are Here, Too?” moments multiple times.
Among others, I was approached by a journalist of the Swiss French newspaper La Liberté, who wants write a story about Leo and me next week. I also met the wife of Vice President Leuenberger and Ben Segal once more
Before we left, Leo got the possibility to rund around the Embassador’s garden area freely. Unfortunately, one guy also at the event obviously did miss understand that and brought him back to me, saying something like “you don’t have to run away from your master, do you?”; when I let my guide dog go again, I caught him obviously breaking some roses by just walking over them and took him back on leash…

Before eleven (yep, we could catch some sleep), we arrived back at the hotel. The next day, we promised to meet around five so the Consul could bring us to the airport for our 7:30 flight. I really did not look forward to this flight; first, bcause it would be with stupid muzzle-requesting again and secondly because we would fly from Tunis to Geneva and then, which made absolutely no sense for me and for where I live at all, from there to Zurich. I probably would have slept better if I had known that things would turn out differently than I expected.

Did you know, that there is no toilet paper left anymore on this beautiful WSIS 2005 rest room I just got to - or well, let’s say HAD TO use?

Finally, this is the time when I feel something like thankful that so many Leo-Confirmation-Letters had been sent to me before the summit; - erm - yes…

We just got visited by Moritz Leuenberger, who is the Vice President of the Swiss Confederation 2005.

Mr. Leuenberger first greeted “this famous dog, Leo” and laughed at the badge he was wearing. After also introducing himself to me, he noticed that on the Screen Magnifying Demo Unit, his page was being displayed; then he sat down next to me and got an introduction to the basics of accessibility and technology for the blind. We also visited his web page and discovered together that it was quite accessible already, but that the “Spacer” Graphics had to be either re-labelled or untagged; we also took a glance at his “Speeches” page, noticing that the designers missed to label the different language contents with their appropriate Language Tags.

Before leaving, he asked about older people and their ability to still leanr braile writing; then, he thanked me for visiting his web site, shook hands again and kind of was forced to move on

His visit took about 20 minutes and was definitely longer than the one from Samuel Schmid the other day. I wanted to provide an MP3 of it, but since my Recorder knows hot to suck - well, guess I don’t have to say more. But there should be a video of it within like seven years online somehow somewhere

Mr. Leuenberger is obviously very interested in Accessibility issues. He already did write a preface to a study on accessibility a time ago; good to know that there are highest people around thinking of the matter…

We are expecting more people to show up during the day, so I will keep you posted.

I slept pretty bad that night. First, my dog tried to jump onto my bed - no clue why he did that at all, but he must probably have realized that the place next to me in that double bed was not being used. As rule following as I am, I nevertheless had to push him back down on his own Posto

Then, when I was fallen back asleep, my phone started ringing because a Thunderstorm obviously tried to call me. This thunderstorm did not answer any questions I asked, but was only as noisy as all his colleagues, and so it is clear that our conversation was rather short. Some hours later, when I was checking emails at our WSIS 2005 stand, I found out that the thunderstorm would have been my girlfriend and that our phone call was nothing but a greatest example how well the phone system works over here. She does, by the way, not sound like any thunderstorm at all when you talk to her normally. But who knows how many quality destroying Secret Service Agents our phone line was directed through…

After giving up getting sleep, we made it to the Kram Park pretty fast, at least compared to the days before (it took, for example, only three minutes to convince the bus driver to let us in).

Throughout the morning, I served a few guests and put in some pictures into the blog (I hope you love them!!!). We actually were supposed to be visited by the Swiss Vice President, but after first postponing his visit to late afternoon, finally the message dropped in that he would check us out on Friday, which he better does, since it will be our last day on the summit.

Instead and surprisingly to me, Dr. Robert Aymar, the Director General of CERN (world’s largest particle physics laboratory), showed up and asked me for a very detailed presentation of my job, screen reading technology and accessibility issues we are dealing with. He even took an ear full of the CERN’s web site and told me that he never had seen the technology giving blind people access to computers before.

Later, another man approached me. It was Ben Segal, a retired CERN staff member who told us that the Director General just spent more time with us than with the CERN staff themselves. He then not only told us about his relationship to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the The World Wide Web (Ben was on of the important ones when it came to bringing the Internet to CERN, though he clearly states that Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW), but also introduced me to the further developed Seti At Home project, which is now Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). BOINC offers a platform for everyone who is in need of huge computizing power. It delivers the necessary resources by using participating personal computers all around the world, which, during their idle times, process little blocks of the whole job. He was involved in running the first serious “voluntary computer grids” and is now introducing African students so they might be able to use the concept of sharing computing power all around the world at their universities. The great part about this and BOINC is that everyone can participate; so if you have your own computer, you might want to give it a try. Check out the BOINC Web Site and take a look at the projects you can make your computer work for (they have everything from Climate Prediction to helping researchers to develop cures for human diseases. AND… Let me know if you participate, because we might want to consider building a BOINC Team then, OK?

Well, anyways: As there was no Vice President to expect anymore, we decided to leave the WSIS 2005 earlier than usually this day and check out the little town of Sidi Bou Saïd (after which by the way the hotel we are staying at was named); it is obviously one of the most beautiful places in Tunisia or around Tunis and we were hoping to find some Souvenirs there.

While we got an always changing mix of rain and sun, we kind of sauntered the narrow streets of the town, enjoying the Tunisians either staring at or fleeing from Leo. At the market, I got myself a touristy peace of crap for the price of a peace of silver (”Even With An Official Certificate Of Authenticity….”). The only things you obviously can buy at this market are drums (which I already have), self-made birdcages (which I don’t need) or ‘the Hand Of Fatima’ Key Chains, which I finally got, still doubting if it was worth it.

For the price of a paper handkerchief in Switzerland I then also bought myself a CD of African Music (Note: they did NOT have Tunisian Music in the store); when I asked for a “Tunisia” T-Shirt, the sales agent recommended buying a white t-shirt and make the “Tunisia” writing myself; then, she thanked me for wanting the name of their country on a t-shirt and finally sold me a kind of out of fashion thingy in the end. She also wanted to sell a second shirt to Leo, but this is another story.

We also bought a couple tons of dates, which you can get everywhere. In the store we bought them, the only had two sorts of dates, but I heard that in other places, you could easily get dozens of different kinds. So far, I ate dates every day since we have been here, all together probably more than I have eaten within the last few years. They all smell kind of the same to me, but during dinner, we had to learn that the ones we bought this afternoon were of course, not only second, but like fifth or seventh quality dates. The waiter, laughing at our selection, even brought some better dates for us to try (he didn’t have the best ones “only second choice ones”, he said), but don’t worry: They still tasted just like - dates.

Before leaving for my room, I checked out the little souvenir shop they have in the hotel - or to be more honest: I stood in front of the shop’s door, while Markus from our team, together with the Leo-Scared sales agent, tried to let me know the items of interest for me - I really don’t know how and why Leo can make those Tunisian Women scream and tremble that much; but I hope she feels better now that she knows we are leaving tomorrow.

Before going to bed, I took the time to give Leo a bath. He did not seem to like it very much, but at least he was able to stand nicely in the tub for quite a while. Due to the water being mixed with some chlorine, one cannot say that he really smells way better now, but if one really tries, one is still able to smell some shampoo on his coat.

Tomorrow will be our last day. We will depart for Switzerland on Saturday Morning though, but since they are having a “Goodbye Delegation” kind of event at the Swiss Embassy Residence, we might not have to return to the hotel at all, but just stay there until our early morning flight leaves.

They call it “Wine And Cheese Buffet Event”; dates are not mentioned obviously - kind of sad actually…