You Tube Channel

I have started a Youtube Channel. The first video can be found here. The second one is here. I will doing more of these and probably be blogging less as I move into the 21st Century.

US Conference

This morning I wrote up a proposal and abstract for a conference paper in the US in November. If it is accepted it will be the first time I will be back in the US since 2011. Seven years is a long time and during those years I have spent significant time in Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Looking on the Internet it looks like the US collectively went insane in the last seven years since I have been gone.

The Dying of Blogs

At this point blogs seem to be almost obsolete. All the interesting discussion of ideas seems to have migrated to Youtube in the last five years or so. I read very few other blogs now and they seem to have less and less interesting content. I am pretty sure that my audience has been stuck at less than a half dozen people for the last six or seven years. Of course this blog's main function has been merely as an electronic diary for myself for quite some time now.

New Year's Break

My New Year's break is almost over. Tomorrow I go back to work. Besides going up into the mountains I didn't do anything special. I went to the gym to work out a lot. I ate at B to B a lot. At one of my lunches at B to B I witnessed a gun battle on the street below. But, I still have no idea what it was about. Yesterday, I was taking a cab to the park by the bazaar to eat Nepali food when I saw my friend in the car in front of me and he told me to get in with him. Then his car broke down before we reached the bazaar and we ended up taking the bus to the park. Other than that I didn't do much.

New Article on Germans in Labor Army Available

My article, "Forced Labor in a Socialist State: Ethnic Germans from Kazakhstan and Central Asia in the Labor Army - 1941-1957" is now available on my Academia.edu site. Just click the link on the title of the article.

Happy New Year

Yesterday I went up to the mountains with some Kurdish friends to celebrate the New Year. The green mountains were beautiful. The grilled fish was delicious. The weather was fantastic. Finally, I had a great time.

Gym

Yesterday, I joined a gym in order to intensify and better organize the exercise my cardiologists have demanded. The coach there wrote me out a weekly exercise plan. I am hoping that this will at least delay for a significant period having to have anymore stents inserted in my arteries.

I Now Have Iraqi Residency (good for ten months)

I finally got my residency and work permit sorted out and got my passport back with another Iraqi visa. It is good until the middle of next January.