I have been telling myself to update regularly, and obviously fail somewhat miserably in this endeavour.

Last week, a nice journalist from Sydsvenskan called me. He was writing an article about the inauguration of Lisbon-MEPs (I am one of them) and wanted to know how I was holding up.

I am holding up reasonably good. I have a Task, and am researching for a draft opinion on Internet of Things (COM(2009)278).

The journalist commented i don't update my blog often. Why, he says. I say, I am trying to do reading now and am not entirely sure what to blog about. Mostly I have been processing lots of information and meeting people. When meeting people, I often do not have the opportunity to asocially and casually twitter (nevertheless blog) about it. All the same, I realize I should.

I covered over the last weeks papers on ITS, ICT and environment (didn't cover that all that much yet) and started with FP7+CIP. Any additional information on this would be, I suppose, useful. In most cases I don't even know where to start looking and it seems I'm about 10 years late into any policy debate.

I need a better way of organizing a public calendar. Google calendar works, apparently, suboptimally.

Last week Tuesday I met a nice lobbyist from ACT. He is paid to be nice to me and tell me his points of views. Some of them make sense, and he had several interesting views on radio spectrum allocation. While I can see more clever (sometimes even non-political) solutions to the problems he presents, I would feel inclined to agree with a friend of mine: "What they need is a desire to make good investments for the future, but since they can't be arsed they're lobbying for advantages for themselves with the present infrastructure."

Last week Friday I went to DG Infso and met people from the units of FET, networked media and new infrastructure. It was very enlightening. They are one of the more open Directorate-Generals I hear, seeing as their primary purpose is to do research and encourage research and ICT development. They have regulatory directorates (A and B) as well as a strategy one (C) as well.

FP7 is about to be evaluated, FP8 is in the beginning of being developed. There is a need for a post-i2010 strategy. Research work!

I have also went over more information on blocking and filtering of the internet, amongst other things by investigating verbatim transcripts of the Commissioner hearings. Some of the languages in there are more than confusing. Simon Busuttils language (page 6 Reding hearing) I didn't recognise at all, but it appears to be Maltese. However, the Commissioner replies are more than easily accessible what with being in English.

I am presently in Rotterdam, since it's a Strasbourg week. My Strasbourg debut will be in March. The SWIFT agreement was voted down in the last parliamentary plenary! This is a big victory for privacy friends in Europe and cause for celebration.

Next week is a visit-the-member-state week, and after that they do committees. So it's an exciting life.