travel disasters

My dear friend H has recently started a new section to his mammoth travel blog/ web page on travel disasters.
my little blog here is no where near to being as comprehensive as H's, but i was inspired by his idea to add a few dodgy memories of my own. so reviving my old passion for lists, here we go:

1. Srpsko Sarajevo, 2003
it all happened in broad daylight, just outside the bus station where you get the buses to Serbia. i was talking to C on the phone and was preoccupied by the story she was telling me, so that i didnt see the fist flying into my face. by the time my head was upright again, there was already a knife at my neck. blood was everywhere, but fortunately i later realised it was coming from my nose. in the end it was a simple robbery- they took my phone, my money, and whatever else the could grab. fortunately i was paranoid enough that my passport and bus ticket out of the country were in a secret pouch near my ankle. so i got on the bus back to belgrade, shaking and covered in blood. no one sat near me, although it was pretty crowded. back in Belgrade i had no money to get to Novi Sad, no phone to call my friends. so i walked to the Russian embassy where i knew people who knew people. they gave me some money, and the officer shook his head "it is those damn Muslims" he moaned. I, somewhat surprised, pointed out i had been in SRPSKO Sarajevo. the illustrious diplomat answered: "yes, i know, but you see those Muslims, they dress up like Serbs and beat up people to make our Serbian brothers look bad in front of foreigners." i am not sure which part of this anecdote is the worst.

2/a. Vukovar, June 2002
nothing bad happened to me here, as ever horror had already struck. the buildings were shattered. every street was destroyed. H and I wandered into an empty house, and on the shot out wall across from us, totally riddled with bullet holes, was a half blown up picture of Jason Donovan, the last sign of humanity left.
2/b Abhazia, July 1999
Russia might claim to have fought a war for this in 2008, but it was already functioning as a russian puppet state in the 1990s. I bribed my way across the boarder and wandered what had once been a beautiful resort town...but war had cleansed it of 80% of the original population. by 1999, it was full of the elderly, combined with Russian soldiers and prostitutes.

3. Dorval Airport, US side, December 1999
Flying from Canada to the US, you have to cross the boarder whilst still in the Canadian airport. it was thus fortunate that i was still sort of inside Canada, when the pile of Cuban stamps were found in my passport, and it somehow surfaced i had been giving, um....interviews, on Cuban TV. my right to do so, but the guards disagreed.....after several hours of questioning, i bolted back to the civilised side of the airport...enough said on that one.......

4. Rio de Janeiro, April, 2008
one of the ladies my dad was travelling with dies on the trip. unfortunately she died on a Saturday morning and hours are spent trying to navigate the Brazilian bureaucracy- at the weekend. A doctor had to come to certify she was dead, then a coroner had to show up, then embassy staff and so on, with the hotel staff fluttering about incessantly and complicating things further. Some one had to sit with the body the whole time, as we were constantly afraid one of the officials would try to steal her jewelry or cash (she had a lot of both)
i think my lasting memory of Rio will be trying to maintain a straight face, whilst attempting to speak portuguese and corpse sitting.

5. some autoroute in Western Europe, Easter Break, 1992
I am famous for my week bladder. but the time i was on a school trip, on a bus with no toilets, stands out. i really had to go, and ended up doing so on the side of the road, with my entire class watching and taking photos. this incident has repeated itself in other geographies, and i am sure most people who know me will have some similar story, but happening in the company of cruel teenagers was the worst.

6.Cambridge, June, 1999
on a walk with my parents in nearby Granchester, we are forced surreally to make polite conversation with Jeffrey Archer and Margaret Thatcher. it doesnt get worse than that.


7. Aberdeen, April 2010
Icelandic volcanic ash leaves me stranded in Aberdeen, where it SNOWS. i try desperately to get tickets on the overnight train, bu there are none. i end up eventually taking the scenic route back via edinburgh, but not before i get force fed enough deep fried pizza and fried mars bars to make me feel like death. mainly i was alone and bored...for days.

8. Paris- Cambridge, September 2005
I made this trip with my unhappy cat. the key low moment was trying to clean vomit off her fur in Dover's port, with English louts wandering past shouting "nice pussy." she had been sea sick.

9. Glavna Bolnitsa Novog Sada, July 2004
my appendix explodes and i end up having emergency surgery in provincial Serbia. everyone has heard this story already, but it still ranks up there!

10. The Ice Storm, Montreal, January 1998
ice freezes everything and all of Montreal looses electricity, running water and heat. temperatures fall subzero and we all are forced to sleep with each other in the hallway of our building, wearing all our clothes. we cant go to the toilet, but then there is nothing for us to eat either. eventually the Canadian army shows up and brings us blankets and portions of poutine, Quebec's contribution to the world of culinary horror. the situation lasts for over a week.

11. Algonquin park, July, 1987
I am on an off-base 5 day excursion from summer camp meant to teach us wilderness survival skills when a bear steals all our food supplies. the "guides" meant to be leading us (who were about 17 or so) dont want to go back to the main camp and admit that it had been their foolishness that caused the problem. so we canoe over to a campsite where lots of tourists go to set up camp, and the guides send me to beg for food, because i am the youngest and smallest and they think i will get the most. for the next several days i feed everyone else on bread and peanut butter i get given by strangers. possibly the most humiliating moment of my life.

Gulliver's travels in Madrid

My trip to Madrid was logistics nightmare. For some reason, flights from London to Madrid are always overbooked and outrageously expensive. When I tried to book last week, in order to get to a meeting, the cheapest ticket on British Airways or Iberia was over 1500 pounds- I could have gone anywhere else in Europe for less. Or, the company travel agent said with reservation….i could go on Easyjet, for £400. the choice was mine.
I am not a huge Easyjet fan, but I used to travel it a lot as a student, and I hate wasting money stupidly. Furthermore, service on Iberia is never great, and lately it has been pretty mediocre on BA too, so I accepted the Easyjet ticket.
The moment I arrived at Gatwick I started to regret my decision. There was one queue for all Easyjet flights, and it was immense. It took over an hour to get through it, and it was filled with predictably scary people, mainly headed for the south of Spain. The girl in front of me was loudly munching crisps, whilst the girl behind me pondered whether she could get a real tan on top of her spray tan. I cringed and put on my ipod. Then I got to the front of the queue, with the same hand baggage I use for every overnight business trip- a small carry on bag and my computer briefcase. No airline- Iberia, BA, Lufthansa, Norwegian Air- has ever objected to this….but Easyjet insisted that I had too much luggage and would have to check the computer bag. I complained that I did not feel comfortable checking a computer. So eventually it was decided that I could carry the computer- but I still had to check the empty computer bag, for an extra cost of £10 pounds, which I did.
and the flight was 1.5 hours delayed, and when I arrived in Madrid, well after midnight, the briefcase was missing. So I went to the hotel, and later went to my meetings carrying my computer in my carry on luggage, feeling slightly ridiculous. I got a call in the middle of the day saying my bag had been found, and decided just to pick it up back at the airport on my way home.
So I got back to Barajas, picked up my bag, and was of course then informed that I would still have to pay another £10 pounds to check it empty again on the way back to London. And as the guy was checking me in, he noticed the flight was almost 2 hours delayed. At this point, even the Easyjet staff seemed a bit embarrassed for their horrible service, and decided to make a kind gesture. “we would like to give you a bear” the man told me. Since no one had said anything similar to me since I was about 10, I imagine I must have looked rather puzzled. But sure enough- they handed me a little brown bear, dressed in an Easyjet shirt, telling me his name was Gulliver, and that he would bring me luck on the trip back. At this point, I was just hoping to make it home in one piece, but I thanked the guy and accepted the bear.
It was, it seems, an excellent gift.
I got back to London Wednesday and told my colleagues, who seemed incredulous that an airline would offer a teddy bear as compensation to a grown woman in a suit.
So on Thursday, just to prove I was not crazy, I brought in the bear and put him on my desk. Within an hour, a deal I had been working on for over 6 weeks was accepted. The next day another came through and the bear was becoming an office celebrity.
He is now seated on my desk, and it has been concluded that he will now go everywhere with me. Thank you Easyjet, it seems Gulliver is indeed a lucky bear!

in defense of BP- sort of

Over the past two months, BP has turned into everybody’s favourite whipping boy. They stand accused of negligence, eleven direct deaths, the destruction of an entire ecosystem, and the loss of a way of life for thousands of Americans. People in the fishing and restaurant industries have lost their jobs. Birds and fish are dying by the thousands or showing up on the shores of Louisiana coated in oil.
Is BP guilty of all of this? Yes, absolutely. But it is hypocritical and wrong for people and the Obama administration to single BP out for blame. It is even more ridiculous to paint them as some British neo-colonial force acting in American territory. BP is a massive multi national organisation, with 40% of its shareholders based in the US. It has no real nationality and is about as British today as Shell is Dutch. Furthermore ALL oil companies I know have blood on their hands. BP was simply unlucky it got caught on camera.
Contrary to what you might imagine reading the papers at the moment, oil spills are not uncommon, and this one is not the largest. Thousands of barrels are dropped into the ocean every year by container ships with faulty stabilizers alone. Whole cultures and peoples can be wiped out in the interest of western oil companies in places like the Nigerian Delta without anyone in the United States objecting or even hearing about it. safety standards in rigs offshore in Asia and Africa are abysmal and people die- but the lives of Pilipino or Malaysian offshore roughnecks are cheap and their deaths go unreported. In the name of oil, in reality if not in technical terms, The US has gone to war (Iraq being the prime example) and Western mercenaries have staged and/or attempted coup d’etats aimed at overthrowing third world governments sitting on oil reserves (such as in Equatorial Guinea, whose conspirators included an assortment of South African mercenaries, British aristocrats and even Mark Thatcher). But again, these things tend to happen in places like West Africa where journalists are few and lives are cheap. Shell, Chevron, Conocophillips, BP- they are all guilty at some moment or another of atrocities somewhere and until now, the US government has never objected- remember Sarah Palin in the last election shouting “drill baby drill”? they are only objecting now as the results of that drilling is washing up, literally, in their back yards.
Regardless of the agonized hand-wringing taking place at the moment in the US congress, these sorts of accidents are going to become more frequent. We are slowly running out of oil. What is left out there is going to be further offshore, and greater depths, and in increasingly hostile environments. Such reserves will be more expensive to recover, and these companies with both need to raise prices and cut costs in order to get them. And yes, more people will die for oil. And the die for oil because of our collective western greed, but American greed above all. The US consumes more oil than any other country by an enormous margin. It is predominantly to feed US demand that villages in Nigeria get exterminated, and it was to feed US consumption that the Deepwater Horizon was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. If Americans are truly upset about the oil washing up on their shores, they should start petitioning now for massive tax increases to fund the creation of effective public transport networks that could help reduce their dependence on cars as well as to research alternative energy sources for the future. I don’t, however, see that happening.

on business travel

Many of my friends, especially those who went on in academia, assure me I have a glamorous life. I suppose they get this impression as frequently when they call me I am somewhere abroad, or when they they meet me in the pub and ask me what I did that day, I say I went to Rome or Aberdeen or something similar. One of my flatmates is the same, every time she hears I am off somewhere she gets excited (“oh, rome, how romantic, you must go to the Vatican…”) when I get back and tell her that I didn’t see a single place of cultural interest, she looks at me as though I were some sort of philistine or Neanderthal, always with the implication that SHE would have managed to see such places if SHE had been there. But the truth about it all is that corporate travel is mainly just boring. Most of my time is spent killing time away in airports, most of which look the same (I am sitting now in Dusseldorf, terminal A, with a stunning view of the sun slowly setting over an Iberia 737 that is parked in the gate opposite- really romantic scenery that) when I am alone I read and write, which isn’t that bad, but is certainly far from being romantic or glamorous. When I am with colleagues or my boss, we normally end up in the airport bar, generally talking rubbish or watching the football/rugby/whatever-is-on. What my flatmate fails to grasp no matter how many times I try to explain it is that travelling for work is fundamentally different than travelling for pleasure. My company books me a tight schedule so as not to waste my time and consequently their money. Yes, I have a nice fat expense account, but it is not for pleasure. Don’t get me wrong- I would much rather be travelling than in the office, not for the travel itself, but because I like to meet people in their native setting and have negotiations on their terms. And…..well, anyway, enough for now, it is boarding time.

germany

I have never much liked Germany. It is hard to pin down the reasons as to why. Maybe it is for the same reasons I never liked learning German at school- it is close enough to my own language to be recognizable, but then just when I am nearly tricked into some sense of affinity, I realise it is actually rather different, get annoyed and cant be asked anymore. Or maybe it is just embedded in my DNA, I am not sure. I am certain however that if I spent more time here I would probably be arrested. I manage to break every rule, and I do it without thinking- like crossing the street when there are absolutely no cars coming in either direction, but the light just happens to be red. Some concerned citizens pointed out my error today in best pedantic German fashion. They seemed as puzzled that I would actually be breaking such an obvious rule as I was that they should actually be dressing me down for it. pedantic, concerned citizens annoy me (I mean surely I should be allowed to risk my life crossing the street where I feel like it, and in any case THERE WERE NO CARS) I am reminded here of a story a former professor once told me. Just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she was offered a visiting professor position in Edmonton, which she described convincingly as the Siberia of Canada. So off she went. At the end of the year, she was offered a contract to stay on as a permanent member of staff, with a decent Canadian salary, at a time when academics in Moscow had essentially been reduced to dire poverty and were often dependant on taking bribes from students to get by. Despite the generosity of the offer, she declined and returned to Russia. When I asked why she said “kanada, eto strana kak apteka”- Canada is like a pharmacy: so clean and sterilised that you could eat your dinner safely off the floor of any public toilet, and my poor professor returned to Moscow with the desire to kiss the first stinking, drunk homeless bum she could find. In one of my favourite stories of the Russian experience in Canada, she was leaving the office late one night (still working Russian-style hours clearly) when a police officer approached her. Like a good Soviet citizen, she immediately gave him her passport, no doubt to his great confusion. He then told her it was very late for a woman to be walking alone- could he escort her to her car? She was too scared to object, and was convinced he would rob her as soon as she got to the car. But when they made it to the car, he just opened the door and wished her a pleasant evening and went off on his way. She naturally became convinced he was a spy sent to monitor her activities.
A slightly absurd example, but I understand that professor’s logic, hopefully without the unnecessary paranoia, as it is basically how I feel everytime I am in germany. The various rules, written and unwritten, are so numerous and so rigid that I feel inclined to rebel, or at least to start questioning them. In its obsession with tradition and ritual masquerading as genuine rules, Germany is actually far closer to France than it is to Britain. But it is somehow even scarier, as the Germans are more efficient than the French at following their national written and unwritten codes.
Walking around Dusseldorf, it is clear to see that all the international studies indicating that this is one of the most affluent cities in Germany, with one of the highest living standards in the world, are no doubt correct. The transport is efficient. The streets are spotlessly clean and the offices immaculate. Walking along the Rhine and coming in from the airport, I can see endless blocks of flats of the quality you hardly ever find in England, and when you do, they are reserved for the ultra-rich. In Dusseldorf, it seems such structures are the norm. everyone looks prosperous and healthy. It drives me insane. Give me Moscow any day over this!

on black bread

Unlike me, my father is a proper Scot. He claims bargain hunting is simply engrained in his DNA. Once in Manila we walked by a Diesel shop and my father said “lets go in and see what is on sale” although there was no obvious sign of any sale. Some 30 minutes later, after intense negotiations, we left with several leather belts which had been 40% off, and which my father talked down further until they became 60% off. I am wearing one now. He can haggle anyone vendor down by some margin: even if he doesn’t speak their language, he uses facial expressions to mysteriously push down the price.
At home where he lives he is something of a known quantity. He can tell you the price of anything in any local supermarket, and he knows every offer on at any moment. When he travels with me, we end up in random conversations, and sometimes even going for drinks with people he has met whilst discussing prices. I once left him alone in Punta Arenas, Chile for about 10 minutes, and when I came back he was drinking a coffee with some Chilean pensioners, discuss the price of salmon. My friend Conar noted that discussing prices is the Scottish generic conversation equivalent to the English standard comments on the weather. He might be right, but I maintain my father is an extreme case.
Yet what baffles me is his blind spot when it comes to Russia. Every time he visits me in Britain (which is rare) he complains endlessly about how overpriced everything is. But he consistently refuses to believe me when I complain about overpricing in Russia. His Russia is frozen in time, somewhere back in the Brezhnev era. When I try to persuade him, he claims I find it expensive because I live in a business traveller bubble. Maybe. But I am the same business traveller in Moscow that I am in Rome, Paris or Madrid- and Moscow is way more expensive than any of those. If I persist in my views, he insists that if only HE were there with me, he would ferret out good bargains. The last conversation on the matter ended with the argument ending declaration “well, you just don’t understand because you never faced down Adolf.” Once any conversation moves to the War, I know it is time to change topics.
Now I have decided to take scientific measures to prove my point. In doing so, I have been partly inspired by my childhood friend C. C works for some government agency (I forget which) and she monitors inflation. This involves getting pensioners, much like my father, to go around supermarkets and note down prices. If the pensioners she recruits are anything like my father, they were probably doing this anyway- C just makes sure they get paid for it. Presumably this information then gets compiled into some sort of database for government purposes. My aims however, are strictly personal. So I have started gathering receipts from grocery trips to different cities and taping them into the little black book I always carry on me. I then use it as concrete evidence to demonstrate to my father that he is allowing nostalgia to warp his bargain drive. Yet despite the presence of concrete evidence demonstrating that rice cakes in central London cost 85p, whilst in central Moscow they are £3.30, my father still refuses to accept my argument. “Man does not need rice cakes. If you had lived through the war, you would have looked at the price of black bread.” Probably I should give up, I sense this is a battle I shall never win.

moscow

It has been a long time since I was last here- too long in fact. It has been an even longer time, seven years to be precise, since I left Russia to study in Hungary. But the moment I arrive it feels like I still live here. Some things simply never change. I lock in to Moscow mode. I have been told I am a different person when I am here- I am not, I just use different parts of myself to function. But being back makes me realise acutely both how much I have missed Moscow, and why I will probably never live here again. As one (Russian) girl in my office put it- everything in Russia is great- except sometimes it makes you want to cry. I think of this as I go to my first meeting. In addition to my business card, reception takes and photocopies my passport and migration card- all of which are studied with more attention than I suspect my actual company materials will be. I then have to fill in several forms, all of which need to be stamped. I am then given an entry pass, and an armed guard escorts me through the building to the section I need to be in. fortunately I anticipated this and arrived at the office complex 15 minutes early to allow time for the procedure. This is quite efficient in many ways- one of the companies I am meeting tomorrow needed me to scan and fax over all my passport details 48 hours in advance, and I am sure there will still be piles of forms to fill out tomorrow when I arrive. At least I am used to this. I could have taken a consultant from my company with me, but chose not too on the grounds none of them speaks Russian. This is true, but another part of the reason was simply that I cannot imagine explaining this sort of thing to one of my British colleagues. I cant imagine taking them around on the metro and trying to explain its wonderfully efficient system, which is super user-friendly and well-signed posted….in Russian. And I certainly cannot imagine trying to explain the situation when I arrived in the airport and ran back in forth between several queues in an attempt to get through passport control within an hour or so, hindered by the people in front who would invite the 20 friends who materialized out of no where right as they approached the front of the queue and suddenly gained the right to go first.
In the evening I go for an incredibly delicious Korean feast with old friends. We drive through the city with its bright illuminated streets and wide avenues. We reminisce about the past, laugh, drink beer and eat kimchi and I am reminded what a special city Moscow is, particularities and all.

Aberdeen

Amazing how dependant our world is on air travel, so much so that 6 days without it can create unprecedented chaos, and touch so many people. One friend was meant to be the best man in a wedding ceremony, which he obviously missed. A colleague was stranded in Rome and had to take a several day trip, patching together cars and trains to get back to London. Another colleague got stranded in Dubai, whilst changing planes on the way from Tokyo to London. I ended up commuting by train between London, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Aberdeen is the oil capital of the country. My father was raised in a satellite town 20 kilometres or so out in the countryside to the West of city, and in those days it was a sleepy backwater place, poor by even Scottish standards. Most of the lads my father grew up with planned to work on the land after school. Secondary school was voluntary back then, and my father was the only boy from his year who chose to go. The others didn’t really see the point. No one imagined that oil reserves would be found offshore, but they were in the 1970s, transforming Aberdeen forever.
That said, it is still a fairly bleak place, albeit an expensive one. As I arrived in the evening it was snowing, although it is late April and Spring in London. But then Scotland is known for condensing all four seasons into a day, rather than stretching them over the course of the year as the rest of the planet does. Sure enough, it was sunny for a few hours the next afternoon, although still blisteringly cold. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the entire core of the city was built with granite, giving it a gloomy grey colour to match the sky. But most of my meetings take place on industrial estates outside the city centre. From the outside, these estates look pretty grim, but that hides the activity that takes place on them, and the incredible sums of money being pumped about. Equally surprising is there multi-national character. Over the course of any given day, I find myself talking to Texans, Norwegians and Mexicans. But, unlike in most European cities, the cab drivers are all locally born, and astonished when they discover my local origins. One fellow driving me out to a meeting in Dyce was only two years younger than my father, but had gone to school a couple of towns over. He marvelled at my exotic accent, especially when I told him that my (adoptive) grandfather had been the headmaster of the school in Oldmeldrum. “You sound like a real Australian!” the taxi driver marvelled, and I didn’t bother complicating the story by correcting him. But it turned out that Australia was more on his mind than in my accent- he and his wife had thought of moving out there in the late 50s, during the Australian government’s “bring out a Briton” programme. Passage was apparently only 10 pounds a head in those days, and nearly all who went got land. The taxi drivers eyes got misty, looking out in the distance to the future that never materialized: a ailing father in law, the birth of children, a minor job promotion….and in the end they just never made it out there. “Just think, if I had gone, my grandkids would all sound like you” the driver said with a forced laugh, whilst I thought that if my father had stayed, I would no doubt be speaking proper Doric myself, instead of my bastard hybid tongue. The driver and I sat in silence, I guess each imagining how things could have been, had different decisions been taken half a century ago.

image making

so off i trot to the gym. I am asked if i would prefer a male or a female. i choose a male on the assumption that any female in such a job must surely be a bitch, whereas any male doing such a thing must be gay. gay men are easier to get on with an normally have better taste, so i went for the male option. the night before the appointment, harry is in town. he bursts out laughing and describes in detail the person he thinks i will be meeting: totally gay, probably latin american or arab. he proceeded to describe exactly what would happen and how. I doubt harry has ever gone through such a process, but he clearly knows what he is talking about. I showed up at my new gym last night, just in time to see Joao, my new personal trainer, prancing towards me. thats right, prancing. i have to admit, joao is lots of fun and he makes me laugh, which is just as well as the initial tests indicate i am way more out of shape than i thought. i had figured that biking around everywhere would at least keep me fit, but evidently not. although my BMI is excellent, i did poorly on most of the tests. Furthermore, after a 45 minute work out, i confess that i woke up today barely able to move. and here i have to grudgingly admit Joao the uber gay brazilian knew his stuff. he analyzed my body and proceeded to select exercises that hit every one of my (numerous) weaknesses. he came up with activities i had never heard of, and managed to exercise muscles i didnt even know i had- although i certainly feel them all today. and he did all this with a huge smiling and flying jazz hands. He also recommended i train in boxing, correctly concluding it was well matched to my personality. so we spent a good while in the boxing arena, as he taught me some basic moves. fortunately here i was not quite so lost. like most Scots, i know how to fight. the more he teased me dancing around the ring, the angrier i got and the harder i punched. it felt good.

again, london

when i land at heathrow, i know what i have to do.
i am totally broke. i need money. i need a better paid job.
i know a guy in the city with connections. i make a phone call. within a week of arriving i have interviews. then second rounds. IQ testing, which is helpful cause i know how to pass tests. 2.5 weeks after landing i have an offer. high pay. high stress. and i accept because i have no choice. bills are mounting and they need to get paid.
so the party is over. i have a phd but there are no academic jobs out there.
back to the City i go, it is time to make money.

on how i became a rice farmer, temporarily

I eat a lot of rice. I have always enjoyed it, but after I fell ill again in 2006, the NHS team assigned to me in Cambridge designed a special diet aimed at controlling my health mainly through diet, and at the base of that diet was rice. The diet has been a successful, and I have been healthier since then since at any other point in my life, increasing my love for both the NHS and rice.
And so I find myself in Indonesia, surrounded by endless green rice fields, and inevitably I grow curious. A locally based American anthropologist explains it is the world’s most labour intensive crop, requiring months of work. So I decide to give rice farming a try, to see if I can sustain the amount of physical labour the locals seem to be putting in. the answer, in short, is I am a weakling. I try various aspects of it. The first time I climb into the watery field to start planting rice is a shock. I had seen the water-filled fields from the road, obviously, but I had imagined such rice fields as some sort of mini-pool structures. Of course I realized that there was certainly some earth/dirt/mud at the bottom of those fields, but that didn’t not prepare me for what happened when I climbed in a rice field for the first time: I sunk almost up to my knees in thick mud, loosing my balance and nearly falling over. More surprising still, the mud was extremely hot, almost like some thermal therapy treatment. Unable to understand the instructions being given to me, the locals and I resort to sign language. So I copy them by taking 3-4 of the sprouts at a time and sticking them in the goo below at what appears the correct space, horizontally and vertically. After completing one section comes the task of stepping backwards in that goo, which proves harder than it had looked when I had been observing from the grass footpath above, but I manage without falling over in the mud, which is my constant fear. it is backbreaking work, literally, as you must remain bent over the entire time. The novelty of the experience quickly wears out and my back starts to ache and burn in the 35 degrees heat. Then, predictably around 4pm, the rain starts. It feels great for about one minute, then the drops start splashing on the mud-goo, which bounce and coat my face and shirt with mud. Afterwards, I wash up as much as possible in a stream, but I suspect the mud under my toenails might prove to be permanent. Back at my hotel, the staff are horrified. “you were in a rice field? With INDONESIANS?” shrieked my attendant in horror, adding that he would NEVER resort to such activities (despite being both Indonesian and the grandson of rice farmers, by his own admission). The next day I am allowed to plow another field with the cows. Once I get used to the creatures, I find this really fun, although even messier than planting the seedlings. After less than 5 minutes and one turn of the patch, I am covered to the waist in mud, but I cant stop giggling. Probably even the cows think I am insane, which could well be the case.
Each plot can sustain 2 crops of rice a year. In some areas, a third, different, crop may be planted on the same turf for another part of the year to replace the lost nutrients. Rice is a labour intensive crop that relies on back breaking human labour. Incredibly, a bag of rice in the supermarket in Indonesia costs more than it does at Tesco’s in London, and that somehow seems horribly wrong.

the year of the tiger

I am not exactly sure how I came to be spending the night after Chinese new years on the 25th floor of a Chinese hotel, by myself. There is of course a technical explanation- problems with airline tickets that have led me to reevaluate the otherwise saint-like image I have long held of Cathay Pacific. But it seems they are not saints, of course, as no one and certainly no modern airline deserves such a position. So, last minute, I must spend one night somewhere in Southern China. And it is the night after Chinese new years, so predictably Hong Kong is practically entirely booked up. The hotel stand at the airport has only a handful of rooms available and the cheapest would cost me close to 1000 US dollars, even for a crap room in terminal 1’s soulless standard airport hotel. Macau seems even worse, as apparently everyone in the South with money to burn have already made their way to that odd enclave’s casinos. But there is no such rush to the mainland, and since I do have time to kill, I head there. Fortunately Hong Kong’s border with the mainland is less than 30 minutes away, and British passport holders don’t need advance visas, astonishingly, you can just show up. I take the metro to the last station and walk the rest of the way to the border. It seems surprisingly cool here in China, and a refreshing change from the tropical heat of the other places I have been in of late. I enjoy my stroll to the checkpoint, where there is virtually no queue and the bored and hungover looking guard waves me through after barely looking at my passport. I had been planning to then hop a cab to the hotel booked for me, but there is no point- I can see it from the border. Shenzhen has been converted into one huge shopping enclave, and not surprisingly, my 4 star hotel is located on top (or adjacent to? I never do figure it out) a major outlet shopping centre. As it was 10 pm by the time I arrived there, I was not able to check out the plethora of shops below me, but should I ever feel the need to visit a mango or polo Ralph Lauren outlet, I at least now know where they are to be found. My room turns out to be on the 25th floor, with a spectacular view of the urban development that surrounds me. In every direction all I can see are massive buildings that would impress the most ambitious of Soviet housing planners. Directly across from me is a 50-something story structure that extends for what must be a kilometer in length, comprising 5 subsections, all filled with peoples flats. In the closest dwellings, I can just make out familys going about their business, cleaning tables and moving children to bedrooms. I am thirsty and wander out of the hotel in search of the ever-ubiquitous asian 7-11, which turns out to be less than 3 minutes away from the hotel, over a high tech skybridge, which provides a stunning view of a well lit fly over. The sky bridge has a number of other people on it, some of whom stare at me, as do the girls at 7-11. They giggle at me and keep repeating “thank you very much” in stilted in English. I appear to be the only white person in town, or at least the only one buying noodles that night at a random 7-11 overlooking an autoroute. The whole population appears in post-new years recovery mode. I am sure if I had arrived a day earlier, all of Shenzhen whould have seemed totally different, and packed with revelers. But the people I pass all seems tired and dazed. The only people in the hotel bar are a squad of intoxicated young Chinese businessmen. I contemplate having a drink, but then they start singing a karaoke rendition of “Hotel California” and I decide to head instead to my super high-tech room instead, where I entertain myself pressing the various buttons around the bedside table. My father would be horrified by such a hotel, and in this way I represent a serious departure with the rest of my family, all of whom favour personalised, small-scale B&B style accommodation, the kind where you chat with the owner over a civilised breakfast. Even as a child, I hated such places. This sky scraper in a random city in the People’s Republic is my ideal- clean, modern, with high speed internet and a pool, where I can be completely anonymous. No one greets me by name. no one pays any attention, other than perhaps staring at my odd skin tone. In such an empty space, I feel safe. There is no need to put on a show. So, undisturbed, I crawl in bed with a Chinese beer and watch a ridiculous Korean soap opera on the 42 inch pazma TV. So far Western 2010 has proved a rotten year. Lets hope the coming of the Tiger will bring me better luck.

racial matters, part II

The Singapore propaganda machine (for lack of a better term) is at pains to insist there is no racism in the country. Part of the reason that the island state broke away from Malaysia in the 1960s is supposedly because they objected to the overtly racist laws that Malaysia was introducing at the time, which ultimately favoured Muslim Malays over other groups. Housing in Singapore is carefully planned to ensure that buildings are as racially diverse as possible, and the same goes for schools. The country has four official languages (English, Tamil, Chinese and Malaysian) and celebrates New Years four times as well. Our driver is at pains to reiterate this official line, insisting again and again that the people are colour blind and refuse to even discuss religion, as it is an exclusively private matter. Sure enough, I pass a school group while visiting a temple, and it does appear totally mixed, with Chinese guys chatting with Indian ones, and no one seeming to care. One the streets it is true that everyone is polite and speaks English, although never once do I see, for example, a mixed Indian-Chinese couple (although there are plenty of white men with Asian women!)
I arrive back at the docks. It is late and I had been wandering about. Singapore has tight security I need to go through every time I want to get on or off my ship, even though I have already been cleared and my passport is already stamped. I go to the control area where I will have to shop my passport once again, before I am readmitted to the shipping area. The queue is massive, there seems to be some problem with the passport control machines and there are at least 300 people waiting to reboard their various vessels (several large boats are docked in the same area). Most of the people people in the queue are Chinese, many appear to be actually from the People’s Republic, as opposed to Singapore. There are several Indian families as well. I go to the back of the queue, anticipating an hour-long wait at least. But then a whistle blows and a guard rushes over, signaling to me and two Australian women nearby. We all simultaneously indict we are happy to wait (a lie, obviously, but the Right Thing to Do) but the choice is not ours. “Europeans straight ahead” the guard barks. A special gate is open, and we are ushered through without even the normal formalities. As we move past the queue, I see a boy with an Indian face and holding a British passport ask his mother why we don’t have to wait, she shrugs and examines her feet. As we move through the gate, we pass the queue for handicapped people, with about 7 PRC pensioners in wheelchairs. They stare at us, as we are moved in front of them. I cringe internally. I imagine the Australian women do too. As we enter the secured area, and the door closes behind us, separating us from the now exclusively Asian queue, I jokingly ask the Aussies exactly when they became “Europeans.” One of the women laughs and says they apparently have it both ways. So much for racial equality.

gastarbeiters

Most countries, especially developed ones, rely to some degree on exploiting the labour of the less fortunate. These people are normally foreigners, and almost always from poorer countries. Britain has/had the Poles, Russian the Central Asians and Moldovans, and the US the Mexicans. But everywhere has the Filipinos. It is estimated that 10 million out of a population of 90 million work abroad. There are estimated to be 300,000 of them in Hong Kong alone. They are cleaners and nannies for the better off in Singapore, Dubai and across Europe and the Middle East. And, along with Indonesians, they are the staff of practically every ship I have ever been on. When our boat docked in Manila, there was nearly a riot. Hundreds of people were waiting for us, or rather, for their relatives on our ship. Docking in Manila is a big deal for the crew, and the only time in nine months they get to see their families. As we are waiting for customs clearance, the crew are all visibly nervous. When they disembark, all seem to be carrying some large technology item: plazma TVs seem the most popular, but one guy was wheeling a fridge about. D, one of the bar staff aboard has been living on the boat for 8 years, and was on another boat before that. He claims the crew are all recruited by an agency in Manila, and shipped out to sea that way. They work 10 hours a day for 7 days a week for 9 months of the year. In most cities they dock in, they are not even allowed off the boat, other than for an hour or so before dinner. The other 3 months of the year are spent at home in the Philippines with their families, who are supported by their salaries. D claims in the three months he spends back in Manila, he does absolutely nothing (“I am as active as a tree there”), and when the break period is over, he is flown back to whatever port the ship is in. and he fully intends to continue working like this until he retires, in several decades time. His logic is clear: if he stayed at home, he would be able to watch his children grow up, but not be able to do anything to help them. By working abroad, he can send them to better schools and one day university. “As long as they are having a better life, I don’t need to see them” goes his argument. The logic is commendable and I am sure whatever wages these guys are paid must make the sacrifices worth it. Yet it is sad that the ship follows a sort of GDP pecking order. None of the Filipino crew hold management positions. The middle level crew members are from random developing countries: Chile, Turkey, India. They get the whole day free in port, and work a much more flexible schedule for higher pay. The “European” staff (British, Serbian, South African and tons of Poles) do better still, appearing to be largely on holiday most of the time. All considered, it is amazing that the Filipinos never seem resentful. I would be.

brunei

I have been to many strange places in my life, but this must certainly be close to top of my weirdo list. The state of Brunei Darussalam, or the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace is one of the richest countries in the world, and has an exceptionally high standard of living. This is all due to its leader, known as His Majesty. While some leaders sitting on huge oil and gas fields would use the resources exclusively to fill their own pockets, His Majesty has taken a more enlightened path. All 300,000 citizens enjoy free healthcare and free educations. Should they wish to go abroad to Britain for university, that is paid for as well. Over 50% of the citizens work directly for the government as civil servants, many of the rest are employed by the country’s oil and gas sector, which represents 95% of the GDP. They are all entitled to heavily subsidized housing, and much of that housing is spectacular, my dad notes as we pass through endless neighbourhoods of massive houses with swimming pools and satellite TV. Everyone assures us that basically any citizen who works is guaranteed a god, stable life filled with material comforts. Of course, His Majesty leads the way, with 4 massive palaces, the largest of which has nearly 2,000 rooms and is run for him by the Hyatt. His car collection supposedly contains nearly 5,000 cars. My father and I are invited to have tea at the house of a lady who (proudly?) identifies herself as one of the “less fortunate” (they don’t use the word “poor” here). She is a cook in a local school. Her house is a wood house built on stilts over the water. Her living room is bigger than the flat I share with other people in London, the snacks she serves are more nutritious than what I can typically afford.
Yet her house is also an indication of the conditions attached to this wealth. An entire wall in her living room is dedicated to His Majesty. Later, I stumble into a Bruneian wedding. There are 1,200 guests, all exquisitely. There is a massive buffet of delicious food that seems to span Indian and Chinese simultaneously, and where for the first time in my life I am treated to curried pineapple, a peculiar taste I conclude I enjoy- in small doses. And again, next to the picture of the bride and groom is a portrait of His Majesty. There is also one in every restaurant we visit, and every public building. On TV, journalists must address him by his full name, all 32 words of it, and they can face severe punishment if they mess up even one word. The national museum is a tribute to him and his family. It mainly contains gifts given to him by important people, such as honorary general’s and admiral’s uniforms given to him by Queen Elizabeth II while he was at Sandhurst. We also get to see the gold throne-mobile he gets carried around in by human labour. It is also a state that relies on the near slave labour of hardworking Philippinos and other South Asians. Of course I have seen many weird states with ruler-cults, but this one defies my stereotype, precisely because it is so damn wealthy and the people seem genuinely satisfied with their lot. They look at their neighbours in Malaysia and Indonesia, and thank their despotic ruler for bringing them 18th century style enlightened despotism. Weird place Brunei.

sandakan death marches

Sailing into Sandakan is a fairly peaceful journey. The sea is relatively calm and, aside from the occasional monsoon-like storm, the weather is often wonderful. The city itself is welcoming and provincially pleasant, so it is hard to imagine it was the sight of one of World War II’s many grotesque atrocities. 3,600 Indonesian civilian slave labourers and 2,400 allied POWs were forcibly marched from Sandakan to Ranau by the Japanese soldiers who held them captive. Six survived. Looking at the bush around me I cant begin to imagine what they went through. The forest is so dense I can only see the layer of trees in from of me, behind them is darkness, no light, nothing except layers of undifferentiated bush. Twice I see poisonous snakes on branches, in addition to several different kinds of monkeys. The ground is unsteady, the forest floor is made up of fallen, rotting branches, trunks, and other various plants I cannot begin to identify. It is hard to move without tripping or falling into the green darkness. There is an overpowering smell of rot everywhere. The jungle canopy is so thick it is hard to see ahead, and at times impossible to see what you are stepping on. Half the time when I lose my footing I reach out and gab a tree truck for support, only then to realize that it is covered in bugs who are now on my arms. It is 35 degrees and the humidity is very high. I am a healthy, fit, young person who was raised in this weather, and I am wearing ideal clothing and armed with extra water and other luxuries like knives and bug spray. The prisoners marched through here had already spent over a year in captivity and forced labour. Some of the allied soldiers had been in captivity already 3 years, since the fall of Singapore. Many were already starving. But in January 1945 the allies were approaching quickly and the Japanese needed to move fast, so they strapped the supplies for their battalions onto the 470 strongest prisoners and tried to march them to the west coast. Those who collapsed on route were shot or left to die where they lay. Those who survived and made it to Kota Kinabalu were then ordered on to Ranau. 183 made it to Renau. But by July 1945, only 38 were left alive….and they were all shot. The 6 survivors were all Australians who had escaped along the way and had been sheltered and hidden by locals. But only three were able to cope with the aftermath of what had happened to them, the other three died shortly after the end of the war. Their shocking testimony of the marches, the worst atrocity suffered by Australian servicemen during the war, at the war crimes tribunal in Tokyo, makes for appalling reading, and this isn’t ancient history, it happened in my father’s lifetime. Looking around, I am overwhelmed by what humans can do to other humans. We are all indeed animals

manila

Walking around in Manila can be a bit embarrassing, at least once my name becomes known. My name makes me famous in this country, and in this country alone, as some illustrious ancestor of mine is regarded as the country’s national hero. Even though this illustrious personage (who was probably not a relation) died long before I was born, and even though as a historian I am personally rather embarrassed by his behaviour, people still get excited every time my name comes up. It is most peculiar- I feel like a celebrity for the first time in my life. Manila in general is full of surprises. It is a diverse city with a surprisingly developed elite section that resembles Hong Kong’s. We wander by a shopping mall full of Louis Vuitton and Chanel, which surrounds a beautiful inner garden of excellent (and expensive) restaurants. Nearby are elite residential neighbourhoods where the houses look like miniature guarded fortresses. A few streets away, however, half naked kids are playing in the gutter…

my father must have a medical condition. There can be no other way to explain his utterly phenomenal snoring. The last time I went on a cruise with him, the boat pharmacy sold super high tech ear plugs, with several settings, that automatically adjusted to your ear size. However, over the course of the past year, those earplugs and I went our separate ways, and I assumed they would be easy to replace once I got aboard another cruise ship. Alas, this was not to be. I am now kicking myself for not at least getting some of the Boots’ generic cheap yellow earplugs in Heathrow before I left. They at least are wearable and do the job. But instead I waited until I got to Asia before buying this essential travel item…and by then it was too late. I have now invested in several pairs, but none of them are too my satisfaction. Chinese people must simply have different shaped ear canals, as improbable as I admit that seems. All the pairs appear to be too big, and they get very uncomfortable as the hours pass. So I fall asleep quite easily with them in, but around 3am every morning, I wake up either because my ears are so sore the pain wakes me up, or because they have ejected the plugs on their own, and the sounds coming from the other side of the cabin have become overpowering. There appears to be no solution to this dilemma. I tried to sleep with my ipod on, listening to something soothingly generic like café del mar, which works on airplanes and in the evening, but at 3am fails to put me back to sleep. So I get up and walk around the boat. This boat is much smaller than the other cruises, as well as being older and not as well maintained. Apparently it was used for some soap opera in the early 70s, and they seem determined to preserve its, um, retro charm. My father and I concluded that it looks has all the esthetic appeal of a Soviet intourist hotel in the late 80s, although the food is marginally better as they at least serve curry. In the day time, this peculiar interior design seems acceptable as the passengers are pretty much all from the same era as the ship. There is a bridge club, where every afternoon people gather around for extremely intense and competitive matches. The first day at sea, I stopped to stare, not understanding what was going on. My father then described the peculiar game as being “for hip 20 somethings.” He paused and looked around “or at least so I thought in graduate school” he added and paused “but it looks like the same people are still playing it…” I then explained that I neither play bridge nor know anyone my age acquainted with its seemingly archaic rules. Such people and notions of entertainment fit the setting in daylight hours, but at 3am when I get tired of trying to sleep, the boat seems more surreal. I wander around the ship alone, and the empty rooms seem spooky with their 70s loveboat interior design. We are now in the south china sea, so the air on deck is warmer and more humid than the horrid air-conditioning in the room, but with the breeze of the sea, I still wander around in my hoodie. Sometimes I fall asleep on the lounge chairs on deck. Other times I stare into the blackness beyond the railing. Sometimes I see the lights of a passing ship, but rarely close enough to figure out if they are freight or passenger vessels. But most of the time, the only thing I can see is the shiny oil-like blackness of the water below. Around 6am, the ships crew start appearing and going about their activities, washing the deck and painting the railings for the millionth time. They always look at me strangely, probably wondering why the only passenger under 65 prefers to sleep on a lounge chair than in a supposedly luxury cabin. But then they have not heard my father snore.

but where is hong kong?

Of course everyone has seen images of Hong Kong, and plenty of my friends have worked here. It is a major international city with a sizable expat presence. So much appears familiar: big sky scrapers and ultra modern interiors, massive shopping malls packed with Asian ladies struggling to carry their Chanel and Dior bags. Drunk English expats vomiting. The usual. But what I didn’t expect about Hong Kong is that, actually, you cant see it! The city is one of the world’s most polluted, and covered by an incredibly thick layer of smog. I stay in Kowloon, in a hotel overlooking the Victoria Harbour, and thus just opposite Hong Kong Island. But I had to look on a map to establish that, as my first few days all I saw looking out into the harbour was white haze, and the island just a 10 minute boat ride across was invisible. Sometimes in the evening I could vaguely see the lights from the sky scrapers on the other side, but only on one day were their outlines visible in the daytime. From the top of Victoria Peak, which supposedly has the best views of the city, all I could see where the very closest blocks of flats. Beyond that was the same whiteness that apparently descends over the city most of the year. Apparently now, winter, is the worst period, but only briefly in monsoon season does the blanket ever really lift. Much of the problem seems to be mainland China’s unreliable electricity grid combined with its ever increasingly industrial output, especially around the pearl river delta, whose factories waft population Hong Kong’s way. Yet city mismanagement and denial also appear to play a role, which seems hard to understand. Hong Kong’s airport is one of the greatest (and most costly) engineering achievements of all time, built entirely on reclaimed land, but you would think that if the city planners were willing to spend such funds on an airport, they would do something to make sure pilots could actually see where they were landing!

food

I have the impression that Chinese people will eat just about anything. But they seem to eat what they do for a reason, and generally one other than taste. “Christina” (God knows what her real name is) is from the mainland and has an explanation for everything. She does not think it is odd I am a vegetarian, as “every one knows very good for skin, that’s why, look so youuuung.” But despite acknowledging the virtues of my peculiar condition, she is into her meat and fish, and she has a particular fondness for fish tails, which don’t look very filling to me, but she claims they have a delicate texture. Every meal features something interesting. Every single restaurant we go to features a round table with a big spinning glass disk in the middle. The dishes all get put there, and then they rotate past all meal long. So I would look up from my vegetarian dim sum to find myself faced with pig knuckles, or the head of a duck, whose eye sockets seemed to stare at me accusingly. But Christina as an explanation for each item, and what it supposedly does to your body. This habit is evidently not a personal one. Wandering on my own, I explore the streets of Sheung Wan, where they sell exciting things like Deer fetuses and dogs penises, all of which serve some purpose. Most of the people working in the shops don’t speak English and I am left to guess at what it is I am examining. Some are proud of their English and run up to me to explain that the object at hand is indeed deer antlers (which are surprisingly furry) or that the hair balls from a horse’s stomach can be used against poisonings. Who knew? Shark fins, used in the pricey delicacy Shark fin soup, are on offer everywhere, as are “bird’s nests” and various (still alive) sea creatures. But as strange as some of these dishes might appear, Chinese cooks certainly know what they are doing. Every meal is a treat, and the cooking is exquisite.

london

two weeks in London pass by in a daze. I cannot recall most conversations or events. I remember being held for 3 hours at heathrow upon arrival from South Africa. I remember needing to go to the passport office for new travel documents. I remember my friends plying me with alcohol to distract me. I remember stumbling to a job interview after some whiskys, and mysteriously sailing through to the second round as the interviewer turned out to be (just my luck) from cape town and spent the duration of the interview reminiscing whilst I nodded and tried to appear sober. I remember doing laundry just in time to pack again and head back to heathrow. But mainly I remember lying under the duvet wondering how the hell I screwed things up so badly.

on cape town

cape town must surely be one of the most magical cities on earth, with its spectacular scenery and vibrant mix of peoples. and surrounding it is an amazing countryside with wine, lions and cheetahs...
and somewhere in cape town, on a hill overlooking Camps Bay, is buried my heart. for although my body is now in europe, it is not whole. and it never will be again.

homes: London and Paris: commutes and generic hotels

Marrakech

Budapest

zagreb, as the northern summer approaches

dublin

soulless in minneapolis

kuala lumpur

Sydney

Melbourne, and the hottest day in its history

Tasmania

Milford Sound, the world's edge

Dunedin, or Scotland abroad

Christchurch, or England abroad

wellington

Picton

napier

rotorua

2009 retrospektive- the year begins with auckland

2009

well it is the 5th time i am writing an "end of the year" summary for this blog.
i stopped first and reread my december 2005 entry. I had just moved from paris to london to start a phd.
now, here is 2009, i can finally call myself a doctor. that is certainly the biggest accomplishment of the year: over a decade of agonizing work has come to an end, and i am free to move on with the rest of my life. yet 2010 begins with no sense of direction at all- i suspect this could be the year when everything changes. as i have no clear "task" before me, as i have for the past 10 years or so, i will have to seek the new direction my life will take. 2009 was also the year i got an amazing job with more money than i ever thought i would earn.....and hated it. so i am entering 2010 seeking a new path, and excited as to what the new year might bring.
in the next three weeks i will be taking extended leave from my interim job, putting my stuff in storage, giving up my flat, and facing the unknown. i am scared but looking forward to it.

freedom

I finished my Phd. I can now call myself a doctor.
At one point during my Viva, I was sure I was sunk, that I wasn’t going to pass, that I was going to have to accept that I had spent 13 years of my life chasing an unrealizable dream. One of the examiners attacked with a battery of questions that all seemed aimed at exposing some sort of fraud. I fired back with answers that sounded more confident than I felt. After a two hour interrogation, they dismissed me to go downstairs to my supervisor’s office. She was waiting for me with a shot of rum, which was quickly followed by another. After what seemed like forever, the head of the commission came and called us both up to the examination room. Somehow, I had passed. They praised me as a “confident public speaker.” After giving the verdict, they then tried to make witty, intellectual conversation for about half an hour. I was dazed and could not participate at all. I sat and stared blankly at them. My supervisor answered for me, before hauling me off to her office for more rum…I then headed for the pub.
But I was dazed the whole time. I had trouble making coherent conversation, but because of the alcohol, but because I was in shock. And I still am. But as soon as I snap out of it, I will need to start planning …the rest of my life?

last flashback

You know the type. The guy in an expensive suit with gold cufflinks who pushes you out of the way on the central line or at a taxi rank.
The suited travellers with expensive luggage who get to queue separately and board first, whilst they spend their empty moments in luxury airport lounges.
Although my family travelled a lot, we never travelled first class. My parents’ academic salaries never permitted that sort of thing. instead they always watched in amazement as such people wizzed by with an air of (self) importance, just as my father stood by in astonishment in Sydney airport a few months back as I was ushered through all formalities in seconds, having flashed a company card.
The thing I have tried to explain to them is that no one actually PAYS for that kind of service. It is almost always achieved through contra-deals, corporate packages or some other scheme.
So I find myself on the eurostar with my colleague, who fits the above description perfectly. Before going through security at the station, he slips off to the toilet with a cheeky grin and returns energised, having snorted the last of his supplies. Not that he would really have had too much hassle getting a wad of coke past security, but I just doubt by the end of the work day that he had that much on him. We catch the last train of the evening. We sit down and my colleague starts to discuss loudly his sex life, which most recently consisted of the boss’s secretary. An older uptight German businessman who is seated in front turns around and asks Z, my substance enthused companion, to be more quiet. Z tells him he can suck his English cock. I suggest we perhaps go visit the train’s restaurant, hoping to give the German long enough to fall asleep. Alas, my idea proved flawed, as within minutes we are moving back to our seat, armed with a huge bottle of champagne, crisps and glasses. Z is now going back into the history of his sex life, in an effort to explain why he is as he is. Periodically the topic of conversation wanders to the only thing we have in common: our office. We exchange company gossip and calculate the deals we are hoping to bring in this month. (“100 fucking grand, mate, ‘d be fucking wicked, can you imagine? Oh man, I’d be minted, I’d go back to Thailand for the weekend and do so much shit”…dreams Z).
From the corner of my eye I can see the older German is disgusted, not only by us, but by the other English guys behaving in exactly the same way at the other end of the first class carriage. Of course I am the only woman in sight, as the German is only one above 45. The last first class carriage of the night is filled by young English assholes who start chanting “EN-GA-LAND, EN-GA-LAND” as we pull into St. Pancras.
A year ago there was talk that this world was ending. Corporate lunches, first class travel, expense accounts- it was all supposed to be part of a decedent past that had landed us all in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. We are still in that crisis, but scale of horror for now seems to have bottomed out, and even if we are not recovered, we are at least not getting any worse. So the cityboys have got their corporate credit cards back out, and have decided for now at least it is back to party time.

leaving

So I left my job. Oddly, after numerous threats to fire me, they then pitched a fit when I took the initiative of walking out on them, having arranged to take back my old job at a bookshop. At the last minute I had serious misgivings- this move meant an enormous pay cut. It meant ditching a (on the surface) successful corporate career for an ultimately unprofessional job with no career prospects. But three weeks on, I can observe the true impact of my move- I am relieved. I don’t start dreading Monday morning on Saturday evenings. I don’t take the phone off the hook for fear my boss might call. I don’t spend my lunch breaks hiding from my colleagues simply because I cant bear the thought of attempting to maintain a conversation with them. Rather, my colleagues and I engage in heated debates on obscure issues when we have quite moments on the floor. We throw trivia back and forth at each other. We have a boss we pretty much all get on with. Although I would prefer lounging infinitely about the living room, I generally enjoy going to work. I certainly never dread it.
I am sure I will change my mind in some months when the poverty sinks in, but for the moment I think I did the right thing.

on trying to be normal

It has now been over a month since I submitted my Phd, during which time I have experimented with “normal life.” I have gone to the pub with mates to watch football. I read an incredibly trashy book- High on Arrival by MacKenzie Phillips, yes, the one in which she confesses to having had sex with her own father. I have even experimented with cooking different types of cuisine, using my hungry flatmate as my chief guinea pig. He hasn’t died yet, so I guess I cant be THAT bad. I have rearranged the items in my flat.
I have also contemplated on how much I hate my job and will never succeed in becoming a “normal person” if I use that environment as my yardstick of normalcy. I go through the motions of behaving like my colleagues: I dress like them, I can speak like them, I can shout nasty things on conference calls and throw temper tantrums just as they do….but I am only acting. I will never actually turn into one of them. It would probably be better for me if I could- I would be headed down a safe road of financial success and security. But I would feel like I was spending my entire life (about 14 hours a day!) in the theatre, acting out a role I didn’t even like. I look at myself in the mirror of the office bathroom and I see myself wearing a costume, dressed up as a TV character in some office-based sitcom. I have spent 1.5 years trying to convince myself that I could do it. Over the past 6 months, I have seen my income rise higher than I ever thought it would….but even that didn’t make me believe in my new character. In quite moments with no few people around (which normally occurred at about 6 am) I would revert to myself, and write blog entries in outlook (pretending they were Very Important Emails), or even sneak peaks at flickr. Those moments were little gasps of freedom, and clear indications that I had not merged myself with my theatrical executive role. Someone would pass by my cubicle and I would deliberately snap back into action, barking orders down the phone line, demanding a form be faxed back to me RIGHT NOW and so on. As soon as the person was out of earshot, I would revert to myself again, pondering useless historical trivia and so on. Other than making good money, it has all become a fairly useless exercise.
So when I get offered a promotion and a transfer to Paris, I refuse. I couldn’t imagine anything more horrid. The thought of continuing with this charade, and even moving country permanently whilst in costume disgusts me. So I refuse.
I will never be "normal" if judged by these people, and i dont want to be. rather than seeking normalcy, i think i might just try switching paradigms, with hopefully improved results.

planet paris

I have spent the past 18 months wondering why it is impossible to market the same product simultaneously to French people and other Europeans and reached the conclusion that they are simply operating on a separate planet.
Last year I worked for the Russian state media, and we had fairly moderate success promoting Russian products in Western Europe and North America, but never in France, although at one point the company had brought in a French team specifically for that purpose. But as they had no luck, they soon became disheartened and quit. When I was interviewing for new jobs, one of the companies was actually looking for a French speaker to promote British material in France. Halfway through the interview, I called discussions to a halt, saying if France was to be my only market, I wasn’t interested. The woman doing the interviewing signed and nodded. In the middle of a recession, with mass unemployment and supposedly 50 people chasing every job, this position had been open for six months. Obviously no one wanted to touch a role clearly marked for failure. Yet as a French speaker, I kept getting offers somehow connected to that country. I finally accepted one trying to do the opposite: market French products into the rest of Europe. I have to say so far I am failing spectacularly. There is just no market for it. The material is of high quality, yet it remains fundamentally completely Francocentric: not in its direct orientation, but in the mental paradigm from which it is generated: the choice of subject matter and the way it is expressed it just completely French. I feel almost sorry for the research director: he dedicates endless hours to his job, and he takes pride in it….and seems truly puzzled as his ideas fall flat time and time again. I have tried to explain why I think certain plans and projects are not working, and he looks at me puzzled. “but it worked fine before,” he says in wonder. That was before when the company operated in France only. Before they got bought out by the people who employed me. Before they had to put up with teams of foreign consultants telling them what to do, and before they had to change.

working in france

Returning to my former home after several years working in England, I am struck by how at odds with the rest of the EU their working culture is. France is famous for its supposed 35 hour work week, and Sarkozy has faced tremendous opposition by suggestion that workers should be allowed to work more- if they want to. This world of professional laziness does exist- I have a friend who works for la poste, and she really does work 35 hours a week, get 6 weeks of holiday, lunch vouchers and an incredible pension plan. Looking at her, any Brit could only be but jealously snide. Yet alongside this workers’ paradise exists a separate reality: the small and successful private sector. It is a scary place. France has a few truly successful international companies that seem to think the only way to maintain their success is by treating their employees like slaves. Every time I visit our Paris office, I am shocked. Every one is at their desk by 9am and they stay there until 10pm or later. They still legally get several weeks holiday, but they often refuse to take it because of pressure from management. No one in Britain would put up with the working conditions such French employees endure, nor would any Brit tolerate the often harsh and disrespectful manner in which French bosses treat their inferiors. The contrast here between the private and public sector is too great to be healthy, in fact it appears dangerous. As I look at the newspapers, the scandal rages over the suicides at France telecom: the company was state owned until a few years ago when it was privatised and new management brought in. Since then the suicide rate has soared in the company, with over 25 deaths in the past year alone. Many took place actually on the job, and many left letters citing their working conditions as the reason.
No one should lose their mental health over a job. Yet if France is to address this issue, it will have to start by recognising there is a gulf of incomprehensible proportions between national rhetoric and corporate reality.

normal people

Intimidated by the excess of free time suddenly granted to me, I have been stumbled by exactly what is to be done with this extra time. For the past several years, I have come home from my office, eaten, changed, and sat down to work on my PhD. I worked until well into the evening, then directly went to bed. So now what?
Still clearly addicted to research, I decided to conduct a survey, with the aim of establishing exactly what “normal” people do in the evening.

J, 25, bookseller: I try to go to a gallery once a week, play the piano, sometimes a bit of flute, once a month or so I go to the theatre. Read.

A, 27, CityBoy: go out and get drunk, mate! Fuck man, last Saturday, right, I met this girl in a pub and then we went back to my place and did some drugs, and then like, I fucked her like 10 times, and then in the morning, the bitch said it was like date rape, and I was like, whatever, get the fuck out of my house!

K, 35, secretary: yesterday evening I ironed 7 shirts and cleaned the living room. Normally I watch TV and do chores.

M, 30, Account executive: go to the pub.

HS, 15, student: WIFI makes time fly!

P, 37, Salesman: I go to the gym and then I go over to my mother’s house for dinner. Then I go home and watch Big Brother.

F, 39, manager: go to the pub.

H, 35, Manager: go to karate with the kids, then get Chinese takeaway on the way home.

A, 30, banker: I get home around 2 am and go to sleep. I see my children at the weekend.

A, 27, trader: go down the boozer, go on a date, meet my mates, watch some footy.

T, 45, head of ops: meet up with friends, take salsa lessons.

A, 32: go for walks, go to the cinema, watch TV.


Preliminary results of research: the British working public spends a lot of time drinking and watching television. They are not that into cooking and rarely read books.
Conclusion: I will have to dedicate serious time and effort in reshaping my life if I ever imagine I will fit into this mass. Otherwise, it may just be that I am not normal.

taste of freedom

I began university exactly twelve years ago this month, an excited teenager in a foreign city, looking perhaps more for adventure than intellectual stimulation. Over the past 12 years, I have held a variety of odd jobs, moved flat and country more times than I can remember, and visited libraries around the globe. I have done four degrees in four countries. To be sure, I took some years off in between degrees along the way, but generally with the intention of saving money to continue. Then, yesterday, I went my current university’s student record office, and I handed in my doctoral thesis. I then went home, stared at the four walls around me, and wondered what to do. It was then it all sunk in: for the first time in 12 years I don’t HAVE to come home and do anything! I have worked to support myself throughout my studies, which has meant, especially in recent years, that the studying always got done at night time, after I got back from the office and ate dinner. I tried to imagine what “normal” people do with their time after work. I know what most of my colleagues do: they take cocaine, go to the pub and frequently end up screwing each other in unfortunate places. Or at least so they tell me every Monday morning. But then no one exactly holds up city bankers as role models of constructive use of free time. I am told other people watch TV. There is one in the corner of the flat, but when I walk over to it, I realise I don’t know how to turn it on. So I sit down on the sofa and open a book, a nice, delicious, uninformative novel. What an incredible sense of freedom!

on the Berber trail

Apparently the Berbers are the original inhabitants of North Africa, occupying the region for at least 1000 years before the Arabs began moving West in the 7th century. There is even evidence to suggest they were already in North Africa in the Upper Palaeolithic age. Most converted to Islam when the Arabs moved in alongside of them, but entire villages of Berber Jews remained in the Atlas mountains until the establishment of the state of Israel. The Berber villages that remain in the High Atlas are something to see, and certainly give a new meaning to “upward mobility.” Like the favelas of Rio, they are constructed seemingly on top of each other at the most incredible angles. They are constructed with a variety of materials, but earth appears the most common. When I am taken into the villages to meet the Elders, I feel a bit uncomfortable, as though an incredible show is being put on. Everyone comes out to greet me. The women don’t meet my gaze, and it is only the children I manage to communicate with- they all want to touch my nose ring, attempting to verify if it is really part of my nose or not. It is the start of Ramandan, but in every village they want to serve me mint tea, or Berber bread dipped in Olive oil. I am trapped by a combination of my own thirst, their hospitality, and a sense of guilt at eating in front of people who cannot. They poverty is stunning- there is no electricity and the women labour all day in unlit, tiny kitchens which seem to reach 50 degrees at this time of year. Yet they certainly have some of the best scenery in the world, with nearly every village looking out at deep ravines at winding rivers. The geography is hard to navigate, and I wanted to close my eyes more than a few times as the driver swerved around the winding roads, giving me a stunning view of the cliff side we just might go crashing down. If the children want to go to school, they would often have to navigate these roads, which are often snow covered in winter, for 3-5 kilometres both to and from school. As a result, not all make it. Yet, they are all seemingly capable of greeting me in French and asking me where I am from. The answers get me blank stares, however, and I am left feeling like an alien who descended from his UFO at the wrong stop.

Ramadan

My arrival in Morocco happened to correspond with the beginning of Ramadan, but there was nothing that could be done to change the dates. Of course Ramadan is practiced by many in Europe as well, but things are different here, where it is part of the life of the majority of the population. My Jewish guides decide that, especially at this time of the year, it was important I see how the majority of the people live. So it was decided that we would go to the house of one of the family’s business associates, so I could see what a traditional Muslim house looks like, and see how people break the fast as dusk falls. Although the guys escorting me about are Jews, they grew up fluent in Arabic, and as their community is so tiny, obviously most of their friends and business partners are Muslims. So we went to the house of one such man. M told me it was an “average middle class house” but I struggled to believe him. The neighbourhood was not particularly attractive, although the buildings were solidly built. But inside, the house was lovely, with spacious rooms spread out over two floors. Like most of the places I have seen here, the floor was tile or stone, with carpets placed strategically around the flat. One thing that astonishes me is that when we arrived, the door was not locked. Theft is rare apparently in Morocco, and people seemed shocked that I even noticed such a thing. The smell of delicious food hit me as we entered the flat. I was taken to the kitchen where I could see the women cooking an enormous meal. I was then introduced to all the children, who each wanted to give me a tour of their bedrooms. We then sat down at the table to eat. In such households, the men and the women eat the same food, but separately in different parts of the house. However, as a special guest, it was decided that I would eat with the men. The table was set, with a huge bowl of lentil soup in the middle, and numerous plates of delicious food surrounding it. We sat down and waited for the magic minute to break the fast. Over the radio, we heard the prayers beginning in Rabat, the capital, where the fast breaks about two minutes earlier. Then it was our turn. The minute was upon us, and all the men immediately reached for their glasses of water and began gulping, all of them downing the whole glass in one go. Next we all moved on to the soup, which was delicious. The hospitality here is incredible, and I was expected to try and give my opinion on every dish put in front of me, with the result that after a couple of hours I could barely move. The desserts were the most visually spectacular part, little sugary balls in an assortment of vibrant colours. Each one I tried was lovely, but there is a limit to how many one can digest! The dinner lasted a long time and we sat around the table and talked. I was quizzed about the economic crisis in Britain, and the cost of housing. The father proudly told me about his children’s many accomplishments: one of the girls had just got back from working in Dubai, another was studying medicine. When he heard how many countries I have travelled to, he asked, with a smile if I worked for Mossad. I assured him that I am not even Jewish, but he laughed, exclaiming “but they all say that!” As we left he pointed out that whilst he wore traditional Muslim dress, his children all wore modern, European clothes, and although his wife covered her head, his daughters did not. “We Moroccans are tolerant people, make sure you put that in your report!” he giggled as I got back on M’s motorcycle.