Pickled Eel

The End of the Pickled Eel Blog - Almost

2007-12-12T19:34:00.001+11:00

I have been working on transferring this blog to (this blogsite here) something that will give me a bit more flexibility in how I present my material. It is a work in progress (you will see I am still having some fun with the formatting) but it is finally at a point where I think a reader can survive navigating their way around the site.

I hope you like it. Let me know your thoughts if you have time to leave a comment.

The new blog is at http://pickledeel.com

If you are an email subscriber please resubscribe on the new page - I am using a different email service to the one I use here. Assuming of course you continue to wish to have my posts drop into your inbox. THANKYOU.

Feel free to forward this on to anyone who you think might enjoy the occasional digression in their web reading.

The Last Post (if you have a bugle sound it now).

Flight Loads in the US - Getting Some

2007-12-08T22:13:00.000+11:00

If I was was to reflect on my travel this last 12months I would ruminate over some of the unexpected destinations I found myself heading towards, obscure places visited and always the remarkable people I have met. Some old friends. And some new ones. The process of getting there has been interesting as well. The nightmare which is now Heathrow Airport stands out. And so too packed aircraft. I can understand there being no spare seats out of Baghdad - that kind of makes sense. In fact packed aircraft are now the norm although the thrill of flying (I am still a ten year old boy in that regard) tends to outweigh the small seats, lack of legroom and awful food. (Can anyone beat freeze dried carrots in a small plastic packet (flight from LA to Dallas)?) With cheaper airfares, the demands of business, and 2001 receding into the background (though the chart here barely registers a minor blip in 2001), more and more people are taking to the skies. In fact the expectation is that commercial airline passengers will double in the next ten years, explaining the massive buildup of global airlines which are creating their hubs in the Middle East. And then there is China's incredible airline expansion which has yet to really impact us. But it is not all bad. Being packed into a seat on a small MD80 making a connection from Philadelphia to Dallas earlier this year I got chatting to about six or seven American travellers in the rear of the aircraft. The cramped confines made for an intimate setting of sorts and we spent the couple of hours in the air talking about family and business but mainly literature. As we descended into the behemoth which is Dallas Forth Worth airport the woman next to me declared (imagine a slow southern drawl), for all the rear cabin to hear, "boy, with an accent like that you could get some." There was much mirth. Sometimes being an Australian abroad can be good for the ego - even if you are getting mileage out of something you have no say over. It was of course a standout moment in 2007.

Sydney Storm

2007-12-04T00:43:00.000+11:00

Some dogs smell them coming and hide under the hedge. Others smell them coming and spin on their chains in insane, barely comprehensible excitement. I relate to the latter. Standing in the middle of a cracking storm is an almost spiritual experience. In fact I suspect it is - completely. Sprinkled, hosed down, baptised with a thorough deluge that hammers every sense. It does help if it is a tropical storm and the rain is warm. But being caught in a storm of any sort sharpens the senses, gets "up your fur" and makes you feel very much alive. Sadly for this one I had to settle for the office window today - though 45 minutes earlier I had been out under a clear and sunny sky eating lunch. This photo (courtesy of Fergus Woolveridge at the Sydney Morning Herald) catches the storm that hit our office this afternoon - and it is hitting right where our office is. A remarkable burst of sudden rain from a ruptured black tank above us. No warning, no spitting, leaking drips. Just a boom and a splash, and you're on your way home for a change of clothes if you didn't see it coming.

Leunig Lessons For Life

2007-12-02T22:22:00.000+11:00

It is that time of the year again when those of us who have resorted to online newspapers pick up a print copy - the Leunig calendar is out. Was out, on Saturday. His ability to distil the essence of an idea in a few simple lines, and convey a poignant message at the same time is to be envied, admired and even emulated. If we can. Here he is again (click on the label to see the post on him from last year).

Evel Knievel

2007-12-02T21:47:00.000+11:00

Here is a chap who attempted to kill himself year on year and yet he managed to survive until his 69th year. Passed away from an illness or illnesses that may well have come about from bashing himself up with his motorcycles. And other vehicles. Here is a name that we were all familiar with in the 1970s but a face that had vanished since. Like that of Leif Garrett. Where on earth has he gone? Or the Bay City Rollers?! Boy was I seriously peeved with those jocks - it was pretty hard to compete with life size posters of music heart throbs that distracted our own heart throbs, causing them to swoon over them rather than the blokes in the third row with long shorts and a dodgy haircut. But Knievel had a different impact on us altogether, perhaps best measured by the fact that his name entered our lexicon as teenage boys and has remained there ever since. To to an "Evel Knievel" was to do something so daring and outlandish that it was worthy of peer respect - not always an easy thing to achieve. A broken bone or a suitably impressive gash always helped. In a community where we had reasonably ready access to vehicles, bikes or motorbikes (one of my fellows had even built a motorbike with a wooden frame!) there were all sorts of ridiculous and dangerous "Knievel" challenges posed and attempted. If our parents had any idea what we were attempting on mate's motorcycles they would have grounded us immediately for our own safety. But even without vehicles a leap into a river from a high rock was a "Knievel" leap. I am sure he would not be surprised but Evel had a big impact on us as impressionable country boys back in the early seventies. Its a sad day when a part of your formative fabric, even if it is now a faint, even indiscernible thread, passes away.

A China Dedication

2007-11-30T23:00:00.000+11:00

I have been to China a few times now but a trip I undertook with some friends in September 2006 was a stand out experience. In part for the companionship of my fellow travellers. But really for the connections we made in a grassroots way with some of the citizens of that country. We were fortunate to cover some "off the beaten track" places but wherever we went we met the most remarkable folk. It was a poignant way to be reminded that when you meet, know and perhaps understand a little about a neighbour, it is that much harder to get into a fight with them. Wherever we went we met people just like ourselves, with the same hopes, dreams and desires. Wherever we go we are indeed all God's children. I hope you enjoy the compilation, it captures a fraction of the variety we encountered.

A Land Flowing with Honey and Diesel

2007-11-28T23:45:00.000+11:00

Recollections of an attempt to seize raw honeycomb from a live hive, nestled out of the way in a willow tree.

A Land Flowing with Honey and Diesel
A Story by PickledEel

Norman Mailer and Bad Sex

2007-11-28T22:54:00.000+11:00

I do like this piece of news. It tickles my irony bone. So to speak. On my shelves I have a select handful of books on writing ( I know, I need more). Perhaps the most useful in terms of unleashing my pen has been Stephen King's On Writing, a surprisingly well written piece on writing. Bet he worked hard on that title. It's one of those volumes that is read in a sitting but every couple of pages you are being struck by the "bleeding obvious". Quite liberating really. I read Bag of Bones immediately afterwards (he was drafting that novel when he was working on On Writing), and I found myself testing the theory as I read. Putting it into practice has been a far tougher gig.

Another volume which sits up there with On Writing is Norman Mailer's The Spooky Art. Norman of course is famous for his irascible personality and his so called "innovative journalistic" style. I figured you could do a whole lot worse than reading what Norman has to say about writing when trying to figure out your own writing.

So to read in today's news that Mr Mailer, also famous for recently becoming deceased, has won this years prize for the worst account of sex in fiction. The Bad Sex in Fiction Award no less. Not a bad way to back up a couple of Pulitzers.

Here is how he earned it. From his novel "The Castle in the Forest." It gives me immense encouragement. On writing mind you.

"So Klara turned head to foot and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth and took his old battering ram into her lips."

Singapore Sign of Our Times

2007-11-27T23:05:00.000+11:00

Notice anything odd about this sticker? It is the reverse (inside) view of a Singapore car registration sticker. Taken as we drove up the freeway when its message caught my eye. It is pretty nondescript actually and I paid it no attention for most of the trip. But then its assumption leaped out at me and I had to laugh - for only in a place like Singapore could such an assumption be made. Albeit a reasonably safe one. That assumption is simply that anyone involved in an accident will be equipped with a camera so 12 (2 x 6) photos can be taken. Cell phones pretty much equip everyone with a camera these days. But I am sure there are plenty who drive who are not fitted up with appropriate optics. And of course there is the matter of "6". Not 3. Not 5. Not 10. When I asked my Singapore friend (driver) about the importance of "6" - he had no idea. But it is a part of Singapore's DNA that they be so precise and so prescriptive. And the irony is of course that I had a camera with me with which to take the photo.

Snow Dump in New York

2007-11-26T20:34:00.000+11:00

Thanksgiving 2003

We made it to the meeting this afternoon after scrubbing up and brushing the light dusting of snow out of our hair. But were feeling the cold. After slushing and sliding our way down through Manhattan we made it into the hospital and into the manager's office. It was on the fifth floor which was not very high by New York standards but far enough above ground to get a good sense of the canyon streets running through this place. Fortunately I was not doing the talking (well , not much). And I was seated with a view down the street while our client was sitting with their back to the window. In the two hours we were there I watched the snow get more and more horizontal, faster and faster, and thicker and thicker, until I was unable to see the other side of the street. As we stepped back into the street the snow was cutting our faces and there were hardly any locals out and about. Sensible people. Carey stopped here for a frozen pose in the Washington Square Park before we ran for a diner in Greenwich Village were we were meeting up with friends. As we thawed out we sat with slack jaws as we watched the snow howl up the canyon - you could not see past the kerb by now. Poor Carey made the mistake of heading for the bathroom just as we were finishing up. Out of his overcoat by now and dressed only in business attire we convinced a Mexican waitress (who had served us ground up, raw Chihuahua (or so we were convinced, it was so awful)) to let Carey know we had headed off up the street. Taking his overcoat we then propped in an alcove and watched an exasperated friend step into the blizzard, put his head down and trudge out of sight into the whiteness. We counted to ten, then ran after him, catching him looking around for his sense of humour and somewhere to buy a new overcoat. He had decided he had lost us in this Alaskan wilderness whiteout. Fortunately he found his sense of humour in one of his overcoat pockets or somewhere and we spent the rest of the afternoon following in the footsteps of Amundsen as we alternatively froze then thawed our way from cafe to cafe, bookshop to wonderful bookshop and finally found our way back to Times Square, tired and cold but as happy as ten year old boys in a puddle. Which was about the sum of it!!

What are the Churches Not Doing?

2007-11-25T23:04:00.000+11:00

I am no social commentator, not do I have aspirations to be one. But as a "member" occasionally things just leap out and slap you when they point at our society and highlight our shortcomings. In the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend there was an interesting article about a small company which has built its business around the cleanup required after a death (accidental or otherwise) or where a site is so filthy no regular cleaner will go near it. Council contracts for abandoned apartments and that sort of thing. They do a good job I am sure. But their observation about cleaning up the apartment of a derelict struck home. One of the cleaners said "...no one should live like that(in a "pigsty") It is great to be able to help make his life a little better. Rightly or wrongly the reporter went on to say "This sort of work used to be done by charities or nuns or concerned people in the community. It is now done by cleaning contractors such as Gabby Simpson."

Well I am not sure about you but it strikes me as a pretty sad state of affairs that our social safety net, our network of care, is reduced to not only contractors but to cleaning contractors!! Come on! Good on Gabby and her cleaning contractors for having the attitude they do. But shame on the rest of us for letting things get to a point where a reporter observes that in our community one of the key groups we expect to be best tuned into the needs of the poor and needy - the church - is not so tuned in. OK, there is a reasonable argument that plenty of churches are pulling their weight (here is one I know). But church or no church, our community is confronted by the fact that too many in our community live and die alone and none of us are aware until their lonely deaths hit the press - usually salaciously since some have rotted in situ for months and in one case for more than a year. Too many of these in Sydney these last couple of years. I sincerely hope we can do better than leaving these people up to our forensic cleaning contractors. Who incidentally, are usually on site when it is far too late!

Hidden Piper in Xian

2007-11-25T00:51:00.000+11:00

It is a not uncommon cliche of those who observe China that these are a people comfortable being in close proximity with each other. They live right on top of each other and being comfortable around other human beings is something that is part of the their DNA it seems. Certainly they have a sense of personal space which is VERY different to our Australian culture, which likes to put wide open spaces between us, even between those who live in our capital cities. (Want to see a bunch of Australians at their most uncomfortable? Insist they crowd into an elevator or commuter train!)

But that does not mean the Chinese don't appreciate their space. They seek it out in all sorts of ways and at different times of the day. In Xian I was in the habit of getting out as early as I sensibly could, to walk around the old Muslim quarter, eating their doughy breakfasts with them and wandering through Lianhu Park as they went through their exercise rituals. One morning I heard the clear, haunting sound of a flute carrying across the park and initially assumed it was being piped across a sound system. But as I walked around the lake I realised the sound was coming from a bushy knoll. When I climbed through the bushes and across a handful of rocks I found this flautist (I think that is what he is) playing his music. In his own space. A few like me had come to investigate the sound, and a couple sat and tapped along, keeping time with their feet. Everyone else ignored him and he had his own place and space in the middle of one of the most ancient and well lived-in cities on the planet. It was a magic time and place for me as well.

Here he is in the video, lost in his own music and creating a special place for the rest of us in the park and under the bushes on the knoll. At the end of the piece (I regret not filming more of it) he signed to me that the music was about a train - I fancy the sound of a horn can be heard in there somewhere. Travel in China is all about these special moments.

Drawing Attention to a Killer

2007-11-24T17:54:00.000+11:00

Here is an interesting dilemma which I find rather intriguing. Take your spent fuel rods and bury them somewhere other than near the Hudson River. Then warn off the accidental and the curious who might want to dig the stuff up again - not a good idea if you are planning on dying in your sleep at a ripe old age. Here is the dilemma - what you write on the warning signs might be good for now. We all know the radioactive fan symbol and of what it warns. But what about this stuff that hangs around in lethal doses for ten thousand years. Those warning signs need to be legible AND understandable in ten thousand years as well. The text shown here tells the opening lines of the poem Beowolf. Believe it or not it is in English. The shift in language over 1000 years has been dramatic and few outside of Old English classes can read this text - not even I who spent three years studying the language. I am pretty rusty now. Look how many languages remained a mystery to us that were only 4,000 years old. Clearly warnings around radioactive waste need to have some ready currency in 10,000 years.

An interesting challenge that is actually being addressed by some of America's scientists. They flag some scenarios that speak to human nature as much as anything else. So we put up warning signs, saying "don't dig here, a horrible death awaits." That did not deter those who dug around the tombs of ancient Egypt or of Persia. Indeed, the more vociferous the warning, the greater the attraction. An archaeologist in the year 9007, whose hair has not already naturally receded from his pate and fallen out his ears, might think that the urgent warnings are signs that he is on the cusp of a famous and wealthy find. After all there would be no immediate signs of ill health. One of the more interesting solutions is to seal and bury the stuff without any signs or warnings. If someone is smart enough to find, the hope is that perhaps they are smart enough to be carrying Geiger counters with them - not always a safe bet with boffins. Thinking practically that is.

The Economist carried this article on future proofing nuclear waste bunkers that caught my eye.

Lashes for Being Raped - Saudi Hypocrisy

2007-11-22T09:13:00.000+11:00

There is a breathtaking hypocrisy in the news floating around overnight that a Saudi woman has been awarded 200 lashes and a prison sentence because she was in a car with a man who was not her relative. Apparently she was gang raped in that trip. The lads get off with a comparatively light sentence but as a victim she suffers this. It is of course her fault - if she was not a woman and not in the car then the men would not have been provoked into raping her!! The hypocrisy is even more breathtaking when in Riyadh you watch the boys picking up the girls at the shopping centre. In broad daylight. Or sit in certain hotel bars on Dubai Creek and watch the Saudi men march in (usually in pairs) and pick up their East European hookers. One (loose) rule for the men. Lots of rules for the women - which damn them for being women just to start with.

New York Blizzard

2007-11-20T18:05:00.000+11:00

Yesterday afternoon I caught the Amtrack up from Philly. I planned on working but it was freezing outside and warm as toast inside. I think I only heard three bars of clickety clack music and I was asleep. I woke just as we arrived at Penn Station. I had an address for the hotel which I saw was in 7th Avenue. I counted the blocks and figured there was only a short distance to travel. I had a case for each hand, was wearing only a suit and business shirt and in the warmth bliss of the station figured this would be a quick and bracing trip. After a block I can confirm the bracing, but not the quick. Stupidly I walked past a man selling mittens of a dollar. Not one man actually. About five. By the time I had cleared the station they were well gone. So on I pushed. Block after block after block. Across Broadway, up 7th Ave, through Times Square and on and on. Slower and slower. More and more braced - stiff. I did not realise just how stiff until I arrived at the hotel reception and was unable to speak, unable to put my cases down and appearing like a mute before the rosy faced receptionist. She seemed to know what was going on and pointed me at a corner near a heater, beside which which I thawed, eventually released my hands and then attempted to sign in again. But even though I could mumble (the jaw needed massaging to help it along) I could still not hold a pen. She accepted a scrawl.

This morning I was more rugged up but we ventured out (on 7th Ave rather than the pavement, with large chunks of ice smacking into the ground every now and then from off the skyscrapers, warning us off) to meet a prospective client, only to make it two blocks before a snow flake stopped us in our tracks. We glanced at each other then continued on. By the end of the block it was falling heavily enough to dust us. We back tracked and purchased beanies and mittens (at which point this photo was taken) and just as well since in the intervening minutes a blizzard whipped across the city and the first dustings had turned into an assault in which you could barely hold your eyes open. By the time we scouted out the location of our client we looked like a couple of cold and bedraggled half-beats. We have an appointment elsewhere this afternoon - lets see what that looks like in this weather. And if we can scrub up sufficiently to make the right impression.

Thanksgiving 2003

Solomon Islands - Frame Up

2007-11-14T18:25:00.002+11:00

We have only been here three days and already we have learned the routine. Get going at first light. It is as humid as a warm bath but at least the sun is not frying us. Work like crazy with the sweat sluicing off us. Hats are necessary first to keep the salty water out of our eyes, the sun off us a secondary role. Tool handles are slippery. Clothes cling - fortunately an open weave shirt (as open as sackcloth but not as coarse) I bought years ago in India is doing what it was supposed to do and the breeze shifts through it occasionally while the sun is kept off. All the locals are sensible people - they sit in the shade and watch us slave away. No amount of encouragement works - although one snowy haired young fellow is always keen to help while a couple of the men chip in every now and then. We work as hard as we can in the morning because, as regular as clockwork the rain tips down in the afternoon and washes us out. We rigged some canvas over the generator and kept going in the first couple of days but the talk at the moment is that we will be able to take the afternoons off since we have gotten ahead of the schedule a little. I have been impressed by the two professional carpenters who have taken this rosewood, rough cut from the jungle, and turned the framing into something that would not look too out of place on a building site at home. With a well drained slab however (it lifts in the middle) getting everything straight and square was a test of wit, builders shortcuts and patience. We fetched timber and laid it out while the professionals scratched their heads and muttered to themselves as they worked it out. Its clear this clinic is going to be the absolute best we can build. And damn it, this is infectious. I could easily stay here and do this forever - building something for those less resourced than us might be hot and sweaty and muscle aching work. But its a real pleasure that warms us all.
(Click on image for a better view)

April 2003

I Married a Dog

2007-11-14T17:38:00.000+11:00

There is a wonderful line quipped in Ghostbusters by Dr Venkman (Bill Murray) when he rather nonchalantly explains to his colleagues that his girlfriend, now turned into a hellish demon with a canine disposition of Cerberus, is just that, a dog. "So, she's a dog..." It is typical of Venkman's understated throw away humour but its a line that snapped to mind last night when the Hindustan Times picked up a story of an event that is not uncommon in India - a person marrying an animal. But AP picked it up as well and it was splashed across the Sydney Morning Herald today. According to all reports this marriage was one of atonement, the groom having not only felt aggrieved for stoning and killing two rutting dogs years earlier, but was now convinced his stroke and other illnesses were a direct result of that culling. Marriage would appease the gods. Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. After all it looks like he is doing his own ghostbusting. By all accounts he can divorce the dog with no ill effects and is not precluded from marrying a two legged creature (bird?) when he feels that is appropriate. In the meantime he has no in-laws to concern himself about, he has not had to add an extra room onto the house, his toothpaste tube can continue to be squeezed just the way he wants and the cost of the reception was kept to a minimum. Her family had no guests and while the groom had a feast all she needed to sate her hunger was a bun. Training her to fetch slippers will be a career enhancement, not a red neck sexist approach to living together, and "bitch" will be a term of endearment. Sounds like a marriage made in ...well, India of course.

Confused Chinese Pirates

2007-11-13T19:04:00.000+11:00

In the spirit of the craziness that can come out of China, witting or otherwise (movie titles and packing instructions) the following is hillarious. At first glance this DVD cover looks pretty normal. But take a close look at the back cover. The pirate graphics specialist has grabbed text from a variety of places to compile the back cover. Reference to "Arnold" ("back better than ever") to start with - I can only guess this refers to the Californian Governator. In the text we start with reference to Michael's movie but it soon morphs into a review of "Laws of Attraction" and the credits are nicked from "Shanghai Surprise". All those English characters look alike so it kind of makes sense. The brazen plagiarism is breathtaking but the publish and be damned approach underpins some of the humour in this. Of course the irony of the "What Controvosy?" header would be lost on the pirates. And no, don't ask me where I got my hands on this DVD but thanks JP for bringing it to my attention. (Clicking on the image should get you a better view).

Escape from Colditz

2007-11-12T21:44:00.000+11:00

My boyhood years were spent with my siblings in small rural town in Otago, New Zealand. More rural than town, our upbringing had a Huck Finn flavour about it in some respects. A well established and fond memory are the "contraptions" built by one of the brothers, the building of one being distilled in this (very) short story.

Escape from Colditz
A Story by PickledEel

Walking Through the Roman City of Jerash

2007-11-11T20:26:00.000+11:00

I took some photos and video when in Jordan recently. An earlier blog refers to that visit but the video gives a better feel for that place. I loved being able to walk through a place that gave such a sense of historicity yet connection with its inhabitants - all at the same time.

Eating Squirrels in New Jersey

2007-11-08T16:46:00.000+11:00

For those of who are not Americans, and/or who live outside of the CONUS there is a quip which explains the quirky, bizarre and just plain weird. It is simply "only in the US", usually said in a condescending tone, the combination of which helps the listener understand that there is a rational reason for the weirdness. Most commonly used when referring to the escapades of Hollywood. Here is one from the other coast that falls in that basket though. It goes something like this:

False alarm: New Jersey says it's once again safe to eat squirrels. Earlier warnings about excessive lead in the rodents that live near one of the Garden State's toxic waste sites was caused by a malfunctioning blender that they used to "process the squirrel's tissue samples," according to the federal government. Full article under this title:

Have no fear New Jerseyans, the toxic waste hasn't made it unsafe to eat squirrels after all

So what is the "only in the US" element hidden in this article? The squirrel element of course. Everyone else would be concerned about the toxins, real or imagined. Here the city council are pleased to announce squirrel is back on the menu!

Born in A Solomon Islands Dog Kennel

2007-11-08T16:29:00.000+11:00

On our third day at Fauabu we had a look at the existing medical facilities. They are pretty primitive. The clinics to which the locals come, emerging from the jungle along invisible tracks, are extremely rudimentary. It is the post natal and post "op" care that we are building this ward for. And if we needed reminding of the need (we didn't really) this morning's visit got us focused. Here is the delivery room. Girls walk out of the bush, deliver their babies on this table and then recuperate on a veranda before walking back to their village. If there are a couple of deliveries happening at the same time then the spillover uses the floor. Perhaps what struck us most forcibly was the fact that this third world facility was operating only an hour or so flying time from first world hospitals and resources in Brisbane. But the lingering impression is the pride with which those who run the clinic showed us around. It is not much better than a dog kennel (one of the lads muttered he would not let his dog give birth in here) but it is all these trained nurses have got.

April 2003

Not so Sleepy Wellington - but Still Windy

2007-11-05T20:19:00.000+11:00

I thought when I interviewed with Eric that my next overseas trip was going to be back into Asia but I ended up in New Zealand last week. In Wellington to be precise. Which is where the New Zealanders hide their politicians. In a building that the locals call the Beehive. It kind of looks like one of those upturned wicker type beehives , though nothing like the boxes we used to raid as kids - there were no bears in our woods doing that. It was the local ten year old boys, who would have copped a hiding if we had ever been caught. Wellington for me is always about memories of the Wahine disaster in 1968, also marked for being the year one of my sisters was born. Later I sailed into Wellington from Lyttleton and the bow of the Wahine was still protruding from the harbour waters. It has long gone but I still see it there in my minds eye. A buoy still marks the spot. Interestingly when I was there last week the winds that blew about town approached some of the speeds that lashed the harbour when that ship went down. Wellington has changed a lot since I was there in the early 1970s but it has a slow country town air which is pleasant. You can walk the length of the CBD very quickly but a slow stroll takes you through a quite cosmopolitan dining and drinking scene which is not what I have ever associated with this very windy place. I happened to be there in February actually and the businessman I was with for lunch bumped into two ex Army friends as we walked to lunch. Men he had not seen since his Army days. Its that sort of village.

The video here catches a more recent ferry heading for the harbour mouth, then the view out over Wellington (with the QE2 in port) and then some views of the Malborough Sounds as we headed back to Sydney.

Jews are Smarter than the Average Bear?!

2007-11-05T19:36:00.000+11:00

Race is repository of IQ points apparently. According to a reporter sympathetic to the notion and who attended a symposium on the subject at the American Enterprise Institute. Certain Jews apparently demonstrate higher IQs than other demographics. Some Jewish communities apparently flash up an average of 107-115+ of those points when the global average is about 100. It would be interesting to know just how rigorous the testing was. I wonder from a slightly cynical standpoint – I swotted my IQ tests before I went through my officer training examinations. Not that I saw any test set by the military which I had seen in my rehearsals. But putting the brain to that sort of training and discipline, and having some practice at breaking down a problem presented in a particular way, meant I not only completed those timed tests you are not supposed to complete but easily packed 20 or 30 points onto the result. Some of my colleagues, who swotted their university exams like mad were horrified that I swotted my IQ exams – somehow that was not the same thing. I am not sure what their reasoning was but it seemed a reasonable approach in my book.

So Jews are allegedly smarter – if IQ points ever really mean anything. Their claims raise some interesting questions about race, Darwinian theory, comparative intelligence of Christians, the impact of historical events like the holocaust, and pogroms throughout history. Not to mention the matter of being a tight knit demographic which tends to marry and interact within its own bounds- thanks to that round of instruction from Mt Sinai, reinforced by lessons such as the Exile into Persia (Israelis are still trying to get back there lately I see!) Plenty of comments on the issue can be found at the Slate site. Based on my own experience of IQ tests and being able to load up a result I think the following probably apply:

Jews are great swots.

Those tightknit Jewish communities pass around volumes of previous IQ tests for others to swot up on.

Jews own and manage some of the greatest libraries in the world (just don’t tell the Vatican) and those old IQ tests are carefully catalogued, examined, distilled and methodologies are circulated to all Jews.

Schooling for your Bar Mitzvah is really a thorough grounding in IQ test papers.

Circumcision means you are less likely to cock up your IQ results (theory only applies to 50% or thereabouts of the population)

The Shin Bet and Mossad knock off any competitors before they can get to the examination room.

IQ tests are written by Jews.

And in the spirit of those supposed results I would hasten to add that there is no scientific basis to my theories. Which is a long winded way of me saying IQ metrics are bunk at best. But then I work with a Jew who has a brain as big as a house and who definitely is smarter than the average ah, person.

Paul Tibbets and That Nuclear Bomb

2007-11-03T13:29:00.000+11:00

Paul Tibbets made news again yesterday with the announcement of his death. (NYT Obituary) Paul was the pilot who flew the Enola Gay (named after his mother) from which the nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima. The news of his death prodded surprising reactions from some in the the newspaper blogs I have been reading. I have the view, perhaps historically driven, that the decision to drop these two weapons was sensible when weighing up the costs of Operation Olympia, the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. With more than one million casualties anticipated, the code breakers indicating the Japanese military factions had convinced the country to fight on and that the defences of the areas into which Olympia was to be directed had been reinforced, combined with Iwo Jima and Okinawa giving a foretaste of what a hometown fight was going to look like (pretty nasty), the two bombs made a lot of sense. But sixty or so years on and our revisionist perspectives prompt comments and views I don't entirely understand - some thought Tibbets' (apparently) painful death was a sign that he got what he deserved from God (just as well God is not a vindictive fellow isn't it?!). Others felt he was an officer simply doing his job (I am sympathetic to that view) while others felt he could have said "no" to the mission - clearly failing to understand the times in which Tibbets lived, or the structure in which he worked. All mixed up in other commentary that gets emotive after all this time about the rights or wrongs of various aspects of that war, aspects which have no connection with Tibbets in any way. Sadly Tibbets lived some of that ambivalence, emotion and hostility in his latter years and he has asked that he be buried with no tombstone least that be a site for protest. Whatever the rights or wrongs of that war it is a part of our history with threads that tie into the fabric of our community today. Beating up on Tibbets now, or at any other time for that matter, isn't going to change any of that.

Truck Trip to Fauabu (Foo arm boo)

2007-11-03T12:53:00.000+11:00

We drove into the night from Auki along a track through the jungle with no lights. The sky was a heavy velvet blue drape that gave no sense of where we were or what time of the night it was. We forded creeks and crept past silent villages, thatch and lattice barely visible in the starlight. The cabs of the trucks were silent as we wondered at what we had gotten ourselves into. After the bustle of the the last few days getting everything loaded onto the ferry, this silent, reflective trip seemed very surreal. Nearly three hours later, after finally finding ourselves on a slightly better road we stopped in an open space at the steps of a white house that looked vaguely out of place in this dark jungle. White clapboard, tidy blue framed veranda and a tin roof. After the quiet trip we were all like boisterous kids as we found beds, moved food in and set up the mosquito nets. And discovered that it was now three o’clock in the morning.

I woke after the sun was well up. A couple of the lads were still snoring away but Mick was gone. I shuffled outside and saw him on the far side of the clearing talking to one of the local men, both beside a large tangled heap of timber. Turns out it was all chainsaw cut 4 x 2, intended for us to turn into the clinic building we were supposed to be working on.

The place is an old leprosy mission site, built in the 1920s but now gone to ruin. Some timber and stone buildings remain, and one clinic was rebuilt, but the main indication that things used to be different are the crumbling concrete slabs that mark where the leprosy mission buildings used to be. There is something sad and ghostlike about the place. But behind the house we discovered we are a short walk through the coconut trees to the beach, where we could see, to our amazement, dolphins playing in the water. We also found a crowd of boys who were very adept with their machetes, chopping palm wood into toys. In this case a small car, complete with wheels which turned. Even the axles were made from palm wood! Kids with swinging, whacking machetes though - this will be an interesting couple of weeks.

Possums (12)

2007-10-28T22:39:00.000+11:00

In 2005 David Paton, good friend, mentor, example, and inspiration died after experiencing an aggressive cancer. I flew to New Zealand to attend his funeral. On the flight back I started writing some notes that were intended to capture something of what David meant to me. Taking a deep breath I thought I would share them more widely here on this blog. They are less coherent than I would like but they tell a story of what a difference one life, honestly lived, can make to those around them. These notes are offered up in 15 chapters which I will post out over the next few weeks. And in order that you can put a face to a name, here he is, on the Stewart Island ferry, catching some "zeds". Or "zees" depending on what part of the world you hail from.

The pet possum was a rare animal, treated with compassion and given a citizenship in the house that few other animals ever had. Ordinarily the Australian brush possum is hunted without respite, it being a noxious pest in New Zealand, causing millions of dollars of damage to forestry and agricultural resources every year. They are hunted with a passion and were the source of some pocket money as we grew up. Out on the Run, with the dogs loose it only required a whispered “sic ‘em” to have a pack of half a dozen dogs or so (sometimes more) to get their blood up and to tear off towards the nearest outcrop of rock to hunt out a possum. Whether there was one resident there or not. David would amble along behind to see what would flush out but often he was the one grabbing this or that dog and force feeding it down a hole or crevice. Sometimes a possum would flush or sometimes a possum would deter the dog with a well aimed swipe at the nose. Sometimes there was only a lot of noise, dust, and slow grins and absolutely no possum to show for the hunt. One possum escapade was especially memorable. It was at Waihola. On that place there was a very old woolshed. At one end there was a lean-too structure which was only a single story high, with a corrugated roof. Somehow we had learned there was a possum resident in the roof but we were unable to flush it out. With a ceiling pinned to the reverse side of the rafters there were plenty of places for it to hide and no way for us to see in. David’s solution was to pick up one of his scrawniest dogs (he used to bring a selection of them down to Waihola, and in the days prior to the purchase of the truck they would all be piled into that old Ford) and stuff it under a loose bit of corrugated iron on which he would then stand to prevent the dog reversing out. Hardly any need since every dog knew that a hunt was on with the cue “sic ‘em” and the place stank of the possum in any event. There was a huge commotion from within the roof as the dog scrambled around in the dark, barking and yelping and the possum growled and shrieked. I have no idea how the possum got out but remember being surprised at its appearance as a dark blur evacuating from under the guttering, flying across the yard and scrambling up the trunk of a huge old macrocarpa tree nearby. Its second mistake was to pause to look around and get its bearings. David shot it dead. We then spent some effort in extracting the dog from under the iron and I recall a few sheets having to be lifted. That old woolshed came down a few years later and was replaced by a new structure that did not leak but had none of the adventure in it that its collapsing possum ridden predecessor had.

Standing on the high country of the Run on a snowy day I paused with David and watched the “bread bus” making its way along the pigroot. David had stopped striding across the tussock to point out that the bus was travelling way too fast on a road covered with ice (he would know) and only opened that morning by the council grader. He suggested we watch it disappear around a bend on the side of the distance spur, across the gully and in the far distance and see if it reappeared on the road further down the valley. “My bet” said David, “is that we don’t see it reappear.” And we didn’t. An hour later we edged our way carefully back up that same bend and found the bus on its side in the snow. The driver seemed very nonplussed and was sitting in the snow drinking from a thermos flask and making wise cracks about the mail not getting through. But as we chatted we realised he was very shaken – as he had swung around the bend only seconds after vanishing from our view he had lost control and was heading for a dramatic drop into the creek below. Somehow he had wrested his careening vehicle to the other side of the road where he had deliberately aimed for the ditch in an effort to get the thing to stop. We left him in the snow and ice, in the rapidly dropping ice blue shadow of the end of the day and said we would call the council to see if he could get him towed out. An hour later the grader came through and about an hour later the bus crept past David’s house, somewhat chastened no doubt.

We left the Run late one night in pouring rain. We had been up there at midnight in late spring, shooting rabbits using a spotlight. The booming .303 was something of an overkill, deafening those in the cabin and proving to be more of a fun factor than anything else. I can still hear Steve saying “Bruce, put that thing away!” as the muzzle flash lit up the night and the thunder of the shot cracked across the gullies. The rain increased to a point where, even if there was a rabbit out there we would be hard pressed to see it so we departed the top of the Run and headed down to the highway. Travelling back to David’s place, as we drove up a long gentle slope in the highway a rabbit hopped out onto the road just at the edge of the headlights. Not in any hurry but just edging along in a slow lope. David asked me to pass over the .303 which I did. Leaning out the driver’s window he proceeded to blast ten rounds up the highway. One hand still on the wheel. Chunks of Highway 75 were flung into the night but the rabbit continued its slow lope, seemingly oblivious to the noise behind it and the destruction around it. In the end it hopped into the verge and stopped after which we duly dispatched it from a distance of only inches. The “one shot, one horse” legend was in tatters!

But not so much that I ever failed to appreciate his praise for my shooting. Getting a pat on the back from David was rare but when it came it was very special. Once at Waihola he took about five or six of us kids up to what was then known as the CYC paddock, the only patch of green grass on the place. From a high vantage point we looked down onto a large puddle on which was floating a thin stick, about half an inch thick and barely visible. About 75 yards away he said. Giving us all one round he then handed his rifle to one of the group and asked us to hit the stick. One after another twig was bounced around in the water until I was handed the rifle. Taking quick aim and dropping the sights on it I fired the round and the twig became two. David was impressed. I savoured that praise for years.

Sydney Turns it On

2007-10-28T19:25:00.001+11:00

It must be Sunday - time to get back into the Blog! There is always a temptation to go searching for inspiration outside this town but the fact of the matter is there is enough material in this town to inspire and convict - you don't always see what is right under your nose. A small thing that always captures my imagination happens every year and is a case of the "bleedin' obvious" in terms of things that make you slow down and put things in perspective a little - the suburb grow a purple mantle and a slow rain of purple litter covers the footpaths, the garden shed and our backyards as the bare branches of the Jacaranda announce the end of the winter months (we don't really have a winter of course). The Jacaranda does that with a vengeance. And if that does not catch our eye the Bougainvillea is at its blushing and fiery, flamboyant best. On the odd occasion a mix of Jacaranda and Bougainvillea happens in the same space and the blend of colours is enough to have you want to stop the drive to work and simply soak it all up. To top it all off the harbingers of these spring explosions are the amazing magnolias, some which remain in bloom if it has been cool enough - though not this year. Nothing profound in any of this, simply an acknowledgment that we are blessed to live where we do for a whole range of reasons. One reason is our environment.

Bloggers Choice Awards

2007-10-28T16:08:00.000+11:00

Many of you kindly voted for the Pickled Eel by clicking on the icon to the right. The 2008 Bloggers Choice Awards are now running so the counter has been reset. If you have a few spare moments I would be very grateful for a vote out there. Its not a bad way to get the blog exposed. Thanks.
p.s. the page is currently parked on the second page under Best Travel Blog.

National Thong Day

2007-10-28T15:47:00.000+11:00

Where I grew up thongs were known as jandals. Who knows where that word ever came from - short for Japanese sandal apparently! Australians call them thongs while in the US they are flip flops. American thongs of course are much more attractive - though that always depends on who is wearing them. Same rule can apply to footwear I guess.

Somehow this slipped past me but National Thong Day, held last Wednesday, 24 October, apparently was aimed at drawing attention to poverty issues. Which can only be a good thing. We need constant reminding that there are others out there who need help. And those are not always overseas but most often are to be found right under our noses.

Having said that there is a small group here who round up resources from the corporate world and who package them up into gift packages and send them off to Sri Lanka each year. I have drawn attention to it before but in case you missed it, or perhaps want to be inspired by how one person can make a difference in the lives of others - in this case mainly orphaned kids - then have a look at Network Heaven.

In Defence of Private Contactors

2007-10-21T22:54:00.000+10:00

Like most I was appalled by the videos on YouTube showing the cavalier actions by Blackwater contractors engaging "targets" without any apparent rules of engagement which might have gone some way to determining if the vehicles bearing down on them on the highway were in fact a threat or not. I am not sure if there are any documented instances of there being a clearly identified threat - citizens in a hurry to make a doctors appointment or in some similar innocent scenario are gunned down from unmarked cars if they have the misfortune to say, try and overtake an unmarked Blackwater vehicle. I was in Baghdad when the Blackwater teams hammered 17 citizens when they thought they were coming under fire. I am the first to appreciate how that impression can come about but for Blackwater this was only one of many incidents and the Iraqi's have clearly had enough. I read today in the Washington Post that the FBI is having a hard look at the incident while the US DoD and State slug it out over the merits or otherwise of using companies like Blackwater.

Fortunately the sunglassed, bandanna wearing Blackwater cowboys (the cowboy sobriquet also applies to those who fly these helicopters shown here) are not the whole story. I spent my time with a contracting company which provided not only security services but is intimately involved in the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Their company operations are predominantly staffed by Iraqi nationals, they live and operate outside the International Zone, are committed to a genuine "hearts and minds" effort with all they deal with and are as integrated into the local scene as they can possibly be. I watched them deal with Iraq civil servants and was intrigued to see how they engaged and interacted with them, treated them as they would like to be treated themselves, were deferential and respectful. It is a far cry from the shoot first, ask questions later which damns Blackwater and their ilk.

Use the contractors by all means (they allow the troops to focus on what the troops need to do) but the Iraq government could do worse than filter out those who have an interest in their contract dollars over and above their interests in the rebuilding of this community. Those security contractors who have a philanthropic and compassionate agenda within their business goals do exist. (And no, I am not employed by one, just in case you thought this was a self serving plug).

Bomb Harvest

2007-10-20T21:54:00.000+10:00

Imagine there was a new Unabomber at work in the US, sending letter bombs out across the nation. Now imagine there was one in every state, so that 164 letter bombs went off in one year, killing 36 people, 15 of whom were children. Would that make headlines?

So commences a review by Paul Byrne of "Bomb Harvest" in the Sydney Morning Herald. An Australian documentary which follows the work of an Australian called Laith Stevens. Paul's review is simply titled Bomb Harvest and can be read by following the link. There is a handy trailer which gives you an idea of what the movie is about.

I went along to the Roseville Cinema tonight to have a look. Regrettably there were only three in the theatre. But we got a clear message about the danger of unexploded ordnance, and the way the filmmaker has you on the edge of your seat as cute little kids unearth bombs is worth the effort to catch this documentary if you can. It did not enrage me (there are some images that might be confronting) as Byrne warned it might, but the message that came though most clearly for me was the capacity we all have to make a difference, even if we are only one person. Laith Stevens is doing that with his life, and what he does has a direct and immediate benefit for some of the world's poorest people. It is inspiring stuff. Sadly it makes too few headlines Paul.

Midnight at Auki

2007-10-20T21:37:00.000+10:00

We arrived late into the port of Auki. The ferry slowed and the stern got caught in its own wake, lifted it up and tipping us forward in a slow motion pitch. Initially we could see nothing but eventually a row of lights on the dark water or hanging in the sky (each was not able to be discriminated between) pointed in the general direction. A vague hint of island on the horizon proved to be imagination only – it was simply too dark to see anything. When we finally docked it was midnight and the tide was low – the ramp up to the end of the jetty was a steep climb.

Auki was a revelation. Hot. Dusty. Dark. Shadows flitted under lamps and the laughter of relaxed and drunk people jolted out of the dark. We could hear them but not see them. The lights illuminating the streets were low wattage and few and far between and initially we were hesitant to walk up what looked like a wild west movie set. But eventually thirst drove us into town and we found a shop up a back lane open. Despite the hour – it was now after midnight. He and his numerous assistants were serving warm drinks but with nothing on the shelves to advertise whether he was a hardware store or a food store. We bought our softdinks and some for the others and wandered back through this strange ghost town to the wharf. A melee still kept us from unloading our gear but eventually the crowd cleared enough for us to get our truck out. And another one in to pick up the extra hospital beds. None of the locals were in a rush. And clearly the arrival of the ferry was a big deal, the cause of much laughter, lots of greetings and some singing. But what a strange town Auki is at this time of the night. Ghost town. Wild West set. A strange orange, hazy glow hung around the itinerant street lamps but most of the place is in darkness, the deep velvet outside the main street only broken here and there by the soft, weak glow of a turned down wick of a kerosene lamp. And each of those signals a crowd sitting around laughing and talking. Smoking and drinking.

April 2003

The Sanatorium

2007-10-19T08:39:00.000+10:00

John "the Global Bedouin" has pointed me at Writer's Cafe and otherwise encouraged me to get some of my writing up there. I have been dusting off some short stories to that end but thought I would start with recollections of my first attempt at a short story. The original is lost but the imagery contained in it and the setting has stayed with me for more than thirty years. It is posted at the link below.

The Sanatorium
A Story by PickledEel

Tale of Two Beaches

2007-10-15T18:06:00.001+10:00

He was wearing a small trenchcoat and looked a bit like a pint sized Robert Redford, with a clichéd shock of blond hair and an open and engaging impish face.But his shoes! His shoes were black, patent-leather-shiny treads with sharply pointed toes and impossibly long. At least a half size again and rising slightly at the bow like those pixie shoes we all imagine those creatures wear. He was with two friends and they flagged down the Drug Arm bus. We stopped and chatted for a while. They were sober and were simply walking around this beach village because they had nothing to do. They were smartly dressed, fashionably so. His impish grin and self confidence was engaging and we found ourselves talking about school plans (for exclusive private schools), parents and politics. He was in Year 9 and his two friends in Year 12. Articulate. Informed. Aware. Opinionated. Self assured and self contained. Headed home with friends to watch DVDs.

He had a number one haircut and a blue-yellow bruised cheek. Two beaches south. Hailed us as well but for another reason. Curt. Aggressive but not offensive. Lived with his mum in a one room flat. Dad in a one room flat on the other side of the city. Down from the country, thin, hunched against the cold - he was made of high tensile fencing wire. Sharp. Glittering eyes. In our faces, f**king this and f**king that. Mainly cursing “f**king gronks” who had gotten two 14 year olds drunk, stolen their handbags and phones and left them on the beach at midnight when it was snowing in the mountains (i.e. it was cold out).He did not know the girls but had stumbled over them when he came down to the beach with his friend for a smoke. He called an ambulance which arrived, handed out a couple of blankets and left telling him they were in no danger. He was furious at that. All of fifteen or sixteen this firebrand Samaritan, and his moral outrage, with nothing to offer except his compassion, had no intention of leaving the girls on their own least some arrive and molest them. Stomping about in his tight T-shirt angry at the world, at the girls, gronks, his mum, ambulance wankers, himself. And us – we had to leave as well

Pickled Eel Interviewed

2007-10-10T23:22:00.001+10:00

Eric over at Travel Blogs asked me a few questions recently - they are listed below. He posted my replies up on his quality Travel Blog site which he has managed to built into a rather good travel blog in a short period of time.

The questions were:

Pickled eel... Is that a delicacy you'd recommend?

You seem to travel quite extensively for work. Do you think this kind of business-related travel is an enjoyable way to travel? Or does the "work" factor diminish the enjoyment somewhat?

Since you spend so much time on the road for work, what does a holiday look like for you? Does it still involve travel, or do you prefer to stick closer to home?

You have been to places like Iraq and Jordan, which many people would consider too dangerous to travel around. Have you ever said no to travelling somewhere because you considered it too dangerous?

Do you think the risk-factor actually adds to the appeal of travelling to dangerous places?

Once this business trip to the Middle East is over, what's next? Any big trips on the horizon?

The responses are at Travel Blog - but take the time to have a look around the rest of his site. There are some interesting characters there traveling some interesting trails.

Post Iraq Muse - An Introspective

2007-10-09T22:33:00.000+10:00

The muse have fled, or so it would seem. Best I have been able to do these last ten days is drag out an old journal entry from the Solomons! I drove from the airport directly to work and had half a day at the desk before I headed home before I fell asleep in the office. And as I did so, through newly sprung maples and watching sulphur crested cockatoos playing in the wires near home I thought how safe and boring it all was. I thought I would still have insights and things to say about the place but by the time I resurfaced a week later from Board meetings and other distractions I discovered the stimulation of the place had been fuel to my muse and now I regret constraining myself to an entry a day. If that environment was stimulating to the muse then this environment is enervating, something I had not really appreciated before. Sure, the alertness and "liveness" I felt in Baghdad revisited previous jobs in edgy places that I have enjoyed in the past. But I had not appreciated the impact the environment has on my creativity or on the desire to pry into what makes things and people tick. I could talk about the sound of news choppers here and all that is trite and mundane when those sort of comparative exercises are worked through but I suspect they would be seen for the contrived efforts they could only be. Perhaps rather a note here that I have some images seared into my mind as the visit recedes into history. The face of a driver of an old Datsun as we passed him on the road out of Baghdad - eyes reflecting the shrieking silent fear of being out there on his own (while I took some consolation in my protective armour and team). A solitary middle aged figure standing in front of his empty shop, gazing at us as we swooshed past. The faces and poses of men standing outside their cars with their hands up - just in case. Indolent soldiers on the street behind their anti aircraft cannons. Three men standing by the Tigris with nothing to do. Watching us closely and our own security people getting edgy under the idle scrutiny. Old women chatting in front of blasted shops, as if there was no war happening at all. A woman and her small daughter pulling along the sidewalk as fast as they could go, not looking around for anyone or anything. Other children going to school as if this was a normal street - they and that attitude will be the salvation of Iraq. Rows and rows of blank faces waiting outside the ministry, with no work, no place to go, no home to return to with any dignity. Best to look like you have been at work all day. Smoke on the horizon marking someones ruination. Silent shadows appearing over the Tigris and settling into their nest on the banks of the Tigris, choppers of all types silently returning from whatever they had been up to. Faces. Faces. And more faces. I need to get back there. Soon.

On Ironbottom in a Flatbottom

2007-10-03T21:55:00.000+10:00

The ferry for Malaita was supposed to get away early in the afternoon. But as with anything in the Pacific Islands no one really knew the timetable. We were supposed to do this on Tuesday. Now it is Thursday. Be gone at midday. Get going after dinner. Symptomatic of all this madness is the fact that there is no captain on the bridge. Rather, it is crowded by dozens of people, none of whom look like they should be there. The ramp to the ferry, Ramos, dropped onto the dock at Honiara (which sits on the island of Guadalcanal, famous for the fighting against the Japanese which took place here in WW2) mid afternoon even though the ferry was tied up alongside for a good few hours before hand. Before arriving at the ramp it was tied up at a larger jetty and for that period we took the opportunity to load the hospital beds – manhandled across the rails, down some stairs and into the cargo bay. Departure was hilarious. It was finally dark. Families were squatting all around the vehicle ramp of the ferry. As the ramp finally came up the mad scramble was not from those onshore making a hurried entry but those family seeing off other family who had to vacate very quickly. Some of us are camped on our truck with all its equipment and material just in case someone wants to help themselves. But most people seemed fixed on settling down for the night and getting some rest. We hoped for the same but the heat is ovenlike, the humidity oppressive. The lights are dimmed and the deck here, from bow to stern is thick with huddled groups drinking, playing cards, arguing, singing and chewing betel nut. Even though they are not supposed to. It is all a little incongruous since the ferry, ex Hong Kong, is all still signposted and marked up in Chinese characters. No one seems to care. We slide out on a glassy sea and beat our way across the eastern fringe of Iron Bottom Sound, site of huge Japanese and allied shipping losses during WW2. That the ferry is flatbottomed means nothing until lightning and thunder rip open the night and suddenly everyone is awake and hanging on for dear life. Hot rain lashed us for half an hour and we endured it all in silence. And with not a little concern as we were flung about. Those on top of the truck scrambled down for a less precarious ride. Then just as dramatically it was all over and we were returned to a mirror sea and the flying fish that sailed along in flashes of reflected light beside us. For which I was thankful since in the crash of the storm I offloaded dinner over the side. I normally travel better than that. Hours later the dim, dusky orange light on the horizon, looking like something suited to “Heart of Darkness” marked the slow approach into Auki, on the island of Malaita. Malaita will be home for the next ten days or so but we have a long drive ahead of us after we reach Auki.

April 2003

I am the Captain of the Taxi - To the Tune of Amazing Grace

2007-09-26T08:00:00.000+10:00

There are moments in life that are just laugh out loud crazy. And in this case slightly alarming. The high speed run from Amman to Queen Alia Airport this afternoon was with a very pleasant and energetic driver who told me he was ten years in the Jordanian Army, retiring as a Captain and for the last ten years he has been Captain of the Taxi. All worked out through broken English and he producing photos of his Army time while we wandered from lane to lane at 120km/h in an old Nissan that was having problems with its transmission at that speed. Both hands off the wheel. Sometimes when conversations falter these drivers put music on. Usually Arabic or sultry Lebanese. But in this case, in mid conversation he popped a tape on and shouted with glee – “back in the Army, scotch (sic) teacher”. At which point martial pipes and drums music blared forth and killed our conversation dead. Now he was just a dangerous driver as he conducted with his right hand and kept time by slapping his knee with his left, occasionally shouting “parade ground” interspersed by a droning hum or a tuneless whistle. As we neared our destination, after marching all over the parade ground in his mind for thirty minutes, the swirl of Amazing Grace came on. He slowed up to tell me how Queen Nor used to love Amazing Grace played by the bagpipes and that once she asked him to make sure it was played at a certain ceremony. The details were lost on me. I told him it was a song about how amazing God’s love is to his people even when we misbehave. He shouted “yes”, turned up the volume and struck his imaginary baton in the air as he hit the gas again. In the end it was only a Hummer at a checkpoint that momentarily quelled the pipes, but as we swung into the terminal Mull of Kintyre was winding up. As he left me kerbside I could hear it blasting from his cab, barely drowning out his tuneless whistle. And his baton was still waving. I hope he got back in one piece.

Taxi Story - The Jordanian

2007-09-26T07:55:00.000+10:00

(In Jordan. To and from Jerash). Hello, my name is Ishmael. You want to go to Jerash? At this time of the day? OK, no problem, no problem. You want to visit craft store for souvenirs? You have enough souvenirs. OK. No problem. Did you know Ismael was related to Ibrahim in the Bible? It is an ancient name. I live just outside Amman. Look at all this countryside. In 1967 all these market gardens and this little valley was home to a million Palestinians displaced by the war. You want to look at that castle? OK, we are going to Jerash. No problem. Here (in Jerash) are all sorts of things to look at and I will show you where to start and will wait until you finish looking. Please don’t hurry. I am happy to wait. Did you enjoy that? It is a special place isn’t it? I brought my wife up here two months ago just to remind ourselves how special it is. When you live here you can forget. I have nine children. I am very lucky to have all good children. And very lucky that they can all do the things they want without worrying about their future or living like those Palestinians had to in 1967. The peace with Israel was the best thing that has happened to our country. My two eldest daughters have been in university. One studied biology and is now getting a job. The other is in her first year at university. All my other children are in school. The youngest is twelve. Two of my children were twins. Two of my daughters are married and each has two girls. (Laughing) I am a grandfather. It is a good thing and I like it very much. Do you mind if we pull over and buy fruit? Thankyou. Here, you will like these figs I have bought for you. It is Ramadan and I cannot eat until sundown but please, have these figs. Let me wash them first with this bottled water. And please, take this rhumahn (phon: = pomegranate). My wife will be happy with these eggplants and fruit, because all the family get together at Ramadan and they eat a lot. It is cheaper to buy fruit and vegetables on the side of the road than to buy in Amman. Thankyou for your talking. I have two nieces in Wollongong. One day I will visit Australia too.

Jerash - Roman City

2007-09-24T16:29:00.000+10:00

Since the time I was a kid I wanted to walk around Roman ruins. There was something magical about all those columns. It was a desire fuelled even more when, for a year at high school, we studied Roman art and architecture and columns and plinths, capitals and inscriptions in detail. A year of Ancient (Roman and Greek) history at university kept the interest alive. And in their own quaint way the pictures of Asterisk and Obelisk continued to pique the fascination. Fortuitously I arrived back on a day with all the offices shut and a few hours of sunlight left. I grabbed a taxi driver (so to speak) and directed him to Jerash. No side trips to souvenir shops run by a distant cousin. To Jerash only. No, it’s not too late in the day. Heaps of time. Less talking more driving.

Jerash is a well preserved and partially restored Roman city on the outskirts of Amman. I happily wandered its streets for hours (and the driver seemed content to wait which was very decent of him). Here are the wide colonnaded streets, pavement still cut by chariot and wagon wheels. Here too the little lanes into roofless houses in high density apartment dwelling we would be very comfortable with. Cellars. Temples. Fountains. A hippodrome. Two amphitheatres still in working order and used for performances today. Shopping centres. Churches. An earthquake in 790 AD pretty much ended this city – all those blocks of stone resting on columns must suddenly have looked like a liability when the earth started moving.

But there are other durable pieces of stone work that can only be admired for their creativity and ingenuity. With some of the buildings stripped down you could see how they hung ceilings and floors two or three stories high – with a lot of cantilevering. There is a remarkable dedication in stone to the nymphs, a collection of fountains placed in a wall, fed by water down two kilometres of piping. The piping has gone, the fountains remain. Even the way the stone was dressed was mimicked in Victorian stone masonry 1500 or more years later and you can see the same style of work in London, Sydney, Philadelphia (which incidentally used to be the name by which Amman went by). Those cut pavers, the apartments with their cellars and an old well hint at real people walking around this place. They have an eerie presence still. Most poignant were the fallen stone decorations, on which you can still see the chisel marks of the masons. Nearly 2000 years dead yet his handiwork is still visible. As I was caught by the sight of it lying in the dust of centuries I thought of our yearning for immortality – a universal desire across all time to be able to spend all time crafting what we can do best. How disappointed that mason would be to see his work thrown down like this. Or would he be happy to know we are thinking of him? Happier still no doubt if he was still plying his craft.

970,000 American Casualties. Is Iraq Worth It?

2007-09-24T02:16:00.000+10:00

Naturally even departing Baghdad is extraordinary. How many international airports require you to pull over on the approach road, empty your magazines and then dry-fire your weapons to demonstrate nothing is “live”? No others spring to mind. Then drop your bags on the road outside, in a large concrete revetment while a bomb dog crawls over your gear. Then imagine a third world mess inside - at least in terms of organisation and graft. 8kg underweight (baggage that is) and I am still up for USD25 for excess baggage. But if you want out of here…! I happily paid up. All of that will sort itself out in the end. I am normally a very patient traveller but by the time I got to Jordan and endured my ninth bag check I was feeling very irascible. Even after being dropped off at the aircraft in the Baghdad heat there was a pat down and bag check. You do what you have to do.

To answer the question, the short answer is yes. Not only from a personal business point of view but also from a broader perspective as well. This place is on the mend but there is no denying it has a way to go. And it is on the mend because local Iraqis are resolved to mend it. Be they the occasional and too infrequently met local, the public servants or the young diplomat I met in the queue waiting to check in this morning. He and a few others were off to Rome to do a course. He has high hopes for Iraq and his belief in what was possible was heart warming and encouraging. People like this make the effort worthwhile I think. Interestingly we discussed the convulsions that have been at the root of the building of other nations. Starting with the US – which is “united” at the cost of more than 970,000 of its citizens dead and wounded. Can you imagine that body-count being reported in today’s press? About the same number of Americans killed by each other as perished in WWII. (And as a footnote is it not interesting that the US had a 12 year Reconstruction period after its civil war? We all want Iraqis to sort themselves out in a couple of years!). Japan. France. Even present day Russia. Vietnam. India. South Africa. The Balkan states. If we could forge nations in other ways we could and should. But sometimes it happens in the worst way. We parted with a handshake (when I was called to a spare seat on an earlier flight (not everything that happens in Baghdad is bad!!)) and a controversial observation – he cocked one of his eyebrows at me and wryly noted that none of their Arab brothers were coming to their aid – it was all the Christian states who were helping, and he said Iraq would always remember its friends. This young man has an interesting diplomatic career in front of him to say the least. But it is that freedom of expression that comes with all other freedoms that we all want to see in Iraq. He said something he would not have dared utter five years ago. Now he feels free to voice his views to a stranger. If we can achieve that, without him eventually becoming a casualty for his forwardness, then Iraq’s people are worth it.

Baghdad Rooftop Reflection - with some help from the Frogs

2007-09-23T17:25:00.000+10:00

At about 11pm a half moon hangs in the sky. I’m sitting on a flat roof reclining in a dusty poolside recliner (though there is no pool), in a hot breeze. Just listening and watching. It is still but not quiet. This city does not sleep. But it is a softer city in this dusky light. Frogs among the eucalypts rhythm their quiet and indolent blues. Distant mosques broadcast their calls and prayers in a melodic tone that is beguiling, a soft chorus that hints at more civil and ordered things. Of better things. The normal city background rumble of traffic adds its background hum. Flares drift down through the trees. Silent, and betraying an unheard and unseen helicopter. Occasionally the drone of piston engines carefully buzzing their surveillance, also unseen. Drifting in and out of the peaceful stillness. Which is broken every now and then by Pumas or Blackhawks thundering in pairs over the house, roaring in then fading out swiftly. Leaving us again to the mullahs and the frogs. A civil airliner flashes its strobes as it lazes its line north, unlike the unseen military jets that occasionally bore through the sky. In and out much more quickly. I am out of here tomorrow and I find myself up here in a reflective mood. There is nothing like being here, if only briefly, to appreciate just how critical the momentum needs to be maintained in getting this place on its feet. It can be done, and it is a work well underway. There are moments when you worry about the place, as we did this afternoon when four or five “booms” carried to us on the wind. Initially we thought they were artillery but eventually decided they were bombs. Unlike hearing them in the news, these carry a clear personal message – that someone has been hurt, and for no reason. Somehow those blasts now seem a lifetime ago as I sit up here under the moonlight and soak up the evening. The frogs are now the constant background theme, far better than the murderous noises heard earlier and throughout this visit. I am hopeful that with some perseverance Malik and others like him will soon be able to relax and get back to their rooftops in the evening, the “booms” being only a bad memory from a distant era. I certainly pray so.

A Lizard Kills a Stereotype

2007-09-21T17:08:00.000+10:00

Shouts and commands from behind a walled compound yesterday had me carefully checking over the roof balustrade. It all sounded a bit urgent and well, commando-ish. The wall encloses a large park like area and through the trees I could see AK47 armed, headband wrapped men dashing forward and heading our way. I had to decide whether this was a training exercise or whether I should be thinking about making myself scarce. Just at the point I was thinking I needed to scamper someone called a drink break. Phew.

On another boundary a short time later the complete antithesis (there is a word for CT) with squeals of terror mixed with laughter getting my attention. That had me intrigued and when I checked it out I could barely contain my own laughter. There has been a lot of construction work next door and the place has been busy with burly, deeply tanned men, most of the them large and muscular, pouring concrete, shaping steel and sweating their hearts out in the sun. The site is now largely done and painters have been in. These blue singleted, bearded, tough men were squealing like 6 year old school girls (that stereotype remains) as they tried to get out of the way of a lizard. One of the men had managed to catch the reptile and was chasing his colleagues with it. They were all flapping their hands in horror, squealing and trying to get to vantage points such as truck decks or cabs. Any stereotype of construction workers, Arab or otherwise vanished in a heartbeat. And at the end the lizard was carefully let down in a shady pool of water, no doubt terrorised by his adventure with these guys. In a land of indiscriminate death it was nice to see the lizard get off lightly.

Another Blogging Traffic Tool - Maybe Worth A Look

2007-09-21T15:46:00.000+10:00

I don't normally have the patience to bother messing around with the tools that supposedly promote, expose, advertise or otherwise make claims to broaden the readership of this blog. On the other hand something that claims to do all those things without me doing much more than inserting some html is worth at least a shot. And for no cost. Click here to be taken to Blogrush and a video that explains it better than I can and in less time than I could.

("Mandela's") Answer for Iraq

2007-09-21T01:40:00.000+10:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? And who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people wont feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to be the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others."

Nelson Mandela, Inaugural speech 1994

Postscript: 22 Sep. Always check and double check your sources. When I finally got to check Nelson's addresses here and here seems these words were not there. A further check suggests they should be attributed to Marianne Williamson from a volume called "A Return to Love." (Kind of ironic since I would not ordinarily cite someone writing in this genre.) But then I have not been able to check that source either. I'll leave the words here since they caught my ear when thinking about Baghdad and still have relevance, regardless of author.

An Obscenity We Don’t See or Feel – Is Still an Obscenity

2007-09-19T17:13:00.000+10:00

I was going to leave off writing about Baghdad for a spell – it becomes a bit self absorbing after a while. Then this morning a bomb rattled the windows. As I got to the roof only seconds later to get a fix on the location a second one went off. The smoke from the first was starting to disperse in the stiff breeze but soon the smoke from the second was roiling up. Ten minutes later the whole sky was smudged by it. My point of reference is the GBU10s and GBU12s, dropped onto air force weapons ranges. As I went out onto the roof I thought to myself “that felt like a GBU12” – 500lb of “bang”. In the event I don’t think there was that much explosive but it was 5km away and still rattled the windows.

It is a sobering thing to watch as you realise you are witness to someone’s day being ruined – all for nothing as Malik would say. But it is sobering for other reasons as well. The delight at watching aircraft fly around now becomes a guilty sin. Being on the edge and feeling alive is now at someone else’s expense. At the expense of real people I have met in the street. And you feel equal measures guilty and equal measures angry for what the incident becomes to everyone else – meaningless or irrelevant. A non event. A tree falling in the forest unheard. The booming crump and the shuddering glass never makes it to most of the on-line papers around the world. Heck, it barely makes the coverage of those carrying Iraq news. The BBC carries a small article. I confess I am surprised that only 7 people are killed, 20 are wounded. The blast felt bigger than that. People bombed lining up at the hospital to identify dead relatives. Obscene, cowardly, diabolical. I am offended by that. But also by the normalcy such a “small” blast has become. By the fact that no one else in town turns their head (no doubt relieved they were not incidental to its maw). I am offended for these victims that the press got it wrong – there were two blasts. And the lack of human touch in the press – who is that man, and what is his story? His pain? And what are we doing about it? The memorial stain of smoke over the sky is an obscenity as well, in part for its brevity. Who of us in our own cities would tolerate a stain like that? No, I thought not. But here it has become part of the grist of life and barely stirs a ripple. An inexplicable sadness for that knots my stomach for the day. I don’t know what else to say.

My Name is Malik and I Live in Baghdad

2007-09-18T19:50:00.000+10:00

My name is Malik and I drive to work each day in Baghdad. I leave my house in the suburbs. There are palms and olive trees, and a small patch of grass outside my house. The house is walled in like many houses in the Middle East. But I have grown up in a fenced and gated community all my life. It is hard to get out of the habit but right now it is best not to drop my guard. I am careful to look up and down the street as I leave to see that everything is normal. I drive an old Datsun, with dented panels, some shrapnel holes in the trunk and three bullet holes in the passenger door. The windscreen is damaged where a rock hit it, and it is running retread tyres. I had not seen them here when Saddam was around but these days getting parts for cars is hard and I have to use what I get. The steering is wobbly but I can’t afford to get it fixed. I get nervous driving along the street when we get to a checkpoint. All the traffic banks up. Anything can happen here. Suddenly a convoy of armoured Fords, probably carrying a VIP, needs to cut through the traffic. An American soldier indicates what he wants me to do by throwing his rifle into his shoulder, leaning forward and pointing at me. I stop. He keeps pointing. I back up. There are hundreds of cars behind me. I can go no further. I hope he does not shoot. People in cars around me get out and put their hands up. Just in case. They take no chances with the American. He is a young man. Young men with guns are more dangerous than old men with guns. You don't see many old men with guns. The Fords pass and we are allowed to creep forward. I do not look at the American in his armour and wrap around shades. He looks past me at all the other cars. I drive past Iraqi police cars and SUVs. Some of them have ZSU23-2s mounted on them. I was in the Army but Bremmer sacked me along with all my buddies and I have no money. But I recognise all this equipment. Some of it ex military no doubt. My goodness, Russian twin 23mm cannon, designed to shoot down aircraft. To control traffic? If they hit my car retreads will be the least of my worries. Lots of police with all sorts of machine guns and made up armoured cars. In Somalia the US military called them “technicals” – SUVs with a 50cal or something on the back. What are they pointed at? What are they protecting? I have no idea. I drive on and past a locked down Bradley. It looks dormant but who knows who is in there and what they are watching. I get past all that checkpoint stuff and drive through a roundabout with lots of traffic. That makes me nervous too. Things go bang here. I watch another collection of Chevy’s take no chances and block off the traffic so their central vehicles can race through. It is efficient. But the locals here are left to their own devices if something goes bang. I was in the Army but now I sell shirts on the edge of the round about. I cannot afford glass in the windows and have to rely on a steel grill to keep things secure at night. Shops on either side of me are the same.Open, and with only simple goods to sell. No one parks in front of my store. But few want to stop anyway. Or walk past. Everyone is in a hurry to go somewhere else. Stopping can be fatal. The shirts are all carefully stacked in their plastic boxes. At the beginning of each day I wipe all the sand and dust off the plastic. With no glass in the window I do not bother running the airconditioner, although even if I did I have no idea how I could pay for it. I sweep the footpath clean and greet old Mahrus next door. He is an old man and respected around here. He stands in the doorway of his shop. But it is empty. So what else can he do? I don’t know his story except he lost family in Saddam’s time and like all families here now he has lost even more loved ones in the last three years. They say there is no family untouched by the recent madness. It is criminal, not religious. We are Sunni and Shia married in the same house for years. Lots of Iraqis live together like that. Old Mahrus comes down here every day and stands in his doorway and watches the world turn on the roundabout in front of him. I say hello and he smiles at me from under his grey beard and moustache and Kurdish style headgear. His name means “protected by God”. Maybe that is why he keeps smiling. I wish we could fix up the front of our shops. All the cement rendering has been blasted off and the bricks look shabby. One day perhaps. At least nothing has gone bang here for a while. Maybe this period of quiet will last. They are talking about dropping the curfew. That will help. Or will it? People die in the night. For no reason except they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like my neighbour who was putting his rubbish out. Was shot in the head and his body dumped. No one ever found him - except a hospital kept a record of his body when it was found 13 days later. But they don’t know where he is buried. Put the rubbish out and die. For no reason. No reason. Die for a cause, yes?! But these deaths are for no reason, like our war with Iran. No reason. Family had no idea where he was. It is Ramadan. I drive home early and I am very careful near the checkpoint again. I move over to let an American tank go past. But if I stop they might think I have a bomb. I keep rolling slowly, hoping he will not crunch me into the concrete wall on the side of the road. I try not to look nervous. I know the soldier on this corner and he waves me though with a nod. The Americans drive past and look somewhere else. I carefully drive home and pull up to the house. I look up and down the street but everything seems normal so I get out and open the gate before driving in and locking myself in. No one bought any shirts today. Maybe tomorrow will be a little better. If I am alive that will be a good start.

(An invention based on an amalgam of things and people seen, and conversations with locals in the last week. I could fill 10,000 words like this - Baghdad is a seething story and everyone has a tale to tell.)

Baghdad Layers

2007-09-18T00:16:00.000+10:00

I spent an hour on the roof this afternoon reading Duiker’s “Ho Chi Minh” until the sweat and dust got too much. But its good to get out of the room. The Apaches were tooling around again. They don’t do laps here for practise so I was tuned in to what else might be going on. As with the previous day their presence coincided with military ground units moving around (you hear turbines whining and roaring, tracks rumbling or wheels whirring on the asphalt and sandy coloured camouflage flashing through the palms) and with Blackhawks flying out of a nearby base. Perhaps all of them watching over a VIP moving between various US bases. But other things catch your eye up here as well. A plump dove sits on a neighbouring roof. Kids bikes lean against a wall around the corner. A white blimp sits high in the sky while yesterday even further up I surprised myself by finding a Predator flying lazy, silent circles. I happened to be watching a chopper then caught the massive drone in view immediately behind at 20,000 feet or so. You could stare at the sky all day and never see those. Which is the idea of course. As you take all that in and look across the perfectly serene and settled suburbs, hear the kids shouting as they play and fight you are struck by just how many layers there are to this place. Starting at the top - unseen but always heard - the fast jets boring holes in the sandy blue sky, a Predator team somewhere doing remote reconnaissance for something. Choppers and a blimp lower down, doing their thing. None of which are necessarily connected by their missions by the way. Lower again and across the roof tops aerials mark homes and unseen TVs and living rooms and squabbles over the remote control. Smoke lifts and curls in lazy grey off the gas burning flue at the refinery just over the river and everywhere Iraqi flags snap away in the hot wind. Under those flags public servants beaver away like public servants do or don’t anywhere around the world. Apartments and high rise buildings stretch away to the horizon, interspersed with TV towers, and domes of mosques. And a surprising amount of foliage. And under my feet kids play, puppies yelp, a lizard scampers and a dove nods off in the heat. Layers on layers, most not connected and the lowermost ones being those you pray become the settled norm here one day.

On the Lighter Side

2007-09-17T02:13:00.000+10:00

Part of the preparation for visiting a place like this is to have a “Run Away Quick” bag. More colloquially known as the F^%* off Quick Bag in another organisation I once worked for. Or perhaps simply a “Grab Bag”. Its not a bad habit to have when you are travelling. Have all the survival essentials in one little bag along with your passport and tickets in case you have to make a run for it. Leave the suitcase and souvineers behind for the new ruling junta and keep the essential stuff.

I thought I would share some of the essentials to surviving in Iraq – which is actually a very civilised place in which to survive. For me at least. A snapshot of the workdesk reveals some critical items – and tells some of the story of my stay.

Green Numerals First.

1. Diary. What was I doing here again? Good to have a note here to remind yourself. Actually a boiled down version of the RAQB – every contact, meeting, appointment, timetable, itinerary all in one document. Sachet of cash as well. If worst comes to worse the diary, passport, tickets and wallet are all I need. Clothes probably help too.

2. Lamp. Made in China. Chinese instructions still pasted across it. Careful of the lead, one of the lads gave himself an electric shock on one. Room is dim and cool, to combat that 43 degrees out there. So a light becomes important.

3. Indonesian betatine – past its use by date but still stings like crazy. Useful if a limb is lost.

4. Pepsi. Sits side by side with that other cola drink in the fridge. Important part of the Dubai Tea Formula. See “8” below.

5. Movie. Black market version but keeps Hussein in his little store in food and water. I have not seen a reproduction as bad as this in twenty years – filmed in a theatre, so the audience contributed to this version as well. It’s taken me four sittings so far and I have not yet finished it – which indicates how bad it is. Good therapy though.

6. Dental Floss. My new South African friend hands out biltong which he has made himself. Its actually very good. But you need floss for three days after to dig the last of it out from your teeth. This is a multicultural environment in more than one way.

7. Would hate to leave it but would if I had to. But new RAQB designed to include this. I no longer travel with a separate laptop case.

8. My Saudi friends introduced me to this stuff as Dubai Tea. Regardless of brand, age, malt, it is all Dubai Tea. As in, “I think I will nick over the border this weekend for some Dubai Tea.”

9. Pocket New Testament. Food for the soul and balm for the heart.

10. Pear Soap. And something for the body!! Advantage – cake dries very quickly (almost instantly) after use and can be thrown into bag without leaving soapy slime everywhere. Sorry, nothing here about whether it is good for your skin or not. I still have a baby soft bum after 45 years anyway so don't need any special soap.

1. Multivitamins –Executive Stress formula. Need that around here? Am convinced the stress stuff is good marketing baloney but the multivitamins are not a bad idea when you are on the road. Sometimes (most times) local menus need supplementing.

2. AA Batteries. Longest life ones you can find. Nothing worse than the lens retracting into the camera as a battery dies just as the shot of a life time pulls into view. Be careful of AA’s loose with coins in pocket – nearly started a fire once. They were Beijing back lane AA’s which lasted for 3 photos but had enough zap to start cooking me. I think they were radioactive. My theory and I am sticking to it.

3. Listerine. Helps with process at 6 above.

4. It is a civilised place after all, so mixing Green 8 with Green 4 in the can is not the done thing. Use the mug. Never wash it out of course, we are not THAT civilised.

5. There is a tray of 24 of these at my feet, all being fed into the fridge where they have a very short time to cool – I am going through 4-6 of these a day.

6. Passport with wallet (out of sight) - with exit visa stamped and signed. Part of the RAQB but out on the desk since I need it on a daily basis to get around this place.

There is Nothing Like Death to Make you Feel Alive

2007-09-16T16:57:00.000+10:00

What is it about travelling in India that makes it so attractive? The red forts? The Taj? The madness? The suburban cricket? All of those things, to be sure. But to my own way of thinking it has something to do with the general precariousness of life. That in itself is not the attractive thing. But that precariousness means Indians, as a general rule, live life with a fervour, passion and intensity you rarely find anywhere else. They grasp it with both hands and run hard with it. You can see the dirt and squalor. Or you can look through all that and see the person living life to the best of their ability in those conditions. With a clean shirt, hair combed, a quick smile and not a cent to his name. Proud and decent. Polite and engaging. There is a zest and vigour and animation that is wholly captivating.

I am not going to pretend the same applies in Iraq. Perhaps not yet. But there is something about this place that has the same appealing ingredients. Two things help highlight it after a week here. The first is the local help. The cooks and cleaners come in from the Red Zone and in their general joy of life (manifest in a dozen different ways, including a puppy washing session) it is hard to view them as anything except laid back and friendly neighbours. Well, they are but they are neighbours from a few kilometres away who, with their families, are living on the edge, every day. Secondly, Fuzzyjefe reminded me of a truism today – that through the sanitising of the press we forget there are real people that create those headlines (comments in a previous post). This afternoon, while on the roof watching Apache helicopters tool around the sky a loud concussive crump happened off to the west. Nothing seen but it’s a distinctive sound that makes you pause for a moment and wonder who has just had their day ruined. In the news later we see a suicide bomber has killed 8 at a police post. Somehow the sound of the bomb gives a real dimension to the headlines. Real people like our cooks and cleaners and groundsman died this afternoon, making me pause, and generating headlines we don’t really take too much heed of. But still these people hang on and make the most of what they have. They create a vibe that is infectious and is a very positive feature in a place like this. Ironically, thanks to its people, it is a place that makes you feel very much alive.

It Is all A Matter of Perspective

2007-09-16T02:38:00.000+10:00

People wonder “why on earth Iraq?” The almost universal and consistent response to the idea that I was travelling here was disbelief. The only exception was my family I think – seems that they are pretty used to bizarre destinations. Would you travel to Baghdad? Assuming you had a reasonably legitimate reason to do so of course. Here are a couple of test questions/scenarios. And the answers lie more in the way your personality is wired and less to do with the situation here on the ground. Scenario the first: the security company briefs you on the security measures taken to get you from the airport to the city, reputedly the most lethal 15km stretch of road in the world. The brief contains all the threats – as it should. Then there is an overview of the type of vehicle in which you will travel, the procedures followed if ambushed, the nature of the weapons carried and the fact you will be suited up with armour before departing the airport. It’s a more detailed brief but you get the idea. Still want to travel? Scenario the second: the same company explains the security of the lodgings you will have. They are proud of the fact that a 120mm only “burned the paint off the roof.” It’s a very safe house. Actually, as you can see from the photo there was a bit more than scorched paint. (Impacted behind the railing, shrapnel penetrating the rails and scoring the walls. And no, I am not implying it was fired by MNF troops - that is simply a convenient DoD image showing the sort of device used). But again, you get the idea. Still want to travel? Without dragging the whole thing out consider the second scenario – with only one exception, those who knew about this were appalled that a 120mm round could still land in the International Zone, every reason to their way of thinking to never travel here. On the other hand I was very encouraged by the fact that it did not penetrate the roof – made me all the more determined to stay there. And encouraged rather than deterred my travel. Like I said, it is all a matter of perspective.

An IED Survivor

2007-09-14T21:22:00.000+10:00

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

Sir Winston Churchill

In the euphemistic, sanitised language that are acronyms IED stands for Improvised Explosive Device. There are a family of derivatives such as VBIED - vehicle borne IED. Already in my stay here various IEDs have rattled the windows and woken me up. No one seems to pay them any attention. But behind IED (we don't say "bomb") is a nastiness never conveyed by those letters. With an emphasis on "improvised" these devices can include bunker busting heavy munitions rigged to take out your family car, or military vehicle, or unprotected shoppers in a market.

Last night I spent a BBQ dinner (yes, those things happen here) with a most remarkable man. From South Asia. Quiet, softly spoken with that lovely singsong lilt that goes with that part of the world, and with an open, kindly face. The cricket is being televised from South Africa so he was a little distracted at the start of the evening by the current game. Not so unusual for someone from South Asia. What was unusual was his thoroughly disarming and frank story about recently surviving a massive IED that hit his vehicle and killed all his fellow travellers and injured him. It was an appalling incident and experience. Not only were these fellow travellers but one was a close friend and another a guard assigned for his protection. (Actually if I got the story right these two were the one and the same). He walked away from the vehicle as the sole survivor, yet the blast was so comprehensive there was nothing remaining by which the others could be identified. I'll spare you the gory details but you can imagine what he was covered in. Burnt, full of shrapnel, covered in gore, he walked away. He was airlifted out of the country for repairs and after being stitched up and given extensive counselling he is back in the saddle. Last night he spoke quietly about the experience. I applauded his preparedness to talk about it, not something we blokes do very well. He is something of a champion among his colleagues (many of them with remarkable SF backgrounds and plenty to be proud of in their own right) - they are in awe of what he walked away from. His shy smile, honesty, calmness, twinkling eyes betraying a vibrant character underneath somewhere, and matter of fact approach to everything has their respect as well I hope - it certainly earned mine. And that he was taking the philosophical approach that every day things just keep getting better only spoke of a resilience that even that old bulldog Churchill would have applauded. I am all the better for having met this man, a fortunate encounter and complete bonus on this trip. Far better than any tourist icon or places you go are the characters you meet.

An Evening in Baghdad

2007-09-13T20:40:00.000+10:00

A dog across the road barks and gets our attention. We wander across the roof top and gaze down into the dark to see what has distracted it. Nothing appears straight away but then a modified Ford pickup truck drives though. Modified with a gun turret mounted on its chassis. A soldier sits in the turret swinging his machine gun from side to side. Three others laugh and chat in the open back as they push on through the street. Like guards in any environment they are booted and spurred but clearly bored and settled into a routine. Even the dog barking had not got the attention of our own guards - they are in their own routine too. Last night we had to draw the guard’s attention to a car load of young men that had just done the third lap past our front door. Once out on the roof the night captivates us and we enjoyed the fresh warmth of the breeze. Overhead there is the constant grumble from high altitude aircraft. I have no idea if the USAF maintains some sort of CAP here but usually there are no lights to give away the location of aircraft. The constant sound of jets suggest someone up there is going the same boring routine as the guards at the gate are doing down here. After all there is no Iraq Air Force to combat – at best they will get is ground support mission. For the first time tonight I catch a military jet (no strobes) with lights on (unusual) streaking north at high speed, a few minutes later followed by a similar profile boring east. Picking up the direction of helicopters is not easy as their vibrations echo off each wall and make echo location damn hard. And of course they fly without lights so you have to be constantly guessing where they are. Soon a shadow creeps in over the Tigris and drops into the suburbs somewhere, vanishing among the buildings. It’s nowhere near the hospital so perhaps the SF lads are out and about tonight doing goodness knows what. The shadow stays hidden and silent for five minutes before the sound of its blades beats the air again and you can hear it coming towards you. You can’t see it until it has gone past and the city lights, such as they are, pick up its fast moving, light coloured belly. It is visible for seconds then gone. Its rotors die out seconds later and you peer into the haze wondering if you imagined it all. The dog across the road gives a nervous yap in your direction and you realise all your peering into the sky, and rotating on the spot to follow this or that aircraft or helicopter track is making it nervous – a guard from another premises has wandered over and is peering up at the roof to try and see what is going on. Time for bed.

Guns and Dogs, Dogs and Guns

2007-09-12T19:38:00.000+10:00

They do seem to go together. Certainly in my boyhood experience, which was an overwhelming positive chapter, guns went with dogs. Specifically they went together up at David Paton’s place where dogs seemed to be everywhere. A trip in the truck was one taken with any number of pillion passengers, their claws digging into your legs as they tried to get their noses past each other and out the window – assuming you were riding with them in the cab. Most often you were jolting along with a dozen of them on the truck deck or tray, fighting them for a place at the cabin guard and rail. A motorbike ride was invariably made with dogs on the petrol tank or panting alongside. I have especially fond memories of all the puppies that scrambled around the yard each year when it was that time. It seemed like dozens and dozens of them, all blue eyed and squealing and yipping their insistence for attention. Not all would survive the cull but some were sent to neighbours and friends and the select few would later learn to round up sheep, nip cattle along but most importantly hunt out pigs, launch after possums and dig out rabbits. We would saunter along behind with a rifle, just in case they needed a hand. It is a blissful memory, no doubt getting better with age.

Here puppies are having the same mellowing affect. I took this photo after being downtown. A couple of Abrams (main battle tanks) pulled over for a break in the shade. Four Australian LAVs went speeding past. I have lost count of the number of HUMVEEs that have grumbled past. It's all fascinating stuff but not “normal”. Off the main road we pull into our house and here are six puppies having their lunch. They are being watched over by a very friendly, likable Iraq guard, kitted up in an armoured vest and wearing his folding stock AK-47 machine gun casually slung across his chest. He has taught me the Arabic word for puppy. He has taken a liking to these animals and is constantly feeding them, getting them water and doing all the things Mum should be doing. She, no doubt thankful, is lying in the shade watching the surrogacy from a distance. Most times she barely lifts her head though her eyes are not closed when her pups are out. Guns and dogs. With the puppies around you forget for a moment that so many guns are around, even on the friendly guard, none of which are intended for pigs or rabbits. Regrettable really.

Saddam's Dias - Shifting and Fleeting

2007-09-11T20:33:00.000+10:00

Every now and then we do a quick run down to the "shops" if only to get out of the house to stop from going stir crazy. On the way you drive past those crossed swords. And if you want to run the gauntlet of contractors and their armoured vehicles and the military parked in front of the swords you can drive in and wander around the grandstand that Saddam made his own, after his own peculiar fashion. Incidentally the "speed hump" directly under the swords is comprised of dozens of helmets set in concrete. I assume they are the same as those clustered at each sword grip, once worn by Iranian soldiers. Parading soldiers and military vehicles would have once paraded over these helmets, an appropriate gesture in the minds of Saddam and his friends I guess. Apart from the single vehicle here no one pays the place any attention. Its been vandalised. It's a hot and bleak and sterile place. None of the locals sit around in any of the shade, unlike the grounds of the tomb of the unknown warrior just down the road. It is as if they spurn it on purpose. For here he used to stand, their very own Ozymandias daring them and the rest of us to defy him. "Look on my works ye mighty and despair." Now we look and no, we don't despair. Now the place echoes to his ghost and people will have none of it except those like me who briefly visit and wonder at how fleeting our claims on this life can be. That is about as much despair as he invokes in us right now. Boundless and bare the sands do indeed stretch far away. Just as well when you consider his legacy to this place.

Apache Flares and Casevacs

2007-09-10T22:54:00.000+10:00

The wind is still hot today but it has swung in from another direction and the dust has been pushed away overnight. The sky is blue and clear though everything is still covered in dust. From the roof I watched through the nodding fronds of a date palm as an Apache helicopter pirouetted through the sky in a seeming lazy series of swinging manoeuvres, flares drawing attention to themselves as they drift to the ground in a glory moment of intense white light. It is not too far up the river but these helicopters are surprisingly quiet if they are not right on top of you, so the whole tableau is played out in silence.

Unlike last night when I had a few drinks and a bite to eat at a BBQ in a compound not too far from a hospital. Generations on from MASH but with the same intent in mind, red cross bearing helicopters flew in to the hospital landing pad in pairs. A number of times. Roaring and whining, thrashing and beating the air with a serious thrubbing which bounced off the concrete walls and echoed off neighbouring houses. And later through the night we could hear them steadily bearing in - we assumed with casualties. It is a sobering reminder that for all that is partly normal here there is so much which is not.

Dante's Inferno - with Choppers Thrown In

2007-09-09T18:10:00.000+10:00

The dust storm blows in and obscures the horizon, limited as it is. The eucalypts, quite pervasive here, are dusted in the fine desert sand that drops over everything with the consistency of talc. The lemon trees in the garden are coated with it and the date palm fronds seem to sag a little lower to the ground for it. The light remains intense and the oven hot wind (it is 43 degrees out there) snaps the flags vaguely visible through the trees on the convention centre. Dust, heat, light – only a few more ingredients and Dante would feel right at home here. A pair of Blackhawks, dim through the dust, cut a low, fast, level and silent line as they head off over the Tigris and vanish behind the Sheraton. We speed up the river bank and cut back into the burbs, moving quickly least anyone draw a bead on us. Except for that slightly surreal expectation the Tigris is a serene place. It is of course a setting marred by the knowledge that here, among the reeds, the Iraqi police have retrieved hundreds of executed civilians, victims of sectarian violence barely imaginable to the rest of us. Though perhaps our experience in the Balkans and Africa has inured us to this sort of slaughter. Suddenly a pair of Defenders beat up the air above us and start circling, doing a few laps before flashing off. Another pair of Blackhawks smack and throb over the top of us at high speed and vanish in a turbowhine swirl of dust, while another couple work their way across town a little more slowly. Something is happening somewhere to get them all lathered up like this. Only I seem to have had my attention drawn by the choppers. The locals never look up and continue about their daily chores.

Iraq's Ozymandias

2007-09-08T17:19:00.000+10:00

After they gained their independence from Britain some in India wanted to remove from sight any reminders of the British rule. So a park was created, just outside Delhi, in which could be placed every statue commemorating a British character. Each city was asked to pull down their statues and to send them to this park where they would be accessible to any who wished to gaze on them. Given some of the Indians had good reason to feel aggrieved at their treatment by the British it was an understandable plan. Fortunately those with a broader sense of history and destiny declined, arguing that these were, for better or worse, part of India's history and the statues would stay where they are. Can you imagine Mumbai without Queen Victoria? It just would not be right. As a result, only a handful of statues ended up at Coronation Park.

In Baghdad there was a very understandable enthusiasm to tear down the statues Saddam had built for himself. While there are numerous other monuments that are symbols of that regime (Crossed Swords being one) the removal of the statues will present a gap in their history. If only as a useful reminder of what not to return to. These couple of statues were torn down and are now tucked away out of sight. In one case badly damaged. No one loved the man, but hopefully there will be a time when people can come and wonder at these as part of their history. Shelly's Ozymandias comes to mind.

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away

What is "Normal" in Baghdad?

2007-09-07T20:08:00.000+10:00

This, as everyone knows, is a fortified city. In every sense. In the Green Zone, or International Zone as it is now being called, no one takes any chances and a drive down a side street through the suburbs is a drive through canyons of concrete walls, check points and roadblocks. Everyone is on a relaxed "edginess" as passes are examined, destinations questioned and faces checked against photos. Yet at the same time there are moments of normalcy that are startling. And encouraging. Down from the new US Embassy compound (a huge complex) a blond Caucasian woman wanders along the street, handbag over her shoulder. Cranes work on lifting cement onto the top of the new court complex (some of which was repaired for the trial of Saddam) and in the distance, outside the IZ and in the so called Red Zone, cranes are working on new buildings. Next to where I am camped a team of good natured Iraqis work on a building site, starting from scratch. They could be any blue singlet gang from any building site in Australia - you don't need to understand Arabic to know these guys are joshing each other as they work. Men wait at a bus stop for the bus, just down from a main IZ entry check point where a low loader has just brought in some Hummers and there are more armoured vehicles than soft skinned ones. I have not seen a bus yet but they clearly expecting one. A young Iraqi man poses in front of a Saddam era statue and has his photo taken by his friend. To complete my picture I stood in line at immigration yesterday with a young couple and a baby about two months old. They had among their baggage a pile of baby toys for the cot. They were standing among a group of visitors who were predominantly boot shod, cargo pant and T-shirt clad ex military types heading in to do their thing. The couple with their sleeping baby were a poignant signal that this is what everyone here is about - trying to create an environment that allows this sort of normalcy that we all take for granted. Who doesn't want the freedom to be able to fly in and out of your own country and to buy toys for your kids? That these people need help getting back to that point is a crucial issue that is hard to appreciate outside of this country. Miranda Devine addressed this point in part rather nicely in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. Visiting here is one way to see what is possible and how important it is that the job is completed properly - else "normal" becomes fear and destruction, not bus stops, a safe wander up the street, workmates and kid's toys. (But which ever way you look at it there is nothing normal about those Crossed Swords).

Baghdad Short Finals

2007-09-06T21:20:00.000+10:00

I asked for a window seat (am always keen to see where I am going, or have something other than my neighbour to lean on if the snoring starts). And of course I end up with the most heavily scratched, scored and sandblasted semi opaque window I have seen in a long time. At least since I was in India methinks. I made the airport and checked in, worried less about what might be ahead and more about what was happening inside - I had been up all night with Montezuma's Revenge and I suspect that goat head rice dish had something to do with it. Fortunately no embarrassments on the plane. I now have everything squared away and am going to try and catch up on the sleep handed over to Montezuma.

Despite the window here is a photo of us on an understandable "short finals" profile into the Baghdad International Airport. For all the obvious reasons there are a couple of tight turning spirals down to the ground from what looked like about 10-12,000', the turns being carried out directly over the airport - hence this grubby view.

6 September 2007

Make your Money and Run, Boy

2007-09-06T14:58:00.000+10:00

Queen Alia International Airport, Jordan

It is a fresh and clear morning and the traffic pretty much non existent as we ran from the city to Queen Alia. Immigration and passports and other officials were sleepy and inattentive, the immigration guy slumped down in his chair below the counter catching some sleep. The place is lousy with American men, and their accents echo through the building. All polite in their own way but making the mistake of speaking louder when someone fails to comprehend their drawl. Adventurers into Iraq I guess. Three out of four wear military style boots and carry military style backpacks. They seem to fall into two groups. Young men in late twenties early thirties age. Travelling in pairs or trios. Jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap. All seem to still carry their military style haircuts. It’s hard to leave the military nursery after all, even (especially) after your discharge is formalised. Most are fit and burly, straining T-shirts to breaking point. One short case looks like he could bench press a cement truck. The local boys in the café humour them although the Jordanian police sergeant refused to reply to a drawled “howya doin’ boy?” I suspect he would take no consolation from hearing the same greeting thrown at a couple of the American's buddies who later came up the escalator from immigration. The second group appear to be in their fifties or so. The uniform is similar although the hair longer and the goatee more frequent. They travel on their own. Same military backpacks. And definitely not as fit looking. I fancy they are seeking the same adventure though. Headed for Iraq and taking the opportunity to do something outlandish, historical or cash rewarding. The latter is a major attraction. Two of them standing behind me at immigration had one of those typically loud American conversations, for the whole immigration hall to hear, about how it was only the cash that drew them to Iraq. Quipped one, to the other , “make your money and run boy, make your money and run.”

It is All About Hospitality...

2007-09-06T02:56:00.001+10:00

Thought I would share a touching moment. On my first night here a young man dressed snappily in the hotel issue waist coat appeared at my door to turn down my bed. (Can someone tell what that is all about - after being on the road for more than 20 years I still don't get that. A hangover from older days and colder parts when hot brick was put in your bed perhaps?) Anyway, in he came and fussed around a bit and then we found ourselves in conversation. And so its been every evening since. Last night he discovered this was my last night here in his hotel and he was disappointed that we would no longer have our broken English conversations, a laugh and a backslap. (I said slap!). Plus the few high fives thrown in. Heavens knows what they were about but they meant something to him and communication is, after all, more than words. Tonight he was waiting for me as I came in from meetings. He expressed his sadness that this was my last night here, sadness at my next destination (!) and as a token of his friendship presented me with this rather battered looking gerbera (the other flowers were standard issue to every room). He had stiffened it with wire and from what I had gathered he had made a special effort to get his hands on it. Which means he probably had to sneak it out of the monstrous displays down in the lobby. Flowers from blokes is not normally something that rings true in my own culture but this meant something special to this young chap and after carefully getting the stem trimmed, and placed in water, another high five and a "sad to be goodbye" he was gone. Who couldn't be touched by that? One of those moments that makes travelling in other cultures extra special. And which was a sign of the hospitality that is a genetic component of the Arab makeup.

Panorama from Mt Nebo

2007-09-06T02:42:00.000+10:00

Well part of it anyway. This composite view looks down the mountain and across the Jordan Valley. Views to the right complete the picture in terms of understanding the terrain but given the camera flattens everything and depth is lost I have left it out. This gives some idea at least, and the general direction of things. Despite the dust and sand blowing up out of the desert we could just make out the Dead Sea, which turned out to be about a 15 minute drive away. The general direction of other points of interest are shown. Bethlehem and Jerusalem could not be seen but are only 50km away. The hills on which they sit were faintly visible but I had to wait until we reached the bottom of this escarpment before they became really clear. And an escarpment it truly is. Standing here gives you a good sense of why Joshua attacked from this direction.

Surprisingly, despite the tough terrain, the whacking heat and the strong winds the hills are dotted with the tents of the Bedouin who live out here on..., well, I am not too sure. Did not seem very much around although each storm torn gully (the evidence of violent flooding is everywhere) had a base of vegetation tucked away from the elements.

Mt Nebo - Moses' Lookout

2007-09-04T20:46:00.000+10:00

As with wandering Jerusalem and other parts of this world there is no expectation that the sites you visit are the real thing. After all there are numerous ideas about where Jesus was born, crucified and even buried. But knowing you are wandering the same place and taking in similar views is enough to have an impact, far beyond what I expected when I fist visited this part of the world ten years ago.

Mt Nebo is a short drive out of Amman and is the place where Moses supposedly took a look at the Promised Land, though denied entry (he would feel at home in this part of the world still!!). Even if it is not the precise spot you certainly get a good idea of what he might have seen. I was struck by the short distances involved. From here you could just make out the Jordan River, Jericho and the blue hills lifting up to Jerusalem through the summer dust and haze. On a clear day Jerusalem is visible. It all must have seemed so much in his grasp as he looked across the plains in front of him.

And of course Joshua would have stood up here somewhere too, planning his strategy from these heights which dominate the plains. You get a good appreciation for why he came this way as well - pushing up along the sides of the lake would have presented the plains people with an easy way of defending themselves. Indeed, Jehicho is strategically placed not only on the highways but at the head of the west side of the Dead Sea, to better cover the approaches from the south. It makes a difference being able to see this ground first hand.

On top of the mountain is an excavated church, the destination for early pilgrims. It is carefully preserved, and covered from the elements and worth the visit if only from an historical perspective. What am I saying? That is the main perspective here is it not? It's a serene place. Well, was for a few minutes when the generator was turned off for smoko. A couple of workers, dressed like the Sith to stay out of the sun, were drilling into the rock to set up some steps for visitors, and the stillness of the place and the chatter of sparrows in the pines were all lost once you got out onto the top of the hill. In the background is a piece of symbolic sculpture - serpent and staff.

Dead Sea

2007-09-04T02:39:00.000+10:00

Not much more you can say in a title without trivialising the experience. And I am not even sure what to say about the place that has not been said before. We all know you float like an apple in a barrel in this water. In fact, trying to swim on your front demonstrates to the locals (all hiding in the shade since its 45 degrees out here) that there is an idiot in the water - the buoyancy flips you over and your legs won't stay down. So there you are thrashing around trying to look like you have it all under control. The two others in the water just sat on the sandy bottom and looked at me in silence, the old guy shaking his head every now and then. Soon the stuff was in my eyes and the fooling around stopped as acid ripped them out of my head. I weighed up letting it work its way out or running over the broken glass, which is the salt encrusted beach, to get my towel. I stayed in the water. Floating around is the key. Just give in to it and let it hold you up. I am not sure reading a book is really that feasible - I value my books too much. It feels like light machine oil. Indeed, if there is anything tactile about you then this place is heaven. But the surprise was that despite the slight oily texture the water is very clear. No vegetation to foul it up and discolour it I guess. The surface tension is so "tight" (is that the right word?) bubbles created in the aforementioned thrashing around sound like rice bubbles snapping and popping. Oh, and by the way those couple of small shaving nicks from yesterday now feel like major wounds. The blueness of the lake, fuses with the distant hills lifting towards Jerusalem which in turn fuse into the furnace sky. (Jericho is over my left shoulder by the way). Blue on blue. The air is heavy and oppressive, a sensation less of humidity and more of weight. Salt crystals form on the waters edge. White and bright in the shallow water, when crushed in your fingers they turn to salty sludge and dissolve. Stones have salt crystals growing around them in the shallows. Not unlike quartz. And the sand from the bottom when stirred up takes ten minutes to settle again. Thirty minutes was enough - I was going to turn into a pillar of salt if I was not careful. Rinsed off, got dressed then had a lunch of goat's head and rice. I think I have acquired the taste!

Presidential Security - ATough Gig

2007-09-04T01:58:00.000+10:00

Back in 1982 I was caught up as a minor minion in the security surrounding the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Canberra. Sorry, Canbra. It's a thankless task although on the day she and Phil were leaving town I had the good fortune to have her slow and and wave at me, Phil getting a nudge to look as well. I had the presence of mind to wave back - a salute was out of the question! But I think she was actually having a laugh at the one floppy ear of my retarded looking police dog and did not notice my poor protocol. That visit sprung to mind (yes, my mind connects in ways even I don't understand) as I walked out for my early morning wander and found the hotel locked down with soldiers everywhere and a Hummer at the front door rigged up with a pintel mounted machine gun. Trouble is the Hummer was hemmed in on each side by two buses that had pulled in to carry the entourage (as it turns out) of the President of the Maldives who is visiting this place as well (I hope he has the room on the other side of the screaming baby, something might get done). If it all turns to custard this guy had an arc of fire of about 5 degrees, could not cover the street or support any of the soldiers lined up all over the place. The best he would be able to do is dust pigeons off the hair salon directly in front of him. Blaming the bus drivers was going to sound pretty weak. I felt sorry for him for a moment then remembered it was he who chose Army instead of Air Force!
3 Sept 07

I am the Good Shepherd - of Amman

2007-09-03T04:02:00.001+10:00

Running around today and finally finishing early by Arab business standards – about 8pm. Back to back meetings and dashing about town. Actually that gives the wrong impression – at about mid afternoon the city gridlocked and we crawled. Locals blamed the visit by the Italian Prime Minister for streets being closed, hastily assuring me the town was not normally like this. I made soothing sounds.

But at one point we had a clear run from the Embassy into town and as we crested a hill and barrelled down the other side a young boy and his sheep wandered into the traffic. Everyone slowed and moved around him. No horns or signs of irritation. The boy ignored the traffic and marched along with his flock of sheep following him. His nonchalance and clear assumption of his right of way was laugh out loud stuff. But also a nice reminder that despite all the focus on oil and industry in the Middle East this part of the world is still about agrarian things. Even the front page of the paper today carried a story of a wrangle over sheep taxes, just in case we needed reminding! And even though this city has remarkable Biblical history roots they are impossible to see now. So this little flock represented those roots for me in a symbolic way instead.

2 September 2007

CIA’s Jason Bourne Has Arab Friends

2007-09-02T07:34:00.001+10:00

Watching a movie in another country is always an interesting experience, especially if the English original is dubbed in one language, subtitled in another and you are left with no English. Happens occasionally in Asia. Then there is the different etiquette expected – trying breaking any of the rules about where to sit in Singapore and they want to stop the movie so they can sort out the seating. Even when there are only 15 of you in the theatre. In Amman this evening the theatre had a decidedly family theatre feel about it. It was small as far as theatres go but we were up against local pop movies and all the kids were filling what I expect were larger halls. The predominantly male audience crowded into a space with seating for maybe 200. The screen was distinctly warped, like one of those carnival mirrors that adds weight to your waist or stretches your head into a cone. If the size of the place was not enough to give a sense of being in a family theatre the constant chat among groups, which back home would have irritated me, seemed appropriate. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. Heck, even I ended up firm friends with a couple of Jordanians who are students in Texas and are currently home visiting family. People wandered in and out, phones were answered, messages checked, and when Jason wasn’t hurtling along in some frantic dash those conversations burbled along. And when Jason got on top of things at Waterloo station there was polite applause. But a clap and cheer each time he bested his CIA rogue minders. And a laugh of relief and theatre wide applause when the final scene with Nicki reveals all is not lost. Whatever your TLA (three letter acronym) everyone wants the good guy to win in the end. Even if he is CIA.

Its an Arab World

2007-09-02T07:02:00.000+10:00

Outside the window the normal hotel pool parade is going on. Young fit men strut their stuff. So do fat men who are just beyond caring and who waddle around defying anyone their right to a place in the sun. They all spreadeagle in the sun and defy it to do its worst. Some hairy chested types are basted walnut stain brown. And still they lie out there for hours, aiming for an even darker hue. Young women start the parade earlier than the men however. They are out there on their own shortly after breakfast and are lathering up the oil so when the sun lifts to mid morning they are glistening like a newly polished hotrod (except you wouldn't leave one of those out in the blistering sun). It is now five hours since the first one arrived and she is still there on her sun chair. She has shifted around from side to side, end to end but has been roasting without a break - I’ve organised meetings, had lunch, walked to the shops, sorted visas and done a host of things while she has been working on her skin cancer. But that is not the thing that stands out – there are “sun idiots” the world over. What is striking is that a short hop across the border is a whole kingdom that locks up their women. They can’t have jobs, drive, or be themselves outside of the home. On this side of the border they wear bikinis and worship the sun. If there is a truism about the Middle East it is that there is no such thing as a typical Arab world. It’s about as diverse as anything you can imagine which shares the same language, prophet, cultural roots and geography.

Short Finals into Amman, Jordan

2007-09-02T06:59:00.000+10:00

We fly up along the Saudi/Iraq border. The haze over the Arabian peninsular means there is little to see. As we swing into Jordan the air clears and the landscape sharpens up. There is a lot that is familiar to Australian eyes. Sweeping dry riverbeds carve up the landscape. But there is a constant dun to the sand and rock, the Australian brass, oranges and reds missing. As we drop lower dry water course show up scanty vegetation following their underground resources while the number of farmlets increases. Goats and sheep, standing around truck handing out hay. How very familiar. Contour ploughing and lines of trees, possibly olives planted along the contours as well. Dust. Haze. Weedy paddocks and rocks. Perimeter rushes up on us, guard towers every so many hundred metres and here we are. Welcome to Jordan. I messed up the transfers into the city to jumped a taxi whose driver ripped me my change but who pretty much stuck to his lane, got out of the way of speeding BMWs and got me into the city in one piece OK. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Dubai International Airport

2007-09-01T19:46:00.000+10:00

This is something of a reunion and there is the air of the familiar as I transit through here. We landed at 5.30 am but time of arrival or departure seems to make little difference here since it is always crowded with transients. This is definitely a utilitarian hub, focused squarely on shifting people through. But in so doing we are all forced to walk though a quite remarkable duty free shopping centre. In actual fact shopping is probably the main reason for the existence of this hall. If you are ever looking for the definition of a melting pot, use this place as your template. Africans, many in their national dress, come in from the south. Those tall and elegant ones from the Horn of Africa seem to float through the shambles, regal in their bearing and not being reduced by the confusion. Groups of Russian men heading who knows where but all smoking their heads off (outside the smoking refuges) and slapping each other’s back in uproarious good humour. Arabs in all the variety of their dress, some completely covered, while others in Western hip hop fashion. A group of ten year old girls from Malaysia all asleep in a circle on the floor, their yellow T-shirts advertising their school. A very high number of workers from South Asia who are the most stoic of the lot, in small groups squatting with arms resting on their knees, watching through the forest of legs that drill past them. A squatting clutch of Korean men compare their visa applications. They look like construction or shipyard workers as well. And here too are the numerous Filipinos in transit to more prosperous times for their families, but via the hard graft of being exploited for their labour in this part of the world. Holidaying Brits and other Europeans make up a large part of the population, pasty skinned or fried and the duty free shops do a roaring trade with them. But it is the poorly dressed single men who clutch their papers, even (especially) as they sleep across the carpet and clutter up the walkways. Some of them snowy haired and aged. Many in simple attire, some in nothing more than rags. With sandals on their feet, rarely shoes. Some look lost, most have a resigned air about them. Where are they going? Where are their families? Are they leaving loved ones or heading home? How long are they away? (A porter in a hotel in Saudi once told me he gets home to see his wife and children in Sri Lanka once every six years!) What on earth do they make of the obscene wealth on display on the duty free floor below? What are their dreams? Do they have any dreams? Can you dream for something better when you have nothing? Or is that all you do? And that, after all, is what Dubai is about – dreams. Dreams of fabulous wealth for those who have nothing, and dreams of fabulous entertainment for those who have. And dreams of freehold real estate and more sunny days than rainy days per year for those who crave those things but who fall somewhere in the middle. This airport of course is only a mirror of what is being lived outside in the dusty 38 degree heat.

On the Road Again: Middle East Diary

2007-09-01T18:01:00.001+10:00

Some unexpected travel came out of the trip to London last month so here I am on the road again. Heading this time into the Middle East, a part of the world that has grown on me.

Emirates EK419

Departures, especially those on long trips are now to be dreaded, regardless of how glossy the brochure extolling the destination, or the claims an airline makes via is model stewards about how much you are going to enjoy the trip. The maxim that the journey is more important than the destination might be good for your chicken soup guide for life but has zero relevance to long haul flights. Emirates seem to have slipped in a couple of extra rows since I flew with them last and I am unable to stretch out, testing my claims that I can sleep anywhere. We bore out of Sydney and head for Dubai via Bangkok where I now sit after a brief walk around Thailand’s new airport. When I came through here for a couple of days last October we missed this new building by one day. Nearly a year on and it already shows wear and tear. Sadly it is another modern airport with nothing startling about the shiny chrome and glass and new concrete. The holding pens for all the seething, crying, bored, irritable stock are no different to any other holding pens in any other airport trying to attract then quickly churn as many passengers as possible. Here we all sit at 2 o’clock in the morning, badly wanting to nod off and not really able to in the plastic seats they have for us. This flight seems to have a lot of kids on it so our gritty eyed fatigue is accompanied by a symphony of sniffles, grumps and outright dissenting wails. I feel sorry for these parents who are stoic in the face of the assault. If I find the place drear, they must hate what it doesn’t offer for small kids trying to work out what is going on. But the diminutive Thai staff are good humoured and see us though and reboarded all with a semblance of good humour. For which we are all thankful.

That BioLuminescence

2007-08-29T09:26:00.000+10:00

In a previous blog I referred to the bioluminescence which was lighting up the waves at Manly. By the time I got back there a couple of nights later with a camera the show had subsided and while the electric shocks were still flashing through the water they were not as frequent. And a camcorder is not the best device for grabbing those sorts of views. But the attached few seconds give you an idea about how spectacular it was - there are some initial glimmers across the tops of the breaking waves and then throughout the wave as it breaks. The dinoflagellate which cause this are marine plankton and in this case are apparently associated with the red algae we have floating off the coast at the moment.

Double Fechr Blog Promotion

2007-08-28T21:20:00.000+10:00

I decided a while ago that this forum is really aimed at well, me. It's useful mix of journal and writing and other creativity though there are many more hours I could spend in here! But that decision meant I have stayed away from trying to place Google ads and all of that sort of stuff. I have not really focused on getting a lot of online attention although there is now a regular round of readers and visitors - repeat visitors are flattering, let's be honest. However many of those visitors first picked up on Pickled Eel when Bobby at Bestest Blog got me some pretty broad spectrum coverage through his site. After something of a hiatus he is back with a new promotion tool which is worth having a look at. Linked here is Fechr.com (pronounced Feature) which gives you 24 hours of intense exposure for no cost (at the moment) - a double fechr whichever way you look at it.

A Japanese Haircut

2007-08-28T21:05:00.000+10:00

I was only looking for a straightforward haircut, much like this young bloke is getting from his Dad. (Didn’t we all hate haircuts from our Dad?! Dad to kid with hacked hair “Hey, what’s the difference between a good and a bad haircut?” Silent pause. “Two weeks! Ha, hah. Now put the clippers away for me will you?” Would have gladly thrown them down an offal pit). (I reckon this kid is glaring at his siblings who are laughing behind Dad - who also has a grin which was never a good sign). Anyway, best get off the couch. Had a meeting in Tokyo with some senior executives of Matsushita (who own Panasonic among other things). Decided I was looking a bit woolly and needed a tidy up. So I walked into the first hairdresser I could find next to the hotel. My Japanese was limited to Toyota, Hiroshima, Sony, Suzuki – you get the idea. Their English was limited to nervous giggles. I signed with scissoring fingers that I needed a haircut. The very cute receptionist nodded and bowed vigorously then showed me into a very sharp waiting room. Glass and leather, mirrors and chrome. She then gave me a bottle of water. That should have been my cue that I was going to be there a long time. From that point on I was treated like a cross between an invalid and a rock star. I was wheeled in my chair from station to station. Shampoo here, lather there, rinse over there, more goop there, massage somewhere else, pause and read Japanese fashion magazines for fifteen minutes in the middle of the shop (with no glasses – they had been taken off me, carefully folded in a cloth and locked away in their own little safety deposit box). Giggling ride somewhere else (dark this time, with strobes), another massage and rinse. After an hour and half someone tentatively approaches me with scissors. They clip away for moment or two before their role is complete and someone else steps in with golden scissors and clips up the back. A girl in a revealing bib and brace set of overalls swans in and clips the hair off the top before someone has a go at the sides. Then a wash and rinse again. More goop. Another massage. A vigorous toweling. A long and studied examination by three or four as my hair is brushed into shape (basic short back and sides!!) before being wheeled, after two hours, to the reception where I am looked at expectantly by a small crowd of workers. It took a few moments for me to realise I was finally free. That I was allowed out of the chair. I opened my wallet dreading what this was going to cost. Twenty dollars!! I could scarce believe it. I fled up the street to the hotel laughing at the experience but after seven bottles of water I was desperate for a bathroom. I was not game to ask where theirs was – it might have invited another couple of hours of, well, washing and rinsing!!
Tokyo, Japan 2002

A Drug Arm Proposition

2007-08-26T15:27:00.000+10:00

Our team hit the streets again last night and we patrolled the northern beaches, checking out some new sites and visiting the well known haunts of kids (and older) who find themselves at a drunk or high loose end on Saturday night. It was very quiet, even though the weather was decidedly warmer and the wind had dropped. In fact the ocean was almost a dead calm. We soon found our way down to Manly where we found a police car camped at our usual park. We pulled in beside them but the police are a sure fire deterrent to kids who might want to talk to us about drug and alcohol issues. They left after a few minutes but “traffic” was still slow. Then we were treated to two highlights.

The first had nothing to do with what we were doing but was merely a factor of being where we were – as we watched the surf we noticed that with increasing frequency waves were being lit from inside by what looked like lightening strikes of green light, Some incredibly bright and spectacular shows. Bio luminescence at work. I have never seen any thing like it.

And I had never seen anything like the large woman who, with a complete skinful, in her late forties or so – hard to tell sometimes – turned up with her battered scallops clasped in one hand and in a drunken rasping voice asked for a cup of hot chocolate. As I was whisking that up for her she decided a hot drink was not enough and asked for a cuddle. My colleagues were appalled. I had to decline this advance, which was followed by a few more requests, on the basis that cuddles were only issued on week days, not weekends. As she processed that we quickly packed up and did a bolt up the road to where earlier we had seen a group of kids. Drunk teenagers, one of whom then tried to steal our light, were a far safer proposition than her insistent overtures. And we were able to share with them our wonder of the sparkling, glowing surf.

1788 Connection with Kensington

2007-08-25T13:27:00.000+10:00

(Notes from a Kensington Coffee Shop - across from the St Mary Abbots Church)

Moss leaks down the stone in green shadows, crowning the heads of stone characters in a very hip luminescence which would earn high praise in the night club across the High Street. From outside, the stained windows are slate black and their colour is lost to us. The sun pokes through occasionally and with the help of the stirring maple trees dapples the stone and windows in blotches of moving light, drawing soft oranges and blues from the windows and lightening the stone, giving it life.

Kensington rushes past Francis Hepburn , buried here in February 1788, the year the First Fleet arrived in Australia. As I rub the dirt and leaves from the engraved letters of her name there is a surreal moment of compressed time and a strange connection made with this place, based on those dates. While Kensington bustled about its ordinary business and Francis was but a month from her grave Sydney cove watched in silence and wonder at the apparition of the fleet - soon proven to be real enough. What was happening in this parish while the fleet was settling into Sydney Cove? The connection seems all the more real for the current existence of this church building, linking time, place and visitor in a surreal way, with the help of Francis' passing. I wonder what she would make of my musing on her helping make a connection with this place.

Australian War Memorial Me109

2007-08-24T08:39:00.000+10:00

And chasing G for George (see previous post) is this Me109. Still working on those Canberra highlights!

Lancaster Bomber G for George

2007-08-23T18:50:00.000+10:00

Canberra, pronounced "Canbra" by locals and properly by everyone outside the country, is a large country town which we otherwise defer to as our capital city. It is home to an outstanding war memorial - the Australian War Memorial no less. It does an excellent job of being a memorial to our fallen and to visit is a moving experience. When I first went to live in Canbra in 1981 every spare day (I was a shiftworker in those days) was spent wandering the halls and absorbing the history. And burning off numerous rolls of 35mm film in bad light. In pride of place was G for George, an iconic aircraft which flew 88 missions from 1942 as part of 460 SQN RAAF. More than 200 crew flew in her and her survival made her famous - as did her return to Australia as part of a war bond drive. Now she is "airborne" in the War memorial in a new, spectacular, world class hall dedicated to some amazing aircraft and all set up in a very "live" environment. The hall alone is worth the visit. It is one excellent reason to visit Canberra. There are a few others but I need a few days to remember what they are. I'll get back to you on that.

View from a Doha Rooftop

2007-08-22T19:39:00.000+10:00

The boys are setting up the wide screen. A dodgy connector is slowing us down. So I take my lime and cold water up onto the roof and step around the water containers and sat dishes and make my way to the edge. The sun has just gone down and a heavy haze of dust and fumes hangs on the horizon, speckled orange by the faded sun. It is just a little over 48 degrees and nothing moves. There is no sound, for we are deep in the burbs and there is no traffic that I can discern. The flip flop scuff of someones sandals alerts me to someone heading to the mosque. Its the only movement and sound. No birds. No dogs barking. Its too hot for any of that. As the night comes on and the sky softens the lads come upstairs and join me. Our glasses rain a small shower over our hands and onto the roof. We are stupefied by the heat and dominated by the silence. And captivated by the serenity of it all. Then the pizza arrives on a clattering push bike which dispels the magic and I am told the big screen is up and running after all. So we carefully make our way down the ladder and settle in to watch something so memorable I can't recall it the next day!!

April 2005

Hong Kong Waterfront

2007-08-22T19:14:00.000+10:00

I am not sure what to make of Hong Kong. There is something about all that glass and steel which is very appealing. But the Kowloon markets, alleys, narrow streets, dodgy goods, poor lighting, gazillion product types, and general hawker atmosphere that tugs even more firmly at my sensibilities than the western elements of this town. Perhaps in the end it is an amalgam of all these things that make Hong Kong unique.

Late last night I wandered the fish markets, comprised mainly of hawkers trying to offload eels from their wicker baskets. Maybe at the end of the day it is only eels that are left. It still has a flavour of the old Hong Kong about it, and that illusion can be maintained as long as you don't let your gaze lift too far from the baskets and shrivelled old ladies trying to sell you something live and jumpy - else you find yourself looking into the windows of five star hotels. A few short blocks away I met and chatted with a young man who was standing at a deserted wharf, not far from a cruise ship, with a small roll of line and attempting to snare the smallest of harbour fish. He was not doing it for a meal but for the recreation. (I thought, unkindly, he needed a trip to far north Queensland to get some trevally on his line). But we enjoyed a conversation usually shared by fishermen - bait., lines, hooks, family who don't understand. A universal language. I left him with nothing in his bucket but a hopeful look was on his face.

This afternoon I wandered in blistering heat along the waterfront and mixed with the nouveau rich, of which there were thousands, all walking with the disbelieving air of having made it from the mainland to Hong Kong. And were wondering what all the fuss was about. In the heat of the day the waterfront was a baking oven with the occasional jarring icon out on display. This evening it came alive with crowds, ice cream, coke and a carnival atmosphere. But only the Chinese seem to be able to create a carnival atmosphere while they all mill around and look at each other.
September 2004

Hard and Buff Kitbag

2007-08-21T18:01:00.002+10:00

This travel advice, intended to make your vacation (sorry, evection) all the smoother by removing the aggravation associated with creased clothes, and other issues to do with packing garments is a little gem that has been floating around in my PC for years. I have always wondered what the doohickey is and what dictionary provided such a translation. And I can only imagine that your adversary is the person you just spent 14 hours sitting next to in cattle class. Hit them with your hard and buff kitbag - but only if the airline has not lost it. Enjoy.(p.s. click on the image to yield a readable version)

Moslem Culture in Qatar

2007-08-20T21:52:00.000+10:00

The community mosques, as distinct from the large buildings in the middle of the cities, are just that, focused on their communities. They are places of worship but are open centres of community life as well. OK, at least for the men. I remember talking with some men exiting a mosque in the markets of Dubai. They had been there for prayers but had stayed on to drink coffee and to chat, and to take some business lessons. Business lessons?! Someone in the congregation was touting his business acumen for free and attempting to help the less fortunate with whom he rubbed shoulders.

There are some wonderful mosques in Qatar but as with other places in the Middle East it seems that the smaller ones are the more interesting ones. The ones with most community interaction. That located in the middle of Doha had all sorts of activities happening in the evening, helped I suspect by being located just across the road from the markets. But by the time I walked past it on the last night of my visit it was quiet and the doors closed. Like most mosques they take on another air at night and many are lit to show off their lines and colour. With a full moon out, the mosque and its towers were nicely showcased. In the heat of the night I stopped for quite a while and watched the moon shift its way around the towers. To go back to the hotel room seemed sacrilegious and I was in no hurry to go back there.

April 2005

Qatar: Dig a Little and Unearth the Local

2007-08-20T21:32:00.000+10:00

Qatar is another one of those booming places in the Middle East that are a strange mix of old, ancient, modern, Arab and American. All popping up out of the desert. I walked this evening from the hotel, parked on the waters edge, out through the dark to a shopping mall. It was like walking through a new housing estate, with new roads laid out and services installed, street lights installed, palms planted and gently clicking in the slight breeze, but with houses yet to be built. In the middle distance I could see a large, unlit, multistory block house that I was told was the shopping centre. I wandered across a vacant lot, sinking into talc like dust and sand, plopping along creating my own mini sandstorm. The sun had sunk into a saffron sky a few hours earlier but the stifling heat meant I was carefully pacing myself. Stepping inside the mall was like stepping into another world - from the velvet quiet of the night to the blurring speed of a hectic mall, with thousands shopping or making the most of the airconditioning.

But I did not come here to get lost in Western style malls. I had the good fortune today to be taken, during our lunch break, out to the fish markets. These are well and truly away from the regular tourist beat and they even took our local contact a while to unearth. That they were so far from the water was not a good sign. But here was local colour and smell, characters who eyed us warily and others who hammed it up for us. Naturally they were disappointed we were not buying. But in this heat, with no, or very little ice, you had to be quick to get in front of the locals who were snapping them up as quickly as they were cleaned and whisking them away. I hope they were taking them away to be chilled. Cleaned by an expert if not surly looking team of cleaners who gutted and scaled in a blur of movement that was a little disconcerting.

April 2005

Starbucks Religious Police

2007-08-19T14:48:00.000+10:00

I am often confronted by people who are surprised I want to travel to Saudi, or other places in the Middle East. There is an assumption that it is not safe. Saudi is as safe as most other places and I was able to walk the streets late at night without any concern for my safety, other than that too often there are no sidewalks.

The religious police are another matter. I was warned to be careful around them but was not sure what that really meant. What the warning really meant was that they are an unpredictable lot with no set guide about what they are supposed to police. Any enthusiast can be a member of the religious police and you need nothing by way of training except the passion of a zealot. In any community that is a dangerous thing.

I was sitting outside a Starbucks enjoying a slice of cake and an iced coffee. It was 48degrees C (118 Fahrenheit) and the still dry air was being offset slightly by a fine mist blowing across the tables. I had tried sitting inside but the air conditioning was turned to the other extreme, to 15 degrees C. The heat was a better option. As I sat down with my drink I was vaguely aware of all the mosques in the area starting their calls to prayer. A couple of people got up and moved off. The store was supposed to shut operations for the time of prayer but did not and the crowd I was with continued to drink and socialise. Two very large Hummers had just turned up and disgorged small crowds of young men who milled around talking and joking and ordering coffee.

Suddenly, without any warning at all a Landcruiser crashed up over the sidewalk and stopped among the tables. Out piled a team of religious police waving their canes (one had a length of pipe). The Hummers evacuated in a heartbeat (though I saw them cruise past a few minutes later checking things out) and the crowd scattered for their cars. I heard the doors behind me snap shut and locks clattered home. The misters stopped misting. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the lights in Starbucks flick off and the last of the staff vanish out the back. Suddenly I was on my own, with a coffee and journal and all these religious police.

For a moment of foolishness I fancied I would finish the coffee, continue the journal and ignore these guys. After all, business would be humming again in twenty minutes and the circling Hummers would reappear and start over (the theory is that the police chase you off to prayers but they are like dogs disturbing seagulls - everything mills around while they bark but once gone everything settles into the original routine).

In my case my theory evaporated very quickly. I was their only target and they were not impressed with my insouciance. Never mind that I was a visitor. Or that I was a non Muslim. Even my line about not knowing there whereabouts of a local mosque was lost on them. In the end they trailed me the thirty minute walk back to my hotel. The only pedestrian and the only vehicle on the road for about ten minutes of the walk. It was not the most comfortable of ambles - and amble I did, just to keep them crawling. Only a visitor, but without a Hummer with which to circle, I needed some other way to fight back.

By the time I got back to the hotel prayers were over and everyone was out and about again. After a quick lap of the foyer I walked back to Starbucks and finished my refreshments. From this point on of course I moved when all the other sardines moved and made sure I stayed lost in the crowd. Being alone with those zealots was not something I wanted to invite on myself again.

Girls of Riyadh

2007-08-19T13:59:00.000+10:00

The book was making some noise last month, even though it was published more than a year ago. I confess to not reading it but the attention this book gets reminds me of the cultural differences that exist in a place like Saudi. For all its Western ways, and veneer, there are some things that happen under the surface that should not surprise anyone - but they do when they are revealed.

Some of those differences are intriguing. If you think of our own culture and then remove women from every facet of life, other than seeing them in the shopping malls, you start to get an idea of the main and obvious difference. No women in any of the businesses you deal with. Absolutely no women behind counters. Not even the perfumery or lingerie sections. That was something I never really got used to seeing. In some malls specialising in fabrics I saw material that was so luxurious and lush I was amazed that it was completely outside my ken - even outside any of my New York 5th Avenue experiences. Colours and sensations that I have never seen anywhere else. In bolts of cloth but especially turned into gorgeous garments. And not a single woman around to measure, fit or entice. Weird really. Almost as weird as having to stand in a "men only" line to pick up my burgers and fries in a food court. Women and children in another line, although some outlets are now allowing families to line up together - radical stuff. And if you want some idea about the challenges young men have in shopping malls this article from Arab News captures the weirdness nicely.

After a few visits to the Kingdom a Saudi colleague, who I had gotten to know well, confided the more well to do women in this place, though apparently repressed (can't drive, work, move about on their own, have to take care when out shopping that their intentions are not misunderstood, even under all that black cloth) can live a very colourful, even hedonistic lifestyle. There are all sorts of undercurrents if you know where to look, which I guess is part of the point of the book by Rajaa Alsanea.

To help make his point he took me down to one of the shopping malls and suggested we wait at the parcel pick up drive-through. In a short period of time he pointed out to me a well tinted car drive past with a cell number in the window. He reappeared about five minutes later and helped a woman with her shopping and they drove off. No big deal except this was one way young men and women can meet each other (euphemism for "can have sex") without the religious police, or their families knowing about it. If, when he drove past, she liked the look of him (or his car) she simply called his cell phone and he drove around the block to pick her and her shopping up. Then its off out into the desert for some dessert.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that this will happen in a society that so assiduously represses sections of its community. You can't be appalled by it. Indeed, there was a part of me that applauded their inventiveness and nerve - it was happening under the noses of the religious police, who all behave as if anything pleasurable is a sin. Even a cup of coffee. My bet is that as teenagers they never got a call on their cell phones when they drove past in their hot yellow, black tinted Supras.

Network Heaven`

2007-08-18T11:06:00.001+10:00

Remember these two? Maybe not. Visit them here. Two girlfriends, orphaned in the streets of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. They come to mind again as I help Anne with her work at Network Heaven. A few years ago she stumbled over an opportunity to donate corporate goods, otherwise headed for the rubbish dump for minor quality infractions, to the poor and needy in places like Sri Lanka. Hence the emphasis placed on "network" - and for many of the recipients of her work it has indeed been a little taste of heaven. There are some quite amazing stories of how even simple things like unwanted golf umbrellas helped street vendors stay out of the sun after their stalls were washed away after the Asian Tsunami. Its all very inspiring stuff and aimed squarely at the likes of these two kids in the markets of Sanaa. Anne now has a blog that is telling a bit of the story. Its worth a little bit of "travel" to get across and have a look at what she is doing. www.networkheaven.org

Sydney or Melbourne?

2007-08-16T16:25:00.001+10:00

Getting more attention in the Sydney Morning Herald today than the collapse in the share market is the news that Robert de Niro has snubbed Sydney and elected Melbourne as the site of his Tribeca restaurant, Nobu. de Niro may well settle his refined nosh shop in Melbourne for all the right reasons and I am not one to argue with him. But having lived in both places, and being a son of neither, it seemed like an opportune time to list those things that make this town (Sydney) a whole lot more appealing than our southern sister. OK, so it's a perennial debate that everyone gets sick of hearing and we all like to think we are mature enough to ignore. But there is a secret part of Sydney-siders that truly believes the best view of Melbourne is in the rearview mirror (I do have a photo of same!) and we just can't help ourselves.

That harbour - you just can't go past Sydney Harbour for sheer beauty. Its a crown jewel to be sure and we all bask in its glory.

Its a working harbour. Not as much as it was but cargo vessels still push in and out and warships, including visiting US aircraft carriers, are regular sights. That hustle and bustle on the water is a pulse that is part of the city.

The pulse. Period. This is one place that lets you know it has a heart. An intangible thing but the zest of this town is part of its appeal. If you want quiet (and that is OK by me) then Melbourne is a better choice.

The icons. Walking into town across the coathanger (Sydney Harbour Bridge) is a perpetual delight. That working harbour beneath your feet is some of the appeal of that walk. And drinks last Wednesday evening in the Opera House as the sun set into the far reaches of the harbour has nothing comparable. Anywhere.

Real beaches. With real waves. Right on our doorstep. None of this driving three or four hours to find the surf. The smell of the salt air and the roaring southerlies that whip us around in late winter, early spring all add to the zest.

We have our seasons when we are supposed to have them. The "four seasons in one day" cliche about Melbourne is, sadly, true. Regardless of the time of the year. Not their fault I guess but I do enjoy the temperate climes and humid summers we have in this town.

Have I mentioned the Harbour? A ferry ride up to Manly. The occasional whale or two in it. Drinks at Manly. Or Bondi. Thai octopus salad by the water. Visiting the zoo which sits on the water line. The bush fringe that circles a large portion of the harbour and gives a garden feel to the place.

That bush pushes its way into many parts of the city - and I live in an area that is blessed by plenty of bush and all its attendant critters - parrots, possums, bandicoots, - and spiders and snakes. Best of all, I don't have to drive out of town to enjoy any of that.

Japanese Kill Sailors - Then Shake Hands

2007-08-07T06:01:00.000+10:00

I understand those of my grandfathers generation who never wanted to speak about the Japanese (or Germans) or only spoke about them with hatred. But I am always moved by those who experienced those times and who have been able to get past the wrongs, and if unable to forgive, are at least able to make up. There are numerous stories about former adversaries who have not only made up but who have been active in social programs in each others countries building something positive and of use to the citizens. A story of a group of Australian soldiers going to Japan after the war and building an orphanage comes to mind - at a time when everyone else was screaming for revenge.

in 1942 the Japanese took a couple of torpedo shots at USS Chicago moored in Sydney Harbour, missed and killed 21 sailors quartered in a ferry. The only living survivor, Neil Roberts, is seen here yesterday shaking the hands of the younger brother of the commander of that submarine, which had recently been located sunk off the Australian coast. Who can't be moved by that image and understand there is more power in forgiveness than there is in revenge?

Camel Headshot Marks the 200th Post

2007-08-03T23:46:00.000+10:00

I arrived back in Australia today and opened an email from younger brother who previously featured with his latest toy at this post. This photo, down from the Northern Territory, shows him with another toy - a Ruger 30-06 in stainless steel. And the end result of messing with that toy - if you are a camel that is. Now a feral pest in Australia these things are also exported to the Middle East, live and in sauce. Did you know Australia has the largest camel population in the world? More Australian camel data than you can eat just here. A photo that is about as far away from London, New York and San Francisco as you can get. A part of me is glad of that. All I have to do is stop talking about going up there and do it.

Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire

2007-08-02T01:55:00.000+10:00

I woke this morning to find a copy of the NYT at the door - unusual in San Francisco where you normally get a wheelbarrow load of state and local papers. Mainly full of advertising. Anyway, the NYT carried an article about how the Chinese, impatient for the release of the final volume of Harry Potter, have been writing their own endings and circulating and publishing them. And of course they have been up to their usual tricks - scanning and copying and printing their own copies of the originals.

But what caught my eye were the titles of complete books they have been working up on their own. Their titles are so perfectly Chinese and make me laugh (its funny whilever they are illegally reproducing someone elses material I guess). Some of the basis of that humour lies in the fact that this is no attempt on the part of the Chinese to create humour - these are titles produced in earnest good faith. They include:

Harry Potter and the Half Blooded Relative Prince
Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon
Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire
Harry Potter and the Young Heroes
Harry Potter and the Showdown
Harry Potter and the Big Funnel
Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll
Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon (my favourite)

Chinese titles can be the source of humour in themselves (this blog is an example) but these Potter titles only underscore how different China can be! That of course is a large part of its appeal. The online version of that NYT article by the way can be found here.

Heathrow Security - A Joke?

2007-08-01T11:12:00.000+10:00

I see the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have grumped about the apparent security mess at Heathrow. Glad they have said what the rest of us were thinking. Especially when they seem so out of step with everyone else. Especially the ridiculousness of the one bag rule. Never mind that the screeching middle aged women (whose families are no doubt glad they are at work) telling you that only one bag is allowed have no idea why. In fact yesterday a BA cabin manager, when asked, had no idea why the rule was imposed either. Most folk, myself included, are happy to buy into an amended rule or process if we know why. We aren't all dullards from Brixton going to Spain for our annual Vitamin D dose. In the last six weeks I have transited Heathrow twice. Each was a horror experience.

In the first case I was transferring to BA to travel to Europe. With a small bag and laptop, both security cleared through Sydney AND Singapore. Sadly Mrs Bucket thought that was not enough and one or the other had to be consigned to the hold. OK for me in that case but very tough for parents and other travellers with extra bags who suddenly had get everything into a single bag. No warning. It is something you discover after you depart your aircraft and are attempting to reconnect to another flight. And you find yourself in along queue for 30 minutes before the rule is barked at you. Leave the queue to check in one of the pieces at a separate counter and then rejoin the queue. I was sweating making my connection.

In the second instance (yesterday) I was departing Heathrow for the US - this time with laptop and samples. No go. Repack. Again no warning for the first time traveller but I was partially prepared given the previous experience going to Europe. Strangely British Airways reckons it is a government imposition. I thought it was an airline rule and could understand it being in place as a result of some sort of cabin management effort. Any security experts out there with any idea why this rule is helpful?

Heathrow is a second class shambles at the best of times. But this new imposition only creates staggering queues (legendary enough to make it onto YouTube) and convinces the cynic in me that these devices are employment ploys - designed to employ middle aged harpies who feel the need to boss a bunch of tired travelers around. Trouble is, these days you can't give them a piece of your mind. If you do there is every chance you will be in breach of some sort of anti terror legislation. Off to Guantanamo Bay, you with the two (small) bags and smart lip!!

In Lincoln Inn Fields

2007-07-29T07:14:00.001+10:00

Lincoln Inn Fields is a very pleasant London park well hidden from the regular tourist beat, not far from Fleet Street and the British Museum. When I dropped past it was home to a couple of homeless men who were stretched out asleep in the sun, while other "classes" played tennis nearby. The sleepers were in stark contrast to the towers of the Courts of Justice nearby or the residences of Holborn. Typical of any city really.

My English master warned of trying to rip off a few words to invent a poem, especially if you are not the poet laureate. Sound advice if you tried to do just that in an English exam – the first two lines were outstanding, the rest (about 100) pure twaddle. That is probably the case here too but these lines were ripped down while I sat on a stone step in Lincoln Inn Fields this afternoon and thought about where these homeless men had found themselves. With a bit of luck that English master won’t see this blog – the hacked meter would give him a heart attack.

In Lincoln Inn Fields
I will lay me down
Under Holborn’s money towers
My bed a public lawn.

In Lincoln Inn Fields
The thok of happy tennis
Played by “your Honour”
Reaches my ear on the lawn.

Behind Lincoln Inn Fields,
Lawyers wigs for sale.
My head is crowned with grey:
Backpack pillow on a damp lawn.

At Lincoln Inn Fields
I read inscribed in stone
Second Viscount of Hambeldon was
A man unselfish – to the bone.

In Lincoln Inn Fields
I dream that such might be
But Second Viscount anything
No hand stretched out to me.

Ah, in Lincoln Inn Fields
“neath singing maple leaves
My chancery lawn is bed enough
Wrapped in a summer breeze.

But Lincoln Inn Fields
Is a harpy when she’s drawn,
You’ll find my bed has shifted
Come autumn’s chilly dawn.

From Lincoln Inn Fields
I’ll shift, tho not very far,
Sadly not under any tidy roof,
Of Holborn’s slate and tar.

Homeless at Lincoln Inn Field
Pack for pillow, lawn for bed
Holey socks and rubbish bin coat
Bad dreams in this down, grey head.

Play your tennis,
Shout your sporting joy,
Relish your Chancery high houses
Justice cares less for this old boy.

I’ll settle for the thrush and blackbird
The Constable cloud wallpaper
The orchestra of the rustling maple leaf
And, alas, the lawn of the Lincoln Inn Fields.

Kensington Gardens

2007-07-29T03:08:00.000+10:00

Every day is a new experience. And full of new things. Of discovery. Even if that discovery is not pioneering and others have been here before you. And even if the names of the places are so very familiar. I step into Kensington Gardens from off Bayswater Road and am confronted by a sprawling acreage that is full of surprises. And discovery. Its size for a start. The open park come farm feel to the place. Stretching into the distance are chestnuts, beech, oaks and elms, sentinels to pathways and mown edges but most commonly ruling over the unruly and the unkept. Knee high, unmown grass covers most of the place. Dogs love it. Little boys with sticks do what little boys with sticks do. Every now and then you spot the raised knees of someone lying on their back, the rest of them hidden by the grass. Every so often you are startled by the prostrate, bleached white body of a Londoner, in nothing but their swimwear, trying to get some Vitamin D. Although the day is pleasant the sky is a John Constable - more cloud and light than sunlight and blue sky, although patches of that appear through the racing, tumbling clouds. Couples meet for lunch. A scarf covered head has leaning on her the swarthy head of her husband. From behind, as you watch them silently communicate, clumped down in this open field with the breeze snapping around them you imagine an immigrant’s tale. Comforting each other in this strange land but in a field that accentuates our basic cravings for peace and light – and each other. And maybe a stupid dog.

The foliage skirts of the oaks and chestnuts, hems flapping in the breeze, soon give way to the Serpentine and its green silted waters, Italian fountains and arched bridge. I walk along a railed fence, past Peter Pan being assaulted by tourists, past thick undergrowth and then ripening elderberry and clawing blackberry, its hard green fruit just starting to hint at purple. I half expect Peter Rabbit to come squeezing through the railings but I settle for a hen thrush instead, which scurries across the path in front of me. Under rustling beech leaves old men remove their shoes and socks and wriggle their toes in the turf. Families break open lunches. Kids play hide and seek. A scotch thistle gives up its crown, and seeds lift away on the breeze which, incidentally, carries to me the turbo-fan whine of the unending stream of aircraft on long finals into Heathrow. These gardens are a plane spotters delight.

I eventually give in and make like a Londoner, find my own patch of wilderness field and disappear into the undergrowth. As I do so I discover I am checking were I put my feet in case there are any snakes – we are products of our places too. Thrips leap to the white page of the journal and scurry about. A spider runs up the spine and grass seeds are startled by my movement and rain across the pages. In the end the thing most synonymous with this country (OK, apart from the Queen, the Tower and Beckham) moves me on – the ground is damp and the stained patches on my pants had better be dried off before I hit the streets. Only a bleached Londoner could lie in this damp stuff in only his Speedos and figure he was onto a good thing. Perhaps he actually is. Some things are just beyond figuring out.

The British Museum

2007-07-29T03:04:00.000+10:00

This museum is a zoo! A human zoo. Summer in London and its school holidays and they are here from all corners of the earth looking at all corners of the earth. Fancy a quiet afternoon wandering a whisper quiet, hushed monument? Best go somewhere else. Here a heaving, chattering throng, charging through ancient Egypt, classical Greece and Imperial Rome. School kids from Korea shout into their mobile phones and attempt to answer a written quiz on Celtic England. Their mystification is complete. Tour groups of Chinese throttle along through broken faced Greek statues as they manoeuvre to the next talking point behind a guide holding a little flag up high. Japanese tourists look on in disdain – such travel and guide methodologies are so passé! But they still happily snap away like their parents and grandparents did and cannot resist posing in front of anything standing still – which is course just what they have in spades here. But they snap without too much discernment I suspect. I wonder what Grandma will think of the pose in front of a broken penised Greek god. The marble testicles will show up quite nicely beside her left ear though.

Eastern Europeans outnumber us all. In and out of the museum it seems. They are in a rush to catch up methinks, and they crowd in solemn assembly around Assyrian bull gods, admire Islamic glassware and linger over the mummies of Egypt. I am plagued by a precocious loud mouthed twelve year old from Michigan who is embarrassing his siblings and parents with his know-it-all commentary. We even got the atomic weight of gold as we admired ancient Chinese coins. Despite a crowd of ten thousand he found me in Napoleonic Europe, North European prehistory, Korean prints and even in the book shop where I think his parents were trying to escape him (His older brother had taken a couple of swipes at him in the bookshop which did not connect, and my uncharitable self fancied I should hold him still while brother took another swing at him). I can thank him though for saving me some money – I fled his lecture on the rules of chess in Anglo Saxon times before I could spend anything in that shop.

July 2007

A Grand Piano in McDonalds - Now I Have Seen Everything!

2007-07-26T00:41:00.001+10:00

It might be raining in the rest of England but London is strangely unaffected. The Thames has a boiling roil of water heading down it and the broken banks visible as you tun to land at Heathrow suggest things are not as the should be. But except for the perfectly inane 24 hour coverage on Sky News you would not know this place had been washed out. It is a mild day, sunny on occasions and High Street in Kensington is as you would expect it to be, with its flower baskets, shoppers, children on holidays and all nationalities mixed up in this cosmopolitan hub. I have to confess to being a cultural Philistine by eating at McDonalds the morning I arrived. As I sat in the window I was amused to watch the two Chinese drivers of a DHL delivery van get booked in the 4.8 seconds they were away from their vehicle by a couple of African giraffes, who if any taller would have been bumping the flower baskets as they casually sauntered along the pavement in that peculiarly rolling African way, issuing their tickets. But the incongruous cultural highlight this morning comes not from the crowds outside, but from inside McDonalds. Tucked into a corner is a grand piano – electronic, so of course it is tinkling away by itself. A grand piano in McDonalds?! I am not sure if that is a marketing misstep by McDonalds or whether someone feels a Kensington fast food joint should look and feel a bit more upmarket. I cannot think why.

An Earls Court Lunch

2007-07-24T11:11:00.000+10:00

The service is unclear, hesitant and slow. Fish and chips are de rigueur in this part of the world are they not? So let’s order that. I sit on a high-stool 3 metres from a staring bank of faces captured by a double decker bus, which is leaning towards me as it tilts at rest on the camber of the road. A rat tailed Rastafarian looking Caribbean dude is plunking coins into a slot machine which makes mechanical noises back at him for a while then goes silent. It’s the conversation of a tyrannical mistress – stony silence and folded arms, toe tapping even, and bright luminous look . So he makes more conversational noise as he feeds her what she wants. She wins of course. They always do.A fifty something woman sits on her high chair under Sky News describing floods in Tewkesbury. A blond ten year old brat of a boy glares at her from the other side of the menu and demands his meal now! Her shabby clothes, ruddy cheeks, bulging midriff, and thin black eyebrows (why do they do that?) tell their own battling story.
At the bar a sixty something fellow with an open face, goofy smile and the startled look of someone who has had too much cosmetic surgery leans on the bar attempting to look suave. His badly done, patchy, kitchen sink hair dye undoes all the work his flashing cuff links and gums are doing to impress a blond in high heels. Initial impression is “sad case” but as lunch wears on and I hear his polite patter, and especially after she leaves with him that turns (slightly) to admiration. He is working jolly hard. But I hope he has invested in plenty of Viagra - the amount of sherry he toasts her with then sculls means he won’t be getting it up on his own for at least 24 hours. But maybe that is why she is putting up with all this attention, knowing she is under no threat of anything except a free lunch of bangers and mash and some inane toasts to her perfect cleavage.

The Qat, the Jambiya and the Nokia

2007-07-21T15:13:00.000+10:00

There has to be a profound story in a heading like that. Sadly not here though. Qat, referred to below, is chewed by most. Even our government employed guide and escort (I am being polite - read "guard") admitted to being hooked on the stuff and the only reason we did not see his cheeks bulging with qat was that he took it out when he was driving us around. When in meetings he snuck it back in for a quick buzz. But he was under strict instructions not to offend our sensibilities. Here a young man selling jewellery displays the ubiquitous chipmunk cheeks that betray the qat chewer. He was also very proud of his two symbols of manhood and of him having "made it" - interestingly a piece of the very old and a piece of the very new. The Jambiya is the dagger, tucked into his belt, which all men wear with pride but which young teenage boys wear with extra pride and swagger (imagine that next time you see a crowd of them milling around at your local mall! Teenage boys that is). You could buy the Jambiya for cents in the lanes of "Old Sanaa" but they looked like my Grade 6 woodwork projects. Or you could spend thousands - and they were probably someone else's Grade 6 woodwork project! Gorgeous pieces of art at all price levels but the thought of trying to explain myself at various customs checkpoints on the way home deterred me from buying one. And of course he is nothing without his Nokia. These blighters never change the original tone though. How they know which phone belongs to who is beyond me - like a single ewe knowing which bleat is her lamb in all same sounding calls, they seem to know which phone call is for who. It would warm the heart of a Nokia sales rep.

Chewing the Qat on a Sunday Afternoon

2007-07-21T14:49:00.001+10:00

Its the Sabbath, prayers are done (for a few hours at least) and the family has an afternoon to kill. In Sanaa, capital of Yemen, there are few leisure options up your sleeve. Many head down to the qat (chat) markets, pick up a few kilos of qat leaves then head for the hill. To do what I hear you ask? To sit and chew the qat. Chewing this stuff apparently gives you a high but one young man told me it took ten to twelve hours of solid chewing to get the effect. And I can tell you from experience this is no lettuce leaf structure - about the size and density of a bay leaf. Or a citrus leaf. And completely tasteless. But it must get them in since all these folk parked here on the escarpment to the west of the city were doing nothing but chew the stuff. it would be humourous if it was not so sad. While Yemen has been known for years as a source of the stuff the country is also famous for its coffee. But coffee growers have ripped out their plants to grow qat - it is a more potent cash crop than the stuff you drink and the buzz is apparently worth the short sightedness.