tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88716225118608054892024-02-08T04:02:06.223+00:00Where is Sam Now?This is the journal of a once-in-a-lifetime trip around the world. One year, 35-odd countries, and with perseverance and a little luck: a book at the end of it.
12 months across Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa - in search of what makes people tick and gives them happiness. In doing so - perhaps a cure for my own, inexorable ennui. Happy reading!Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-35365966498979373142008-06-22T12:27:00.004+01:002008-12-11T17:39:35.925+00:00Fifty memories.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpMczGwqtn0chMNowmBc4NpRfzB1FbOdAlQOqGMLOvC46OkOlj_TB_JPKoW2O7NUsEZfJWGsyq24JqgM7rpcd3hqoiCtBlMWzJnzPWbUwp3G-F9k7LNdX2-72ELM3sX0_S5_5W1hn2zMQq/s1600-h/the_persistence_of_memory_1931_salvador_dali.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpMczGwqtn0chMNowmBc4NpRfzB1FbOdAlQOqGMLOvC46OkOlj_TB_JPKoW2O7NUsEZfJWGsyq24JqgM7rpcd3hqoiCtBlMWzJnzPWbUwp3G-F9k7LNdX2-72ELM3sX0_S5_5W1hn2zMQq/s320/the_persistence_of_memory_1931_salvador_dali.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214672977548259314" border="0" /></a><br />The pursuit of irreducible memories – memories that the passage of time cannot parse or dilute – is probably an addiction, and is close to hedonism, but not quite the same. If hedonism is addictive too (think of any hedonist you know and their lifestyle is likely compulsive) the unwavering identification, pursuit and acquisition of perfect moments is a more noble – and far harder – task. But one undoubtedly worth the trouble.<br /><br />I thought I was a hedonist because some people told me I was. A love of coffee, of food, of whisky, of sex – of pleasure in so many of its manifold guises – is hardly something of which to be ashamed. Who, honestly, doesn’t love things like those? Who doesn’t wish they could have the pleasure response more often than mundane life typically permits?<br /><br />But now I see I was close, but wrong. Measuring out a life in coffee spoons? I could probably manage without many things if I had to. No, I’m not an exceptional hedonist after all. What I am, it turns out, is a compulsive, addictive pursuer of memories, a cognitive bounty-hunter, a collector of the reminiscences which get ground into your self like dirt into carpet. These are exquisite times when time stops and you step out from your self for a brief and endless moment, and find yourself trying to take a snapshot to remember it.<br /><br />But if you need to <span style="font-style: italic;">try</span> to encode it for future retrieval, it doesn’t meet the standard. The real ones – the ones that most people have a handful of in a lifetime but which I’m extraordinarily lucky enough to have had countless? They don’t need encoding. They’re things good and bad; triumphs and disasters; loves and lonelinesses. They are the cache files or cookies that don’t need backing up. They nestle in the dark recesses of your motherboard, a background process idling forever until called upon.<br /><br />And so it was that recently – in what would’ve been a display of self-satisfied backslapping if it weren’t so suffused with genuine gratitude – I made a list of some of the things I’ve done in my almost 28 years. Life isn’t about lists – or, at least, it probably shouldn’t be – but they have a time and place. And if you find yourself coming up with a “Things to Do before you Die” list, two points – I think – are worth noting:<br /><br />The first is that the list should be a long one. The number of conceivable special experiences outnumbers by an order of magnitude the opportunities available to do them. So the list should be long. If it isn’t, you’re really just not being imaginative enough.<br /><br />The second point is that it doesn’t matter if the list grows at a faster rate than you can tick off its component parts. The point is not to reach the end, gripping a big red marker in your age-addled and Parkinson’s-afflicted claw, making a final triumphant Tick! before carking it elegantly in front family and friends – as attractive as that sounds. No, the destination doesn’t come at the end of the journey; it’s the journey itself. The pleasure – and here it’s conflated with hedonism – emanates both from the ticking off of items and from the introduction of new ones. My list is both growing and contracting at an accelerating rate, and that, <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>, is how I know that I’m doing alright.<br /><br />So at the risk of appearing boastful, here are fifty of the things I’ve ticked off my list. Some were planned, some just happened. But I couldn’t forget any of them if I tried.<br /><br />1. Played a concerto, accompanied by an orchestra and conductor, in front of a thousand people.<br />2. Played in the Sydney Opera House, sung in a choir in front of a couple of thousand people, and won a piano competition.<br />3. Helped an overweight and miserable boy, failing at everything in his life, to find what he’s good at.<br />4. Watched Ashkenazy conduct the LSO.<br />5. Lived with a family in a Mumbai slum.<br />6. Stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset.<br />7. Bathed an elephant in a raging river.<br />8. Eaten – among other things – snake, penis, rat, frog, snail, emu and quite possibly (albeit unintentionally), dog. (That definitely wasn’t on a list beforehand, but deserves its place due to being just plain <span style="font-style: italic;">weird</span>).<br />9. Paddled in a canoe from one of the Croatian islands in the Adriatic to the mainland.<br />10. Snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef.<br />11. Made love in sand dunes at dawn.<br />12. Hit a six on the final ball to win a pick-up game of cricket with Indian streetkids, dunked a ball from a trampoline, abseiled forward down a cliff, and skipped a stone fourteen times on water.<br />13. Crossed India by train.<br />14. Crossed China by bus.<br />15. Bought countless children’s shoes and distributed them at a Cambodian orphanage.<br />16. Interviewed a modern hero of mine.<br />17. Picked up a stranger on a plane.<br />18. Picked up a stranger on a bus.<br />19. Kissed a complete and utter stranger in a train compartment.<br />20. Jumped out of a plane with my (reluctant) father.<br />21. Driven a gorgeous, 1950s British roadster at tyre-squealingly unsafe speeds round corners.<br />22. Perfectly parked a car between two others with a J-turn (Blues Brothers’-style)<br />23. Seen Bob Dylan live.<br />24. Drawn against a player who has two competition chess games archived in Chessmaster 9000.<br />25. Helped a family member to overcome a challenge they believed insurmountable.<br />26. Fed live chicken to a crocodile (again, gets onto the list because of weirdness rather than desirability).<br />27. Edited, by myself, an edition of a magazine read by 35,000 people.<br />28. Been inside the Taj Mahal, the Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s Basilica, Angkor Wat, Yad Vashem, The Duomo in Florence, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and various other of the world’s magnificent buildings.<br />29. Walked up the steepest street in the world.<br />30. Flown in a frighteningly small plane around the summit of Everest.<br />31. Been on a submarine and a helicopter.<br />32. Skippered a vessel on the open seas wearing a silly hat. In fact, basically behaved like a little boy countless times in adulthood – something all men should aspire to do from time to time.<br />33. Taken bored and uninspired kids and helped them to love playing music.<br />34. Ridden on a Harley in the Australian desert at dawn.<br />35. Ridden around the Pyramids – also at dawn – on a camel.<br />36. Been able to say a proper goodbye to a loved one before they passed away.<br />37. Been in love and been heartbroken.<br />38. Travelled by boat through the Three Gorges and the Dam on the Yangtze.<br />39. Drunk mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway’s favourite bar in Havana.<br />40. Spoken in front of more than a thousand people.<br />41. Eaten magic mushrooms and spent the afternoon giggling in a park with a best friend.<br />42. Visited an Istanbul Hamam and been manhandled by a homosexual and hairy Turk.<br />43. Spent an afternoon hanging out with a famous band.<br />44. Lain on a runway while a plane lands.<br />45. Been on long roadtrips with friends on four different continents.<br />46. Been published.<br />47. Danced at a Hindu wedding, a Bah Mitzvah and the (utterly debauched) kit kat club in Berlin.<br />48. Driven to Timbuktu and lived to tell the tale.<br />49. Been to more than fifty countries in my life.<br />50. And, most recently, climbed the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane at night and drunk a bottle of wine while looking over Jerusalem during the call to prayer.<br /><br />This isn’t exhaustive – anyone can come up with fifty things they’ve done they’re happy about. It’s not in any particular order. And not all of these things were events planned in advance, or even memories that were happy at the time. But memories they are, memories all – irreducible, indispensable shards of a kaleidoscope of sights, smells and sounds that watch over you as you go through the motions of normal life, tolerating the infinitely forgettable minutiae. They are, or they can be, the Atheist’s God.<br /><br />So, I’ve done a lot, I’m grateful for it, and although my lifelong ‘to do’ list still runs hundreds deep and is probably growing faster than I can chip away at it, I’m at least not just existing, but living. And whether one’s desires involve travelling to faraway places, or learning a skill, or overcoming a fear, or achieving something otherwise difficult – the only piece of advice I can impart worth the paper is this: forget pleasure. It comes when it comes. Remember instead and always that life and who you are is but a compendium of your experiences, a photo album that makes you greater than the sum of your parts.<br /><br />So make new memories in the present, do new things now, always connect, but you’ll have them to look back on in the future, and there are futures to be planning in the present.<br /><br />Carpé diem and good luck.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-86094243749895591952008-04-11T23:51:00.010+01:002008-12-11T17:39:36.725+00:00Cuba<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSFTcml624x9cA2WFe9e0otdPsxZYkNt7G4BFmn_myAk01Z55MD5uxxAClOX2O5kJ7p69-UIB3Q2l2vmvapVuMjBkZRyDENAcbSJtPgbY_fvCjoXb-McMUGwZy1ffW9uTVcGmvHw7QucTC/s1600-h/P1060345.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 263px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSFTcml624x9cA2WFe9e0otdPsxZYkNt7G4BFmn_myAk01Z55MD5uxxAClOX2O5kJ7p69-UIB3Q2l2vmvapVuMjBkZRyDENAcbSJtPgbY_fvCjoXb-McMUGwZy1ffW9uTVcGmvHw7QucTC/s200/P1060345.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188129133169917458" border="0" /></a><br />Before going to Cuba – in fact while sitting in the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah of Tijuana – I scribbled something for later reading. It was a short summary of what I expected Cuba to be – preconceptions I could dig up from the disparate bits of knowledge I had about that most curious of places. After rattling it off, I put it away without really thinking about it again.<br /><br />While sketching out what you’re reading now, and after finding it even more than usually difficult to arrange my thoughts into coherence, I remembered the paragraph I’d scribbled while counting the hours in that abject cesspit of Mexico. And before even digging it out from the bowels of my backpack, I knew instantaneously that I’d been strangely right all along.<br /><br />This is what I wrote.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From what I know of Cuba, it’s an island in more ways than one. Only ninety miles from the US, its modern history has been written as much by the now almost fifty year-old embargo, as it has by the rule and misrule of its venerable leader, the irrepressible Fidel. Despite his recent retirement from a protracted illness, and the succession of his brother, Raul, Cuba is undergoing a period of slow and steady change – a change which may be catapulted forward should there be a change in the US’ Cuba policy after the November elections, something not out of the question.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">It’s the only communist country in the western hemisphere, probably a mix of Soviet Russia and contemporary China with a bit of tin-pot Africa dictatorship thrown in. It’s a police state where criticism of the political system – and especially advocacy of a multi-party democracy or denigration of la Revolución </span>– <span style="font-style: italic;">is strictly forbidden and seriously punished.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">I expect a vibrant culture of music and dance, I fantasise of untold fabulousness sitting in high-ceilinged bars with impossibly slow fans and dusty shards of light creeping through the wooden slats on the windows. I expect many of the economic features of a northern European social democracy along with the lackadaisical chaos of the Mediterranean. I expect a low standard of living to go with its low per capita GDP, but a general absence of a wealthy class. I expect incredible food, beautiful women and a great deal of propaganda. Most of all, I expect a population bored with the US blockade, proud of its history, and loyal to the leadership, because for whatever its shortcomings, it’s a leadership which has defied the perceived bellicosity of the big bully to the north, whose glittering lights of Miami lie a babbling brook away but whose politics are an ocean apart.</span><br /><br /><br />With a couple of exceptions – and I’ll get to them – I was pretty well damn right on the money. Is it right to fail to be particularly surprised by a place once arriving for the first time – especially in so singular a place as Cuba? Or does it just come from reading too much of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Economist</span>? Whatever, it turns out I was broadly right, but came away from two weeks there more politically confused than ever before. If China elicited cautious admiration for what can be achieved by a strong State enthusiastically embracing the free market, and Bulgaria and Serbia left no doubt about the total shittiness of everything conceived, invented, designed or constructed under Soviet-style communism, Cuba just left me befuddled and bewildered.<br /><br />How can there be so much to admire as well as so much to loathe – bizarrely the exact same reaction I’ve had every single time I’ve visited the United States? This is troubling.<br /><br />Naturally, however, Cuba was much more than vindication of a few hastily-scribbled predictions. Once you venture beyond Nikon-snapping tourists and the wallet-relieving domestic industry that traipses around after them in every country on earth, you meet the real people and go from just seeing a place to <span style="font-style: italic;">experiencing</span> it – actually <span style="font-style: italic;">feeling</span> it. You sit in people’s homes drinking their tea or wine, invariably trying to swallow down some godawful local ‘delicacy’ which has the taste of peat and the texture of a condom, all the while grinning with fawning gratitude for the offering. You strike up conversations in parks, in cafés and in the markets. And if you’re a little bit ballsy, you trundle along to the universities and schools and get a feel for what the next generation of leaders have in mind. Because that’ll tell you just as much about a country’s future as sitting on a geriatric’s porch munching on a peat condom will tell you of its past.<br /><br />First, the obvious. Cuba is a police state. In fact, that term really doesn’t do justice – it’s a “government” state, with the Lada-driving police merely the most noticeable organ of the State the tentacles of which include the army and many other uniformed and plain-clothed officials keeping an watchful eye on the people. The government is everywhere. Every restaurant, bar and hotel is government-owned and the manager is a government employee – with the exception, curiously enough, of the restaurants in Havana’s comically bad Chinatown. A small street cafe might be privately owned, but anywhere which sells alcohol – pretty much everywhere – is not. According to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Wall Street Journal</span>, the Cuban government controls 90 per cent of the economy. In a world dominated by free trade, privatisation and liberalisation, Cuba is every bit the island it has been since 1959.<br /><br />That most inept of explorers, Columbus, happened upon what is now Cuba, called it Juana and described it as “the most beautiful land human eyes had ever seen”. As his intention was to head west from European to India, likely as not he figured he was somewhere off the coast of Japan. But he was perhaps right then, and if he came back to Havana today, I suspect he would be just as blown away.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDv0amIv8b_sFx-UGG7icQXZrRWbOQ_UM3hYUP7Yzt-nE6esq6Y5fDZmVGB7pF6wIOFk9gpAHlEJpvzDTGxW1FuYTSIWNKplY0FAsgWnA4DqQdchNHBQwLRSnvjOzrFJ7dYkpiqKb9gysS/s1600-h/P1060225.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 343px; height: 257px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDv0amIv8b_sFx-UGG7icQXZrRWbOQ_UM3hYUP7Yzt-nE6esq6Y5fDZmVGB7pF6wIOFk9gpAHlEJpvzDTGxW1FuYTSIWNKplY0FAsgWnA4DqQdchNHBQwLRSnvjOzrFJ7dYkpiqKb9gysS/s200/P1060225.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188129115990048242" border="0" /></a>Havana’s streets are dusty, narrow and pockmarked with holes like the surface of the moon. The decrepit old houses squish up oppressively against one another, shoulder to shoulder, never quite straight – but they hold each other up against the elements and ravages of time, a worthy metaphor for their inhabitants within. The west of the city – the Vedado – is on a grid, so the lightless alleys you wander down are less disconcerting than the strange sounds, puddles and acrid smells suggest. When you head a bit east you hit Centro Habana, home of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Politico Naçional</span>, a building which carries an ironic but distinct resemblance to the Houses of Congress in Washington DC, only a couple of thousand miles to the north. Habana Vieja – old Havana – is unselfconsciously exquisite. The salsa, rhumba and jazz blares out all night, the Cubans dance in the streets, old bars where Hemingway grumbled into his mojito meet tiny art galleries and run-down colonial hotels. It’s worthy of any honeymoon.<br /><br />The sounds of Havana are worth coming for themselves. There’s an endless background thrum of people shouting, (what is it about those with Mediterranean blood that nothing can ever be said if it can instead be yelled?) and the crash of the waves as they hit the waterfront. There’s the enormous and deafening Chevys, Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs from the fifties, a throwback to a golden age of American motoring when Eisenhower had just build the Interstate system and America emerged from the Depression and the Second World War as the world’s economic powerhouse. If you’ve never ridden in a convertible Buick about twenty-five metres long, weighing six tonnes and carrying more chrome than the QE2 (and capable of taking a gentle corner about as adroitly), I commend it. It’s like riding a trampoline converted to a stretched tractor with a small nuclear warhead under the bonnet.<br /><br />For every American fifties behemoth with chrome fins and held together by electrical wire and sellotape, there’ll be three Ladas or Trabants and a couple of modern Chinese automotive atrocities – a constant reminder that Cuba has had many different friends over the years, but never very many at any one time. The police cars – and ‘car’ is charitable – are the same as those driven by the East German <span style="font-style: italic;">Stasi</span> in the Bond films of the eighties. They have wheels the size of dollar coins, are constructed almost entirely from processed rust held together by a few pieces of steel and have the aerodynamics (not to mention aesthetics) of a Rubik’s Cube. That said, I saw a guy in a Lada drag race a guy in a Caddy the size of an aircraft carrier. Although the Caddy won, it was primarily because its chrome nose was already at the finish line before the car itself had even begun moving. The Lada was actually faster. In a relative kind of way.<br /><br />But Cuba isn’t about the cars or the cigars or the rum – as pleasing as all those are. It’s about the people who live in the western hemisphere’s only communist state, and how they go about their day-to-day lives in the face of real privation and difficulty. It’s about how a repressive, revolutionary government has remained in power for a half-century – and retained the support of its people even as the Soviet Union fell apart – and it’s about how those people see Cuba with a mix of adoration and exasperation; resignation and hope.<br /><br />Changes are undoubtedly afoot – particularly in the couple of months since Raul officially succeeded Fidel – so it was a fortuitous time to visit. DVD players, microwave ovens and personal computers – previously banned, ostensibly because of their drain on the electricity grid – are now allowed. Perhaps most significantly, in March of this year, Raul Castro's government said it is allowing cell phones for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the state apparatus.<br /><br />This was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under Raul, and is the kind of small freedom many Cubans have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding Fidel in February. Cubans are nothing if not enterprising, though – something I’ll return to – and some who were previously ineligible for cell phones already had them by having foreigners sign contracts in their names. But mobile phones are not nearly as common in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America or the world.<br /><br />The telecommunications monopoly ETECSA said it would allow the general public to sign prepaid contracts in Cuban convertible pesos – the currency generally used by tourists on the island – but the prices of these contracts will still remain out of the reach of most Cubans, who earn an average salary so low it beggars belief. The average Cuban wage is aboutUS$20 per month. The UN Development Program considers a dollar a day ($30/month) to constitute extreme poverty, so on the face of it, Cubans are as poor or poorer than those on the subcontinent or in sub-Saharan Africa. But with a very important caveat.<br /><br />That caveat is communism. The Cuban government controls not just the service and manufacturing industries, but provides free health care, education and housing to all Cubans. The provision of housing is one thing, but the maintenance of those houses is quite another. As Cuban architecture is stuck in a timewarp – virtually no residential construction seems to have taken place since the late fifties – most houses are decrepit. The government claims to maintain them for free as required, but the backlog is endless, and it’ll never be able to keep up with demand. The demand for housing itself is even more problematic than the demand for maintenance. Most Cuban families cram many members into a single small house – it’s the norm to see a married couple with all their parents and their children under one, two-bedroom roof. This has some very interesting consequences.<br /><br />The first is something you see a lot of in Asia – the survival of the extended family, largely abandoned in the developed world in favour of the nuclear family as children move away for jobs, the elderly can afford to live alone, and young adults move in together. The atomisation of western society is something that truly bothers many people, me included. In London during the past few years, I’ve moved house a few times, each time to a different area and never being part of the sense of community you can get from living on a street and knowing everyone in the neighbourhood. What one gains in freedom and excitement, one loses in belonging, in solidarity, in support.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvLKDnL5lEpyQfusr9LAgfNo_YcXb-uXcmNpu6XIcds0SzjOFlHzaxsfTunj0pei_XYi2Ingovq4_4pp19NvNhUVE4xzDlaNrBed_Ke1kuKrAv7eXxyj4Q9RS_kq0XBIPQgwpfQtTqMnD/s1600-h/P1060174.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 340px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvLKDnL5lEpyQfusr9LAgfNo_YcXb-uXcmNpu6XIcds0SzjOFlHzaxsfTunj0pei_XYi2Ingovq4_4pp19NvNhUVE4xzDlaNrBed_Ke1kuKrAv7eXxyj4Q9RS_kq0XBIPQgwpfQtTqMnD/s200/P1060174.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188129107400113634" border="0" /></a>So the Cuban kids get babysat and taught by the grandparents every day while the parents are out at work. The kids play baseball in the street – there’s barely an intersection in all of Havana where fifteen barefoot and bare-chested young boys aren’t playing a pick-up game – and people wander in and out of their neighbours’ homes to swap hard-to-get products, or to borrow some butter, boiled water or just a few pesos. Having grown up apart from an extended family – and now living probably the rest of my life eight time zones away from my immediate one – I recognise profoundly the joy and support that comes from three generations being a part of each other’s lives.<br /><br />But some other consequences of the housing shortage are interesting too. Surprisingly, perhaps, Cuba has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. A divorced mother-of-three selling coffee on the side of the road explained that the living conditions forced upon her and her husband made the marriage deteriorate irretrievably. When you share a room with your children and even perhaps your own parent, a sex life becomes nearly impossible.<br /><br />A sex life is also, therefore, difficult for the teenage or post-teenage children of the marriage – who are unable to move out, and quite obviously cannot just get a hotel room. As a result, the city is full to bursting with young couples fooling around in parks, doorways, bus-stops, alleys, and most of all – the Malecon.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhadYJiFZqaZiPOQ4TQnViVZD1QhAOl3UU8dmd0Za7VK0t7JTM0M_fvI9RJTzgtfvD8xUX0bXKgFxMUfdEzJ1NZz2beesToipMEyzR0sCxiPj0831ZPx53-xDdmCfqjwb6CNb1A1-KTHSRS/s1600-h/P1060338.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 331px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhadYJiFZqaZiPOQ4TQnViVZD1QhAOl3UU8dmd0Za7VK0t7JTM0M_fvI9RJTzgtfvD8xUX0bXKgFxMUfdEzJ1NZz2beesToipMEyzR0sCxiPj0831ZPx53-xDdmCfqjwb6CNb1A1-KTHSRS/s200/P1060338.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188129124579982850" border="0" /></a>The Malecon, or seafront, is the true beating heart of Havana and one of the most special places I’ve ever seen. It stretches for miles along the coast, with jagged rocks breaking the violent surf and a high wall often overcome in Hurricane season, covering the coastal parts of the city in salty spray and sea slime. The slime makes the walkway along the Malecon potentially treacherous, but go to a Cuban lawyer with a tort claim against the government, and you’ll get laughed out of his office. He’ll probably close the office for the day to go and regale his colleagues. No litigation means there are about two dozen ways you can get killed every day – from uncovered holes in the street which descend metres into a stinky gloom, to workmen on scaffolding three floors up who throw pieces of rubble big enough to dent a Studebaker (or destroy a Lada) onto the pavement below.<br /><br />As well as fishermen, couples making out and families taking in the sea air, Havana’s Malecon is famous for something else: more prostitutes than I’ve ever seen anywhere else on earth.<br /><br />Cuban prostitution is not like the trafficking of Eastern European women lured with jobs, or crack addicts earning their next fix or the desperate fight just for survival in Cambodia. It’s more often about a small taste of a life otherwise out of reach. The girls –<span style="font-style: italic;"> jinateras </span>– are invariably young, often eye-bleedingly gorgeous, and hang around waiting for foreign men to walk past, at which point they fawn and flirt in a remarkable display of well-rehearsed coquettishness. Usually, it’s not an overt exchange of cash for sex, but rather the in the form of dinner at a restaurant, cocktails in a lounge and maybe gifts unaffordable to ordinary Cubans – designer jeans or jewellery. This begs the question of whether it’s prostitution at all – I know a few men who’d argue that getting sex anywhere at any time tends to mandate dinner, a few drinks, and a gift or three – but, unable to leave the country and able to see an MTV lifestyle otherwise tantalisingly out-of-reach, acting as a temporary girlfriend or escort for visiting foreign men is a taste of that life they see and want.<br /><br />As well as the stunning and flirty freelance <span style="font-style: italic;">jinateras</span>, there’s also a depressing prevalence of guys pimping out their own girlfriends and, one assumes, splitting the spoils. Walking home at night through the dark and garbage-strewn streets of Centro Habana, countless times I’d pass a young black (always black) Cuban couple kissing passionately against a wall, before the guy spots me, pushes his long-suffering lady aside, and whispers, “<span style="font-style: italic;">Hey, amigo, you like my girl? You want fuck? She suck good, amigo</span>”.<br /><br />This is sad, and I don’t know whether it reflects most poorly on the girl for acceding to this and staying with him (perhaps she has no choice), on the guy himself for lacking any self-respect, on the foreign sex tourists providing demand, or on a socio-economic system that makes this commonplace. UN officials working in Cuba, as quoted in the <span style="font-style: italic;">International Herald Tribune</span>, say the girls blame the US embargo, which leaves not enough money for food. Whether it’s the desire for a D&G t-shirt or <span style="font-style: italic;">bona fide</span> impoverishment, as sexualised as Cuba is – and it <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> is – this shouldn’t be happening.<br /><br />So, it’s clear most Cubans live lives of real hardship – which go way beyond undrinkable tap water and cramped living conditions. As I said, the average wage is pitiful, and I spent a fair bit of time calculating the cost of goods. Not just the cost for foreigners – staying in a hotel, taking an official taxi, going to a museum or eating in a restaurant are all surprisingly expensive – barely cheaper than the West, especially when you get hit with an astronomical twelve per cent commission on all transactions. But I rooted around to find the cost of beans and rice, of cooking oil and underpants and various other things people cannot do without. And it didn’t add up. Doesn’t matter how frugal a life you use as your reference point, it’s not possible to survive on the earnings of the average Cuban. So I wandered off to the house of one of Cuba’s best-respected journalists who writes for the state-run daily newspaper,<span style="font-style: italic;"> Granma</span>.<br /><br />This newspaper is worth a moment’s digression for its Orwellian hilarity alone. Astonishingly, it’s translated into English as well as a couple of other languages, and is available online as well as in hard form (not that any Cubans actually have Internet – so one assumes it’s for the benefit of people like me who want to get a feel for the zeitgeist, and is seen as an opportunity to bring us around to the miracles of <span style="font-style: italic;">la Revoluçion</span>).<br /><br />Just a brief perusal of the headlines tells you everything you need to know. Some are relatively positive but benign articles about Cuba’s involvement in the world. “<span style="font-style: italic;">Mexican swimmers are training in Cuba</span>”; “<span style="font-style: italic;">Cuba is facing the threat of global warming with determination, the UNDP affirms</span>”; and “<span style="font-style: italic;">Cuba exports medical equipment all over the world</span>” are just three from one particular day’s front page. Others are more creepily manipulative: “<span style="font-style: italic;">The revolution is stronger than ever</span>”; “<span style="font-style: italic;">Cuban exiles use lies to undermine the revolution</span>”. It’s important to note that these are not on the comment or Op-Ed pages, but are journalistic articles in the news section. The distinction between news journalism and commentary breaks down when the paper-of-record is a mouthpiece of the government.<br /><br />The most interesting part about <span style="font-style: italic;">Granma</span> – aside from the surprising excellence of the English in translation – is the regular, lengthy pieces by Fidel himself. Assuming he is in fact still alive and actually writing these pieces (admittedly not a given), he really is a gifted thinker, and I read much of his work, coming to appreciate the fierce requisite intelligence for him holding onto power in the face of endless attempts by the outside to undermine his rule. One long piece – over two issues – was China’s place in the world. While quite obviously sycophantic towards a country on which Cuba is more and more dependent, it was an admirable wide-angle look at Chinese history, a significant academic piece of work. Whatever you can say about Fidel’s politics and his treatment of dissidents over the past five decades, absolutely nobody can argue he’s not a towering and impressive man – a father figure for all Cubans.<br /><br />Digressing further if I may, the existence of a ‘father figure’ in some parts of the world is something that has struck me regularly on my travels. The Serbians have Tito, the Turks have Ataturk, Thailand has its venerable King, China – to a decreasing degree – has Mao, India has Nehru and Gandhi. Cuba has Che Guevara, José Martí and, of course, Fidel. Some of these men have been kindly and benevolent, some tyrannical and cruel. I wonder what it must be like to grow up in a country with such a figure. I find it hard to group Queen Elizabeth in that category (not just because of her gender, although a father figure is undoubtedly different than a mother figure, but because most Britons admire rather than revere her). I wonder to what extent having such a figure in a country’s past is a substitute for a deity. And I wonder if faith in a human father figure who watches over his people actually gives comfort and solace in times of adversity. My guess is it probably does – even if in many of those cases, the figure himself is a large cause of the adversity being faced.<br /><br />Anyway, I was talking about the unfeasible cost of living versus earnings, so sought out the journalist at <span style="font-style: italic;">Granma</span>. She welcomed me into her lovely home (not everyone earns less than a dollar a day, even in a communist country), and I began by launching into respectful interrogation on the subject of journalistic freedom.<br /><br />“Do you think <span style="font-style: italic;">Granma</span> is journalistically independent?” I ask. “Can you write what you want without the involvement of the government?”<br /><br />She nods patronisingly at me – as if I’d just asked a question a slow-witted three year-old would come up with.<br /><br />“The media is completely free, we can write what we want”. I was hanging out with a photographer from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span> at the time, and he and I exchanged glances.<br /><br />“So, you can criticise your leaders?” I ask.<br /><br />“Oh no”, she replies, in a Kafkaesque non sequitur which makes my brain hurt.<br /><br />“Why would I want to criticise the government?” she asks rhetorically. “Our government doesn’t use propaganda, that’s just what you’ve been told, because you’re brainwashed on the outside. The people using propaganda are the Americans and the western media, who believe what the exiles in Florida say, and the western governments [by which she means the US] spread lies about Cuba because they hate Fidel for humiliating them”.<br /><br />I’m only able to stifle my incredulous snort because the very last part is basically true.<br /><br />“Hypothetically”, I suggest, “what would happen if you did write that the government is doing things badly and you though there should be elections?”<br /><br />“We can criticise the government for the way things are badly managed, but why would I criticise our leaders who’ve done so much for us?” she replies.<br /><br />And suddenly, just a very little bit, the clouds part and I begin to understand. She and I were at a classical political-cultural impasse where neither understands the other. For us, government means the executive branch and the party in control in the legislature. In Cuba, the government is everywhere and it is everything. So when she says she can criticise the government, she means she can write that the potholes are getting too bad so someone at the department of infrastructure should be blamed, or that something more should be done to improve electricity supply. In other words, constructive criticism of those low down on the government ladder whose responsibility it is to attend to the day-to-day services of the country are fair game. The revolution, the one-party state and its upper echelons are firmly not.<br /><br />But I’d gone to her home to ask about the economy. “Cubans are poor”, she agreed, "but there are no extreme poor. We have no homeless (which does seem to be true), virtually no HIV (also true) and no malnutrition” (possibly true, but difficult to visually verify because Cubans are naturally thin).<br /><br />She pointed out that although wages are low by international standards, the government gives people a clothing and food allowance in addition to free education, housing, utilities, health care and virtually free public transport. And that people occasionally (she lowered her voice as if about to blaspheme) “sell some of the goods the government gives them in their jobs on the side”. This piqued my interest, and I made a mental note to find out more.<br /><br />“Viva la revoluçion!!” she exclaimed, as I walked out the door. Well, she didn’t. But she might as well have.<br /><br />More muddled than ever, and wondering if Cuba is in fact the hardest society I’ve seen to try and unravel, I wandered up to the university in search of a professor willing to speak candidly.<br /><br />This was every bit as much a challenge as you’d expect. Pretending not to recognise the barbed looks of suspicion from the secretaries tapping away on typewriters and the assistants wrestling photocopiers that looked like they’ve been lifted from Bletchley Park circa 1941, I asked to see someone who could help me write a piece that would surely laud the miracle of the Cuban economic model.<br /><br />This evidently passed muster, because I soon found myself in the office of an elderly professor of economics and social theory, only too delighted to shower me with talking points on the triumphs of the revolution and Marx. I got bored pretty fast – I’m already impressed with societies that manage universal free health care and education – made my excuses and left. Realising that my first approach was doomed to fail – going to the office and requesting a formal interview was only going to raise suspicion and prying eyes – I went wandering on the faculty grounds and found a lecturer in economics, a black, middle-aged woman eating a inedible-looking sandwich.<br /><br />I asked her the questions I had posed to the white man in his office only minutes before. What does it mean that Cubans can now stay in hotels and own mobile phones? How do people get by on so little? What is the future of Cuba?<br /><br />“Oh, what difference does it make to most people?” she sighed. “Theoretically, gaining freedoms is a good thing, and these were beyond what we’d realistically suspected. But Raul is a smart man – smarter than Fidel, perhaps. Like all communists, he understands the importance of symbolism”.<br /><br />“So, this is no glasnost or perestroika?” I prodded.<br /><br />“Not at all. It may appear that Cuba is in flux, and it is, but it’s not the kind which changes a system of government. People here admire their government, they support it in its provision of services to ordinary people. But most of all, they see it as a proud resistance to the bullying of the United States. The blockade and the rhetoric which comes out of Washington DC about Cuba only strengthens the status quo here. So Cubans can now legally stay in hotels they cannot possibly afford, and get a mobile phone line that costs four months’ salary. Big deal. But however slow the changes, and whatever the difficulties Cubans face, things are much better than in the 1990s. So people are reasonably optimistic about their futures”.<br /><br />The “1990s” she was talking about is the “special period” and deserves some mention. After the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR collapsed during 1989-1991, Cuba’s best friend in the world disappeared overnight.<br /><br />During the mid-eighties, after a quarter-century of a top-down, Soviet-style economy, it was clear that quality was suffering and production quotas were unrealistic. In 1986, Fidel introduced a ‘rectification of errors’ campaign, a process aimed at reducing malfunctioning bureaucracy and increase local-level decision-making.<br /><br />Just as things were starting to improve, the Eastern bloc collapsed and US$5 billion in credits disappeared from Cuba’s balance sheet. Castro declared a five-year <span style="font-style: italic;">periodo especial</span> (special period), an austerity program of quite stunning privations. Every person I spoke to in Cuba about the availability of goods and services refers back to that era, in which starvation and malnutrition was widespread. Only fifteen years ago, Cuba was sub-Saharan in its living conditions.<br /><br />So despite the Helms-Burton Act and the repeated tightening of the noose by the Bush Administration – which besides keeping the huge electoral swing state of Florida in Republican hands, has done nothing but bolster support for the regime among Cubans – things now are pretty damn good in Cuba.<br /><br />But I was still confused about the cost of living, so wandered over to the Hotel Inglaterra on the central square – a splendid, pre-revolutionary edifice which specialises in excellent mojitos, apparently drab and moth-eaten rooms, and utterly inedible food. All the food in Havana is pretty much inedible, I suspect the rooms are all moth-eaten, and without doubt the mojitos are fabulous – though sometimes with water from the taps, which anyone without a suicide wish would be well advised to avoid. While sitting on the terrace, I saw a black girl with a baby approach the front door and ask the white Cuban doorman if she could use the bathroom. “No” he shouted. Not twenty minutes later, a white girl with a baby came and asked the very same thing. “Yes” he said, waving her through. The statistical validity of this aside, I began thinking about the racial mix of Cuba – the melting pot of black African slaves, the Spanish, and countless mixes of black, brown and white blood. But the prejudice towards the blacks was something alluded to by a certain Dr Jesus Acosta Santos –with whom I lived – and I began to think about it more and more.<br /><br />I spent my time in Cuba hopping from one <span style="font-style: italic;">Casa Particulare</span> to another and ended up staying the last week in Havana with a delightful and unusual man by the name of Dr Jesus Acosta Santos – a semi-retired criminal defense lawyer and owner – if such a term ever applies in Cuba – of a <span style="font-style: italic;">Casa Particulare</span>. (You never actually own your home – even though the middle classes do get to buy and sell them. But they’re not transferable. If you die, you can’t leave it to your children – it reverts to the State).<br /><br />Staying in Cuba you have two choices. A hotel with European prices and sub-saharan standards – Hotel Inglaterra, by all accounts, being perfectly representative of them all – or a <span style="font-style: italic;">Casa Particulare</span>, a government-licensed room rented in a local person’s home.<br /><br />Jesus was a kindly and very funny white-haired old man in sandals and a neck brace, apparently from a recent motorbiking accident. It says as much about Cuba as anything else that after a successful career as a lawyer, and his own legal practice with a personal staff, he lives in what would be called ‘the projects’ in the US, or a ‘council estate’ in the UK. After 45 years as a skilled professional, he still washes himself from a bucket, and only recently has been able to afford a television, on which he and I passed the evenings watching Cuban baseball. Every morning when I left the house, he reminded me that I was his responsibility; that Cuba is dangerous. He’d grab my arm and look into my eyes with a piercing apprehension and say, “Watch out for the black man. He will steal you and kick you and try to kill you”.<br /><br />I’ve been to many places in the world, and everywhere is different in many ways. But one thing which seems truly universal is the fear non-blacks have everywhere of young, black men. In Europe, North America, Australia, and even in places like India and China where there are barely any blacks at all, “Watch out for the black man!” is a refrain heard over and over. This is a topic beyond the scope of this piece. Maybe I’ll try and dig into it another time. I just wonder how much all of our African ancestry plays in this prejudice – the association of Africa with violent primitivism which we all think we’ve outgrown – and how much is because young black men, turns out, are just more violent.<br /><br />Anyway, like almost everyone in Cuba, Dr Jesus has relatives overseas. Of a Cuban population of 11 million, at very least one million live outside Cuba. Some – many – are in Florida as you’d guess, but many too live in Europe, having fled for a better life. Jesus lives alone but has two daughters and a wife overseas. He’s not, as I’d originally suspected, a widower or divorced – in fact his marriage to his wife in Italy is still going strong. But twelve years ago, and completely disillusioned with the revolution, hating communism and having had enough of the Special Period, she left to Italy with their daughters – one of whom is grown up and comes to visit him three times a year.<br /><br />Why didn’t he go with? I asked. What can possibly be worth being apart from your much-loved wife and children for the rest of your life and living alone?<br /><br />“I love Cuba. Cuba is my home”, he answered. And that was that.<br /><br />Everything was becoming more and more muddled. How does the economy work? Is there real and profound racism between whites and blacks here? Why do some Cubans appear to be genuinely rich? Why do so many love their country so passionately, yet also dream of leaving at the same time?<br /><br />And after bemusing conversations with a <span style="font-style: italic;">jinatera</span>, the well-respected journalist, the academics, with a medical doctor, an expat Canadian and various others, I ended my investigations with an evening spent with a remarkable young man called Sidney.<br /><br />Sidney is 26, a black Cuban whose maternal grandmother was Spanish and whose paternal great-grandfather was a slave taken from west Africa to Jamaica a century ago. He’s lived his whole life in Havana and works as a ‘systems manager’ (the closest I could translate, he maintains the electronic systems within buildings) and – like most Cubans – has never left the island. This will change later this year, when he moved to Toronto to start a new life with Carolina, his Canadian wife. They met a year or so ago when she was here for a development conference, they fell in love and were married some months later. They’re currently in the middle of the lengthy application process for his immigration to Canada – something which ought to pose no real problems. Canada – partly I think as a fuck-you to America – has long had close ties to Cuba.<br /><br />Carolina has been coming to Havana every couple of months since they got engaged, so their time apart has been bearable, but quite naturally his impending emigration looms large in his life. And not just because he’s never left his country, or because the climatic difference between Havana and Toronto will be overwhelming. Because he’s saying goodbye to the place he grew up – something I know only too well about myself.<br /><br />“I love Cuba. Cuba is my home”, he said with sadness, as we drank beer at sunset on the waterfront peering over to Florida. “I will always miss it. But by far the greatest thing about Cuba is the people. There are so many problems here: the corruption, the waste, the passivity in the face of repression and the desperation” (his English was better than most native speakers). “They are warm, easy-going, and always, always make sure to take care of each other”, he added, taking the words right out of my mouth.<br /><br />You really do feel it, you know. There’s a solidarity, a sense of shared adversity and – appropriate considering the politics – a camaraderie that makes me think of what London must’ve been like during the Blitz. In the face of average wages lower than virtually any other place on earth, and 45 years of US policy designed to squeeze the country into submission towards democracy and the free market, and particularly on the back of the Special Period, Cubans take care of one another. You can see it in the way a driver, unsure of directions, will flag down the very first person on the sidewalk and end up getting comprehensive instructions. You can see it in the way the elderly take care of the young children while the parents are working. You see it in the way the 17 year-old boys play baseball with the five year-olds in the street. Or the way vendors give out freebies to the neighbours.<br /><br />And so it was with Sidney that I finally got the answer I wanted on how the nonsensical jigsaw puzzle that is the Cuban economy works. He’s an exceptionally smart man and he understood my question before the words had finished leaving my lips.<br /><br />“Can’t you see?” he laughed. “There is a parallel economy. Of course, nobody can live on what they’re officially paid, so to call Cuba ‘communist’ is misleading and even inaccurate – it’s about the most capitalistic and entrepreneurial society you can imagine. It’s just that the capitalism exists in the informal economy. It’s the fruit vendor who’s given a weekly quota of bananas and apples from the government to sell at a fixed price. He sells some of them at that price, tells the government the rest are ruined, and gives the rest away to his family or sells them to foreigners at a massive mark-up. The guy selling shampoo does the same, and the woman in the government clothes factory is deliberately wasteful, keeps the scraps of material scraps and takes them home where her mother makes clothes out of them and sells for virtually nothing to the people on her street. The pharmacist steals medicines to give to his family and friends. The baker makes extra loaves of bread he doesn’t account for and gives them away. Everybody, absolutely <span style="font-style: italic;">everybody</span>, steals from the government. And the government knows. This is how it <span style="font-style: italic;">has</span> to work”.<br /><br />And suddenly it all made sense. When people have their backs to the wall as the Cubans have for two generations now, and when they live in a political system where wastefulness and inefficiency is a necessary and tolerable by-product of everything, people are enterprising in their survival. The government knows very well what’s going on and quietly tolerates it, because it’s the best case scenario to have a system with a black hole of waste but which keeps people healthy and alive (the average life expectancy is the same as in the USA), and in which it gets to thumb its finger to the big bad bully upstairs and declare victory for the revolution.<br /><br />“All warfare is based on deception”, wrote Sun Tzu in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Art of War </span>– and a de facto war is still going on between this rich but at the same time poor little island and a country to its north which has a reactionary bilateral policy born of the era of Kruschev and the Cuban Missile Crisis. But not all evolution mandates revolution, and I’m dying to know whether genuine ‘evolution’ in this country – a manifest improvement in the lives of its people – can or will take place without the ‘revolution’ that Washington so desperately wants. But beyond the crappy food and the falling-down houses, the music and the laughter, the entrepreneurship and the solidarity, the prostitution and the families walking together in the open air, and beyond the political repression and total state control, there is a beating heart to Cuba that is perceptible but completely indescribable unless you go yourself.<br /><br />Sidney told me of a woman he met at Havana airport the week before, while he was waiting for Carolina to arrive from Canada. The woman he met was flying back from Germany where she’d spent the last ten days. She spent ten days in Germany three months earlier, and three months before that and three months before that. She earns enough money in ten days of crazy, rat-race work (I didn’t ask what she does) in Germany to afford to live for three months of a frugal, family life in Havana. Sidney asked if she’s thought about taking her family to Germany for good. But she would never emigrate from Cuba for the same reason my friend Dr Jesus would not follow his wife, and why Sidney is so ambivalent about following his.<br /><br />“I love Cuba, Cuba is my home.” was her response. And that was that.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-26179646704997712112008-04-05T23:27:00.005+01:002008-12-11T17:39:37.942+00:00The Kaleidoscope of Ideology<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ho8E3EmzF3_sYYZ4ecDz5XkQiloM0nwphdy2fOpmeurFn3EUpTQOKsyJKjV8UHMBncFMRGsX7mXndMkryPx28BPskqVNerGZP4Usgsf4oosSKBqWt-DPx63EHz2RDGR09miAh_ZcOxYA/s1600-h/P1050736.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ho8E3EmzF3_sYYZ4ecDz5XkQiloM0nwphdy2fOpmeurFn3EUpTQOKsyJKjV8UHMBncFMRGsX7mXndMkryPx28BPskqVNerGZP4Usgsf4oosSKBqWt-DPx63EHz2RDGR09miAh_ZcOxYA/s320/P1050736.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185892054760739602" border="0" /></a>In the end, it always comes down to ideology.<br /><br />As hard as I try to get enthused about the oddities of the food or the perplexing social gestures; differences in music or attitudes to religion or sex, I find myself most often intrigued by government, and its various guises around the world. This probably stems as much from a self-reverential pondering on how to start a society from scratch (a hypothetical recently posed by a friend on a long car journey and which provided hours of merry dreaming) as anything else. But curiosity as to the structure of society and the role of the State is heightened when circumstances conveniently conspire, and you find yourself in an important place when something important is happening. Being in China the past few weeks has been just that.<br /><br />List – if you will – the most potentially fraught geopolitical relationships in the world today, and there’s a fair chance they’ll all involve China. There’s the unsustainable – and growing – Sino-US trade imbalance. The age-old mistrust and resentment the Chinese have towards Japan. There’s Taiwan, which is only ever one mischievous pro-independence candidacy away from seeing about a million young Chinese conscripts wandering around in smart green tunics carrying Kalashnikovs. There’s North Korea, Kashmir and China’s endless thirst for oil. Tinderboxes all.<br /><br />But Tibet is the elephant in the room. Long the pet cause of Hollywood liberals and the European Left, it’s a particularly bewildering issue, inasmuch as nobody realistically expects anything ever to change. The world’s dependence on China’s factories and the Chinese need for “face” – a need born from millennia of foreign invasions, humiliations and declines (the “sick man of the east”, as China was called in London’s 19th century gentlemen’s clubs) means that there’s no way China permits Tibetan independence. So in that sense, it’s moot.<br /><br />But China’s opening up. It’s a statement made by every journalist who visits, and as sound bytes go it’s true, but it’s eye-wateringly complex as well. China in 2008 is littered with contradiction. It’s an awakening giant liberated by the free market but crippled too with a debilitating lack of self-esteem; arrogant and pathetic as much as visionary and ambitious. Everyone I met there, from factory workers to cab drivers to hostel owners to students and teachers added layer upon layer of paint to a picture already daubed thick with colour.<br /><br />So Tibet erupted into the worst violence in a couple of decades while I was there. I was guiltily pleased to be able to watch Beijing waver and fumble and fool. It began, naturally, with the Internet. Which deserves a small digression.<br /><br />China now has more Internet users than any other country. PCs are becoming affordable for the urban Chinese for the first time (the PC division of IBM – that venerable American behemoth – was bought by China’s Lenovo a couple of years back – a rather embarrassing fact most Americans chose to ignore). Most Chinese, though, still don’t have computers at home, so they cram by the thousands into Internet cafés the size of football fields to watch pirated VCDs and furtively stream porn – but most of all, to play online games. Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (or MMORPGs – honestly, could nobody come up with a better acronym than that?) are a phenomenon the significance of which not enough people yet fully grasp. While I was at the CSFI, we produced papers and organised seminars on the subject. They’re the stepping-stone between a world of indisputable reality on the one hand, and one of virtuality on the other. Remarkably, half a dozen young Korean men supposedly drop dead every month in Internet cafes from playing these games too much. Leaving aside the rather obvious point that these kids would be better off playing football, reading or trying to get laid – and the rather elegant Darwinism of their demise – it was in China that I got to see the phenomenon first-hand. Zombies, row upon row of keyboard-tapping ghouls slaying dragons or building wizard points or whatever to triumph in battle over some snot-nosed and pimple-faced adolescent sitting in his parents’ attic in Copenhagen or Auckland or Durban.<br /><br />So the young Chinese are using the Internet for the wrong things – stop the presses! That’s their problem and their prerogative and I won’t say any more about it. But what’s far more significant is not what’s <span style="font-style: italic;">on</span> the Internet, but what’s <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span>.<br /><br />The existence of the so-called Great Firewall of China isn’t news to anyone. It’s annoying while you’re there to find Wikipedia blocked – presumably someone had the nerve to refer to Taiwan as a “country”. It’s even more exasperating to find that online bible Wikitravel likewise unavailable. But as useful as Wikipedia is for becoming a minor expert on a subject as quickly as possible, it’s a flawed product and everyone knows that. China’s blocking of the BBC, on the other hand, is a whole other matter.<br /><br />The BBC radio world service is the most listened-to station in the world. The BBC television world service – along with CNN International – is the world’s foremost 24-hour news provider. And, please, excuse any green-pastures, rose-glasses Anglophilia, but the BBC remains the world’s most respected news source. It just is, and it’s a disgrace that the Chinese have blocked it for so long. )Although at the time of writing, they’ve just removed the block – probably more to do with international opprobrium over their latest lashing-out at Tibet than my own repeated entreaties. But whatever – it’s a good thing).<br /><br />The BBC, though, is only a part of the story. Google has famously – infamously, really – agreed to allow censorship of its search engine in China, a example of obsequious, cost-benefit pandering of which an otherwise admirable company ought to be ashamed. Google ‘Human Rights’, ‘Tiananmen Square’, ‘Democracy’ or ‘Taiwan’, and you’ll find your internet connection drop out. I know – I tried it every day I was there. Curiously, Myspace is blocked too. Apparently depressed, 14-year old goth kids in Nebraska and aspiring rock bands in Sheffield pose a national security risk to the middle kingdom. Facebook isn’t blocked at all – presumably because the bureaucrats in Beijing and their IT lackies don’t appreciate that that’s where real dissent and criticism will manifest in the years to come – along with the blogosphere of course. The blogs are blocked too, but only in part. I could update my own blog by logging in, but not actually open and view the URL. This would make some sense from the perspective of the Chinese officials, if it weren’t so pathetically easy to bypass the firewall they’ve constructed. I’m not what you'd call IT savvy – I’ve never written a line of code in my life – but I could get around all the blocks in no time. Moreover, to compound the counter-productive effect of censoring the Internet in the first place, the bureaucrats have overlooked that the people who may formulate insurrection or dissent – young, urban students – are the very same people who’ll be able to figure out how to bypass the restrictions put in place. It’s been the folly of communists from time immemorial: the utter counter-productivity of lashing out. Like the Soviet imprisonment of dissidents in the past, they’d be better off abandoning the premise that communism is incompatible with dissent, and instead just levelling with their people. If the current rise of <span style="font-style: italic;">Östalgie</span> in the former East Germany and USSR demonstrates anything, it’s that people are not always, under all circumstances, opposed to a strong, centralised State which is more involved in their lives than in the West. What they loathe is the suppression of speech and the fear and oppression that engenders.<br /><br />So, to the crusty old cadavers in Beijing who probably think the Internet to be a conspiratorial series of pipes and who are so desperate to retain their one-party model, my advice is this: open it up. Your young, English-speaking students – the ones who are going to cause you trouble down the track – are smarter than you. Telling them what they can and cannot read on the Internet – surely a force for good to rival agriculture and the Gutenberg press – is going to come back and bite you in the arse. Loosen up, you octogenarian fools.<br /><br />And so, back to Tibet: Naturally, the propaganda machine went into overdrive as the Chinese PLA began shooting protesters in Lhasa, leaving perhaps 150 dead. Or so the US, Australian, British and French media were reporting – and as they had reporters on the ground, I’m going to take them at their word. By Day Two, and as the Chinese state news agency was reporting that brave PLA troops had been attacked by Tibetan radicals (including, rather amusingly, Buddhist monks who Beijing would have you believe were rampaging through Lhasa like blacks in LA after the Rodney King verdict) YouTube went down. This was pretty irritating – you never know when you’re going to be struck by the need to watch grainy home footage of people falling off trampolines or lip-synching to Celine Dion – but it turned out, unsurprisingly, that someone had impertinently uploaded footage of Chinese troops beating the living shit out of unarmed Tibetans on the site. So there went YouTube.<br /><br />By the end of Day Two, CNN, the Guardian and MSNBC articles on events in Tibet were blocked too. I still read them – as I said, it’s not the hardest thing to bypass the firewall – but bit by bit, I came to begin to understand the true nature of the Chinese government and its paranoia of lockdown. It’s the reactionism of a government that lacks faith in its own purity of virtue to trust its people to know the truth. Tiananmen Square couldn’t happen again I don’t think. The Chinese government was stunned by the tonnage of international opprobrium which landed on its doorstep in 1989 but has probably learnt enough not to machine-gun its own students in the centre of its capital. Mobile phones and digital cameras no longer permit such an atrocity to be kept quiet from its people. And say what you like about the Chinese predisposition to authoritarian rule – and I could say plenty – I don’t believe they would tolerate a repeat of 1989 in one of their own cities. Even the most policed police state in the world cannot suppress a truly widespread uprising among its people, and the Politburo in Beijing may be stupid, but it's not that stupid.<br /><br />Digressing further if I can, I asked pretty much every Chinese I met about their thoughts on Tiananmen. The most common response? Uncomprehending blankness. They haven’t heard about it. Going to the Square itself – a place I wanted to visit for a moment of personal and solemn reflection – is like visiting Disneyland, but with more flags, fewer Americans and about the same level of excruciating banality. Thousands, tens of thousands of Chinese are running about, giggling, squealing and posing for photographs. In the world’s largest public square, and in a place where not two decades ago one of the world’s iconic modern images – the man martyring himself in front of the tank – was seared into our minds, and where the bitumen is soaked with the blood of innocent students, the sea of Chinese tourists don’t know a damn thing about what happened. The closest I got to genuine knowledge of 1989 while in China was a young, English-educated man of exceptional friendliness and worldliness called Leo.<br /><br />Leo – the charming director of entertainment on my boat trip through the Three Gorges on the Yangtze – is that rarest of travel finds: the native who’s been overseas and who works in an industry where he meets visitors to his own country. People like him are a journalistic goldmine; he can uniquely understand and express a comparison between not only his own country and others, but between the people of both places too.<br /><br />He <span style="font-style: italic;">had</span> heard of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He had the year wrong (ironically, he thought it was 1984) but he knew that some students died. That was about it. The revealing part, though – and perhaps the single most revealing moment of my time in China – was his astonishment that <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> had heard of it. He was genuinely confused as to why such an event would have made international news.<br /><br />And there it is. Play word association in the West with anyone who, well, really with anyone who knows how to read. Say the word “Beijing” and they’ll just as likely respond with “Tiananmen Square” as they will “China” or “Olympics”. Say “Tiananmen” and the knee-jerk response is unanimous: “Massacre”.<br /><br />So, not only has the government managed to bury this tragic, cruel – and really quite recent – event from its people, but has fostered an environment where the people don’t realise what the outside world thinks of that government itself. This will change in time – for reasons I’ve already gone through. Short of DPRK-style, Stalinist totalitarianism, there’s no way to keep a population dumb in an Internet world. But my various conversations with Leo and his other compatriots left me clear: not only is there much the Chinese don’t know, but there’s even more that they don’t know they don’t know.<br /><br />By Days Four and Five, Beijing was panicking. The reason you can tell is that the tripe coming out of the state media had qualitatively morphed from eyebrow-raisingly improbable to downrightly Orwellian. And then things ramped up further and Chinese defiance grew and grew until a single word – the magic word, really – was muttered in a few capitals around the world. And that word, of course, is “boycott”.<br /><br />The Chinese had been comprehensively outflanked. The Achilles heel of China in 2008 is the Olympics, an event they've been preparing for in one way or another for twenty years. Hosting the Olympics is a major challenge and a real coup for any country. There’s the quadrennial need to get the Games to run smoothly and have the IOC chairman announce at the closing ceremony that the Games had been “the best yet!” But for the Chinese, much more is at stake. Centuries of various humiliations, the brutality suffered by the Japanese, the Mongols, the Opium Wars and the British, and the decades of development lost to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution have led to 2008’s Games being China’s 'coming of age'. It’s an opportunity for China to demonstrate its position as the biggest, most ambitious – and in some ways, richest – country on earth. They know they’re not going to be overtaking the US economy for decades, but that’s not the point. The point is, they hunger for the world’s respect in an almost pathological way, and an Olympics on an unprecedented scale is designed to get just that.<br /><br />And these Games really will be unprecedented. China has spent three times as much as the next most expensive Olympics. US$17bn has been spent <span style="font-style: italic;">just on cleaning the air in Beijing</span> (although as always, government accounting transparency in China is not what it is in Europe or North America). Although the IOC’s Jacques Rogge was making noises about the air quality while the Chinese army was gunning people down in Tibet – again, no coincidence but a calculated snark at the Chinese – my own experience in Beijing was astonishing. Blue skies and clean air in a city in which I was expecting to be barely able to breathe. I suspect I was lucky – but one thing is beyond question: the Chinese are working around-the-clock, planning a ban on a third of traffic during the Games and spending a fortune to get Beijing’s air acceptable for outdoor sports, not to mention the US$40bn they’re spending on public transport and skyscrapers. All this, of course, to get the world’s media to write in surprise at how impressive and clean a mega-city it is. It’ll probably work. Unless, of course, there’s a boycott.<br /><br />That word, “boycott”, began rumbling across the global news media within a few days of troubles beginning in Tibet. Nobody in a foreign government with real clout expressly called for it. But the French refused to rule it out, and its not hard to imagine the human-rights Left and the anti-Chinese Right in the US Congress aligning behind it. It’s that rarest of things – a confluence of interests at both ends the spectrum. I’m sure a boycott of the Beijing Olympics won’t happen by any significant countries. But if it did, it would be an event of enormous significance for a variety of reasons. But the biggest of these, I really think, is that it would be unspinnable to the Chinese people. Nobody, not even the most PR-savvy operatives in the world – and none of them seem to work for the Chinese anyway – could put a positive spin on this. The Chinese people would find out why it is the world is choosing to stay away from their magnificent showpiece.<br /><br />The Tibet thing slowly began to recede and with it, so did mention of a boycott. But watching the government’s paranoia close-up was a spectacle I recommend to anyone who wants to be in a war zone without, you know, having to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> anything.<br /><br />China really is such a confusing place. It’s breathtaking and underwhelming in equal measure; admirable and disgusting; a place I want to go back to over and over, and never again step foot in for the rest of my life. You can be so frustrated with the manners and habits of its people, only to then be embraced with grace and kindness. You can gasp through the sooty air of one of its countless megacities – there are more than a dozen you’ve never even of which are bigger than London or Paris – and then find yourself, within an hour, sitting on soil so fertile and land so rich you wonder how it is Mao managed to extract famine from it. And you can be in a food market one minute, stomach turning at the skinned dogs, the barely-alive frogs, birds and snakes kept in unutterably awful conditions and then wander though a door to find a crafts market where families sit together, chatting, laughing, bonding and making baskets or pots.<br /><br />Single young women can safely walk at night in any city, knowing full well that the punishment for rape or theft (especially against foreigners) is so draconian it serves as a virtually total deterrent. They can take solace in this safety, but wonder too whether it’s right that a mugging committed by an impoverished Chinese should be punished by the State with practically summary execution. They can be pondering that question, and then notice the elderly Chinese out on the streets at midnight on a Saturday, hundreds of them dancing in pairs to some droopy, saccharine Chinese love songs. And they can wonder to themselves how many places in the world there are where the elderly feel safe to be out on the streets at night dancing and socialising, rather than slumped in front of a television watching Parkinson or Letterman re-runs, slowly awaiting Death’s cold embrace.<br /><br />As I said at the top, It all comes back to ideology for me. It’s the unique (okay, Vietnam has a similar model) political system the Chinese have – the incomprehensible mésalliance of a free market charging ahead like a runaway train, and an authoritarian, bureaucratic and oftentimes cruel State which cannot see the trees from the wood.<br /><br />Their one-party system, the improbable marriage of communism and capitalism is a prism through which every visitor cannot help but see China. I’m not a communist – I accept the well-trod orthodoxy that liberal democracy is, so far, the least worst system of government anyone’s come up with. (I do think there should be some sort of voting test – a non-partisan, general knowledge assessment of the issues before you get to pull your level – but this is an idea unlikely to gain traction, least of all among those who wear their ignorance as a badge of honour).<br /><br />But what’s clear from visiting modern-day China is the enormous advantage a one-party model bestows when it comes to solving the big problems. I’m going to devote some space to the Three Gorges Dam, because not only is it arguably the most ambitious project the world has seen in centuries, but it speaks volumes about the capacity of a governing party – when there’s no opposition to argue with it – to actually<span style="font-style: italic;"> govern</span>. Say what you will about the cruelties and injustices of authoritarianism, when massive projects are required, projects which could never get underway in the West because of political lobbyists, a litigation culture, and various special interests or advocacy groups seeking injunction after injunction, in China – they get <span style="font-style: italic;">done</span>. Spend a gazillion workers’ salaries on building stadia? Let’s do it! Construct a single airport terminal the size of the whole of Heathrow? Let’s do it! Build a city of 8 million people to belch out smog on the site of a fishing village? Let’s do it! Send a man into space with no scientific rationale for doing so? Let’s do it! Dam the Yangtze? Damn the expense! Let’s do it!!<br /><br />So, the Three Gorges Project. They rightfully call it the ‘project’ rather than the ‘dam’, because the dam itself – although the objective – cannot stand alone. It would be like describing football to a neophyte and saying that it’s played by a guy who tries to kick a ball into a net. The overseas media, I think, often misses the primary point of the project. It’s often couched in terms of hydroelectricity, supplying renewable energy for an enormous country industrialising at a scarcely believable rate. This is true – the project is now supposedly providing forty per cent of China’s energy – but often overlooked is the role the Yangtze has played in China’s history. I can think of no country so dependent on a waterway – it’s been an artery for transportation, a source of irrigation and drinking water for as long as China has been populated. I don’t think its overstating it to say that without this river – the third longest in the world and one which zigzags across the land from Tibet to the Pacific – there would be no China as we know it.<br /><br />The river has always been a curse and a blessing in equal measure and with devastating effect. The river floods every few years, and 400 million Chinese live along or near its thousands of kilometres of winding banks. Catastrophic loss of life has occurred throughout its history – as recently as the 1970s a quarter of a million people were swept away; in 1998 a few thousand died; in the fifties another quarter million. Getting accurate figures isn’t easy. China has been technologically backward for so much of its history, which, in combination with successive governments committed to the control of information and a population so enormous that accurate accounting is impossible, makes all figures relative approximations. Three things, however, are beyond dispute. First, the Yangtze has flooded every few years throughout China’s 5000-year history. Second, the flooding has become more frequent in the agricultural and industrial ages. And third, millions upon millions of people have died. The primary purpose for the Three Gorges project, therefore, was to control the hitherto uncontrollable.<br /><br />Although the green light for the project was given in the early 1990s, and building began in 1993, the idea dates back at least a century. In 1924, a brilliant young Chinese engineering student returned from Birmingham University in the UK with complete theoretical plans for the damming of the river at Sandouping, creating a 600km-long lake and drowning countless cities in the process as the waters rose. But logistics and a lack of material and technical resources and know-how left this vision consigned to mere fantasy for decades, until in the 1970s a group of American engineers, together with the best and brightest China could produce, began work on plans which took advantage of technological developments, and made the project a possibility. During the seventies and eighties, a trial, guinea pig dam was built 38 kilometres downstream from the Three Gorges Dam – a smaller version, only twenty metres higher on the upstream than downstream sides. In 1993, the decision to go ahead with the main dam was made, and 100,000 workers spend the next fifteen years building it, in three parts. From 1993-97, the river was <span style="font-style: italic;">stopped</span>. This is a notion so stupendous to me I can’t say any more about it. From 1998-2003 the dam itself and the locks for the ships were constructed. And from 2004 to today and until 2009, the generators were installed.<br /><br />No amount of statistics can really convey the magnitude of what the Chinese have accomplished here. What most of the world knows of the dam is that it’s really, really big, is very, very expensive, and many people – and the environment – have suffered because of its construction. For China’s countless critics, it’s come to exemplify the dehumanised arrogance and disregard for its citizens of a political monolith which does as it damn – no pun – well pleases. What I came to see, though, what I came to understand from speaking to the people whose lives have been affected by the project, is that conventional wisdom outside China is far from the full story. I think can tell when I’m being fed bullshit – like the government tour guide who insisted the project has come in under budget when the foreign media more believably insists it was three times over – and when someone is speaking with genuine freedom and candour. And despite some of the environmental consequences of the dam, it’s done a lot of good too.<br /><br />A few numbers to begin, though, so bear me out. The dam itself is about 180 metres high – roughly the height of London’s Canary Wharf tower. It’s 2300 metres long, and at its base over 200 metres thick. When the hydroelectric turbines are finished next year, it’ll produce 87.4 billion kilowatt hours per year – or €8bn worth of annual electricity. This is a lot. The lake being created behind the dam is 600 kilometres long. At the time of my visit, the water level had risen from 60 metres to 155 metres above sea level. When the lake finishes rising next year, it’ll be at 175 metres. The water level upstream will be 96 metres higher than downstream. It’s worth taking a moment to think about the amount of water being controlled in the creation of a 600 kilometre long lake, increasing in depth by 115 metres. It’s enough to have created a microclimate above the water – a shroud of mist from the evaporation of a body of water of quite unimaginable volume.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGs3tPS5tkl0B4DXB-3LTdl6LlO5mFvZ9zn64lM9g6EDf-XyBV0Rtpw65QZB_tb7jxkrIOpdpvXffPww63F9XoseBkGGji2mRJFNebNAcroECc8zWJxN9MiMBYyhhApag1Rn9uL51CoDld/s1600-h/P1050732.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGs3tPS5tkl0B4DXB-3LTdl6LlO5mFvZ9zn64lM9g6EDf-XyBV0Rtpw65QZB_tb7jxkrIOpdpvXffPww63F9XoseBkGGji2mRJFNebNAcroECc8zWJxN9MiMBYyhhApag1Rn9uL51CoDld/s320/P1050732.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185892050465772274" border="0" /></a>1.13 million people have been displaced due to the project – a rare statistic upon which the Chinese government and outside observers are in apparent agreement. Some lived in the cities along what was the upstream river, cities like Badang and Fengdu which now lie in the watery depths of the resulting lake. Others were farmers scattered along the river bank, whose farms now lie submerged for all of time. Standing as I did high up in the City of Ghosts, China’s most sacred place for Daoists and Buddhists, and having my ears burnt with various titbits of unevolved superstitious claptrap, I peered across the lake where the city of Fengdu once lay, and towards New Fengdu – the replacement city they built in the last decade (see photo). I can’t help but come back to my earlier point: the Chinese, with nothing more than determination, labour and money, have built new cities higher up on the river bank to replace those now completely drowned under a hundred or so metres of water. The British can’t get the baggage system at Heathrow’s T5 to work and the US, after three years, still can’t get started on repairing New Orleans. I’m just saying: bitch about Chinese human rights all you like and complain about the shoddiness of some of their exports, but you can’t ever say they don’t know how to get things done.<br /><br />I wandered around the new cities of Badang and Fengdu – two of many that have sprung up during the construction of the Dam. The buildings are modern and rather elegant, the streets wider and better constructed than most you see in China’s towns and villages. Through a translator I asked – se<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG4s6tc3XODIxGtpJAhnoFR6owt6j2KD-UpKhIUcgUDtB_vpy4eLLDR1dpM2RxuPjmGxeOGEPpzsvFFp6HqBY8k9Ctw9c5xuTLRNbBFAED7F9ROVUhI82lGc3LeSHrpi-MUmlY4TZHvnbb/s1600-h/P1050798.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG4s6tc3XODIxGtpJAhnoFR6owt6j2KD-UpKhIUcgUDtB_vpy4eLLDR1dpM2RxuPjmGxeOGEPpzsvFFp6HqBY8k9Ctw9c5xuTLRNbBFAED7F9ROVUhI82lGc3LeSHrpi-MUmlY4TZHvnbb/s320/P1050798.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185892054760739586" border="0" /></a>parately - a shopkeeper, taxi driver and a factory worker what they think of their new city and the Project. Their responses were remarkably similar. I’m paraphrasing, <span style="font-style: italic;">“My old house had one sleeping room and one eating room, and eight of us were living there. When the project was announced fifteen years ago, we were sad to have to leave it, and see our city disappear. But the government has built enough new apartments that now we have only two people in each bedroom, and the house is warm in the winter. We don’t have to be afraid of the river flooding any more, and we’re proud that China can do something as big as this. We want everyone to know what China is capable of”</span>.<br /><br />These were people talking honestly and openly, and I began to see the project not just as a necessary alternative to building dozens of coal plants, and not just as protection for millions of people of the savage whims of a river which has taken millions of lives over generations, but as a way to have improved the lot of those living impoverished lives along its banks. Of course, it’s not all Christmas in Paris. Some farmers can no longer work and have been just paid off for their loss. And the long-term environmental consequences are not yet fully understood. And the people displaced by the project could, of course, not avail themselves of a judicial system which, in the West, would allow them to challenge forced relocation as unreasonable. But before we pile on, as is fashionable to do, I really think credit should be given where credit is due. The Chinese have conquered the next frontier, and if the rampant growth and ambition of this extraordinary and ancient country is teaching us anything, it’s that we can expect them to do much more of the same in the century to come.<br /><br />All this progress comes at a cost though, and time after time I was told that China’s ‘tradition’ is being chipped away. One expect this from the elderly – old people everywhere never tire of telling anyone who’ll listen (or who is too polite to walk away) that ‘tradition’ is being lost – but I heard it over and over again from the young too. I heard it from the uneducated rural Chinese in the interior provinces and from students in the ugly and indistinct urban centres like Chongqing (incidentally, a city unique in also being a province, and by some measures the city with the world’s largest population – 34 million. It’s a skin-crawlingly awful place). I heard it from the professional classes riding the train with me and, surprisingly, from three odd young students I met in Chengdu and with whom I passed a remarkable afternoon.<br /><br />I was wandering aimlessly through the city trying not to get run over, spat on or sideswiped by a bicycle, and happened upon the main square. I’ve seen big squares in the world’s cities before, but it says much about China’s scale that in a city virtually no-one outside the country has heard of, and which is bigger than Sydney, Chicago, Berlin, Barcelona or Vancouver, there lies a central square so vast you can barely see the other side. Although admittedly the air has the viscosity of treacle and the colour of apricots, so one can’t always be sure of scale.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1yhHQ6GwyfKzoMKzI2AkDW4XYSukcLJoKx2aklKc-Vl_pHP-Ch1GIYhx0Dye7j4sH0xLhzKArAV9NhrZWi4d3YsFkgicko4DDRiRIgm4_6BJT3AFr7N7qXRuVERxzd6NXU7leTjMvuEzy/s1600-h/P1050379.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1yhHQ6GwyfKzoMKzI2AkDW4XYSukcLJoKx2aklKc-Vl_pHP-Ch1GIYhx0Dye7j4sH0xLhzKArAV9NhrZWi4d3YsFkgicko4DDRiRIgm4_6BJT3AFr7N7qXRuVERxzd6NXU7leTjMvuEzy/s320/P1050379.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185892041875837666" border="0" /></a>Nevertheless, there stood the ubiquitous statue of Mao, a hundred feet high, arm outstretched and gazing benevolently towards his people. I stood in admiration of the statue – it really is something – and started snapping photos. Three young men – English students at the local university – nervously approached and, in English so haphazard and metallic it made me squint, asked if they could help with anything. I was delighted, so asked why it is that in a packed public square, with an enormous monument of modern China’s most important leader, I was the only person looking at it. I asked what the Chinese think of Mao nowadays, and the conversation was moving nicely along to democratic movements and right of protest, when the army arrived.<br /><br />Frankly, the nervousness I usually get when approached by the military – especially in places where dissent is not allowed and I’m carrying a backpack full of notes which basically refer to them as limp-brained, commie automatons – was trumped by an unexpected desire for some good 'ole trouble. Flashing through my mind were romantic dreamings of a couple of hours of respectful interrogation in a police station, during which I’d embarrass them into admitting that they’d really rather be doing more important stuff than spying on foreigners – and then being expelled from the country only to get on the news back in the West as a poster-child for Chinese intransigence and diplomatic ten-thumbedness. And then I’d write a Pullitzer-winning article about my experience and live off it at dinner parties for the next two decades.<br /><br />So I puffed my chest up, ready for anything, but not worried about any sort of violence – this is an Olympic year after all, and the Chinese aren’t dumb enough to torture a foreigner when there are so many of their own citizens yet to torture first. Disappointingly, the officials stopped short of dragging me away, but said that if we wanted to discuss such things, a more discrete place would be appropriate. This was not the heavy-handed sino-sulk I had come to expect, but they were serious about it – talking to the Chinese about democracy is permitted, it would seem, as long as you exercise the decorum of not doing it in front of a bloody great statue of Chairman Mao.<br /><br />So, in what I considered a satisfactorily ironic ‘screw you’, I took my three new friends to Starbucks, and shelled out a Chinese worker’s monthly salary on four coffees.<br /><br />My new friends included an extroverted and metrosexual Europhile who called himself Hans and professed admiration for everything about Germany, without knowing any more about that country than you'd get from seeing a VW Golf on the street. The second was a whiskery young thing called Chen whose voice would have been irritatingly staccato even without the world-class stammer with which he was sadly cursed. Getting his coffee order out of him took longer than actually drinking the thing. “La-la-la-la-la-la (oh, c’mon!) la- la-latte!!”<br /><br />Christ.<br /><br />The third was a charming and soft-spoken introvert also called Chen, who – like most charming and soft-spoken introverts in all places – was the smartest, most thoughtful and most interesting of his group, but consistently treated by the others like a moron. Hans the Europhile Extrovert went on and on, waxing lyrical about the music of Beethoven and Brahms while we waited for our coffee to come, with little indication than he had any experience with those two great Germans other than having read their names somewhere. His extroversion and self-appointment as group leader was made all the more irritating by a periodic excitability in which he would hyperventilate. His friends explained that he was so excited to be speaking with a foreigner he needed a moment to calm down. In retrospect, buying him the double espresso was probably a bad idea.<br /><br />But after a slow start, a truly revealing afternoon followed. They all study English together at the university – although quite obviously the English is being taught by a Chinese professor who can read it but not speak it, and who knows nothing of conversational nuance. They’re all only children (without siblings, I mean) – my question as to whether they had brothers or sisters was met with a further fit of giggling – and don’t have girlfriends. In the case of the hyperventilating Hans this is really a no-brainer, but they all said that there aren’t enough girls to go around, that the male surplus among the young Chinese has left the acquisition of a mate more Natural Selection than, well, natural selection. What girls there are get their pick of the rich, the foreign or just the very best looking men around. Which left my three young virgins (yes, I asked) with no real prospects of a girlfriend or even a wife. It’s not funny at all, of course. It’s really, really sad. If you can’t realistically leave your country, and if there aren’t enough of the opposite sex to go around, one of an individual’s most fundamental rights – the right to at least the prospect of finding a spouse, of having children – is voided. Amidst all the talk of political censorship, of the lack of voting and the quality of the air, this is something not talked about enough. China’s one-child policy, and the consequent foeticide, female infanticide, and sex-related abortion – both voluntary and involuntary – deserves more international attention, indignation and outrage. I really felt sorry for these guys.<br /><br />But the really interesting part of my afternoon spent with these three oddbods was their hatred for their government – the first real expression of this I’d heard during my weeks in the country. “<span style="font-style: italic;">The only perfection is truth!!</span>”, Hans shouted, slamming his fist on the table so loudly the Chinese baristas jumped a foot. I don’t know if Hans is a scholar of the European Enlightenment or not – my guess would be not – but he and his two sidekicks began to complain about everything from the blocking of the Internet (of which they were very well aware), the propaganda of the state-run media, and their inability to openly protest. They wanted democracy, they wanted a multi-party free market, they wanted reconciliation with Japan, a policy of status quo on Taiwan, they wanted China out of Tibet, and they wanted more to be done on environmental issues. My surprise at what turned out to be a raging torrent of grievances was less that university students would turn out to hold generally left-of-centre views, but that such views hinted at a well of discontent beneath the veneer of order and conformity the Chinese put forth with such conviction.<br /><br />These debates probably don’t take place within the lecture halls at the universities, and they definitely are nowhere to be found in the state media. But in the bowels of the Internet, on the millions of blogs to which the Chinese contribute (all three of my new young friends were enthusiastic bloggers) and far beyond the eyes and understanding of the bureaucrats managing the Great Firewall, there is a vibrant discussion of ideas taking place. Countless fora are dedicated to free speech, a free press and China’s place in the world. As everywhere else, political and philosophical discussions like these are done in an echo chamber; who can know for sure just how big this movement is? But what I came to understand by the end of a few short weeks in the Middle Kingdom is that just when you think China can’t confuse you further, it can. It’s the anti-Magic Eye. The longer you look at it, the more jumbled it becomes.<br /><br />The Chinese predisposition towards authoritarianism will never go away, I’m sure. Reverence for and obedience towards centralised power goes back as far as China does itself, and the disappearance of that is about as likely as the Spanish giving up siestas. And it’s probably also true that the late 1980s – the years leading up to Tiananmen Square – represented the apex of the democracy movement in China. The majority of Chinese people I spoke to – and other people’s accounts bear this out – are optimistic and happy about their country and their place within it. For most Chinese, their personal lot has grown in the past decades, and after generations of famine and hardship, having enough wealth to feed and educate their children, own a television, eat in a restaurant now and then and look after their parents is such sufficient reward that voting really doesn’t seem much of a big deal. Fundamentally, people who have always lived a parochial existence care about parochial matters. And in such matters, things are getting measurably better.<br /><br />But peer further into the kaleidoscope of China and you wonder about the millions of students blogging away, calmly and easily evading the government’s sonar like submarines plumbing the ocean’s dark depths. You wonder what happens when they take public sector jobs to replace the old men in Beijing. You wonder what happens when the first generation to openly criticise the excesses and criminalities of the Cultural Revolution takes power. You wonder what happens when the enforced civil duty for the Olympics passes – after being told to learn how to queue, to stop spitting everywhere, will those superficial changes last? You wonder what happens when the government and the army eventually goes <span style="font-style: italic;">too far</span>, when instead of a couple of hundred protesters far away in Tibet, it’s something closer to home.<br /><br />The question, I suppose, is whether China in 2008 is like the USSR and the eastern bloc in 1988. Is it a country whose astonishing embrace of the free market will necessarily require an embrace of freedom more generally? Or do the officials in Beijing actually understand the nature of their 1.3 billion people much better than do academics and NGO noise-making dilettantes back in the West? Perhaps they do, after all, and that indeed this odd marriage of consumption and growth on the one hand with rigidity, closure and control on the other, is sustainable after all. Maybe it’s like the Arab wife who, when asked why she agrees to walk behind her husband, defer to his opinion and wear the niqab, answers, “This is what we do. This is what works for us”. Are we, in fact, all the outraged feminist theorist posing the question, who decries that Arab wife’s subservience and disempowerment, but who has been divorced three times herself?<br /><br />Time will tell whether the economic changes in China translate to political ones, and time will tell whether my three angry little friends are really representative of a burgeoning dissent beneath China’s controlled surface. As I said at the start, though: for me, it all comes down to ideology. I just wish I could understand what that ideology is, in a country so confusing nobody from the outside can ever possibly understand it fully.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-63198499848482213632008-03-13T12:38:00.006+00:002008-12-11T17:39:38.664+00:00Gorgeousness & gorgeosity made flesh!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfhCpoq1FvNIUM5hCaxonELR56sPoDFszZ255x-SU14ZRG8d67sL_sNBIjUoIFr-4gXueRIwzbYRkmkEgXKjU1UAr0WnVMwGWBnhXxrTyXjGxWYoFAZnmE2mQEVeckJmpJTS21wEVAGiLB/s1600-h/P1050860.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfhCpoq1FvNIUM5hCaxonELR56sPoDFszZ255x-SU14ZRG8d67sL_sNBIjUoIFr-4gXueRIwzbYRkmkEgXKjU1UAr0WnVMwGWBnhXxrTyXjGxWYoFAZnmE2mQEVeckJmpJTS21wEVAGiLB/s320/P1050860.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177206168838337362" border="0" /></a>There are moments in life so thankfully rare, so exquisite you can hardly breathe. Time slowly slows and then just as slowly stops and everything, absolutely everything else disappears. The birth of one’s first child, I would imagine. The first night of your honeymoon. The Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in four generations. I’m having one of those timeless moments right now – right this second. I don’t usually write in real time – it reads too much like a journal. But right now, this infinite nanosecond deserves nothing less. There’s no other way.<br /><br />I’m sitting on the bow of a boat aptly named Serenity, cruising down the Yangtze, through the Wu Gorge – the second of the three that precede the (in)famous and monstrously impressive dam the Chinese have been building for the last fifteen years. It’s the largest engineering project in China since the Great Wall, arguably the world’s most ambitious project in living memory and rumour has it the 600 km-long lake which is creeping up behind it will measurably affect the earth’s rotation.<br /><br />Whether or not that morsel of internet trivia is true, what beauty! What splendour! Words, of course, can never paint the picture you want to describe a scene. A much more skilled writer than me would despair. It’s hopeless. The Yangtze, hundreds of metres wide for most of this journey from Chongqing so far, has narrowed here to barely five ship-widths. The walls of the river for the last two days have gently climbed to the sky, dotted with ramshackle houses, forests and tiered paddies. But as we enter the gorge they morph to towering sheer cliffs which roll and straddle and jut in and out of the water. The thick air and low visibility that gives much of China a Dickensian and lung-cloggy gloom instead makes this vast canyon otherwordly. Here, it’s not smog but a foggy mist which hangs in the air, but not like the fog of a cold morning. It’s a microclimate created by the dam itself. It’s as if the air is laced with cotton, as though you can reach out and grasp it with numb fingers and it shrouds the mountains and the river lending a cold cotton-wool cover to the diagonal silhouettes approaching from the horizon. It’s like in the movies when there’s a flashback and you get the blinding, solarised effect as the protagonist jumps back to a lost memory. This place, here right now: it just doesn’t feel real.<br /><br /><br />It’s not even particularly bright out here on the bow where I’m perched, rugged up with laptop and iPod. Pink Floyd’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Great Gig in the Sky</span> just perfectly came on the leave-me-to-my-thoughts playlist and it has the angelic Clare Torry screaming wordlessly the ethereal soprano line and it feels like her voice is ricocheting around the walls of the canyon. Even iTunes is conspiring to soundtrack this lovely instant. But though it's not bright, I’m squinting anyway; the pale cotton-mist reflects what little sunlight is ma<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr0M3d_LxxLPds2bzCN8f_LdVodRKfVuYwysqo87femkIbKxVO-xPygujnofZoz1R2RXV_IrFrA9uOB86fevWVKZHEHl8u-7VTP5q9JSm0Tr7m_ZGEscelM1kkEogDjqPgaVT_LVSA18D_/s1600-h/P1050768.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr0M3d_LxxLPds2bzCN8f_LdVodRKfVuYwysqo87femkIbKxVO-xPygujnofZoz1R2RXV_IrFrA9uOB86fevWVKZHEHl8u-7VTP5q9JSm0Tr7m_ZGEscelM1kkEogDjqPgaVT_LVSA18D_/s320/P1050768.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177206177428271970" border="0" /></a>king its way down into the gorge, bouncing it off the flat walls and the mirror-flat water and off the white painted signs thirty metres up the cliff walls which designate to where the river will fill, once the three gorges project is complete.<br /><br />Man is so ambitious, so capable, so frighteningly adept he can choose to take something as unimaginably vast as these canyons – which run for tens and tens of kilometres – and make them smaller. He can build a dam so massive it raises the water level one hundred metres for hundreds of kilometres on the third longest river in the world, drowning whole cities in the process. I was thinking last evening, if one chooses a single word to describe humanity, would would it be? Some would say “evil”, some “consciousness”, others “conscience", some probably “love”, some “evolution”. For me, it’s “ambition”. The history of our species – especially from the Renaissance to the present – is, I think, a tale of tireless drive and energy, of exponential change for better and worse. This isn’t an original or interesting thought. I just feel moved to explain: once you pass slowly through this stupendous, utterly magnificent gorge, bewildered, left wordless by its beauty and scale, and then you see painted way, way up its edge, “175m” (the eventual water line above sea level) you can no longer be sure of what’s the more astonishing truth: that a godless universe could just randomly marry our visual senses to such physical wonder, or that humankind can now casually modify that wonder with nothing more than money, political will and labour.<br /><br />It’s phantasmagoric in this oriental valley, oh, gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh! The scent of the forests and some smoke hanging in the air from a fire someplace near. The air even tastes soft on the tongue, like candyfloss. It’s bitterly cold, but better for it. Makes the trip more of a voyage; more intrepid. Squinting across the bow, I count eight mountains lined up from closest to farthest – and going away each a slightly lighter tint of soft, misted grey, as if they’ve all been grabbed and scrunched up to the horizon. Which I suppose – tectonically speaking – is true.<br /><br />These moments come about so seldom. There’s so much beauty in the world but we get to properly see it so seldom and even when we do see it, we don’t experience it, we don’t <span style="font-style: italic;">feel</span> it. Well, right now, this stopped moment, I’m feeling it and I wish ev<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc6KKmGa1Gree8UbuG8q5xwKrjXUCQhv77Yq8-Qoweum_tCT1BVcQsXsGtKmLqNbpF2CtM6VjkFcRngMbmyoX1qia2LWeSZMn8AzUuIMlN_pUTVZ2hVmQvgkrBgOJ7kTyx2bzDjzTcborh/s1600-h/P1050869.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc6KKmGa1Gree8UbuG8q5xwKrjXUCQhv77Yq8-Qoweum_tCT1BVcQsXsGtKmLqNbpF2CtM6VjkFcRngMbmyoX1qia2LWeSZMn8AzUuIMlN_pUTVZ2hVmQvgkrBgOJ7kTyx2bzDjzTcborh/s320/P1050869.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177206160248402754" border="0" /></a>eryone I care about could feel it too. Traveling the earth, ticking off your own list of the wonders of the world means you can collect these moments in a locket kept pressed tight to your chest. They’re yours for always – nobody can ever take them away. And whenever times are hard, whenever you’re against the wall and when life’s quotidian drabness stomps on your soul, you can take a slow deep breath, close your eyes and stop the clock in your mind, taking yourself back to one of those handful of exquisite moments life can afford, when there is nothing else there, nothing at all, but you.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-2355219578712325132008-03-02T10:09:00.007+00:002008-03-03T12:04:33.465+00:00Three StoriesThis is the story of three men.<br /><br />The first is a rice farmer who lives a few miles outside Yangshuo, a gorgeous town set in the imposing Karst countryside of Guangxi province in China. He’s 37 years old, and has been married ten years to a beautiful woman who grew up in the same village as him. They have an eight year-old daughter, an only child like countless tens of millions others in China. The country’s one-child policy has relaxed a little in the last couple of decades – as the terrible consequences of macrosocial engineering dawns on the bureaucrats in Beijing – so the farmer and his wife have some small hope of being able to have a second child. The rural Chinese, if they have a son as their first child, cannot conceive again. The farmer, when asked what the consequences of another pregnancy would be, whispers “hospital”, and looks furtively around as if a uniformed official might spring sternly forth from the shrubs by the side of the road. They are weirdly lucky in their misfortune of having first a daughter instead of a son (daughters are not merely financially burdensome to marry off, but cannot adequately help in the family’s rice paddies). Having a daughter in China is ignominious at best, downright shameful at worst. Perhaps a hundred million baby girls have been murdered in the past twenty or thirty years. Drowned, strangled, or just dumped by the side of the road.<br /><br />But the couple’s misfortune in having a daughter has a silver lining. It means that, with the relaxation of some of the rules from Beijing, they might be spared the trip to “hospital” should she fall pregnant again. Perhaps, but it’s not assured. The urban Chinese, however, cannot avail themselves of such discretion. A second pregnancy still leads to state-mandated abortion in the heaving Chinese cities, perhaps more than anything the defining stamp of a authoritarian system within which the individual is forever subsumed to the collective. On an issue as thorny as abortion, one should be prepared to accept and even respect a multitude of different viewpoints. But when the State violates a woman to terminate her foetus without consent, a grave evil has been committed and no amount of impressive stadia and cute-as-buttons mascots at the Olympics should permit the world to forget this.<br /><br />But although our farmer would naturally have preferred a son, he's besotted with his little girl. She’s in her third year of education, but the school is poor and doesn’t have adequate books. After he finishes tending the rice paddies with his wife all day, he reads to his daughter in the evening. He speaks excellent English for someone of his roots. Three years ago, he borrowed a small sum of money to travel to Guilin – an hour’s drive away – for English lessons. It’s the farthest he’s ever been from his farm.<br /><br />The English lessons allow him to work as a tour guide on the sole day a week he’s not farming. He takes visitors to Yangshuo biking through the mountains, on bamboo boats on the Li River, to the famous water caves twenty kilometres away. His accent is the stuff great comedy is made of, a perfect caricature of himself. His English itself is superb, but with a stifling formality suggesting his teachers were older Chinese who’d learnt at university rather than any of the hundreds of thousands of young Westerners who come to teach English in China. The accent lilts and undulates, with inflection independent of the context or his meaning. He’s learnt from books with a phonetic template, not by watching television. They don’t own one, anyway, and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to afford the satellite channels with English language.<br /><br />His parents live in the same house, commonplace in Asia. They’re only in their sixties, but people age fast here. Already they’re elderly, and cannot help much with the farming. He provides for them as he does for his wife and daughter. It’s a painted picture of rural Asian life. Sometimes when you’re ready to be confounded, the most surprising thing of all is that things are just as you expect.<br /><br />His name's Wen. He wears the cheap, drab olive attire of the Chinese peasantry, and which the whole country wore only a generation ago. The young Chinese from the cities dress unwittingly like clowns; draped garishly in Western labels with ludicrous coloured and wankily styled hair. The young men often wear make up. The girls dress like underage Hentai sex princesses. The boys and girls sport as much jewellery as the body can carry and bear the crushing yoke of aspirational selfconsciousness. This is what we’ve given them. They look ridiculous.<br /><br />They’re part of the rapidly emerging, Chinese urban middle class. They’re the first generation in Chinese history to have the means to explore their own country. It’s still not easy to go overseas, the language would be a real barrier and besides: this is the magnificent and rich country they’ve learnt about all their lives. So in their droves, they’re showing up in Dali and in Kunming; in Yangshuo and Xi’an; in Yuncheng and in Yinchuan. In Yangshuo they outnumber Western tourists a hundred to one. They want to see the famous Karst scenery and to peer at how the peasants still live. So, as well as taking Western backpackers around, Wen makes his living showing rural life to the Chinese from Beijing and Shanghai.<br /><br />Watching quietly from the sidelines, their disdain for Wen and his type is embarrassing. He’s too polite when you approach him alone, too curiously English to use his English to express what he really thinks. But it’s clear: there’s a chasm in China, a great wall which divides the peasants from the programmers and the farmers from the civil engineers. They come to Yangshuo not just for the scenery and a break, but for vindication of their decision to leave in the first place. Condescension transcends all tongues. If I were him, I’d be apoplectic. But he smiles quietly as they laugh and point their bejewelled fingers, and takes their money home at the end of the day for his daughter’s further schooling. His life is small and simple, and he loves it. He is, without doubt, one of the finest people I’ve ever met.<br /><br />The second man is an Italian. Fifty-four years old with wispy white hair and elegant spectacles, he is to be found, at any time, staying in one of the world’s millions of hostels, guesthouses or budget hotels. He dresses like any other affluent European traveller, all polafleece and gore-tex; travel pouch and windbreaker. He speaks English impressively, with – like Wen – an amusingly bouncy inflection, but typical for a Milanese.<br /><br />His name is Sergio but he’s no normal traveller. The first twenty or so years of his life were typical enough: a good family, a good school, girlfriends and various jobs. He even moved in his early twenties to England, where he lived in Sheffield with a girl called Diane. He said her name was <span style="font-style: italic;">De-aaa-na</span>. But I’m pretty sure it was just plain Diane.<br /><br />They lived together for five years, a relatively average couple in a more-than-usually average place. But this was the last time his life would be average, for he went travelling in 1974 and has never stopped. He’s been travelling, practically non-stop, <span style="font-style: italic;">for thirty-four years</span>.<br /><br />His story is incredible – in the true sense – until you hear him speak more. He owns no property, he hasn’t had a car since the seventies. He owns no clothes besides those which fold into his well-worn backpack. He’s filled up over twenty-five passports. He doesn’t use email. He’s never owned a mobile phone or a computer. He supposedly funds this unending voyage with oddjobs on his travels. Fruitpicking for four months here; factory work ten weeks here; sorting mail for a month there. His transport is always the cheapest he can find, and he has no desire to blow money on wine and women. He stays in $5/night dorms and in thirty-four years of sharing rooms with strangers, he’s met a lot of people. Tens of thousands, he estimates. But he keeps in touch with no one.<br /><br />His parents are dead, his brother is somewhere in Italy. He’s never been married, and has no real friends. We crossed paths in Kunming. I was there just for a night, to break up the tedium of the journey to Dali. He’d been there a month already. He’s been in China for the past two years. It’s his seventh time here. He spent a year in Vietnam, three in Africa, two in Australia, one in India, one in Russia, and too many others to list, but in all that time, in all that time, not once has he rented or bought a home. From six years before I was born until now, he’s wandered the world in dorms and fleabag hotels.<br /><br />I’ve met people of this ilk before. There was the dreadlocked and pirate-bearded Dutchman in Sarajevo who’d been cycling for sixteen months with no end in sight – and apparently no bath either. Yet he was what anyone would call a hippy. Not just his appearance either, but a peacenik wanderer who in his heart wanted to be left mostly alone. Sergio is by no means a hippy. Highly organised and well-maintained, he’s just decided to do what he loves more than anything. “Friends will change and they’ll leave you”, he remarks, with a surprising absence of bitterness. “Why would I want a house or a car or a wife?” he asks rhetorically, revealingly conflating the accumulation of chattel with love. “Why would I stay in one place when I can keep moving whenever I want?” This last question wasn’t rhetorical. I replied that, as salubrious as travel may be, there’s a lot to be said for ‘home’ – for putting one’s roots in the ground. He guffawed and slapped me on the back. Sometimes there’s just too much which separates people to even try understanding.<br /><br />He doesn’t know what his next destination will be. He’s thinking about going back to South America someplace, maybe to work in a bar. But despite how alien his life is to anything I’d ever choose for myself, his generosity and friendliness to someone he’d never see again and to whom he owed nothing was breathtaking. He showered me in advice for my upcoming travels, offered maps, shared various mysterious foods from his bag. By design, he keeps nobody at all in his life. But he opens his heart to those just passing through. No wife, no children, no home – just endless, timeless movement, forever. I thought of Wen, and how in his whole life he’s travelled 65km. Strange, how people are.<br /><br />The third man is English. He lives in Dali City, which is about as far west as you can go in China before crossing into Burma or Tibet. It’s a small town of 40,000 with a long and glorious history. What remains of the old town is still ringed by the medieval wall, and is pleasingly free of traffic and pollution. It’s famous for its marble (so much so that marble in Mandarin is “Dalishi”) and the people are strikingly different from other parts of the Middle Kingdom. Most of the inhabitants share the surname ‘Duan’. They look more like Tibetans or Nepalis than coastal Chinese, and the Bai minority still wander the town, selling trinkets in colourful, traditional garb. The women offer to sell – in their full traditional dress - hashish to the tourists, and stand around in groups at night outside the bars. I’ve never been anywhere else in the world where, confronted by a group of drug dealers, I’ve felt that <span style="font-style: italic;">they’re</span> the ones intimidated by <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span>.<br /><br />The Englishman is in his late thirties. His name is Michael and he’s beanstalk thin with a curly goatee and greasy red hair. He wears a cardigan which would make him incongruous in Dali anyway, but for the fact that he wears shorts as well – and the visiting Chinese gape at his hairy pale legs as if he’s an invader from a celestial otherworld. In bohemian and beautiful towns such as Dali around the world, one commonly stumbles across the backpacker who accidentally fell in love with the surroundings and contrived never to leave. I can’t count the people I’ve met like this. And watching Michael stroll along the cobbled street, you’d be forgiven for assuming he’s one of these. But he’s not.<br /><br />He grew up in the east end of London, from a middle-class family. He excelled at A Levels and took himself off to Edinburgh to read history and got a first. He moved back to London, spent a few years among miserable commuters, measuring out his life in coffee spoons then moved to Dali to open a bar. This was five years ago, and he never, ever, wants to leave. He spends his evenings pouring drinks for travellers and sharing stories, blasting out his favourite music and making fleeting friends. If the pursuit of happiness is one’s primary goal in life, he says, he’s reached his zenith. He’s there. There’s absolutely, definitively, nothing else in the world he wants.<br /><br />Three men, three chance meetings, three stories. Each so different but every one exactly the same. Wen’s life of staid simplicity isn’t elective, but can one really hope for much more than a loved family and an outdoor life in the mountains? Sergio’s existence is a diametric pole apart, but like Wen, he has nothing and he has everything. And Michael’s life, like Sergio’s, is one of his own choosing, but like Wen’s, it’s one of constancy and simplicity. I’ve met these three unusual men within the space of a week or so, and have been reminded, peculiarly perhaps, of the story of Goldilocks. Stumbling into the bears’ house to rudely steal their porridge (or was it sleep in their beds? I can’t remember), she finds two extremes, and one ‘just right’. I think of Wen, and despite his very real poverty and his knowledge that he’ll never be able to venture outside his province, I crave the simplicity and warmth of his life. I think of Sergio, and despite his lack of friends or family, or a place to call home, I admire the absolute freedom and autonomy his choices afford. But most of all, I think of Michael, who realised what he wanted and what he didn’t, and he changed his life accordingly. I wouldn’t want to run a bar in China any more than I’d want to grow rice or spend my life in dorms with grimy itinerants. But there’s a great deal to be said for courage, for determination, in breaking free of the shackles of expectation. In knowing what you desire, looking at your life as it is and changing it accordingly until it’s just what you want. Just right.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-88667345966354681642008-02-28T08:20:00.004+00:002008-12-11T17:39:38.874+00:00Lessons for the Asian neophyte<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh73rvVhbFVnyer7DIrDmI3GmUpkr1i5z2abFjDxqXczd0zlFvMSWMYBsBv9tqTaM0bTm5qEjP2UHlDS2Ft9yyVvuWqLjzVGLpHx3MVvoQbCNqzQb81iDmV2SOFmQwodgy1iNmbfHQhMRmU/s1600-h/P1050012.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh73rvVhbFVnyer7DIrDmI3GmUpkr1i5z2abFjDxqXczd0zlFvMSWMYBsBv9tqTaM0bTm5qEjP2UHlDS2Ft9yyVvuWqLjzVGLpHx3MVvoQbCNqzQb81iDmV2SOFmQwodgy1iNmbfHQhMRmU/s320/P1050012.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171944345002050450" border="0" /></a><br />There are probably four things any virgin visitor to Asia in general – and China in particular – ought to know.<br /><br />The first concerns food. Abandon happy and homespun preconceptions of steamed vegetables, stir fry, slivers of filleted garlic beef sizzling on a hot plate or sweet and sour-flavoured animal which once grazed on a farm. The reality is instead an array of domesticated pets, vermin, noodle soup with the viscosity of kerosene and a multitude of other unidentifiables served on the gunk-encrusted hotplates by the side of the road. Accompany this guidance with the critical footnote that parts of the animal with which a Western vet wouldn’t even be familiar are served with genuine pride. In addition to ear, brain, penis and cartilage, you find vague and worrying references to muscle, wall, contents, joint or tendon.<br /><br />This is a lesson also learnt in India. Vindaloo, Korma and the brightly coloured and textured sauces you find when out for a curry back in the West don’t exist in India. Substitute, among other things, tiny fish sufficiently salty to make your body hair fall out and peculiar egg-shaped and hollow crunchy vessels filled with a hot, watery fluid which smells suspiciously like blood and tastes like chalk. Or vice versa, depending on the time of day. Regardless, the lesson is <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>to avoid sampling all this food. Eating weird shit is integral to the experience and means you will regurgitate not merely the food – a given – but fantastic tales of the Orient upon your emaciated return. The lesson is to <span style="font-style: italic;">be prepared</span>. And find someone who knows how to translate, “Look, I’m not saying I wont eat it. But I want to know what you mean by ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">glands</span>’”. This is more important than “Which way to the train station?” or “Why are there tweezers next to the chopsticks?”<br /><br />Second, habits. You’re supposed to refrain from adverse judgment when travelling to new and exotic places and to accept that different peoples find different practices acceptable. Just as we would expect conservative Muslim visitors to the West to hold back from soapboxing about women’s attire or anyone’s consumption of alcohol (not that they do), similarly the visitor to China should keep his mouth shut when confronted with some of the less ingratiating local habits.<br /><br />But as far as I’m concerned, that prohibition extends only as far as not directly accosting strangers in the street. Bitching to people back home is fine. Table manners are the first thing. The constant open-mouthed mastication I can live with. Ditto the nosepicking and regular dinner-table hand down the pants. It’s the spitting of pieces of unwanted gristle – which constitutes pretty much the entirety of a cheap Chinese meal – in a perfect parabola within inches of the visitor’s face that really gets my blood up. But the spitting during meals is nothing – <span style="font-style: italic;">nothing</span> – compared to the veritable celebration of expectoration that goes on absolutely everywhere else. The Chinese spit in the street. They spit in a car. They spit on the floor of a bus or in a hotel foyer. They spit on the wall of the train station. And worst of all, they’ll spit on the wall of your sleeping compartment on the train. (This, by the way, is even done by the sartorial elite in soft sleeper class, heading from one city to another for a business trip. The mind boggles at what it must be like further back in the train. Like standing in a saliva rainstorm without an umbrella I suppose).<br /><br />The spitting itself isn’t even the worst part. It’s the preliminary cacophonic wind-up. Whereas the Indians (world-class spitters, themselves, it must be credited) measure social status using a complicated and ancient caste system based on ethnicity, profession and skin colour, the Chinese – to their own credit – have simplified the system wholesale. Social status in the Middle Kingdom is directly proportionate to the volume, duration and raspiness of the phlem-finding process. It begins in the lungs, whereupon the truly aristocratic spitter can, in an impressive display of only four or five hacks, raise five ounces of honeyish snot to his larynx, hold it there, while using his tongue and teeth to produce a lump of blackish fluid the size of a tennis ball before hurling it through a curled tongue at the nearest wall, piece of furniture or mortified backpacker. From there, he will watch it glissade languidly down the wall (or furniture or mortified backpacker) admiring its leisurely track downward (the highest socio-economic stratum can manufacture such viscosity that it’ll descend so slowly as to be undetectable in movement – like a medieval pane of glass which is thicker at the bottom than the top). The peasant spitter is profoundly incapable of such virtuosity – no doubt why he remains a peasant. He probably had a job interview in the 1980s, enthusiastically spat in the face of the interviewer but it splashed down onto the prospective employer’s coat instead of clinging impressively to his nose. What a loser.<br /><br />Third, toilets. Americans, in their inimitable way, sneer at European toilets just as they laugh at our dental work (see below). I don’t think it’s even about hygiene, they’re just confused by a water closet incapable of handling a fecal deposit weighing five or six kilograms. If their consternation is in fact about hygiene, they should drag their planet-sized posteriors to Asia. Hell may very well be Baghdad after a bombing or being stuck in an elevator with Italians. But more likely, it’s having to use a Chinese public latrine.<br /><br />I’ll spare you specifics. You can probably imagine what I’m talking about – qualitatively, if not quantitatively. Let me just say: Never again will I wrinkle my nose at the facilities at a football match in Britain or a beach toilet in Australia. Never, ever, again.<br /><br />Fourth and finally, dentistry – or rather, its conspicuous absence. For all you muppets like me who’ve had thousands of pounds spent on orthdontics, periodontics or just plain dental hygiene over the years, it transpires you can manage perfectly well with one sole tooth at the front, and gums everywhere else. Not only is flossing a boondoggle cash-cow conjured up by a cynical tooth lobby, but brushing your teeth is too. Just let them fall out, and wander around frightening tourists with a monodent grin. They’ll want to take your picture and offer you money for the privilege. But stick to soft food.<br /><br />So, four little things of which to be forewarned next time you venture beyond the Costa Brava or Cape Cod. One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the west coast of the United States tends to do pretty well on all these things. Good food, clean toilets, selfconsciously free of bad public habits, and superlative teeth. As you cross timezones eastwards in the northern hemisphere, you’ll find that all these things steadily deteriorate. The US eastern seabord, then Britain, continental Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, India, and finally China, which is a country of pet-eating, loogy-lunging, single-toothed floor-crappers.<br /><br /><br />I’m just saying. Forewarned is forearmed.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-43125731141315961712008-02-25T09:50:00.005+00:002008-02-25T11:37:28.224+00:00A whiter shade of greyStepping out of the customs hall in Shenzhen, having navigated the antiseptic metro system of magnificent Hong Kong and the nonsensical signs at the border (“China non-visitors this way”; “Foreign non-tourists take second queue”) you’re greeted by an urban vista which would make you vomit, but for the fact your first breath of the thick, fetid air got there first. The city is grey – but then, so are many around the world, and you can’t expect the self-indulgent prettiness of Florence or the colonial elegance of Phnom Penh everywhere you go. And calling Shenzhen polluted does an injustice to the word. Breathing is like fellating an SUV exhaust pipe while the driver hits the gas. But again: Athens is polluted, so are LA, Bangkok and Mumbai. Shenzhen is different, though. It’s worse. It may be the most miserable place I’ve ever visited outside of Utah. Or Agra.<br /><br />Shenzhen today exists within the Shenzhen Economic Zone (SEZ), created in the 1980s to be a sort of Hong Kong within the People’s Republic of China. At the time, the city was little more than a collection of fishing villages with a combined population of about thirty thousand. It now has 8 million inhabitants. It has increased 300-fold in my lifetime. I’d be beyond surprised if in the history of humanity, any part of the planet has industrialised at that pace before.<br /><br />China, as nobody with a newspaper needs telling, is for better or worse going to be <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> dominant global player of the coming century. Choose any measure you like of growth, of change, of the accumulation of wealth, and you’ll find this enormous country of over 1.3 billion people breaking astonishing ground. Perhaps with the exception of Shanghai, nowhere exemplifies Chinese growth better than Shenzhen. It calls itself “China’s richest city”. I don’t know how they come about that claim – productivity, perhaps; maybe GDP – but it’s a stomach-sinkingly awful place. Look beyond the pus-yellow smog that you feel clamming onto your skin, and the horrific stench (not the rotting refuse and bundled humanity smell of India, but the putrid reek of coal and exhaust and concrete dust and metallurgy), and you see what Dickens and Engels must’ve come across in Victorian London and Manchester. Factories as far as the eye can see (further, actually, considering you can barely squint beyond your outstretched arm), belching coal smoke into a dank sky which would make anyone who’s every been fortunate enough to leave the city open their wrists upon their return.<br /><br />But of course, the millions of workers who slave away in this, the richest city of what will one day be the richest country, never get to leave, except for a few days every year when they return to their home villages for Chinese New Year, and hand over their meagre earnings to a family which can barely afford enough rice to eat. Just a couple of weeks ago, China’s worst weather in five decades brought the south-east of the country to a standstill over the new year holiday. 800,000 people were stranded for days in nearby Guangzhou train station itself, patiently waiting to take their annual few days’ respite from the inhumane backache of factory existence. In only the most recent of God’s nasty little jokes, many were prevented from seeing their families (their children included) for yet another year. It’s so obvious it goes without saying, but it puts one’s own pathetic little disappointments in perspective.<br /><br />This area (Shenzhen, Guangzhou and their environs) is the part of China that produces much of the crap we buy on a daily basis. As a little experiment, I’ve just emptied my daypack which is sitting next to me in a smoky café in Yangshuo, and examined both its contents and done an inventory of what I’m wearing. Aside from my laptop, PDA, mobile and camera (all of which naturally are made in China), so too are about four fifths of all the other useless shit I have with me. If time and inclination moves you so, do the same. China is dressing you from shoe to brassiere to sunglasses and more. Statistics aside, these guys are producing <span style="font-style: italic;">everything</span>.<br /><br />And other than when Nike or the Gap gets caught in a PR glare by some do-gooding NGO and is then forced to renounce its use of sweatshops in south-east Asia, and the media momentarily trains its lens on such practices before the audience’s attention reverts to <span style="font-style: italic;">Wife Swap 3</span>, it’s too easy to forget the real face of industrialisation. It’s not just ‘globalisation’, either – that’s an oversimplified cop-out by those whose main concern is losing jobs in their own manufacturing bases. It’s industry per se: the production of stuff in order for its consumption in order for growth in order for its further production. I’m by no means an agrarian utopianist; I’m very proud of and inspired by much that man has achieved. And exponential population increase naturally requires production to keep people alive. It’s just that stepping into the murk of ashen-faced Shenzhen and into a consumptive, Bladerunnerish gloaming, you can’t help but wonder what report card some of our ancestors might give us were they to see all this. Sometimes, it’s just not clear if we’re progressing at all.<br /><br />I met one of Shenzhen’s anonymous millions on the sleeper train to Guilin. The sleeper train to get out of Shenzhen comes pretty close to redeeming the city itself. I adore trains – I’ve written ad nauseum on the subject before. I’m not what the English call an anorak – I don’t know one end of a train from the other – I just love the clickety-clack rhythm, I love the conductor taking your ticket and showing you the way to your compartment. I love the sliding doors and the bedside lamps (I’m talking here about real trains with little cabins and hot towels and fold-down beds, not the utilitarian cattle vessels where you sit aeroplane-style in rows and have to ask the corpulent bottom-feeder next to you whose stomach is hanging over onto yours if he’d move so you can get to the toilet. That isn’t really train travel. Unless the scenery is spectacular. And leaving Shenzhen, it surely ain’t).<br /><br />So assuming you’re willing and able to spend what amounts to a month’s salary for a Chinese factory worker on a soft sleeper ticket, you get a journey of refinement and elegance which the TGV in France can never provide. It’s someone’s job to plump the pillows; another’s to vacuum the carpets on the corridor. It’s one guy’s job to patrol the train telling everyone to keep their valuables safe. As I was sharing my delightful little compartment with two girls who remarkably enough spoke less English than I do Mandarin, this cheery-faced and smartly-attired fellow came to give me his little rehearsed warning. I gave him a look of studied blankness before we both resorted to gestures, with my gestures signifying only that I didn’t understand his. Twenty minutes of this, and he was convinced I was not merely stupid but deaf too, so thankfully he moved on to give his performance to the lot next door.<br /><br />But after tiring of nervous and uncomprehending smiles from my Chinese bunkmates, I ambled down to hard chair class and found the charming young woman who had helped me nagivate the otherwise unnavigable train station. A nurse in one of Shenzhen’s godawfully grey factories, she was heading home, as she does every weekend, to Guilin. Her name is Helen (her “English” name – her Chinese name sounded like the aluminium death-rattle of a TB patient) and she has an eight year-old daughter who lives in Guilin with her (Helen’s) mother. Helen’s husband left them some years back. I thought it impolite to ask the circumstances, but her sad eyes suggested another the existence of another woman. So the daughter lives with the grandmother, and Helen sees her for one day a week, once you take away the fourteen hour commute each way. The daughter is a gifted violinist, or so she said proudly, whipping out a well-thumbed and tattered album of pictures. Thrusting it into my hands and looking up into my eyes for a glimmer of warmth, I smiled as broadly as I could and said how beautiful her daughter was. She beamed back, exposing dental work that would make a blind man grimace, and invited me to come and meet the daughter and stay with them when we arrived in Guilin.<br /><br />My heart ached with the recognition of one of those rare moments which are profoundly, palpably real. Here was a woman (she was 28, only a year older than me, but looked middle aged already) whose existence could at very best be called dire. What kind of life is this? Sixty hours a week in a Hadean beehive masquerading as a factory, a shared hovel in a city which Lucifer coughed up, separated from her daughter. A 28-hour return commute on a wooden-slat train bench every week to spend a sole day with her child, and having met a young traveller who was wealthy enough to afford a soft sleeper ticket, she invites him home with the presumable hope he would fall for the daughter and stay. I really can’t say for sure that she was hoping for marriage and a way out of this miserable life. She may just have been so proud of her musical daughter that she wanted to show her off. But although desperation in someone’s otherwise dead eyes is hard to describe, I know it when I see it. I’ve seen it a lot on this voyage. The tuk-tuk driver in Varanasi, the vegetable trader in Siem Reap, the rag-seller in Belgrade, the gypsy mother in Budapest, the beggar in Ho Chi Minh. It’s far too easy to mistake need for want; helplessness for calculation; desperation for envy. Desperation in such places comes in various guises and facing it with sympathy is the only real (however inadequate) susbstitute for empathy. Her desperation was different from theirs, but I saw it in her eyes. A barely educated and prematurely middle-aged single mother, in a country which values only men, with no money, no prospects and no real life worth the word. It was truly sad.<br /><br />I apologised, explaining that my itinerary forced me to head straight to Yangshuo, and wished her all my heartfelt best. Sitting in the restaurant car a little later (my favourite place on a night train), drinking myself silly on undrinkable Chinese lager, I tried to regain my usual giddy enthusiasm for sleeper travel and for long, nocturnal journeys in particular. Peering out of the window, trying to grasp a glimpse of southern China by night and its tapestry of blackened factories chugging by, all I could see because of the bright lights above me was my own reflection in the glass.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-65429185653941006572008-02-08T09:09:00.000+00:002008-02-08T09:21:15.264+00:00A postscript to the bit about AustraliaThe "Pacific Solution" was the policy begun by John Howard in 2001 for dealing with the seemingly endless stream of asylum-seekers heading to Australia by sea from various Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The policy - instead of letting the boat people into Australia and examining their asylum claims - involved the Australian government paying the governments of Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea to house them in detention centres. Australia is state party to the Refugee Convention and the UNHCR. This policy (which also overlapped with the deporable "Tampa" situation which Howard used to win the 2001 election), was roundly criticised around the world and besmirched Australia's good standing as a global citizen.<br /><br />I mention this now, because as of today, the last asylum-seekers have left Nauru, bringing an end - as promised in the election campaign by Kevin Rudd - to a racist and mean-spirited chapter in Australia's recent history. People who endeavour to come here on unseaworthy boats having used up their life savings to do so are either genuine refugees or they're not. Transporting them to deserted detention centres to keep the issue off the front pages and lying to the Australian public about the circumstances behind their arrival is one of the many reasons the country is better off for seeing the end of the little dessicated coconut and his ferretty little face.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-21893776326924750952008-02-06T08:05:00.000+00:002008-02-06T08:06:15.672+00:00A noteThere is some problem on this page with text getting corrupted. I don't know why. To solve it, just click on the heading of the blog entry and it will bring the entry up in an uncorrupted, separate page. Thanks.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-29827944655655918982008-02-06T07:20:00.000+00:002008-12-11T17:39:40.323+00:00Back home in A Sunburnt Country<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVflSKqzu7S9ewLbH_KZ3nRwlCAYaw0o8m3B0DKo0Nvful5kR71_wufmp9n1Pqsq2eds1LVXECHKbNUdcsi3i7bnee2OZYYBGJoojFTaAGjG048F4OwEm-wnkfhDesfZZ5Oy-1Pa7RIRYx/s1600-h/20JUN07+-+023(2).JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVflSKqzu7S9ewLbH_KZ3nRwlCAYaw0o8m3B0DKo0Nvful5kR71_wufmp9n1Pqsq2eds1LVXECHKbNUdcsi3i7bnee2OZYYBGJoojFTaAGjG048F4OwEm-wnkfhDesfZZ5Oy-1Pa7RIRYx/s320/20JUN07+-+023(2).JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163766322655688946" border="0" /></a>Perth, the town where i grew up, is unique. All places are – and a pedant will argue uniqueness is a binary state, something either is unique or it isn’t – but Perth is especially so. And the word continues to spread. The number of British people emigrating to Australia has already increased from 8,749 in 2001-2 to 23,290 in 2005-6 – and wandering through the major cities of Australia, you’d conclude the lion’s share have come to settle – as my parents, my brother and I did twenty-two years ago – on the sun-drenched and sleepy banks of the Swan River.<br /><br />So why is Perth ‘especially’ unique?<br /><br />A few facts to begin: Ben Elton once wrote that Perth has more dollar-millionaires per capita than any other city on earth. This would appear a tall claim to anyone who’s visited Hong Kong, Monte Carlo, southern <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ0cUaQfY2SU2ZOtEMMa3YXCy2g4o_5C4fD-32gXnWdtdxr_xKuFhCicQ-evnq-m6TEIrdA4vZbxfp3YTat3cRRb-K5D9f_WFHqeya71dxWQyYdry5oDvm_ScUepnSHx-RAjcSedW9H6DD/s1600-h/P1040330.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ0cUaQfY2SU2ZOtEMMa3YXCy2g4o_5C4fD-32gXnWdtdxr_xKuFhCicQ-evnq-m6TEIrdA4vZbxfp3YTat3cRRb-K5D9f_WFHqeya71dxWQyYdry5oDvm_ScUepnSHx-RAjcSedW9H6DD/s320/P1040330.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163767190239082786" border="0" /></a>California or Dubai. He wrote that in the 1980s so even if it were true then, it may not be now. Nevertheless, what is clear is that Perth is confidently affluent in a way that is dumbfounding, breathtaking to the hundreds of thousand of visitors it receives every year. If the weather, the green spaces, the crime rate, the provision of public services, the cleanliness of the air and the average standard of housing are what constitute ‘standard of living, it’s probably unrivalled by any world city. It’s also the most isolated city in the world. Adelaide is the closest neighbour (about 3000km away), Melbourne and Sydney are about half as far again, Singapore and Jakarta are about the same distance. Western Australia – of which Perth is the capital – has a population of just over a couple million, for an area the size of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, G<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFOCTQ_6gqs6155FMFUMM3AgVK0C4f9jS32q6qlLWo09d1PK22__5fZJTmyvhKqzFiGbRHjvQj_ZikmyfulVDoLOlF5Ohu9-mnL7FmhmSmb5CidfEyaO-eXjCqT63G0kzT0aM1SE_0xN5w/s1600-h/perth_night_rc.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 298px; height: 146px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFOCTQ_6gqs6155FMFUMM3AgVK0C4f9jS32q6qlLWo09d1PK22__5fZJTmyvhKqzFiGbRHjvQj_ZikmyfulVDoLOlF5Ohu9-mnL7FmhmSmb5CidfEyaO-eXjCqT63G0kzT0aM1SE_0xN5w/s320/perth_night_rc.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163765236028962994" border="0" /></a>ermany, Switzerland, Italy and Greece combined. It is 2.7m km2 of uninhabited and largely uninhabitable wilderness. So take my word, when you’re in Perth, you really feel a long way from everywhere.<br /><br />Perth’s an ‘American’ city, built for the car and an exemplar of how urban sprawl can go unchecked when circumstances permit and geography mandates. Part of the reason is the history. The city was founded in 1829 on the banks of the Swan, but the early settlers were disappointed by the soil’s – that’s an Australian euphemism for gigahectares of sand – poor agricultural prospects. The more fertile areas were upstream and so small settlements such as <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7bdvJAlmMYV82a4FwTbV-d6mzU3UKAgx8VUpcf_PKyhFAph3spR96LmqkRSdv5fxL_5xOeNRKGQEy1HSHu2WMD4tTblCSU-8JAfEXplADSNLH1WrRcwTVP2fayPiIAC-Hghz32EMT1NXp/s1600-h/crichton_australian_outback_460x300.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 293px; height: 191px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7bdvJAlmMYV82a4FwTbV-d6mzU3UKAgx8VUpcf_PKyhFAph3spR96LmqkRSdv5fxL_5xOeNRKGQEy1HSHu2WMD4tTblCSU-8JAfEXplADSNLH1WrRcwTVP2fayPiIAC-Hghz32EMT1NXp/s320/crichton_australian_outback_460x300.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163767194534050098" border="0" /></a>Guilford were built. Although a ‘free’ settlement – unlike the settlements those built with convict labour on the east coast – many convicts arrived in the west and tourists can see their sartorially improved descendants to this day, stealing cars, plotting vegetable heists and sniffing glue over a tall macchiato on one of the cappuccino strip’s quaint cafes. Do wave and take pictures, I implore you. They love it.<br /><br />Perth was generously designated a ‘city’ by Queen Victoria in 1856 – but a city which doesn’t have a second university shouldn't really be called a city at all. And that second university happened in 1975 – the same year that Australia had its major constitutional crisis (when the Queen through the Governor-General sacked the Prime Minister and dissolved parliament) and Australians vowed never again to tolerate a foreign Head of State*. The second university was called Murdoch Uni – rather appropriate since Rupert is Australia’s most influential person and he himself would be pleased to find that tens of thousands of mealy-mouthed undergraduates drop his name every day. A momentary digression on the subject of Mr Murdoch: Australia has the highest concentration of media ownership in the industrialised world. In the last major review (done in 1999), of the twelve capital city and daily papers, seven were owned by Murdoch and three by Fairfax. Few people complain, though, because the Australian media is so execrable there’s no guarantee letting anyone else in to produce more of it would have any beneficial effect whatsoever.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />*They broke their necks getting around to a speedy referendum on the Republic issue only 24 years later, and the electorate – with the sort of well thought-out reason you expect from Australians en masse – decided that they quite liked the Queen after all, so voted no. Another referendum is expected some time in the 25th Century.</span><br /><br /><br />So although Perth was a city since back in 1856 (two years before the first independent school was founded – of which I am a proud alumnus, go you Haleians), it took until the 1950s to begin any meaningful expansion. Wave after wa<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiduz5UPYOQsVbPfVxOUDwwS959PiqseV5Tb_pB9BdxWuprwvtSprX_0bTprU4WvqP5m7cKAz09xlxAWpW4qgocUtDPf5tuIYJFQuJ-bWWBhFSz7pHXAN4sHXn0j46beoAuKHLJ1rSC9LsX/s1600-h/P1040272.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiduz5UPYOQsVbPfVxOUDwwS959PiqseV5Tb_pB9BdxWuprwvtSprX_0bTprU4WvqP5m7cKAz09xlxAWpW4qgocUtDPf5tuIYJFQuJ-bWWBhFSz7pHXAN4sHXn0j46beoAuKHLJ1rSC9LsX/s320/P1040272.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163767185944115474" border="0" /></a>ve of British immigrants came over on £10 tickets – the ‘£10 poms’ as they are affectionately known – and found themselves on a coastal settlement bound to the east by a mountain range (hills, really, but an obstacle nonetheless) and the endless Indian Ocean to the west. With barely thirty or so kilometres separating these two longitudinal barriers, expansion north and south was inevitable. And expand the intrepid settlers did. To call Perth enormous does an injustice to enormity. I’ve been to LA, I’ve been to Mumbai and I live in London. Trust me, for what it is, Perth is <span style="font-style: italic;">enormous</span>.<br /><br />The 1950s was the decade when the car became an affordable, mass-produced commodity. So a city like Melbourne on the other side of the country – which began its real growth decades earlier than Perth, setting up three universities** has a European-style system of trams and a public transport system broadly adequate for its people. Perth on the other hand has about the worst public transport of any place outside of Somalia, Mozambique and the United States. In that sense, Melbourne is to San Francisco or New York as Perth is to LA or Phoenix or Vegas. When space is aplenty and the car is affordable, governments built roads. And Perth is a road city like you’ve never seen.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />**Murdoch Tech, Murdoch U and The Centre for the Study of Murdoch have done quite well, but the Murdoch Institute for Largescale Finance suffered due to its unfortunate acronym. No, I’m joking, but on that subject, Perth’s third university is the Curtin University of Technology. It was originally and ill-advisedly called the Curtin University of New Technology. But not for long.</span><br /><br />Perth has more cars per capita than any other city in the world (roughly 750 per 1000 population, which translates to one per person when you exclude the elderly, children and those too incapable to pass their test. Thankfully, I suppose, it also has more car park spaces per capita than any other city in the world. Nobody seems to know how many that fleshes out to. Suffice to say at certain times<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzB4sk-KFLTfs49xeXJDzP5hWqlS5TakFL1LdUC952kpAiNfUWaNa-UVP-17OMn22PvGsfWpoaUUyBRZukmhAUiqSXhyphenhyphenztq3egE396XOmVrCM-OyrYShSMbwupbcPnhfTW4z9poNuqZIAv/s1600-h/OutbackHero_a_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzB4sk-KFLTfs49xeXJDzP5hWqlS5TakFL1LdUC952kpAiNfUWaNa-UVP-17OMn22PvGsfWpoaUUyBRZukmhAUiqSXhyphenhyphenztq3egE396XOmVrCM-OyrYShSMbwupbcPnhfTW4z9poNuqZIAv/s320/OutbackHero_a_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163765240323930322" border="0" /></a> of day you behold endless expanses of empty grey tarmac shimmering under the summer sun. At other times, you’ll get dizzy from driving around and around the block, cursing your road-fellows for their parking incompetence. <span style="font-style: italic;">“If that guy had parked ten centimetres further back, and the guy in front had done the same, and the guy in front and the guy in front and the guy in front of him had done the same too – I could’ve squeezed in there. Bastards.”</span> This is a popular complaint. Circling the block in the city centre at night is like playing pass the parcel with Hyundais. It sucks.<br /><br />In most other places, if you don’t have a car, or choose to leave it at home, you have – in addition to buses, trains and perhaps trams too – a variety of taxis buzzing around, which at least affords the option of beating the sweaty crush and not having to stand around with everyone else. For the sociopathically enclined, this has an irresistible appeal.<br /><br />Perth has a population of just over two million people. Greater London has a population of nine or ten million. London has 30,000 official black cabs, and thousands of private hire mini-cabs too – which get you there just as fast, can be ordered at any time, and are a fair bit cheaper. Often the driver smells like a Parisian, but it’s a small price to pay for not actually having to be in Paris.<br /><br />Perth, by contrast, has six hundred taxi licences. That’s right, six hundred, for a city the size of Birmingham, Nottingham and Manchester combined. Because everybody drives, nobody takes taxis during the day. So you seldom see them, and when you do they’re parked on taxiranks with bored drivers. But that’s fine, because as I said, nobody has any need for them. The six hundred drivers have a pretty rotten life with nothing to do. Which explains the government’s refusal to issue any more licences.<br /><br />The evening is a very, very different matter. On weekend nights in particular, the whole city wants to go out on the town to drink until they fall over. This is Australia, after all, a country whose people coined the expression “technicolour yawn” and who largely herald from working-class England. And the English are famous for binge drinking in the way the French are known for sitting around and spouting pseudo-intellectual tripe; it’s not so much an engrained habit as the scaffolding which keeps society in one piece.<br /><br />A local here will tell you the average time nowadays to get a taxi after midnight on the weekend is somewhere around two hours. My brother once waited for three hours before giving up and walking home, which took three more hours. When half a million people go out eating, drinking and dancing, and then all want to go home at roughly the same time, six hundred cars is a trifle inadequate. This was a problem when I lived here. It’s become even worse in the years since.<br /><br />But watching the Aussies trying to get home from the nightclub district is revealing in itself. I saw a queue at the taxirank one hundred long. They all waited patiently in the way only Anglo-Saxons can. I took the girl I was with (a very attractive young blonde), walked fifty yards up the road before the rank, and sent her into the oncoming traffic. We had a cab within ten seconds. Nobody else thought of this. Which just goes to show that you can take the Aussies out of England, but you can't take being English out of the Aussies.<br /><br />That night I'd been out with a bunch of friends. We went first to a Caribbean bar at 9pm. The queue outside was fifty feet long. I pushed to the front and schmalzed the bouncer, which had about as much success as it would anywhere else in the world. The men at the front of the queue sported the self-conscious metrosexuality all Australia men have nowadays, including designer stubble. One of them said he’d been queuing so long he was clean shaven when he got in line. Actually, he didn’t say that – he was a moron – but that was a gist. The queue was static.<br /><br />So we walked to another bar. Which was closed. On a Saturday night. We passed half a dozen clubs – all of which had queues more than a hundred people long – and found one which was moving at passable speed.<br /><br />Twenty minutes later, my friends and I reached the entrance. A wet-faced eleven-year old girl with acne scarring that suggested she’d been hunting with Dick Cheney was clutching a clipboard with an expression of nauseating self-importance. She looked down at my shoes (perfectly clean and neat navy suede sneakers), shook her head gravely and announced – with the nails-down-the-blackboard excrutiatingness of the ocker Australian lilt: <span style="font-style: italic;">“Yoi carnt come in hiere wurring thoise, mite!”</span><br /><br />I argued, I reasoned. I even tried flirting. I pointed out that the guy in front was let into the club wearing a singlet which left tufts of black hair hanging from his armpits like a couple of squished bushrats. I explained that the group of gentlemen in front were likely too mentally challenged to be able to exit the building in case of fire, whereas I am an expert at trying to leave places, having grown up right here in Perth. And finally, I touched her shoulder, smiled and gave her a look of saccharine droopiness that made my friends want to vomit. She looked hesitantly around for a bouncer. I left.<br /><br />But a place is nothing without its people and, unlike the various other cities, towns and villages I’ve been lucky enough to visit on this trip so far, I can speak of Perth as a local. I spent sixteen years of my life here. And although many of my attitudes to this remarkable corner of the world would be wholly unrepresentative of the thoughts of others, it’s nevertheless a place I know well and one which has indelibly marked my sense of self. One’s self is but a function of the people and places which have passed through it.<br /><br />Paradise – by many people’s understanding of the term – Perth really is. Describe to an Indian or a Bulgarian or a Cambodian or a Serb a place of such bountiful wealth and opportunity, of such safety and sunshine, of such abundant space and flora, and they will think you waxing panglossian about a hereafter. When you tell them it’s the place where you first played<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0CbJBmLaHGwbA4kDobgHYWPNBDCa8eLuzdh05lSgkoma4KjrqKCbFHVNgtgy0veSiO74yZA_xSpeh8LijqSo6WLNiKGAj9TVB6_xFZOI5GfVxygni5W9dEJ3jLF0RhLEGolWqcpfUmLlL/s1600-h/P1040265.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0CbJBmLaHGwbA4kDobgHYWPNBDCa8eLuzdh05lSgkoma4KjrqKCbFHVNgtgy0veSiO74yZA_xSpeh8LijqSo6WLNiKGAj9TVB6_xFZOI5GfVxygni5W9dEJ3jLF0RhLEGolWqcpfUmLlL/s320/P1040265.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163767181649148162" border="0" /></a> cricket in the street, drank your first beer, had your first kiss, learned to swim and drive and write in rhyme, they regard you with an otherworldly fascination. Even Americans – brought up as they so often are to believe in the unarguable exceptionalism of their own culture – see in Perth in particular and Australia as a whole – that which America wishes it were.<br /><br />If you tell the Indian or the Serb, however, that – despite being grateful for what this pristine utopia afforded you – you couldn’t wait to leave, he or she regards you not with fascination or even bemusement, but a real incredulity. Either your description of the place has been woefully misleading, or you are indefensibly ungrateful for what you’ve been given. After having experienced this incredulity many times, I cannot help but conclude that the truth must in fact be both. I have both failed to depict fully Perth’s shortcomings and I have never fully appreciated its virtues and its people.<br /><br />But who are the people? Who are the inhabitants of this most isolated of metropolises? Despite Perth’s (and Australia’s) chest-puffing claims to multiculturalism, it’s actually anything but. Scandinavia it is not, but – don’t be fooled – if you come here expecting a polyglot melting-pot of white, black, brown and yellow faces, you’ll be disappointed. To this day it’s an overwhelmingly white country – and a great majority of these white inhabitants are protestant Anglo-Saxons too. Melbourne and Sydney have small but significant Mediterranean minorities (predominantly Greek, Macedonian, Croatian and Italian), and Sydney has a growing Lebanese community – many of whom came over in 1980s during the civil war.<br /><br />White as it is, though, Australia is a country which is changing, and it’s a really interesting time to be back. After 11 years of a right-wing coalition federal government the November elections brought about a landslide victory for the centre-left Australian Labor Party. In truth the ALP is neither a “Labor” party (Australians don’t shed many tears for the unions) nor centre-left (the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, calls himself a fiscal conservative) but it holds a commanding majority in Canberra, as well as every single one of the State and Territory governments. The vanquished Liberal party of John Howard is now so weakened that its highest-ranking public servant in the entire country is the mayor of Brisbane. And next week, as the US did for slavery and its treatment of native Americans, and the British for Ireland, Australia atones for its own original sin. The federal government, meeting one of its campaign promises, will apologise to the Aborigines for the Stolen Generation, which is supposed to put to bed the sorriest chapter in Australia’s young history.<br /><br />Australia’s relationship<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXG4wdZLotRkvRzp4Td3AbE0igmHlCU2l6KzmCSD_74AdZVwCRoQ7kwvD8IiwohlC34IP51Rv_FqVCoEfZjCRoZiGEIzU4h2au6NXVQZVk3pZmmO7RqtDk-6gn_XY3uyFdi0n8t70MGGMO/s1600-h/r91626_273753.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXG4wdZLotRkvRzp4Td3AbE0igmHlCU2l6KzmCSD_74AdZVwCRoQ7kwvD8IiwohlC34IP51Rv_FqVCoEfZjCRoZiGEIzU4h2au6NXVQZVk3pZmmO7RqtDk-6gn_XY3uyFdi0n8t70MGGMO/s320/r91626_273753.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163768465844369730" border="0" /></a> with its original inhabitants is a tortured tale of disrespect, neglect, blame, racism, middle-class guilt and politically-correct relativism. To visit this self-described ‘lucky country’ and lay eyes on its original inhabitants has broken the hearts of thousands with a social conscience who’ve come to these shores. Surely, what’s left of the Aborigines is the most wretched social group of any developed country in the world. Prevailing wisdom across the political spectrum is gloomy beyond belief. Virtually everyone thinks the Aborigines will be effectively extinct within two generations. And to make matters worse, virtually everyone thinks the problem is intractable.<br /><br />Aborigines have 26 times the dementia of Australians as a whole. They have 3 or 4 times the rate of respiratory disease and diabetes. They have a full <span style="font-style: italic;">70-fold </span>the rate of communicable diseases, two to three times the infant mortality and five times the drug-induced mental-disorders. Life expectancy is 59.6 years compared to 72.9 for Native Canadians, 72.1 for Maoris and 70.6 for Native Americans. According to a 2004 Canadian study of 100 countries, Australia’s Aborigines have the second worst standard of life of any group on earth (after some Chinese indigenous communities). Despite this, Australia ranks fourth glob<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5cHDB7Nf8dTAcXCSizJIMyiAPoZWHiwlCAZH-h-2jsft3PhxtbJ897JJucfrnJUZ5EIU5dymiAZVCp9h8DAml7OaTJDeaXPgihx00ZrmFyRDYrDNubjUfYUCNqBB8ciI42YQ2bR72tMiE/s1600-h/capt.sge.qyt32.260607133534.photo00.photo.default-512x341.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5cHDB7Nf8dTAcXCSizJIMyiAPoZWHiwlCAZH-h-2jsft3PhxtbJ897JJucfrnJUZ5EIU5dymiAZVCp9h8DAml7OaTJDeaXPgihx00ZrmFyRDYrDNubjUfYUCNqBB8ciI42YQ2bR72tMiE/s320/capt.sge.qyt32.260607133534.photo00.photo.default-512x341.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163768465844369746" border="0" /></a>ally on the study’s human development index. The UNDP’s 2007/8 Development Index (the best recognised of its type) puts Australia third, after Iceland and Norway.<br /><br />None of these statistics can ever reveal the full picture, though. For that, you have to sit in the centre of any of Australia’s cities for a couple of hours, and watch the world go by. The Aborigines lurk in the shadows like H.G Wells’ Moorlocks. When you see them, they’re dressed like vagrants, limping, invariably carrying a bottle in a paper bag. These are the more active ones. Take a stroll to a nearby park, and you’ll likely see a group of Aborigines, of both sexes and all ages, passed out on the grass. But even this doesn’t tell the full story.<br /><br />The full horror lies outside the cities. Although a small minority of Aborigines do live in urban areas (with almost universal unemployment and welfare dependance), a large percentage live on what may charitably be called ‘reservations’ in the Australian outback. They live neither the traditional nomadic lifestyle they once had, nor do they integrate into modern Australia in any way. Ask any knowledgeable Aussie and he or she will tell you that I’m not overblowing my point: Aborigines live a life where they just wait to die. These outback communities have no employment save the one man who sells alcohol. The children regularly die of diseases which have been eradicated in all but sub-Saharan Africa. I met a lecturer in the History department at the University of Western Australia. He made an interesting point:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“This is a soft left department at a soft left university. But whenever there’s some sort of governmental intervention into these settlements, those academics who’ve never visited one predictably decry the policy’s paternalism and illiberalism. And those who have been out there, complain that it doesn’t go far enough. These Aboriginal communities are places of indescribable degeneracy. And nobody knows what more can be done”.</span><br /><br />A comprehensive examination of the history and causes of Aborigines’ wretchedness is beyond the scope of this piece here. But it’s worth telling an undisputable truth. Alcohol and pornography have decimated black Australia. In the middle of last year, the Howard government – in response to a long-awaited report which detailed horrific levels of child sex abuse in these communities – banned alcohol and pornography to certain areas of the Northern Territory, which amounted to a ban for Aborigines alone. The only real outcry from the Australian Left was not to the policy<span style="font-style: italic;"> per se,</span> but to the cynical, populist reactionism of the government in so drastically implementing it. In short, practically nobody who lives here, irrespective of their political leanings, is unaware of the appalling, unspeakable sex abuse which is widespread in Aboriginal culture. In my two decades here, barely a week would pass without yet another story of the gang-rape of children. Only two months ago, nine men who pleaded guilty to gang-raping a 10-year-old girl at the Aurukun Aboriginal community on Cape York escaped a prison term, with the sentencing judge inexplicably saying the child victim "probably agreed" to have sex with them.<br /><br />The argument that alcohol and pornography are to blame is one which tends to stun and bemuse neophytes. After all, both are freely available in society at large, and child rape – while it does exist – is not endemic. But whether you loathe Aboriginal men for their evil, or make the case that the taboo on child sex is as culturally specific as the prohibition on corporal punishment, the fact is a significant majority of children as young as two or three are systematically and continually raped in these communities and 2007 in Australia was the year the civil libertarians ran out of objections. The complaint that imposing our standards on these communities is paternalistic and is the root cause of Aboriginal wretchedness carries no more steam. Just this week, Robert Bropho, a prominent Perth Aboriginal leader of the Swan River Nyungah community, is on trial for child sex charges. He is – and I don’t say this lightly – completely representative of Aboriginal leadership in Australia. In twenty years, I can’t count the number of Aboriginal “leaders” who’ve been found to be – at best – corrupt, and – at worse – child rapists.<br /><br />In my final year of law school here in Perth, I took Advanced Criminology. The majority of this very small class conducted investigations and wrote theses into Aboriginal rates of juvenile incarceration, or deaths in custody, arguing vociferously that White Australia is to blame, that Aborigines are unfairly targeted, that the media manipulates the electorate into believing Aborigines are more predisposed to crime than everyone else. As a proud social liberal, I was stunned and a little guilty to find myself shouting these people down, class after class. Despite the good-intentioned but morally deficient policy of taking Aboriginal children from their homes in the 1950s, despite the fact that this was their country long before it was ours, and despite early Aborigines being massacred by the British, the relativistic nonsense my classmates were spewing made me bilious with opprobrium. As they spent a semester researching and making excuses, always separating the disease from the symptoms, I wrote my thesis on virtual child pornography and argued its continued legality. It made me a hate figure, but I think their hatred of me served to confuse their own defense of contemporary Aboriginal culture. This was in 2003. Maybe they’ve come round to mainstream opinion since. Not for nothing, I topped the class. In response they voted me most likely to be a serial killer. I hated them all.<br /><br />So next week there’ll be a milestone in modern Australia. Although a handful of progressive premiers and senators apologised to the Aborigines a decade ago, the Howard government – despite public support – steadfastly refused to do so. The explanation was that an apology implies culpability and a flood of litigation would drown the judiciary and bankrupt the country.<br /><br />This was farcical and mean-spirited. But the time has come, and the new PM is giving both a written and verbal apology for the suffering caused. It probably won’t make much practical difference to the dire conditions in which Aborigines live. An apology won’t get them off welfare dependence any more than it'll convince Aboriginal men that child sex is evil. But if there's any disease which underpins the wretchedness of Aborigines, the disease with contributes to the other diseases I’ve already mentioned, it’s a disease of the soul. A culture with no remaining self-respect cannot summon the strength to save itself. The dearth of dignity which leads Aborigines to spend their days stumbling through city centres, eye-bleedingly drunk and cursing drivel at an imaginary foe, must surely stem from knowing that the white man never thought much of them in the first place. So if a genuine, heartfelt apology, based not on direct guilt but on compassion and sincerity, helps just a few Aboriginal men to stand up tall and announce, “I am a proud man and I will be a leader of my people before it’s too late!” then perhaps everything is not as dire as I've made out.<br /><br />Time will tell of course, but on this historic week, I can't overstate how sad the Aboriginal problem is. Australia is a country with so much to be proud of. With a tiny population, it has a booming and resilient economy, sends fine actors, writers and musicians everywhere around the world, conducts some of the world’s pre-<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSpuA1QuaKUtyCtZfB69iLt_If7WGROuVa52yMF64E9ISvXcd_kq6JsRfESyG_YmVhVmUOjJ9llAVUaLyAwdNWEvqch9ebXb-mCyaO82zdhdq2OFXRJ22pwLh-3lZV0HcjngL1_s2bbSlY/s1600-h/australia_pictures_sydney19.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSpuA1QuaKUtyCtZfB69iLt_If7WGROuVa52yMF64E9ISvXcd_kq6JsRfESyG_YmVhVmUOjJ9llAVUaLyAwdNWEvqch9ebXb-mCyaO82zdhdq2OFXRJ22pwLh-3lZV0HcjngL1_s2bbSlY/s320/australia_pictures_sydney19.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163765244618897634" border="0" /></a>eminent science, has produced thinkers as diverse as Germaine Greer, Peter Singer, Edna Everage and my own greatest hero, Clive James. It’s the country of Don Bradman and Banjo Patterson and Joan Sutherland and Rod Laver, and the tenets which underpin Australian culture are as admirable as any in the world. Although visitors and expats may laugh at the notion of “fair dinkum”, it’s a laudable belief and should be on the flag. Admittedly difficult to define, it broadly refers to a spirit of fair play and hard work. It means respect for integrity and candour. And it’s the reason Australians smile and call total strangers “mate” – and really mean it when they do. It’s a marvellous country with a marvellous people. Which makes it all the more sad that the open wound of Aboriginal reconciliation continues to fester on an otherwise tough and tanned skin.<br /><br />Each time I come back to Australia, I find it less and less like home, but with more and more to admire. And being here in Perth, in this most isolated metropolis of all, on a land which – as the anthem goes – abounds with nature’s gifts, with beauty rich and rare, I am moved to raise a cold beer to the Great Southern Land, which is going through a rite of passage, consigning to the past its adolescent sins, and beginning an exciting and unwritten chapter in its history.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-45649669581918278592008-01-28T09:31:00.000+00:002008-12-11T17:39:41.154+00:00Pride and Prejudice in Ho Chi Minh<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6h0c4zTyuwbjRr4tfRaos3V9mJcjwHvBfDiQAGtPwq1wKPi9JyVZwo-DQ8jNM3bWfM3VNWXdF05dkUaagzVvWvMI6cFxYTEnF7xvfq3Q9gSQk_qQ-osdPWt_w3jjxxjXTE8Jk-N2HEgQi/s1600-h/DSC00628.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6h0c4zTyuwbjRr4tfRaos3V9mJcjwHvBfDiQAGtPwq1wKPi9JyVZwo-DQ8jNM3bWfM3VNWXdF05dkUaagzVvWvMI6cFxYTEnF7xvfq3Q9gSQk_qQ-osdPWt_w3jjxxjXTE8Jk-N2HEgQi/s320/DSC00628.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160459086168619090" border="0" /></a><br /><br />For my tenth birthday I was given a book of short stories by Jeffrey Archer, someone I’ve always thought – despite being a fabulous scoundrel – one of the most gifted natural storytellers of all. I remember a lot of this great book, but my favourite story was the one about an insurance claims assessor, who lives a life of metronomic regularity. Every day is exactly the same as the one before and the one after, including his arrival at the train station every day to catch the 5:52pm home from work, but not after buying ten Benson & Hedges and a copy of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Stand</span><span style="font-style: italic;">ard</span>, which he would place on the little ledge next to his seat on the way home, happily reading and smoking for the 38 minute journey.<br /><br />One particular day, however, his routine is disrupted by some event at work, and a chain reaction of events leads him – instead of placing his newspaper and cigarettes as usual on top of his briefcase – to put them <span style="font-style: italic;">inside</span>. Finding himself sitting in a different train from his normal one and surrounded by unfamiliar commuters, a leather-clad, pierced young skinhead reaches over to him with a glare of defiance, and steals a cigarette from the pack sitting atop the man’s briefcase on the ledge. Fearful and speechless at the breach of protocol, our protagonist grabs the newspaper. But the young punk glares again, reaches forward to do the same, a tussle ensues and the paper is torn in two. The insurance man smokes a cigarette from his pack but to his astonishment the skinhead grabs another, the insurance man takes another and for half and hour they glare at each other, both smoking the B&Hs as quickly as possible and clinging to the scraps of newspaper they’re left holding. Eventually, the insurance man reaches his stop and opens his briefcase, only to find inside a pristine copy of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Standard</span> and an unopened pack of Benson & Hedges.<br /><br /><br />I hope the joke of that story survived its summary, because among the various bewildering experiences of Vietnam, one stands out. I needed to hail – as is perfectly the norm – a young man on a motorbike to take me across town. He was about twenty, short, very slight and bespectacled and wearing a shirt of typically catastrophic blue. We agreed a price, and before getting on the back, I turned away to put my iPod in my bag and check it was all securely fastened. This was a lesson I learnt in Cambodia when half my belongings narrowly missed being crushed under a brakeless lorry.<br /><br />Turning back to the yo<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_R6NGjBxQ4GrSw3UwYyYFqW5OIyF3RflpGZiN2VlXxBbk8xqyKPc8z6xwBerQiW9WovKpqxyVw1y9vkKW96WRnVXB6LhqY5EuWOuRNsWYT4k5VLzzDV8GDYatsGvxdOCFAJkPuShUXJCd/s1600-h/P1030795.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_R6NGjBxQ4GrSw3UwYyYFqW5OIyF3RflpGZiN2VlXxBbk8xqyKPc8z6xwBerQiW9WovKpqxyVw1y9vkKW96WRnVXB6LhqY5EuWOuRNsWYT4k5VLzzDV8GDYatsGvxdOCFAJkPuShUXJCd/s320/P1030795.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160459124823324802" border="0" /></a>ung driver on the bike, I saw an overweight German man – who could easily get a full-time job as a professional caricature – climbing onto the back of my young driver’s bike, and strapping on a helmet. Politely, I tapped his corpulent shoulder and I told him I was here first. No I wasn’t, he replied in accented English. This was now a problem. Not because there aren’t enough motorbike drivers around (there are plenty), but because firstly, you should always stand your ground, and secondly, if you give a German an inch he’ll take it as an invitation to invade a neighbouring country. And Cambodia has really been through enough already with the French.<br /><br />So in what I imagined was a display of phlegmatic resoluteness, I pushed up to him, put my finger in his fat little face and told him to get the fuck off my motorcycle.<br /><br />The man – and I should add that although fat enough to topple a ferry, he was more security guard than daytime television guest, and could’ve killed me with a single bear-hug – peered at me with the bewildered indifference with which a rhino might regard a wristwatch. His response was that which Germans often give when approached in the wild. He spoke in German – and I’m pretty sure in the cretinous, self-satisfied idiolect they use in Bavaria.<br /><br />He disembarked from the bike – to the evident relief of the driver who was mentally calculating how much a set of new shock absorbers would cost – and a crowd of curious Vietnamese surrounded us. They’re all curious, and all of the time. But when there’s actually something more interesting than a dying dog to watch, they really, really gather fast.<br /><br />Now he’s shouting and me and I’m yelling back, because I’ve absolutely had it to bits. You get screwed in India, you get screwed in Thailand. You get screwed in Nepal – but you forgive it because everything’s so pretty. Getting screwed by the locals is an inevitable part of travel, but I’ll take getting sodomised and beaten in a Vietnamese prison before I get screwed by a fat, lugubrious German.<br /><br />As the yelling about who had the motorcycle first gets more and more heated, a uniformed policeman as thin as a chopstick and about as tall comes and breaks it up. A scuffle ensues, a fracas, a melee even. And then I see him. Sitting on a virtually identical Honda motorcycle parked directly in front of the bike with the bellowing Jerry is my driver. He’s watching me in the way a woodland critter must regard a bird of prey, having seen me approach the bike directly behind his to attack a total stranger for no imaginable reason. He presumably thinks me a certifiable lunatic, and upon catching my eye as I stare, dumbstruck and mortified with embarrassment, he frantically turns the key and speeds off. The German – still shaking with indignation – climbs back onto his bike and leaves. And the throngs of spectators who were pleased just to see a white guy lose his marbles, mill away and back to their lives. There are no more guys on bikes anywhere to be found.<br /><br />I end up walking.<br /><br />Vietnam is such a weird and perplexing place. Back home, it’s easy to forget that it was a country long before it was a war. Yet the war is how we see this country. We measure its progress against how much was lost during twenty years of conflict. We see, to this day, a communist government running a capitalist country – a government which exists because of the failure of the mostly American foreign forces to triumph in a war against a dedicated and hidden enemy which could stomach greater casualties and knew what they were fighting for. If only that were a lesson which’d been heeded in the last few years. Long before Vietnam meant bodybags and napalm and cold war proxies thrashing it out, it was a country of proud and dignified people. Proud to have worn the scars of battle against various enemies at different times, a centuries-old abnegation of foreign domination which gives the visitor a sense of the people’s national self-assuredness; something you don’t feel in other Asian countries. The Lonely Planet (as always) puts it well:<br /><br />“The Chinese have been the traditional threat and the proximity of this northern giant has cast a long shadow over Vietnam and its people. They respect but fear China, and in the context of 2000 years of history, the French and the Americans are but a niggling annoyance that were duly dispatched”.<br /><br />But it’s a country of stunnin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6q2I_fweJOn6QMzJslVgOg4VPvZ0D6yiXJj8om4pWjvWoP0KtFiav_iG1x7XPcnwem48e9_lQZ9oq-9N6MUVQK_8ZIe2hgbyMZjLKKfpkLjCzDxWyajIPdUYRjr7H0MK6pM0DHXxCQmX4/s1600-h/P1030828.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6q2I_fweJOn6QMzJslVgOg4VPvZ0D6yiXJj8om4pWjvWoP0KtFiav_iG1x7XPcnwem48e9_lQZ9oq-9N6MUVQK_8ZIe2hgbyMZjLKKfpkLjCzDxWyajIPdUYRjr7H0MK6pM0DHXxCQmX4/s320/P1030828.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160459133413259410" border="0" /></a>g paradox, too. The Vietnamese have embraced capitalism and then run with it – creating a monster of mercantile, consumerist strength which belies its communist underpinnings. The significant Vietnamese migrant communities in the US, Canada and Australia – communities which left during and after the war in the 1970s to start a new life – have one striking thing in common. They have an extraordinary work ethic, a predisposition and facility for business and commerce which has been the envy of many other migrant communities. The Vietnamese diaspora was a sad part of modern Vietnamese history but has given a great deal to the receiving countries.<br /><br />Like much of Asia, cursed (or blessed, depending on your perspective) with comparatively low life expectancy and an explosive birth rate, it’s a young and jaw-droppingly dynamic place. For every elderly Vietnamese wearing the distinctive, conical rice paddy hat and traditional garb, you see twenty young men and women porting what they believe to be the latest western fashions, carrying mobiles and MP3 players and swapping thousands of counterfeit DVDs. Ho Chi Minh City – which the locals persist in calling Saigon – thrums with commerce. Everywhere you look is the sensory overload of sights, sound and smells which characterises the Asian megacities in general. But Saigon has something else, something hard to identity and even harder to describe. The closest I can get it is to invoke a well-trodden and rather tired cliché. It’s a city which feels alive. It pulsates and undulates with the round-the-clock tramplings of five million inhabitants, three million motorcycles (the most in the world) and a culture of street commerce and an otherwordly chaos that tantalises and frustrates. Only thirty-three years since images of American troops and diplomats being saved from the advancing Vietnamese troops, hoisted from the roof of the embassy, brought humiliation into the living rooms of America, Saigon has been reborn. It represents everything, absolutely everything which means this century will be the Asian century.<br /><br />The people are warm and engaging, but commerce underpins everything. A fruit vendor tells you about her children in the staccato, pronoun-free delivery which characterises Vietnamese English. Any reciprocated interest elicits a machine-gun burst of further minutiae about her family and an invitation to meet them. Then a rather aggressive request to buy a metric ton of papaya. Then indignation at your polite protest that a cubic metre of tropical fruit might be an unwanted burden to a backpacker.<br /><br />A conversation struck up with an old man on a park bench continues for ten minutes or so. You admire his facility with English and his knowledge of the city, his stories of being a private in the South Vietnamese army, until he tells you he’s a freelance tour guide – and promptly pulls out a tattered and garish business card. A few years ago, an American politician, in a dumbass pique of Francophobe populism, announced that, “The French don’t even have a word for entrepreneur!” I don’t know whether the Vietnamese got theirs from the French while this was Indochina, or whether it’s culturally innate. I’m just saying: the Vietnamese are admired for the same reason that the Jews have been historically distrusted. They have commerce in their blood.<br /><br />I told the man on the bench I don’t need a tour guide. Which wasn’t really true, I just don’t like to be observed having things pointed out to me while I almost get run over by five hundred motorbikes. I told him – as I have done countless times on this voyage – that I’d be delighted to retain his services for a couple of hours, if he’d tell me real things about the people and the place.<br /><br />The man happily slurped the revolting coffee I’d bought him (important digression: don’t drink coffee in Vietnam. They serve it with the viscosity of honey, the smell of sewage, the taste of tarmacadam and the texture of soil). Vietnam, he told me – and South Vietnam in particular – has changed beyond recognition the past thirty years. The gap in understanding between the elderly Vietnamese and the westernised youth creates a disconnect which in other places might manifest as mutual hostility (I’m paraphrasing). Yet the young and the old, despite how different their lives and exposure to the West are, share a deep and passionate love for their country, a tolerance of their single-party government and a fierce determination that Vietnam should prosper.<br /><br />My elderly vet said he’s as happy as anyone could expect to be. He remembers well the misery of the 60s and 70s. Lending weight to the lesson which many have learnt from the Iraq debacle, he spoke with clarity of the humiliation brought upon a people when foreign troops with space-age toys come parachuting in and wantonly go house-to-house. This, of course, is a guy who fought with the Americans, as part of the poorly-trained, indisciplined and ragtag South Vietnamese army. But anyone, he said, who sees their country invaded – even if the invaders are fighting on the same side as you – suffers the marked indignity of occupation. He couldn’t wait for the Americans to leave in ’75, even though it meant the communists had triumphed. And, he impassively observed, they’re still in power a generation later.<br /><br />I met a schoolgirl in a black and white pressed uniform. She’d stopped off for a drink, halfway through her two-hour commute home from school by scooter. Five days a week, she sits on her girly-pink Honda for four hours in pea-soup pollution and end-of-history traffic, most of that time at a standstill. The two other days of the week she does the same thing to get to work, most of the money from which supports her family.<br /><br />I said hi. She giggled like, well, exactly like you’d imagine a Vietnamese schoolgirl to giggle. We got chatting and I learnt – aside from her commuting schedule – that she has five siblings, was born in a village outside Saigon, and – like so many in this city and every other Asian metropolis – her family moved here for a better life. Her mother is a tailor who works seven days a week. She (my giggling friend, that is) has an iPod (fake), a DVD player (fake), some Bose headphones (fake) and a shiny new 3G phone (real). Turns out mobile phones are the only consumer gadget which the Vietnamese are yet to bother counterfeiting.<br /><br />But they counterfeit – as do the Cambodians, and the Thais – with breathtaking ease, speed and imagination. In Thailand, I needed new headphones. Armed with the long-gotten wisdom that headphones are one of the few things you should never skimp on, I circled the islands for days in search of a single, solitary pair of Sony, Sennheiser, Samsung headphones – any would do. I probably found five thousand pairs scattered across forty electronics shops. And not a single pair, not one, was genuine! I know this because firstly, the text on the packaging would invariably have some ridiculous syntax. And secondly, when I would demand of the shop proprietor that I wanted the real thing and was willing to pay ten times more for it (the fakes were a couple of dollars), he or she would always give the same apologetic shrug, insist that it’s not possible to buy real headphones anywhere in Thailand, but “is ok, copies also good! Same, same! But different!” As if it’s like going into a chemist and buying generic ibuprofen rather than Nurofen. Rather than what it actually is, which is an illegal breach of Sony or Toshiba’s intellectual property – not to mention a besmirching of their reputation for quality every time anyone buys this otherwise cosmetically identical product and blames the company for its shoddiness. Which, I imagine, happens about a gazillion times a day.<br /><br />My search for headphones is a rather dull tale (I ended up being forced to buy some “Sony” in-ear buds, and they naturally stopped working within six hours), but worth telling to illustrate a broader point. In a part of the world that is so bustling, so imaginative, so entrepreneurial and which boasts so much human capital, it’s completely impossible to buy a standard, genuine consumer product that you could find within five minutes in any European or North American city. Counterfeiting is well known to be rife in Asia – the Chinese are in a constant and circular battle with the Americans over a failure to crack down on DVD piracy – but you really have to go into a DVD or electronics shop to appreciate the scale of the problem. Hundreds of thousands of fake DVDs line the walls, sending not a single penny back to the producers, the actors or the film companies. But at least the product they’re selling doesn’t diminish the reputation of the studio. Electronics are a different matter. I can’t tell you the number of gadgets you can buy which are perfectly recognisable as having been made by the premium Japanese brands, only to shake them and hear them rattle like a box of smarties. Not everyone, I think, immediately recognises crap <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsRYL1G06mZPwt1jvWKt_EN4T0BY4jmCI2vkTAFO1nYvqV9IFvXLEcanvjGq5zznAEjBar-DCo3omzgxyLaUP-0fWzTScW05Ne9jKf8HXXOtlFt0V6FazXo6GHDx-NVSwm2O-w4ebOJWNe/s1600-h/DSC00630.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsRYL1G06mZPwt1jvWKt_EN4T0BY4jmCI2vkTAFO1nYvqV9IFvXLEcanvjGq5zznAEjBar-DCo3omzgxyLaUP-0fWzTScW05Ne9jKf8HXXOtlFt0V6FazXo6GHDx-NVSwm2O-w4ebOJWNe/s320/DSC00630.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160459116233390194" border="0" /></a>when they <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI2FfDqfz6PeYAZcxIi7XwCFL6D9uCJeanwH7bltni-YQY_RTUhQl3nMOKoCEJWAD5uPTZUpXFulxz7gECJzAo_HR_BBqVir8PA05NrhgEsyDIj9L-_dwcsOTEIiYIo9DKudBPzE6ewaBQ/s1600-h/DSC00629.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI2FfDqfz6PeYAZcxIi7XwCFL6D9uCJeanwH7bltni-YQY_RTUhQl3nMOKoCEJWAD5uPTZUpXFulxz7gECJzAo_HR_BBqVir8PA05NrhgEsyDIj9L-_dwcsOTEIiYIo9DKudBPzE6ewaBQ/s320/DSC00629.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160459107643455586" border="0" /></a>see it.<br /><br />Some of it is very funny. Here are some photos of DVD covers at a typical Vietnamese shop; two of my favourites are “<span style="font-style: italic;">Overwhelming USA Action Movie</span>”, which, it transpires, is a collection of Willis, Van Damme and Seagal blockbusters; and my personal favourite, “<span style="font-style: italic;">Robert De Niro: Gangster. Black helped eldest brother to come, the fire exploded a condition imminent!</span>” Which, after ten minutes of brow-furrowed inspection, I still could not for the life of me decipher.<br /><br />So some of it is amusing, but some really is not. And having been brought up to respect quality when I see it, I find my skin crawling by the churned-out crapness of so much in this part of the world. If some kid with a DVD burner wants to sell identical copies of movies at a discount, that is – although rightfully illegal – a real service which is being provided, and which is being provided to poor people who otherwise could not see the films at all. For people with very little to look forward to at the end of a 15-hour day in a factory, if watching a pirated American film gives some bit of pleasure, then who am I or anyone else to begrudge that? Especially so when the prevalence of Anglophone movies helps improve English and increase social mobility in an increasingly Anglophone world.<br /><br />But as much as I can accept that, I’m repulsed by the mass-produced mediocrity of so much of the total shit which is for sale in south-east Asia. While the Japanese innovate and design and invest in products which make many of our lives both easier and more fun – while constantly having to stave off recession and lay off the poor salaryman who’s toiled almost to death for his company – the south Asians copy the product and sell it for practically nothing, reciprocating nada to the company which designed and built it.<br /><br />Japan is rich and Vietnam is (at least for now) poor. So there’s maybe some fairness in what amounts to a downward redistribution of wealth. But taking from the lucky and giving to the unlucky (something I’ve always been for) is not the same as stealing, or taking something which is good and turning it into something which is bad. And as myopic and ethnocentric as I know this comment is, I really wish the south Asians would have a little more pride. Pride in not just stealing the innovations of others and making them worse. Pride in not celebrating the bottom-line production of rubbish. And have some pride in trying to create an economy which, while booming, innovates and generates revenue which can be plugged back into helping the poor climb out of their poverty.<br /><br />And, I feel, it’s the very same lack of pride which brings me back to the giggling schoolgirl – who by now was turning pink and displaying the unmistakable signs of having a crush (I’ve come to recognise it well, it’s hard work being a man of the world, you know). Between trembling giggle-fits, she asked me whether I have a girlfriend, what I think of Vietnamese girls, would I ever marry one, etcetera. And - also mindful of whether I was being watched by a jealous, crowbar wielding ex-boyfriend – I projected what I imagined to be a boyish insouciance in changing the subject. But then came the heartbreaker – and it transported me suddenly a couple of months back to India and Shahrukh Kahn (the Bollywood star) advertising “Fair & Handsome”, the skin-lightening cream which all young Indians are so desperate to use, in order to look more beautiful. More European.<br /><br />“I’m so ugly”, she murmured, with the unmistakable but exquisite glimpse of honesty you occasionally stumble across. Suddenly the constant thrum of the traffic left my mind, and I even forgot the imaginary ex-boyfriend and the fact my dairy drink tasted like blended Chihuahua. All I was left with was a moment of perfect candour with a total stranger in a totally strange place. “We are all so ugly compared to you”, she remarked, with genuine sadness. I clarified that she meant white people, and not me in particular, and she went on. “White girls are so beautiful, they have those round blue eyes, and they all have blonde hair and long legs…(I wish, I restrained myself from interrupting) … I want to have my eyes done and my nose too, but it’s very expensive, and it would never look real. I will always be ugly like all the Vietnamese”.<br /><br />I gave her a few useless platitudes like how she was very beautiful and should be happy with who she is, and took my leave to contemplate this seismically sad divulgence. What upset me was not hearing the fears and insecurities of adolescence – I remember them all too well myself. It’s the fact that I know, I just now know for sure, that hers is the mainstream view across this continent. There is a macro-cultural inferiority complex going on which is everywhere you look. You see it in the mannequins in the shop windows across Asia – ALL of which are Caucasian. You see it in the billboards for lingerie, razors or suits. You see it in the obsessive face-whitening in India, the eye surgery in the Far East, and the fact that probably eight in ten Singaporean, Malaysian, Korean or Thai boys I’ve ever met dye their hair blonde or red. You see it in the desperately imitative fashions, the reactive gestures, the Asian ghetto <span style="font-style: italic;">patois</span> that inculcates all of their tongues. You see it in the way as a white guy you’re treated with reverence while a black tourist receives disdain. And you sure as hell see it when a young girl of preternatural loveliness loathes the way her race looks.<br /><br />Of course, young girls in the West hate their appearance too, but it’s different. Jealousy of one’s peers at a time of insecurity and hormones is the most normal thing in the world. An old and proud culture being subsumed by another, not by outside imposition but voluntarily welcomed, sought out, encouraged, is really sad indeed. Where is the pride in permitting to economy to be run by flogging fake junk? Where is the pride in the governments of this gigantic continent not asking advertisers to curb the cultural envy, not telling their people that they should be proud and happy to be who they are? It is sad, and so is an economy which employs its people to, if they’re not making the junk which we so needlessly consume back home, creates the social conditions for embarrassingly phoney copies of exotic things from other places. And I’m not even talking about the damn headphones.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-77353052106887464132008-01-12T09:02:00.001+00:002008-01-18T04:10:04.494+00:00Starting over in AmericaIt’s primary season in the US electoral calendar. It’s that time when fleece-wrapped and beanie-clad Americans gather in hysterical throngs in civic centres and town halls in the frozen wastes of New England and Iowa, waving placards with sloppy slogans in fonts subtly different from those of their opponents. Under an avalanche of focus-group rhetoric, a hopelessly undemocratic (to the rest of the world, anyway) process begins.<br /><br />It starts earlier each time, and this one began almost a year ago when the candidates of both parties set up their mandatory “exploratory committees”. Then the media gossiped and speculated until the senators, governors and varied Washington bigshots announced their campaigns. Then begins a process of shameless pandering to Iowans on of parochial matters of ethanol subsidies and to the fiercely freethinking Granite Staters of New Hampshire (state motto: “Live Free or Die”), in order that the first-in-the-nation caucuses and primaries provide momentum to sweep through the states to come.<br /><br />It’s easy to be cynical. To the rest of the world, the primary system demonstrates little other than the sad fact that a small sliver of the electorate wields massive, disproportionate influence – just like the electoral college system, which pretty much sends twenty-something states to the Democrats, twenty-something states to the Republicans, leaving a small handful of swing states to decide the next President. It renders laughable any democratic principle of ‘one person, one vote’.<br /><br />This time – even by usual standards – the world is watching with fascination and some nerves. It’d be hard to argue that there’s ever been a more pivotal election, geopolitically speaking. The course of the war on terror, global approaches to climate change, US relations with the Muslim world and with China – the next President of the United States will be crucial in determining what transpires in the years to come. And we all have a stake in it. Can’t the Electoral College should be expanded; if Texas can have 34 votes and small flyover states where nobody wants to lives get a handful each, is it that unreasonable for Europe to get twenty, China to get a couple of dozen, and the Arab world to get a few – depending whether they stop burning American flag on al-Jazeera? I’ve made this argument to a variety of Americans over the years (and I even mischievously posted on a right-wing American blog a while back), and the responses have run the gamut from condescending bemusement to outright hostility. It’s an idea that’s going to take some time to get the traction it deserves.<br /><br />But I don’t mean to sneer at the American system – for all its shortcomings, the rest of the world owes it a great deal. And this time, there’s something truly different going on. In part, because for the first time since horse and carriage, there’s no incumbent President or Vice-President running (can you imagine the global opprobrium if Cheney threw his hat into the ring?) In part, it’s due to the palpable disillusionment the US electorate has, not with the GOP per se, but with the neocon, evangelical cabal which has hijacked its agenda, and in so doing alienated and enraged everyone else. Michael Moore probably played a role in why things are different this time too. His 2007 documentary, “Sicko”, brought real attention to the criminal unfairness of the for-profit health system in the US, which not merely has 47 million Americans uninsured, but leaves even those who do have insurance to get helplessly screwed by the HMOs who are beholden to “Big Pharma” and its Washington lobby.<br /><br />And in part, it’s because on the Democratic side, there’s a man who comes along once in a generation. Obviously, nobody knows if Barack Hussein Obama will be the nominee. And if he is, nobody knows if he’ll win in the general election. What an improbable tale if he does – and I do hope he will. Nevertheless, what I’m sure of, from watching him since 2004 and his magnificent speech to the Democratic National Convention (http://youtube.com/watch?v=MNCLomrqIN8) is that he reminds people of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King for a reason.<br /><br />What’s that reason? It’s not a conniving media strategy to position himself as their natural successor. Nor do I think he’s received politically correct favouritism by a mainstream media afraid to criticise the first black man with a chance of winning. I’m sure of what it is, and anyone who has seen him speak, seen him on the talk shows, read his books, and heard him captivate his audience must know it too. Even Republicans must know it. They must fear the exquisitely all-American story of the son of a Kenyan father, brought up by his Kansan mother in Indonesia and Hawaii who, upon leaving law school, doesn’t go to a lucrative corporate law firm to pull in a six-figure salary. Instead, he works the streets on the south side of Chicago with community empowerment programs. He works as a civil rights lawyer, and becomes first a senator in the Illinois state legislature and is then elected in a landside to the US Senate. Amidst massive encouragement and support and almost religious faith – especially from young voters utterly disgusted with the cronyism, falsehood and partisanship of the political system in Washington – he launches his presidential bid. The rest will be history – in every sense. The Republicans must surely fear the reason behind Obamamania: he reminds people of those giants from the sixties.<br /><br />If the overused term ‘inspirational’ can be applied to anything, surely it can to Obama. He speaks in rhetoric without sounding stage-managed. He rouses a crowd with metre and cadence and does it neither notes nor a prompter. He engages without being obsequious or disingenuous. He’s qualified, naturally funny and just plain likeable in a way that Hillary Clinton – for all her very real qualities – will never be. But above all, there’s something transcendent – even ethereal – about his message, about the platform for his campaign. His speech back in 2004 referred to “the audacity of hope” – also the title of his second book. It advocated a future of nonpartisanship, of the restoration of American moral leadership in the world, of using progressive domestic policies to lead by example. From everyone in the States I speak to, from all that I read and watch, it’s abundantly clear: something over there is changing in a very real way. Seven years of President Numbnuts and his coterie of Machiavellian, base-pandering divisivists have alienated a great swathe of the electorate. For some under thirty – baby boomers’ children – their parents’ generation has bequeathed them a world and a country they no longer admire. It was their parents who began the era of rampant consumerism which will be inscribed on the twentieth century’s tombstone. It was they who failed to understand environmental problems and who now are the captains of industry who continue to obstruct real progress against climate change. And in this election year, it’s they who the younger generation see in congress and lined up behind the podiums in the election debates. Old white men, all in a row, railing against Hispanic immigrants, baiting the Iranians, parsing words on climate change, speaking in well-honed soundbytes, and hedging positions to remain friendly to the military-industrial complex and the lobbies which control contemporary DC.<br /><br />On the Republican side, Congressman Ron Paul from Texas is the only one with the courage to speak unpopular truths. Despite being frighteningly conservative on many issues (his proposals for the abolition of the Inland Revenue Service and the CIA alone render him utterly unelectable – and a good thing too), he stated in a recent debate that in order to understand the hostility aimed at the US by the Muslim world, “[Americans] must examine [their] foreign policy”. He believes it’s US support for Arab dictatorships, the Iraq war, an apparently unwavering favouritism towards Israel, and the presence of US troops on Muslim holy lands which are the underlying causes of anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Not only did his opponents openly sneer, but one of them demanded he retract such an unpatriotic position. “They hate us because of our freedom”, was the predictable populist retort.<br /><br />Two things deserve mention here. The first is that Ron Paul has been a phenomenon in 2007. Despite never polling out of single digits in any of the early primary states, he raised $20 million in the final quarter of 2007 – practically the leader among the GOP candidates – and not only did it practically all come over the internet, but it practically all came from 18-25 year olds. In other words, a fiscally conservative, elderly and rather wooden congressman from Texas, whose views on a variety of issues are totally at odds with the mainstream and who must be considered unelectable by even his most fervently dewy-eyed supporter, has tapped into a great lake of discontent among the youth, and raised more money than the establishment candidates. He was against the Iraq war from the start, he bemoans US hegemony, he spoke out against US dependence on foreign oil long before his competitors. He has – at every opportunity – said exactly what he thinks. So much so that Bill Maher – the famously left-wing, anti-GOP, libertarian comic and late-night commentator – after interviewing Congressman Paul for the first time early in 2007, was visibly stunned by the honesty of Paul’s arguments (http://youtube.com/watch?v=xo6KiusCBoU) and came pretty close to endorsing him.<br /><br />Many Paul supporters – who stomp noisily around YouTube and the blogosphere with vituperative advocacy for their man – will likely coalesce behind Obama when Paul drops out of the race – as he inevitably will. In other words, the most right-wing and reactionary candidate from either party, a white, old southerner, shares more with a centre-left, young, black, progressive northerner than with anyone else from either party. And young voters – who are participating in historically unprecedented numbers – overwhelmingly support them both. What does this tell you about the exasperation the American youth is feeling towards the status quo?<br /><br />The second thing deserving mention is that Paul is very right as well as very Right. What he argued in the debate on the role of US foreign policy in fermenting terrorism – and with which his army of devoted, web-savvy supporters must presumably concur, is conventional wisdom everywhere else in the world. Read the opinion pages of any British, French, Dutch, Indian, South-east Asian, Australian broadsheet – anywhere on the spectrum – and you find some attribution of blame at US foreign policy blunders and Washington’s calculated support for the undemocratic regimes in the Arab world. Until recently heresy in the US – outside of blogs and the New York Times Op-Ed page, the young are starting to realise this, while the old still do not. A seachange, in other words, is afoot.<br /><br />Ron Paul won’t win of course – and it’s a good thing too. He’s a lunatic on most issues. Another Bush term would do less damage than a President Paul. He won’t win. But neither will the paleorepublicans who laugh him down on the debate stage. The policies of polarising the electorate on social wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage, and dismissing criticism of the administration as unpatriotic – has manifestly failed. It’s left the next generation of voters – sorry for the cliché – hungry for change. A full seventy percent of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track. Merrill Lynch this week announced that the US economy may be in recession. The most accurate civilian body count of the Iraq War so far puts the figure at 151,000. And the current Commander-in-Chief has made, after seven years, his first – first – trip to the Occupied Territories, and while there, in his usual, embarrassingly platitudinous double-speak, informed the Arab world there should be peace in Palestine. As if he’s just discovered it.<br /><br />Thing must change across the pond, and the unprecedented turnout in the primaries and caucuses so far demonstrates how fierce that demand for change is. And the improbable candidacy of Senator Obama – with its refusal to “go negative”, with his soaring, preacher-like oratory, his warmth and his determination, his words infused with both moral anger with how things have gone so wrong and real optimism at how they can be put right – may be remembered by future historians as the first real sign of America’s renaissance. Once more a ‘City on a Hill’, as John Winthrop described America.<br /><br />I’m as frustrated with the Bush Administration as anyone around the world. Each time I visit the States, I’m increasingly struck by the sense of fear drummed up by the news media, the perfidious advertising, the divisive rhetoric spewed forth by the elected officials – many of whom have a vested interest in the maintenance of this sense of national foreboding. A close friend lives and works in DC. “This country needs a big hug”, he’s probably said to me a dozen times, as we sit on his porch near Georgetown drinking a beer. It’s a little cheesy, a little corny perhaps – but I’ve never heard it put more accurately. America needs to feel good about itself again. The world needs America to feel good about itself again. From the Declaration of Independence to the Marshall Plan to the Apollo program, America has been a beacon to light the world. It’s just been so long since that were the case, and become a claim so cynically abused by the Bush administration, we’ve all overlooked that it can and should be true once more.<br /><br />The more my friend has said it – that America just really needs a hug – the more I realise he’s not trying to convince me. Rather, he’s mumbling in quiet desperation for something to come along and allow the country to start this wretched century again. The installation by the judiciary of the puppet President and his cabal of reactionaries in a disputed election, 9/11, the disastrous and unaffordable tax cuts for the über-wealthy, the war in Iraq, the criminal mismanagement of Katrina: it all got the twenty-first century in America off to a beginning that the majority of its citizens feel has been a nightmare. The last time my friend said that sentence to me was over a year ago, when to most Americans Obama was just some word that sounded a lot like Osama. Things are very different now, and the Barack Obama juggernaut, with its message of hope and positivism and engagement – win or lose – will change America for the better. But especially so if he wins, and the world is waiting patiently.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-73749799689401485852008-01-08T07:15:00.000+00:002008-01-08T10:10:26.919+00:00Ho Chi Minhcemeat<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwJSlEH7pD_sO4JfIMmZ4rj1LXi68Y8DGTJbQ5WcYD0jH47QpNDe16FCDlEaUN6bSukWx4BcGWIpHo780h11Q' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-29643345207087371122007-12-22T11:37:00.000+00:002008-12-11T17:39:42.585+00:00Probing Evil<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGFo4V_309bJEkf6BVeXb6N6UBH9kO28KINZCy7PVTgvXkDu0spHnLNpuyEq24N-7WTTrhbVmj3rGHwLltXENI5S-w-Yge1HOYHU6Av7UNgUZHkylteyn_PLjpW3H23EuHboPdlOU2mCCg/s1600-h/P1030548.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGFo4V_309bJEkf6BVeXb6N6UBH9kO28KINZCy7PVTgvXkDu0spHnLNpuyEq24N-7WTTrhbVmj3rGHwLltXENI5S-w-Yge1HOYHU6Av7UNgUZHkylteyn_PLjpW3H23EuHboPdlOU2mCCg/s320/P1030548.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146760736895421506" border="0" /></a>Perhaps the hardest part about writing while on the road is realising that, about some things, there’s nothing original to say. Not only have countless before you tried to pen elegant prose on the very same subject, and not only will others follow after, but they’ll observe and write the very same things, the same impressions. Some experiences are so powerful, some glimpses back into history so clear that the feelings they elicit can seldom be parsed by words.<br /><br />It’s not true of everything, naturally. One person will see in architecture one thing; and she’ll draw impressions from the people she meets that may be in stark contrast to what another concludes. If that weren’t true, what would be the point in travel at all? Wouldn’t we all just read someone else’s book while getting brown on a coconut-strewn beach?<br /><br />Occasionally, though, you’re stuck. You see something you came a long way to see, and your impressions are so predictably orthodox you wonder if there’s anything to do but just to snap away some photographs and tick it off your list of things to do before you die. Any effort to describe the experience to those who didn’t share it is pointless. Because it’s the experience itself, the sight and smell and sound and taste, which transcends what mere words can express. Background, context and descriptive prose cannot, I’m saying, describe S-21 in Phnom Penh.<br /><br />S-21 is also known as Tuol Sleng. It’s where the Democratic Kampuchea regime – known to everyone outside as the Khmer Rouge – set up a prison to detain individuals accused of, well, pretty much anything. They could’ve used a hospital or a military barracks or a food market for this purpose. And in a parallel world, visiting such a place would still be a bitterly upsetting and frightening experience. But the Khmer Rouge – in an acted of calculated malice – used a high school previously called Ponhea Yat to torture and execute anyone who could pose any threat to the regime, and its pursuit of ultra-communist, agrarian collectivisation.<br /><br />There’s something almost wantonly cruel about using a high school. I suppose they had other reasons besides its almost poetic nastiness: the convenient location, the many small classrooms on different floors well suited for separating people from their families. But visiting this place, you’re struck, floored, dumbfounded, heartbroken by the juxtaposition of innocence and evil, of warmth and coldness, of the rampant destruction of what is good and its replacement with all that is bad.<br /><br />S-21 is located in south Phnom Penh, and covers an area 600 by 40<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gSFExxCsEsGlatpN9FxgBgFS-Oo33v-mW-X8qWhT6CH5oUjlnMFSU_JQLy6KhBcmFwfkCv8yNDWdDFVCo-Ad7d7Hhgd6KRPzwMvfl6ye_AuLkNeEm9jsXUYLOAB7iJzyX5CQgeyOwalA/s1600-h/P1030570.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gSFExxCsEsGlatpN9FxgBgFS-Oo33v-mW-X8qWhT6CH5oUjlnMFSU_JQLy6KhBcmFwfkCv8yNDWdDFVCo-Ad7d7Hhgd6KRPzwMvfl6ye_AuLkNeEm9jsXUYLOAB7iJzyX5CQgeyOwalA/s320/P1030570.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146760741190388850" border="0" /></a>0 metres. During the late-70s regime, it was enclosed by two folds of corrugated iron sheets, all covered with electrocuted barbed wire. The houses around the four school buildings were used as administration, interrogation and torture offices. All the classrooms were converted to prison cells. All the windows had bars. The ground floor classrooms were divided into individual cells of 80 by 200cm – roughly the size of a small single bed or a large beach towel. The most miserable part of visiting, though, is when you walk in the front gate. You’re walking into any high school in the world. It’s a place where kids ought to have been running around the playground, screaming and giggling, learning, flirting, reading and playing music. Superimposing pitch-black brutality onto a place of youth and optimism seems like a bad dream from which you can’t wake.<br /><br />At first, interrogations were conducted in the houses surrounding<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirR5HLYpQfJcpOPr5cugPdP4iJn_SH4mwNYp_6U3EyVDLCheP1xadKrqzMpJ7MpGsClENoQi4kmVLM4G013SVEe5vyMYaA79IHTXLLBNPT5XVqdw1NJFTwIeUEcgwoLXQH_ssMQptI5CxB/s1600-h/P1030533.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirR5HLYpQfJcpOPr5cugPdP4iJn_SH4mwNYp_6U3EyVDLCheP1xadKrqzMpJ7MpGsClENoQi4kmVLM4G013SVEe5vyMYaA79IHTXLLBNPT5XVqdw1NJFTwIeUEcgwoLXQH_ssMQptI5CxB/s320/P1030533.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146760736895421490" border="0" /></a> the prison. But the interrogators seemed unable to help themselves from raping all the women and children they were interrogating, so in 1978, the chief of S-21, a former teacher himself, converted building B into an interrogation office for women and girls. Because the gang raping of 7-year old girls was an inefficient use of time and resources. This way, the interrogators would have more time for electrocuting them, burning them, drowning them and lashing them with electrical wire.<br /><br />The number of workers – employees – totalled 1,721. These included 1,377 “general” workers, which in themselves included sub-units of male and female children aged ten to fifteen. These children were selected and trained by the Khmer Rouge to act as guards. Without going into unnecessary detail here, these children were exceptionally, wantonly cruel and violent to the prisoners.<br /><br />Approximately 10,500 people were held at this high school. 2000 of these were young children, all tortured and killed, according to the various archives available now. I want to reproduce in full the regulations, (translated with world-class almost comic incompetence from the original Khmer) which were posted in each cell:<br /><br />1. You must answer accordingly to my questions. Do not turn the<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrNNQcvF0NUY_ldrdtcZDH_63AtUZeRlf06DL11iLLXxQVHAJ0AKX5bkwF4PTmO3m4_4b1ANi_9ncCO8sbgwmJJ-I5s_0H50z9L88UHtrF74-Lusc7GNlCFDz1S3YkGk1NbvKYwWWCy8OB/s1600-h/P1030550.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrNNQcvF0NUY_ldrdtcZDH_63AtUZeRlf06DL11iLLXxQVHAJ0AKX5bkwF4PTmO3m4_4b1ANi_9ncCO8sbgwmJJ-I5s_0H50z9L88UHtrF74-Lusc7GNlCFDz1S3YkGk1NbvKYwWWCy8OB/s320/P1030550.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146760741190388818" border="0" /></a>m away.<br />2. Do not try to hide the facts by making pretexts of this and that. You are strictly prohibited to protest me.<br />3. Do not be a fool for you are a [I love this] chap who dares to thwart the revolution.<br />4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.<br />5. Do not tell me either about your immoralities or the revolution.<br />6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.<br />7. Do nothing. Sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.<br />8. Do not make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.<br />9. If you do not follow all of the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.<br />10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get eithe<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KlUf-OisTOVJo1rAUHGUPCn0q8KeldwQLchW0dIyDJMnKUarAYh5T7UAo0WcSWfGxp5TPS0S8zgMQxYdJf7SWrSEXnnH7ay-hk2gZKNNzOm6hNBaRqx_9IQBiyRJ38sMb1G0w-Vs60B3/s1600-h/P1030560.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KlUf-OisTOVJo1rAUHGUPCn0q8KeldwQLchW0dIyDJMnKUarAYh5T7UAo0WcSWfGxp5TPS0S8zgMQxYdJf7SWrSEXnnH7ay-hk2gZKNNzOm6hNBaRqx_9IQBiyRJ38sMb1G0w-Vs60B3/s320/P1030560.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146760741190388834" border="0" /></a>r ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.<br /><br />I won’t bother going into the idiotic repetition and intellectual emptiness of these rules: they speak for themselves. But reading them, as I did while sitting in the corner of a dark classroom on the top floor, I pondered – as often before – the nature of evil. And how the various evils of history compare, how they sit together. If Time or Letterman did a <span style="font-style: italic;">Top Ten Evils in History</span>, what would be on the list and why?<br /><br />Evil is a concept that always used to sit uneasily with me. It’s not that I’m not horrified when I see it on a screen, read about it on a page, or stand on blood-stained earth where it has taken place. I feel the horror as much as anyone who approaches the concept with ease and confidence. It’s that, overwhelmingly, those who commit what we call evil acts don’t believe themselves or their acts to be evil. History’s dictators have always had a lofty objective which they were convinced was virtuous every bit as much as everyone else is convinced it was not. Mugabe, Amin, Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Kahn, Mussolini, Bush (let’s not go there right now), Kim Jong-Il, Mao, and of course that bloated toad Pol Pot: what they share is both the fanatical belief of the zealot and a self-assured faith in the maxim that the Ends justify the Means. Serial killers only seldom consider their actions evil; usually they are proud to be cleaning the earth of some disease – prostitutes, homosexuals, immoral women. The percentage of serial killers who are devoutly religious might surprised any neophyte. Often, they’re doing God’s work.<br /><br />The fanatics kidnapping Iraqi men and their families and drilling their eyes out while raping their daughters in front of them believe it too. Whether it’s the reestablishment of a global caliphate or the eradication of a different sectarian group or the approval of a deity or ultimate executive power through which their noble ends can be achieved, they all, they <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> believe that the Ends justify the Means and that consequently the means are – far from being evil – in fact virtuous.<br /><br />It’s the fact that they believe this so unblinkingly which always made me uneasy. To import John Rawls – in my opinion the greatest thinker of the past half-century – how much of our revulsion is conditioned by our upbringing, by context, by culturally-specific values and circumstances? Had I been born an impoverished and devout Sunni man in Tikrit and had sectarian nonsense and hatred pummelled into me every day while seeing those I loved suffer, would I be the one with the power drill and the knife, raping the Shia women? When the ‘Veil of Ignorance’ is allowed to fall over our eyes, can we say with certainty what our actions would be when everything we know and have experienced is taken away? What is left of a man when all that is gone?<br /><br />This is cultural relativism, and I’m pretty sure every humanities class at every university in the developed world teaches it to some degree or another. In other words, you don’t need to condone repulsive actions, and you are permitted to feel revulsion, but you have to temper your disgust and moral outrage. You must filter it through the prism of context, and hold back on untrammelled judgment.<br /><br />This left-leaning orthodoxy has always outraged the Right, and because the Right has always outraged <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span>, I’ve found some sympathy with the orthodoxy. Or rather, I did until 2004. August 2004, to be specific – and perhaps you’ll remember something that captured the world’s attention at the time: Beslan.<br /><br />There’s something about the 24-hour news media. It conveys horror in a way no textbook ever can. For a couple of days that month the world was glued to its screens, waiting, hoping, for resolution of the hostage crisis. Because it was <span style="font-style: italic;">children</span> this time, not theatre-goers in Moscow, or bankers and fund managers in the Towers, or even commuters on the Madrid rail system. These parasites, vermin masquerading as humans, went with automatic weapons into a school full of children. And everything got worse and worse.<br /><br />When it ended, after the trigger-happy Russian troops stormed in and the ensuing firefight was over, there were hundreds of bloodied and naked children carried limp by inconsolable, broken men. Fatigued commandos stained indelibly with misery. Four-foot corpses festering in the Caucasian summer sun. More than three hundred children were dead, all of whom must have been frightened stiff like we will never know, and suddenly, immediately, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTzHekiL8BB71lyS1vLPBbN4odfxvhLZJuPfSdi6v0J-eV5Dmq2XIn8Yh_BUOiDrGjrHwbKibQd-76yCi6JQbkj5bvMwq_KmGD8mvmqhnZ8G9zT1CmwAVfUS7cuLL2HZTEpDD8cWrGRnFx/s1600-h/en-beslan390-2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTzHekiL8BB71lyS1vLPBbN4odfxvhLZJuPfSdi6v0J-eV5Dmq2XIn8Yh_BUOiDrGjrHwbKibQd-76yCi6JQbkj5bvMwq_KmGD8mvmqhnZ8G9zT1CmwAVfUS7cuLL2HZTEpDD8cWrGRnFx/s320/en-beslan390-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146761050428034178" border="0" /></a>totally, I understood the face of evil. It really shouldn’t have taken me so long, but it did.<br /><br />What I’m saying is, I’d always struggled through the murky waters of tolerant relativism, grabbing in vain at the very existence of evil but it was a flapping fish that kept slipping away. But now I’m unshackled, and can look at a place like S-21, and allow the hatred to course freely through my veins. It’s cleansing, somehow.<br /><br />Anyway, I was sitting there in the corner of the classroom, heartbroken at the awfulness of it all – something which can never be expressed in words even though everyone’s impression who visits there will be exactly the same – and I thought about the comparative nature of evil. Mugabe’s pernicious avarice and heartless disregard for his people will be remembered, but he’s not in the top tier. Hitler is usually invoked as the archetype of modern evil, for reasons that are probably self-evident to everyone. Stalin was ruthless – and killed perhaps more people than anyone in history – but he wasn’t genocidal per se. Mao maybe caused the death of even more than Stalin, and I think it’s unarguable that he caused the most misery, if such things are quantifiable. But even Red China recognised that in a collectivised agrarian society, you still need something approximating a pyramidal social structure. You still need the teachers and doctors and engineers and – some – intellectuals. As objectionable as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were, they made some, very limited sense on paper. You can understand at least what Mao was trying to do. I hope that statement is not too much of a stretch.<br /><br />But Brother One and his Khmer Rouge: I think there’s a perfectly good case to be made that Cambodia 1975-79 represents humanity’s <span style="font-style: italic;">worst ever</span> time and place. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing at all which is intellectually defensible about what this zealot group of murderers, torturers and rapists sought to accomplish. My heart aches for this crippled and tortured country. Perhaps two million people out of a population of seven million were killed because of the regime. Which is not only, in percentage terms, a loss of life probably unprecedented; but the people they killed – not that any lives are worth more than others – but the people they killed were the very people the country would have to rely upon to get back onto its feet. The thinkers, the professionals: those who would be needed to counsel the millions of traumatised orphan children, to rebuild an economy, to teach the skills and to take down history for posterity. A whole generation of the best and brightest was lost, and everyone lost someone they loved. So, I think: c’mon down, a big round of applause please for the Khmer Rouge: in my opinion the worst group of people ever to walk this bloodstained planet; the most evil, execrable and indefensible thugs and rapists of them all. And friends, bearing in mind the competition, I think we can all agree – that is <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>saying something.<br /><br />But back in that same week of August 2004, my own watershed in shedding the shackles of relativism, two other things happened. The first was that Hicham El Guerrouj collapsed after his Olympic 1500m gold medal win at Athens, having finally secured the sporting immortality that had eluded him for years. He fell to the ground beyond the finishing line, spent, and tears of relief streamed down his pumping cheeks. He sat on the track, pro<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBokllLCtD_Q8ePfaGzOc4ExHH_NqK70mV4MfUzt9ozrrfzKhPGZqa4h_z-OHbmTp2mCVGpidjBaBxzkk3tS4p5eNWbK0vBHOib5jmzJa8YvhkkJ_giYV56CfdIqlg3POHEFxVpvvMrZ-7/s1600-h/Hicham.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBokllLCtD_Q8ePfaGzOc4ExHH_NqK70mV4MfUzt9ozrrfzKhPGZqa4h_z-OHbmTp2mCVGpidjBaBxzkk3tS4p5eNWbK0vBHOib5jmzJa8YvhkkJ_giYV56CfdIqlg3POHEFxVpvvMrZ-7/s320/Hicham.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146761054723001490" border="0" /></a>pped up by one arm like a dropped doll, as eighty thousand roaring spectators savoured a balmy night in the birthplace of western civilisation. Two of the other runners came up to him, they dropped to their knees next to a good and gracious man who deserved the gold so much. They smiled and embraced him through the dizzy cloud of fatigue, and – ignoring their own disappointment - cupped his exhausted face in their hands, an image for the pantheon of what’s great about sport; of life’s wondrous capacity to dazzle in a joyous snapshot for all time. I don’t know how everyone else watching felt. I can only speak for me. But time stopped still for that moment and I was flooded with love and admiration for my species.<br /><br />The second other thing which happened during that eventful week was the launch of the Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn and Titan. Sending probes to the other bodies of the solar system is commonplace enough now that people rarely get too excited. But this one was really special. Because while the Cassini probe would spend years to come photographing Saturn, the Huygens probe would descend to the surface of Titan – the mysterious Saturnian moon which is continually blanketed with an organic atmospheric carbon sludge that no telescope can look beneath. Scientist have been fascinated by the mysteries of Titan for decades, because it resembles most closely what earth would’ve been like during the primordial soup. It’s a glimpse back to our very beginnings.<br /><br />And so I watched, jaw-agape, the launch of this remarkable vessel. Giddy with enthusiasm, I was so impressed at the acceleration of progress which allows, within fifty years, evolution from a cylindrical Soviet beeping satellite in low earth orbit, to a vessel which can plunge into a strange land billions and billions of miles away and send back what it sees. Months later, it did so, and surpassed the expectations of all the waiting scientists. I remember hearing the whooshing audio track as it plunged through the frozen sky of Titan. I remem<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFaxfrmCQ4Nrjes0P2yxElds-WodWjleWSU7N4K_NuOatmNhZQzF28MC6kSGtivm7kA_Drj0QcSZRzn9s9-ZfXr5nKAqw9BsPWmZZBILCbNLyRdy3HU5Fkf0xST1SCvC7e1j8w2phYS6eY/s1600-h/titan-from-18k.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFaxfrmCQ4Nrjes0P2yxElds-WodWjleWSU7N4K_NuOatmNhZQzF28MC6kSGtivm7kA_Drj0QcSZRzn9s9-ZfXr5nKAqw9BsPWmZZBILCbNLyRdy3HU5Fkf0xST1SCvC7e1j8w2phYS6eY/s400/titan-from-18k.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146762588026326178" border="0" /></a>ber seeing the first photographs of the surface, lakes and coastlines and boulders and a horizon. After an hour, the probe died of cold – as it was expected to do – but that hour of life down there was worth the millions of man hours and the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in it. Even aside from the scientific value, millions of children around the world watched it on the Internet, as excited as I was, and some of them will have picked up a science book that very evening, planning to become explorers themselves when they grow up. And this is the only way we move forward.<br /><br />If there’s one thing about people and about the world which strikes me more strongly and more often than anything else, it’s the cavernous gap, the desperate disconnect between our good and our evil. And although I now accept that unqualified evil exists, and it was given a human face in the administrators, guards and conceivers of S-21, and I loathe them more than I can loathe anything, I find myself flabbergasted at how one species – for most of the time so remarkably alike – can be at once so good and so bad. What can you say about a species that kills its children in the same week as exploring other worlds for their future? What can you say about a species that tortures and burns people alive for nothing more than having an education, in the very same country that once built the magnificent temples of Angkor? What can you possibly, possibly say?<br /><br />Which brings me back to the start: there are some things which have to be experienced to be experienced. You need to sit in the courtyard of S-21 and hear the crying ghosts of murdered children so young they should’ve been playing together in the streets. You need to visit the Angkor temples to appreciate their majesty and the ingenuity behind their conception. You need to watch Hicham El Guerrouj get embraced by his competitors after winning gold. And you need to listen to the wind rushing past the plummeting Huygens probe as it descends to Titan (<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEM85Q71Y3E_0.html</span>). Because it’s every bit humanity’s soundtrack as the crying ghosts of Cambodian schoolchildren.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-34078287212890567202007-12-13T11:12:00.000+00:002008-12-11T17:39:44.182+00:00These womenI want to write about women. Not the demographic of women native to<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiycMx5OQoahreO2FpJrTn9vbW5TtxlbQc_eesF0NQuhBAwt7h5OdqLqqQd6aIgZlu5u5n_t1qZqUynsuqzjHrcV1G9EC644QsQpYhMpkWC0l5xaDNgybvnCJgTQ4gh6mjVlT9KYRtk3neT/s1600-h/female_sign_lead_203x152.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143421819323596290" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiycMx5OQoahreO2FpJrTn9vbW5TtxlbQc_eesF0NQuhBAwt7h5OdqLqqQd6aIgZlu5u5n_t1qZqUynsuqzjHrcV1G9EC644QsQpYhMpkWC0l5xaDNgybvnCJgTQ4gh6mjVlT9KYRtk3neT/s320/female_sign_lead_203x152.jpg" border="0" height="201" width="275" /></a> the countries I’ve visited – although an expose of their endless sufferings would make a worthy tome in itself, and in time I’ll get around to putting together my many notes on that. But I want to write about the particular women I’ve met on this trip so far. ‘Girls’, I'm told, can be a pejorative term, even for females in their early twenties; we don’t call young men ‘boys’, after all. So, instead, I’ll just write a bit about These Women.<br /><br />It’s rather lazy to import the wit of those much smarter than yourself, but a few quotes seem about right. “Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little”, the conceited but amusing Samuel Johnson once fatuously wrote, someone who’d doubtless be appalled to find that the law has given women much more in the centuries since, without redressing the imbalance by taking away Nature’s powerful gifts too.<br /><br />Germaine Greer – a woman of almost vicious pulchritude when she was younger (before she supplicated herself to <em>Celebrity Big Brother</em> and the feline lasciviousness of the revolting George Galloway) – demanded to know, in <em>The Female Eunuch</em>, “Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?”<br /><br />From her writings, it’s still astonishing to me that Professor Greer isn’t a lesbian, but her point is irrefutable. Who can deny the daily pressure on women to attain unattainable levels of physical perfection? And who cannot see the relative ugliness of us men? I know of not one heterosexual female (or homosexual female, for that matter) who believes the males of our species to be more aesthetically pleasing than the women. As Elaine Benes once quipped, “The female body is a work of art…the male body is utilitarian. It’s like a jeep.” It’s nice for men and women to all agree on something for once, I suppose.<br /><br />The unbearably smug and unjustly handsome anti-semite revisionist historian, Mel Gibson, remarks in the film <em>What Women Want</em> (on that very subject), “After about 20 years of marriage, I'm finally starting to scratch the surface of that one. And I think the answer lies somewhere between conversation and chocolate”. I quote that one because, although as I get older I find myself more and more confused about what it is which drives and inspires women, chocolate and conversation do seem to be two recurring themes – as generalisations go. It's like saying men want sex and respect or power. It’s pretty well on the money, but not particularly insightful and even less helpful.<br /><br />And one final quote – my favourite – because it summarises rather well the point I want to make. It’s from Billy Joel – who married a supermodel, the bastard, but who came to regret it – “I've reached the age where competence is a turn-on”.<br /><br />Indeed.<br /><br />I grew up in Australia, and attended an all-boys’ school (and a particularly sausagey one at that) all the way through until starting university. Finding myself in lecture theatres like aviaries, replete with shrieking young women (girls, at that point, I suppose), I remember being struck by how a single-sex education can undermine your understanding of the other gender. I was never particularly gormless, I don’t think – I was, and have always been, able to talk to girls with a modicum of composure – but I saw around me those other young men condemned to school life without girls around, shivering in the muddy trenches of post-adolescence, and vowed never to foist the same fate upon my own sons. I’d had girlfriends during the school years – extra-curricular activities such as music, drama and debating were a saving grace in that regard – but I’d seldom had girls <em>around</em> me, doing the same things I was doing. I’d never spent time with them on a daily basis. I’d had taken from me the chance to see the way girls are, the way they mingle and gossip, and fight and flirt. The way they go to the bathroom in pairs, the way there’s so often a subtext to any question. The way their insecurities are so nuanced and their power so unexploited. The way they’re so conscious of what people are thinking, except on the dancefloor. I saw it at university, and bemoaned the lost years – all the while feeling real sympathy for some school acquaintances whose clumsiness with these new and mysterious strangers was going to be a cross they would bear for years to come.<br /><br />My undergraduate years came and went, and for the most part I felt I got to understand women a bit. I learnt what makes them laugh and what makes them cry. I learnt to overcome the unspoken boys’-school prejudice that girls are so different from us that they could be a different species altogether. And I learnt that women are every bit the sexual creatures men are, just far more complex, and that whereas every girl (whether she grew up around boys or not) understands broadly what drives men and how she can use their predictability against them, the skill of understanding and unlocking women is a lifelong pursuit – and something a man usually only starts getting good at when it’s too late to really do anything useful about it. Because the man sees that the exceptional ones have been snapped up by the boys who used to kick sand in his face during recess, and the remainder are carrying the emotional baggage of having dated a handful of abusive and cruel Neanderthals and the ensuing mistrust leaves a minefield to be exhaustingly cleared.<br /><br />But as the undergraduate years passed and so did postgraduate study, I found myself on the downward slope of a sine curve. Having felt I was starting to understand them and was learning from previous mistakes, I was in fact making the same errors over and over. Invariably, this comprised a regression to the “trophyism” of women; the misogynistic thinking that, because you can get your laughs and fun and conversations and real memories from men – without the complications which go along with relationships with women – the pursuit of women can, if desired, be simplified to the acquisition of more and more beautiful ones, until your twenties is but a scrapbook of vacuous dimwits with unblemished skin of silk and a scent that stops your blood’s circulation in its tracks. Coveting and chasing – the acquisition of beauty – becomes more than a past-time if you’re not careful. It becomes the backbone of your existence and can turn you into someone you don’t wish to be.<br /><br />This is all by way of saying that there were many reasons why I dropped everything to do this trip. One was a career gamble, one a calculated assessment of opportunity, one a general <em>ennui</em> which was becoming worryingly incurable. But one reason was the desire, not to find the girl who ticks every box – that’ll come in time if it hasn’t already – but to reassure myself that they exist. That the sense of always compromising, of compartmentalising the fairer sex one way or another, is a demon who resides in the depths of context, and one who can be eventually vanquished for good.<br /><br />I’m writing this sitting on the terrace of a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, with some girl’s (apologies, woman’s) perfume cutting through the heat and the stagnant water below and doing what it always does to me – making me giddy and stupid, dribbling like a lobotomised Aussie Rules footballer. And gazing furtively over at her (she, too, is writing. Something incredible and intelligent no doubt. I should go talk to her….Aargh it never ends!) it seems the right time to recount some things about the wonderful women I’ve met so far on this trip.<br /><br />Just in the past couple of weeks, for example, there was Zohar, an Israeli who’s recently finished law school. Somehow she managed to excel at law while working at the s<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Pe73J8P7wli-Arxs1thcK2cbzwVAUL6pqTXfp3_sxIiVsWykfSU7qfGJzJlGzTMvVjtdAvCXHPyUldGzYdbOc6SMiePXcDC1VeVCdGJS2-fH1uoHKVRiC6rUZW4Lymo_bA4cMufyOnX3/s1600-h/P1020808.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143417107744472514" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Pe73J8P7wli-Arxs1thcK2cbzwVAUL6pqTXfp3_sxIiVsWykfSU7qfGJzJlGzTMvVjtdAvCXHPyUldGzYdbOc6SMiePXcDC1VeVCdGJS2-fH1uoHKVRiC6rUZW4Lymo_bA4cMufyOnX3/s320/P1020808.jpg" border="0" height="200" width="272" /></a>ame time as a stewardess for El Al – flying to New York a handful of times a month – and waitressing to pay the rest of the bills. All the while completing a second degree in Business. She is – as most Israelis – a sergeant in the IDF (something I find predictably alluring), and can carry a heavier backpack than mine for a longer distance. She’s deferred her clerkship at a firm in Tel Aviv for six months, and took herself off to Nepal to trek through the Himalayas seeking clarity and solitude. She has some real things to think about after a very rough couple of years, and I wont betray her valued confidences here. Suffice to say, though, a more fascinating, strong, determined, independent yet at the same time completely feminine woman you could never meet. We ran into each other in the airport in Bangkok, and after spending a couple of days exploring the city, travelled to the islands in the south and passed a happy few days on the beaches. My sadness, when I had to say goodbye, was profound. But I shall see her, if not in Australia, then perhaps in Israel next summer.<br /><br />In Istanbul, there was Lauren, a Melbournian student of aeronautical engineering who’s taken a year off to live in Bremen and work for a company there, and who now is working the ski fields in Whistler, British Columbia. Curiously awkward and confident in equal measure, she has passion and ambition and guts and sass. Equipped with possibly the greatest thing a man can find in a woman – a splendidly ironic and filthy sense of humour – every moment with her was a delight. She wants to be an astronaut one day, and I cannot tell you how much I hope she succeeds in this.<br /><br />In the last few days I’ve been travelling with a couple of French girls, L<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1B08DH_fcdf_FVHcgC9wdf_YtvvkU39CIgBoGKXV7OOz4a_9RrsEFZ9Df6-SExeeT8jYRsm3MnCpexfzxME2Z_o8wPMKosJ5lj7RPEDIz_eYw8t3maVY18f1Wx_InqTQ5PVOExXJpImTB/s1600-h/P1030246.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143417112039439842" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1B08DH_fcdf_FVHcgC9wdf_YtvvkU39CIgBoGKXV7OOz4a_9RrsEFZ9Df6-SExeeT8jYRsm3MnCpexfzxME2Z_o8wPMKosJ5lj7RPEDIz_eYw8t3maVY18f1Wx_InqTQ5PVOExXJpImTB/s320/P1030246.jpg" border="0" height="171" width="251" /></a>aura and Marie, who’ve served as a reminder that – as high-maintenance as French women can be, as any man who’s dated a few will know – there’s a reason they’re so desired and admired everywhere they go. They're chic and stunning and politically thoughtful and fun. They’ve been in Sydney for the past year, and we hit it off immediately, in part because of our shared ambivalence towards Australia and Australians. I’ve been pleasantly smitten for days, and exploring the astonishing, ancient Temples of Angkor with them while learning to sing smutty French songs about toilet-related misfortunes has been a lovely thing to do.<br /><br />And there's Josie, from Malmö in Sweden, (half-Serbian too, a mix I would recommend to any young girl seeking a second half) whose self-assuredness and composure is breathtaking for someone not yet 22. I was a fraction of the man I am now when I was that age, something which reflects not only my then-immaturity, but her precocity now. I wish I were a mere tenth as cool as her, I wish I had her fabulous style and polyglot speech and unpretentious tattoos, but not everyone is cut from the same cloth. Our passing was a brief one, but the Age of Facebook means it will hopefully not be our last.<br /><br />There was Libby – in Istanbul, too – a quite obviously brilliant gender studies major at Berkeley, but who’s living in Greece right now. Resisting every opportunity to be baited by me with provocative beliefs I don’t even really hold, she debated gender differences, and affirmative action, and women’s issu<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghBGjxoeg3A5fTecRyT_NVGakfjX6bzJo1f7f9uZlgImL3a5DgF05MIHYEuzcRVfe7tASN_mvwdJwOC3U1_0SXq5UKOOzw-r2SNAimva9CN9DROdCfB6NfTeFUSZg1zsjpql10nnQcFC1c/s1600-h/P1010133.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143417103449505202" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; width: 244px; height: 151px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghBGjxoeg3A5fTecRyT_NVGakfjX6bzJo1f7f9uZlgImL3a5DgF05MIHYEuzcRVfe7tASN_mvwdJwOC3U1_0SXq5UKOOzw-r2SNAimva9CN9DROdCfB6NfTeFUSZg1zsjpql10nnQcFC1c/s320/P1010133.jpg" border="0" height="141" width="234" /></a>es in the third world with a ferocious intelligence, personal experience and an open mind. I wish we had had more time to talk. 21 too, and with a genuine social conscience, she’ll do incredible things in her life, of that I’m sure.<br /><br />There was Martha, a Canadian teacher living in Bahrain, and whom I’m meeting in Vietnam for Christmas. With an infectious laugh and enormous love for other people, she met me and my old friend Sarah in Istanbul, and they bonded almost telepathically. Although they met for only a week, and don’t know when they’ll see one another again, their friendship is more real than most which have lasted a hundred times as long. Martha is an enticing mix of young girl and real woman, extroverted and confident but with the frailty of someone who is unsure of what her world will bring. It will be truly lovely to see her again.<br /><br />And Sarah, my dear Sarah. I’ve never met anyone of such unconditional generosity and compassion. Sardo<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFsfZYrGShOdmYZiLmK3NlQKUSWkGMjY1NmG3CJ6ddSSP52xu1JSxhrBwWISes47-CxsSfuVq6lSPh44hSpCjyz462obXZEzvF9Bb0dGjWnzFUu_GHIGnvg4Yy7NyEIAwsaFUUFTm5l4Z/s1600-h/DSC00260.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143416399074868578" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 183px; height: 225px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFsfZYrGShOdmYZiLmK3NlQKUSWkGMjY1NmG3CJ6ddSSP52xu1JSxhrBwWISes47-CxsSfuVq6lSPh44hSpCjyz462obXZEzvF9Bb0dGjWnzFUu_GHIGnvg4Yy7NyEIAwsaFUUFTm5l4Z/s320/DSC00260.jpg" border="0" height="288" width="206" /></a>nic and smutty, she works with plants in a nursery back home, and grew up in the New Forest, running about in wellies and splashing in puddles. For every time since we met that I’ve felt lost, angry, nervous or just plain sad, she’s been there and I will never forget it. She’s the girl I needed in my life growing up. I wish I could be with her right now, to help her through her own current sadness.<br /><br />There are also the other women I knew before departing who I’ve caught up with on these travels. There’s Sabine, an Austrian with whom I lived during my Master’s degree. She has quite the weirdest sense of humour of anyone I know, and is about as physically beautiful as a human being can ever be, like Wilma Flintstone with a better accent but, alas, without the fur skirt. I love her affectations and idiosyncrasies (a sudden and periodic inhalation which sounds like a 100 decibel hiccup is especially amusing in public, as is a vocabulary of words in English with which, I must confess, I am not yet fully <em>au fait</em>) and I love that way th<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTKZjVl1X9YEg4-lGqTdaQr770t8SJc3hEzmSNZi4voNFwkUTXWVM4UKQ19xy5L20ANppD2Y-L8PTkzg6-0GUhNjJUO8SYljkn57rKIsAhmy1s7vShkf1baXn9zEevJtVxoYAyhYeUyiI/s1600-h/IMG_0887.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143416403369835922" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTKZjVl1X9YEg4-lGqTdaQr770t8SJc3hEzmSNZi4voNFwkUTXWVM4UKQ19xy5L20ANppD2Y-L8PTkzg6-0GUhNjJUO8SYljkn57rKIsAhmy1s7vShkf1baXn9zEevJtVxoYAyhYeUyiI/s320/IMG_0887.jpg" border="0" /></a>at when you tell her your aspirations and dreams, she looks you straight in the eye with a genuine and giddying enthusiasm as if these dreams were her own. I love how sexual and sensual she is, I love how she looks better in the morning with a splitting hangover than I did suited up on my graduation day. I miss her self-deprecation, unusual in a woman who knows very well her physical beauty but who never flaunts or uses it for unfair leverage. I love the way she dances with no self-consciousness at all, and if it’s at all possible, with even less grace.<br /><br />And there’s Kat, with whom I stayed in Germany soon after leaving the UK. Confused and a little lost as all 19 year olds are, and with a grasp of reality which is sometimes tenuous at best, she’s infectiously witty, beguilingly complicated, unashamedly dorky and one of the sma<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhico2i814HHytJw1rfvrXNeqkZxNSu4pwFQ8pOhm-1yrnjbdH0-CQYHNsFmY0eYu3jCV-JsxoxINWNvbberlfaydK4P7J8dgfUZekmW3yZfZ7NExY5WTGAk_yLhpUNmj0VeRv-6nBzXj33/s1600-h/Photo+49.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143417112039439858" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhico2i814HHytJw1rfvrXNeqkZxNSu4pwFQ8pOhm-1yrnjbdH0-CQYHNsFmY0eYu3jCV-JsxoxINWNvbberlfaydK4P7J8dgfUZekmW3yZfZ7NExY5WTGAk_yLhpUNmj0VeRv-6nBzXj33/s320/Photo+49.jpg" border="0" height="183" width="250" /></a>rtest people I know. Not a day passes when I don’t miss being silly with her, and feeling like a teenager again, as difficult as it was the first time around.<br /><br />There are others, too. Sara from Korcula, about whom I wrote some months back and who mesmerised me, transfixed me with her terrible sorrow and her overwhelming strength. Ani from Sofia, who took me around the city<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Mew97qbrJL5qlnh8scu_7Ebkqlkj3ImArPhaQadw59iInxrDRzvb6Q_9qQguPuvRvjJewk8P9xtS8PehnI2VU9QU1Fx_euDkpyRC_IUGgtUPn209QTyMWPntgweAddzAKn5Hk2FXvOim/s1600-h/DSC00564.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143416403369835890" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Mew97qbrJL5qlnh8scu_7Ebkqlkj3ImArPhaQadw59iInxrDRzvb6Q_9qQguPuvRvjJewk8P9xtS8PehnI2VU9QU1Fx_euDkpyRC_IUGgtUPn209QTyMWPntgweAddzAKn5Hk2FXvOim/s320/DSC00564.jpg" border="0" height="192" width="206" /></a> and explained Bulgaria with insight and imagination in a way that nobody else had. Sagen (named after Carl the writer but curiously with a different spelling) who is the most good-natured and bubbly person you could meet in five straight lifetimes. Violaine, Eva and Sarah in Belgrade, the first of whom stroked my neck and insisted on cutting my hair. So electric and tender was her touch and so seductive her entreaties that I put aside my concern that she’d never cut hair before. When beholding the unmitigated disaster which resulted after she hacked indiscriminately away with blunt kitchen scissors, I forgave her in a New York minute, because she's just so utterly stylish and irresistibly cool. Which is ironic, considering the abject mess she made of my hair.<br /><br />I’ve mentioned these women not to please them that they made an impression – although I guess many will be reading this – nor to boast that I’ve met such women at all. I’ve mentioned them because it makes an important personal point. That one of the reasons for the enormous gamble I’ve undertaken – a voyage which has necessitated putting my career on hold, friendships on hold, and incurring significant financial debt – has already paid off. These women I’ve met – some of whom have been just wonderful new friends; some of whom have been more – have exorcised one of the demons from my adolescence. The frustration I felt for years that dealing with women is a constant exercise in compromise – putting up with <em>this</em> to get <em>that</em>, or looking beyond <em>that</em> in order to appreciate <em>this</em> – is gone, never to re-emerge. I am cured. I am, in the best way, a lover of women once more. I implore you never to send your sons (or daughters, for that matter, but I know less about that) to single-sex schools, because whatever slight academic advantage may possibly be achieved through a lack of distraction is more than offset by the burden they may carry from seeing the “other sex” as too much “other” and too much “sex”. I know facebook has allowed many to regain contact with their old school friends and acquaintances. For me, getting back in touch with these people and seeing how they’ve turned out has confirmed an underlying suspicion that a single-sex education can (not always, but it definitely <em>can</em>) dangerously defer really coming to understand and admire the opposite sex. After countless poor choices in girlfriends over the years (with one exception, someone I will love always), and a growing disenchantment with women in general brought about by these poor choices, I have purged, at last, the misogynistic remnants of a myopic past, and am entranced, moved, betwixt and ensorcelled by the fortitude and sass and fabulousness of these women.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-71602373224666108882007-12-04T10:03:00.000+00:002007-12-05T05:32:27.621+00:00Baby elephant naughtiness<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzZxDbCtvkQ-NtrshZ1TEQhgRFwkM6fgjOKz8O-RI0DDtR6KA8GTVfPZFdb662b1st-4EcZsTVzDFCCQJFNuw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-40350664416535677052007-12-03T11:41:00.000+00:002008-12-11T17:39:45.134+00:00The externalisation of happiness<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEJnntX_r0gm1568VAiiEvzGkyAsFiSwScsvPjgEjKItrHgFr0Xe9Jkb-otBFMapO1V2p2F1NXLfhPk2bJUJcZIz4K-EWrlObD91Vu3Efn3TZtF4UYfsjGedawWPrJAMAMkPFD9nnLqTXw/s1600-r/P1020523.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOCnm7p3NhP_iqTBbDP9ZqQ5EZHhCUJZPms5_dDJxbIyf_mSBu7bup1H8DsehTBSURsZhz6Il3KdRfOE9smaKVG2rhWHEAAfT_1k4iY3K54DB5wa2YZxN42ZgcNp3TmUbhO00WPRNda-WK/s200/P1020523.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139712350559321410" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">A middle-aged City trader has gone on holiday – a very unusual thing for someone who regularly works weekends as well as excruciatingly long hours during the week. But there he is, walking down a beach a</span><span lang="EN-GB">nd grimacing at the underutilised hours, his separation from his beloved Bourses, and his blank-faced Blackberry nestling like an electronic corpse in his khaki pocket. He comes across a jetty and wanders to the end. There, and sitting in a small wooden boat, is a fisherman. The City trader says hello. The Fisherman says hello and introduces himself as Pong.</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“What’re you doing?”</span><span lang="EN-GB"> asks the City man. “Well”, repli</span><span lang="EN-GB">es Pong, “I’m just cleaning the fish I caught this morning. My day has been very typical. I got up, had breakfast with my wife and chatted to the kids. I came out here fishing, and in</span><span lang="EN-GB"> a minute I’m going to take the fish to market, go home and have lunch with and make love to my wife, and play with the kids when they come home from school. This evening my friend will come round, we’ll play guitar on the porch together, drinking red wine, and then I’ll go to bed”.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hmmm”, sa</span><span lang="EN-GB">ys the City trader, scratching his neatly-trimmed goatee (greying until quite recently) with elegantly-manicured fingers. “That sounds really nice. But you k</span><span lang="EN-GB">now what? If instead of going home in the afternoon to see your wife and kids, you fished again in the afternoon, you could sell enough fish to be able to buy another boat, and pay someone to fish in it. You keep doing this, you could expand the whole thing until you have a bunch of people working for </span><span lang="EN-GB">you on a fleet of bigger and bigger fishing boats, selling to supermarket chains. It could grow, and perhaps one day float your company publicly! Think of that! Retire at 50!”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Pong is intrigued. “What happens then?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Well”, replies </span><span lang="EN-GB">the trader, “I guess you get to spend your days doing what you <i style="">really</i> want. Spend time wit</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2xkJXniPKWdjntnVzek6p9XckIdztLKQw_lvJtGYMfZB_yX31q-fN9GOhhFoUhJ3YU2aF8zQDvKiST3p1gYncuLFtUnPZeXgUa6NxK9Bx0Qu0fJVzhcZAXlpOiMyxEilDWN7ewTk3jxUR/s1600-r/P1020389.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaUJNmSbPTU_LqnUcANS44EHpKri4nAphfrYD3T7CAWjRjPzDlEKPhX0TJwUUWHH3rWMDZtV6aGr1UBI6TVkSm_uPlZNSTUoGvhhICIXLeDfHYKBYxrm1LiRLMnKUfHGx4Na8CqCKbTce3/s200/P1020389.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139712346264354098" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">h the kids when they come to see you, hang out with your buddy, drink wine, play guitar, ma</span><span lang="EN-GB">ke love to your wife”.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It’s opportune to tell this parable now, as I'm in fact sprawled on a beach watching fishermen in their boats bringing back the day’s catch. The parable is, of course, quite trite. First of all, not everyone lives in a part of the world or under circumstances that would permit making enough fr</span><span lang="EN-GB">om a half-day’s work to support a family and give one’s children support and real opportunities in life. Second, even a corporate junkie working long and high-stress hours can still find time for marital love-making, spending time with his or her children, playing an instrument and boozing with friends. It is, I would think, not an easy thing. But having already seen some people manage it very well, I see no reason why plenty of others could not do the same.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And third, Man’s willingness to work more than a subsistence life has led to an astonishing smorgasbord of discovery, innovation, science, the arts – the spectrum of human imagination and achievement without which I think </span><span lang="EN-GB">we can all agree - the world would be a poorer place. We might very well each have different h</span><span lang="EN-GB">uman achievements on our individual lists – but I think it can be fairly said: humans over the past 500 years in particular would be considered a rather ambitious sp</span><span lang="EN-GB">ecies to a visiting Martian. In short, if the world were populated solely by Pongs, we would give up a lot that is good. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Anyway, I’m at this moment in paradise – which also goes by the name of Lamai beach on the island of Koh Samui in southern Thailand – and watching a bunch of normally-overworked Europeans snooze on the beach while the various Pongs of Koh Samui bring in their day’s catch.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I’ve been travelling for over three months now, a trip that’s already taken me across fourteen countries and across the paths of hundreds if not thousands of people. Local service people, fellow itinerants, expats, business travellers, local academics and NGO workers, the insane and the just plain lost. The purpose of this trip (or at least its primary purpose) was to put together a qualitative look a</span><span lang="EN-GB">t whether</span><span lang="EN-GB"> people are happy, if so why and if not why not, and how happiness varies among different peoples. This was a daunting task at the start and only gets harder as you wrestle with the timeless nemesis: individuality. Every attempt to draw </span><span lang="EN-GB">general conclusions about groups is continually undermined by the caveat you must keep at the forefront of your mind: that people – despite their necessary membership of groups such as gender, age, religion, socio-economic status – are nevertheless individuals. Any contemporary analysis of twin studies reveals that the age-old nature/nurture debate is helpful but incomplete. You cannot isolate an individual’s traits, beliefs and character by considering it a mere function of his or her genes and upbringing. There’s something else. And whatever you call it – the soul, the self, the mind – it plays havoc with all attempts to draw co</span><span lang="EN-GB">nclusions about people. I have a degree in psychology and didn’t learn very much from it aside from this nauseatingly frustrating truth: that people are much more complicated than the output of an equation. Psychologists know this, but try to brush over it because it belittles their profession to conclude they don’t know much more than they k</span><span lang="EN-GB">now. The unknown unknowns – to quote my favourite neoconservative American poet – abound. In short, people are – and I apologise for the manifest obviousness of this statement – all individuals.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So as I said, this truth is a spectre that haunts attempts to describe what people are <i style="">like</i>. And I could tell you stor</span><span lang="EN-GB">ies – interesting ones, too! – that I’ve heard along the way so far. Being nosey and loquacious by nature, I seem to be pretty good at getting people to talk. But the other truth – albeit less obvious than the first – is that everyone has a tale to tell. Everyone is interesting. Even the most soporific individuals – the people who make you want to weep into your beer with boredom – have, if you press hard enough, something special, something unique, something which import</span><span lang="EN-GB">s the ‘self’ into the first half of that equation and produces something intangible and wonderful in the second.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But I won’t just recount stories for now. Instead, I want to try and tell you what I <i style="">have</i> learnt so far about people and peoples as a whole. So please accept the above caveat about the spectre of ‘self’ as what it is – an acknowledgement that everything I say is not merely subject to many exceptions, but might also be just patently wrong.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">As I said above, lying</span><span lang="EN-GB"> on the hot sand with waves lapping at my feet and the scent of coconut oil from the nearby massage beds mixing with the fresh seafood in the Phad Thai they’re cooking up the beach, is an appropriate time and place to consider the nature of happiness. Many if not most people, when asked what they'd do after winning the lottery, or what their perfect holiday entails, respond with</span><span lang="EN-GB"> some variation of lying on a beach in a tropical paradise. Usu</span><span lang="EN-GB">ally with cocktails served out of coconuts, fresh food, clear waters and a good book. A casual stroll a couple of miles up this coast supports this. Spread through the hundreds of chalets, bungalows and hammocks that nestle in the swaying palm trees that caress this shore are hundreds o</span><span lang="EN-GB">f tourists in two – and really only two – categories.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The first are overwhelmingly middle class Europeans and North Americans. Affluent, generally middle-aged, married or divorced, they’re here for exactly the reason you’d imagine: to take a couple of weeks off from their lives – which many of them loathe – and to find the time which they can’t back home to actuall</span><span lang="EN-GB">y read a book cover to cover, to tan, to relax, to unwind. They’re not particularly receptiv</span><span lang="EN-GB">e to questions about why they’re here and what they think of their normal lives– for the perfectly understandable reason that they didn’t come all this way to be reminded of the mediocrity of their day-to-day lives relative to this snatched glimpse of perfection. Nevertheless, they’re unhappy people having a happy time. And you can see, beneath their newly-rested eyes and leather-tanned faces, a wistful dream; a wonderment at what life would be like were they to pack in their jobs as brokers or attorneys or civil engineers or media consultants and move to a place like this and open a bar. I’m not saying they should </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhihHqy295jOvfZ2k45315onQ80YAc1aUDgG_E2DRpBPCfi9O7jwb8kd4ft9DVYprYP_Xzp8ssHaJgw0mIpxJkhGqxIXmPQfz4u4yRKaOdz2scQ6Y8WSNKT4aVYLGqWKPeQ3K6XcBSQs9FI/s1600-r/P1020293.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyLlw6ogJUWL9YG8LL4GMaQyqIpKlXbSzfXCRWzhluOSPsFB17GgQYTSCUdblDhVTeNkvb5j4efG-l1BlcF_DrGeaXXwFw9K4Wix5rA_V89lmghp5O_KQQwINcIgkJSHEV6vag0wggRGpr/s200/P1020293.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139712333379452194" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">at all. Someone back home needs to do those jobs and if everyone opened a bar in Paradise then Paradise would no longer be Paradise and the developed world would become unbearably bottom-he</span><span lang="EN-GB">avy. </span><span lang="EN-GB">I’m just saying, I’ve met a few people who <i style="">did </i>pack it all in, I’ve met them in rural India and in Nepal and in the Swiss alps and here, and they’re the happiest people I’ve ever come across. So the overworked white people escaping their lives for a couple of weeks are the first group.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The second group of tourists here are people like me. Young, educated and well-travelled, we share some common traits. First, they (we) generally seem themselves as citizens of the world above citizens of their home countries. They’re well-informed, critical of certain aspects of their places of origin, but proud nevertheless to be from where they’re from. Many are on long trips on a budget, most have recently finished university, almost all have an unquenchable longing to learn more about people, and absolutely all are unsure about their future</span><span lang="EN-GB">s. Unc</span><span lang="EN-GB">ertain about career prospects following their overpriced degrees, afraid of the mid-life crises their parents and their parents’ friends are going through, and lucky enough to be living in a time which allows one to affordably explore the world with relative ease and safety, they’ve packed their bags with no set itinerary and gone wandering in the hope that it’ll clear the mind and rejuvenate the soul. Let me just say this to anyone considering becoming a member of this diaspora: for the most part, they <i style="">do </i>find what they’re looking for. And although when they return home their lives may end up quite different from what they’d expected before they left, crucially the process of travel exorcises demons and purges fears. If you can backpack solo around the world, no job interview or rent payment or cut-throat job market will upset you again, because you’ve pushed and tested yourself to breaking point. You’ve been scared and lonely at times; jubilant and meditative at others. And for all the times in between, you’ve explored </span><span lang="EN-GB">– a</span><span lang="EN-GB">nd exploration is in Man’s blood, it always has been and always will be. W</span><span lang="EN-GB">hat I’m saying – and what any member of this second group will say to you if you ask – is that travel is an end in itself. Apologies for the cliché, but it’s the journey and not the destination which matters, and quenching the thirst for exploration and discovery that some people have is salubrious. It makes you stronger and better.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Not everyone has the desire, that’s for sure. For some people, weekend trips to four-star hotels with guidebook sightseeing thrown in is enough. And that’s fine – I’m not a travel snob, I’m really not. But I knew long ago that mine was a lust which could never be sated without great distance, massive challenges and countless people with which to share stories, find real affection, and generally allow your life to intertwine – however briefly – with their own.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So those are th</span><span lang="EN-GB">e two types of people that – for the most part – you find on a Thai island. The travellers that you come across in Kathmandu are of a different kind altogether. Just as are the tourists in Rome, the adventure zealots jumping off bridges in New Zealand, or those in pain and confusion seeking enlightenment through Buddhism or Hinduism in India. What they all share, though, is, firstly, an acceptance that the pursuit of happiness – for them – cannot be undertaken by a quotidian cycle of rote banality</span><span lang="EN-GB">, and, secondly, having the means to be able to go exploring. They are, we are, a lucky bunch.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But I said I’d write what I’ve concluded thus far about the nature of happiness. And please accept it not merely with the caveat I outlined above, but also the footnote that this trip of mine is far from over – so any conclusions are preliminary.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">My beginning hypothes</span><span lang="EN-GB">is seems right. This is bad news because I was hoping to be wrong. The hypothesis – and it was a tentative one at that – is that there are broadly two types of people, notwithstanding the ‘self’ through which each individual’s identity is filtered. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Group One is the majority. They (and alas I include myself in this) are those who, while not depressed, discover early on –usually in adolescence – that happiness comes in excruciatingly small pockets to those who try for it. They spend their adolescence trying to figure out what those pockets are, and every single moment after that trying to maximise both these pockets’ frequency and</span><span lang="EN-GB"> their duration. The component of individuality or self is the variable that adjusts merely the <i style="">nature</i> of those experiences which comprise the pockets of happiness. But the pursuit is constant and everyone in this first group does it. All the time.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It may come in th</span><span lang="EN-GB">e form of pizza with an old friend who you haven’t seen in ages. It may be a night spent dancing sweatily in a club. It might be scoring a goal in the game's final minute for your team, or a cup of coffee in the morning, or a compliment from your boss; a hot bath or a good book or an orgasm. Most people have a bunch of these things which matter to them, and some come about </span><span lang="EN-GB">– </span><span lang="EN-GB">thankfully </span><span lang="EN-GB">–</span><span lang="EN-GB"> on a daily basis. These are the events, the exquisite pockets of happiness, which act as counterweights to a tedious commute, a stressful day at work, household chores or chronic pain. These are the things we find ourselves living for, and if they were taken away, little would be left. Think about your own little pockets, the things which give you that embalming warmth and satisfaction, then take them all away from your life and ask if you could ever get up in the morning again. What would life be without spo</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoOvSHc53hZKNYbVfWKEmX_xUIvRhpMwShRNT5R2aq5jdE0SR2gm9D84FWp2pI0DCmPl2DmhHK6ed-j1SgK8rl5-YHvlx0ENNAkOuR2mzNijnl0Jq9pFNVx4oz_vyEgDIWiPJpu4twUMSh/s1600-r/P1020178.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ0uQbT8cVW9_CVfSDh-SRigd-MV2KNT687yqAd_B6M_EJM3btIk6lzihJp5Zjex5rJEQrYpiutKnSW0flyvnT-TNsdiDt0eUGp1gEQMaqaZBaqyvPDJyL5-WoQN-ybvrYgrlwJWGk1ju_/s200/P1020178.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139712324789517586" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">rt or sex or good food or music or the feeling of scalding hot water on your back in the morning? What’d be left if</span><span lang="EN-GB"> you took away the smell of garlic or flowers, or a strange woman’s perfume on the breeze, or could never hear your favourite song ever again or catch up with old friends and share anecdotes, aspirations and advice? Right now, for me, it’s the feeling of hot sand between my toes and the smell of salt from the sea. I grew up on the beach in Australia and not a day passes when I don’t miss some of those formative, visceral sensations – we all have them; the jagged pieces of our childhood which slot into the jigsaw puzzle we’ve become.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And the feeling you get<span style=""> </span>– as I delightfully happen to have now – when you meet someone, you like them immediately, you spend time together and then realise they like you back. And it’s the exquisite perfection of the wait for the first holding of hands, the first kiss, the first touch of your finger on their skin and the way your own is galvanised, electrified, as you do. As I said, I’m convinced that we each have, we each kn</span><span lang="EN-GB">ow the things we live for, the only variables are what those things are and how adept we are at manipulating our lives to experience them as often as we can.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This group of people, us, we’re the majority. And without those little pockets of exquisiteness, we’d all kill ourselves. Not to worry; it’s hard to imagine all these things being taken away at once. But it’s sobering, I think, just how dependent we are on the externalities of life for our happiness. I guess hedonism is the word for it, but I feel it’s more than the mere pursuit and acquisition of <i style="">pleasure.</i> It’s about filling the <span style="font-style: italic;">ennui</span> of your life with happinesses like a builder plugs a hole in a wall. Without it, it can all crumble around you.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Group Two – and I’m sure you know where I’m going with this – is a small minority. Having successfully thrown aside </span><span lang="EN-GB">dependence on the externalities, they have (cliché alert) ‘inner peace’. Able to find happiness in life <i style="">per se</i>, they can have life's component parts systematically taken away from them, and nevertheless be satisfied with nothing more<span style=""> </span>than the fact that – right here and right now – they are alive. And it’s wonderful. I’ve met a few of these remarkable souls on my travels already. You may remember the wandering Dutchman in Sarajevo I wrote about, who’d sold all his stuff, hopped on his bicycle sixteen months earlier and was happily just riding about, alone, with nothing but his bike and his thoughts. I’ve met few happier and more centred people than him. There was a Nepalese guide – dirt poor, of course – who was disinterested in money and got everything he needed in life from being in and around the jungle. And the woman in Varanasi who kindly gave me her time to explain the ins and outs of Indian culture and the role of Hinduism. You could take away her job, her clothes, ever her friends and family I think, and she’d still be happy. An</span><span lang="EN-GB">d the protagonist in an otherwise excrementally bad book I’m reading at the moment called <i style="">The Monk who Sold his Ferrari. </i>Although the writing is something of which a lovesick schoolgirl would be ashamed – so much so that I’m moved to tear out the pages when I next run out of toilet paper – the protagonist has abandoned the stress and materialism of life as a lawyer to seek spiritual enlightenment among a group of monks in India. He has, in other words, successfully moved from Group One to Group Two.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This is what I’m rather long-windedly getting at. Many of the young wanderers whose paths you cross as you traipse the globe are people who’ve come to the same conclusions I have. Although not depressed, they acknowledge how dependent they are on the little pockets, the externalities I described above. And what they/we share is a determination – if not to cross from Group One to Group Two (after all, a life of meditation and poverty isn’t for everyone) – to at least learn something ab</span><span lang="EN-GB">out the latter group and, in doing so, pursue less the little, isolated pockets of happiness on which they are so dependent back home, and gain a renewed love of life itself.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Which brings me back to Pong and the Trader. Irrespective of the fact it’s just a parable, I really don’t know whether Pong is in the enlightened minority or not. One assumes that if his lovemaking, guitar playing, wine and the rest were taken away from him, he’d suffer just as would we. It’s not that he’s enlightened, he just has some perspective about the relative importance of work and play. But it’s a parable worth recounting both to the middle-aged and jaded European lizards sprawling prost</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCM3poYm-pqreIIIprUFOF0VHTyaoscKmbkNOLkC0rs8JVEs_jiW4zmgVluIeAed0XMz28OBd44SJXWGUCATr8G-R9kfjbk_ga8hnnT3fldRkWWwDWQNE_8wxUoElzzuISVdvUWD_CVo67/s1600-r/P1020652.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzuZKsG2q2jipjaawdXpekqClhNEZrcjeao9-OFgP01D3ZMb3tqHSHgSysov4wWkIVYAMeQOq8Y6oPuD2CC0Wf-DpGFNu1SSc6neuSZdJE3hUP2VKquBaCHcrP6YQRHeALl_Qfq64el-e/s200/P1020652.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139712367739190610" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">rate on the sand next to me right now and to the people who set me on this journey in the first place: the miserable, materialistic and overworked businesspeople in the City of London – with and for whom I’ve worked for the past couple of years – and whom I am desperate never to become. They don’t need to sell their Ferraris and move to India. They don’t need to give up coffee or restaurants or kissing or tennis. They just need to remember that the only externality that <i style="">really</i> matters is family and friends. The rest of it is just stuff. And there are plenty of people around the world who are perfectly happy without it.</span></p>Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-4471603223581362402007-11-22T16:13:00.000+00:002008-12-11T17:39:47.071+00:00Massage, Medicine balls, and the Marquis d'Amritsar<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2feDKVbC1UYibtltPzb3vz8nKIB8-Yfhlz4MZYVbr2Z3E9K8i7lGugSKwAYO02frNSdN-9WtLppp0cq2XVkDnDYctrMifI-hzhvXMdG-21M-hlVprNlzPQSVYLcXmEaEt1Vt8LO_hqO6/s1600-h/P1020626.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2feDKVbC1UYibtltPzb3vz8nKIB8-Yfhlz4MZYVbr2Z3E9K8i7lGugSKwAYO02frNSdN-9WtLppp0cq2XVkDnDYctrMifI-hzhvXMdG-21M-hlVprNlzPQSVYLcXmEaEt1Vt8LO_hqO6/s320/P1020626.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135976405100079586" border="0" /></a>I bathed an elephant. I did it. It wasn’t what I expected, but in fact transpired as one of those rare experiences that exceed all expectation. I envisioned being thrust beneath a lumbering, gentle but abjectly filthy creature, handed a brush and a bucket, and told to have fun. Bathing an elephant, though, is – it turns out – an unmissable life experience. You are taken to the to the river, accompanied by her <span style="font-style: italic;">mahout</span> (handler), and the gorgeous creature carries you, perched upon her massive frame, into the water.<br /><br />Delighted to be doing what’s her favourite thing in the world, she drops to the river floor, pulling you underwater with her. She rolls and turns like a bucking bronco as you hold on for dear life. One of her eyes peeps up in your direction and you see – as anyone who has been right up close to an elephant has seen for themselves – the depths of her character, her mischievousness, her gentleness, her (I’m reluctant to say this because elephants have more soul than many people you meet) “humanity”.<br /><br />So she rolls and heaves, ecstatic to be in the water. She fills her trunk, lifts it above her head that’s the size of a large washing machine, and sprays you in the face. She throws you off her back. She lies on her side in three or four feet of water and her mahout hands you a pumice stone and gestures for you to go to work. So you rub the rock over her massive grey frame. Her skin is coarse, thick and rubbery. She makes little noises of pleasure. After spending all day standing around in the dusty heat, swatting flies or carrying irritating, middle-aged Italians through the jungle, there's unmistakable happiness in her eyes. She sprays you in the face with her trunk again and you begin washing a hind leg which has the girth of a morbidly obese man.<br /><br />You then hear a gushing sound, like a fireman’s hose being emptied into a river. Which is pretty close actually, because an elephant a few metres away – also having her daily bath – is happily pissing in the river. Panicked and desperate to reach the safety of the river bank, you find yourself rapidly encircled by a foaming, iridescent slick of thirty litres of elephant urine.<br /><br />Then a thud – like a medicine ball being dropped into a puddle. And another. And another. Three enormous balls of elephant dung get carried ominously toward you by the current. Like Costner in the Bodyguard, you throw yourself prostate over your own drowsy beast, in the vain hope of hiding behind her gargantuan body to use it as a dung-shield dam. God’s will prevails as her friend’s medicine balls are stopped in their path and you are saved with mere seconds to spare. Until your own adorable creature farts happily underwater for twenty or so seconds. Which sounds exactly like an outboard motor idling in the shallows. 4 Hz and about 400 decibels of elephant fl<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7n7VCMiUZSm-fu0i4GPikWj8sbzFpYC0CEYneLAXDCM_x-JlJaScym00dt9iRB4hNWKmvNJFZktHMHnVQOObAuRw5COi27yDj-GFMFqdgf6AQZZeKcMO2XONSSL44IwHFZ0ds4LnohVQ/s1600-h/P1020570.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7n7VCMiUZSm-fu0i4GPikWj8sbzFpYC0CEYneLAXDCM_x-JlJaScym00dt9iRB4hNWKmvNJFZktHMHnVQOObAuRw5COi27yDj-GFMFqdgf6AQZZeKcMO2XONSSL44IwHFZ0ds4LnohVQ/s320/P1020570.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135976409395046898" border="0" /></a>atulence. “The Humanity!” you scream, as you mount her enormous body to get out of the water. She sprays you in the face with her trunk and throws you off. The process repeats.<br /><br />Anyway, bathing an elephant – urine and brown medicine-balls notwithstanding – is a top five life experience and I’m privileged to have done it. All of the above took place in Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal. Which is also the site of the inevitable subcontinental food poisoning. I was so smarmy and self-satisfied – telling everyone who would listen that my gut was iron-clad and I'd be fine. Talk about counting chickens. I won’t go into the details (everyone has vomited, everyone has been bedridden, everyone has had diarrhea at some point in their lives). But for those fortunate enough to have had merely western food poisoning, let me just say I wouldn’t wish Delhi Belly on my girlfriend’s paramour. It’s like a small explosive device goes off inside you while you body is swinging around on a gyroscope. So the centrifugal force sends the toxins two ways. Up. And Down. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter – other than I’ve lost a lot of weight.<br /><br />The past couple of weeks – which began with recovery from the Auschwitz tr<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh30iIYyC_6C3kg7eANG193KMxy82y-j02tHwBYZiULFuz9NH6dyUpsiBYtCigku6t7bZ_4O1dMk8eDV3nAb5e9TLQF0tfk43XTBRl8PlG19PD5JthfmXEo1cton9n9feM4DTOqO9VmfQvB/s1600-h/P1020110.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh30iIYyC_6C3kg7eANG193KMxy82y-j02tHwBYZiULFuz9NH6dyUpsiBYtCigku6t7bZ_4O1dMk8eDV3nAb5e9TLQF0tfk43XTBRl8PlG19PD5JthfmXEo1cton9n9feM4DTOqO9VmfQvB/s320/P1020110.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135700045429418402" border="0" /></a>ain experience – have taken me through Ahmedabad (a nondescript city which nobody’s heard of, with the population of London), Udaipur, Jaipur, Agra (a bona fide contender for the world’s worst place, and which should probably be nuked aside from the gloriousness of the Taj), the colourful holy Sikh city of Amritsar in the Punjab, the holy Hindu city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, and on to Nepal – which, frankly, is already my favourite place on my trip. Gastric catastrophe notwithstanding.<br /><br />During all of this, I’ve been reading a lot. Long train journeys, interminable delays and the need to block India out of one’s mind for a few snatched moments here and there all lend themselves well to a book or five (I have eight in my bag now which weigh more than all my clothes combined and lead to an almost daily jettisoning of clean underwear, the consequences of which I invariably come to regret a couple of days later).<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdmnK6gakqZrm0LVVdPKgp9RJ2SxFRj3XnpmTZoh5dERPDznKcce3aRDQsfCQM1lj1ipFj3wmySSMyEH2wbHvwKXocE7G9Ucn6yD4Vp_va1zPWPTM6i9VzpHjWPFhdECfSKO8-bkjj7s8A/s1600-h/P1020226.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdmnK6gakqZrm0LVVdPKgp9RJ2SxFRj3XnpmTZoh5dERPDznKcce3aRDQsfCQM1lj1ipFj3wmySSMyEH2wbHvwKXocE7G9Ucn6yD4Vp_va1zPWPTM6i9VzpHjWPFhdECfSKO8-bkjj7s8A/s320/P1020226.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135700049724385714" border="0" /></a><br />Anyway, I’ve been reading Mark Twain. In 1895, financial difficulties forced him to accept a commission for round-the-world travel – poor soul! – and the great man found himself bewildered and ensorcelled by India. In 1897 he published Following the Equator – recounting tales of hiring the requisite ‘bearer’ (an all-needs manservant who would following the visiting traveller around doing pretty much everything) and a visit to a Parsee Tower of Silence. I commend this book to everyone, but I read a line in it (a footnote, actually) that struck me as ironic, and a convenient segué into a bit about Indian self-identity.<br /><br />Twain’s first candidate as bearer was a little man named Manuel, of half Portuguese descent and half Coolin Brahman – the highest of the numerous castes. After a ludicrous exchange in which he discovers Manuel’s English is not as was claimed (something every traveller comes to terms with here – the Indian will always prefer to feign understanding than to admit his English is inadequate, often leading to disastrous results), Twain orders him to clean out the bathroom, just to get rid of him.<br /><br />Manuel begins brushing Twain’s suit with violent enthusiasm. Twain asks why. Manuel fetches a young, bedraggled child in from the street and delegates the slop-bucket duties to him. Manuel’s refusal is indignant. He would lose caste if he did it himself; it would be pollution, by the law of his caste, and “would cost him a deal of fuss and trouble to purify himself and accomplish his rehabilitation”. That kind of work was strictly forbidden for persons of caste as is strictly restricted to the very bottom layer of Hindu society – the sudra, often called the dalit. Apparently the name is a term of contempt, ordained by the Institutes of Menu (900BC) that <span style="font-style: italic;">if a Sudra sit on a le</span><span style="font-style: italic;">vel with his superior he shall be exiled or branded</span> – and Twain follows with a short footnote:<br /><br />“Without going into particulars, I will remark that, as a rule, they wear no clothing that would conceal the brand”.<br /><br />Oh, how deliciously ironic that, despite the change in meaning of the word, and the relative improvement of the Sudra’s lot – that statement has become so true for Indians as a whole. They love their brands. They live for their brands. They wear as many western brands as one can fit on a garment of clothing. Which is more than you would imagine possible. This brings me to a question which confronts all travellers to the developing world – what is Westernisation/Americanisation doing to the peoples of these places? What is left, once the sartorial, musical, traditional, linguistic aspects of the indigenous culture are subsumed by a once-size-fits-all, multinational McHomogeneity?<br /><br />I defy any traveller to claim they haven't seen it for themselves. The Asian peasants’ and African militiamen’s NBA shirts; the closure of local business in the face of junk food franchises; the increasing obsession with celebrity and banality; and most of all: the pornification of the culture.<br /><br />I like porn as much as the next man – if for no other reason because it is speech. And like it or not, the only permissible restriction on speech in a liberal society should be when it encourages violence against a group. Although there’s a reasonable argument to be made that porn fits this bill, in my opinion the threshold to be met ought to be high, and to those who loathe pornography, it’s the natural consequence of free speech and a free market, and the price to be paid for those things.<br /><br />But the introduction of porn to a culture previously unaccustomed to it is a whole different thing. The television and billboards are replete with practically naked women dancing sluttily to sell some product or another. Which, in cultures where women have been previously marginalised, oppressed or disenfranchised, seems to me to be even a retrograde step. Empowerment of women – crucial for development and human rights in these parts of the world – will not and should not happen through their objectification. It must come through education, affirmative action and collective will. Despite the ponderings of those towering feminist ideologues the Spice Girls, girl power will never come from a liberal display of T&A on every street corner.<br /><br />As well as the indirect pornification of mainstream culture, there’s the problem of porn itself. Or perhaps more accurately, the ‘into the deep end’ phenomenon, whereby a demographic stratum of young men previously ignorant of pornography suddenly finds itself with an internet café on every corner, the introduction of more and more Western female travellers, and a culture which has sharply-drawn lines between boys and girls before marriage.<br /><br />I hope I’m not labouring the point, but young Indian men (and the Turks do the same, it must be said) are absolutely, frighteningly sex-obsessed. Example number one: the 17-year old boy in the internet café in Amritsar who is surreptitiously looking at ultra- hard core porn on the computer screen (amusingly minimising windows the moment anyone walks by), while at the same time reading an online sex guide to putting on a condom, and posting onto a sex education forum with the hilariously minimalist query:<br />“Who do I sex?”<br /><br />Assuming – as I think is fair - that this translates to, “With whom can I have sex, and how do I make it happen?”, one pities the poor young girl who ends up in an arranged marriage with the aspiring <span style="font-style: italic;">Marquis d’Amritsar</span>, and who, on her wedding night, comes face-to-face with a litany of perversions which Marquis presumably thinks the norm. It seems pretty clear to me that if you mix a culture of pre-marital abstinence and arranged marriages, with total access to western pornography, you’re going to get a lot of frightened young brides, or supremely disappointed young grooms. That’s example one.<br /><br />Example two is the rickshaw driver who insisted on asking Matt every conceivable question of Western women’s sexual habits and proclivities – despite Matt’s <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVttxvXLKyaOGZEC71qX3i3kas4YjscMi9OzY_N50lY-vizY5ftC41c2MQafpFw0lX6VNQdExw_SQ1l3zh_cPptJb-wACuwvukqLcgoZpyOOVObwOqsJpwv9BW0xrXOJXBq6cowsotAVjh/s1600-h/DSC00584.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVttxvXLKyaOGZEC71qX3i3kas4YjscMi9OzY_N50lY-vizY5ftC41c2MQafpFw0lX6VNQdExw_SQ1l3zh_cPptJb-wACuwvukqLcgoZpyOOVObwOqsJpwv9BW0xrXOJXBq6cowsotAVjh/s320/DSC00584.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135976396510144978" border="0" /></a>repeated entreaties for him to just shut up and drive. Example three is another driver, who asked a perfectly lovely girl I met the most inappropriate questions about her sexual history within moments of meeting her, and gave a look of blank incomprehension when she refused to answer. As he would never ask an Indian girl the same questions, one assumes he views Western girls as completely permissive. Example four is the guy running the internet café in Ahmadebad, having concurrent and clumsy chats with a bunch of women – a complete amateur, too – trying to use the law of averages to get anything he can. As a journalist, I felt obliged to photograph his screen over his shoulder, and have reproduced the incriminating evidence here.<br /><br />Example five is the guy in the hotel in Varanasi who, again, was running an internet café and streaming and distributing hard-core pornography while the rest of us put up with the resultant snail-aced Internet. I told tales on him when we left. I filed a written complaint with his superiors. I hope he got fired. I’m a moral man, after all. There’s nothing I hate more than slow Internet.<br /><br />These are but a sliver of what I’ve seen, suggesting that a generation of young Indian men are growing up to see women (or at the very least Western women) as sluts. This was so evident in Turkey too: I can't count the number of Western girls I met who had to put up with aggressive sexual predation from the local men, a predation which they definitely don't force upon the Turkish girls. It can only be the effect of globalisation. The proliferation of pornified Western media – not to mention pornography itself – has led these men to believe that white girls are tramps and harlots. It’s sad and depressing.<br /><br />But moving away from the sexual side to the other aspects of cultural degradation, I wish I had much original to say. But, alas, the negative effects of global westernisation are so obvious to even the most addle-minded and uninterested nincompoop, that they’ve been documented to death.<br /><br />I have a close friend who has, only this week, retreated to the UK, tail between legs, after an aborted attempt at the Asian travel experience. Depressed and unspeakably disappointed at having given up on her life’s dream of exploring Asia, she left a month ago for a seven month tour salivating at the prospect of a cultural smorgasbord of dialects and strange sounds and arcane traditions and mystique and history and alien peoples. Instead, she found what so many before her have in so many places: an indigenous culture being bevelled, chipped and sanded down until it’s nothing but a junkheap carcass of crass imitation and ill-conceived aspiration. There are many things which development has given the third world; many things of which the West is justly proud. It’s because of Norman Borlaug that India can feed itself, after all. But why is it that every place east of Vienna and south-west of Los Angeles manages to import the base-level awfulness of the worst we can offer? Croatian Big Brother made me want to weep with embarrassment. Serbian materialism, Bulgarian ghetto patois, and India – my god, India is a country weighed down by a collective lack of self-esteem which manifests in both adorable quirky traits, and social phenomena which suggest that theirs is a culture which is slowly dying.<br /><br />There are countless anecdotes I could recount to support this argument. Some are my own; some are collected from the myriad travellers whose paths I’ve crossed. But I’ll limit myself to something particularly depressing, something that –while not unique to India (it's prevalent in South America and Africa, too) – has struck me as abhorrent. This thing is the obsession with face lightening.<br /><br />The market in India is saturated with products to lighten your skin. One is called, “Fair & Easy”; my personal favourite is “Fair & Handsome: Very Sexy!” As I’ve written before, India is – to this day – a terribly stratified society. There are four main castes – at least 22 sub-castes – and there is a very clear positive correlation between skin lightness and caste level. The Brahmans and the modern entrepreneurial class have skin of almost west European lightness, while the lower castes have a black pallor. I really cannot overstate the prevalence of advertising for these products. Practically all the Indian celebrities are virtually white. Practically all the mannequins in the store windows are actually white. And the actor Shahruhk Khan – the biggest celebrity in India, who advertises every product under the sun and who until recently I concluded to be a decent and moral man – advertises Fair & Handsome. I gatecrashed an eight-year old girl’s birthday party in Jaipur, to discover that her father had bought her a large supply of this cream as a present. He was – as so many middle-class Indians are – desperately keen to give his children better opportunities than he was given. This is to be admired, of course. And perhaps I’m over-blowing this (it wouldn’t be the first time), but I find it symptomatic of a society in rapid decay that its most visible and respected celebrity advertises a product designed to make the overwhelming majority of the native population look more like the overwhelming majority of a foreign population. And a young girl – a girl young enough she shouldn’t be concerned with ethnic self-image – gets a present which will make her look like she’s from a different place and of a different race. Aside from the probable health consequences of regularly bleaching your skin, does it not smack of a macrosocial dearth of self-esteem that a people with such a rich ethnic history should be seeking to be other than who they are?<br /><br />The counter-argument is a predictable one: that we in the West want to be more tanned, and use various tanning creams and solaria to darken our skin. This was an argument made to me by a professor to whom I presented my observations. She said that all people want to look more like other people – and that this is the same. And although there’s some broad truth in this, I find it specious. I don’t know a single Westerner who wishes to look Indian. Rightly or wrongly, there's an imbalance here, and if I can invoke one last example, it’s a poster I saw in Varanasi advertising English classes at a local school. It showed a chess board in oblique view. In the far ground were the black pieces, lined up in their starting positions. Only the black pawns were really visible. In the foreground stood the white king – alone, and three times the size of the black pieces. I probably don’t need to join the dots here, but when a society’s advertising distinguishes between whites being kings and blacks being pawns, something has gone seriously, seriously wrong. Maybe it’s a relic of the British Raj. I don’t know.<br /><br />Perhaps I’ve been overly critical<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9ktiwCj8a1Z7u-0GIjrMgFbqNyc7mVrmfFqUqkARloGWl8k3QXazPJ8EJ1UeG99-oFZe-TwI_6mpj0uPyH_vCiMiEQoTNWhNgO00n7rULMxleYE9g6xdHqFYVfRfjF-Ri4AA4Xrotx8X/s1600-h/P1020056.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9ktiwCj8a1Z7u-0GIjrMgFbqNyc7mVrmfFqUqkARloGWl8k3QXazPJ8EJ1UeG99-oFZe-TwI_6mpj0uPyH_vCiMiEQoTNWhNgO00n7rULMxleYE9g6xdHqFYVfRfjF-Ri4AA4Xrotx8X/s320/P1020056.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135700036839483794" border="0" /></a>. Next time, I’ll wax lyrical about the Sikhs and their generosity, the spirituality of Varanasi and what it’s like to take a boat across the mist-drenched Ganges at dawn, watching the cremations and the Hindus washing away their sins. I’ll write about the soft pinkness of Jaipur, the overwhelming friendliness of the locals of Udaipur, the natural beauty of Nepal which makes your eyes hurt, my slowly growing respect for the system of arranged marriage.<br /><br />But for now, I think it’s worth me posting – for the benefit of future travellers in the subcontinent – a warning about the famous Ayurvedic massage. I had one. This was my folly. So as designated beefeater, I feel compelled to warn you about what is involved.<br /><br />The Ayurvedic massage uses some sort of weird oily concoction about which I’m not <span style="font-style: italic;">au fait</span> – my approach to massage generally being like that to food: don’t ask questions. So while in Varanasi, curiosity gets the better, and I traipse to the local parlour. A gorgeous young girl welcomes me in. Trying to suppress my delight, I hand over my money and am led into a spartan room lit by a single fluorescent light, and with a small, hairy man inside, wearing a couple of kilos of gold jewellery. I spin around anxiously, only to see my lovely intended masseuse disappearing out the door.<br /><br />Now, I’m neither a homophobe nor particularly averse to male physical contact. So when he instructs me to strip down, I think of my book and my pack-induced back pain and take it like a man. Once down to my boxers, he starts shaking his head and pointing for them to be removed too. I look up at the glare of the fluorescent light, I peer once more at his hairy chest and gold jewellery, think of my Anglo-Saxon aversion to non-sexual nudity, protest for a minute, then reluctantly acquiesce.<br /><br />So there I am standing stark naked in a room with a hairy little man I’ve never met. Ominously, he takes off his shirt. He motions for me to lie down on my front. Compared with lying on my back this seems a reasonable option, so I do. He starts pouring hot oil over my body and, well, it feels wonderful. As it should.<br /><br />This goes on for a while, and it becomes frightfully clear that he has no compunction about letting his hands go where masseurs’ hands rarely do. So now, of course, all I can think about is how normally when hands go to such places, the circumstances – not to mention the gender of the other person – are somewhat different. So I’m stuck in the age-old battle of wills with the autonomic responses of the male body. But mental recitations of UN Conventions and times tables prevail, and we’re out of the woods. Until he commands me to roll onto my back. Which is altogether a much more compromising experience – and one which might have been easier with some Enya and scented candles to make it feel less like a doctor’s appointment. As if this weren’t enough, he pops out of the room a couple of times, opening the door to a communal corridor of passers-by who are probably about as happy to see a feet-first, pale and naked man as I am to be giving anyone who walks by a public peep show.<br /><br />After the massage, the pervy little masseur suggests I shower. Happy to wash the gallons of oil from my body, I enter the shower to find the hairy little man right behind, insistent that an important part of the massage is being bathed by the masseur himself, and before I protest, he throws me – still butt-naked – onto a toilet seat and begins sponging me down. Eventually, I reach my limit. I believe in trying anything once, but I’m perfectly capable of washing my own genitals, thank you very much.<br /><br />The whole experience, mortifying as it already was, was made all that much worse when I emerged to find that Matt – who had also taken the Ayurvedic plunge – was offered some sort of rudimentary underwear to wear. And his masseur was perfectly happy for Matt to wash himself. So on top of the fact that I spent the following two days smelling like I’d fallen into a vat of Madras Curry, it turns out I was molested by Vanarasi’s pre-eminent homosexual.<br /><br />It was time to head to Nepal.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-20050823490466917512007-11-11T08:03:00.000+00:002007-11-11T08:29:11.852+00:00Video of a very typical Indian traffic intersection<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxDR8BMZR7l5QeoAq5brk3XkGwFJUVYJh9DSvREejU_UfHLpFA_jiyiLDpjDVi3CvZ9mBFZW3RnzRs2xiOSTA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-18685934015353966502007-11-07T09:02:00.000+00:002007-11-07T10:43:17.893+00:00Video of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad train in Auschwitz Class<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyuyKazr_xb7hmRPLtLJaqioeO48MT-JLcdgT02OG-oyjZ3LaGWI50SdiSPmASdS4DuDpVn-mL1SLW4nsT0mg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-29758752600410263032007-11-07T08:34:00.000+00:002008-12-11T17:39:47.913+00:00Ticket touts, turds and a taddle-tale<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Lfvk9-WAoUejV6Ah68CxEhhuOw0nya-9r6xCsfpsYP_WMqxsrLYuPBmHAh7qETuAs9WKfS3ob97esL3PORzTXKvrb_ZuRMrHgNXL3Wf-BUqO7nE4sbxst5_zPz0Zn5JzgaBssYSwxNCo/s1600-h/P1010581.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5130017004813824706" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Lfvk9-WAoUejV6Ah68CxEhhuOw0nya-9r6xCsfpsYP_WMqxsrLYuPBmHAh7qETuAs9WKfS3ob97esL3PORzTXKvrb_ZuRMrHgNXL3Wf-BUqO7nE4sbxst5_zPz0Zn5JzgaBssYSwxNCo/s320/P1010581.JPG" border="0" /></a>Picture – if you will – a steel-panelled cylinder made in the 60s, seventy feet long and twelve feet wide. Picture two hundred peasants, merchants and general riff raff crammed inside. Picture it creeping through the baking hot Indian countryside. Picture this happening at dawn after a night with no sleep. And lastly, picture three unhappy western travellers – accustomed to niceties such as a couple of inches of personal space, seats which don’t crush the spine and the absence of some irritating toilet-trader excavating his feet and clearing his throat like a two-stroke tuk-tuk in front of one’s face. If you can, you are picturing General Population Class train travel from Mumbai to Ahmedabad during Diwali, when nothing else is available.<br /><br />The all-emcompassing dreadfulness of the experience begins with the ticket purchase the day before. You’re directed from one non-functioning and utterly nonsensical website to another before you discover the entire process is designed to break the spirit of the wired traveller. So you give up and grudgingly trudge through the crowds to the station.<br /><br />The train station you’ve been directed too is, naturally, unable to help. So you spend an hour in a four wheeled furnace driven by a guy who’s played too much rally driving on his Commodore 64, and eventually you get to the right station. This, you soon understand, is but a physical manifestation of the website, but with the additional delights of unbearable heat, sickening stench, and – in addition to the thousands of men standing around and shouting apparently at themselves – the flagship of Indian bureaucracy. They are prouder of this than anything else.<br /><br />The form-filling in India deserves a moment’s digression. Everywhere you go and everything you do, there’ll be a form to be filled out – usually complete with irresistible contradictions – and a sheer litany of details required. An internet café – I kid you not – will usually demand not merely your name, age, birth date and address in India, but passport number, visa number, passport issue date, passport issue place, visa issue date and place, address outside of India, email address, contact phone number and, (in one excruciating place which offered dial-up speed and a suspiciously sticky keyboard) both parents’ full names.<br /><br />“Tell them to sod off!” you might retort. This – I assure you – doesn’t work. Resistance to the form filling process is met with looks varying from manifest incomprehension to curious bewilderment to barely-veiled hostility. You can try compromising – filling in some of the details and drawing a line at “Age Of Mother’s Loss of Virginity”, or “Average Daily Bowel Movement Frequency” – but all this leads to is the aspiring bureaucrat traipsing back demanding more. Exactly the same process takes place at every hotel. Every booking in a travel agent. Forms and forms and even more forms all demanding the minutiae of your life. Time and time again.<br /><br />Ultimately, you concede you’re not in a bargaining position at all. Because stone-age bandwidth and sticky keys notwithstanding, this is travel, and this is the 21st century. And you need Internet more than he needs the aggravation of someone from the Ministry of Pedantry coming round with a clipboard.<br /><br />The form filling is everywhere – and most of the time it’s a time consuming but tolerable nuisance. But at the railway station – oh Lord! – the least accessible system conceived by Man is accompanied by about as much organisation and forethought as you’d get in show-and-tell for special ed kindergarteners. First you need to find your train number and fill it in. This is not easy. Once done, you queue for a reservation form. This is not easy either, because the child in front has shat itself without a nappy, and twelve barefoot urchins are eyeing your backpack. Nevertheless, you fill out the form and get to the front of the queue, open your mouth to speak, and immediately three men push in and start barking Hindi at the official behind the desk. You push and shove and shout back but they speak about as much English as you speak Hindi, and moreover, the official is ignoring you and attending to them. You then realise that this is India, and the only way to get attention at all is to push through as many people as possible, elbows flailing backpack swinging, and completely disregard the existence of the queue in the first place. This will get you served.<br /><br />But of course it won’t – because you get instructed by the bored official that you forgot to enter “Father’s Sperm Count” and “Girlfriend’s Fellatio Technique” in the box at the bottom. Once the form is complete, the really awful truth dawns. This is Diwali week – the festival of lights in which everyone in India travels and the consequences of which you were too stupid to anticipate – and every train for the next eight days is not merely full, but has a three-figure waiting list.<br /><br />Until this point, you’ve not noticed the eighty or ninety sly and ridiculously-moustached men loitering furtively in the shadows. Like the cheetah in the grass waiting for the limping gazelle, they wait for the moment your travel plans collapse around you and your face reveals your desperation – and they strike.<br /><br />These men are the touts, and they call themselves – again, I kid you not – “corruption agents”. I suppose you have to commend their candour. They explain to you – and you manage to corroborate this – that paying under-the-table to the train officials is not only the done thing, but in fact the only way to get a train ticket at all. At, of course, a criminal mark-up.<br /><br />“But”, you protest, “All the trains are full!” You point to a 10x8 seat availability matrix on the board showing trains down the side and classes across the top – and it’s filled exclusively with zeroes. The shady-looking one with rodentish eyes who's pushed to the front sniggers. And clears his throat and spits – sending a shimmering oyster of beef-coloured phlem flying past your head. You fantasise about cutting his eyeballs out with the pocket knife you’re fingering in your pocket, but the idea of a week trapped in Mumbai helps to quell this urge.<br /><br />The long and the short of it is that you (and by this I mean everyone, not just gullible rich tourists) pay these guys to buy tickets for you. All the train network employees are corrupt too, of course, so they claim the trains are full when they’re anything but. So the phlemmy rodent-man pays the corrupt douchebag of an official, and sure enough you get your ticket at an exorbitant rate.<br /><br />But no! He returns, touching and placating you with mock sincerity, and hands you a document with the ominous initials WL. Waiting List. You get into a heated argument (helped by having a gargantuan travel companion who can trample them under his clown feet) and you get some of your money back with the understanding you show up at the station an hour before the train leaves the next day, and some more money will get you assigned seats – presumably at the expense of a family of poor chumps going home to visit their relatives for the holidays.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPmGq8cuFhu_ucPNAcGxp72q9MM5XlEgCe8uMKrewBRgb6G-rBJE0K339-fZaIaqPXG2d0L6AXrjRam2DKKydl3YbQfR8N-aJPxztFmO5GocV7KuJy-isqoUGph8Csrp2r65mRUHX3UDp/s1600-h/P1010532.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5130017009108792018" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPmGq8cuFhu_ucPNAcGxp72q9MM5XlEgCe8uMKrewBRgb6G-rBJE0K339-fZaIaqPXG2d0L6AXrjRam2DKKydl3YbQfR8N-aJPxztFmO5GocV7KuJy-isqoUGph8Csrp2r65mRUHX3UDp/s320/P1010532.JPG" border="0" /></a><br />5am the next morning, you arrive ticketless expecting a relatively deserted station only to find 50,000 people engaged in what can only be a faithful recreation of the First Zulu War. You track down the thieving pustule of an imp-man who shafted you the night before, you find out that the waiting list – unsurprisingly – has gotten longer rather than shorter, and you end up paying way, way too much for General Population Class. Also known as the way the Germans took the Jews on holiday to Auschwitz.<br /><br />So, we’re back to the sweltering, steel cylinder creeping across India at the speed of a motorised wheelchair running low on batteries. After waiting on a platform which looks over an enchanting view of piles of human effluent dropping straight down from the toilets, you take your seats – benches, actually – which provide roughly half the width and a third the legroom of an economy class airline seat. Through the sleepless morning fog and the atrocious smell and the overwhelming noise of p<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjmu3M7noiAkjR8OCAuvGmk2Wxn2BIMVG3u8cjrAj6ngsJP6HhcRaoqNxAKhdRiUFOM-AwLa_7nq0F9KvqCwpfpBb1QYub8klwVPOqcYJ8z2OG0V6LQ21VbegMTZC5BOzG0qrmPOSgokgD/s1600-h/P1010533.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5130017021993693938" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjmu3M7noiAkjR8OCAuvGmk2Wxn2BIMVG3u8cjrAj6ngsJP6HhcRaoqNxAKhdRiUFOM-AwLa_7nq0F9KvqCwpfpBb1QYub8klwVPOqcYJ8z2OG0V6LQ21VbegMTZC5BOzG0qrmPOSgokgD/s320/P1010533.JPG" border="0" /></a>eople yelling and pushing in the Indian way, your heart sinks at the prospect of ten hours huddled like battery hens in this oven (the accompanying photo, by the way, was before anyone really got on board and doesn’t begin to tell the story). You find you’re sitting next to a bunch of people carrying a stench that could outlast religion. So you and your travel companions move to some seats five metres away in order to sit together. A sudden hush - the din stops as people struggle to comprehend anyone sitting in other than assigned seats. And then you encounter a complete and utter pubic louse of a man who’s having his shoes shined by a miserable and malnourished child and telling everyone his opinion on everything. Although obviously due to patriarchal pride and overcompensation for the shame of having to travel Auschwitz Class, he’s a person you want to disembowel and force feed his innards. You wouldn’t wish him on your worst enemy.<br /><br />He starts lecturing us on why we need to be in our proper seats. Irate, we retort that if his compatriots had only learned about Imperial Leather instead of just imperial mistreatment of everyone else, we wouldn’t need to move in the first place. The ticket inspector arrives and the pubic louse sees his moment. Standing up to impose his full five feet of height, he excitedly recounts the story of how the three westerners left their assigned seats!! – something apparently unprecedented in Indian transport history. Eventually, our use of logic and reason is considered cheating, and we’re forced back to our assigned places. We huff and sulk. We check our watches to find there's almost the entire journey to go.<br /><br />Five men clear their throats, spray snot out of a nostril in no particular direction, and spit.<br /><br />But it’s about to get much worse. Much, much worse.<br /><br />Because although all the seats are full as you pull out of Mumbai Central Station, this doesn’t mean the carriage – which the Germans must’ve sold to the Indians during Partition – is full. Not at all. The two hundred people sitting down are a mere third of the carriage’s capacity.<br /><br />So you pull into Borivali in the outskirts of Mumbai, to be greeted by a platform of people one hundred deep. The moment the train stops, they engage in an orgiastic display of violent pushing and screaming. The doors are immediately crammed with three people who are now of course, wedged stuck and being pushed by three dozen people behind them. In the crowd, women and children are pushed over, elderly men thrown aside, punches thrown (well, this is India, so girly slaps really), and eventually bones give, the dam breaks and the three guys in the doorway tumble forward and everyone charges on board.<br /><br />The two hundred in the carriage becomes five hundred within seconds. With absolutely no comprehension of personal space or the acceptability of leaning over a complete stranger and dangling sweat-sodden armpits in his face, the newcomers fill every square inch of floor space. Including the small gap between your seated legs. For Londoners, imagine the Northern Line, southbound at 8am. Double the people, double the heat, quadruple the smell, increase the cacophony by five orders of magnitude, and halve the ventilation. Oh yes, and it’s ten hours.<br /><br />But it gets worse. Because then the beggars, the Eunuchs and the vendors arrive and the carriage is transformed into a heaving and chaotic bazaar. The Eunuchs – dressed in saris and make-up and with male voices – push through, forcefully begging. You have to feel for them – many were boys castrated by their beggar parents in order to earn more money. The women start cooking food on the floor, and the noise of everything is just deafening. People start singing, which is only mildly better than the constant yelling and pushing. And all you want to do is stretch your leg, take a moment’s respite from the heat, go to the toilet (bad, bad idea – best to soil yourself, really) or kill people en masse.<br /><br />And anyone who’s ever tried to sleep in church knows how hard it is on hard, straight-backed benches. Your head lolls, your back cramps, and your buttocks go numb – and this is with the salubrious tedium of a sermon to help your reverie, not the chariot scene from Ben Hur going on around you while all the men hack and cough, stare, take off their sandals and begin picking their feet with toothpicks which then go back in their mouths.<br /><br />I’m not saying don’t take the train in India. On the contrary, I’m writing this moment on the express from Jaipur to Agra a<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI8VVUYPe4gOq_mhWfq64LPGqjNo9Kz8HZBp9Wnaq4x3idbaxobbQgCND_mSOsRmjPzh_JxOrwcNd1TEv3Dzabo2pgySz1CUu1-tcYiRzGrNNkhVBMTd0xbUj4K8l86KBO_l-s6qILCxTs/s1600-h/P1010590.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5130017017698726626" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI8VVUYPe4gOq_mhWfq64LPGqjNo9Kz8HZBp9Wnaq4x3idbaxobbQgCND_mSOsRmjPzh_JxOrwcNd1TEv3Dzabo2pgySz1CUu1-tcYiRzGrNNkhVBMTd0xbUj4K8l86KBO_l-s6qILCxTs/s320/P1010590.JPG" border="0" /></a>nd then Amritsar. The scenery is stunning (see photo). I have a seat to myself, and the smell is really no worse than you’d get bathing in a septic tank after Glastonbury. I’m just saying: don’t do it during Diwali. Don’t take Auschwitz Class. Don’t under any circumstances venture into the toilets. Don’t queue – always push. And if some silver-haired, shoe-shined, diminutive taddle-tale is sitting around like Lord Muck and opining on everything under the sun, don’t be unnerved by your inclination to disembowel him or carry him into the toilet and shove his face down the squat hole. Nurse that inclination, embrace it! Let it grow! In India, sometimes it’s the only way of knowing you’re still human.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-22888549007702427662007-11-01T13:36:00.001+00:002008-12-11T17:39:48.771+00:00Largess, Love Stories & Life on the Eighteenth<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt3_vIwwc2pp8UKD6k5F0eugON7HOWcVhwQY7gEacj4-bSug-7FSd2ikk4M_-NRIx1h2fg8hQas1B3zez52487zzK-x9swqiDF1JL1hEMY1In90Us4jRV6hH9ffHsIXcbkGIHHmox-QjMb/s1600-h/P1010158.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 298px; height: 195px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt3_vIwwc2pp8UKD6k5F0eugON7HOWcVhwQY7gEacj4-bSug-7FSd2ikk4M_-NRIx1h2fg8hQas1B3zez52487zzK-x9swqiDF1JL1hEMY1In90Us4jRV6hH9ffHsIXcbkGIHHmox-QjMb/s200/P1010158.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127875396681085554" border="0" /></a>Nehru once described India as “a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads”. It’d be hard work finding an apter description. The myriad reinventions of this majestic country over thousands of years tell a fascinating tale, from which a vibrant, modern yet troubled nation has emerged to confuse, scare and entice the intrepid voyager who dares – to the raised eyebrows of his acquaintances – to “do India”.<br /><br />Mark Twain mused similarly: "So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked." And a close friend of mine solemnly informed me that India stands for “I’ll Never Do It Again”. After a mere week, I think I can profess this tongue-in-cheek witticism to be utter rot. I will, without a doubt, do it again.<br /><br />It’s hard to put one’s finger on why. Without any condescension at all – because these are fabulously generous and warm-hearted people – it might be the childlikeness of the Indians. The film industry – centred here in Mumbai – produces, in this city alone, 900 films per year, or almost three a day. There can’t be many people in the West unaware at least superficially of the reach and reputation of Bollywood. But flipping channels on the telly – as everywhere – offers revealing insight into the nature and values of a people. Producers and programmers and advertisers understand their audience – it’s their job, after all – and India television is replete with a bizarre mix of singing, slapstick, and the obligatory bout of sobbing every few minutes. My host and friend here – a remarkable and articulate man named Russel, about whom I’ll say more later – puts it thus:<br /><br />“You must understand that emotion is a very important thing for Indians. We cry together, we laugh together. Most of the time we sleep in the same room all together. And expressing ourselves is who we are”.<br /><br />This is evident everywhere you look. In the human cauldron that is India's urban street, everybody shouts to everybody else about every possible thing. Hands gesticulate wildly as people barter and push and sell their wares. On the telly and in the innumerable Bollywood offerings which litter the hundreds of channels, the stories are easy to follow for the non-Hindi speaker, such are the exaggerated gestures, the cringeworthy crying scenes over the latest my-life-is-over tragedy such as Boy not desiring Girl as Wife, or the tiresome need to break into poorly-synched song every six or seven minutes. When they’re not singing or crying, the actors (and I use that term generously) gaze wistfully off-camera like a <span style="font-style: italic;">Days of O</span><span style="font-style: italic;">ur Lives</span> parody, without any discernible parody. Otherwise, they seem to slap each other in the face a great deal and run around at high speed. The Indians admire all things British – that much is clear (Jade Goody excepted of course). It’s a shame they’re under the misapprehension that Benny Hill and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Carry On</span> films represent the pinnacle of comedic sophistication. Just like the prevailing wisdom here that the best solution to any administrative problem is to add another couple of layers of bureaucracy. Because that’s what the British would’ve done, of course.<br /><br />All of this is ‘childlike’, but I honestly mean it in the best possible way and I trust no offence is caused. The films that studiously avoid any bad language or risqué scenes; the belief that even in a movie concerning profound and serious issues it’s permissible to break into song at the drop of a hat. The way not only the children on the street but the adults, too, greet a stranger with a Cheshire grin and are desperate to know from where he comes, what he thinks of India and what it’s like to travel so far. This is an innocence you don’t see in Europe or the States or even in South East Asia. It's a really nice feeling.<br /><br />I’ve been joined for my five weeks in India by a splendid Englishman named Matt, whom I met in Istanbul and whose itinerary converged nicely with my own. Matt – as well as being black, a feature that elicits curiosity and astonishment everywhere we’ve gone in Turkey and here – is also 204cm tall. Which means that although I talk to his navel when we speak, the Indians are practically rubbing noses with his kneecaps. In Turkey, shouts of “Big man!! Black man!! Basketball!” would ring out in every street we passed through. And the exact same is true here. But the Indians are warmer, more affectionate, more tactile than the Turks and we’ve drawn a crowd everywhere we’ve been. A walk through the markets in Chembur saw us mobbed by textile traders, all of whom entered into sudden and noisy competition to see who could produce a pair of jeans long enough to accommodate his stupendously long legs.<br /><br />The thing is, they weren’t particularly trying to sell us anything. I’ve travelled enough to recognise it when I see it. But these ten or so men were so delighted to see a man of such unusual proportions in the flesh, we found ourselves in a frenzied scrum of tape measures, reels of cloth and a barrage of gleeful questions. That is, until one particularly forward young chap saw fit to push to the front of the crowd, point to Matt’s groin, and with a preceding reputation of black men evidently in mind, asked him about the size of his equipment. Which would’ve been fine until he reached out (well, reached <span style="font-style: italic;">up</span>, actually) to grab a handful – presumably for the purpose of comparison with his his countrymen (for those wanting further research on this subject, see <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6161691.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6161691.stm</a>). We bade a hasty farewell.<br /><br />I tell this story just to illustrate my point – that there is something very childlike about the people here, as if in <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-WJ5INv5ySaVlo0S6GAvazU-3TcEGEe-u4LmFQSwd-Nlnu1ax0IWADq09UDvXUzzplG49g1X13r01kZOPezstgIu_XYN7k6B6AzzDdK4nYPuY4a6IcZWAWe0p5QyolpbdnMoGigafnk-o/s1600-h/P1010196.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 317px; height: 237px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-WJ5INv5ySaVlo0S6GAvazU-3TcEGEe-u4LmFQSwd-Nlnu1ax0IWADq09UDvXUzzplG49g1X13r01kZOPezstgIu_XYN7k6B6AzzDdK4nYPuY4a6IcZWAWe0p5QyolpbdnMoGigafnk-o/s200/P1010196.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127875400976052866" border="0" /></a>Eden before Eve listened to the counsel of the snake. As I said before, I spent a couple of days staying with a man called Russel and his family, an experience which a thousand guidebooks and tens of interviews with academics or journalists could never replicate. Russel is 34, and lives with his wife Usha, his mother and formidable matriarch Elsa and his sons Kenford and Danny – eight and two respectively. Their house is like so many in India, two rooms with toilet facilities shared with a bunch of neighbours, and slim mattresses which get thrown on the kitchen floor at bedtime. The family all sleep together, they always eat together. To conserve water (heavily rationed by the city of Mumbai which cannot cope with a population that has doubled to 16 million in the past quarter century) they sometimes bathe together. Living with a family like this is <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> definitive travel experience – you can learn more about people in a couple of days like this than you would in a year of hotels, restaurants and taxis.<br /><br />You see first hand the shortcomings of the nuclear family – the importance of having uncles and aunts and particularly grandparents around as you grow up. You appreciate the importance of meal times as a communal experience, an opportunity to bond and laugh and share news. You come to understand the pride that comes with being aspirational and driven, in being able to provide well for your children,<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNjbwj2fEmwWggE6mRkcCWbehUrVILh_JdbqrMr7-FCia-eOPZ5I4TD2dDquq3FDX5HKgYQB3rsScsmqECtTboqcLhi3UAM7wDuUxB_i9HlUwzxslSfPPMr62PpqN3P3_lqf7QYlzZc10p/s1600-h/P1010238.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 319px; height: 199px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNjbwj2fEmwWggE6mRkcCWbehUrVILh_JdbqrMr7-FCia-eOPZ5I4TD2dDquq3FDX5HKgYQB3rsScsmqECtTboqcLhi3UAM7wDuUxB_i9HlUwzxslSfPPMr62PpqN3P3_lqf7QYlzZc10p/s200/P1010238.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127875405271020194" border="0" /></a> to give them opportunities in life which your parents and their parents and theirs before them were unable to do so. Russel, who works as a systems integrator for a company – whatever that means – never completed university. He hated his father since an early age because his father married at 43 and inadequately prepared for the consequences of that. So by the time Russel and his brothers needed support to take on further education commensurate with their obvious intelligence, his father had retired with nothing. And India is not a place where you can just support yourself if you wish to study past high school. And so Russel has paid for his brother to study in the US, and paid for his father’s considerable medical bills in the final years of his life. But watching him work incredibly long hours, return home and find the energy to play with his children, love his wife and talk to his mother, I was struck, once more, by the fact that some people in this world really are to be admired. Although he earns a pittance by Western standards, h<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKB2ZxcCIYG2QZl-R5r1VwXZCnVHCwYvyWqM01EzIJ1LnS1XfHQKMDpi30oKQuXzeUoottOtUp_ncCATUrUUe52HghYrIsS6yp8xURGQmRaKgiy1Ka8Cwdpsc0EV0SjLuf5PKTVprFqLu8/s1600-h/P1010207.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 218px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKB2ZxcCIYG2QZl-R5r1VwXZCnVHCwYvyWqM01EzIJ1LnS1XfHQKMDpi30oKQuXzeUoottOtUp_ncCATUrUUe52HghYrIsS6yp8xURGQmRaKgiy1Ka8Cwdpsc0EV0SjLuf5PKTVprFqLu8/s200/P1010207.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127875400976052882" border="0" /></a>e is determined to make sure that his boys – both smart as buttons themselves – will have the chance to keep the social climb going. He has pulled a middle-class life out of the scattered detritus of misfortune and inopportunity, helped his brother to do the same, and still welcomes travellers from around the world into his home and refuses to accept anything in return.<br /><br />Russel is Christian, and met Usha – Hindu - when he was sixteen and she twelve. They fell in love and – in his words – ‘courted’ for seven years, which consisted of five minutes per day at the bus stop together. In a move which I find utterly bewildering (as I do all things connected with religion), she began the complicated process of converting to Christianity, and they married. He went to Muscat in Oman for a while to make a better living, but they couldn’t bear being apart and he returned back, and they had Ken and Danny. What I find moving about this story is the honour and simpleness of their courtship and the profundity of a love that waits seven years of a few snatched minutes per day in order to have a loving family full of generosity and ambition for their children.<br /><br />This is not a uniquely Indian thing, naturally. I wouldn’t claim that all Indian families are supportive, caring and welcoming any more than I would argue all French, Australian, German or Welsh families were loveless, detached and unhappy. But the fact remains that – religious and cultural reasons notwithstanding – the divorce rate is very, very low here and most people remain close to their elderly parents. There’s a lot we could learn. The disconnect of the western nuclear family model which produces maladaptive and angry teens, brattish kids, pre-nupped marriages and torturous yearly gatherings contrasts starkly with my time here so far. Russel, Usha <span style="font-style: italic;">et al</span> live in something between a slum and a housing estate – former stables and barracks for the pre-independence British cavalry which has morphed into a heaving, cramped community of thousands of families living on top of each other. Children sleep regularly at one another’s houses every night. Food and various provisions are shared and swapped. Tuk-tuks and motorbikes speed through potholed and dusty alleys four feet wide. And all of this backs onto the eighteenth hole of the President’s Golf Club, where the greens and fairways are irrigated around the clock while the shantytown has its drinking water rationed, and India’s growing number of millionaires and billionaires are meekly followed around the fairways by caddies waiting to be thrown a few rupees.<br /><br />There’s only so much you can say about social inequality in any place. You can describe the abstract juxtaposition of obscene wealth and obscener poverty – but it only says so much. It can’t really paint the picture. You can take photos – which <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> paint a picture – but the image is always subjectively filtered through the mind and the lens of the observer. There’ll always be a contrary tale to tell.<br /><br />Or you can give some raw numbers - like the fact that it’s possible to pay four days’ worth of a rickshaw driver’s average salary on a cup of coffee in a swanky hotel – which would be like a £300 cappuccino in London. Numbers are cold and detached and they don’t tell which is the greater injustice – the criminal expense of the coffee or the criminal salary of the driver. So, permit me a few statistics instead.<br /><br />In 2007, there are 41 million registered cases of diabetes, expected to double in the next two decades. India has surpassed South Africa as the country with the highest number of HIV cases (5.7 million) – a figure probably grossly conservative, and in large part due to Indian men’s unwillingness to wear condoms and women’s (particularly prostitutes’) inability to enforce their use. I posted the BBC story about Indian men and condoms above rather facetiously, but it may hide a broader problem to be addressed. Moreover, human rights groups estimate there are 60 million child labourers. 350 millions Indians live below the poverty line. The population growth rate exceeds the economic growth rate, and although the middle class is swelling, the average annual wage is US$710 per year and up to 400 million Indians live on a dollar a day or less. And despite the massive urbanisation with characterises all parts of the developing world, three quarters of Indians still live in rural areas, where income is a quarter that of city dwellers.<br /><br />This last point is a question I have posed to a variety of people here – to students, to a kindly Hindu priest I met who was recovering from typhoid at the hospital where I stayed on my second night, to the traders and to Russel and Usha: As people flock to the megacities from rural areas, does their standard of living actually increase? Or perhaps more accurately – because this is closer to the subject of my book – what happens to their <span style="font-style: italic;">quality of life</span>? Because observing the wretchedness of life for the urban poor, it’s difficult to conceive of a life with significantly less. Thousands upon thousands of people sleep on the pavement – some of whom have presumably come to the big city with grand dreams which have fallen tragically flat. And this is in the richest, most cosmopolitan and dynamic city in the country – the financial and commercial capital of a nation that’ll one day be a superpower.<br /><br />Perhaps I’m being hopelessly naïve. Perhaps my scepticism at why anyone would leave a rural village only to struggle for a shanty life in a polluted, overcrowded, disgustingly congested city like Mumbai comes from being yet to see what rural Indian life is like. Russel – originally from a small town in Gujarat – assures me this is the case. Life in a rural area, he says, is beset with enormous financial costs compared with urban life, and the idealised peaceful village life I imagine isn’t a reality at all. The Indian rail system – the biggest employer in the world, by the way – is so advanced, so widespread (thanks in large part, it has to be said, to the colonial British) that there’s no village in India truly untouched by urbanisation. Cable TV and mobile phones are everywhere but salaries are lower and costs are higher. According to Russel and at least one economics undergraduate I interviewed, it’s the trappings of relatively affordable western luxuries which draws people to the cities.<br /><br />It’s disingenuous to think that cheap mobile contracts and MTV account for this enormous migration. But their point was that India is not – as I’d suggested – like China, where people leave behind a rudimentary agrarian life to make their fortune in one of the twenty or so cities with over ten million inhabitants. Rather, village life in India has become a prohibitively expensive, poor, smaller version of urban life – and both standard of living and quality of life are relative concepts. The shantytowns which line the fence of the golf club – and which are periodically torn down by the local government only to pop right back up again – may be poor and dirty, but they’re a step up from life on the street and village life too. This is something I find hard to accept, and the coming weeks will reveal much, much more.<br /><br />Beyond the poverty and the unfairness, beyond the simple and uncomplicated stories of love and family bonds in the movies, you can absorb so much more here. You sense the pride that accompanies having a job and making a living – the truth that so often, when you try to tip a merchant or vendor a few extra rupees as gratitude for his courtesy and goodwill, that tip is refused with a look of embarrassment. Or the fact that when I brought gifts to Russel and his family as thanks for showing me the city, feeding me and generally making me feel at home, the response was one of sheepish discomfort rather than unfettered gratitude. Or the taxi driver who, when seeing that Matt and I were sweating in his sweltering cab like cows being led to an abattoir, stopped to buy us bottles of cold water and would not accept a penny. These people, these open, friendly, generous and, yes, childlike people are the most wonderful part so far of this wonderful country. They hav<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXASdGT6UBvAyhw3HT3ZzPSp77wS9HF-xvM8F4LGLBUpYLaEEgx8EXAMcSFRIOb3SfHY9e23rsvEmp_RGN4a0AUfP9IWjaGmzZ3eEd7Rp_49dSnkpt5Bf48Rxzx-xmfO9LpDRGVR1xLwJo/s1600-h/P1010316.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 326px; height: 118px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXASdGT6UBvAyhw3HT3ZzPSp77wS9HF-xvM8F4LGLBUpYLaEEgx8EXAMcSFRIOb3SfHY9e23rsvEmp_RGN4a0AUfP9IWjaGmzZ3eEd7Rp_49dSnkpt5Bf48Rxzx-xmfO9LpDRGVR1xLwJo/s200/P1010316.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127875405271020210" border="0" /></a>e curious cultural affectations such as a side-to-side, up-and-down, figure-eight head-wobble (which I’ve coined the “Stevie Wonder”) that can mean ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ with no obvious way of discerning which. The children gather round demanding that you play cricket with them. And despite most Indians tolerating hardship that we should never and will never know, they smile and engage you with their eyes, knowing full well that you carry in your wallet a month’s worth of their salary and worked much less hard for it.<br /><br />The weeks to come will tell me how much of this is specific to Mumbai. All the guidebooks and everyone you speak to will tell you that Mumbai is to India as New York is to the US or London is to the UK: big, cosmopolitan, and completely unrepresentative of the country as a whole.<br /><br />There’s too much more to say. The perplexing choice of the Indians to, when selecting a car on which to model their taxis, choose an Italian model which rusts faster than it drives and breaks down on average every 75 metres. Or the Hindu festival earlier this week during which married women fast for the day to give thanks to and for their husbands (it goes without saying that there’s no corresponding festival in which the men fast; it was men, after all, who invented the festival in the first place). Or the endemic corruption. Or the artificially low unemployment rate brought about by having men in uniform standing around everywhere with nothing at all to do. Or the fact that recent and rapid economic development means that everyone owns a mobile, but nobody has ever had a landline.<br /><br />There’ll be time for all of this – but for now, I’ll sign off by recounting that on my second day, while travelling to the hospital where I was put up by a physician I met, I saw a deaf man and a blind man crossing the road together. It reminded me, naturally, of Gene Wilder and Richard Prior in “See no evil, Hear no evil” – the blind man listening for sounds and signing to the deaf man, and the latter guiding the former through the traffic. And it occurred to me, for perhaps the hundredth time that day – as it has every day of this journey – that if everyone showed that sort of solidarity with one another, the world would be an even more extraordinary place than it already is.<br /><br />“I’ll Never Do It Again”?<br /><br />What crap.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-7591374234460054432007-10-27T13:12:00.000+01:002008-12-11T17:39:49.206+00:00The shantytown at the end of the universe<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdHggq0yu-vjBb4EolbRd5EvHyDpSEgw79FjGNlaEWLQdajagCDhrR84b6_Ei4Z_Z-98u4_A0QkO_MWKPx1DKoKCFGGdqEJ5dqkdcd8LY6cehge1U8V9fp9TWItpN2IIPVlwx_kQ4SIOBc/s1600-h/DSC00576.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdHggq0yu-vjBb4EolbRd5EvHyDpSEgw79FjGNlaEWLQdajagCDhrR84b6_Ei4Z_Z-98u4_A0QkO_MWKPx1DKoKCFGGdqEJ5dqkdcd8LY6cehge1U8V9fp9TWItpN2IIPVlwx_kQ4SIOBc/s320/DSC00576.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5125989016979911266" border="0" /></a>I was so close to finishing it! My chapter on Turkey and Bahrain – it was almost there!<br />It was hard going, to be sure – it’s been an extraordinary couple of weeks and there's a lot to say. And then I arrived in the human cacophony of Mumbai and there's so much to describe it should be gotten down while fresh. So the earlier chapter will follow this one in a couple of days – but for now I beg your patience, and for those who’ve never had the experience, let me do my best to paint a picture of what it's like arriving in India.<br /><br />It really is far too easy to sit in one’s cushy armchair back in the developed world, knowledgeably discussing approaches to third world poverty, to cite articles and thinkers and NGO models and the like, and to read up on the enormous countries of the developing world which strain under the weight of overpopulation and inequality. It’s too easy to say “yes, well, I’m a do-gooder and believe in progressive taxation and care about the plight of the needy. I understand what they’re going through”. And I’ve travelled much more than most. I’m lucky. In my life I’ve been to places where deprivation is all around and met countless people in countless places. But it’s nothing like here.<br /><br />Mumbai proudly calls itself the economic capital of India. And it <span style="font-style: italic;">does</span> have more than its share of billionaires and foreign investment and the stock exchange. But it’s not the whole story. It’s barely a footnote or a dust jacket on the whole story. I got in last night and took a taxi ride for two hours through the biggest, heaving mass of humanity you could ever imagine. For two whole hours we passed through shantytowns and suburbs. For two whole hours I saw naked, abandoned toddlers scavenging through detritus, amputees begging, homeless children, literally a couple of hundred thousand people passed by my open taxi. Some came to the side to beg for money or food. Some stared. Some continued selling produce at the roadside as thousands of cars and bikes and rickshaws and buses beeped unceasingly through the blanket of people. The noise is constant. It’s deafening. It’s a sarcophagus of sound. It makes London – in itself an impressively large, busy, noisy and vibrant metropolis – appear a sleepy country hamlet. I really thought that Istanbul – with its 15 million inhabitants and throbbing crowds and unique blend of East and West – was an assault on the senses. And I’ve prepared my mind for arrival in India for months now. But – and I hate resorting to clichés but sometimes there’s nothing else – nothing, nothing, nothing at all can prepare you for the noise, the crowds, the chaos, the squalor, the colours of one of the Indian megalopolises.<br /><br />The physical stature of the people hits you too. The Indians are not the Dutch or the tribespeople of the Kalahari – that much hardly needs pointing out to anyone who’s ever gone out for a curry. But it’s the effect of malnutrition in the lower castes here that’s so clearly evident. So many men of the darkest skin stand barely 4”10 and weigh less than 50kg. This isn’t just a racial or genetic thing. Most working and middle class Indian men aren’t much shorter than their Western counterparts – although slimmer, to be sure. This is a nutritional problem and a caste problem. And they go hand in hand.<br /><br />India is, to this day, an extraordinarily tiered society, with the Dalits – the “Untouchables” - occupying the bottom rung of many on the social ladder and living in the direst, most unfair conditions arguably of any social group on the planet. A country which rightly has aspirations of being one of the big geopolitical players of this new century and which will soon overtake China and have the largest population on earth cannot, it cannot, it <span style="font-style: italic;">must</span> not tolerate the prejudice and hardship foisted upon the tens of millions (130m according to one reliable estimate) of people consigned to living in sewers, collecting faeces with their bare hands for pennies, sleeping on piles of rubbish and clearing away dead animals. What their scarce opportunities for work have in common is ritual impurity. Which is exactly how the Dalits are seen by Indians at large. It’s their perceived impurity that keeps them where they are. India should be ashamed of itself.<br /><br />The situation has improved, it’s important to note, and the Indian Constitution makes special provision for the betterment of their living conditions. But with your own eyes, passing through a reasonable cross-section of Mumbai and watching people in their hundreds of thousands – you can see the multi-layered caste structure as plain as night and day. The lower castes have skin almost black as night and are diminutive through a lifetime of abject want. The Indian working and middle classes have a much paler complexion and stand a foot taller. The upper class is practically white.<br /><br />But don’t be put off, dear readers! Don’t be scared by the stench of open sewers (which is admittedly vile). Don’t baulk at the suicidal/homicidal traffic behaviour. Don’t be nervous about the yellow air so polluted your throat aches after ten minutes and which has covered my laptop with a film of taupe gunk which I’m fairly certain Apple didn’t build it to withstand. Don’t worry that you’ll cry for the dead and dying animals that litter the roadside (although you might very well). And don’t prevaricate about not being able to shake your head at the most wretched beggar children surrounding you with big eyes and distended bellies (although they will, and you probably won’t).<br /><br />Don’t be put off by any of it, I implore you. I wrote before leaving London that I feel the need to come face-to-face with real life for most of the world’s people. That I need the perspective that comes only with experiencing (ok, observing) truly grinding poverty and the miserable hopelessness of so many people’s lives. And that only through doing so will I get some appreciation not only of the smallness of my own struggles, but begin to understand people in a way which I have been yet to do. On these travels thus far, during the first eight and a half weeks, it hasn’t really come. Western Europe is fascinating of course, and largely very beautiful. For a student of twentieth century history in particular, it’s heaven. And the former eastern bloc and Balkans is manna for the economist – to see in plain sight the all-pervasive mediocrity of communism and the desperate inequity and disappointment of a transition to liberal capitalism. And Turkey rewards the hedonist and the ancient historian who yearns to walk the land which has been the site of empires waxing and waning for millennia.<br /><br />But India is the prize, and I’ve been waiting for it for my whole life. Because India – although I am barely off the boat – will reward and tear at your soul. It will, you just know it, it’ll crush and lift the spirit. It’ll bring forth smiles and tears in equal measure, it’ll make you love and hate people both. It’ll be a struggle just to travel across it and give you strength you always craved. It’ll feed the individual's Humanitarian, it’ll spur his compassion and clarity and charity. You can't see the things I’ve seen already – and will come to see in the coming five weeks – without feeling it viscerally. The world is an enormous place with too much to see in a lifetime, but the planet is too small for so many people. India has the population now that the world did when the Wright Brothers first took to the skies. This country might be the economic miracle of the subcontinent and boast a real future as the IT call centre of the West. Which will create more middle class jobs, yes. And by all accounts the <span style="font-style: italic;">relative</span> number of people in poverty is decreasing. That is, I suppose, some good news.<br /><br />But the problem is the way we throw that word, ‘poverty’, around. We use it to describe welfare mothers in Brixton who can’t afford to eat out. We use it for people who live on sink estates in perpetual debt and complain about the NHS. We use it for apartment buildings without any green space for the kids to play in. Whatever 'poverty' is, though, it has to mean something beyond an abstract term of art encapsulating having less than the majority. It has to refer to miles upon miles upon miles of dilapidated shanties, each with ten people crammed into 5m2 of filth with corrugated iron walls, undrinkable water, and a dollar a day. This is poverty on a spectacular, galactic, unimaginable scale.<br /><br />But through all this, you still see people finding pleasure in life's little delights. I took a long walk last night through the shantytown. Attracting quite a crowd of giggling followers as I made my way through like a disoriented and pale-faced pied piper, I watched a father playing with his son. A mother laughing at her daughter’s poor attempt at sewing. Children hitting a shuttlecock. I played street cricket with a group of barefoot boys using a piece of pipe and a tennis ball. "Ponting! Steve Waugh!" they shouted at me. "You like Tendulkar?" They were as delighted as me. They don’t really see white faces. In a cumulative four hours in a taxi since yesterday afternoon, I must’ve passed – and I promise I’m not exaggerating here – half a million people. And – again, this is the truth – I have not seen even ONE white face other than my own. Despite the Incredible India! posters that plaster travel agents the world over, most visitors don’t leave the centre of the cities or they stick to slurping cocktails in Goa and photographing the Taj Mahal. They are, I can tell you, really missing out.<br /><br />So at the risk of sounding unbearably limp, I return to my earlier call: come to India and see for yourself what deprivation really is. Come and meet the people and chat to them and wave to them (they’ll all delightedly wave back) and then – and only then – complain about the water pressure in your shower or the price of a cappuccino or the bugs in Vista and why can’t Microsoft get its act together. None of us have any right to do so – and that is what I came to India to really understand.<br /><br />Thanks for your indulgence. Stories from Turkey will follow very shortly. Including a crazy sucubus Serbian, an enlightened Kiwi, angry protests, my latest border screw-up, and a hairy Turkish man touching my testicles.Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-14309419585754350062007-10-13T14:59:00.000+01:002008-12-11T17:39:52.376+00:00Bulletholes, Bosnians and Backpackers<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtt7UwoZLjMBhMQTVGkBslwJK1OEGw7hyphenhyphenYmo_oHGiYItudgGbb2t5GE-nMdJ25ce_cm3-zZmHEhoQLmAI2c8yeQQfgC5XMwcHqiIsbef0AghXis4xy4NXa26NZPr05IWIcy-ull5nzedj2/s1600-h/DSC00610.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtt7UwoZLjMBhMQTVGkBslwJK1OEGw7hyphenhyphenYmo_oHGiYItudgGbb2t5GE-nMdJ25ce_cm3-zZmHEhoQLmAI2c8yeQQfgC5XMwcHqiIsbef0AghXis4xy4NXa26NZPr05IWIcy-ull5nzedj2/s200/DSC00610.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120822061750311714" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">The complexity of the Balkans is hypnotising. The cruel </span><span lang="EN-GB">whimsy of history, the pliable borders, the peoples so different and so similar – it’s really hard to take it all in. Especially when you have a nine-foot Bosnian or Serb man barking the minutiae of some 14<sup>th</sup> Century internecine battle and who expects you to be fully conv</span><span lang="EN-GB">ersant in the ethnic chessboard of the time. </span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>And being here and meeting the people really brings</span><span lang="EN-GB"> home the fundamental evil of communism. It’s so easy to be seduced by ivory tower academic apologists who argue that it’s not the <i style="">system</i> but its <i style="">implement</i></span><span lang="EN-GB"><i style="">ation</i> which was evil – and who fail to question whether the two things are actually one and the same. Like many deluded undergraduates before me and surely many after, I remember spouti</span><span lang="EN-GB">ng sympathetic nonsense over café lattes. But spending time in the former Soviet states and </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Yugoslavia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">, y</span><span lang="EN-GB">ou see, smell, feel, you taste the awful decay of the system, the all-pervading mediocrity of everything associated wi</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBfxQhsI5AaUvU_pMO8kBOwsvGG7uZNf03hLw7bd816WBMnmeaQFNLSab1af9AEF2ReAztDmN7Vy24kCduZ9niR5ZqXUjN7eLz-vjvTGPdz9IkXTV9PUPkf-BqQU_BfGLW1zEQdUQy4Zga/s1600-h/DSC04110.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBfxQhsI5AaUvU_pMO8kBOwsvGG7uZNf03hLw7bd816WBMnmeaQFNLSab1af9AEF2ReAztDmN7Vy24kCduZ9niR5ZqXUjN7eLz-vjvTGPdz9IkXTV9PUPkf-BqQU_BfGLW1zEQdUQy4Zga/s200/DSC04110.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120822989463247714" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">th communist rule. I’m in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Sofia</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> now, and the first person I met </span><span lang="EN-GB">here described it as the second worst place in the world after </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Romania</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">. Leaving aside the fact that he has barely travelled more than a few hundred kilometres in any direction, it was an astonishing welcome from someone who’s taking a degree in (wait for it) hospitality and PR and who manages a ho</span><span lang="EN-GB">stel. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>But as always, I’m getting ahead of myself. So I’ll recap a little before musing on the second worst country in the world, the grey, crumbling ug</span><span lang="EN-GB">liness the Soviets left behind, and the desperation the Bul</span><span lang="EN-GB">garians feel to be anywhere – and perhaps anyone – else</span><span lang="EN-GB">.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Wikitravel<span style=""> </span>- the free and fabulo</span><span lang="EN-GB">usly helpful sister site to Wikipedia and surely a genuine threat to Lonely Planet’s dominance of the travel advice market – describes travelling from </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Belgrade</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Sofia</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> by train: </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB">“Allow up to three hours delay while the Serbian and Bulgarian customs officers ransack the trains due to cigarette smuggling. However, the cigarette smuggling is worth experiencing once.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB">I must’ve read this sentence weeks ago, smiled, and promptly forgot it. Because yesterday morning I was clinging miserably to the least comfortable sleep of my life in a 60s-era urine-smelling train compartment full of Bulgarian farm workers who travel to Serbia to earn their fortune (which should really give some pause for thought in itself), </span><span lang="EN-GB">when</span><span lang="EN-GB"> I was woken by six Bulgarian border police. One of whom was rap</span><span lang="EN-GB">ping my leg with some instrument which wouldn’t look out of place in a blacksmith’s foundry. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>Through the lavatorial and back-aching </span><st1:time minute="0" hour="5"><span lang="EN-GB">5am</span></st1:time><span lang="EN-GB"> fog, I follow my co-travellers out of the compartment and stand lined up in the corridor. One of the guards – a frightening-looking and pallorless behemoth of a man with machete scars on his face – produces a batte</span><span lang="EN-GB">ry-operated electric drill from a pocket th</span><span lang="EN-GB">e size of a three man tent and begins unscrewing the whitewashed chipboard panels which line our compartment. His colleagues climb on the seats, crumpling my half-read copy of <i style="">Pussy Westerner Weekly</i>, and start banging on the walls with cocked ears.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>The ceiling panel falls open with a thud. Suddenly, ten thousand cigarettes in cellophane cartons pour out. My Bulgarian farm workers shrug and with the sort of lethargic insouciance I've been working on unsuccessfully for years, promptly light their own cigarettes. All of which were of the same indecipherable brand as those plummeting fro</span><span lang="EN-GB">m the heavens.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>One of the uniformed wall-bangers stops. He pulls off the panel dire</span><span lang="EN-GB">ctly</span><span lang="EN-GB"> behind my </span><span lang="EN-GB">backpack to reveal yet another smug</span><span lang="EN-GB">gled bounty and the guards – with their own expressions of bored resignation – form a chain as hundreds of cartons are passed to their colleagues waiting on the tracks outside. My chest (and something else) tightens as I imagine myself being fingered for this failed enterprise by my treacherous peasant companions (to whom I had earlier given chocolate and wine, the bastards). I picture a freezing, faecal-smeared cell the size of a cupboard, me naked, sobbing and hugging my knees. I imagine my captors’ interrogation: “You will NEVER use Facebook ever again, do you understand? You will rot in this jail and never again feel the cathartic feel of thumb on iPod trackwheel unless you confess!”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>Anyway, before I can even stutter “habeus corpus” or subtly nudge-nudge cough-cough in the dir</span><span lang="EN-GB">ection of the peasants, the guards are satisfied and – astonishingly – smile at the workers, hand them one of the cartons back, and promptly disembark to collect their wares below. My criminal companions calmly return to their seats, the train shudders back into life, and they all fall happily asleep. Except me. I sit in the darkness contem</span><span lang="EN-GB">pla</span><span lang="EN-GB">ting murder.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>The days before were spent mostly in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Sarajevo</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB">,</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdoduF8atg9nmNOiXwiO9TAS_4VhjEl8zRY8Y6IsqVEam6IFjOeTGDpdUyPHsqoNyVK5kF5T8BpPrOcBKzZjSsX6K-i_VFF7A08VSIi_wG9HPNGjzhaauJPI146Kk5-c1SHTwEHl-q9VCw/s1600-h/DSC00576.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdoduF8atg9nmNOiXwiO9TAS_4VhjEl8zRY8Y6IsqVEam6IFjOeTGDpdUyPHsqoNyVK5kF5T8BpPrOcBKzZjSsX6K-i_VFF7A08VSIi_wG9HPNGjzhaauJPI146Kk5-c1SHTwEHl-q9VCw/s200/DSC00576.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120822967988411186" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB"> a place I had approached – like all </span><span lang="EN-GB">visitors, I suppose – with wonder</span><span lang="EN-GB"> and some unease. The Bosnian countryside is among t</span><span lang="EN-GB">he most beautiful I’ve ever seen – mountains and</span><span lang="EN-GB"> valleys and lakes</span><span lang="EN-GB"> and cliffs and fields, undulating with </span><span lang="EN-GB">a breathtaking greenness and smattered with tiny hamlets of poor farmers still using equipment from a pre-industrial age. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Sarajevo</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> itself is a remarkable place </span><span lang="EN-GB">– everyone who goes is struck b</span><span lang="EN-GB">y its uniqueness. Quite apart from the fact that the name itself has become synonymous with Serbian aggression, ethnic cleansing, the 1992-95 siege and the inability or unwillingness of the West to wake itself from its self-congratulatory post</span><span lang="EN-GB">-cold war triumphalism and actually DO something – it's t</span><span lang="EN-GB">he European Jerusalem. It’s a wondrously cosmopolitan alpine town of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Bosniaks</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB">, Croats, Serbs, Jews, Turks and countless other peoples.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The first thing you notice is the mortar and bullet holes. I don’t exaggerate at all when I say that 99 per cent of all buildings are </span><span lang="EN-GB">pepperedwith holes of varying sizes like an Ottoman/Italian/Austrian/Yugoslav diorama made fro</span><span lang="EN-GB">m Swiss cheese. Every wall and alley and apartment block and government building looks like it’s only the holes which are keeping it together, and the lack of meaningful post-war capital has meant only the bare minimum has been repaired. You see commun</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5I9cfnJadL5HylaMivfmNJYdG82wLL0azBeO0tovW6HBBp3JOveO456AwuzN2itawFO-0l_GUXEoeXT1TfW5CQ8XeVcdy0ObN5Z96ynWC5UiTVtRcgjl0IeGLXjxyNe_xkwLOjokAemOX/s1600-h/DSC00584.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5I9cfnJadL5HylaMivfmNJYdG82wLL0azBeO0tovW6HBBp3JOveO456AwuzN2itawFO-0l_GUXEoeXT1TfW5CQ8XeVcdy0ObN5Z96ynWC5UiTVtRcgjl0IeGLXjxyNe_xkwLOjokAemOX/s320/DSC00584.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120825184191536018" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">ist-era apartment buildings where, after a galaxy of tiny rifle holes, suddenly there is a blackened crater the size of an umbrella, half covering someone’s window; the only window in the e</span><span lang="EN-GB">ntire block which is new. One morning not too long ago a middle-aged housewife was probably cooking on the stove when a Serbian shell blew her and her kitchen into smithereens. Somehow, through the grief and hatred, someone got around to calling someone else to come and install a gleaming new window, the only one among the other three hundred rotting Communist frames in that building. Keeping up with the Joneses is a bit different here.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>It’s sobering. As are the various “</span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Sarajevo</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> roses” on the pavements - flat crimson</span><span lang="EN-GB"> monuments to where more than 11 people died in one explosion. The</span><span lang="EN-GB">re are quite a lot of them to see.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There's so much to describe and to experience in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Sarajevo</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> that I can never d</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQ4Jh13ERiAdqdlAKAnzbXjO5bUzMAefudmmOkhBSlbfnHJMUtjhXNKa54LTcKIVEZZg0CycDRancBUMQ7pwirTJZh-n3QoFL64K70AuI-kgF8_02kVVu5Jx6I9xyUmPRU7YkBJJpV9tc/s1600-h/DSC00582.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQ4Jh13ERiAdqdlAKAnzbXjO5bUzMAefudmmOkhBSlbfnHJMUtjhXNKa54LTcKIVEZZg0CycDRancBUMQ7pwirTJZh-n3QoFL64K70AuI-kgF8_02kVVu5Jx6I9xyUmPRU7YkBJJpV9tc/s200/DSC00582.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120822985168280402" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">o justice here. The Arabness of the bazaar, the Europeanness of the rattling trams, the Asianness of</span><span lang="EN-GB"> th</span><span lang="EN-GB">e food smells in the Turkish quarter, the mosques (with this sign at the entrance), the syna</span><span lang="EN-GB">go</span><span lang="EN-GB">gues and orthodox churches, the juxtaposition of the eclectic skyline with the mountains </span><span lang="EN-GB">behind. These are the same mountains that</span><span lang="EN-GB"> hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics. In the reception of the hostel where I was staying, a yellowing and faded poster for those games included a map for the ath</span><span lang="EN-GB">letes and spectators to get from one event to another. Like architects’ drawings of commercial buildings before the</span><span lang="EN-GB">y</span><span lang="EN-GB">’re built, it depicted smiling and energetic people walking as in a solarised, landscaped dream. You wonder if they would be quite so smiley and energetic if they knew what was in the pipeline.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>It was in that very reception that I passed a very revealing few hours. One of the local men who work there is called Sunny, and my subsequent research supports his rather self-effacing claim to be the most popular tour guide in </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Europe</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">. He runs the only War Tour of Sarajevo, and demand exceeds supply by quite some way. As a fluent English speaking native Muslim who has travelled overseas but lived his entire life in Sarajevo (including, obviously, the duration of the war) and who’s met literally tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of travellers through his work with the hostel and the tour, his research value for me was beyond value.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>I can’t possibly summarise everything he</span><span lang="EN-GB"> told me here, but most salient was how happy he thinks Sarajevans are. The bare need for survival during the war has engendered a greater appreciation for life in its aftermath – the joy of one’s family being alive and well, the pleasure of walking outside without fear of snipers, the desire not just to <span style="font-style: italic;">survive</span> but to <i style="">live</i>. My travels will take me to northern </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">India</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Vietnam</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Argentina</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Chile</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">West Africa</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> and </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Lebanon</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> – former conflict zones the lot. I want to know if this response </span><span lang="EN-GB">– </span><span lang="EN-GB">to emerging from the dark into the light </span><span lang="EN-GB">– </span><span lang="EN-GB"> is universal or not.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>Travelling the way I’m doing it (hostel-hopping) lends itself extraordinarily to fleeting but deep friendships. An email world means that after you spend a few days with a new person or people, you can easily keep in touch. Moreover, backpackers are a self-selected group, especially when you go to the more exotic locations. To be sure, if you drop in on the Costa Brava or similar during summer you’ll find yourself surrounded by troglodytes </span><span lang="EN-GB">– including the eponymous bare-chested, Umbro-wearing, tattoo-porting and shaven-headed Englishman </span><span lang="EN-GB">who laughs at everyone and makes a general embarrassment out of himself and his compatriots – but backpackers are a bit different. They’re adventurers at heart. Their thrill comes from exploration and learning <i style="">per se</i>, the irresistible yearning to see and smell and watch and hear the world and to not be able to sit still for too long. They’re my kind of people.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>So it’s a good point to fill you in on a few of the characters I’ve met along the way. Right now I’m in the communal area of my hostel in central </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Sofia</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> – surrounded by quite the motley crew of itinerant misanthropes. There’s the middle aged Israeli Jew with the ginger beard like a rhododendron bush (to borrow from Blackadder). He talks to himself in Hebrew most of the time and has a peculiar facial tick that gives the impression you’re causing him pain. I’ve tried to be open-minded and friendly. So much so that I gave up my space in the Internet queue last n</span><span lang="EN-GB">ight, as he assured me he needed onl</span><span lang="EN-GB">y 15 minutes (and I wanted much longer). An hour later and after a barrage of harrumphs and tuts in ascending volume from me, he told me he wasn’t yet finished. I told him the Bulgarian government puts all visiting Jews under continual surveillance and my job was to report back on his Internet use. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>He gave me the computer.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>The man is evidently troubled. What my investigations reveal so far is that he’s 47, backpacking by himself, lived with his mother (I know, what a cliché) and accepted financial handouts until she died and he hasn’t worked since. I put CNN on earlier and he made a noise like a beached whale gasping its last – he doesn’t like watching the news. We discussed the </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Middle East</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">. I told him that the different birth rates between Jews and Arabs means that Jews would become a minority in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Israel</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> within a generation or so – so the clock is ticking on a two state solution. He did not know this, a</span><span lang="EN-GB">nd has looked somwhat lost in thought since.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>A Swedish couple are sitting – as always </span><span lang="EN-GB">–</span><span lang="EN-GB"> silently in the corner. He looks</span><span lang="EN-GB"> about twenty, has dreadlocks like schooner rope and eyes in a permanent squint. She looks about thirty with hair so blindingly white it probably accounts for his squint. Last night a group of us went out to a nightclub (which, after careful examination, actually turned out to be filled with an 80:20 mix of hookers and pimps - and practically no one else) and the apparently lobotomised Swedes resisted every opportunity to make even the barest polite conversation. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>And although this particular room is filled with people I have nightmares of being stuck in a lift with, the past weeks have involved some fascinating characters. There was Rikjaard, the shaggy Dutchman who has been cycling for the past sixteen months with no real itinerary and no end in sight. A computer programmer by profession, he decided that he could stomach the routine and pettiness of urban professional life no more. So he sold his po</span><span lang="EN-GB">ssessions, packed a bag (including a Ukulele which he cannot play but carries around with him anyway), hop</span><span lang="EN-GB">ped on his bike and set off. Although occasionally staying in a hostel to have the odd shower, he is for all intents a nomad, sleeping under trees and in fields. I’m not romanticising this life. There are very few people for whom such an existence could be genuinely rewarding. But after a night drinking beer together and sharing stories, he struck me as a man at total peace with the world. And although, to be sure, he feels the loneliness at times, he is completely content doing what he does – and plans to continue indefinitely. I was honoured and grateful to have crossed paths with him.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>As well as the Flying Dutchman, the past few days have seen me return to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Belgrade</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> with Johan, a South African Scottish Englishman twice my height and with Samsonesque locks. Soon to be a media lawyer, he’s doing much the</span><span lang="EN-GB"> same as me – a yearlong voyage around th</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdX-6CrHq9u4J1JrQ9ZnVh7bSOE_HETNSJ8ciXuvvJEruM-7IbiC7aAXuSvaNTNFG_b6d3UNz8GcpbgYe_jFm2MdeSP8rwuhHnum9OVn5A226CKstxk6bX1fFIp3rQLU9S9-KSYT5AThLY/s1600-h/DSC04092.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdX-6CrHq9u4J1JrQ9ZnVh7bSOE_HETNSJ8ciXuvvJEruM-7IbiC7aAXuSvaNTNFG_b6d3UNz8GcpbgYe_jFm2MdeSP8rwuhHnum9OVn5A226CKstxk6bX1fFIp3rQLU9S9-KSYT5AThLY/s200/DSC04092.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120823002348149618" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">e world with the prime intent of meeting new and varied people and learning more about human nature before he has to settle down behind a desk and a cloak of melancholy. With my assurance that the Serbian girls are even more lovely that the Hungarians, the Croats or the Bosnians, I lured him to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Belgrade</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB"> - and the hostel where Passepartout and I stayed a couple of weeks ago. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>As for the other friends of this trip so far, there has been Dylan and William and Rosenne and Eve and Violaine and Guillaume and Ivan and Sara and Monique and Andy and Fede and Suzanne. Little pockets of realness and symbiosis and profundity in a world otherwise replete with artifice.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>And so Passepartout’s and my friends are now Johan’s friends and innumerable phone numbers and email addresses have changed hands – and for about the 800000<sup>th</sup> time I marvel at the complete splendidness of making new travelling friends – with whom, almost by definition, you know you already have a great deal in common – and sitting up all night over a bottle of whisky sharing experiences of the world and of its people. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>But it’s right that I’m moving on to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Turkey</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> and </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">India</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> and possibly </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Kyrgyzstan</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> soon – the Balkans is, as I wrote above, overwhelmingly complex. The depths of the misunderstandings, the nuance of the suspicions and the history – it makes it genuinely impossible for the outsider to cease to feel like one. You can ask every question you can think of about the war, and NATO and religious differences, and the various land grabs over the centuries, and all it does is confuse you further. The history just runs too deep.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>What is clear though, what must be obvious to the most lackad</span><span lang="EN-GB">aisical of observers, is that this region is still profoundly poor, profoundly corrupt, and – despite the lure of the EU and the trickle of foreign capital becoming a torrent – sad and depressed. Many will disagree with such a characterisation, and there’s no shortage of anecdotal examples which lean the other way. But every shop with unaffordable goods, every university graduate who cannot leave and cannot get a job paying more than minimum wage, every incident of cronyism in the nascent democratic governments, every pensioner surviving on €50 per month while prices double and double – all of these lead you to one irresistible conclusion: that the Balkans and the former Eastern Bloc has a long way to go before it provides its citizens what they deserve. To be sure, it’s not the starvation poverty of sub-Saharan </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Africa</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> or the child sex abuse of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> or the unconscionable maltreatment of the Indian Untouchables. Of course it's not. I am prepared to accept that there are degrees of suffering, and, for the most part, people in this part of the world <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> have their basic needs met.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p>But as well as material poverty, there is the poverty of the human spirit, and it covers south east </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Europe</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> like a grey, wet blanket. So many people are desperate to leave their countries. They’re exasperated with the failure of liberal democracy to provide what they feel it should. They’re sick of inflation keeping a middle class lifestyle tantalisingly out of reach. They’re (at best) ambivalent towards a EU that makes them jump through economic hoop after administrative hoop like dumb circus animals. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p>And most significantly of all, I think, almost to a person they feel their standard of living has dropped since the end of communism. I don’t know how one measures standard of living. There are too many plausible criteria to count – both for relative and absolute measures. But what’s changed in the past fifteen years is that now the citizens of these countries get to see western tourists, see western television, and see an alternate life that has pulled perhaps inexorably away from their own. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>I don’t know it people really see progress as a “race” between<br />c</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYK8A3hVEPhW3Dg2ZdEHVgjPPbpPEFqcBKtP0XR_8b6phOWuRCNuN82cV7mNfnsBPRqZGNA3Wae_f6jKXNulxYMHuHTwCVUV-j1ZG7QjDYOdzxjpogWssojxTmT7tUmMZIZtEOABpd-SOZ/s1600-h/DSC04109.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYK8A3hVEPhW3Dg2ZdEHVgjPPbpPEFqcBKtP0XR_8b6phOWuRCNuN82cV7mNfnsBPRqZGNA3Wae_f6jKXNulxYMHuHTwCVUV-j1ZG7QjDYOdzxjpogWssojxTmT7tUmMZIZtEOABpd-SOZ/s320/DSC04109.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120824252183632770" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">ountries or not. Some definitely do. But the peoples of this region, with so much history and bloodshed and so much to be proud of too, see others in the world pulling away from them, and peace and seven percent economic growth or not – how can you be happy if you wake up every morning and see everyone else disappearing into the distance?<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p>I’ve overstated my point of course – there’s plenty of development and positivism to see too. But I must say I’m glad to be moving on. Tomorrow to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Turkey</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">, and as I stay in a hostel on the </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Bosporus</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> with my lovely friend Sarah, I will peer across the river for a whole week. And it’ll be a sad goodbye back at </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Europe</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> for almost a year, and a big hello to </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Asia</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">, where so very, very much awaits.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8871622511860805489.post-29722546313456333022007-10-05T16:03:00.000+01:002008-12-11T17:39:53.486+00:00Gypsies, sunset, steak, and lovesickness<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvLdsGIGy9OnyWh2-sXOpISGX-CcMaZOlEi607uOzxRteEO_tge-ypxEbTnnaMBiTuyF1ZagUB7jV1nkSGogogUD5V8SJA8CSuOoOvZ4eV5-YtwueocTt_dAH9r3WlAvgvLc0xahCJDZpi/s1600-h/DSC00510.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvLdsGIGy9OnyWh2-sXOpISGX-CcMaZOlEi607uOzxRteEO_tge-ypxEbTnnaMBiTuyF1ZagUB7jV1nkSGogogUD5V8SJA8CSuOoOvZ4eV5-YtwueocTt_dAH9r3WlAvgvLc0xahCJDZpi/s320/DSC00510.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117869340453788370" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">Passepartou</span><span lang="EN-GB">t is cross with m</span><span lang="EN-GB">e, and has s</span><span lang="EN-GB">pent the past couple of days greeting my every word with a torrent of sarcastic eye-rolling which I’m sure makes him privately dizzy. He accuses me of lovesickness and it’s just as well I’m discarding him at the Croat-Bosnian border. Lovesick I may be, but from a flatulent and sunburned Swedish Harry Potter-lookal</span><span lang="EN-GB">ike who lives on steak and lager, this seems an unfair slight. The lovesickness</span><span lang="EN-GB"> he rolls his eyes at is because of a raven-haired Korculan physicist named Sara. But a lot has happened since I last wrote, so I’ll start f</span><span lang="EN-GB">rom the beginning and come back to Passepartout and his pigheaded condescension a bit later.</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span lang="EN-GB">Serbia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> is a land of colour. I don’t mean it’s</span><span lang="EN-GB"> colourful in the sense of replete with bright colours. I mean that you fe</span><span lang="EN-GB">el the colours more than elsewhere – both their vividness and their absence. It’s really hard to describe. You have to see it to really get it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It starts on the train ride into the country – and I can’t deny feeling real nervousness. <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Serbia</st1:place></st1:country-region> is not the EU. It has no real prospects or intention of becoming part of the EU. Millions of litres of blood have been split on this soil over the past thousand years and longer, and much more recently than in western Europe. This is the</span><span lang="EN-GB"> Balkans. We (being NATO) bombed the crap out of it only eight years ago. <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hungary</st1:place></st1:country-region> and Czech feel like Eurodisney in comparison.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So the train rolls over the border and stops for what seems like forever. The gingerbread villages of southern <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hungary</st1:place></st1:country-region> with their flowerpots and white fences and farmers driving shiny tractors gives way to a deserted siding as you wait for the Serbian border police to board the train.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">They do so, and painstakingly interview every passenger on board. The wait is interminable. You ask yourself whether you got rid of the magic mushrooms you bought in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Vienna</st1:place></st1:city> or whether the Dutch sex aids will start vibrat</span><span lang="EN-GB">ing maniacally in </span><span lang="EN-GB">your bag just as Lieutenant Bogdan – in camouflage fatigues and carrying a Kalashnikov and a catalogue of anti-imperial grievances – pushes sternly through your compartment door.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But the landscape is surreal. Even at 5pm, the sky is charcoal and </span><span lang="EN-GB">the flat expanse of land drained and ashen. I felt, I must say, a little unwelcome – and I say this as an Australian who has been to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Indonesia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">As it darkened and darkened it struck me – the darkness of this country is not just an ashen sky over blackened land, it must partly be due to a lack of reflected artificial light. For two or three hours we travelled through northern <st1:country-region st="on">Serbia</st1:country-region> towards <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Belgrade</st1:place></st1:city> and saw barely a light – despite the fact the countryside is plenty populated. For whatever <st1:city st="on">Belgrade</st1:city> has become in the past few years, and despite the fact <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Serbia</st1:place></st1:country-region> has become the tiger economy of the Balkans and a lightening rod for foreign investment, this is a dark country with a dark history.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But what surprise awaited us in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Belgrade</st1:place></st1:city>! W</span><span lang="EN-GB">e arrived at night and stumbled through potholed streets and lopsided alleyways, g</span><span lang="EN-GB">uided (or misguided) by <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Cyrilli</st1:address></st1:street></span><span lang="EN-GB"><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">c street</st1:address></st1:street> names which Passepartout claimed to be able to decipher without difficulty.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Three or four hours and a couple of wildly gesticulated conversations with sour-faced taxi drivers later, we arrived at our lodgings. Which turned out to be about thirty metres from where we started. But the next day brought with it a true sensory smorgasbord and I implore you all not merely to visit <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Belgrade</st1:place></st1:city> – but to do it soon. Because as with everywhere in the former eastern bloc and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the rate of Westernisation is truly frantic. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Serbia</st1:place></st1:country-region> is a country with profound problems. The billboards and neon advertising belie a massive disparity in wealth, a gini coefficient that would make an American CEO blush. The shops are full of broadly the same products one finds in <st1:city st="on">London</st1:city> or <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sydney</st1:place></st1:city> – smartphones and plasma tellies, clothing which (although hardly Paris Fashion Week) are roughly the same as everywhere else. And the price</span><span lang="EN-GB">s are the same as in western Europe. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But here is a problem I’ve seen all through the former East – th</span><span lang="EN-GB">e stores are empty because income is barely a quarter that of the West. My CSFI</span><span lang="EN-GB"> salary in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Lo</st1:place></st1:city></span><span lang="EN-GB"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">ndon</st1:place></st1:city> would afford me a truly exceptional lifestyle here but it would make me one of only a handful of people in the country able to afford the goods that fill the shelves. Who make up the other handful? The Mob, a handful of the Serbian elite who have made their money elsewhere, and arithmetically-challenged tourists who struggle to convert the currency and enthuse that a Nokia N95 is a real <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Belgrade</st1:place></st1:city> bargain.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">What’s more, the streets are filled with gypsies, the Roma, and the partially employed. Plus more stray cats and dogs than you’ve ever seen in your life. Street markets are everywhere but sell nothing you would ever wish to buy and the</span><span lang="EN-GB"> locals seem to feel the same. I watched a busy market for an hour and saw people examine broken digital watches and mobile chargers and cracked glasses and buy virtu</span><span lang="EN-GB">ally nothing. Is it that uncontrollable inflation has extended from the big Market to the street market? Or just that they recognise crap when they see it too?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The grey darkness, as I said, is striking – and it admittedly didn’t help that it drizzled a fair bit of the time Passepartout and I</span><span lang="EN-GB"> were there. But the smell is discernible too</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqKj41XfvQEPMn9nUfxSnyrts8tfw_SP3hFeJYWn6uAK0cEq7tSXgMRsq5hfaM_ZDfPYtixQgERyg0Okt-BAnUUuHgOcRutf5ooqsucxB6AqRm3tdughoiJYACmL49yhP9ZEA3pve1il6Y/s1600-h/DSC00513.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqKj41XfvQEPMn9nUfxSnyrts8tfw_SP3hFeJYWn6uAK0cEq7tSXgMRsq5hfaM_ZDfPYtixQgERyg0Okt-BAnUUuHgOcRutf5ooqsucxB6AqRm3tdughoiJYACmL49yhP9ZEA3pve1il6Y/s320/DSC00513.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117870293936528098" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB"> – and it’s not a bad one at all, it’s just familiar to anyone who has visited large Asian cities. It’s the everywhere scent of cooking oil and outdoor food preparation, of street animals and communist-era car pollution, of dust and sewerage and newly-washed laundry. It may sound unpleasant but it’s not at all. It’s a smell that is real and intense and </span><span lang="EN-GB">welcomingly reminiscent of my travels in <st1:place st="on">Asia</st1:place> as a child.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">We visited Tito’s mausoleum pe</span><span lang="EN-GB">rched on a hill overlooking the </span><span lang="EN-GB">city. An exorbitant taxi ride across potholes the size of bomb craters – some of which, I suppose, may actually have been – took us to where the strongman of rump <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:place></st1:country-region> is buried. The Serbs revere him for resisting Soviet pressure and holding the federation together. He reminds them of a time when <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:place></st1:country-region> was effectively Greate</span><span lang="EN-GB">r Serbia with many times the area and population it has now. Only last year <st1:country-region st="on">Montenegro</st1:country-region> voted for independence, the last of the SFRY states to leave the once mighty <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Serbia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. You can’t help but feel their nostalgia when talking to them. The young Serbs largely loath Milosevic and Mladic and the other military cronies from the Bosnian war, but even the most internationalist and cosmopolitan among them and those too young </span><span lang="EN-GB">to have been drowned in nationalist propaganda feel aggrieved. Aggrieved at </span><span lang="EN-GB">NATO for the 1999 campaign, aggrieved at the <st1:country-region st="on">US</st1:country-region>, at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">the Hague</st1:place></st1:city> Tribunal, at the EU which sneers at them, aggrieved at the Croats whom many consider to have been co-aggressors in the war. The world doesn’t see it that way – because history has written of a regime which was ruthless, racist and expansionist – but they do. With everyone I spoke to, I sensed bitterness at everything which has happened. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Tito’s burial place is one of the most unusual places I’ve visited. After he died in 1980 they built a museum around his grave, a place of such 1970s tackiness th</span><span lang="EN-GB">e Brady Bunch would’ve squealed in delight. It looks like the atrium of an unbearably nasty hotel and the museum where his considerable collection of gifts are housed is empty and sterile and staffed by a man who tried to charge an irate Passepartout €7 for a postcard. Passepartout told h</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi58irkvamIdGOJp7WEyIJGA4be-MPSGHF-YtAWtFc0C62FpjJHvxF_DrgdH6R2TpU_oeGMPLoHErPtidqBm5HZhSCysdpdf8JGYm4dyLjdJm-oDP033iFlUVyzKAXXOn-NInUW7uGmFsWl/s1600-h/P1000645.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi58irkvamIdGOJp7WEyIJGA4be-MPSGHF-YtAWtFc0C62FpjJHvxF_DrgdH6R2TpU_oeGMPLoHErPtidqBm5HZhSCysdpdf8JGYm4dyLjdJm-oDP033iFlUVyzKAXXOn-NInUW7uGmFsWl/s320/P1000645.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117871311843777266" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">im in his now-fluent Serbian to stick the postcard up his commie rent-a-cop arse. We left.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">On our last night in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Belgrade</st1:place></st1:city> we were joined by an Australian girl who has the kind of presence that when she enters a room it feels like someone left. Soporific but good-natured, she accompanied Passepartout and I to a tourist-less bistro in the suburbs where Passepart</span><span lang="EN-GB">out had his fourth steak of the day and after seeing the most extraordinary s</span><span lang="EN-GB">unset (smog-induced, alas) we listened to the locals belt out ancient and violent drinking songs. The lyrics to m</span><span lang="EN-GB">y favourite goes:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-style: italic;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“When we cut off the breasts of the women and eat the children of the Muslims and the Jews, then will <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Serbia</st1:place></st1:country-region> reclaim its rightful position as leaders. Because we rape the women and kill the men – we are warriors to the last man!!”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Okay, I’ve paraphrase a little, but I have this translation on good authority from Passepartout (who by this time was loudly boasting fluency in Serbian to anyone who would listen) so it is presumably accurate.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">After the bistro we were led to an underground bar so cool it doesn’t even get busy until 3am and we drank ourselves stupid for hours with the locals and some expats until Passepartout wanted another steak so we settled for Preslavica – a Serbian hamburger the size of an Olympic discus – and caught our 6am train to Croatia.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I will save telling you about Split and its underage beehive, and the drive there at 190kph for another time because I’ve rambled on at some length already, so I’ll sk</span><span lang="EN-GB">ip straight to the past four days which we’ve passed on the island of Korcula, three hours off the Croatian coast, and where I fell for Sara.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Korcula is – and I don’t think I’m g</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVdNGpn3Uka3SFll0sAeQUnAO9w9NL3X32QbgmzLr5ws8XQibi_XAOsQMdT5YWHtyOYLaMi7kte_JUUnqQib485cxAOkW1X94iT-5UNEAkrP7WEY4hlbrWa1Yq9u9gpSlDbrifb7qIAB9y/s1600-h/P1000770.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVdNGpn3Uka3SFll0sAeQUnAO9w9NL3X32QbgmzLr5ws8XQibi_XAOsQMdT5YWHtyOYLaMi7kte_JUUnqQib485cxAOkW1X94iT-5UNEAkrP7WEY4hlbrWa1Yq9u9gpSlDbrifb7qIAB9y/s320/P1000770.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117873270348864258" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">oing too far out on a limb here – perhaps the loveliest place I’ve ever visited. The isl</span><span lang="EN-GB">and has 16000 inhabitants (of which 3500 live in the town of the same name), and it sits in the middle of an archipelago of crystal clear Adriatic waters, thick forests and a medieval old town which has resisted invaders for centuries. It is also – if you’re interested – the birthplace of Marco Polo.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Our days were spent exquisitely – kayaking, climbing a mountain in search of a Franciscan monastery, sipping espressos with the locals – and no list of adjectives can adequately convey how beautiful, peaceful and welcoming a place it is. Let me just t</span><span lang="EN-GB">ell you to go there at some point in your lives and you will understand what I mean.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I should wind up, so I’ll finish by telling the cause of Passepartout’s eye-rolling. On Monday, his aunt introduced us to Sara, a girl who grew up there but who now studies theoretical physics in Zagreb and who was back on the island for a couple of weeks. The introduction was made with evident intent to forge a romantic union between Passepartout and her (his aunt had to marry her still-husband in a shotgun wedding in the 60s after they were seen holding hands in public – but things have progressed a little since then).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It transpired that Sara is a lot more like me than like Passepartout (she farts less than 35 times a day, for one thing, and doesn’t give a rat’s arse about buying equities) and we hit it off immediately. She is chic and curious and struggles to understand people in groups. She is melancholic and deterministic and cynical about human nature. S</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROrS9HQf5ehWrj0ZMSXZqFEQYCsDgy-_sdMvT3XpE5SWZ3Mi_FBsFYxJPn-NjY-ZynpnM1vfz0YyyNAi9Vr1JTrkwBi5UsH_niOcWwXGPVdYu0crWGNRTYppWSdft-Gu4J_jwJmmv03g_/s1600-h/DSC00569.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROrS9HQf5ehWrj0ZMSXZqFEQYCsDgy-_sdMvT3XpE5SWZ3Mi_FBsFYxJPn-NjY-ZynpnM1vfz0YyyNAi9Vr1JTrkwBi5UsH_niOcWwXGPVdYu0crWGNRTYppWSdft-Gu4J_jwJmmv03g_/s320/DSC00569.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117874167997029138" border="0" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">he is intrigued by the happiness of others and their lives and the nature of good and evil, and I was immediately smitten.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Passepartout is not quite as dim as he appears and realised this by the second day. “Jump her!” he implores. “She wants it! I asked her friends and they all said yes!” Bless him. But soon I began to understand how differently things work in this part of the world. In a small, catholic town on a remote island where everyone knows everyone and gossip is a de facto currency, a girl cannot be seen cavorting in public. My usual repertoire of innuendo, lascivious sniggering and smart-arse comments would not work here. This would require a crash course in the art of seduction.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The first evening that I walked her home (after Passepartout’s increasingly insistent suggestions) and after she had playfully tossed her hair and touched my arm and girly-giggled a couple of dozen times, I offered my arm as we walked through the moonlit main street. She declined it – the first time a girl ever has. I was crushed. Bewildered. Confused. Fuck Passepartout and his meddling! I vowed to put arsenic on his breakfast steak the next morning.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So I did not pursue and we parted with a smile and a nervous kiss on the cheek, but the next day my various investigations revealed that this is all part of the boy-girl game here – il faut ‘jouer le jeu’ – and she knew that I had one more night on the island. And to be seen walking arm in arm with a man back to her house at 3am would start tongues wagging – even if, alas, not our own.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So after a day spent with her at the beach (during which at one point she emerged glistening and bikini-clad from the water exactly the way Ursula Andress did in Dr No, and I lay on my front to conceal both my white belly and ... well… anyway) we went out again on my last night on the island. And we chatted and played and discussed the world and sat on the beach as the water lapped, and then…well, I will not allow this column to be reduced to salacious tabloid rot, but suffice to say that the night ended perfectly and reminded me once more that although for most people at most times in most places life is tedious and shit, there come occasional moments - for all of us - where you wouldn’t change a single thing.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So we parted, and I shall miss her and think very fondly of the few days we spent. And once I rid myself of Passepartout at the Bosnian border, my voyage will continue solo across the Balkans to <st1:city st="on">Sarajevo</st1:city> and <st1:city st="on">Sofia</st1:city> and <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Skopje</st1:place></st1:city>. Alone, perhaps, but not lonely.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Sam Mendelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11308650863862009897noreply@blogger.com1