Big Trip Two - The Big Trip Continues

Animal Kingdom Shout Out

2010-05-06T00:26:00.003Z

Hey all. Just a shout out for a new aussie movie opening at the start of June. Got Guy Ritchie... Won the Sundance Best Picture... Looks goooooood.

Here's the trailer.

Small loans, big changes

2010-03-25T01:18:00.001Z

Some day soon there will be a proper update... but until then I just wanted to share this amazing little clip.

Perspective... its a wonderful thing

2010-02-10T03:48:00.000Z

How rich are you? >>

I'm loaded.
It's official.
I'm the 49,847,130 richest person on earth!

Is there anybody out there? Probably not!

2010-01-23T09:16:00.008Z

Rowan and Colette. I love this pic!

Hello! I expect a few regular readers have given up on me in the two and a half months since I last updated this blog. Apologies. I hadn’t forgotten. I have wanted to write something, but there just always seemed to be something else to do…

Hopefully a brief account of what I’ve been up to since November will act as some penance. :)

My usual themes are: working in the development field, life in Sydney, and travel. And as usual, I’ve got a little to say about all of these things.

When I last updated the blog at the start of November, I’d just returned from an inspiring trip to India. I was full of enthusiasm for a non-microfinance project for mentally-ill women in India’s poorest state, Orissa.

Since then, I’ve been working to formalise processes for supporting both this project, and any future non-microfinance projects that we might wish to fund. Otherwise, the last three months at work have been typical of any three-month period since I joined Opportunity, in that there have been big changes in personnel, and responsibilities. And being such a small organisation, any changes inevitably affect me. Since I last wrote, four of our six-strong leadership team have, at least temporarily, left. Our donor relations director and investment director have moved on, and our programs director, Mark, has moved to the

Philippines for 2 years, while, Chris, the head of our Strategic Services Department (and my boss) has moved with his family to India for a year.

Right: At Ed's wedding.

This has changed my typical working day. Not least because, with my boss moving to Hyderabad last week, it has been somewhat quieter in the office. I am now a one-man department (though I still rely on several volunteers to keep me company) and I’m looking forward to the extra responsibility this year, both informally – as I will be the main person available to help develop and present our strategy – and formally, as I’ve now taken on responsibility for looking at the potential for new programs in Nepal, China, Indonesia and other SE Asian countries.

I didn’t take any leave over Christmas. I even worked in the office on my own for two days. I already feel like I’ve hit the ground running in 2010 and I’m enjoying the job a lot again. Plus, I’ll be going to Nepal with work for the first time in a little under 3 weeks. Though I usually kick and scream when I’m dragged out of my comfort zone, I find work inspiring when there is change, new demands and a variety of work areas. I grow bored when I fall into too much of a routine. I don’t think I’m going to be too bored in 2010. And I should have plenty to write about.

Christmas Work Do

The last time I wrote about anything other than work on this blog… hmmmm, I shouldn’t even say (blush). The subject was the ‘Spring on the Rooftop’ party. Seems like about, I dunno… four seasons ago now. I’ve hosted another rooftop party since then. Great party. Same people, different season, and a different rooftop. At the start of October I saw an apartment for lease that I liked. I’d been looking casually for 6 months. It’s nice to look when you don’t have any need to take the plunge as you can afford to be very fussy (I’m sure there’s an analogy with dating there, but I’m not going to say it).

I love the new place. A one bedroom apartment feels like a big improvement from a studio, and the building itself is impressive. Harry Seidler was Sydney’s premier architect for decades and has designed some of Sydney’s most distinctive modern apartments and public buildings (including the Ian Thorpe Pool, built after his death in 2006).

My apartment block is one of his earlier, more modest efforts, built in the 1960s, but it’s still an interesting design, with the rooftop overlooking the Bridge and Opera House the highlight. I’ve moved closer to the harbour, closer to a nicer, quieter part of town, and there’s an icing on the cake. Where my last place had a gym that I never used, this place has a rooftop pool that I’m cooling off in at least three times a week. And it’s been a blessing in the last few months. Yes… get ready to start throwing bricks, I’m going to talk about this summer’s weather.

In the interests of keeping it brief, I’ll just mention today’s weather. It’s a Saturday, so I can’t tell you what the weather was like before 10am. Damn hot I’ll bet. By 11am when I got to Bronte beach it was 37C. The peak was 41C at 230pm, but that all changed when the temperature dropped 15 degrees in an hour as a storm barrelled across the city. As I write this it’s almost impossible to tell what will happen in the next few hours. There’s a free open-air concert in the Domain tonight but I’ll be taking the safe option of watching the Australian open on TV instead.

There seems to be a weather record broken in Australia every week. But if Sydney takes the biscuit, Melbourne takes a large cake, a cake platter, and a set of 12 side dishes. When I was in Melbourne with work last week the lowest overnight temperature on the first night was 37C. Yes, that was the ‘coolest’ temperature during the night. Not that I noticed, tucked up in my air-conditioned hotel room. But I did notice the 43C temperature at 5pm that afternoon as waves of heat reflected off the pavement. I seriously considered frying an egg on the pavement, but my brains were boiled and scrambled and I just wanted to get indoors. When I left two days later, the peak temperature had dropped to 23C.

Ok, enough amateur meteorology.

I couldn’t mention the last two months without breaking a bit of a personal taboo. Since I started this blog, I haven’t mentioned romance, aside from a few unheralded references. But there can’t be anyone I haven’t already told about Alise Grinfelde, so it will come as news to no-one that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in the last few months corresponding with a girl that I met at Ed and Dace’s wedding in October. Alise is a fellow European, but unlike me is still braving the frosty European winters. In Riga the temperature is currently -30C. Apparently if you could go from +41C to -30C instantly you would perish within a few minutes. Ok, I just made that up, but I will be able to shed some light on that theory when I head back to Europe next month. Alise and I will be spending some time together in Paris, Scotland, and Latvia when I go back ‘top-side’ in Feb/March. And of course, as you know already, I’m really looking forward to spending time with the family and celebrating Granny’s 90^th birthday.

Aija and Alise

So, I hope that all goes some way to explaining the lengthy silence in the blogosphere. If I’d written as many words on this blog as I’ve sent to Latvia in the last 3 months, I could probably publish another book. On the plus side for the blog, at least I will be able to post some travel snaps with someone good looking in them this time. ;)

Famous last words, but more updates will follow soon! I’ve written an article on my friend Dom’s art Mardi Gras exhibition that I just have to talk about.There’s the trip to Nepal, and I have plenty to say about going back to Scotland. But next I’ll stick on some pics of two great parties – Summer On the Rooftop (with some pool action), and New Year on the Rooftop, which was spectacular.

Hope Among The Poorest - Orissa, India.

2009-11-07T03:07:00.013Z

After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually 6 months, I was back in India last week. I spent all but one day in Delhi progressing the two projects that comprise the largest part of my role with Opportunity International. I want to talk about that other day, when I journeyed more in curiosity than purpose, but ended up with a real need to ‘do something’.

I’ve seen a lot of the Indian subcontinent now, the North (Punjab, Nepal and the Himalayas), the South (the big cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and Sri Lanka) and even a little of the West in Gujarat. But I’d never been to the east. The east is a whole other realm of India again. Different languages (Bengali), very different cities (Calcutta) and states that have more in common with neighbouring Bangladesh than with the rest of India.

Orissa stretches along hundreds of miles of India’s eastern coastline. Its population of 37m makes it middling in terms of Indian states, and therefore pretty devoid of outside interest. Of course, you wouldn’t expect this place to gain much international attention, even if its population is greater than either Australia or Canada, two perennially newsworthy parts of the world. But how excluded and remote is a place when a 1999 cyclone (Cyclone 5B) could kill 10,000 people without even being considered important enough to warrant a name?

Despite vast mineral reserves, that are only now being tapped by international mining companies, Orissa is marked by having possibly the worst development stats of any Indian state. Life expectancy is shorter, education levels lower, infant mortality rates higher than anywhere else in a country which generally performs very poorly on the Millenium Development Goals. And that’s why Opportunity International have more partners based in Orissa, than in any other state.

If you want to tackle poverty, this is the place to come.

I was the first person from Opportunity to go to Orissa. Though I didn’t perceive any risk in the areas I went to, the state does have a reputation for lawlessness. A headline in this week’s Indian newspapers read “Maoists blow up guesthouse” (though no-one was injured) and there’s a lot of socialist activity and civic unrest.

Of the three microfinance institutions that we work with in Orissa, Manas and I visited Peoples Forum – one of our newest partners – to review their work generally, and to make a visit to a very interesting new development project there.

We met two groups of women who are part of a microfinance program that has been running since 1989 and now has 25 branches and 35,000 clients.

The first group of 10 women make saris. They have borrowed Rp10,000 (about $250) each from Peoples Forum to pay for materials. They will repay the money over 18 months and then be eligible to borrow more money and expand their business. It was important to see where the women work – each of the rooms is barely bigger than the loom it accommodates. The rooms are dark with small windows, which are lit by light bulbs even in the middle of the day. And the work is hard, physical work. There’s a lot of effort needed to operate the machines.

And what do they get for this hard work?

Before Peoples Forum came along and provided the group with a loan, each of the women saved around Rs50 per month, and over a period of 18 months they had saved Rs1050 each in total, or about $25 in total.

Imagine where you were 18 months ago and then imagine you had spent every day since then working 8 hours a day in a small, dark room in a tropical environment, just to earn as much money as the typical Australian would spend on a round of drinks or a couple of cinema tickets. It’s staggering.

But the MFI is trying to change this. By giving the women training and business support, they can earn more for the saris and increase their income and the amount they can save.

The second group was even more interesting. The women here make ropes from raw material, again working 7-8 hours a day in the tropical heat, where peak temperatures can be 47C.

They purchase about $30 of raw material and it takes the group of 10 women 3 days to turn that into ropes which they sell for about twice as much. All told, this gives them an income of about $1 each per day. But again the MFI is giving the women hope of improving their lives. Through a loan, they will purchase an additional machine that will allow them to work more effectively, and they are even building a ‘factory’ of sorts that will let them work indoors in the monsoon season.

What is really remarkable about this group is that the majority of them used to be lepers (they are ex-lepers as Monty Python would say). The houses that they are building with the profits from their rope making business are being built virtually next to a government-built leprosy mission. And they used to live in the mission, until they were cured.

It is remarkable to think of the obstacles these women have had to overcome. Not just issues of caste, poverty and their status as women in India’s poorest state, but also the stigma attached to leprosy. They are now running their own business and earning money that they are using to improve their lives.

This is something that microfinance has always been about –demonstrating that people who are poor and excluded still have value in society. The work that Peoples Forum are doing is just taking that one step further.

And the last program we visited on the day is arguably yet more ambitious.

Mission Ashra is Peoples Forum’s project to provide care and shelter and rehabilitation to women who have ended up abandoned on the streets because they are mentally ill.

Why do they end up on the streets? Firstly, there is a real stigma attached to mental illness in India. When someone develops a mental illness, their family often aren’t able or willing to take care of them. And they are just dumped by their families. It may seem unimaginable, but often these women and girls – one-third of the ashram’s patients are teenagers – are taken to the city on the pretext of a holiday. And at the end of the holiday their families will just leave them in the hotel room.

The natural reaction to this is horror and disgust. But understanding why this can happen is important to understanding why the small ashram that Peoples Forum is running could have a transformational impact far beyond its doors.

Attitudes to mental illness are shaped by education and experience. A lack of education and community awareness in the poorest parts of rural India, mean that mental illness is often thought to be incurable, a curse, and something that dehumanises people. This leads to a situation where the family feels that abandoning the individual is the only option they have.

The second reason that so many mentally ill women languish on the streets is that, once they are in that situation where they’ve been abandoned, they have very limited capacity to help themselves. If you’re suffering from depression or schizophrenia, you find it difficult to seek help or to even look after yourself. And these women are very vulnerable. When the ashram rescues women, many of them have been the victims of physical or sexual abuse.

Almost all of the 150 women at the Ashram are from a very poor background. Many have been rescued as a result of a call to a public helpline that the Ashram provides. When they arrive at the ashram the woman will find herself in a site about as big as football field, maybe a little longer, and a little narrower. The facilities are limited. There isn’t even enough space in the rooms for beds. The beds have now been taken out and mattresses placed on the floor to accommodate the women.

There are a formidable list of mental conditions here (depression on its own would rarely be enough to see someone end up at the Ashram) and I feel sure even the best resourced facilities would find this patient-load challenging.

But, despite limited space and resources, the Ashram does appear to have great success in looking after patients. Drugs are part of the answer – they have a full time pharmacist – and psychiatric care is available from nurses and a part-time psychiatrist. At the same time its obvious that drugs and medical attention are only part of the rehabilitation process. Perhaps just as important is the love and care being provided. On top of that, the Ashram makes stimulating activities a key part of the women’s daily experience. Yoga, music, gardening… these all provide some routine and stability to the patients’ lives, something to fill their time, and to give them some meaning.

But of course the ultimate goal is to treat the illness and make the women well again and able to go back to their families. That’s absolutely the aim of the ashram. And reuniting women with their families is a key part of what they do.

And they have mixed success, which is perhaps not surprising. You can split the women into a couple of different groups. There are a group of women who have ‘gone missing’ – perhaps run away from home, or been abducted. In many cases their family will have thought they were dead. Often they are overjoyed to find their daughter or wife. But in many cases, because there is such a stigma attached to mental illness, that they don’t want the person back even when they have recovered. And that can cause huge rejection issues for the patient, and a relapse into depression and further mental illness.

But mixed results does not mean the Ashram is not successful. Over 250 women have been reunited with their families in the last 6 or 7 years. With limited resources Mission Ahra is providing an absolutely essential service.

And really, although it was very upsetting to see people in a distressed condition, in what I perceived to be a bleak and comfortless environment, actually these women are the better off. What is really heartbreaking is to think of the women out there who aren’t getting even this basic care and shelter.

There are only 2 sites like this in the whole of India. The other is in Chennai in the south of India. With government resources for mental health extremely limited, there are thousands of women with mental illness in India who are left vulnerable with no support. It is no exaggeration to say that the life-expectancy of these women is very short, and quality of life is desperate. It really does break my heart to think about this.

But there is hope here too. As with their microfinance programs, Peoples Forum are demonstrating something really powerful. They are demonstrating that mental illness does not make someone less than human. These are human beings too. And they deserve care and love. They are also showing that, with care and shelter, many of these women can recover and go back to their families.

Before I’d even left the ashram I’d started to think about what I could do, and what Opportunity could do. We have expertise in two things that gives us a real possibility of helping here – we can sell a story to people when we find something truly inspiring and we can leverage something that works to expand that solution and maximise impact.

Mission Ashra has the capability to not just help a few mentally ill women, but to change perceptions of mental illness. Peoples Forum would like to move to a new, larger site with better medical facilities – effectively something more like a hospital. This may start locally, and modestly, but I believe it can grow fast. I’ve already made this presentation to colleagues and we are taking the first steps to make things happen.

This last picture may appear to sum up how bleak the Ashram is, but actually these women are relatively lucky. The ashram is giving hope. The alternative is hopelessness.

Cappuccino for a Cause

2009-10-16T02:40:00.008Z

Cappuccino for a Cause: As much as fund-raising, we're hopeful that this gets a lot of coverage for what we are doing, and we're seeing signs of some press coverage already.

Work is a world of excitement today!!! As mentioned before, Opportunity have teamed up with Gloria Jeans for Cappuccino for a Cause. This is something really new for us - we've never had a big campaign like this before, so the team are really buzzing... and that's only partly from the coffee we've been drinking today to support the cause.

Also, we have our big annual event tonight at Kirribili House which is a bit like renting out Ten Downing Street for the night. We'll have 150 movers and shakers in the room. Despite losing my voice (what a time for a bug to strike!), I'm really looking forward to it. It's a great opportunity to bring our message to even more people. Though I might have to pass the message on using sign-language.

This kind of exposure is really exciting. Sometimes this side of things is just as exciting as getting out to the field, though with 10 days to go, I've definitely got one eye (one bum-cheek?) on the flight to India.

Revisiting My Favourite Place in the World... via the Economist

2009-10-09T03:06:00.005Z

One of my favourite pictures, from my time on Easter Island.

In all of my travels, and of the 50+ countries visited, Easter Island is still the most mystic and exotic. A little clod of earth way out in the Pacific Ocean still pops into my thoughts and dreams... and I make no apologies for romanticising about somewhere that would capture the imagination of the most cynical traveller.

Despite UNESCO World Heritage status, the island and its 5,000 inhabitants rarely make the news, so it was quite a surprise for me to see an article on Rapa Nui in this week's Economist magazine.

To be honest the article is a bit of a non-event - too short to do any more than list the current issues threatening the island environment, but long enough at least to bring attention to one of the world's most important historical sites. I believe such attention can be a positive thing, if it helps encourage Chile and La Isla Pascua develop a long-term plan to protect the place. But that attention could, I suppose, be negative, if it simply encourages people to visit.

I would love to go back, and would love more people to be able to have the experience I had there. At the same time, it's that type of attention that risks doing as much environmental damage today as the island's original inhabitants did hundreds of years ago. But there's no harm in reading about it, and if the economist article isn't emotional enough for you, you can always check out the effect it had on me.

Spring on the Rooftop

2009-09-29T07:16:00.011Z

In the past two weeks, the exceptionally calm winter has given way to a rather unsettled Spring. Such is a perfect description of our weather here in Sydney. But I could equally be talking about my own personal circumstances!

The weather has been bizarre even by Australian standards. Last Tuesday, saw the worst dust storms to hit Sydney since 1944. Being unfamiliar with dust storms – except for during my annual flat clean – I was at a complete loss to interpret the scene that greeted me when I woke up at 5am to see my room completely bathed in red.

Imagine waking up in the morning and seeing this view out of your window. This is an undoctored shot of my view at 5am on Tuesday 22^nd September. Now I can say that, though I’ve never been to the outback, the outback has come to me!

It’s hard to overstate how odd things looked as I peered out of my window. Nuclear attack, meteor strike, or the Rapture... all seemed like plausible explanations. But by lunchtime the skies had cleared to a familiar blue, and the only puzzling thing was how the global news networks saw fit to drag the story out across the rest of the week. ‘Sydney brought to a standstill’ was one of my favourite headlines. Sydney is always at a standstill at 5am! But the press love to talk up a dust storm in a teacup.

Let's get this barbey started. The Keith Foreman Grill cranks into action.

The high winds were back for my big party on Saturday. This was the much anticipated ‘Spring on the Rooftop’ celebration. Some cold beers and cooked sausages helped the 30 or so punters forget the chill-wind for a while, but eventually we had to beat a hasty retreat to the local pub.

There was a general consensus that the venue was pretty spectacular, and that this was an event to be repeated in a couple of months, when good weather would be guaranteed.

But this might not be possible…

I’m hoping to move apartment soon. Much as I like my studio apartment, living in just one room does get a little tiring. On better days I like to think that a studio is great because ‘every room you are in is a large spacious room’ (!), but that makes Polyanna appear like a pessimist. And since I’ve started looking for somewhere else, I’ve been more unsettled where I am. The grass has started to look greener…

Unsettling too are my travel plans for the next couple of months. I am still no clearer on when I will next be in India. I hope it will be within the next month or so as work is always easier when I can keep strong connections with colleagues abroad. And thoughts of travel aren’t just restricted to India. I would really love to pay a visit home to see the family. I’m hoping to get these trips worked out in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, a much smaller trip beckons. The next event on the Spring calendar is Ed’s stag weekend. Fifteen of us are going to the Gold Coast for a weekend of wholesome fresh air and exercise. Or something like that. This must be the most anticipated stag weekend of all time. Expect limited reports and blurry photographs.

This is the first day’s holiday I’ve had for six months (oh poor me!) and an interruption to my training routine, which has been going superbly. I’ve never felt fitter. I ran my first half-marathon last weekend and clocked 98 minutes. This was way better than expected and a similar pace to my best run for 10km – half the distance – some 8 years ago!

I wish I could push myself as hard in the pool, but I’m nervous about the injury returning. Still, running has been a great alternative. At the start of the half-marathon, running across the harbour bridge, with thousands of other Sydneysiders, under the giant Australian flags... I started to well-up! And there can’t be many more inspiring locations to finish a road-race either - running round Circular Quay and up to finish under the opera house.

Sydney’s weather is only rivalled in unpredictability by Melbourne. After my last update, I travelled down to Victoria’s capital to attend a two-day conference. I stayed an extra night to catch-up with friends and go to the Dali exhibition at the National Gallery there. My 7pm flight was then delayed as all flight operations were temporarily cancelled due to a storm passing the airport. Not ideal when I had to get up at 5am in Sydney the next morning for the half-marathon! I eventually got five hours sleep, and another reminder of why I prefer Sydney!

Cappucino for a Cause

2009-09-22T00:50:00.005Z

Hi All

On October the 16th and 17th, Gloria Jean's Coffees and Opportunity International are getting together to help people living in poverty. Buy a cappuccino from Gloria Jeans across Australia on those days and 50c will go towards Opportunity's Microfinance Programs in India, the Philippines and Indonesia.

http://www.facebook.com/CappuccinoForACause

Enjoy a caffeine high, and a buzz from helping others, at the same time!

(Update on the Sydney Half Marathon coming up shortly...)

Great times

2009-09-13T10:39:00.008Z

The mercury topped 32C today. And according to my friend Olivier it’s still winter. I reckon Spring started on the 1^st of September, but this is awesome, even for Spring!

It was a nice day out for Olivier, Sandra and I today. We took the train and then a little ferry south of Sydney and after a short walk along the coast we found a secluded beach in the national park. It was a great beach for swimming, only later did we realise that it was a nudist beach. And I can report that – as has been said a thousand times before – it’s never the really fit people that you find on nudist beaches. Oh well, each to his own.

The freakishly warm winter has made for some great weekends. I went back to the Blue Mountains with ‘the Irish’ last month.

Again it’s been such a long time since the last update, and when I apologise for that I do mean it – I wish I would find the inspiration to update more often these days. Maybe it’s partly because nothing particularly momentous had happened recently (until this week) while life has still been busy, and just so enjoyable.

There have been a hundred and one things on, with some highlights since my last update being…

- Last month I was one of 75,000 Sydneysiders taking part in the City2Surf fun-run. This annual event is the largest fun-run in the world. That’s largest as in number of people, not longest distance, obviously, though it’s still quite a challenge with a long uphill stretch in the middle of the 14km distance, before a long sprint downhill to the finish at Bondi beach. I was made-up with a time of 69 minutes, and it inspired me to enter the half-marathon (22km) next Sunday. I was absolutely done-in afterwards though, and the traditional post City2Surf drinking session nearly killed me! Thank goodness I cut my losses and escaped from the pub in the late afternoon and was in bed by 7pm.

- All this running has gotten me a lot fitter and I think I can finally… with some conviction… say that my shoulder is cured (and never let it be mentioned again!). I was swimming in the sea today for the first time and hope to start with the ocean swimming club on Saturday mornings now that Spring is sprung!

Right: the girls putting the 'fun' into 'fun-run'. :)

- I’m just about to book my next trip to India. This is the longest I’ve been without a work trip (4 months) and I’m really looking forward to getting back to the field. But before that I’ve got Ed’s stag weekend, and then Ed and Dace’s wedding in October, which I think I’m MC-ing, after which I’m MC-ing a work event too (how am I getting MC-ing jobs with my Scottish accent… what the hell’s going on here?!?). Got a trip to Melbourne next week too, followed by ‘Spring on the Rooftop’ – a bbq event at my place which should go gangbusters, given the level of excitement generated so far!

All of which means that there will be no shortage of more exciting news for the website between now and Christmas!

Right: Ed’s surprise birthday party. Not a surprise was Ed getting very (very) into the partying spirit. ‘Enough scotch to sink a battleship’ is the expression I reckon. Here he is getting into Dace’s hen night accessories. Almost topped recent antics at the Abercrombie…

Lastly, the momentous news is that this week the immigration department approved my application for an extension of my working visa. The extention takes my visa up to 2011, which is rather more reassuring than my old visa which would have run out in a month’s time.

A sincere thanks to Graeme and Fraser for badgering me to update. It’s effective… eventually!!

What’s worse – 105 Days in a Windowless Capsule or 3 Days in Canberra?

2009-07-20T11:32:00.006Z

With my shoulder still recovering slowly, I’ve decided to do a bit of running again. Here’s a shot from a run across Sydney’s Anzac Bridge – one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world. I’m hoping to run the 14km City to Surf run in a few weeks time.

CAUTION: I must warn readers who are sensitive to sarcasm and sardonic wit… …as this update follows a recent trip to Canberra, a city deservedly famous in Australia as a national centre of dullness.

I’ve been to Canberra three times now, twice at gunpoint. Not literally at gunpoint of course, but being work trips I didn't have any influence over the choice of destination. This time I had a three day stay in Canberra for a microfinance course. This constituted my longest stay in the city yet, by two days, and about three-days longer than anyone needs to stay in the ACT, as Australia’s Capital Territory is known.

But before I really let rip on Australia’s capital city, something far more interesting caught my eye in the news in the last week. With all the focus on the 40^th anniversary of Neil Armstrong stepping on to the surface of the moon, a rather less stunning milestone in the history of manned-space travel has been reached.

Six volunteers have just emerged from 105 days locked in a windowless capsule intended to simulate the cramped and inhospitable conditions that astronauts would have to endure on a manned flight to Mars. As incomparable a moment as Armstrong’s first step on the moon was, I have doubts about whether manned space flight is still relevant in these days when all the spectacular science is being done by unmanned telescopes like the Hubble (admittedly serviced by humans), and the newly launched - and criminally under-celebrated - Herschel telescopes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8150385.stm

But even supposing for a moment that manned space flight does have a future, would you really volunteer to sacrifice 105 days of your life to such an experiment? Sure, these men could also say they were contributing to the scientific advance of mankind. But wouldn’t it grind you down to know that you were locked inside a glorified tin-can pretending to be an astronaut. In fact, mightn't there be something fundamentally abnormal – geeky, unimaginative, passionless (isn’t it telling that all of the volunteers were men) – about these people?

Surely it’s only reasonable to ask: what on earth (a rather appropriate construct I’m sure you’ll agree) leads people to volunteer to be shut in a fake space-capsule for 3 months? Even more unfathomable is that this 'adventure' will now be followed up by a repeat experiment, identical in every respect except that it will last 520 days…

Well one thing’s for sure – at least the experiment is far less dangerous than an actual manned voyage to Mars, where at any point in the two year journey, a rogue chunk of rock could careen into your space capsule, spilling you out into the atmosphere-less expanse of space.

Space isn’t the only place completely lacking in atmosphere. During my work trip I took an early evening constitutional around the streets of central Canberra. Though I hadn’t expected it to be like the last day of the Rio Carneval, or the banks of the Seine in mid-summer, I was still shocked at how much Canberra’s streets lack any joie de vivre.

It was like Edinburgh’s Princes Street at 10am on the 1^st of January (though without the smell of rancid beer). Worn down by the soporific feel, I retreated to my hotel room, where at least Aussie Tv might provide some distraction.

Passing reception, I picked up a rather thin publication called “This Week in Canberra” on the off-chance that the town’s streets were so empty because people were having a rip-roaring time at any number of exciting Canberra events. And yes, it is possible that people were cramming themselves into ‘An A to Z of Animals in War’, an exhibition promising “stories of horses, donkeys, camels, dogs and other creatures used by military forces from the First World War to the present day”.

Or maybe there was a run on the unself-consciously named ‘Cockington Green Gardens’ with its “fascinating display of meticulously crafted miniature buildings”. Regulars at Cock Green - as it may or may not be known - must be reassured to learn that 30 years of the Gardens have not subdued the spirit of innovation there, where you can now find a “newly constructed Syrian arch, complementing the original English village”. Not sure those are traditionally considered to be complementary architectural styles, but clearly, as in Canberra, anything can happen at Cockington Green Gardens…

Favourite Old Band * Favourite Modern Artist = Bliss

2009-07-17T04:15:00.001Z

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico "Run Run Run" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

A Gen-X-er's Take on Tech...

2009-07-12T11:01:00.011Z

So I got a new iPhone 3GS. And its an incredible piece of kit. It's hard to resist the temptation to go on about it at some length. But how dull would that be... There must be thousands of 3GS reviews out there already. Dull, dull, dull.

So instead, I got to thinking, how great is technology today? Is this really a life-changing piece of kit, or just another toy? Is it even conceivable that this could be laughably out of date in just a few years...?

As a Gen-X-er of a certain age, (old enough to remember the Sony Walkman, young enough to be uber-enthusiastic about new kit today) maybe I'm uniquely placed to get some perspective on this wonder-gadget with a cheeky wee look back on the technological hits and misses in my Gen-X life.

1983 Nintendo Game and Watch – Donkey Kong Jr -HIT!-

For me, this is where it all started. Nintendo have had a long history – from making a primitive kind of pub pinball machine in the 19th century (yep, Nintendo are older than Winston Churchill and the penny-farthing) to the mass-mass-market fun of the Nintendo Wii. But I will always be nostalgic for the Game and Watch. The first hand-held video-game system, it was essentially just a large LCD- watch style screen (hence the name), limiting game play to platform-games and a very small set of possible actions. But it had that ingredient essential to all great games – an increasing level of challenge to match increasing expertise, and was thus perfectly addictive.

I still have mine, though its whereabouts haven’t been definitely confirmed for years (probably under a mountain of lego somewhere), and so I became all dewy-eyed when I found the above picture on the net. The hours and hours of fun the 9-year-old me had with that thing. And yet it could have all been so different. Within hours of buying it on holiday in Spain (I was quite possibly driving my folks bonkers on that holiday), I was having palpitations as it appeared to have packed in on the flight home. Little did I know that 1984's LCD panels just weren't happy in a pressurised air-cabin. A major tearful episode was avoided when the game started belting out its zippy, blippy little tune (haven’t Nintendo always been great at that?) back on terra firma.

1984 ZX Spectrum + -HIT!-

The warbly tapes. The dodgy sound and graphics. The bizarre but fantastic games (was it just me, or was Ant Attack genuinely scary?). And nothing was more memorable from those first gaming days than Daley Thomson’s Decathlon. Battering that keyboard for all it was worth (all RSI, no Wii) and then hitting the spacebar to throw a javelin (a single line of pixels) through the air, where it would hang for about 3 minutes like a cruise missile, before landing on an unyielding and unconvincing electric-green square… many a sunny afternoon was wasted on that one.

This was the pinnacle of computer game creativity – there were literally thousands of games, you could even write your own in your bedroom – and, on the creativity front at least, its been a mostly bobbly downhill slope from there. To think that Sir Clive Sinclair then made that obscenely shaped plastic-go-kart-death-trap thingy and then turned into a recluse(ish). If only they’d had reality tv in the 80s he could have carved out an alternative career as a bearded pantomime dame…

1987 Hitachi Ghettoblaster -HIT!-

For about 2 months before Christmas 1987, only one subject could occupy my mind for any length of time – portable hifi. And whilst these-days ‘portable hifi’ might mean something you can stick in your jeans pocket, back then it was something you could barely lift above your head. Undeterred, I would pour over the pages of Kay’s Catalogue, comparing features such as auto-reverse, graphic equaliser (3 or 5 band, 7 band if you were especially posh), bass boost and detachable speakers, this latter feature being something I was especially excited about, for a reason that I can no longer fathom. They were plasticky, they had crap radio reception, buttons frequently fell off at the least provocation… why is it a hit? Well it meant I could play music in my room, and that was revolutionary for me. Since then I’ve been a music freak. Job done.

1990 Panasonic G40 Barcode Reading VHS Recorder -Miss-

Yes, the history of 1980s technology disasters has effectively boiled down to VHS beating up Betamax, and yes we were a Betamax family (wasn’t it great to catch the cat out with that top-loading mechanism?) but that story has been told too many times. Instead, my mention of video-recording tech has to be an example of a laughably bad solution to a (semi) legendary problem.

The fact that not being able to program your video recorder has become synonymous in the English-speaking world with having problems with new technology shows what a major problem this was in the 1980s. But it was a problem that was never going to be solved by scanning barcodes. Not a sensible solution. Obviously. Except that, for a while, all the major VCR manufacturers (including Panasonic) wanted us to think it might be.

Ok, this wasn’t strictly 'my' techno miss, it was one for my parents, but it’s too weird not to mention. Come on – a giant sheet of barcodes where you scan one barcode for the channel, one for the day, one for the start time, one for the length of the program… are you kidding?? After recording just 4 episodes of Baywatch (well come on! what teenage boy didn’t???), I felt skilled enough to give a supermarket checkout lady a run for her money. What was wrong with just typing in numbers? Nothing apparently, as barcode technology was quietly dumped a couple of years after my folks bought the model pictured above. And that’s the barcode scanning pen on the right, which incidentally doubled up as a fairly weak laser-pointer that could be used to distract yourself - and passing drivers - when you realised that you’d accidentally recorded Murder She Wrote instead of Robin of Sherwood.

1996 Sony MiniDiscman - HIT! (and Miss)-

The end of my unwavering faith in technology – a format that I thought would change the world (You can record in digital! You can skip tracks!) but boomed for roughly 6 months, before fading painfully and gradually like the career of an ex-Spice Girl. Even the combination of my unfailing enthusiasm, and an appearance in the Matrix - the most fashionably futuristic movie of the 90s - couldn't stop its demise. I held out much longer than I should have done – though not as long as my friend Graeme has with cassettes, come on Graeme, 2009 mate, 2009! – and I still have about 200 of the little discs gathering dust in my mum and dad’s attic, with titles like ‘Best of Indie CDs!’ and ‘Stone Roses Second Coming’ barely visible in fading biro on their little sticky labels.

But I loved them, and their demise meant I would never fully trust the technology industry again…

1997 Sony Playstation -HIT!-

Yes that’s right – just “Sony Playstation”, not PS1 or playstation 1, and certainly not PS2 or PS3. This was the original. And it kicked Nintendo, Sega and Atari in the nuts and ran away with an entire industry. How? Simply by being a little cheaper, better in almost every area, and most importantly absolutely-top in the fun stakes. And never mind that it looked like a set of bathroom scales. Sony would later undergo collective amnesia in launching the over-priced, under-loved PS3, which has given away that colossal market advantage and apparently cost them all the profits they made on the PSOne and PS2. But who cares. Playstation was uber-cool in ’97 with games like Doom, Resident Evil and Wipeout, the latter featuring songs by Leftfield and the Chemical Brothers - who would have thought it… a video game… with a cool pop-culture tie-in!

2002 & 2006 Xbox & Xbox 360 -Miss-

Microsoft tried to repeat Sony’s industry-grabbing game-play in 2001, but the Xbox (in spite of having just about the best video game ever in Halo) never quite cut-it. I didn’t keep either Xbox1 or Xbox2 for any length of time. Maybe they were trying too hard. More likely the games were just too safe and same-y. And if the Playstation One was a set of bathroom scales, these were the pug-ugly plastic boxes to break those scales.

But I do have one very funny tale to tell from this. Apparently when my dad told my mum that I had bought the original Xbox, her reaction was “A sex box? What does he want with one of those?”. Yep, hilarious. But why didn’t she ask what a sex box was??? Mysterious. Lol.

2007 Ipod Classic 80Gb -Hit!-

After many years of going French and buying Archos mp3 players, I eventually succumbed to Apple as recently as 2007. Within days I realised why Apple were able to charge more, and for a superficially similar product, with apparently less functionality. It… just…works. It does everything so well, and so intuitively. And of course it comes in such a sexy package.

I loved my Ipod… but I wasn’t IN love with it… and then I got my iPhone. (lmao)

So there we have it – my entirely selective, one-man history of technology. And one last point – anyone who says that the old days were better just needs to spend 10 minutes with my iPhone (if you can prise it from my cold, dead hands). That we might soon have such technology would have been an incredible idea, in fact unthinkable, just half a dozen years ago. And there's no doubt this gadget would have been like an alien visitation to the nine-year old lad with his Donkey Kong Junior Game and Watch.

With this rate of progress there is surely so much to look forward to in the next few years. Might they even get round to inventing… …a sex box?

An Amazing Six Months

2009-07-09T09:21:00.003Z

Sydney in winter is like a date with a hungover Audrey Tatou. N’est pas parfait, but it’s still p-r-e-t-t-y d-a-m-n f-i-n-e…

After a couple of weeks of mixed weather, things brightened up at the start of last week and the temperature was pushing 20C every day. Not bad for winter. Last weekend was the best of all with two full days of sun and blue skies. And there’s so many great places to be in Sydney when the sun is out. I am gradually getting to know them all, but there’s years of exploring left yet, and I’ve probably yet to see some of the finest spots. On Sunday I found a pretty unique spot that I’ve been meaning to get to for some time.

Sydney Harbour is said to be the greatest natural harbour in the world. It is to harbours what the Grand Canyon is to holes in the ground. It's the sheer extent of the harbour, the number of coves and bays and beaches that is incredible. There are 317 km of waterfront in total, a fair portion of which is packed with the most expensive real estate in Australia. But it’s the amount of untouched, natural shoreline that’s impressive.

Some of the wildest parts are at the headlands at the mouth of the harbour. North Head and South Head (which sit on the north and south side of the harbour respectively – nothing, if not informative, this blog) are a couple of hundred metres apart, but separated by almost 25km of coastline (and bridge).

I took ferry, bus, foot to north head on Sunday and had a really peaceful afternoon in the winter sunshine. Wearing just a t-shirt and jeans for much of the time, I spent a good few hours wandering around, admiring the views and watching the whale watchers – who seemed to be having a frustrating, whale-less day (as opposed to a whale of time), which was a shame given the immense beauty of the place.

For me, it was a good time to relax and get a bit of perspective on the first half of the year. In the spirit of talking about ‘we’, rather than I, it's good to be able to say that Opportunity had a really blessed first-half of the year. In spite of the terrible economic climate, and really gloomy outlook at times, we have met our fundraising targets for the first six months of the year. This is immensely satisfying because of the hard work that the team has put in, and because we know how important this will be to the poor, especially given how hard hit some communities will be by the economic crisis. And personally, I’m delighted. I’ve found the past six months the most rewarding of my career. I want to be able to continue to do this for a while yet…

And the chocolate event was a big success! Fanny and Alex’s chocolate creations were the absolute business. Liquid chocolate, mousse, sorbets… fantastic stuff. And my first experience of a panel interview wasn’t as terrifying as I’d expected, though I was perspiring quite intensely – I blame the warm, chocolate kitchen atmosphere hitting my unaccustomed Scottish noggin.

And that's about it for this week. Given such amazing news at work, everything else seems unworthy of reporting.

After another stint of hard work, I’ve rewarded myself with an iPhone. A full review of this work of time-absorbing delivishness will follow in the next update.

From William Wallace to Willy Wonka

2009-06-28T06:39:00.007Z

Hey, I'm trying to jazz up the website a bit again, hence the elephants marching across the top of the page (from Etosha National Park, Namibia). I'm not sure it looks ok on everyone's computer, so if you've any feedback on the new look, let me know! (Time permitting) this is still a draft of the new look. (I seriously need to dig out that html book I slept through a couple of years ago.)

It's the depths of winter, but Sydney is still a beautiful place to be outdoors. This morning I went for a run in the botanics. When the notion takes me I can run through the park down to the edge of the harbour, round the edge of the water between the botanics and farm cove (the site of the first white settlement in Australia) and jog up to the Opera House in about 15 minutes. A round tour back through the botanics takes about 30 minutes and I never see a single car. This morning it was spectacularly beautiful and peaceful too. Why do I not do this more often??

Well of course I'd do more outdoors-ey stuff like this if I did a little less socialising at the weekend, but being unattached in Sydney is always going to keep the number of 'quiet nights in' to a minimum. Similarly I'm typing this on the roof of my building - from the 17th floor you can see the bridge and the opera house to the left and out to the ocean to the right. Why is it two months since I was last up here??
My running route. Out my front door, past Brett Whitely's matchsticks, out past the Boy Charlton pool and round farm cove to the Opera House (to the right of the bridge in the photo). This was the view from the roof today.

Work continues to be really sweet for me, and it will be even sweeter than usual this week. On Wednesday night I will be part of a panel being interviewed in front of an audience of young professionals in Sydney. We will be talking about Opportunity International of course, and also talking a little about the impact of the global economic crisis on the fight against poverty. The venue is a chocolate shop (ooh, free chocolate!), Boon Chocolates on Victoria Street in Darlinghurst. And the prospect of free chocolate has me very excited.

Not that I need free chocolate of course. But - not unusually for a Scot - I have a very sweet tooth. It's an affliction that comes and goes. At various times I can handle my condition (sic) pretty well but then at other times I just can't resist at least two 'treats' per day. This past month has been such a time. What constitutes a 'treat'? There's a modest list of top quality goodies that will satiate my junkie-like need for a sugary hit: crunchies (or violet crumble in Oz), mint aeros, McDonald's M&M Mcflurry and caramel slices are all near the top of the list, while home-baking (with it's built-in disregard for the dietary common-sense that afflicts products sold to the general public) is almost an obsession, especially tablet, fudge and shortbread, all of which have that insane level of sweetness needed to satisfy a long-time sugar-abuser. (If my metabolic rate ever slows down I'm in so much bother...)

But chocolate of any form will do nicely, thank you very much.

So needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to Wednesday. I may not sleep until Friday, and then of course I'll have to go cold turkey at the weekend. But by God will it be worth it.

And hopefully Andy Murray will give all Scots an excuse to stay indoors (and away from ice-cream vans and sweetie stories) next weekend. Come on Andy, surely the insanely high hopes of the British public will be met with Nadal already out and only 14-times Grand Slam winner Roger Federer standing between you and the title.

Seriously though, I do think he has a chance. Could be a cracker on Sunday.

Weather update: spectacular change in the weather in the 30 minutes since I started writing this update. I'm now back in my apartment as the expected lovely sunset vanished, usurped by a sudden storm and potential rain. Hmmm, it'll have to be an episode of peep show in front of the telly this evening.
Still love a good fix of quirky British comedy.

Winter in Sydney

2009-06-20T05:43:00.011Z

WW takes some time-out from the battlefield to attend to local morale...

It’s been more than a month. I’ve tried a few times but…

…I’ve had mixed feelings about this website since I stopped travelling. I’ve been reluctant to talk about the day-to-day stuff. It could get rather tedious (whadda ya mean ‘could’ I hear you say?). It’s much easier to make this lively and interesting when I’m talking about foreign travel, because the focus is on… exotic places and weird customs and freaky things happening. And I’m not talking so much about me…

But I do want to keep the blog going. It's good to blog. It's something for me to look back on if nothing else.

But maybe... maybe I can keep things interesting by not talking about me. Instead of talking about me, I could talk about ‘we’ – what ‘we’ at Opportunity have been doing, what ‘we’ as in me and friends have been doing, maybe even talk about ‘we’ as in me and my romantic interests. Nah, actually I might leave that for another day... tmi…

Because ‘we’ is what life should be all about (aaaahhhh!). Ahem, ok… definitely going to get on with it now, before this becomes nothing other than semantics and naval-gazing.

[and another thing - it's hard to get motivated to update this blog when blogger works so freakin poorly. If anyone can explain why all the paragraphs are stuck to gether and why I ahve to continually fiddle with these updates to get them looking remotely neat, please do tell. Ok, Counted to ten... bitch over... High horse put back in the stable... ]

Opportunity

Opportunity International is a big part of my life at the moment. We (hey this is easy!) are going through a big big year in 2009. Not an easy year. We are working through the biggest global recession in 60 years – it affects our donors, it affects our partners (in India, the Philippines and Indonesia), it affects our clients. We are working harder than ever to make sure we can keep the money flowing. We are working better as a (smaller) team. We are loving it actually – there’s always a buzz in the office. Uncertainty is never very nice, but there’s a real satisfaction in doing as much as you can, working together. Not that it’s all sweetness and light – we drive each other mad like any other office full of wilful people.

We are relying more on the work of our ambassadors – our highly involved volunteers, who are running projects for us, not just to raise funds, but to raise awareness. Most of all we want to make friends this year.

Last weekend we had an event for ambassadors in Sydney. We had a few presentations on our work, including a presentation from me on the effect of the global economic crisis. It seemed to go very well. We are investing effort now for the long run…

Job satisfaction is often elusive. But if you can see an outcome (a product, a service, a change in the way things are done) making a positive change in peoples’ lives (whatever field you work in), and if you can know that you have made an important contribution to that outcome, then I think you’re there. I think we’re getting there.

Willie Wallace finds that freedom means different things to different people...

Party

Photos in this update are from last weekend’s (that was one busy weekend) fancy dress party. We had an awesome time, with great outfits (Jessica Rabbit, Mr T, Braveheart (yours truly), ballerinas and playboy bunnies). At the end of the night (ok, the next morning) it dawned on me that my wig was missing. Returning to the scene of the battle to ask for your wig back is something I’ll bet William Wallace never had to do. Mind you, even the bar staff had been trying it on, so it’s not surprising it went walk about…

It’s been great to reconnect with friends in Sydney. We’ve had bbqs, birthday parties (1yo, 2yo, 30yo), festivals (Brian Eno festival, Sydney movie festival) and generally done much in defiance of the steadily worsening weather.

Next week sees the shortest day. The temperature is never too low (it’s never in single figures), but it feels somehow freezing at times. Wearing a jumper to work has become a daily necessity. Going out for a coffee seems a justified defence ‘against the cold’. How did I ever survive in Scotland???!!!

Iceman!!! Bogie at your 6, bogie at your... ahhh, whatever, let's just pose with Betty Boop.

Fluff

Lots of things have tickled me in the last month. For a week I was a geeky follower of the shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. There wasn’t a battery replacement, a module installation, a stubbornly resisting screw that I didn’t read about three or four times. That’s not drama?? Are you kidding me??

I’ve been to Brisbane for the first time. Looks nice. Very legoland-ish around the river. I was there just for one day, nothing too exciting. Would love to go back.

I’ve been back at the physio. Being ancient, I break very easily these days. This time it’s the other shoulder. I now have lots more funny little exercises (steady!) to do over the next 6 weeks. At least I can still swim this time, though not in the ocean… and yeah I’m not missing that too much at this time of year.

I could go on, but I'll shut up at that. More fluff and 'we' soon.

And not an NRL player in site...

The Philippines (Part 2)

2009-05-30T23:44:00.008Z

After the most intensive six weeks of work since I started with Opportunity, I was looking forward to a week of relaxation and reflection on the beach, and some exceptional scuba diving. But it didn’t quite work out as I’d expected.

Slog

The day after the conference I had a 9am flight to Manila to catch another flight to Coron, a large town in the north of the Palawan archipelago, a chain of islands in the west of the Philippines best known for their undeveloped tropical environment – fine white sandy beaches and perfectly clear blue waters.

I had a particular fixation on these islands because, in 1944, just off the island of Busuanga, American navy launched a surprise attack on the Japanese fleet, sinking 14 large ships in a raid which at that time was the longest-range aerial attack in history (many of the attacking planes ran out of fuel before they could return to their carriers). Today, these wrecks lie well-preserved in the very shallow water they sank in, teaming with marine life. In short, a divers dream!

The flight to Manila was routine and as the connecting flight took off in clear blue skies, I had no reason to think that we wouldn’t make it to Coron…

About ten minutes from our destination, while gazing out of the window at the pure blue waters of the South China Sea, I noticed a column of cloud, storm-clouds in fact, which looked not a little like a typhoon. While I was still puzzling over this aberration in the middle of otherwise clear blue skies, the pilot (or it could have been the copilot or anyone that can do that voice I suppose) announced that we would be in a holding pattern for a while due to what he euphemistically called ‘bad weather’. After 20 minutes of lazy circling (blue skies, blue skies, blue skies, typhoon, blue skies) which fooled no-one, the pilot came on to regret that we had been ordered (by air-controllers, or by God, I’m not sure to which he was referring) to return to Manila.

Detour

What I day. I spent several (yes, several) weary hours at Manila airport booking flights to Boracay for the next day. Boracay is the most famous, and (over) developed resort in the Philippines, a pretty decent place to spend some relaxing days, and - more importantly – in a group of islands well clear of the typhoon. So it was the perfect location potentially. And I did feel like I was recharging my batteries there, though by the end of the week I was pretty bored. Beach resorts are not often a great place to be on your own, and this was a particularly couple-y place. I enjoyed the diving, it was pretty decent, if not out of this world.

Somehow I found myself happy to be back in Manila though. Maybe the hotel helped – the global economic crisis has made some hotels ridiculously cheap, and the discounted price of five-star luxury has crept into even my budget. Hostels are fine by me, but I’ll take luxury when I can get it.

Trek

So obviously I prolonged checking out of the Mandarin as long as possible, but eventually they had to kick me out on the streets. I had a few hours to kill before my flight back to Sydney and no appetite for further shopping, so I decided to take-in the new Star Trek movie.

I can't say I'm a fan, at least I'm definitely not a trekkie. I have seen most of the movies though and there seemed to be a fair amount of buzz about this one. And for once it's justified. This is a fantastic action movie. No better way of describing it in my opinion. Just really sharply put together. The story is very nicely together of where all the main characters came from

What this is not though - and this will sound odd - is a sci-fi movie. For me sci-fi is the art of presenting something different and other-wordly. Superficially, this is just that. But its just too slick and though there are plenty of surprises, they are all 'knowing'. In every other Star Trek movie i've seen, there was something off-the-wall which suggested the writers were smoking something at some point in the production. On screen these moments could seem wobbly or kitsch, but they at least got you thinking. This is missing from the new Trek movie. By being slick, it's the perfect action movie, not the perfect sci-fi movie.

And that was the Philippines. It was a funny trip. Nothing went quite as planned. And at the same time I can see the place has amazing potential and I hope to go back soon, and often. But not to fancy resorts. And not on my own. And definitely not during typhoons.

The Philippines (Part 1)

2009-05-18T13:08:00.008Z

I was only back in Sydney a week and I was packing my bags again. It’s to my immense good fortune that my role within Opportunity is one of the few that takes me out to the field, where I talk to our partner CEOs and staff, discuss our policies and even meet clients on occasion.

In the busiest moments… I have to confess I do forget how fortune I am. That week in Sydney was one of those moments.

But as exhausted as you do get, sleeping fitfully on flights, waking at 5am in hotel rooms, I think these times are cherished after the event. I’m already smiling thinking about the trip to the Philippines. This is the first of a couple of updates explaining why:

The Friendliest People

I never feel confident enough to make conclusions about a country after visiting as a tourist. It doesn’t stop me making some assertions – as I did about every country I visited on the Big Trip – but they are always qualified observations. There’s something about the tourist experience – visiting tourist sites, flitting from place to place, filling the voyeuristic, detached role of the tourist – that puts a barrier between you, and truly knowing a country. And by knowing a country I mean knowing its people, knowing how the society ‘works’, how people treat each other, and how they treat outsiders. That’s why my visits to India with work have been such a privilege, and so much more rewarding than my first trip, as a tourist.

So I was delighted to be able to experience the Philippines for the first time with some purpose other than enjoying the beach, the shopping and restaurant food (not that there’s anything wrong with those things, which I did plenty of when the work was over!). My main purpose in the Philippines was to make a presentation on Social Performance Management to some of the 600 attendees at the APPEND Microfinance Summer Camp 2009. Append is an organisation representing 12 MFIs that serve over a million clients in the Philippines. The summer camp was a chance for the Filipino MFIs and their staff to reflect on the past year at a 3-day retreat on the southern island of Mindanao.

The retreat was a revelation for me. Our Filipino partners are hard-working and have a level of dedication to poverty relief that you will not see in many other countries with a history of microfinance. But the summer camp is as much a celebration of the unity and shared mission of the staff as it is about any technical aspect of microfinance. There was much singing, dancing and ceremony. Religion is a very important part of life in the Philippines and people are clearly very much in touch with the role of religion in their work. Karaoke was well featured in the evenings too, and though I would have given it a go, I was a little relieved when I was passed over in the karaoke event in favour of my colleague Mark (our program manager for the Philippines) who was pulled up on stage for a couple of 80s classics from Fame.

In fact the atmosphere seemed odd and a little unnerving at first. It took me a while to realise that the reason the atmosphere seemed odd to me was because people were so relaxed at the event. The Filipinos are truly a people that are laid-back in social situations. They are the most social people I

have ever met. No wonder one-sixth of the world’s text messages are typed and sent in the Philippines!

The second day saw me presenting to a break-out group of about 100-150 people. This seemed to go fairly well. I’m not sure my accent was the simplest to understand, though peoples grasp of English in the Philippines is excellent. I started the presentation by speaking a little Spanish, which was met with much appreciation (though actually I found out that the Filipino language Tagalog is only very loosely related to Spanish) despite my limited vocabulary! Anyway, I got through the presentation fairly well I think, and the conference was a great opportunity to make contacts with key people in each of our partners.

And then on the third day we went white-water rafting. As well as being a good laugh, this was my first chance to see some of the natural beauty of the Philippines that the guidebooks will gushingly tell you is under-sold and much ignored.

Why under-sold and ignored? Well, the Philippines has a strange demographic – it’s a place that’s hard to get your head around – an incredible 4,000 inhabited islands sitting lying shards of broken crockery in the South China Sea, connected by a hundred ferry routes, and more recently by almost as many domestic flightpaths.

Mindanao itself has much about it that is strange, and no doubt wonderful too, but sadly the ongoing terrorist activity on the island has gobbled up all the international attention. I’ve been to a lot of places that have been affected by terrorism now – Sri Lanka, Bali, Nepal - places where terrorism has become part of the definition of the place (as opposed to India for example, where mercifully, attacks on Delhi and Mumbai continue to be just a tiny part of the Indian story) and I’ve learned that the most respectful thing you can do is to appreciate that, for local people, this is often a part of their experience that they do not want to dwell on, or discuss with outsiders.

In Cagayan de Oro, a town in the north of Mindanao where we had the conference, I found people to be unfailingly welcoming, friendly and always looking to do something for you, not through any feeling of obligation (that I could discern) but through that joy in being sociable that I’ve mentioned already, and through a respect for other people.

So that was the working part of the trip. I hope I’m privileged enough to return to return to visit our Filipino partners in the field. I can’t wait to see how they work with clients – I’m sure it will be a really enlightening experience.

Next update will feature encounters with typhoons, scuba diving, boxing matches and an imprompto meeting with a taxi driver who has just started protestant Quakerism in the Philippines. Stay tuned.

India 2009

2009-05-13T12:05:00.003Z

(photos of India to follow!)

Ok, for those of you who are counting, and I’ve had vocal reminders from a couple of peeps (thanks for the encouragement!), its been a month (again) without an update. I’ve been travelling across Asia fighting poverty. Ok, that sounds a bit too grand. I’ve been travelling to India and the Philippines making presentations on Social Performance Management (SPM). That’s better.

There’s so much to cover. I’m going to start with an update on the India trip today. An update on the Philippines and what I’ve been up to in Australia can wait for another day (not in a month I promise!).

So, India. This was my most rewarding trip yet. Though it was the second workshop that we’ve had with our partners, it felt like a new kind of experience to me, as I had so much more face-time with the CEOs. It helped that I had the chance to introduce the event and talk a lot about my pet subject, which meant I was pretty much front-and-centre for the two days of the workshop.

I’m really pleased with how things are progressing. This is an important project for us – giving us the opportunity to introduce a new method of establishing and reporting on the impact that we are having on poverty, so it was very encouraging that so many of our partners are enthusiastic about SPM.

I was exhausted by the end of the week and after a bit of shopping on the Friday night (Delhi malls are a great place to get some bargain clothes) I was more than ready to head home. And there the fun began. After six trips to India without mishap I was fairly blasé about the risk of Delhi belly. But as soon as I woke at 3am on the Saturday morning I knew the trip home was gonna be deeply unpleasant!

As always with Delhi belly it started at one end (what do you mean too much information?) but it wasn’t long before the nausea kicked in. I left the hotel for the airport at 530am with several plastic bags to hand (cue worried looks from the driver). Amazingly (and to the driver’s delight) I made it to the airport, and indeed on to the flight without using the bags. But I knew was in real trouble when we had to queue on the tarmac for 20 mins before take off.

I know the old saying about a kettle, but truly it is a watched ‘fasten seat-belts sign’ that never goes off. With sweat running down my forehead I willed 200 tonnes of Boeing 757 off the runway, into the air and up to a safe cruising altitude. As soon as the light went off I sprinted with unrestrained panic to the toilet. And I made it. Just. But it was a long time before I came back out again, and I certainly wasn’t touching any of those foil wrapped meals with the strangely rubbery green-beans (always rubbery green-beans, no matter the continent or airline).

It was a very long trip back to Sydney and I didn’t really feel right for days. But I made the sprint to the loo and for that, I (and my fellow passengers) will always be grateful! Sadly though, this turn of events means I have had to give up a title. At work, I had become known as ‘cast-iron stomach Scott’ for my ability to disregard normal precautions when eating and drinking abroad, and never becoming ill. Now that title has gone, and I’ll think twice before I visit a Mexican restaurant in India again…

Talking of airplane food reminds me of that fantastic complaint about Virgin from a few months back (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/4344890/Virgin-the-worlds-best-passenger-complaint-letter.html). And another complaint on the news today has tickled me too. Katie Masters, who is 109 wrote to the Queen to complain that the birthday cards she was getting every year had the same photo of the Queen on the front. I think that’s bloody marvellous! And obviously the PR department at Buck Palace has improved somewhat in the last ten years as they sent Prince William to visit her to apologise. Maybe the British rarely complain, but when they do they do it in style. (It’s your hamster in the box Richard, and he’s not breathing!)

India, the Philippines... and a free tv??

2009-04-10T15:36:00.005Z

I’m a bad blogger. Bad blogger! Once again, I’ve managed to go a month without updating this website, and though the ‘too busy’ excuse is more true than ever, I’m going to refrain from the sob story. Besides, it’s been good to be busy!

I’ve been working like a drone again. And why? I’m off to India today, for the first time in nearly six months. The trip is timed to coincide with our second MFI Partner Workshop. I’ll be talking about Social Performance Management – and a few other things beside – with our partners. I’ll also be taking photographs, interviewing partners and visiting SEWA Ashram again, but I’ll save that for my post-trip blog, which should be a good one!

As if that weren’t excitement enough, this isn’t my only upcoming trip. Oh no. I’m only back from India a week and I’m flying off again, this time to the Philippines. Once again, I’ll be attending a conference with some of our partners. And once again, I’ll be talking about Social Performance Management. There’s a packed agenda for that workshop, which includes karaoke (an intense passion of the Filipinos) and an evening in regional costume - hold your breath, this could be an outing for the kilt! After the conference, I’ll be staying on into May, for some well-needed R&R. I’m planning a week’s diving in Busuanga, a beautiful white-sand island, famous among divers for it’s Japanese WWII shipwrecks. Again, more on that in the next blog.

I’ve got much other news aside from work, but I’ll save some of that for now. Instead, I have to mention one story that’s huge in Australia, not least because it directly affects a substantial proportion of the population.

Yes, the big news here is on the economy front where Kevin Rudd is attempting to turn bad news ‘global financial meltdown’ into good news ‘free cash for (nearly) all’. And yes, free cash is pretty much that. Though officially going under the moniker of 'stimulus package', Kevin’s whiz consists of A$900 (450 pounds) paid out to every resident taxpayer earning under A$100,000. About 10m australians (half the population!) are eligible and the impact on the economy has been felt even before the payments have been made.

Most amusing has been the constant barrage of adverts for consumer items all priced around the A$800-900 mark! High definition TVs, washing machines and leather sofas are all mysteriously (or not mysteriously) converging on this figure, in the hope of getting secondary exposure to Kevin’s wad.

I for one have my eye on a Samsung 32 inch full-HD LCD tv. I’m not exactly sure what all of that means, it's just that, in their ubiquity, these adverts are becoming mighty persuasive. There is one potential drawback for me, Samsung, and Mr Norman’s electrical emporium. I’m not exactly sure I’m going to get the cash. I think i'm eligible as i'm a resident for tax purposes, but i pay so little tax that – as I say, i'm not really sure. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. all the payments go out in the next month. That bank balance will be getting more close attention than usual in the next couple of weeks…

Bye for now. Will be back online after India.

M8kadifranz

2009-03-06T03:45:00.002Z

One of Opportunity International's amazing ambassadors, Leah Israel has just set up a site offering the opportunity to buy some of the amazing made by Opportunity's clients in Africa, India and Asia.

This is a fantastic initiative, giving a direct link between people here in Australia and our poor clients. Plus, the proceeds of all sales go directly to fund Opportunity's work. In the words of the site itself:

"M8kadifranz Virtual Bazaar offers you an opportunity to buy many unique and beautiful items made by women and men, poor entrepreneurs in Africa, India and Asia. Together we can make a huge difference in this world! And it’s as simple as making a purchase.

There is no "middle man" with M8kadifranz. All products sold on the Virtual Bazaar are handcrafted by indigenous people and have been purchased at fair prices. All proceeds go directly to fund the work of Opportunity International helping similar entrepreneurs realize their dream and to provide mosquito nets through Auzzie Mozzie."

Please visit the site and let me know what you think:

http://www.m8kadifranzvirtualbazaar.com/index.html

Pathetic Sharks Update

2009-03-04T22:13:00.003Z

Well this is getting out of control.

The 'Bridge to Beach' swim - the big 11km swim that is my ultimate goal (in 2010!) - has now been cancelled "amid fears the water could be too 'bitey'".

Apparently the organisers had reports from fishermen of a lot of baitfish (shark food) in the water. And because of this 300 people due to be taking part next weekend are left disappointed (not to mention the disappointment for the hungry sharks).

I despair. We are such a media/publicity-driven society these days. Difficult though it is to be precise about probabilities, if you compare the risks of taking part in this event with the risks from any sailing, rugby or even running competition, I'm sure the harbour swim is relatively much safer. Why can't we let individuals decide if they want to take part in these things?

I'd hate to think that I could do a lot of training for next year's swim only for it to be cancelled because someone else makes a rather bizarre (and probably publicity conscious) decision that it is not safe enough for me.

Anyway, to finish on a positive note, I got my time for the 2km swim and it was 30 minutes dead, which I'm really chuffed with. An average of 45 seconds per 50m. Forget the spoilsports and bring on the next race!

Swimming with the Sharks (well, not really)

2009-03-01T01:38:00.004Z

888 people took part in the Sydney Harbour 2km Swim this morning. The Chinese believe the number 8 is lucky and some people this morning were no doubt thinking that a dose of good luck would be no bad thing, given that yesterday saw the third shark attack in Sydney in three weeks!

Just to put things in perspective, every shark attack in Sydney makes the news here because they are so rare. But they do seem to have picked up in frequency recently.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/5358819

Once again the attack took place at dawn/dusk, and it’s becoming clear that – this year at least – you are taking a risk with life (or more probably limb) when you go into the water at these times. But I have a lot of sympathy – surfers in Sydney are some of the most passionate sportsmen and women around, and often early morning and late afternoon are the only fit with the good surf and school/work.

I had absolutely no fear of a shark attack this morning, and not just because the chances of being ‘chosen’ were 888 to 1. If I were a shark I’d be staying well clear. With three helicopters in attendance it wasn’t exactly a predator’s ideal hunting environment. Mind you, didn’t the shark take down a chopper in the abysmal Jaws 2???

In fact, as it turned out, the only risks were cramp and jellyfish. Cramp was a definite worry as I hadn’t swum this distance since my shoulder injury last May. But actually the race went very well. I felt good right the way through and finished strongly. In fact, I was feeling so good afterwards that my thoughts started to turn again to the 11km Circular Quay to Manly swim… maybe in 2010.

And jellfish…? Well, for the first few hundred metres the water was full of them. It was quite magical actually. Layer upon layer of these symmetrical, pulsing shapes appearing out of the murky water as I ploughed along the surface. I think there is a similar scene in Finding Nemo, which is of course also set in Sydney! Despite touching their blobby forms on every other stroke, they seemed pretty harmless, though I did notice a few people getting treatment for stings at the end of the race.

The times and results are out in 48 hours, and then it’s time to look forward to the next race. I love this aussie lifestyle!

FASHION THEIR FUTURES

2009-02-23T00:12:00.006Z

Hi everyone. This website is overdue a couple of decent updates. Which will follow... honest! But in the meantime, here's a great event in Sydney.

Combining fashion, cocktails, canapes and poverty relief, this should be a really inspiring and enjoyable evening in Sydney. The event has been organised by Heather, one of Opportunity's ambassadors, as a fund-raising event for us, and I think she's done a great job in putting this together.

The cocktail party and fashion show will be held at Studio Twenty4, a fashion photography studio in Walsh Bay on Wednesday evening 29 April 2009.

Designers including Bianca Spender for Carla Zampatti, Tim O'Connor, Melanie Cutfield, Kyotap, CUE and Veronika Maine, as well as upcoming designers such as Mimmelu and They Thank You, have donated stunning outfits for the catwalk show and to be auctioned at the event.

Tickets are on sale now and cost $85 (includes drinks, substantial canapés, catwalk show, fashion auction, goodie bag and lots of great prizes). To purchase tickets go to www.opportunity.org.au and click on the ‘Donations/Events’ tab. The Fashion their Futures event page will explain the ticketing process. There is an "early bird" special which will entitle you to VIP seating at the fashion show so book early to avoid disappointment!

Ocean Swimming

2009-02-15T00:32:00.005Z

It would be madness to go ocean swimming at Bondi beach just 48 hours after the first shark attack there for 80 years.

Madness.

But that didn’t stop twenty hardcore aussies going out for the regular Saturday morning swimming class yesterday. And I was delighted to be able to join them.

I’ve been recovering from a shoulder injury for more than 6 months now. After 4 months out of the water, two months using fins and a few weeks swimming normally again, I at last felt that I’d recovered enough for the fairly testing challenge of swimming in the surf.

And as for the sharks? Well, I did feel a few things bumping against my legs in the water, but there is often seaweed in the surf. In fact, the most notable event all morning was back on shore, where we were accosted by a Channel 9 filmcrew. Here’s a transcript that I’ve totally made-up as I wasn’t close enough to hear Spot over the roaring surf. But it probably went something like this…

Rugged ex-AFL Interviewer: So can you explain to me what’s going on then?
Spot (crazy aussie swimming coach): Just your regular Saturday morning ocean swimming club mate.
Interviewer: Aren’t you erm… worried about sharks, after this week’s shocking events.
Spot: Nah!! You can’t worry about the sharks. They’ve got their place. They don’t really like the taste of humans anyway. They just get a bit confused sometimes.
Interviewer: You guys seem to be the only people willing to go into the water.
Spot: Ahhh, that’s just the weather mate. A bit of drizzle scares people off. There’s no safer time to go in the water. Way I reckon, there isn’t another shark attack due for 80 years. Couldn’t be safer!
Spot: (to squad) right you lot – back in the water, get right out beyond the break! Last one back’s a dribbly Pom… etc.

And the swim went really well for me. I put a lot of stress on the shoulder swimming in and out of medium-height (for Bondi) surf and it stood up well. Going to do the harbour swim on 1st March now.

If anyone’s interested, here’s the Bondi Fit website. I love the ocean swimming – nothing can set you up better for the weekend.
http://new.bondifit.com/Surf.asp

Pssst: in case you think I’ve really lost my marbles, the attack at Bondi, and another one in the harbour last week both happened at dawn/dusk when light conditions are low and the sharks are more likely to be feeding. The risk at other times is much less, apparently…

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/bondi-attack-fires-up-shark-net-controversy-20090213-86pp.html

We can't find beauty with our eyes closed...

2009-02-04T06:54:00.003Z

A story that tickled me today...

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

It's All Good Man!

2009-01-30T12:10:00.010Z

Can you believe I lived in my apartment for eight months without realising I had a roof terrace??? And what a roof terrace! The views are some of the best in Sydney. Unbelievable. I've been enjoying it with friends since.

So January's done already. The weather has been great, the festival a real boost to the social life and I'm back swimming again. All good? Well... no. Something has definitely been missing. Frankly, I haven't had enough work to do...

My mood is often determined by how happy I am at work. And it might sound strange, but it's taken me years to realise that.
Beautiful water and sands down at Jervis Bay.

I always felt that working for the Civil Service was a bit of a compromise. The work wasn't appreciated and it wasn't especially rewarding, and the working environment was never exciting, but the payoff - I thought - was a less stressful, less demanding working life. It wasn't until I left that I realised I'm happiest when work is demanding. An undemanding job isn't a payoff, it's a lead weight. I can only feel happy when I'm working hard and adding some value.

It's that Scottish Protestant guilt that I just can't shake off. Hahaha!

Left - James enjoyed his lunch on the rooftop!

So it's with some relief that I find my workload ramping up in the last week. And I'm excited about working for Opportunity International in 2009. I'm excited because this could be the most challenging year for this organisation yet. None of us would wish for the difficulties that the credit crunch have imposed on us. We would all prefer to have more donations, more money to pay for the projects we have in the field, and more money to pay for our team in Australia, which we've unfortunately had to pare down in the last month or so.

But given the circumstances we find ourselves in, we're determined as a team to do the best we can. I've said this before, but I've never felt as encouraged by my colleagues and by the atmosphere at work as I do at Opportunity.

Since I've written this, I've had a great week. I've done some walking in the beautiful bush around Sydney. My shoulder feels almost fully recovered so I've entered the harbour swim competition on 1st March. I've caught up with friends and I have a weekend of beach, barbeque and the Australian Open with a few tinnies to look forward to.

It really is all good!

With Australia Day passing, I feel the need to comment on the rivalry between Australia and the UK, and back one of these very different horses. Hope to put this into a new update real soon...

Wow!!!!

2009

2009-01-10T02:49:00.000Z

When I was at school I was a keen student, and a well-behaved one (boring! I hear you shout, and yeah, guilty as charged). My only vice was a tendency to daydream. For example, I remember on many an occasion thinking about the year 2000 and what it would be like to be around at the end of the millennium. This was quite an exotic thought, not least because I would be 25 by that time, an age that seemed impossibly grown-up, and therefore eons away.

The millennium duly came round without the notable passing of eons, and now, by heck, 2009 is here and I still don’t feel that I’ve aged notably, well not mentally at least.

This thought struck me when I was waiting on the bells at Jackie’s party in Edinburgh. And I guess I had a more thoughtful (and less drunken) new year than usual. In fact, the whole holiday season was much less about partying – and much less about ‘me’ – compared to the last couple of years, and that was a really positive thing.

I just got back from three weeks in the UK. This was a time to catch-up with friends and my family and to take a break from work and feel refreshed for the year ahead.

It was a really enjoyable three weeks, the highlight of which was spending time with my nephew and niece, Rowan and Colette, and with Kirsty, Gordon and my mum and dad. I love life in Sydney, but it’s hard being so far from family. And though I’m excited to be back in Sydney, it was upsetting to leave Scotland.

Christmas Day was very memorable, and it reminded me that Christmas is really about the kids. Rowan’s radio-controlled helicopters, flying saucers and insects caused mayhem, while Colette played happily with Peppa Pig DVDs, books and miniature dolls. Brilliant! (And as soon as my internet connection starts behaving itself, I’ll upload a few photos).

Otherwise, my memories of the trip will be of doing plenty of travelling, spending quality time with friends (too often in the pub, which has given me a beer belly to work off in January!), and how inhospitable the UK is in winter. The cold was just as disturbing as I’d feared and what’s with nightfall at 4pm? Some days it was so dull and gloomy that we never switched the lights off!

And so now I’m back in Sydney. January in Sydney is a fantastic time at least. The festival starts today, the 10th, and I’m booked up to see some great acts, including Mr Scruff and Cinematic Orchestra. Otherwise, the main focus will be work. Hope to hit the ground running with some interesting projects in January. More news soon.

dollar a week

2008-12-08T05:48:00.004Z

In Australia, $120 buys you a designer t-shirt. In Laos, it can help you train as a carpenter, allowing you to provide for your family. In Australia, $21 gets you a ticket to the movies and a tub of popcorn. In Sudan, it can put a mosquito net around your bed to protect you from malaria – a disease that is likely to kill you. In Australia, $1 is spare change. But in Uganda, it can change your life.

Just wanted to stick on a link to another great poverty relief website. I think this site does a fantastic job in expressing one of the most stunning facts about poverty - solving poverty isn't about making big sacrifices, if each of us gave just a small amount, we could end poverty, now.

Rebekah Nolan is a colleague of mine at Opportunity International and I’m so impressed with the work she’d done writing this site.

And a site written by young people for young people is a great idea - just a shame it makes me feel like an old-timer. (Thanks Rebekah!)

Click on the link below to find out how a dollar a week can make a difference.

Counting Down

2008-12-08T05:33:00.002Z

I leave for the UK in just 5 days. This will be the first annual leave I've taken all year. That I've survived this long without a holiday must be a reflection of how much I enjoy the job. However, I'm definitely hitting the wall now.

Like an under-prepared marathon runner hitting the 24 mile mark, I'm now struggling towards the finishing line with wobbly legs and a nodding head.

And in the holiday spirit, I spent all weekend in 'Maximum Socialite' mode on the premise that i am going to miss out on the xmas party calendar in Sydney. Ping-pong at 5am, an ex-girlfriend of (a very young) Russell Crowe, a half-hawaiian Bjork lookalike and a French molecular biologist may all have been part of the weekend. Or perhaps it was all just a weird dream.

In any event, I'm once again packing bags, catching up with washing and dreading the jetlag.

And what's this about 16cms of snow...???

A Great Week in India, and an Unsettling Week Back Home

2008-11-28T23:08:00.012Z

I meet clients for the first time! This group of women in Chennai, Tamil Nadu (on India's SE coast) meet to make a repayment on their loan and find out about the benefits of co-operation.

I’ve gotten quite a few messages asking if I’m safely back from India. Thanks for that. I am in Sydney, and quite safe. From here the attacks on Mumbai seem almost surreal, but they will have a very real impact over there. This is a tragedy for India as a nation. I feel this will change things a lot, and in ways we can't yet predict. I worry that India could become a new focus for terrorism.

India can be proud to be the largest democracy in the world, and proud that, generally, religious tolerance is extremely high. There are over 150m Muslims in India. But ironically democratic freedoms will make it all the harder to contain terrorism.

For myself, and Opportunity, this development is upsetting and could - potentially - have real implications for what we do and how we work in India, though I wouldn’t want to make swift judgements. We don’t tend to travel to Mumbai much – I’ve only been once – whereas we travel a lot to the other big cities.

On my day off I went back to my favourite tourist site in Delhi, the Qutb Minar. It's sad to think that I will have a niggling doubt in my mind the next time I visit a tourist site in India.

It’s been a strange week indeed. As I finally feel completely settled and happy at work, the organisation suddenly (post credit-crunch) seems set for upheaval and ‘paradigm change’. I won’t say any more about that now. Though it’s no more than coincidence, I have to mention that, on the brink of summer, the weather in Sydney has gone wintry. Everything has suddenly gone a bit odd… I think it’s time for a break. I’m looking forward to my trip back to the UK.

I promised a review of the Bond film.

It’s great.

There we go.

I have to mention a couple of things that tickled me about the screening though. Not that it was in Hindi – thankfully I managed to book the English version – but that there was an interval in the middle, as Indian tradition dictates.

Asking women clients some questions (through an interpreter).

This threw me! Bond films are the ultimate in movie escapism. But switching the movie off half way through, turning on thumping Bollywood music and sending out a bloke selling chai in paper cups from a large canteen did a good job of destroying that sense of escapism! And all this coming after a tense chase scene across Italian rooftops. I had to laugh – it was the ultimate in surrealism.

Sorry, this picture is very blurry. The woman on the left is a member of a tribal community in rural Andhra Pradesh. These people have a very traditional way of life and it would be very unusual for her to come to even the smallest of towns. It would be even more unusual for her to meet a foreigner. I felt a little embarrassed about taking her photo. Not a typical tourist event.

I’ve now seen the last two bond movies at the cinema in Belize and India. Does this qualify me in the same jet-set league as bond himself…?

No?

I can do the accent…

These photos are from the second week of the India trip. After 9 days in Delhi, I had a pretty hairy travel plan for the rest of the second week. With the help of our Indian team, I somehow managed to stick to the plan and covered another 4 cities in the last 4 days. Exhausting doesn’t begin to describe it. But it was a great experience. I met clients for the first time – a group of women who have borrowed money from one of Opportunity’s partners in Chennai, and another group of women who have taken health insurance from an amazing NGO working near Hyderabad.

Meeting another group of clients. These women are members of a health insurance scheme for the poor, which allows them access to health care. When I talked to the women it was clear that their priority is their family. They want insurance to protect their children.

It was great to be truly ‘out in the field’. And it was a real privilege to have the opportunity to ask these women questions – through a translator – about how their lives have been changed by the loans and insurance that they have received, to be able to ask them about their hopes and plans for what they might do in the next weeks, months, years to improve their lives and more importantly (for them at least) improve the lives of their children.

I also saw some people in far less optimistic circumstances. In fact I saw people living in some of the worst conditions I’ve ever seen, even worse than on my last trip. I saw the utter destitution of slums in Delhi where the poor are forced into prostitution because there is no alternative but starvation.

I found this extremely hard to take.

I didn’t feel as frustrated as I have in the past. And I don’t feel any need to point fingers now. There’s no point in people beating each other up over this. But it is very sad. And there’s something wrong with a global society in which these things are allowed to persist. But some people are trying to do things about this. I hope Opportunity can support these people.

This lovely couple run a 35-bed hospital in a small town south of Hyderabad. Poor clients can access quality healthcare there.

There was so much packed into that week. I could write a lot more. I might save that for some day in the future, and some other forum, when there’s been more time, much more time, for all these things to sink in.

I was exhausted by the Friday night when I got on the plane at Cochin for the long flight home. But it was a ‘good’ exhausted. I’ve got plenty of work to do yet to make the most of the trip. If I can get this done in the next two weeks before I leave for the UK it would be the best end to the year possible, whatever might be coming up in 2009…

This little guy is just a few days old. This light treatment will protect him from jaundice.

Amid all the turmoil, it's possible to forget that amazing work is going on in India, work that we need to support, even as things get 'tough' at home.

Bride Wanted. Convent Education Preferred.

2008-11-16T14:35:00.008Z

Vishnu

Today I had my ‘day off in the middle of the trip’. In high spirits and curiosity I sought cultural stimulation from two sources. I might have stretched that to three but it took me just 10 minutes on the first night to conclude that the 70 TV channels available in this hotel are all appalling (and 3 of them were Hindi versions of Big Brother).

Firstly, I visited the Qutub Minar, which I reckon is the most attractive visitor site in Delhi. Photos will follow. And secondly, as has become habit on these visits, I turned to the Hindustan Times classifieds section, for a gander at the Matrimonial ads.

As an entire section of the paper, this is home to a host of intriguing cultural insights. Here's a good example:

Alliance invited from a well settled, well educated Brahmin boy, preferably from Delhi, for marriage with March ’83 (168cm) very fair, slim, charming, beautiful, convent educated, MSc Economics graduate, belonging to a well established Brahmin family. Please send photo, biodata and horoscope details.

Krishna

This format is by no means standard with a good proportion of the ads focusing particularly on the spouse sought, while others wax lyrically on the aesthetic appeal of the would-be celebrant proferred, these latter type often consisting of 5, 6 or more synonyms of the word beautiful.

Touchingly, some of the ads can veer from comical to heart-breaking in one sentence:

Looking for a well educated effluent (well i'm full of it!) tall boy (furnish me with a groom?) belonging to a rich family, upper-caste preferred, for marriage with 30 years, 5' 5", qualified, very fair & extremely beautiful girl (i'd need to see a photo) of a highly educated and affluent (so they do know how to spell affluent - the plot thickens!) family. Innocently cheated in first marriage.

Check that last bit. Awwww. :(

Brahma

Two examples are probably enough. But I did have a good skim through for other highlights and turned up these gems:

slightly healthy (ie not dead???) with pleasing mannerisms (now if that doesn't set your imagination racing...)
32 (looks much younger) - seriously this appears a lot, and always in brackets as if to be read sotto voce!!!
with slight stammering problem – well I guess that’s something you’d want to know before you got to the vows…
greedy people must not contact at all – to reduce the cost of the wedding banquet??
convent educated - haven't they seen St Trinians???
son, never married, 38 but looks 27-28 - well i guess thats the benefit of never being married!
girl with modern and traditional values - I think this might be the Indian equivalent of 'a cook in the kitchen and a vixen in the bedroom'!

Kali

Seriously, I find all this fascinating. Though arranged marriages are not nearly as universal as they once were, they still account for a significant proportion of marriages in Indian society.

And, I mean no disrespect. These ads are funny because the terms appear so esoteric to the uninitiated. But of course when something becomes familiar, you no longer think of it as esoteric. The average singles column offers just as much bemusement potential for the novice. Who is this ‘Mr Right’ that everyone wants to find, and what exactly constitutes a ‘good’ sense of humour???

And maybe what makes all of these ads more humorous is the fact that the ‘human-ness’ is – by convention – truncated from the language of classified ads. Go to the ‘motors’ section and you’ll find wordings such as ‘Car for sale. One owner. Comes with manuals and full service history,’ rather than ‘I’m selling my car. I’ve had the car since new and once I’ve hoovered all the grit and fluff out from under the seats I’ll be fishing out the manuals and including them with the sale.’

So we get passive-verb laden gems like ‘convent educated’, ‘alliance invited’ and ‘innocently cheated in first marriage’.

Shiva

If I were looking for a wife through a newspaper ad, I’d like to put all the nice bits of the language back in. It'd probably go something like this:

Hi ladies (‘parents’ for the Indian version of the ad). I’m on the look out for a young – or at least a fairly young looking – lady with a big heart and a curiousity to find out what we’re supposed to be doing on this crazy planet (though not through horoscopes). I’ve been single for a couple of years now, though I have dated often (amusing stories will be shared in the event of marriage, though full service history has been lost in transit). A wilfully quirky sense of humour would be a real bonus as my humour on occasion seems very odd to the largest part of the population excepting a few mates who are as ‘eccentric’ as I am. I’d love to meet someone who is honest and open because those things matter a lot to me. And my experience suggests that the sort of person who appeals to me is passionate. It doesn’t matter what you're passionate about (a love of drum ‘n’ bass would help - is that too specific?), and in fact I would be especially taken with someone who could make me share their passion for something that I would have thought I’d avoid like the plague. But I’m never going to another Julia Roberts move as long as I live…

Ahhh crap. That’s gonna cost me a gazillion rupees. Oh well, it was a nice thought. The search for a soulmate will have to continue to bypass the mainstream media. I am still curious about the convent education though…

Coming next week – a review of that Bond movie and notes from rockstar tour of Southern India.

Ganesh

2008-11-15T10:15:00.005Z

Namaste! Meera nam Bond hai, James Bond.

Greetings from India.

This is my fourth trip to India this year, my fifth in eighteen months, and at two weeks, its also my longest visit yet. You might think I’d be getting tired of it. But if anything, I’m loving this trip more than any other.

I’m almost wholly consumed with work, from getting up at 6am until getting back to the hotel at 7 or 8 in the evening. This suits me fine though. I’m getting so much out of the job at the moment. (And believe me – I’m not always this hard working!) The projects I’m here to develop are really starting to move forward and I’ve got plenty scope to shape the future of these initiatives myself.

I’m recycling photos again – for shame!

Plus, I’m more and more convinced that Opportunity is the right organisation to affect change in poverty in India. Not simply because we do microfinance but because, even within the Indian microfinance field (of which I saw a lot more this week), Opportunity seems to be most closely focused on social impact and really helping the poor. This is immensely empowering.

There will be a break from the work schedule tomorrow. I’ve got the day off and I’m going to the cinema in the morning. Not to see a Bollywood movie I’m afraid, but to catch the new Bond movie. It’s just out here so 11am was the only showing I could get a ticket for. Actually, I hope I bought a ticket for the English showing and not the Hindi-dubbed version. Yikes…

As with every trip to India, I’ve seen a few things that have brought me close to tears. I will never get comfortable with the children who beg at the car windows at Delhi’s main junctions, and live just a few feet from the traffic, perhaps 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I’ve also seen the manic development in and around Delhi (think ostentatious dark-glass tower blocks and luxury malls to rival anything in the UK), which seems if anything to be intensifying in pace. It’s impossible to see a positive connection between these two things – the poverty and the opulence. Some people say that India doesn’t need aid because it is a high growth, rapidly developing country. No-one who spent any time here could make that argument and sleep soundly at night.

Next week will be pretty crazy – Monday is Delhi, Tuesday – Chennai, Wednesday – Hyderabad, Thursday – Bangalore, and Friday – Kerala. Chennai, formerly Madras and sitting in SE India on the edge of the Indian Ocean, and Kerala, on the SW coast of India, will both be new to me. I’ll fly home exhausted on Saturday but I should be pretty happy at this rate. I’m sure I’ll sleep soundly at any rate. Oooh… mind you, I’ve just remembered that dead dog I saw at the side of the road on Monday (and Wednesday). That will haunt my dreams for weeks…

Mo-vember

2008-11-03T10:53:00.006Z

A quick shout out to Keith who is taking part in Mo-vember. In fact, I'll pass the mic over to the man himself:

"During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'm growing a Mo. That's right I'm bringing the Mo back because I'm passionate about tackling men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer.
To donate to my Mo you can click this link Keith's Mo Appeal! and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account."

Great stuff Keith. Having seen the appalling effect that 3 days without shaving has had on your coupon, I hope you raise plenty.

What an Obama win would mean to me

2008-11-03T02:38:00.005Z

I've been to the US just once since Bush started his second term (back in September '06). My next visit will be during a Democratic administration, whatever happens this week!

This will be the second US Presidential Election I've followed from Australian shores. Back in 2004, I sat on the beach in Byron Bay and wept into my cornflakes as the American people did the unthinkable and re-elected the worst US President in living memory. That was a real downer, in the middle of what was otherwise just about the best week I’ve had on holiday. A group of us surfed, sunbathed and partied through the first week of Chris and Caroline’s honeymoon.

Times have changed much since then, both on a political level, and on a personal level for this author, (boy have they!!) and this time round I’m having a party on election night. The Grumpy Old Men are coming over and I’ll be supplying them with hamburgers, hot-dogs and a bucket of icy-chilled bottles of Bud – all in honour of an anticipated Barrack Obama victory in the November 4th US Presidential Election.

I don’t throw many parties. The downside of a studio apartment is the difficulty of entertaining multiple guests. So why do I see such a need to celebrate an Obama win? Well, I can’t remember when the choice has ever seemed so stark.

Don't take that from me... The New York Times has just published a detailed account of all the major issues, concluding with a resounding endorsement of Obama. It is a lengthy article, but worth reading to realise just what is at stake, and how feeble a proposition McCain offers. Check out the article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/02/elections-obama-mccain-yorker-democrats

Though I wouldn’t have come near to the outstandingly well written prose of the Times article, I’d have loved to expound on a couple of the issues, but I’ve got a hair-raisingly busy week this week – Melbourne Cup, sailing and Obama nights, aside from a huge workload before I fly out to India again on Sunday. More on that trip soon!!

Halloween Outfit? No...

Hair raising? Arguably...

Hair-straightening? Certainly.

eightsixty

2008-10-29T23:31:00.006Z

So the need is still out there.

And Opportunity International are continuing with a great series of new and innovative events. Our last official event of 2008 was 'eightsixty', a beautiful exhibition of photography by Rick Carter, taken on his last trip to India with Opportunity.

http://www.eightsixty.org/

I was at the VIP night a couple of weeks ago with Dom, and I thought it was a really atmospheric event, totally in tune with Opportunity's position as an organisation that offers something different, and full of care, attention and respect - something that's also embodied in Rick's photos.

The book is still available to buy on the eightsixty website. All proceeds from the book will go to Opportunity International's India program.

Dom loved the event too and had a few stories of her own, from a trip she took to India a few years back. Four months of travelling and painting as a single woman in India sounds rather adventurous to me, but led to a successful exhibition of paintings in Melbourne. Maximum respect.

In times of need.

2008-10-29T20:12:00.011Z

All picture in this update are from a visit to the 2008 Sculptures By the Sea exhibition last Monday.

One view of the world.

It’s 2008, turning into late 2008. Markets crash, then countries crash. Your workmates suck their teeth and tell you that the ASX has fallen 10%, then your friends invite you to share their disbelief – ‘haven’t you seen that the ASX has fallen 20%?’ – and then your mum tells you that the SAX has fallen 40% and so you reckon you’d better start following this ‘credit crunch’ yourself.
So you start reading the business news section of the newspaper. But by this time the business news has become front page news.

It was bemusing when large banks with vaguely familiar names bit the dust. It was downright alarming when your bank went bust. Now it’s nothing short of bizarre – are you reading that right? The government is buying your bank and you’re about to become your own bank manager...?

Who’s going to pressure you to cut your spending when you’re your own bank manager? Well, no need actually. Peer pressure will do that alone.

The Australian last weekend ran their ‘Melbourne Cup Fashion Tips’ article. Headline – ‘how to look like a million dollars on a hundred dollar budget’. Frugality is this season’s flair.

If cutting back has gone beyond need and is now fashion, it's time to ask what to cut first? Well the mortgage payments might be falling (the one plus-point of the credit crunch so far) but they’re not crashing. Maybe the holiday will have to go, or it’ll have to be 4 stars again, not five. And maybe it'll be another 6 months before it's time for a new car.

One cut tends to be implicit though.

Charity.

Why? Well, in the hard-nosed economic view of the world 'Discretionary Spending' is the first thing to be cut when times are bad. In this context, discretionary means optional, expendable (or non-expendable!) – essentially… ...non-essential.

And if there’s one thing that’s not essential, then surely it’s giving money to charity.

One view of the world.

Another view of the world.

What role for the poor in all this? The credit crisis is hitting us bad, but what about the poor? After all, they don't have shares, or pension funds, or banking jobs.

Inflation pushes up the price of food - the poor spend 75% of their money on food, compared to 15% for Australians. The economic slowdown is reaching even the developing countries now, with growth in India stalling and interest rates rising. And those interest rates affect the poor too, through their impact on the Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) the poor rely on. The credit cruch has pushed through the roof the rates that MFIs borrow money at, and this affects the interest rate that the MFIs pass on to their clients.

Even in good times, life is hard for the poor in India. Half of children under 5 are stunted or too short for their age, 20% are too thin, 43% underweight. 7 in every 100 will die before the age of 5.

When times are good, most fair-minded people expect that there will be some effort to spread the wealth around, as Obama would say. Implicit in this is the idea that when times are bad, that charity will dry up.

But I hope that won't happen this time. I hope that crashing markets and shrinking investment funds will bring about a more fundamental shift in people's attitudes to charity. I hope people will see value in other things aside from a new car and a fancier holiday.

What greater achievement than to help end poverty.

And finally…

A recession is when your neighbour loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job. Is a credit crunch when you go broke without even losing your job?

Talking of which, where are all those job losses? Does anyone know anyone who’s lost their job yet? Well obviously we’re told that the financial sector is ‘hard-hit’, but surely a depression means more than financial sector job losses?

I think they’re coming. It will get worse before it gets better. But if this is a chance for a fundamental shift maybe better could be much much better.

That’s something to hope for.

The economy might be off the rails, but I truly hope it's not the end of the line yet for charitable giving...

10^100 - The SEWA Ashram Video

2008-10-21T05:09:00.003Z

Our application for the Google 10^100 project is in. And thanks to our friend Christa, we also have a rather great 30 second clip of the work of the Ashram to accompany our application. And here it is:

Hopefully, with a large slice of good fortune, this video will be seen by thousands, come January.

10^100 (Ten to the Hundredth) - SEWA Ashram

2008-10-15T22:21:00.003Z

There's so much going on in the battle against poverty just now, including a couple of particularly innovative ideas that have come across my radar - 10 to the Hundredth, and Blog Action Day. Read on to find out more.

As part of Google's 10th birthday celebrations - must surely be the wealthiest 10 year old in the world - they have put out a "call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible."
(http://www.project10tothe100.com/intl/EN_GB/index.html).

My colleague Stephen and I can't think of a much better idea than SEWA Ashram, and we've put together the following application. With a bit of good fortune, we hope we will be one of the 100-strong shortlist. Expect a very excited post here, with a link to our youtube video (being put together as we speak) if that happens!

What one sentence best describes your idea?
To provide shelter, healing, education and training to the most destitute in society through a new form of community that will become a model for rehabilitating the extreme poor.

Describe your idea in more depth.
Two hours north of Delhi, SEWA Ashram is a small volunteer-run community that for the past 8 years has provided shelter and healthcare to destitute individuals who have been found on the streets of Delhi, abandoned by society. It’s budget is $4 a day. But many of those who are helped fall back into destitution, as they have no skills or opportunities to integrate themselves into society when they leave the Ashram.

The current Ashram can only house up to 150 individuals so with a larger site and the introduction of education, training projects and microfinance, SEWA Ashram plans to extend the work it does to truly re-connect the most destitute into society. It will grow its community to around 750 people.

This project would build a bridge between the most destitute, excluded individuals, and one of the most innovative developments in the not-for-profit sector in the last 30 years: microfinance. By providing shelter, healthcare, training and – ultimately – microfinance opportunities in one community, this project could provide a model for rehabilitating the most destitute.

The aspiration for SEWA Ashram community is to provide a model of society in miniature, tackling many social issues we face today. As such, this idea could equally fulfil any one of the 10^100 categories:

- It provides shelter and healthcare to the sick, through loving, non-judgemental treatment. One in ten current patients have HIV, and around 50% have TB.

- Through education and livelihood projects, it provides individuals with the capability to help themselves.

- As a purpose-built community it provides a platform for clean energy solutions. Through its scalability across the world’s second largest country and beyond, the implications for the environment could be profound.

But most of all, this idea is about community. A community is literally built for those who have none.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

In urban Delhi, 100,000 people are homeless. Many of these people leave behind family and have no local support networks to turn to when trouble arises.

Javed was born 33 years ago. His family home was made of mud and grass. His father left the family when he was 3 months old. He seldom had clothes and was always hungry. He ‘left home’ at eight, jumped trains and begged until he was 13.

Eventually he escaped to Delhi, where he lived under a flyover for 5 years. Uneducated of the dangers, he contracted HIV through his drug use.

When Sewa Ashram found Javed, he had infected wounds, TB and was seriously ill. He was in a coma for 8 days. After hospital, Javed came to the Sewa Ashram. The early days were difficult.

The Ashram gave Javed the chance of a new life. This project gives more people that chance.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

It will benefit the most destitute in society; those – like Javed – whos’ lives have been tougher than we can imagine, lacking hope, love and opportunity. Many of the poorest are capable of doing much to help themselves and others. Sewa Ashram encourages this capability.

However, it is not just those who are helped who will gain from this project. This project gives all of us the opportunity to understand our fundamental similarities, and explore how we can overcome society’s most intractable problems.

Javed grew whilst in the care of the Ashram and discovered a talent for painting, which provides him some income. He met and married Jyoti, another Sewa Ashram patient. They have now adopted Jyoti’s 14 year old niece.

Javed still leads a life that most people would shudder at. But for him, he has “made it”.

Our idea is to make more stories like Javed’s a reality.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

Implementing this project and testing the SEWA Ashram model will require significant resources, both human and financial. These are the steps that will make the SEWA Ashram model a reality:

- a draft detailed business plan has already been developed for a community village for the destitute that will provide a financially and environmentally sustainable solution to the problem of the destitute homeless in Delhi. It’s feasibility needs assessing.

- this village will be built on a site outside Delhi, incorporating medical services, family homes, school buildings, livelihood training projects as well as other community initiatives. This will cater for a community of 750 people and will cost an estimated US$3m for the initial 12 month period.

- 12 months after the Ashram launch, the community acts as an inspiration and model for communities across India and other countries.

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

With the support of the 10^100 project, we will develop an innovative and cost-effective solution to the problem of extreme poverty in urban India.

Impact is not measured simply by the number of people helped, but by whether and how their lives have been transformed and the sustainability of the solution.

The project mission will be to take the homeless, impoverished and sick, and heal them, give them shelter and ultimately give them the capability to move forward with their lives and become part of society again. We would measure success by the numbers of people who successfully complete this process.

Success will be measured by meeting people like Javed and listening to their stories on how they “made it”.

This posting was created for Blog Action Day 2008.

http://blogactionday.org/

In Her Footsteps

2008-10-06T06:37:00.008Z

I've been busier than ever at work recently, and I'm not the only one. Opportunity has been very busy working on some exciting projects. And, there’s one big first that Opportunity wants to tell everyone about!

On Wednesday 1st October, “In Her Footsteps”, received its world premiere at the Dendy Cinema Opera Quays, in front of an enthusiastic audience of about 250 people from Sydney’s business and entertainment world.

In Her Footsteps is a feature-length documentary about a group of women from Australia who travelled to India in early 2008 to experience the reality of poverty in the developing world and the potential of microfinance as a solution to the indignity of poverty.

After the very warmly received premiere, the film was shown again the following night, and another 200 people, including myself, had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of what represents a pretty interesting and novel departure for OIA.

First off, though I’m bound to be biased, you can take it from me that the film is a real triumph. It’s very professionally done, it holds the attention throughout, and it does exactly what – I presume – was the intention: to show the depths of poverty in India and how unsolvable these situations can appear, and then to show how Opportunity’s partners are helping the poor to help themselves out of poverty with the aid of microfinance.

After getting over the shock of seeing my big head on screen – in a mercifully brief non-speaking role at the start – I settled into the story of the group of women travelling from Australia to India. Told in the words of the women themselves (and those of Anita, the Opportunity tour-leader), we saw poverty through their eyes, and heard them describe in very personal terms their impressions on being confronted with the slums of Delhi.

What comes across in the first half of the film, as we follow the women on a day trip to one particularly deprived area is that these trips can have a profound impact on both staff and participants. Being confronted by the squalor that some people live in, by simple consequence of where they are born, gives rise to feelings of anger and disgust. That people – who are patently very much like us – have to live with so little in conditions we wouldn’t consider fit for our pets, is inhumane. For many people, seeing extreme poverty first hand brings out a personal determination to do something to make a change.

The first half of the film can be difficult to watch, focusing as it does on the extremes of poor peoples' lives, but it’s when the women visit one of Opportunity’s partners and meet Indian women who are using microfinance to transform their lives that the film really grips us, and gets across the message that we are powerful, we each can – and should – do something about poverty.

I’m sure everyone will be personally touched by something in the film. For me, I was reminded how easy it is to assume that poverty is “too big a problem for me to do something about”. Before I first tried doing some charity work in Belize in 2006, I did very little to help with poverty, believing I couldn’t have any impact. There was a real personal growth for me when I turned that idea on its head. Today I make my own very modest contribution. More importantly, I can’t imagine ever again not doing something. I know the women in the film now have the same feeling.

In Her Footsteps will be shown again in Brisbane on , 29th October and – I hope – many more times after that. I hope this film becomes another powerful medium for the message of microfinance. My big head notwithstanding.
http://www.inherfootsteps.com/

I wore a suit for the premiere, and at some cost to my personal comfort! Sydney is experiencing some exceptionally unseasonable weather at the moment. On Thursday, the temperature hit 30C, an incredible temperature considering that we are still closer to winter than summer. This was only to be outdone the next day, with Friday’s high reaching 35C by some accounts, 38C by others. That’s at least 15 degrees hotter than the October average. I am going to be very careful with my skin this year.

For once though, the good weather couldn’t hold out over the weekend. With the Parklife music festival to go to, and the biggest racing day of the Spring Carnival, I would have paid good money for sun over the weekend. Instead I was shelling out for an umbrella. Still a great weekend though and photos of Goldfrapp, Dizzee Rascal and Keith and I in our Sunday finest will appear shortly.

At Last!

2008-08-07T09:13:00.010Z

You thought I’d given up didn’t you!

Ok, so it’s been more than two months. And that's not good. But winter isn’t a good time for me. I tend to go into a semi-hibernating state. Like a NASA robot on Mars, all non-essential systems are shut down to conserve power to survive until conditions are favourable for a return to full action. But it’s been 28C today. That’s enough to bring anyone out of hibernation. So – much belatedly – here’s an update on the most interesting part of my last trip to India...

SEWA Ashram is a volunteer-run refuge for the destitute homeless people of Delhi. Opportunity International has a connection with the Ashram through their shared mission to provide opportunities to the impoverished, in response to Jesus Christ’s call to serve the poor. In July 2008, I visited SEWA Ashram’s one-and-a-half acre site, just north of Delhi, to see first-hand the challenges faced by the Ashram in providing medical care, shelter and rehabilitation to around 150 of the most vulnerable people on the very fringes of Indian society.

As we approach the main entrance of the Safdarjung hospital, one of Delhi’s largest hospitals, Nino spots a guy sitting on the bare ground. He could be around 20 or 30, or older. It’s hard to tell. He has a filthy bandage around his right leg. He looks confused, drugged even.

“This guy is typical,” Nino tells me, “he knows he needs help, he knows this is the hospital, this is where the care is, but what he should do next… he has no idea.”

“This is what it means to be destitute and ill in Delhi.”

Nino, one of the two volunteers who run Sewa Ashram, had picked me up from my comfortable central-Delhi hotel that morning.

As a veteran of 16 months working with the poverty-stricken in Delhi, Nino had volunteered to give me a ‘day-in-the-life” of SEWA Ashram. We would visit the Ashram itself, take a tour of the Delhi streets where they find most of their patients, and visit one of the government-run hospitals in Delhi, where I would see the challenges facing those who want to do something for the welfare of the poorest.

Softly spoken, passionate, and thoroughly non-judgemental, Nino is a great teacher. Spending time with Nino is learning about poverty at the coal-face. Everything Nino does seems to be a product of both a passion to change, and an acceptance of what is. At first glance, these two things might seem incompatible but I learn from Nino that a real, respectful and lasting contribution to the problems of poverty in Indian society comes from managing the clash between these two emotions.

After a few minutes we are driving through Delhi’s chaotic morning traffic in the tiny Toyota that doubles up as delivery van and ambulance for the Ashram. As with much else in India, Delhi’s traffic problems are pretty much the same as anywhere else in the world – no more or less stressful than in London or Sydney. It inconveniences you, it raises your blood-pressure, it gives you something to moan about when you get in to work.

But imagine chaos in a hospital. That is something far more harmful. What more difficult time to manage stress, confusion and disorientation than when one is ill?

Unfortunately, in Delhi, this too is a fact of life – for the poor at least. The young guy lying on the ground in front of us is a victim of this chaos, and it’s when Nino and I walk through the front entrance of the hospital, that I realise why. And I also start to understand what it really means to be poor and ill in Delhi.

Getting care and attention is a fight against a multitude of obstacles. The first problem is finding the right department. With no reception desk, and no obvious staff to direct you, it’s difficult to know where to start. There are signs, yes, but if you are illiterate how do you know where to go? It’s not hard for me to imagine this problem – with my extremely limited Hindi, the Hindi script is meaningless.

Maybe if you are self-assured, assertive and well-spoken you can find someone who will help you find where you want to go. But many of the poorest lack the confidence and strength that they need to help themselves.

Moving beyond the entrance hall, Nino takes me round to one of the hospital’s main admission departments where maybe as many as 50 people are waiting in two queues to see a doctor. This is the key to being admitted to the hospital – to be seen by a doctor and for him to assess your condition and decide that you should be admitted. It sounds straight-forward, but…

Some people will wait here all day, just in the hope of getting their few minutes with the doctor. And though the hospital is clean, the atmosphere is intimidating. It’s busy, noisy and dark, more like a city-centre bus station than any hospital I’ve been in before. We stay for a few moments and I feel a real desire to be able to help, mixed with not a little helplessness.

But as well as showing me the problems, Nino also wanted me to understand from the start that this hospital was not only of a better standard than many of the other hospitals in Delhi, but also on a steady – and in places rapid – curve of improvement. The A&E ward has modern trolleys and expensive diagnostic equipment. Two new large buildings are being built next to the main hospital building, to provide specialist surgery and care.

And past the admissions department, I see patients who are being treated, and treated well. In the Orthopaedic Department, we visit a ward that is bright and well-equipped. And the staff we talk to are caring and attentive.

But though things are improving, people still fall through the safety net.

In the ward, Nino introduces me to a sometime patient of the Ashram. The man lying in the bed in front of us had tried 15 times to be admitted for treatment for a badly fractured leg. Not all of those attempts had been unsuccessful. Through a misfortune which would have caused me to lose my senses, he had been admitted on one occasion, only to be thrown back on the streets when the nursing staff in the department had – for what may well have been very understandable reasons – gone on strike.

We spend some time with the patient, and Nino talks to one of the nurses. The Ashram staff have a good relationship with the hospital, built up over time and through personal connections. Many of the things that make a difference in public healthcare in India appear to me to be dependent more on trust and personal motives than policies or regulations.

As we leave, we pass the admissions department again. Looking at the long queues of weary patients, I see some determination, some resignation and plenty of bewildered, confused looking people. It strikes me that this weighting room is like a force-field, bouncing back the weak, and those lacking in confidence.

Back outside the hospital again, we see those who have neither the capability, nor the help from relatives to breach this force-field. In the competition to be admitted to the hospital it is the weakest who lose out. And around the Safdarjung hospital, you can see them sitting on the steps and lying under the trees and at the corners of the buildings.

After the visit to the hospital, Nino and I drive over to the streets around the Yamuna, the river that cuts through the Eastern half of New Delhi.

The van pulls up under one of the city’s newly built overpasses, and I can see a number of figures sitting or lying in the shade, taking some relief from the pre-monsoon sun. As we park up, someone approaches the van and directs our attention to one figure lying on the ground.

As we approach him this figure looks notably different to others I’ve seen sitting at the side of Delhi’s roads. Firstly, his condition is shocking to me. He is obviously a tall man, but Nino guesses that he weighs “less than 40kg”. He is all arms and legs. There was another difference too. He had a dignity, even lying prone on the ground. When Nino asks him his name in Hindi, he answers in English. He is not looking for charity, but rather Nino has to persuade him that he desperately needs treatment. TB of this severity has a very poor prognosis if left untreated.

But back at the Ashram, some kind of future can be offered. The first step was to take the new patient to the clinic in the local village for chest x-rays to assess the extent of the damage. Then a prescription would be made for the patient (at least 6 months of drugs in the case of TB), followed by education for the patient. In the case of TB, a disease all but forgotten in the developed world, success of the treatment is dependent on strictly following the prescription. All this could happen in the clinic over a couple of days. Recovery and rehabilitation would take many months, hence the need for the safe and loving environment provided by the Ashram.

In fact, by the end of that day the impact of the Ashram was already obvious. The guy we had picked up off the streets was lying on a sarpoy (a simple Indian bed). He had been at the Ashram for just a few hours but already looked like any of the other residents. For a moment my mind couldn’t quite grasp how quickly he had become part of the community.

I wondered why this seemed so odd to me. The answer was in my own experience and prejudice. I was used to the idea that, to become part of a group, especially a group that offers love, care and community, there is a kind-of ‘probationary period’ when you are not afforded the privileges, trust and rights of established members.

I was seeing this guy as a ‘new patient’, when in fact there is no such distinction at the Ashram. He was part of the community from the moment he arrived.

I wondered if I should feel encouraged that we had ‘saved’ him, made a difference. But I remembered too what Nino had said about the false impression that could be picked up from a visit to the Ashram site, about how the picture was only half-complete without seeing what was outside the Ashram.

My thoughts turn to all the people who we had seen earlier in the day who didn’t have this opportunity. As easily as some are ‘saved’, many others were just as easily left out. It unsettles me that there could be such a difference in outcome, for want of so little. My mind races on. How can I sit aside and accept that people are just as easily left outside, sleeping under bridges, alone, with serious, untreated, bewildering mental and physical problems?

I was also troubled that finding answers to these questions was more about addressing my guilt. I had felt good that one person had been saved, and this made me wonder at how it was possible that people could just stand by and let people suffer for so little. But this was to misunderstand the whole nature of the problem. Poverty is about the big picture in Delhi. Lasting solutions – as Nino fully appreciates – need an understanding of what is, as well as a will to change.

SEWA Ashram, with the assistance of Opportunity International, are currently considering options for expanding their existing operation, both in size, and through providing more sustainable solutions to the problems facing Delhi’s destitute homeless.

I love the colours in this photograph. It's almost like a painting with the marble-y coloured floor.

Whales!

2008-08-04T03:24:00.002Z

Update on India to come soon, but in the meantime...

It's whale watching season again in Sydney as Humpback and Southern Right Whales migrate north along the New South Wales coastline.

But you would never expect the whales to come quite as close to the coastline as this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/jul/31/whales

These whales are right in the middle of the bay at Bondi!!! When I go to my ocean swimming class (on a winter break at the moment) I go out past the surfers!

Amazing Stuff...

Its time to be proud to be from San Francisco

2008-07-08T12:02:00.002Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7494640.stm

Yeah, its another political post, but quite a funny one i reckon. :)

Outraged, Depressed, Upset (!)

2008-06-30T11:41:00.005Z

Thabo Mbeki: a failure, and an embarrassment to the good people of South Africa?

Nothing upsets me quite so much at the moment as the situation in Zimbabwe. While I do like to give vent to some political passion on this site, I tend to keep those messages short and infrequent, in between the usual updates on life in Sydney.

However, I can't bring myself to give the usual jovial update this week. I've got a much greater compulsion to point out what I think is an understated travesty in the current Zimbabwe situation.

Since Ghana was the first African country to gain independence in 1957, far too many African countries have spent too long under the regime of leaders who fail to have any respect for the rights of their people.

Robert Mugabe is clearly such a leader. Since taking power in Zimbabwe in 1980, he has steadily showed his real colours as a despot, a criminal and a murderer. Recent events are part of a steady progression towards anarchy in the country, which Mugabe must be held responsible for.

And now, Thabo Mbeki appears to be another. When South Africa finally emerged from apartheid in 1991 it got a leader that it richly deserved. Nelson Mandela is rightly lauded as one of the greatest leaders of our time. That his successor has been such a disappointment is not what the South African people deserved.

Mbeki too has been in his own downward spiral. Corruption among his closest associates was disappointing, his policy of denial on AIDS/HIV (South Africa has more HIV sufferers than any other country in the world) disturbing, but it's his support for the Mugabe regime that is the most depressing development.

The situation in Zimbabwe brings me to tears. I wish there was more that countries such as the UK and Australia could do to instigate a resolution. But with Mugabe oblivious to pressure from outside of Africa, the only way that social, economic and humanitarian disaster can be avoided in that country is with pressure from other outside parties that Mugabe must rely on - his neighbouring countries.

South Africa is foremost in those, so we should be shocked and outraged that Thabo Mbeki is now trying to persuade his fellow African leaders to recognise Mugabe's completely specious electoral win.

That's the basic facts. I'm not going to go into Mbeki's motives. This article gives a few more details if you are interested: http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=792493

I am relieved to say that Mbeki is leaving office next year, and will be replaced by a rival in his own party, who has made clear his anti-Mugabe sentiments. But in the meantime, anarchy in Zimbabwe will go on.

The South African people are suffering in this too, albeit in a very different way. I don't believe they share Mbeki's wish to shelter an evil dictator. Rather, the front page of one of the daily newspapers in South Africa today called Mbeki's leadership into question over the issue. It's also worth pointing out that, while the paper costs 10 Rand in SA, across the border in Zimbabwe, the price is 15 billion Zimbabwean dollars. Aside from the violence, I can't think of anything else that so well sums up the astonishing failure of leadership... in Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

And we just stand idly by...

2008-06-17T23:51:00.004Z

Please read this. You will hear plenty about it in the next two weeks. My guess is that it will then disappear from tv screens, as we once again do nothing about it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/18/zimbabwe

A Trip to Fraser Island

2008-06-17T23:01:00.011Z

I love the greens in this photograph. Beautiful.

For the holiday weekend, Dom and I took a trip to Queensland’s rainforest and beach paradise of Fraser Island.

I already have my big holiday for this year planned – in December I’ll be back in the UK for 3 weeks over Christmas and New Year. As this will drain most of my annual leave, I’m having to be pretty scrooge-like with my holidays for the next few months.
Those crazy, crazy 'roads'.

So with the office closed for a long weekend, and the Sydney weather turning a little more wintry (well, 18C and rainy), it made a lot of sense to get out of the city and seek the warmer climes of Queensland.

Hervey Bay is a 90 minute flight north from Sydney, and the stopping off point for the ferry to Fraser Island. Dom and I had organised a 3-day hire of a Landrover Discovery (see pics), which would be our trusty steed for getting around the road-free, sand-dune covered expanse of Fraser.

Right: eagle-spotted ray, seen from the cliffs at Indian Heads, Fraser Island.

After an unconventional safety video – “do not drive in the salt water, deflate tires to extract yourself from swamps, do not feed the wild dingos, etc…” – we were off on the ferry.

We had been told about the island’s dirt tracks, but hardly expected the all-terrain assault course that awaited us. Half-sweating in fear, and half-laughing hysterically, we tackled the outrageous cambers, giant pot-holes and sand slides that make up the navigable tracks. In fact, this was one of the key attractions for me – awesome fun, and really just like a big advert for 4x4 off-roading.

It got even better after we’d traversed the 15 mile-wide island and reached 75-mile beach on the far side. Driving at up to 90kmph along the beach, running through wash-outs and scattering wading birds was just too much fun!

I should say a little about the natural attractions too. As you can see from the pics, the island has some beautiful scenery – a natural result of the combination of desert, rainforest, lakes and ocean, which is actually pretty hard to find, even in Australia.

One less natural attraction is the wreck of the Moheno, a passenger liner washed ashore in a storm in 1935. The ship had been bought by the Japenese, but was shipwrecked during delivery to its new owners.

Given that it would probably have been used against the Australians in WWII, the grounding can now be considered somewhat fortunate.

Great place, great weekend break, back to work now.

A New Career and A New Home in A New Town (Going Through a Bowie Phase at the Moment)

2008-05-26T23:05:00.009Z

I belatedly realised that the title of a previous update could have led you to believe that I’ve become as slovenly as to only update the website four times a year.

This update should abolish that impression.

I have a new home. Please see various images of the fantastic views. This is the key selling point. Otherwise it’s a ‘studio’ apartment. Like most real-estate euphemisms, ‘studio’ really just means one big room with a bathroom. I may be dating an artist, but I’m not about to turn into one.

I like the apartment though. It’s small but cosy. There’s a gym and a jacuzzi downstairs. It’s very very near to town. The swimming pool is even closer.

LEFT: Yes, this really is the view!

I’ve been doing a lot of swimming since India. Otherwise I’ve been trying to spend as much time out of doors as I can. After a very poor summer here (by Australian standards), the autumn has been amazing. Every day has been 20C and sunny. As it gets dark by 6pm, its best to do as much as possible outdoors at the weekends.

Talking of weekends, my next adventure will be a trip to Fraser Island for the holiday weekend (6th-9th June). Fraser Island is a fantastic wildlife/beach/ocean getaway. Dom and I are very excited. Actually, I’m amazed they still celebrate the queen’s birthday here. Though if the alternative was one day fewer holidays in the year, I guess I’d celebrate anything.

Happy Birthday Keith. We had another big night out at the Argyll last Friday. This was a more sober moment – must have been near the start of the evening.

Work is going well though. We had our annual fundraiser last week. I was a table host – and conversationalist – for the gathering at the hyper-plush Sheraton Hyde Park. Even though I conversed with a large number of the donors, we still managed to raise a substantial sum on the night. The highlights included an interview between our new CEO and our founder, Senior Australian of the Year David Bussau. We were also lucky enough to have one of our donors from the Philippines in the room. Her presentation was particularly moving, and a great reminder of how much we have, when others have so little. In other words, it was a great prod for the guests to write some cheques!

Chrissie, Rebecca, Karen and Sarah at our fundraiser. Have you ever seen a more glamorous looking finance team???

Another Big Trip to India…

2008-05-05T02:21:00.007Z

This is the amazing view from Adam and Jo's apartment window. The towering apartment blocks are part of Thane's incredible building surge, reflecting the money brought about by the rocketing Mumbai economy. It's not just money that builds these tower blocks though. Poorly paid labourers live in the slum houses you can see in the foreground. These workers risk their lives daily, working in dismal conditions to earn wages that will keep them in poverty in urban Mumbai, but far exceed what can be earned in rural India.

How many Indian cities can you visit in a week? It seems like four or five if you are on a business trip. I’m just back from my second work trip to India and I had the good fortune to visit four cities I hadn’t been to before:

Hyderabad sits right in the middle of India, towards the south, and is the old capital of the Mughal empire and home to India’s Shia muslim population.

My rather eccentric hotel in Bangalore had a golf course across the road and a gaggle of geese in the forecourt (see bottom of picture).

Bangalore is well known to Brits as the IT capital of India. When a UK-based company hits the headlines for transferring its IT operations to India, this is most likely where they end up (though Hyderabad and Chennai/Madras are also getting in on that action). Bangalore has a great history, though no other Indian city seems to have made quite such a headlong rush towards the twenty-first century. The city has a very modern feel to it, and – typically – development has brought problems as well as virtues: during my stay I was caught up in some of the worst traffic I’ve experienced in any city.

For all its modernity, Mumbai still retains much that is exotic about India. Here you can see goats' feet chopped and ready for sale.

Mumbai is perhaps India’s most vibrant, confronting and news-worthy city. Apartments in some parts of Mumbai cost as much as they do in the more affluent parts of London or New York. Poverty in Mumbai is as shocking as in any other urban location in India. The two things – extreme poverty and extreme wealth – can often be found literally within yards of each other in Mumbai, the electronics and media (ie 'Bollywood') capital of India.

Ahmadabad in North West India is the capital of Gujurat state and famous as the birthplace of Ghandi. In the general aesthetic of the place (the architecture, the people, the enivronment), Ahmadabad feels closest to neighbouring Pakistan, but I was still unable to get a Peshwari Naan in the hotel restaurant.

I had meetings, site visits and work to do in all of these cities, mostly related to the healthcare project that I’m working on for Opportunity. I learned a lot about what works and doesn’t work in India and I met a number of people that will be useful contacts in future. If that’s all that happens on one of these trips, it’s a success. In addition to that, I made good progress towards partnering with a couple of organisations to help provide healthcare to the poor – that’s a great bonus.

Another great bonus was the chance to meet up with Adam and Jo in Mumbai and see their home there. It was hard to believe that we hadn’t met up for nearly three years. Within 10 minutes Adam and I were getting along like friends that see each other every day. We had a great laugh buzzing round Mumbai on Adam’s motorbike, buying cheap electronic gadgets (a mobile charger for Rps120 – fantastic! – a hifi for my ipod – awsome! – a speaker system for my mobile phone – lovin’ it sick!), buying furry underwear and paper stamps (ahhhh, don’t ask). Friends like that are just beyond any value. It was also great to meet Freya for the first time – she is gorgeous – and Alastair seemed as loveable and cheeky as his dad. Looking forward to meeting up with them again when I’m back in the UK in 6 months time. (Hopefully I’ll even get the chance to whup Adam’s ass at pool.) They have just bought a great house in Blackburn, where they are moving to when their great three-year Indian adventure ends on 10th June. I really did make it out to see them in the nick of time.

Back in Australia, it has been great to see Graeme and Jill in the last few weeks too. Part of their 3-week holiday here coincided with my India trip, which meant I had to cancel a planned weekend with them in Brisbane. That was a bummer, but we had a good time in Sydney, hitting some restaurants and making the most of the Anzac holiday weekend. I was somewhat disturbed by Graeme and Dom’s shared love for the audio cassette. Though it has to be said that their taste in music was pretty, erm… divergent. And no Graeme, your encyclopedic knowledge of obscure Australian rock music is NOT something to be proud of.

This means that in the space of a week I’ve caught up with three of my best friends. This hasn’t happened for a long time.

Adam and I had a great laugh in India, not least shopping for 'quality' Mumbai souvenirs. Here I am, loving my 'stylish' Rp200 watch sick!!! (Picture of furry underwear to follow!)

So, with some relief, a more uptodate addition to the website. It’s a pity the photos aren’t better though – I just seem to keep forgetting to take pics. I didn’t get a single one off Adam, Jo and the kids. Well, here’s a link to Adam’s site to make up for that:
http://www.clanblack.co.uk/

Ok, time to sleep off the jetlag. I had another flight on the A380 superjumbo this morning, but its hard to appreciate when you're arriving into Sydney at 7am, without having caught a minute's sleep...

Autumn!

2008-04-21T08:54:00.008Z

Well… this is a record! And not a good one. Apologies to anyone who has been checking the website regularly (or even irregularly), you will not have seen anything new on this site for some weeks.

In fact, it was only when I checked this morning that I realised it had been more than a month since I’d last put anything on here. And given my commitment to update the website weekly, I am feeling guilty, chaste… in short I deserve a wee ‘boot up the erse’!

At least, after such a long absence, I have plenty to write about. And to keep this manageable, I’ll stick to the interesting stuff.

Top of recent ‘achievements’ was discovering Jervis Bay a few weeks ago… and Canberra . On paper, a trip to Canberra was long overdue – it’s the nation’s capital after all, and only a few hours from Sydney .

It took an art exhibition to attract me there in the end. The Turner to Monet Landscapes Exhibition has been advertised heavily over here, and it turned out to be worth the visit. From European masters including Constable and Friedrich to great aussie artists like Glover and Streeton, there was plenty to see at the exhibition. Canberra itself seemed much less impressive. Dom and I didn’t stay long enough to really do the place justice. I did get an overwhelming impression of a sleepy green, white and blue country town, spread over a huge area of modern town planning. Everything is roundabouts and bypasses, without there being much to bypass or go round about…

Who’s Dom you ask? Dom is a very sweet aussie girl that I met at the Playground Weekender music festival in April. After a few strange – and admittedly slightly drunken – dance routines in the dance tent, Dom and I quickly discovered a compatibility in our music tastes that bordered on the supernatural. Normally, when I tell people I love The Cinematic Orchestra, Yo La Tengo, Beck’s Guerolito and the DJ Shadow remix album, they go duh…. whahhh??? Dom not only knows all these peculiarities but loves them too.

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Air together at the Opera House. The gig was sold out but I was lucky enough to get two seats for row D (!!) and what a gig. Yes, its lounge-fi, yes they wear cotton slacks and have bad hair-dos (they are french), but boy can they do an amazing live gig.

Incidentally, the Playground Weekender was a top weekend, with Ian Brown, Maximo Park and Kruder & Dorfmeister, not to mention my mates Willy, Smithy and co, doing a bit of DJ-ing on a great site on the banks of the Hawksbury River a couple of hours north of Sydney.

Otherwise, weekends have been taken up with horse-racing (watching/gambling, not riding), barbeques on the beach (some of which have been washed out!), and of course painting Keith’s house. Like the opera house, Keith’s renovations are over-budget and over-schedule. Ed and I are hoping that we will eventually finish the job by 2009. Even sooner if Keith gives us a hand. Only kidding Keith – you know we love to wind you up!

Easter weekend is well worth a mention too. Had a fabulous weekend north of Sydney with friends Jude and Nicola. Nicola's folks have a holiday home up there. It's a particularly beatiful part of New South Wales, with beaches scattered everywhere and gorgeous forest walks. Dom and I joined Chris, Caroline and James, and Dave, Virginia and family. Much Polish vodka was drunk and there was some pretty healthy swimming and running too.

Work has been pretty eventful too in the last month or so. Both of the projects I’ve been working on have progressed nicely recently and I’m looking forward to making further progress when I’m back in the field (ie India ) in the next few weeks.

Progress with the projects means that there’s a good rationale for me staying on for the long term. After some thought, I’ve decided I’d like to stay on here beyond November. Therefore, the plan is to make a trip back to Scotland to see the family for xmas.

So that’s a whistle stop tour through the last few weeks. And now I’m off to India again…

That’ll be the adventure side of the next few weeks. Less exhilirating is the need to find a new flat before my lease runs out in May. I’ve had a very pleasant 5 months staying with Dave and Dave but as the guys are moving on, it’s time to find somewhere new. I’ve decided on a one-bedroom apartment. And I want to live somewhere with a rooftop view like this…

…it’s not impossible, but with rent going through the roof in Sydney , it could be an exhausting search!

OH WELL! I ABSOLUTELY DESPAIR! I don't mean to make excuses (here we go!) but blogger is a real pain for me these days. I've been a fan since the start, but it really is time they improved their service. The last week of delay has been because the site never works properly. I've decided to publish this post even though i couldnt see which of my pictures were which. so annoying. but better to post something than nothing!

Antelope Park - Revisited!!

2008-03-12T00:18:00.002Z

I have so much to catch up on! Music Festivals, salsa nights, some nice aussie weather...

But I have a big strategy meeting with the CEO of Opportunity tomorrow (exciting stuff) so no time for all of that. I’ll just have to be content with posting this amazing article. This all happened in Antelope Park, one of the absolute highlights of my trip:
http://calumsbigtrip.blogspot.com/2007/07/incredible-zimbabwe-2-antelope-park.html

Amazing picture of the moment a British teacher was attacked by a 400lb lion
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=511673&in_page_id=1811&in_page_id=1811&expand=true

Excuses, Birthday Celebrations and Getting Back on Top of Things

2008-02-28T13:22:00.010Z

So like wow. when did i last update this site?

I'm finding it so difficult at the moment. I kind of feel i've got two choices. I usually like to take some time and think about what I'm going to put on here (yeah, i know you wouldn't think so, reading this). But I'm just too bunged these days. I've gone for option A recently - just hope for a gap and a bit of time to update, but now i'm going for option B - quick updates, just throwing on whatever i can at the time.

After all, my typical week at the moment is: Monday - solid day at work, then swimming in the evening then the Old Fitzroy pub for a Laksa dish (spicey seafood soup/noodles) and then i do my washing and ironing and catch an episode of the sopranos. Tuesday is usually meetings and then i have a salsa class after work, which sometimes goes on to Equilibrium - a bar in town. Wednesday is a good night for skyping home and catching up with email and facebook, though i sometimes go to a friend's for dinner. Thursday is mental - busy at work, always meet a friend for lunch, then biathlon after work, then the Thursday Night Grumpy Old Men's Drinking Session, which sometimes (but as rarely as i can get away with) ends up in Loaded at World Bar until 2am... and beyond... Friday is quieter at work. After work i sometimes catch a drink and sometimes go to squad swimming at Bondi. Occassionally Friday night is a night out (tomorrow night is a karaoke night) and then Saturday morning is always swimming at Bondi. Saturday i like to go into town and do something different and there's usually something on at night. Sunday is sometimes recovery time, and catching up. Recently Sunday morning has been swimming competitions. Sunday night is always salsa night - starts early and goes on late. And then before i know it, i'm getting up for Monday morning again.

So that's been life since India. And that's my excuse for not updating the website. Having gone on about that for length i feel i never need another excuse! Back to the blog...

Is there a link between jetlag and age? Having just reached the grand old age of 29 (for the sixth time), I’m inclined to say that yes, there is. It took me a good week to recover from the jetlag and fatigue of the India trip and another week to really get back into top gear. My sleeping patterns were all over the place, I felt unsettled in Sydney (a first!) and was struggling to do anything constructive other than work (updating the website didn’t get a look in). But by the 10th of February I was back to my usually cheery ‘life in Sydney is awesome’ self. And I had a pretty good birthday. The ‘main event’ was my first ocean swim. After turning down a good few swims through bad weather, unfortunate clashes with spectacular evenings-out, and sheer terror at the thought of swimming out into the sea, I eventually committed to doing the North Bondi classic on the morning of the 10th. I took my preparation seriously. By which, I don’t mean I did a lot of swimming – though I did a fair bit. More crucially I curtailed my alcohol intake (no, really) at the Reid family barbecue on the Saturday. Chris’ folks, and his sister Natalie are over from Ireland/London for a few weeks and Chris had a bit of a gathering on the Saturday night. It was interesting to see people getting drunker and drunker as I restricted myself to half-a-dozen beers and an early trip home. And that ‘training’ paid-off. I actually found the swim to be ok. I took it easy at the start and paced myself the whole way, to finish the 2km distance in 48:03 with some energy left in the tank, as is hopefully evident from the following picture:[link] I was 498th out of 697, in other words almost 200 people finished slower than me, so I was delighted. Being very competitive I’m also driven to go faster and further the next time. I’ve since taken a couple of swimming classes and have started pounding up and down the pool after work. I think all the exercise helped get over the India fatigue too.

And wow, it really paid off. Just a week later, I did my second ocean swim. This was also preceeded by a big barbeque, this time at my place! Even so, i managed a great swim, totally demolishing my previous time. This time I managed 37:10 and I was in the top half for my age group. My competitive streak isn't getting any weaker... So, my birthday itself was fairly tame - though there was a visit to the pub on the Sunday evening too. But only because the big event was planned for the following Saturday. Since having a memorable day out at Randwick Racecourse on boxing day, I'd been looking for an excuse to go back. Handily enough there was a race-meeting just a few days (or so) after my birthday. It was a great day-out and a fair crowd of us enjoyed open-air beers/cocktails, and the opportunity to lose a few bucks on a couple of attractive fillies. Actually, the winning rate amongst us was pretty low. We might have been better advised to check out the childrens entertainment as its difficult to lose much money with Barney the Dinosaur (though I’ve heard he has a real mean poker face).

The rest of February has been pretty good. I'm always trying to strike a balance between work (which I care deeply about, and what to do as well in as I have the capability to), socialising (never usually difficult to get motivated for!), keeping fit and healthy and fitting in all my hobbies and relaxing (always difficult to fit in!). I seem to have at last managed to strike that balance. But sometimes it feels like juggling clubs. Clubs with blades on the end. And the blades are on fire. And someone keeps throwing an extra one in, now and again. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Trip to India Week 2: Best Week at Work Ever???

2008-02-20T10:19:00.007Z

With apologies for the long delay, I should really finish off the story of the India trip. The story picks up from the middle weekend when Stephen came down with the lurgy.

As our trip to Hyderabad was cancelled we had a bit more time to hang around Lucknow – well I had more time to hang around Lucknow, while Stephen – poor soul – was confined to bed.

I had an interesting wander around town on India’s national holiday, and it was clear to me after just a couple of hours looking around, that Lucknow isn’t a particularly prosperous Indian city. That said, even in Lucknow there is a notable split between the haves and the have-nots. We were staying in the best hotel in town – a huge colonial style building on three floors, with large landscaped gardens and a huge pool in the grounds. Perfect for a wedding. In fact there were three pretty impressive wedding receptions at the hotel when I was there.

The photo at the top of this entry is of an Indian pipeband that I bumped into on our third night. Now there is some dispute as to where the bagpipes were invented. Scottish people will tell you that, like most good things… the television, the pneumatic tyre, the Presbyterian denomination, the bagpipes were invented in Scotland. But I’ve also heard from a less biased source that the bagpipes were played in India more than a thousand years ago. Though the guys playing at the wedding reception didn’t speak any English - and I couldn’t say much in Hindi - just by impersonating a piper I was able to make them laugh. It tickled me anway.

And if those guys like overly well wrapped up for India, they were certainly better equipped for the weather than I was. The last time I had been in Delhi was as a tourist in June last year when it was 37C, and after that experience I associated Delhi with the heat. I just kinda assumed it was pretty warm all year round. So I packed one small suitcase with my Sydney summer clothes in it. Which meant that I had a large number of short-sleeved shirts, a couple of long-sleeved shirts, no jumpers, no jacket. And then we walked out of the airport and there were local guys with gloves and balaclavas on…

The other good thing about being stuck in the hotel in Lucknow was that it did give us time to practise a bit of Hindi. Stephen and I found that our most popular phrases were Moo jay yay sum a jee na hee aye (I don’t understand), Deerie deerie (slowly slowly) and Sa hie ta kee-jee-yi! (help!).

My absolute favourite expression was Gulab Jamun. This is a very sweet doughy dessert which is fried and served in a warm syrupy sugar sauce. It doesn’t look like much in the picture below (!!) but if you have a sweet tooth they are awesome.

I’ll finish this account of the Indian adventure with one of the stories from the Ashram, which is just incredible. One of the cheeriest guys we met there was a guy called Sarin. He had spinal TB – a really serious condition – and had been on his back at the Ashram, unable to walk for 10 months. The photo below is one that Stephen took of Sarin when we were there on the 21st of February. This is Sarin getting some fresh air, with a puppy that he seemed to have adopted.

A few days after Stephen and I got back to Australia, we were sent the following photo from Kaye, one of the two leaders of the Ashram. This is Sarin on his feet for the first time in 10 months. Just incredible. If it wasn’t for the Ashram, these things wouldn’t be happening.

I joined Opportunity because I believe microfinance is the best hope of providing a sustainable solution to helping the poor.

But I don’t think it’s the only solution.

Where something works, I think it should be supported. And it’s been great to be involved in the Ashram project. Even better to be involved with this sort of thing having seen the country, the poverty and the people first-hand.

Work Trip to India (Week 1 - A tale of two cities… and feeling kinda sh*tty)

2008-01-27T12:38:00.000Z

In my previous life, as an economics advisor to the Scottish Government, one of the disappointing factors of the job was that I was pretty much tied to my desk. Interaction with the outside world was rather limited and work trips took me as far as…. Leeds. Southampton once. And Cumbernauld on more occasions than I was entirely comfortable with.

But that was a previous life, one which seems a pretty distant memory now as I write this in my hotel room in Lucknow, deepest Uttar Pradesh.

Without getting too technical, this work trip has two main goals for me. Firstly, I’m meeting with an organisation that I hope to work with to design and test a new survey programme for estimating the impact we have on clients in India – are we reaching the poorest people, are we moving them out of poverty? Secondly, I’m meeting with healthcare providers here to discuss the possibility of partnering with them to improve healthcare provision for our clients in India.

It was Indian National Day on the Saturday, celebrating the creation of the constitution on the 26th of January 1950. All public buildings were decked in impressive glad rags!

And there are other benefits to the trip too. Not least that I’m getting to meet some of the people who are working in microfinance and poverty relief on the ground in India, and I’m getting to meet some of the people that we’re helping.

My colleague Stephen and I are travelling together. Stephen has a few projects of his own that he’s hoping to make progress with here. The first of these turned out to be incredibly interesting, and has given me the chance to make a contribution on something which seems valuable beyond measure when compared with the types of projects we usually get to be involved with in our working lives.

On the first day of the trip we visited the Sewa Ashram, a refuge for the destitute homeless people of Delhi. The Ashram has about 120 inhabitants who have been ‘saved’ from the streets of Delhi where they live in conditions which are unimaginable to you or I. Half the patients have TB (a horrible and deadly condition, which has been forgotten by the developed world, even though it still continues to kill a million of the poorest people in the world every year), and one in ten are HIV positive.

It was really humbling to see the work done by Nino and Kaye, the German and Canadian managers who run the Ashram. Their work is unbelievable – quite simply I couldn’t ever do it. I’m not sure many people could. We also met a large number of the patients in the Ashram, many of whom are ill and bedridden, but many others of whom have been rehabilitated and are now gaining confidence and dignity in the community atmosphere of the Ashram, and even contributing, through basic activities such as making jewellery, painting canvases and growing vegetables.

We were there to talk to the managers about an idea they have to relocate and expand the Ashram to accommodate five times as many inhabitants. The need for help is, sadly, far far greater than the supply of care…

The day was really interesting, really educational in terms of finding out just what individuals’ needs are when they have been completely abandoned by society. Stephen and I undertook to draw up a proposal for a new Ashram. The idea of the proposal is to put some detailed plans together (eg setting out resources (money, people, assistance) needed), which will help the Ashram to raise the money and assistance it needs to make their vision happen.

We spent a lot of the rest of the week drawing up a draft proposal and will meet with the Ashram again before we leave India, by which point the proposal should be pretty well advanced. After seeing the people at the Ashram, it’s hard to imagine feeling more motivated about a piece of work.

On day four we flew to Lucknow. Lucknow is the administrative capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. If Uttar Pradesh (ooh-tar praa-desh) were a country on its own, it would be the fourth largest country in the world by population… and one of the poorest. There is a large north-south divide in India, with the southern states experiencing the greatest benefits of India’s economics boom (but there is poverty in the south too) whereas economic activity in the north is weaker, and the poor poorer.

Left: Stephen tucks into lunch. Was this the dodgy meal...?

We visited a start-up microfinance organisation where they have just a few thousand clients now, but are hoping to expand rapidly. Stephen and I provided a bit of IT consultancy, though my contribution was restricted to “switch it off, leave it 10 seconds and then try switching it on again”. Well not quite, but I certainly didn’t feel as useful as I had at the Ashram. I also went to visit Emmanuel Hospital Association, an association of 20 mission hospitals, which provides healthcare to an amazing number of poor people (600,000+) for an amazingly small budget ($5m). Had a very interesting meeting which I hope to follow up on later.

At the end of the first week we unfortunately ran out of luck on the ‘Delhi Belly’ front. We had been quite adventurous, trying a few new Indian dishes. Stephen was more cautious than me, so it was sod’s law when he came down with stomach cramps on the Saturday morning. This lasted a good 48 hours at the last checking and we’ve had to call off our trip to Hyderabad, which is a shame, but totally understandable. I think Stephen is coping with it pretty well. I know I go pear-shaped at the slightest hint of ‘man-flu’.

Here’s hoping for better health in our second week, and another chance to make a contribution to the Ashram.

Please do visit the website of the Ashram. If you have the chance, read the document on the ‘Urban Destitute’. It contains incredible stories, that you wouldn’t imagine possible in 2008. It’s a hard read, but well worth it.
www.sewa-ashram.org

Ahhh, no. Wait a minute. I think I've spotted the dodgy meal...

... those goat brains aren't as succelent as you might think.

Super Jumbo Smashing Great

2008-01-22T16:47:00.000Z

The Airbus A380. Actually, 'the' Airbus A380. This is perhaps the future of air-travel. But at the moment, there's only one in service in the world.

I'm in Delhi. The last time I updated the website from India was exactly six months ago, in very different circumstances. I'm now here with work! I'm on a 12 day trip to visit some organisations that Opportunity International has been working with, or is looking to work with in the future.

I'll shortly have plenty to say about the trip itself I'm sure. It's only the end of day one, but already it's been a great experience. But it is only the end of day one. So I'll say nothing more about India yet.

Instead, I'll start from last week. Pre-departure prep was eventful in itself. Last week I worked like a dog and was in the office at 7am more than once.

Having never felt more motivated at work, it wasn’t hard to do.

I needed to fuse the wires a bit after that week and went out for a (fairly) big one on the Friday night with Ed. Good night. Got up the next morning for my Saturday morning ocean swim. I enjoyed this as much as ever, really pushing myself under grey skies. I was amazed by the visibility in the water, out beyond the waves. It was incredible, the light reaching right down to the sandy bottom far below. Far clearer than I’ve seen before at Bondi.

In contrast, the weather was poor and the by the end of the session the grey skies had turned dark and soon raindrops were pebbling the waves. It didn’t feel cold to me, but I guess it was. In any event, the next morning I woke up completely bunged, with a sore throat, and generally feeling rubbish. More than anything, I couldn’t believe the timing.

Due to fly to India the next day.

Visiting a centre for the most destitute, disease-prone people in India the day after that.

I snuffled my way through Sunday, doing a few hours work, meeting up with a couple of friends and eventually washing, ironing and packing at the very last minute, finally getting to bed just before midnight with a horrible sicky feeling that the 6am start would not be a pleasant one.

But then I caught a break.

I woke the next morning having – as usual – allowed myself 12 minutes between getting out of bed and leaving the house. When I have to get up early, I won’t get up any earlier than absolutely necessary. If you can shave, shower (do the other sh…), apply deodorant and aftershave, dress, check keys (wallet and ipod), leave the house and lock up in 12 minutes – and you can, if you want to, you can – why would you get up any earlier?

I think I was at the getting dressed stage before I realised I felt fine. Not just fine but great. Cold gone. You could say someone was looking out for me. It certainly seemed miraculous in my vocabulary.

My day improved to the power of about six when I got a more than pleasant surprise at the airport. After a lengthy weight for check in, and a rather uncomfortable delay in the departure lounge, my flight was at last called, slightly after the scheduled departure time. As I made my way to the tunnel to board the aircraft, I glanced at the front of the plane and it looked, well… …funny. A bit different. And boy was it.

For 40 years, the Boeing ‘Jumbo’ 747 has been one of a select number of celebrated icons that have come to symbolise technological progress in the modern age. It is a colossus of popular culture, one of just a few ‘objets’ that have grown to embody the ingenuity of man and the simultaneously shrinking and growing world that we live in at the end of the 20th Century and start of the 21st.

But as of the end of January 2008, there was one (and still only one) commercial aircraft in the world that could top the 747. There can’t be anyone with even a passing interest in planes, flying, or even just travel generally, who doesn’t know all about the Airbus A380 Superjumbo. At last, after four empty decades, we have something that can show some progress in our mastery of the skies (Concorde aside… which I love, but which in all honesty had a rather limited impact in the history of passenger flight).

You can see how these two stories are converging. But before that, I just have to point out again that there really is only one aircraft that tops the 747 right now. Not just one model, but one plane. Due to well-publicised problems in production, Airbus were only able to deliver the first A380 to launch-customer, Singapore Airlines, in October 2007. And they have yet to deliver another… to anyone. The plane only flies one route, and even that route it shares with a number of other aircraft.

So I was exceptionally lucky to be one of the first few hundred-thousand people to fly the A380. And if you think that sounds less than impressive, bear in mind that there have been more than a billion passengers have flown in a 747.

Anyway, enough fluff and bluster, what was it actually like?

Singapore Airlines configuration allows for just 471 seats from a maximum possible of 800. So there was plenty of room. In this first aircraft, some seats are omitted, almost at random it seems, which adds to the sense of spaciousness. Plus, for a double-decker aircraft, the headroom was phenomenal. I’m looking up and thinking, how can the ceiling be so high, when there’s another couple of hundred seats above my head? And then there are the wings. They are colossal. Anyone with a window seat anywhere from row 33 way back to row 49 is sitting at the wing.

But though some things seemed bizarrely big, a lot of other areas looked pretty similar to any other wide-bodied aircraft. The toilets, for example, are just as pokey as ever, and bizarrely – given that the flight was only a third full – there didn’t seem to be enough of them.

And yes, you did hear right. The plane was a third-full at best. I think it’s about eight years since I was last on a long-haul flight that was so empty. Maybe it was the day of the week, or the time of year, but it seemed frankly bizarre that the plane designed to increase global air-passenger capacity should start its life with so many empty seats.

But for me, that didn’t detract from the experience, but rather did much to enhance it as I was able to switch seats and move about the plane freely.

Not that you would feel the need, as the seats were extra comfy. Like a good recliner chair (and unlike any other economy class seat I’ve experienced), the base part tilts as you recline the seat back. And then – as can be seen in the next picture – there’s the entertainment system. The best feature of the new system – narrowly beating the USB port for charging your ipod, and keyboard for creating word/excel docs – is the huge, high-resolution widescreen display. I’d swear my old laptop had a screen about that size, and I used to voluntarily watch movies on that.

Talking of which, I caught the 2007 Australian film “Noise” on the flight to Singapore. What an exceptional piece of cinema. This is one of the most beautifully filmed (and soundtracked) films I’ve seen in years. I can’t wait to see what the director, Matthew Saville, does next – you will hear of him again. It’s great that the Australian arts/film scene is capable of something so wonderful, when television in Australia is so appalling.

On the later flight from Singapore to New Delhi I watched Ratatouille. One of the best pieces of cinema I’ve seen in years. In fact, I’m going to come right out and say it. No messing. Without a word of a lie, it was even better than Toy Story 2. Seriously though, I can’t recommend Ratatouille enough. The story and script are as good as you could ever hope for and beautifully put together with drawing and animation that are probably better than any other animated film to date.

Anyway, back to the A380. With the seatbelt signs on and the safety demonstration underway (it was tempting to pinch one of the safety cards as a souvenir, but I resisted), I peered out over the huge wings and could just discern we had started taxiing toward the runway. Take-off itself was the quietest by far that I’ve ever experienced. The engines are super-quiet and you begin to worry that there has been some kind of thrust failure before the plane gently and undramatically lifts into the sky. A little disconcerting the first time to be honest, but definitely something you could sleep through in future.

After take-off we were quickly served a meal, a Sinaporean dish that was easily the best in-flight meal I’ve had, and close to a proper restaurant meal. One less visible, but well appreciated feature of the plane was the air-conditioning. Usually on long-haul flights you get off the plane feeling like you’ve been lightly poached, like an overly-healthy breakfast egg-option. Not here. If I was breathing another two hundred peoples’ germs, it certainly didn’t feel like it.

You can probably guess by now that I’m quite excited about the Airbus A380. And not because I’m a tech-geek, I’m truly not, honest. I’m just very excited about the cutting edge, about achievements that push beyond everything that’s ever been done before. That’s why I’m so excitable about space exploration (and so bored and exasperated by the International Space Station) and anything else of that ilk. The world’s fastest car. Or the world’s tallest building (also frequently mentioned on this website).

But while I get a buzz from hearing about these things, there is a limit. If I were given the choice of spending money on constructing a kilometre-tall building (plans for which were recently announced in Kuwait) or spending money on poverty relief, I’d say let’s all live in bungalows.

At least that gets me back to the subject of poverty. Which is what I should be talking about here anyway. Cue the next update.
The A380, after we touched down at Singapore airport. The ‘nose-on’ shot above captures the unusual shape of the aircraft. It’s ovular, or egg-like. Which explains all that head-room. So I guess the tagline could be: “The A380, fry without getting poached.” (sorry, sorry)

2008 and all that

2008-01-13T06:51:00.000Z

(Composite 180 degree image of Circular Quay with 116,000 tonne Cruise Ship, Sapphire Princess on the left, Harbour Bridge in the middle, and Opera House just visible through the trees on the right).

I can hardly believe it’s the 13th already. This update is soooo overdue. So without any further delay…

Sailing

One of the highlights of life since I got to Sydney was sailing Chris’ Taser dinghy in the Sydney harbour. It was a quiet day down at double-bay with much of gentrified Sydney having left town for the holidays.

(Tasers, like Chris' dinghy)

After much stretching of gibbets, curling boom lines and sheathing cleats (I have no idea what I’m talking about), the boat was ready and we wheeled her down to the water.

This is where the fun began. I hadn’t thought that boat launching could be so treacherous. In even a light wind, we managed to tip the boat over, fall out and slide about on the slimy bottom. After some assistance from experienced sailors (they had their names painted on the side of their boat – losers!) we found ourselves in the water,

Chris is a pretty good sailor and he was a pretty damn good teacher too! I started at the front of the boat, managing the ‘front sail’ (jib sail?) and we were soon making great progress, the boat tipped up at an angle and both of us with our feet in the feetstraps (footstraps?) leaning right out of the boat to keep us from capsizing.

(James and I head down to the beach!)

So mostly, we were tearing across the harbour with some skill. Though Chris did allow me to take the tiller (I’m sure I’ve got that one right) at one point with two hilarious episodes.

Turning the boat at speed is a pretty sudden, violent event. A sharp turn is essential to avoid losing speed, but not too sharp. On one particular turn I managed to turn a bit too fast, let go of the tiller and the next thing I knew I had my head under the water – in fact rushing through the water – with my feet still in the footstraps. Chris was able to reach over and pull me back into the boat, though in the panic I wasn’t able to pay due care to my shorts which were by now half-way down my backside, showing a good few inches of butt-crack!

With the sails out of control, thankfully the boat came to a halt. Unfortunately, when I looked behind me the Manly ferry was almost on top of us, with around a couple of hundred people seeing our predicament!

And, after a few near misses we did eventually capsize on our way back to the jetty. Actually, it was much easier to right the boat that I’d thought. And good fun actually!

Ocean Swim too far…

After my first sail in a dinghy, my next sporting achievement was to be my first ocean swim the following Sunday morning. And then the storms came. Not to Sydney but to the Central Coast. Though the weather in Sydney was good, the storms created a huge swell right down to Port Jackson, and Bondi was pretty heavily affected!

I went down for the training session on Friday night and the surf was big, real BIG. As we swam out I found I couldn’t calm down enough to breathe properly. The exertion of getting out beyond the waves had me out of breath and every time a huge wave came, I’d have to hold my breath as it washed over me. I was exhausted by the time I got beyond the surf, and then I had to swim back in.

(Left - fireworks explode from the Harbour Bridge.)

And then half way through I got absolutely bundled by a huge wave. When I came up, I’d lost my goggles. I got back to the beach and said to Spot, the coach, that I was going to have to call it a day as I’d lost my goggles and I was wrecked! But, in that typical aussie way, Spot laughed that off saying “You don’t see me wearing goggles. Come on, just get back out there.”

So I did last until the end of the session. But, with the forecast for the surf to get even bigger, I made the decision to skip the competition on the Sunday. I was back at Bondi the following Saturday and it was flat calm. Hopefully when I do get to a competition – probably after I get back from India now – the weather will be more like that than the previous weekend.

New Year

New Year in Sydney. Even the idea seems epic. After Christmas week, I was pretty much partied-out already. I would have been happy with any kind of night at New Year, but I was delighted with Circular Quay.

(Right - Keith and I meet some Scottish girls (!) on Hogmanay.)

Keith and I and a bunch of Peruvian friends had tickets for Cruise Bar. Despite incredible difficulties getting to the bar – a major problem on Hogmanay – it was a great venue. We met some nice people and of course the fireworks were immense.

Otherwise

Yeah, otherwise I’ve been partying hard and working hard. My room is looking more homely – photos to follow when I get my nice new canvas prints from my trip up on the walls. I’m getting better and better acquainted with Sydney’s nightspots and I’ve found a couple of new beaches around the harbour.

Lastly, my trip to India is booked! I fly out on the 21st and get back on the 1st of February. More about this soon. Should be epic…

Still didn’t mention the weather.

(Six Peruvians and two Scotsmen celebrate New Year in Sydney.)

Christmas in Sydney

2007-12-30T23:43:00.000Z

Looking a bit goofy after swimming the surf on Christmas morning.

How to describe Christmas in Sydney… I had about ten days off from the 21st of December until the 2nd of January. I spent almost all of that time socialising and swimming. Sydney has a Christmas party season like no other. After nine nights out in a row (nine in a row!) I at last had a night in on the 29th.

It’s been a great time to meet people. The two top events were Ed’s Christmas Day Bonanza (truly it was a great day!) and the Boxing Day races at Randwick Racecourse.

Ok, Evita definitely looks better in this outfit than I do.

Christmas Day started with a trip to Bondi for a swim with my German friend Babette. After struggling out of bed, I borrowed Dreadlock Dave’s car (about which, more later) and drove over to Bondi. It was cloudy in the morning and the beach was half-full at 11am. Babette and I braved the waters for about 20 minutes with a bunch of other people. It was a great wake-up call for Christmas Day.

Christmas at Ed and Dace’s was a superb day and evening. We had a real multinational mix, with a few Latvians, a Thai girl, an Iranian, a Peruvian, a couple of Aussies and Keith and I representing Scotland. Keith did a fantastic job making top-quality cocktails (mojitos and cubraroscas) but the piece-de-la-resistance was Ed’s turkey which was perfect. Brilliant meal – almost as good as mum makes it. We had some good party games and a bit of a singalong. Since my karaoke appearance at the work Christmas do, people seem to have been encouraging me to sing all the time (about which, less later).

Pretty hungover on Boxing Day, but couldn’t resist an invitation to Randwick Races International Day. Another crazy aussie idea where anyone with a foreign passport gets in free. Guess who forgot his passport.

What a brilliant way to spend Boxing Day. I went with my flatmates, the two Daves and met a huge number of other Irish peeps. There were an outstanding number of well-presented ladies there. And I think there was some horse-racing going on somewhere as well.

As well as the partying, I have done some more wholesome stuff over the break. In preparation for the competition next Sunday, I’ve been swimming about 2km each day in the Olympic size pools near my flat and in the Botanic Gardens. The weather has been awesome since Christmas and it’s a great way to exercise. Slowly building up the stamina I’ll need for the long-distance events.

The absolute best even off the holiday has been going out sailing with Chris. But that deserves a website entry of its own and will have to wait until the new year…
Dave larking about after I forget my passport and have to pay to get into the races.

Zimbabwe Ruined

2007-12-20T02:53:00.000Z

The Zimbabwe Ruins, as visited by the author back in July.

There are two articles in the press today about Zimbabwe. The first is in the Economist magazine, where they have unveiled their country growth forecasts for 2008. Modest or strong growth is predicted for the majority of sub-saharan African countries. The exception is Zimbabwe where the economy is expected to shrink drastically in 2008.

Contrast that with Zimbabwe's own forecast of 4% growth for 2008, announced last month by Zimbabwe's Finance Minister.

I know which forecast I'm putting my money on.

I may even bet my 1,000 Zimbabwe Dollar note that I kept when I left the country in July. And the other story today was that Zimbabwe is to issue new banknotes with values of 250,000, 500,000 and 750,000 dollars. The 200,000 dollar note (which was introduced when I was there) will be phased out...

...and if you wonder what you could buy with a 250,000 dollar note?

How about a Big Mac.

Central Bank Governor and Finance Minister - two of the hardest jobs imaginable.

But I'm sure - like Mugabe's other cronies - they'll be living in luxury as their forecasts and the fortunes of millions of their impoverished countrymen go down the toilet.

STOP THE PRESS!!!

2007-12-17T08:19:00.000Z

Another gratuitous shark pic.

Check out this article which was on the front page of the BBC news website yesterday!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7146551.stm

The article reports that:

A swimmer has been attacked by a shark at Australia's Bondi Beach, a favourite with tourists from around the world. The shark reportedly grabbed the man by the arm but he escaped after punching it on the nose.

Its common knowledge among Australians and tourists alike that punching a shark on the nose is the conventional defence if attacked. Less conventional is what the guy did next...

The man reached the Sydney shore before collapsing in a cave in which he was said to be living temporarily. He was later found by his girlfriend.

Eh??? The guy is 'living in a cave'...? What's that all about? This immediately suggests to me that there's something fishy (so to speak) about this. And sure enough...

A lifeguard spokesman said the man had gone swimming in the dark on Friday, which was strongly discouraged.

Channel Ten reported it was believed to be the first shark attack at Bondi Beach for 70 years.

So there we go, not much to worry about for another 70 years. And only then if you're crazy enough to go swimming in the dark. Though probably as well that I didn't know about this incident when I went into the exact same waters less than twelve hours later!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, I also have to point out that he was later found by his 'girlfriend'. Isn't Sydney an awesome place when even a guy who lives in a cave can get a girlfriend...

A cave, yesterday.

Big Swim in the Big Surf

2007-12-08T23:10:00.000Z

Mel holding the board that he paddles out into the bay with, surrounded by Bondi Fit Club members.

Last Friday some of my work colleagues were kind enough to take me out for drinks to welcome me back to Opportunity. We had a great night in Cruise Bar in Circular Quay, overlooking the opera house across the inner-harbour waters of Sydney cove. At the back of my mind though, I had a nagging suspicion that each additional beer would be regretted the next morning...

And so it proved when I dragged myself out of bed and headed down to Bondi beach for the first of three ocean swimming lessons. This short course is intended to teach you techniques for swimming in surf, which will in turn give you the confidence to compete in Sydney's ocean swimming races which are spread throughout the Australian summer.

There were four of us on the course, including myself and my German friend Babette. We were thrown (not literally) straight into the water by Mel, our very aussie coach, and told to swim 200m out into the Bondi surf. This was pretty 'exciting', not least because my hangover was playing havoc with my swimming stroke. After struggling back to shore Mel pointed out things we were doing wrong (drowning/sinking were only the least of them) before throwing us (literally this time) back in the water again.

Mel is a great coach, and like many great aussie sportsmen, unfailingly enthusiastic. He taught us skills for spotting where the rip current is pulling the water out to sea - good place to swim out - and where the waves are crashing over the sandbanks - good place to swim in... if you can avoid/survive being bundled by a monster wave.

Other techniques include using your arms as a board to 'surf in' on the top of large waves, entering the water with jumping, wading and porpoising techniques (which impresses people watching on the beach!) and breathing in such a way as to be able to look behind you and spot when you're about to be hammered by a huge wave.

This was all great advice and really interesting stuff, though I was a bit bemused when he got us to run along the beach and back to keep warm - ok, it was cloudy and the aussie guys were shivering but I was more likely to collapse from exhaustion than catch cold.

After the hour and a half long session had finished I felt absolutely on top of the world. This is surf swimming at one of the best locations in the world, with some of the wildest surf! The regular swim club joined us for the last hour and it was a great feeling 'competing' with these guys and girls. On top of which, to feel so pumped at 1130 on Saturday morning is something I'm not used to. and very welcome!

I'm really going to stick with this and join the regular club when my courses finish. My hope is to do the Bondi classic competition on the 6th of January. A bit ambitious, but I'll see how I'm going over the next few weeks, and it would be a good one to start with as you don't have to swim past rocks/cliffs as you do in the beach to beach swims.

When I was a youngster...

...I was a huge lego fan (fan-boy I guess you'd say these days). Like computer games, lego has come on leaps and bounds since then. I was just amazed to read in the paper at the weekend that lego now have a website where you can download 'lego-design software'. This lets you design your own lego models online! Not only that, but once you've designed a hotrod or spaceship or whatever else, you can upload the design to this website and order all the bricks you need to make the model. http://factory.lego.com/

How freakin' cool is that??? If I have a bit of free time over Christmas, I may have to design a giant santa's sleigh or something. Will post the results here.

And finally... thanks to my sister, Kirsty, for the following. Very amusing... and seasonal...

CHRISTMAS DISORDERS and CAROLS

1. Schizophrenia --- Do You Hear What I Hear?

2. Multiple Personality Disorder --- We Three Kings Disoriented Are

3. Dementia --- I Think I'll be Home for Christmas

4. Narcissistic --- Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

5. Manic --- Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Treesand.....

6. Paranoid --- Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Get Me

7. Borderline Personality Disorder --- Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

8. Personality Disorder --- You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm GonnaPout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why

9. Attention Deficit Disorder --- Silent night, Holy oooh look at the Froggy- can I have a chocolate, why is France so far away?

10. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder --- Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, JingleBells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,Jingle,Bells, Jingle Bells,

11. Oppositional Defiant Disorder-- You better not cry - Oh yes I willYou better not Shout - I can if I want to You better not pout - Can if I want toI'm telling you why - Not listeningSanta Claus is coming to townNo he's not!!

Over the Hill and Under the Waves

2007-12-05T01:50:00.000Z

Sydney CBD

Middle-aged?

As I start a second week at work I recall that, one of the things that attracted me to living and working in Sydney, was the atmosphere in the CBD (Central Business District). There’s a liveliness in the city-centre at all times of the day and night. Back near the start of the year I mentioned on this website how I thought that this great atmosphere was in part due to how young the general population appeared when you wandered around the city at lunchtime.

And now statistics have been published which back this up.
The Sydney Morning Herald this week included an article on plans to make the city-centre more accessible to children and old people. Surveys were done, which showed that these groups were very poorly represented in the city centre:

“In a survey of people and activities taken on a summer weekday at Circular Quay, Pitt Street Mall and George Street, 57 per cent of people in the city were found to be aged from 15 to 30…

The middle-aged made up 37 per cent, and the elderly and the very young both registered slim minorities at 3 per cent each.”

Now, I take two things from this. Firstly, almost 3 in 5 people are between 15 and 30. No wonder Sydney’s business district has such a young and lively feel to it.

Secondly, who the hell are they calling middle-aged???

Alive on the Ocean Waves

Last weekend I found myself with a few spare hours and decided to head down to the Eastern Beaches. This would be the first time I'd been back there since getting back to Sydney. The main stretch of beaches runs from Bondi in the north, down to Coogee in the south. A little further south from there, is Maroubra beach, and having seen it featured in the national newspaper in the past week I thought I'd pay a visit.

A favourite topic of conversation in the Eastern Beaches, aside from surfer fashion (this isn't the most culturally aware part of Sydney), is shark spottings. And any concentration of sightings also greatly interests the national newspapers. Here's an excerpt from Monday's Sydney Morning Herald (one of the best selling papers in Australia):

Swimmers were evacuated from beaches in southern Sydney and on the South Coast yesterday after 17 sightings of sharks close to shore. A lone hammerhead was observed off Wanda Beach at Cronulla. An Australian Aerial Patrol crew sounded the alert and a dinghy was dispatched to coax the shark into deeper water. Meanwhile, two large sharks seen at Cudmirrah Beach near Sussex Inlet on the South Coast were thought to have been either white pointer [aka great white] or tiger sharks, authorities said.

So it was with some interest that I made my way down to Maroubra beach. I wasn't surprised to find aussies and tourists getting on with it, with a large number of people in the surf. I had a pretty uneventful swim myself. However, about half-an-hour later the shark-patrol were out with a dinghy out in the water and a chopper making a few passes overhead. Not sure if they'd spotted anything but either way, it wasn't discouraging people from getting in the water. That's the aussie spirit!

Which brings me nicely on to my latest hobby - ocean swimming. Ocean swimming has become increasingly popular in Australia over the last few years (though this doesn't appear to have dampened enthusiasm at Sydney Council for building yet more Olympic sized swimming pools - Surry Hills is the latest area cited for a new pool). This popularity will only be stoked by the recent announcement that a 10km open swim will be an event in Beijing for the first time in Olympic history.

I've been a bit slack on the photography front recently, so all the shots in this update are nabbed from the web. Here's an awesome pic of a surfer at Maroubra beach.

In Sydney, there are frequent 'big event' swims such as Manly beach to Shelley beach and Bondi to Bronte, which typically measure more than two kilometres. I really like the idea of competing in one of these events. I'm attracted by the challenge and social-ness. Factors that enticed me into doing a couple of triathlons a few years ago.

Bondi fitclub runs Saturday morning courses for people to learn to swim with confidence in the sea. This Saturday is the first day of the course and I'm very much looking forward to it. Lets hope the shark patrol are on top form!

Wine-ing Pommes

The Hunter Valley got a brief mention on this website when I went up there for the Lovedale long lunch in May. Being a truly beautiful stretch of countryside, with rolling vineyards and hills, I was keen to go back asap. On Saturday I went back up on a day-trip, which - somewhat bizarrely - started with liquers and then moved on to three different authentic Aussie wineries.

Though the trip was well organised and the winery visits were interesting, I didn't go a whole bundle on the wines. They were not bad, but I don't think we were sampling at the higher-end of the wine range. Fair enough - I don't usually shop at the finer end of the wine range, but when on a wine tour I do like to sample some of the more luxury wines. There were a couple of cheeky reds that I liked though, so I took the opportunity to stock-up a bit for Christmas.

So I wasn't actually that impressed with the wine on the day. And I'm not the only one with reservations about Australian wine. The Sunday Herald reported at the weekend that the head of Tesco's wine-buying division - Dan Jago - has criticised Australian wine-makers for their lack of innovation, warning that Tesco will be forced towards fast-changing and refreshing Chilean wines.

I just love the response of "Hunter Valley winemaker" Bruce (yep, Bruce) Tyrrell:

"He's a wanker."

Bruce goes on to fulminate thoughtfully on Mr Jago's challenge to the Australian wine industry:

"He should go back to selling dog food.

For years the Australian wine industry has been supplying the British with technically correct wines that have good colour and are full of flavour, compared with the Europeans, who have been supplying them with technically poor wines with no colour and taste like cat's piss"

Though not reported in the paper, I'd like to think that Bruce went on to question Mr Jago's parentage and sexuality before challenging him to a game of cricket and stomping off to shoot a kangaroo, or perhaps throw another prawn on the barbie.

I couldn't find a picture of Mr Jago, but I'm sure Bruce would feel similarly about this substitute. (And you can't see this picture too often...)

(Politically speaking) Things Can Only Get Better

2007-12-04T09:29:00.000Z

John Howard (left), and a ridiculous looking baffoon in a suit (right).

Anyone being honest would admit that Australia is years behind the rest of the world on most things. And the political 'lag' seems to longest than any other - especially if the embarrassing voxpops about muslims that I saw on tv last night could be thought to be at all representative of wider opinions.

Think back to the UK General Election of 1997. A tired and unpopular right of centre government, who had been in power for longer than anyone cared to remember got thumped by a younger, fresher opposition determined to prove that they not only held the moral high-ground on the key political issues of the day, but could be trusted to be both competent and reinvigorating for the country.

Well something similar has just happened here in Australia.

After 11 years as PM, Johnny (laughing-boy) Howard has finally been thrown out by the Labour party's new leader Kevin Rudd. Howard even lost his seat. I find it hard to feel any sympathy. As with Tony Blair, the Liberal Party (of which JH is leader) issues that I had most problems with were the big foreign policy ones.

Johnny was even further out of touch with people than TB. Not only did he whole-heartedly and faithfully (what's smaller and more timid than a poodle?) follow George W, but he also refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. Yes, until yesterday, there were only two countries in the world that continued to refuse to ratify that treaty - the US and Australia. (Kevin Rudd gave notice that he would ratify the treaty on his first day as leader.)

Just as bad in my eyes, though seemingly not quite as objectionable to many Aussie voters was his policy on asylum seekers. Before the last election, the Liberals promoted a story that asylum seekers trying to enter Australia by boat had been throwing their children overboard. After the election it turned out to be untrue. It's quite amazing to listen to some of the Liberal party's policies and statements on asylum and immigration. I'd like to hope that this was part of the reason he was voted out. But in fact, Labour's policies aren't too far different. I guess this is an area where Australia really does have a lot of catching up to do with the rest of the world.

Having hardly spent any time in Australia in the last ten years, its probably rather bold of me to make the following assertion but I have to say that, in my opinion, John Howard has been an unfortunate albatross around the necks of the Australia people, dragging down the country’s international reputation and weakening its previously proud national psyche. This is, of course, to say nothing of domestic policies, though I've read nothing in the press here to persuade me that he's done anything particularly laudable there either. But don’t take my word for it. This Guardian article is a better written - and probably more balanced - assessment of Australia’s recent political history:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,2217015,00.html

So what next? As with ‘97, there is some concern that the incoming government – with a set of largely indistinguishable policies – will struggle to improve on the previous government’s record. But then, Tony Blair’s government were fresh, effective and a force for good reinvigorating politics… until Iraq.

Kevin Rudd: Do you think he's trying to get a subtle message across in this picture?

As with Blair in 97, I think most people will be wishing Rudd all the best. He's looking to get off to a flyer and I hope he can really turn the country and its reputation around.

So why the sudden obsession with politics? Well aside from the pageantry around Beckham's visit there has been little else in the news here last week.

Personally the big news is - drum roll - that I've started work. After 15 months out of paid employment (yes, really, who'd have thought it!), this travelling slacker is once again working 9 to 5.

So far I'm very excited about the job. I'll be working mainly on an impact assessment methodology for Opportunity International and there's plenty to get stuck into. It's been very easy to get started as everyone has been so welcoming and most people are familiar from my voluntary stint earlier in the year. I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about work in future months, particularly visits to our partners in India. The first trip should be in January and I can't wait.

I'm not looking for sympathy (before the house-bricks start flying!) but adjusting to working every day has been tough. Concentrating eight or more hours a day has been very tiring. I even had to have an early night last Thursday. Hahaha! And on that note...

Back in Sydney

2007-11-23T02:47:00.000Z

I'll only mention it once, but the weather has been rather fantastic most of the time since I've been back. See. Mentioned it. Now its out the way. Will try not to mention it again.

Right, so. Well then. As promised I have continued to try to update the website weekly... ...have tried. But failed!

It has been a busy old couple of weeks though. After arriving on the 13th - and not yet having a place of my own to live in - I enjoyed the excellent hospitality of my good mate Ed and his lovely girlfriend Dace at their bijou residence in sunny (and quite posh) Edgecliff. The views of the harbour from my bedroom window reminded me of being back in my Cremorne flat on the north shore of the harbour when I was here earlier in the year. It brought on a fair amount of nostalgia. Equally, thoughts of that lovely flat made me determined to find somewhere homely to live for the next year too. And perhaps somewhere a bit handier for the pubs and city centre this time.

Ahhhhh. Chris and I are reunited... in fact it looks as if we've actually glued ourselves together.

I won't bore you with the details of the accommodation market in Sydney but suffice to say that I saw a lot of shoddy apartments. In fact, if I can be so bold, I saw a lot of shoddy potential flatmates as well. It was a blessing that I had nearly a full fortnight of free-time before starting my new job, as I spent a fair amount of time traipsing across the city with little to show for it. In fact, even more worryingly, flat-hunting was starting to intrude on my busy social life.

Perhaps it was fitting then that, when I did at last find somewhere, it was within crawling distance of our regular Thursday Night Lads (or Grumpy Old Men's) drinking parlour, The Shakespeare. For those of you who've seen Shaun of the Dead, think The Winchester, but without the jukebox.

I will be sharing with two Irish guys, David and David - which keeps things simple - and have my own en-suite room. The flat is a nice 40 minute meander through Hyde Park to my work in the city-centre and disturbingly close to Surry Hills bar and cafe facilities.

Oi Lennon! That bottle's not plugged in!

In some ways it feels like a long time since I was last in Sydney and at first I was surprised at how unfamiliar the city felt. But a few things are happily just as good and as welcoming as they've ever been. Firstly, Sydney is just as sociable as ever I remembered. Not least Ed and Dace putting up with me for the first couple of weeks. Their cooking skills and finely stocked liquor cabinet were things of awe for me and I'm already looking forward to having them round for dinner in my new place.

Will aka Bono aka Elvis Costello sings Brown Eyed Girl (or something like that).

Its also been great to get back into the Thursday night routines. The first of which was a real Thursday-night special with teapots long into the night, as you can see below...

The first week was topped off by a rather enjoyable fancy-dress karaoke party for a friend's 30th birthday, at which i managed to avoid dressing up, but didn't avoid the karaoke. Apologies to Keith - i really did think a Sean Paul duet would be a good idea -never mind that he doesn't even sing in English...

Best outfit of the night was the home-made Bjork tribute. Superb.

Violently Happy.

In the first two weeks I also managed to squeeze in a great scuba diving day with Roslyn and some peeps from the Beverly Hills scuba dive club (less glamorous but definitely more friendly than the name implies), a visit to my favourite (Shelley) beach with Chris, Caroline, young James and not-quite-so-young Keith (when I got thoroughly sunburnt), catching up with some other friends and even a visit to a 'soccer' game.

David Beckham came to Australia for the first time last week with his team, the LA Galaxy. They played an exhibition match against Sydney United midweek in front of 80,000 super-hyped fans. In fact, the reception DB got in Australia was just astonishing - even for a Brit like myself, hardened by years of golden balls' over-exposure back in the UK. His photo took up two-thirds of the front page of one of the national newspapers, and his visit to play a friendly club game, sell his new perfume, sign some autographs (ie do nothing!) took up an even bigger proportion of the tv news for the whole week.

I was kindly offered free tickets to the game on Wednesday by someone at work but couldn't go. In any case, I wasn't toooo excited about what I thought would be an uncompetitive and unexiciting knock-about between two exotic but unrated sides. How wrong I was! In a complete shock, Sydney beat LA 5-3 in an end-to-end match, which featured a trade-mark Beckham free-kick special and a sending off for stamping!! And I sat through a 0-0 on Sunday night when the most exciting things were going on in the crowd (Brazilian drumming, female linesmen and beautiful female fans were a perplexing novelty for a footy fan used to Tannadice in January).

Time to get the magnifying glass out. This is halftime in the game between Sydney United and Queensland Roar (bad name, I know). Somewhere in this photo is David Beckham.

With such a busy couple of weeks already under my belt, and with summer, and Christmas (how weird is that?) only just coming around, I couldn't have wished for a better start here in Oz.

Hong Kong

2007-11-22T00:26:00.000Z

Two International Financial Centre. This prosaically named building was being built when i was last in Hong Kong in 2002. It became the third highest building in the world, but has since been overtaken by several others, not least the Burj Dubai which, incredibly, will (when completed) be twice as tall.

It's been 5 years since I first visited Hong Kong, and I wondered how much this stellar city would have changed in that time, and whether my high expectations from that first visit would be met.

I had three days in the former British colony and as well as testing my previous experience, I planned to see some of the sights I’d missed, first time around.

Sculpture in downtown Hong Kong.

Hong Kong may be the fastest changing city on earth. When I was last there it had been 5 years since Britain’s 99 year lease had expired and the general consensus was that Hong Kong’s economic and social transformation had been unchecked by Chinese stewardship. A further 5 years down the line and I can personally confirm that Hong Kong is still a whirlwind of development.

For example, when I was last there, they were busy building the third highest building in the world. That building was finished a few months after I left. But, impressive as it is, its already in danger of being forgotten, as already a taller building is under construction in Kowloon and several still-taller buildings are in the planning stages.

The largest seated Buddha in the world on Lantau Island, HK.

The transport system is also something that never stands still. The new airport is the product of one of the largest land-reclamation schemes ever. Having been to the even-newer Bangkok International airport, I feel that Hong Kong’s is no longer the world’s most impressive (in my limited experience). However, HK’s public transport system is something Bangkok can only dream of. The MTR seems to operate perfectly and effortlessly with stacks of spare capacity whenever I used it. And officials in Hong Kong have a greater appetite for public works even than those in Japan. The latest plan is for an extension to the train system to link Kowloon with Macau. At present Macau is an hour’s journey away by speedboat. This would be the largest bridge of its type in the world.

This development comes at a cost though. China’s environmental record has come under considerable scrutiny in the last 18 months as record growth has resulted in record levels of pollution and a move towards some unenviable records. In particular, climate-change sceptics in the US point to China’s progress towards the title of greatest contributor to global warming as an excuse for foot-dragging on reducing domestic carbon emissions (China will still be well behind the US on emissions per head).

Despite its low levels of industrial activity, Hong Kong is a significant contributor to China’s environmental footprint. In addition, the colony also has a significant environmental impact at the local level. This was something I would see myself on my second day in Hong Kong.

The Chinese White Dolphin is one of the most endangered dolphin species in the world. I took a trip out into the harbour on a dolphin spotting tour to try to see these beautiful animals, which - in spite of the name - are actually tinged pink. You can see from the pics that we got very close to the dolphins and it was a really exciting trip, although we had to wait an eye-straining 90 minutes before we spotted the first one. The dolphins played around the boat, usually at distance but sometimes swimming close. Given the huge volume of ferry, freight and sight-seeing craft in the harbour, its amazing that the animals survive at all, and that they will come so close to boats.

The other highlight of Hong Kong for me was the horse-racing. HK is famous for Happy Valley racecourse, a track squeezed into the built-up area of Hong Kong island. However, while I was in HK there were no meetings at that track. But such is the popularity of horse-racing in a place where it is the only legal form of gambling, that there is another venue for horse racing just a few miles away on the Kowloon peninsula. Sha Tin racecourse is an amazing stadium with capacity for 85000 people and over 1000 horses! Even the parade ring has seating for several hundred people and its own stadium-style all-weather roof.

Liking the odd small gamble, I loved the place and had a great afternoon there. In the first race, I backed a rank outsider at about 35-1. It led right the way round the course and was still in the lead coming down the final stretch! Of course, it was seventh by the end, but it did get me excited.

This fella would have had about as much chance as my pick in the second race of the day.

After two races, my small petty cash fund had run out, so I make a withdrawal from the ATM and put a slightly less modest bet on the third race. The picture below is off the closing stages of that race. And what a cracker it was! I backed a one-two-three and raked in over HK$1000!!! This paid for my accommodation for my whole stay in Hong Kong... which was nice!

Come on Dover - Move yer bloomin' arse!!!

So my second day in HK was a cracker. Unfortunately I spent the whole of the third day in bed with food poisoning! I guess I'd used up all my luck at the racecourse. Even so, it was great to go back to Hong Kong. The dolphin spotting, horseracing and the island hopping I did on the first day made for a great few days. And quite different to my first visit into the bargain. Next stop Sydney.

Attractive sandy swimming beach on Cheung Chau island, 30 minutes from HK by ferry. HK's mass of people and activity has an impact on the environment for some distance around.

Coincidentally, I watched the Al Gore film "An Inconvenient Truth" on the flight to Hong Kong. If you haven't seen it, I'd implore you to make every effort to watch it. Though it has come in for some criticism for a few of the things it claims, it is an incredibly compelling film and hopefully one that will have a significant impact on the way politicians in particular view the environment and their moral responsibilities. It just so happens that, as I write this, there are only 24 hours before Australians go to the polls in the national elections. Surveys suggest that the former global warming sceptic and enivronmentalists nightmare John Howard will be defeated by the more left-leaning (but still quite right wing compared to UK politics) Kevin Rudd. But more on that in another update.