Madrid’s bullfighting triumphs over ‘eating ze bugs’

Jose Tomas bullfighting in Barcelona

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From Madrid: Madrid is better than Paris. That’s my advertising slogan for this great city. Instead of Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen should make a movie called Daylight in Madrid. Rather than showcasing Paris with the writer Hemingway, the bullfighter Belmonte, the artists Dali and Picasso, and the greatest filmmaker ever, Luis Buñuel, Woody Allen should showcase them all in Madrid where the world is real, and law and order keeps the dodgy people on their toes.

Writing in the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall had this to say:

Our Foreign Correspondent of sorts, Michael de Percy, is in Madrid. This anti-Woke destination has a rich culture of bullfighting rather than bug-eating. ‘Creating fake meat in laboratories or eating locusts is somehow deemed to be morally superior. But not in Madrid where the creation and consumption of food is an art form of the highest order.’ I am starting to suspect that Michael is on a food tour of Europe...

Writing in the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes had this to say:

Michael de Percy sees much that is manly and romantic in a Madrid bullfight, while most Anglo-Saxons see it as a barbaric and sadistic practice, where bulls are tormented and killed for entertainment. While he and I can never agree on bullfighting as a ‘sport’, his point about true Spanish culture as not being for the woke is a valid one. We’d just make the additional point, though, that Spain’s best days are centuries behind her, because long ago the Spain of los conquistadores became soft and decadent by the 18th century. And the current Spanish socialist government is more akin to that decline than the rugged manly virtues that de Percy admires and extols.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Madrid’s bullfighting triumphs over ‘eating ze bugs’.

Madrid’s bullfighting triumphs over ‘eating ze bugs’ | Michael de Percy
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For me, Madrid’s history stands as a beacon of hope for Western Civilisation. It is prepared to defend Enlightenment thinking without compromising its cultural heritage.https://t.co/nG7ctu80jJ

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) November 23, 2024

Portugal’s national identity is forged through individual bravery, not identity politics

Bacalhau (salted cod) is Portugal's national dish and part of its seafaring identity

From Lisbon: Portugal, a seafaring nation, pioneered the Age of Discovery and the exploration of the New World. Synonymous with this period is the individual bravery of the early navigators who battled tough conditions to explore beyond the Pillars of Hercules and to cross the Atlantic. Until recently, Portugal forged a national identity through individual ruggedness in the cod fishing industry in the North Atlantic, and not through the identity politics that is part and parcel of the European Union (EU).

Writing in the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall had this to say:

Speccie favourite Michael de Percy is on holiday in Portugal and has dropped a travel log for us about the state of identity politics in this part of the world with a proud and rich history. ‘Portugal is now another casualty of the EU and all the identity politics and economic hardships that entails…’

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Portugal’s national identity is forged through individual bravery, not identity politics.

Portugal’s national identity is forged through individual bravery, not identity politics | Michael de Percy
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One thing that struck me is that despite the proud national culture forged in hard work and bravery, Portugal is now another casualty of the EU and all the… pic.twitter.com/H6GXRkkzti

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) November 17, 2024

North Korea trash politics sky-high while our pollies are distracted

Guard Post at YP-Do, 3 June 2024

From Baengnyeongdo, South Korea: Here at what the Americans call PY-Do in the Yellow Sea, we are closer to North Korea’s capital than we are to the South’s capital, Seoul. PY-Do is an ‘island outpost at freedom’s frontier’. It is home to over 4,000 South Koreans and exists in an administrative afterthought of the Korean Armistice Agreement in an area known as the Northwest Islands.

The United Nations Command (UNC) established a Northern Limit Line (NLL) in 1953 at a time when the North’s navy was barely existent. In effect, South Korea stays below the NLL while North Korea does not recognise it. The five Northwest Islands, of which PY-Do and Yeonpyeongdo (YP-do) are a part, remain a flashpoint for hostilities between the two nations.

PY-Do is the site of annual South Korean and US military drills designed to ‘bolster their readiness against North Korean nuclear threats’. Technically, North and South Korea remain at war, but general hostilities ceased in 1953. The threat of tit-for-tat skirmishes, however, is ever-present.

Writing in the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall had this to say about my article:

I was chatting to Michael de Percy before Speccie TV the other day and he was telling me all about his trip in South Korea. ‘You should be our foreign correspondent!’ I unfairly badgered him on air. Michael was kind enough to dutifully reply with an excellent story of what it’s like in the demilitarised zone. He writes: ‘It is confronting and gives one a sense of gratitude for the lifestyles we enjoy in the West. But it also makes me realise how important it is that we actively defend our way of life and celebrate the achievements of the West.’

My latest in The Spectator Australia, North Korea trash politics sky-high while our pollies are distractedNorth Korea trash politics sky-high while our pollies are distracted.

North Korea trash politics sky-high while our pollies are distracted
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I’ve been exploring the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas for the last few years to understand what it is like to live at the frontier of freedom. The contrast between the North (which… pic.twitter.com/Jpn2q3DOmo

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) June 9, 2024

Australia's Korean War 70 years on

At the DMZ, April 2023

As we approach the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement (July 27, 1953), it is timely to reflect on Australia’s contribution to securing what is effectively the frontier of democracy.

Here is my latest article in The Spectator's Flat White, Australia's Korean War 70 years on.

As we approach the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement (July 27, 1953), it is timely to reflect on Australia’s contribution to securing what is effectively the frontier of democracy.https://t.co/S9mO2PRLIh

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) April 25, 2023

The Korean War: The Long March to Liberty

Nuclear Missile Deterrents, Korean War Museum [Michael de Percy CC BY-ND 4.0]

I visited the Korean War Memorial on 22 September 2022. I have never seen a B-52 in the flesh. I will let these photos speak for themselves for now.

T-LOG2022 Technical Visits: Incheon National University

Gyeongin Ara Waterway Logistics Complex, 21 September 2022.

I attended the 9th International Conferences on Transport and Logistics (T-LOG2022) at the Graduate School of Logistics at the Incheon National University. I chaired the panel on the Shipping and Port Industry and then participated in a day of technical site visits.

Entrance to Incheon National University.

The site visits commenced with an introduction to the Incheon Free Economic Zone.

Korean Air Cargo Terminal, Incheon International Airport, 21 September 2022.

The logistics solution to the free trade zone's transfer of air freight in the Korean Air Cargo Terminal was interesting and hectic!

Inside the Korean Air Cargo Terminal, 21 September 2022.

We then went from the airport to the entrance to the canal that connects Incheon International Airport to Gimpo International Airport. The canal doubles as a way to drain the nearby flood plain.

Gyeongin Ara Waterway.

Connecting the Han River to the Yellow Sea had been planned hundreds of years before Korea had the earthmoving technology to make it a reality. The result was the Gyeongin Ara Waterway, completed in 2012.

Looking toward the Yellow Sea.

Lunch was a traditional Korean affair. Thank you, Incheon National University and T-LOG! That was an excellent event!

Traditional Korean Meal. A bit tough on the old knees!

We also visited the Ara Skywalk which juts out over the canal.

Looking down while standing on the Ara Skywalk.

The weather was great!

View from the Ara Skywalk.

The technical site visits finished at the Ara Marina Gimpo.

Briefing at the Ara Marina Gimpo.

Bank of Korea: What can Australia Learn?

 

Historical Monetary Policy Board Meeting Room [Michael de Percy CC BY-ND 4.0]

It's interesting what one can learn from technical site visits (such as Korean Air Cargo Terminal), but also surprising how attending small-scale specialist museums stimulates one's thinking. I will return to this later but for now, here are some links relating to Korea's Money Museum.

Link to paper on the history of Korean monetary policy.

Money Museum website.

Money Museum flyer.

Vonnegut: Nothing to see here, moving right along...

Folly in the Mist, Hann. Münden, Germany. Photo by Michael de Percy.

I was on my way to Germany to visit Berlin, Dresden, and Hann. Münden. Kurt Vonnegut, a second generation American of German descent seemed a good choice for the flight. I usually find it easy to knock over a Penguin paperback on a long-haul flight, but not this time. I've been struggling to read deeply since a major life event early last year shifted the focus of my spare time. 

So I didn't manage to finish the book until some months later. I found Vonnegut's work to be interesting but a little far-fetched - it smacked of a Woody Allen style of science fiction (see the trailer for "The Sleeper" below) that was somehow banal yet allegorical in a mildly interesting way.

    

Much of the social commentary was lost on me. I suppose for a conservative reader of the early 1960s the foot-touching free love may have been a bit out there, but for me it was all old hat. I had the feeling of the 'thirteen days' and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. 

Usually I am a fan of history but Vonnegut is rather economical with his contextual elements - an Animal Farm kind of focus on the sociological order rather than the 'iceberg' cerebral development approach. It was interesting today that I listened to a podcast on Jack London's literary style.

This sent me on a quest to look back at some of my previous readings of several of London's works. One thing I found was that I have been critical of London's racism (poignant in the wake of the Black Lives Matters protests beginning in the US and now happening in solidarity but focused on Indigenous deaths in custody here in Australia). 

But I was also pleased to note that I had picked up on a key theme of the overall problem (from Jack London's To Build a Fire):

The trouble with him was that he was without imagination.

That's how I felt about Vonnegut's work. Until the meaning of the title came to my attention. The cat's cradle:

It's a child's illusion. It requires one's imagination. One flick of the hands and the cradle is gone. It doesn't exist.

I am usually way off but occasionally, like with Jack London, I am on the mark. 

I found in Cat's Cradle the Stoic technique of the "bird's eye view". Once we view the world from above, we realise two things. 

First, the insignificance of our petty existence. The arguments of today, the angry idiot tailgating me on the Hume highway last night, flashing his lights and sounding his horn. All nothing. I remember noting too, with flying, that once you are above the clouds it is always a perfect day. It is all a matter of perspective.

Second, we are all in this together.  I am currently reading Ryan Holiday's Stillness is the Key. He mentions Edgar Mitchell's famous words upon viewing the world from space:

You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.’

It is interesting that just this week, Mitchell's words have resurfaced in what has been called the world's first political protest in near space, but targeted at Donald Trump.

In the above musings, and almost two months after I finished reading Cat's Cradle, I realised Vonnegut's genius. It is all an illusion. There are hands, there is string, there is imagination. The cat's cradle is made up of reality and intangibles. Neither works without the other.

Fake news, The Guardian versus The Australian and all of the left versus right is more of the same nonsense. It is not imagination, it is not creative. It is dogmatic, divisive, and dodgy. Yet the people believe.

This is what I get from Vonnegut. It is not the illusion, but that we make sense out of the world through our "bounded rationality" combined with our sense of  imagination. Not fake or make-believe, but creative and expressive and from the depths of our intellect.

Regrettably, Kurt Vonnegut reminds us that without imagination (the creative as opposed to the conspiratorial kind), we are doomed to an inevitable end. Like London's "everyman" in To Build a Fire, we are not reflecting on our mortality in the face of nature, but rather imagining ourselves to be something more significant while smacking of hubris. For London:

The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.

But London, too, was a fan of eugenics. He was human and he, too, was wrong.

Vonnegut was subtler, less egotistical, more realistic. If I had to sum up Cat's Cradle, I would say that London had too much imagination, whereas Vonnegut is the Goldilocks' little bear version of "just right".

P.S. It's a shame that The Three Bears was originally written by Robert Southey and not the Grimm Brothers to fit my German theme. And the original Goldilocks was an old woman and the three bears were bachelors. But you can use your imagination! I visited the Grimm Brothers Museum in Kassel, Germany, on 3rd December 2019.

Outside the Grimm Brothers' Museum, Kassel, Germany.
Photo by Michael de Percy.

Modern Anchorites; or, How we displace reality because of the Fuckeaucracy

Contemporary Anchorites: When the insane becomes the popular stupid fuckeaucracy

What struck me about anchorites was their popularity. They were like the rock stars of the annoying Middle Ages where people were supposedly so stupid that they were complete idiots and believed anything.

And we tend to think of the Dark Ages as stupid - where stupid people continued to breed despite the odds of their perpetuating their stupidity. Not like now, when we are so advanced. Surely, we are so much more advanced than then?

It seems that we are now in the midst of a new period of stupidity. Everyone knows it, but we can't say a thing because the morons are in control again. If we state the obvious, we are obviously insane.

What am I talking about? The Age of Stupidity. It's like the Age of Enlightenment only dumber. It's like the Dark Ages except this time, we know that we are complete fucking morons.

And what's to blame? Bureaucracy. Although Weber and Durkheim may have pointed out the obvious in their time, it is now time that somebody who is not a bureaucrat came up with an alternative solution to what is obviously a crock.

So convince me that climate change is not real. That popular opinion is the predominant way of assessing policy. That people who spend their entire lives focused on crafting perfection in their field have nothing better to do than parade around being some elitist fuck because they are complete morons. That through their research they somehow arrived at something that suited their particular political agenda. Please. 

Tell me that every academic who is jumping through the hoops created by non-PhD or, more appropriately, non research active public servants who pretend to be academics but have career agendas beyond academia - that these non-academic people stood up to bullshit because it advanced their careers - and tell me what the fuck do these same clowns know?

And then tell me that the majority of people who barely did well at science in high school have a legitimate voice in policy-making. Please. Prove me wrong. No, please do so because I am sitting here thinking: WTF?

Most contemporary political problems are a consequence of a lack of knowledge. Whether the lack of knowledge is a consequence of the progressive dumbing down of university education is by the by (it is only a mater of time before it is true) but it is clear that everyone now has the democratised answer to everything. Who needs experts when we can now simply have the answer because we are so entitled to be brilliant?

Which is my point. Once, we may have clung to the words of some random fuckwit who locked themselves away in an anchor-hold to tell us about the future. Now we cling ourselves to some random fuckwit who tells us what we want to hear. 

The difference is training. If you think that academics are trained so peculiarly in scientific method that you, somehow with your non-research active idea about scientific method, are somehow better than every other natural and social scientist who have to defend themselves against popular opinion generated by uneducated morons who somehow know better; then fill our boots. 

You obviously know. Please. Be in charge of the future. I want you to be responsible.

On a mystical journey with Italo Calvino, Marco Polo, and Kublai Khan

Inside The Venetian Casino, Macau. Photo: jgmarcelino [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom writes that Invisible Cities is worthy of being read and re-read, and is one of the best short story works of the twentieth century by the "fabulist" Italo Calvino. Bloom suggests that Calvino is Borgesian and Kafkan. 

The connecting thread is a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, with Polo describing the cities he has visited, so the Great Khan can know better his crumbling empire. Bloom says of Calvino's wisdom (a recurring compliment from the great critic) that:

Calvino's advice tells us again how to read and why: be vigilant, apprehend and recognise the possibility of the good, help it to endure, give it space in your life.

The cities described are apparently all versions of Venice, with Kublai Khan later recognising this and trying to describe instead the cities to Polo. An endless chess game becomes a vehicle to describe the cities using the pieces and the board as metaphors. 

A "fabulist" is "a person who composes or relates fables". What I found most interesting about these (at times) very short stories is the way they are arranged (or scattered, as Bloom writes) around themes of thin cities, trading cities, dead cities, the sky, even fanciful cities such as Brave New World and Yahooland. 

Within the descriptions, there are numerous anachronisms: motorcycles, aircraft, steamships, and so on. But these never interrupt the reader and provide a connection with the present. The combination of fanciful and mystical characters who appear in the cities (for example, a woman who milks the carcass of a cow) are echoed in Gabriel García Márquez's work, but there is a difference. 

Márquez was regarded as a "magical realist", whereas Calvino's Invisible Cities is less realist and more like a series of fairy tales. I noticed myself drifting off into fantasy with the mystical imagery and the slipperiness of time; not in the J.R.R. Tolkien sense of fantasy, but an older, classical, Brothers Grimm-like fantasy land that repeatedly connects the past with the present and indeed the future. 

This work is more serious in tone than Palomar or Marcovaldo, but it still has their mystical qualities. I must admit to experiencing a sense of peace while reading this work, and although some aspects have a darker quality, I couldn't help but think of Don Draper's pitch for Lucky Strike in Mad Men:

Advertising is based on one thing, happiness, its reassurance that whatever you are doing, it’s OK, you are OK.

Of course, Bloom (How to Read and Why, pp. 62-64) has more academic things to say about Calvino, but for me, one actually experiences his stories. 

In trying to articulate Calvino's style more clearly, I turned to the Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel and found that Calvino is described as a "post-modernist", and that Le città invisibili has (p. 174):

...closer affinities to the allegory of the Middle Ages than to the realist novel.

An allegory is a story:

...that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

I suppose this is what Harold Bloom means by the lessons we can learn from Calvino's wisdom. But even as an aside to read intermittently, the mystical qualities of the short stories provide sufficient space from reality for the reader to rejuvenate, to think, to imagine, and to dream; even just for a moment. 

This mystical quality is what I admire most about Calvino, and I am pleased to have stumbled upon Marcovaldo in a Shanghai bookstore a few years ago that led me to take this journey with the great post-modern Italian master.

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The inside story on life in wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong

Shanghai, 25 March 2016. Photo by Michael de Percy.

Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This collection of short stories focuses on life during the Second World War in Shanghai (and partly Hong Kong), including aspects of the Japanese occupation. Eileen Chang lived through this period in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and while many of the stories are about mundane everyday life, the issues of culture, imperialism, intrigue, gender roles and relations, class, and love provide an interesting ethnography of the times. The trajectory of the plots are noticeably different to male and western authors, with no noticeable climax and conclusions that peter out and fade away somewhat like a 1960s pop music hit. That is not to say that the stories are unresolved - they certainly are - but that the resolution occurs as a phase in the life that otherwise continues on. Yet each story projects a form of melancholy that I suppose reflects the wartime situation - somewhat like Hemingway's ever-present tragedy that is inescapable in almost all of his writing. While visiting Shanghai for the first time in 2016, I read W. Somerset Maugham's work On A Chinese Screen. Maugham tried to show a side of everyday life for local inhabitants that was otherwise ignored by the imperialists. Chang provides the inside story, and while the stories have all been translated into English, one does not feel that there is anything missing from the work. Chang was prolific, and I will try one of her novels in the near future.

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Travel Notes: Road Trip: Palmyra, Ma'aloula, and Saidnaya, Syria, 13th January 2007

Outside the Temple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria, 13 January 2007. The building has since been destroyed.

Well before the current conflict, I was able to travel to Palmyra, Syria. The Temple of Bel in the photograph above has since been confirmed destroyed. I am fortunate to have seen it, but it is a sad loss for the history of humanity, not to mention the many people who have lost their lives in the region. Syria is a beautiful country, and I felt safer there than I did in Sydney on a Saturday night. The people were very hospitable, and what you saw is what you got. Like most of the region, religious tolerance is a part of everyday life that is rarely reported in the Australian news media.

The photograph below shows how the building looks today. While going back through my travel diaries, I recalled a story about a travel guide, Fayid, who had studied at the University of Western Sydney, and a young Bedouin camel operator, who Peter Manning and his partner Carole met at Palmyra sometime in 2005-6. The story is mentioned on pp. 130-1 of Manning's (2006) book Us and Them: A Journalist's Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East.

Temple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria, 28 March 2016. Photo by Jawad Shaar CC-BY 4.0

We, too, had met Farid (and the young boy on the camel) at Palmyra on 13th January 2007. I can’t remember whether I read Manning's book or shared the “small world” experience (on p. 130) first. Anyway, yesterday I was writing up some of my travel diaries as blog posts, remembered the encounter with Farid, found his business card, re-read the book, and wondered what had happened to Farid and the boy. Here is the excerpt from Us and Them:

Carole chose to see much of this on the back of a young Bedouin boy's camel. I got talking to another guide, Fayid, who promised to take us to the amazing funerary tombs out to the west of the Roman city. Fayid, who had lived in Australia for seven years and studied at the University of Western Sydney, spoke perfect Australian.

Below, I have transcribed the diary as is, exercising some editorial licence, and removing the parts that are for me alone.

Damascus, Saturday 13th January 2007

Woke to coffee and wake-up call after receiving a wrong number at 1:30am! Taxi driver was waiting at 7:15am, went to Syrian and Overseas Bank - could only withdraw 5,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) [my diary records the following exchange rates: $1 USD = 49.8 SYP; $1 AUD = 32.16 SYP; 1 Jordanian Dinar (JOD) = 64.75 SYP]. Memorial to the north of Damascus built and funded by North Korea. Blue buildings (must have connections) for housing public servants. Railway line east-west built by Ottomans, tax-free zone north of Damascus.

We had agreed $100 USD for the trip with the driver, he was a smoker and we could smoke. The plan was to go to Palmyra, then on the way back to Ma'aloula, then Saidnaya.

After 230-odd kilometres, we arrived at the entrance to the Temple of Bel - it cost me 75 SYP and my wife 10 SYP to get in.

Palmyra, Syria, 13th January 2007

We met a guy who stated he had been to the University of Western Sydney and earned a diploma of interpreting, but his business card [which I still have] read Sydney University.

Palmyra, Syria, 13th January 2007

He charged us 200 SYP to visit the tombs in the Valley of Tombs [Wadi al-Qubur]. He joined us in our cab and took us to the museum to get the keys to the tombs... and we had to take the guide and the guy with the keys in the taxi.

The rest of my notes are bullet points. We visited a number of the tombs, and I recall that the faces of people on the relief sculptures had been scratched off centuries before. Unfortunately, many of the tombs have since been destroyed. Australian Adjunct Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Ross Burns, has maintained a comprehensive list of the major historical and architectural wonders of Syria at his website Monuments of Syria.

There was also an enormous castle on the hill overlooking Palmyra. 

Palmyra Castle or Qalat al-Ma'ani. Photo by  Jerzy Strzelecki CC-BY-SA 3.0

After Palmyra, we returned via Ma'aloula, one of the few places where Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth, is still spoken. The photograph below is from the Convent of Saint Takla, Ma'aloula, looking from East to West.

View from Convent of Saint Takla (Mar Taqla), Ma'alouba, Syria, 13th January 2013

In February 2013, twelve nuns from this convent were abducted, and were not released until March 2014. In the photograph, I am standing on the rooftop of the convent.

There is an interesting legend about the location, in that Taqla, a Christian woman, while running away from Roman soldiers and a pagan marriage, came to a cliff. The mountain split open, and she escaped her pursuers. You can read more about the monastery here.

Later, we went to Saidnaya, and saw what is believed to be an original picture of the Virgin Mary painted by St Luke at the Our Lady of Saydnaya Monastery. Much like the churches in Jerusalem, it was super-creepy.

On the trip back, I went to an ATM and made the mistake of withdrawing most of my cash to pay for our hotel room. The hotel would only accept a credit card. After much deliberation, we could pay in US dollars, but we could not exchange the money in the hotel. I went downtown to the black market dealers and they changed my Syrian pounds for US dollars, and I paid for the hotel room with no problems.

This was my first lesson in understanding the consequences of a "weak" state, Sanctions by the US were biting hard. There were no McDonalds or KFC outlets, unlike Jordan and Egypt. The simple fact was that foreign companies would only trade in US dollars, making the local currency virtually worthless.

Cash in Iraq suffered the same fate after Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Incidentally, the former Iraqi leader had been hanged two weeks before this trip, and I did not meet a single person in the region who was happy about what had transpired. Despite the ideas of "freedom" for the region harped on about by the Australian news media, most saw this as little more than neo-colonialism.

It is now more than a decade since I travelled to Palmyra. Everything that has transpired in the region since has been a great shame. Humans and human history have suffered. But one only need to look to the history of this region, the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilisation, the epicentre of faith. It has been there since the beginning, it has survived many conflicts, and its existence has evolved time and again. I daresay it will be there at the end, too.

Book Notes: "Us and Them: A Journalist's Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East" by Peter Manning

Us and Them: A Journalist's Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East by Peter Manning

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first read this book in 2006 or 2007. It was a refreshing take on Australia's news media reporting and an exercise in personal growth, aired in public, by the author. I re-read this because, while writing up some of my travel diaries from 2006-7, I recalled a shared experience when we travelled in the Middle East not long after the author. Reading the work again was useful and it put perspective on a number of things that happened in the early 2000s, and also gave new light to the trajectory we have been on since the beginning of the 21st century. This is an interesting read, first, for its content, and second, for what the author sets out to do and, ultimately, does.

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Book Notes: "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" by Rolf Potts

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the book I would carry with me if I had to sustain myself through misfortune. Frederick the Great carried the works of the Stoics in his saddlebags for the same purpose. I have read bits of this book for more than a decade and the words of Rolf Potts have inspired my blogging and my travel writing since I first left Old Girty's shores in 2006. There are so many quotes in this work, and so many pointers to other books to read, it is like a crystallisation of everything Potts ever read or learnt all jam-packed in a relatively quick read. For me, this book is nothing short of inspiring. Always has been, always will:

As Salvador Dali quipped, "I never took drugs because I am drugs." With this in mind, strive to be drugs as you travel, to patiently embrace the raw, personal sensation of unmediated reality - an experience far more affecting than any intoxicant can promise.

Potts has something special. He is the me I only hope I can be. I don't mean that I want to quit my job and become a vagabond. Far from it. Potts is a philosopher. Vagabonding is a 21st century philosophy book in the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, only better. Potts has what I want, and ever since reading bits of his work all those years ago, I have been inspired by his philosophy. For me, education and travel make us free. Not politicians or political systems. If I had the option of returning to my youth (which I do not want!), I might consider becoming a vagabond. But I am the sum of my experience and rather blessed for it. So for me, the philosophy is key. But a practical philosophy. Think of tending your own garden, like Candide. Then read this book.

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Book Notes: 'The Great Railway Bazaar' by Paul Theroux

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I must admit that I enjoy travel novels. While not really fiction, there is typically a story with a beginning and an end that coincides with the departure and the arrival. Sometimes factual and historical, such as Sven Hedin's Silk Road, and at other times then-contemporary snapshots of a particular period in the recent past. This book includes the first chapter of Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, which covers the same journey as The Great Railway Bazaar but thirty years later. I must say that I am not a fan of such marketing of other books. A simple pointer to the new book would have been sufficient but now I am compelled to read this first chapter so the former book is properly "finished". I often keep my own journals when I travel, and I have several all waiting to be retyped or rediscovered. Sometimes I will keep a journal during the mundane times and write simply what happened. It is often banal. Theroux apparently wrote in the past tense as it happened, but it is his reflections and self-deprecating manner, especially towards the end of his journey, that captures how one must feel at the end of four months' train travel. I found this aspect, along with the historiographical capturing of the past viewed from the perspective of someone living in the mid-seventies, to be particularly engaging. As a consequence, this was an easy and enjoyable read and re-affirms my taste for good travel novels.



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Book Notes: "On a Chinese Screen" by W. Somerset Maugham

On A Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It was pleasing to have purchased this book in Shanghai and to have read it with the images of Shanghai and Hangzhou fresh in my mind. Maugham captures a good deal of the Chinese culture and, from what I saw of The Bund in Shanghai, the Colonial era in full swing. The work consists of 58 portraits of individuals and their idiosyncrasies and various places. At times, it is difficult to tell whether Maugham is mocking, mimicking, or satirising the various ways in which an air of cultural superiority was practised by foreigners in China. Yet it is fascinating reading, particularly in the context of just having visited Shanghai and noting the extent of its Colonial history in the face of ancient culture.



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A Mini-Ethnography: Shanghai-Hangzhou High Speed Rail

Photo by S370/CC BY-SA 3.0

1:28pm, 23rd March 2016

We leave the station slowly and pass under the spaghetti of roads just outside

Speed picks up slightly and the view changes to worn out fields of weeds

Up another gear and warehouses, more spaghetti, quaint houses, a freeway

This is a green, smoke-free train according to the hostess over the speaker

Another gear, beside an elevated freeway

Construction sites, across rivers, yellow flowers in worn-out and unkempt fields

A woman with a tray of who-knows-what. No time to stop and sell

Purple uniforms, 184km/h, 15 degrees

Market gardens amongst rubble, an excavator and construction

Some drinks and snacks, just so, pass faster than the train seems to move

Over another market garden, a creek, a slow train

Another gear and like nothing we reach 300 km/h

1:37pm, 23 degrees inside

Constant rumbling, the slight drone of engines

Barely notice the pace until a sound barrier careens past

With subliminal flashes of market gardens in the gaps

We're off and Shanghai dissipates as if into the perpetual grey sky

Or it would if it ever ended

Hangzhou to Shanghai, 8:18pm

Ticket office over there. No - construction.

Ask police. Downstairs.

Outside, 200m, walk the stairs to the ticket office

No signs for outsiders

Line-up behind the yellow line while nobody else does

¥75 for both but too cheap. First class?

Window 21 is the reply. Back in line, but longer

First class. All done.

Out of the ticket office and straight past where the cops told us to go downstairs

So near and yet so far

Welcome at the entry, passports waved off. But no gate number

Search for the journey number, not too difficult

Seat won't stay up - travelling backwards at speed. Seems to stop more often

Other classes more seats, good to have room to move

But hoiking, hoiking everywhere. A national past-time? The smog?

Hangzhou is quiet in parts. (Arm nearly ripped off by passing luggage!)

People dancing on the deck, old men singing and playing musical instruments

The crowd joins in. Chestnuts, squirrels (so friendly!), the West Lake (so happy!)

Then through the spaghetti and we're back

But then home to buses and slow trains, an airport where the traffic holds up the bus

On the tarmac trying to get to the other terminal. Not so in China

Rich country on the cheap. Poor country shows the way.

Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: Technological leap-frogging, fact or fiction?

It is commonly assumed that less-developed countries, which may not necessarily be constrained by years of investment in fixed-line infrastructure, can overcome the ‘digital divide’ by simply ‘leap-frogging’ ahead of developed countries by deploying less expensive wireless infrastructure. 

However, research by Howard (2007: 136) suggests that the instances of this occurring are rare. For example, during the period 1995 to 2005, only five countries (which were already wealthy) managed to ‘leap-frog’ some of the global communications technology leaders.

Yet during a recent follow-up research field-trip to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I was surprised to learn that the take-up of mobile technology in the Kingdom had achieved more than 100% penetration since my last field-trip in late 2009.

Howard (2007) did not include Jordan in his study, yet the Kingdom is clearly leap-frogging well before achieving maturity in the fixed-line market.

Indeed, fixed-line subscribers in Jordan declined from 10.84% of the population in 2006 to 6.79% in 2011, while mobile subscriptions had increased from 76.61% in 2006 to 119.75% in 2011 (Source: Jordanian Department of Statistics 2012).

Admittedly, some 39% of Jordanian mobile subscribers have more than one mobile subscription, so the digital divide persists.

At the same time, Jordan's telecoms market is the second most competitive in the Arab world.

In my research, I am interested in how institutions help or hinder the deployment of communications technologies. Jordan provides a unique case study as this developing nation's telecommunications industry is clearly getting on with the job.

Although many industry players appear frustrated by the quality of service role the TRC has adopted, the regulatory framework is certainly not hindering the take-up of mobile telephony.

Similarly, household access to Internet services has more than doubled from 15.6% in 2007 to 35.4% in 2011.

While much research focuses on competition as a major enabler of communications technology penetration, I am curious as to whether Jordan's laissez-faire approach to the coordination of networks in favour of market intervention via a quality of service role is responsible in large part for the stellar performance in communications technology penetration.

Compared with Australia's slow deployment of the expensive National Broadband Network, one thing is clear: Jordan is doing something right.

References:

Howard, P.N. (2007). Testing the Leap-Frog Hypothesis: The impact of existing infrastructure and telecommunications policy on the global digital divide, Information, Communication & Society, 10(2): 133-157.