Dispatches in Transit

When it was my turn to step forward to the Peruvian immigration desk, the official was pulling the surgical mask far enough away her face to be able to speak into a cellphone. She was talking to her daughter. It seemed that a particular tradesman was supposed to turn up at their house by 8 pm that evening but had never arrived. There was now a new appointment, for around 10am the next morning. "Don't worry, mi hijita", she said. Your papá will be there as well". Back in Peru, I thought, grinning as the official stamped my passport. "Have a good trip", she said. "Thanks for waiting".

My taxi driver to the centre of Lima also had a surgical mask on. As we drove away from the aiport he pulled it off with a grunt of annoyance. "Can't stand wearing this thing", he told me. "The muncipality makes us, or we get fined".

Earlier in the day, at Santiago airport where I stopped over for 7 hours before the connecting flight to Lima, there were also official precautions against the H1N1 influenza. Everyone who got off the plane, whether entering Chile or in transit, was redirected into a little side room where they had to fill out a form giving contact details and declaring any flu-like symptoms, and then join a rapidly growing line to have a photo taken by a single masked official. The official repeated the same mantra over and over: Permanezca inmovil. Mire directamente a la cámara. Gracias. Puede continuar. ("Stay still. Look directly at the camera. Thank you. You can continue"). After the first twenty or thirty photos everything became more efficient, and the official had to cut himself off: Permanezca inmovil. Mir--Gracias!

I couldn't help wondering what the Chilean authorities were going to do with all that data (starting with around 300 passengers on just one full Airbus). With the forms being handed out and collected separately, it just required a couple to get out of order to frustrate any matching process with the photos. As for contact details, the only useful thing on my form was my email, which I think was probably illegible.

Peru was less counter-productively obsessive. All passengers getting off had to fill out a form about symptoms, and there were two nurses from the Callao health service waiting bashfully by the plane door to offer "advice or assistance", but no compulsory photo session. The masks, however, were just as ubiquitous.

My taxi driver from the aiport was friendly enough, but not very talkative. I told him it was first time in Peru for over two years; I imagined quite a bit had changed. He laughed briefly. "Nothing much has changed", he said. " You'll see". He looked dead tired, and said he had been working since 7 am, and would continue until dawn."Why do they make you work such long hours?", I asked. "I requested it", he said. He told me that he earned a fixed rate of 950 soles per month, around $300 USD. The extra hours would get a bonus, but according to my driver, shaking his head sadly, "it's not enough".

You Wanna See My Positionality?

An interesting little exercise in my Ethnographic Research class on Tuesday. This week's student seminar was on reflexivity, summed up as the careful and deliberate examination of the relationship between a work of ethnography, its producer, and the process by which it is produced. In any other science, you might just call this 'being transparent about one's methods'.

My classmate who was giving the seminar asked us to write down ten things about ourselves -- personal, political, demographic, academic or philosophical, that give an idea of who we are and where we come from, and that could influence how we carry out our research.

I found it surprisingly easy to scribble things down, and had filled up an A4 page within four or five minutes. A couple of my classmates who read out their jottings focused on things that would directly affect the particular research project they had planned. But it seems I interpreted it as a chance to come clean about my what drives me in general. I wrote it down quickly, in what was pretty close to a stream of consciousness. Apart from a couple of grammatical tidy-ups, the below is almost exactly what I jotted down on the sheet of paper.

1. I'm very analytic but also like to see connections or analogies between things and put them into a system.

2. I'm generally shy and introverted, but sometimes switch over to another side of my personality and become domineering. I have to have my say, and can be a poor listener.

3. I tend to become very obsessed with particular topics, and have to know all the details about them.

4. I have a background in philosophy (itself driven by the personality traits above). I've since moved on to a more empirical interest in human affairs, but the philosophy always finds a way back in.

5. I love stories -- anything is better when told as a narrative, especially written, but also filmed. My driving ambition is to be a good writer myself.

6. I'm male, European, hetrosexual and middle class, but have always felt detached from the supposed position of power that puts me in (being clumsy, nervous and geekish always seemed to easily override any inherent social advantage). It's only as I've got older that I've noticed the subtle ways in which my path is smoothed.

7. I was brought up as a Catholic, but with a Kantian / humanist morality that emphasized principles, responsibility, and treating people as ends in themselves.

8. I'm very interested in Latin America for reasons I can't fully explain. Although I have quite a bit of experience there, my connections are overwhelmingly with the mestizo middle class, which could lead me to overestimate my insight.

9. I love the outdoors, but am also very attached to certain comforts, notably hot showers, coffee, and a good night's sleep.

10. Politically, I'm a social democrat by default, with flirtatious leanings toward left-libertarianism. I'm prevented from crossing over fully by a suspicion that oppressive systems don't come close to explaining the sum total of human nastiness. In that sense, I'm also probably hiding a streak of 'small c' conservatism.

OK, so there you go. Readers, how about a similar contribution? You don't have to do ten; five or even three would be a good start...

Andean Participant Observer

Next week, after two years and slightly more than three months absence, I'm returning to South America. On Thursday 21 May, I'll fly out of Auckland. The flight arrives in Santiago at the slightly spooky-feeling time of five hours before it leaves; then I have a few hours layover before catching a connecting flight to Lima and arriving around midnight.

I have the reasonable span of eight weeks, which should be enough time to recover from the jet lag and make the most of being there.

Fortune, weather, personal discipline and people's kindness permitting, I aim to do at least the following:

--make some enquiries and prepare the ground for possible research in 2010 towards my development studies thesis, which at this stage I'm keen to do in the Arequipa region

--collect a wider and more in-depth selection of 'ghost stories of the sierra', which I will in some way work into a report for my ethnographic research class

--visit my friend Hugo's 'lodge', which he is constructing near the town of Santa Teresa in the jungle of Cuzco, close to an alternative route to Machu Picchu (I put 'lodge' in inverted commas because, based on past experience, I really don't know what it will be like).

--do plenty of trekking and climbing, with the ultimate aim of scaling either of Nevado Ampato or Nevado Coropuna, both around 6,400 metres, and both a step up in terms of height, cold, snowiness and general drama from my previous ascents of Misti and Chachani.

--at some stage manage to visit a part of Peru (or even Bolivia) that I haven't been to before. At this stage I'm favouring the region of Ayacucho.

A lot of these things are going to require regular, discplined writing, variously of the jotting, recording and narrating varieties. That's good news for this blog: I hope it will become a lot more regular, dynamic and interesting than it has been for for some time.

Tackling Cults and the Corporation

I have to put in a plug for my new favourite personal blog, Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog: Free-Market Anti Capitalism. The site originally raised my interest because of arguments rather similar to my own about the hypocrisy of right-wing attacks on 'big government', and criticisms of the vulgar libertarianism of 'pot-smoking Republicans'.

An important area where he takes vulgar libertarians to task is in their blinkered obsession with 'state' power that systematically ignores the abuses of power in the private world, especially in large corporations.

From there I hit on Carson's deconstruction and withering attacks on that bible of corporate enforced conformity, Who Moved My Cheese, and something called Fish! Philosophy which as far as I'm aware hasn't made it to New Zealand yet, but sounds truly terrifying and shudder-inducing.

It's worth reading all the collection of posts and comments linked to from this page.

This Is New Zealand On Air?

A complaint has been upheld against TVNZ Breakfast presenter Paul Henry for his despicable, overgrown frat-boy style demeaning of a guest on national television.

But what was the substance of the reprimand?

Henry had been spoken to and told on-air editorial decisions were not his to make and that he must adhere to the executive producer's decisions.

TVNZ had met with senior Breakfast staff to insist on the need for more care and discretion around editorial decisions about what the programme covered.

So, nothing along the lines of: 'stop being such an immature asshole if you want to have a job', or even more pertinently, 'for crying out loud, learn to show some basic human decency', then? Rather, the corrective lesson is obey your manager.

Compare and contrast: on the one hand, an internationally-renowned scientist with over 25 years of public service, summarily dismissed for commenting on his area of expertise. On the other, a monumental dickhead, an embarrassment to what remains a publicly-owned organisation, slapped on the wrist for not following procedure.

What was that about wanting to retain our best and brightest?

Sacking of a Weather Man

A further example of what I was referring to in the previous post is the summary dismissal of climate guru Jim Salinger from NIWA, apparently for making a few offhand comments to media on passing weather stories, without gaining prior approval.

Some of the commentary on this has emphasized the suddenness of the dismissal and speculated on the chance of a personal grievance case against NIWA for not following due process. I'm more inclined to ask how come a scientist with 27 years working for public institutions and an established international academic reputation, doesn't get to say pretty much whatever he likes about his area of expertise.

Let's assume the complaint is that Salinger's comments could have been confused with the 'official' stance of NIWA. But shouldn't he be cut some slack for having been a climate scientist for longer than NIWA has existed? The institute was only created in 1992, when in a spate of textbook-crazed 'reforms', the 'weather' bit and the 'climate' bit of the Meteorological Service were carved apart into separate, semi-commercial insitutions.

I'm oddly reminded of David Landes The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, where the author spends considerable time detailing the respective inexorable declines of Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish economic power. A common feature of these empires was that, for different reasons, all three made concerted efforts to restrict the spread of knowledge and expertise.

Cults and the Corporation

One of the emerging and, in my opinion, most important roles of popular blogs like The Standard is to allow a wide audience to read about the experiences and struggles of ordinary people that would not be covered by the mainstream media. In particular, they can give insight into interactions within large organisations, which the combined forces of HR and PR normally ensure are airbrushed from public discourse.

This is a particularly valuable post on the industrial dispute between Air New Zealand and sub-contracted Zeal flight attendants who are striking for the same pay and conditions as full Air NZ employees. The comparison of Air New Zealand's corporate style to a religious cult might sound exaggerated, but the internal communique from CEO Rob Fyfe speaks for itself:

I have found this week particularly challenging – I love Air New Zealand, the brand, the people and what we mean to the country. Therefore, I have found it especially difficult to see the Zeal crew go to such lengths to project themselves as unprofessional, denigrate the uniform, our brand, the koru and the professional standards of the airline.

Once again, truth is more terrifying than satire.

If You Thought We Were Bad

The self-appointed spokespeople in New Zealand's media have a long history of getting offended at any slight on the country or its inhabitants -- false, accurate, or imagined. I'm afraid this piece wasn't really that much of a joke.

It's terribly embarassing, and you want to crawl under a rock every time they do it. But at least now we have some decent competition.

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Paul Krugman said that the "worst-case outlok for the world economy" was that "America could turn Irish". Krugman's point was that Ireland had suffered from an extreme case of the financial speculation/housing bubble disease and as a result had been hit earlier and even harder than other countries, to the point where its government is being pushed into fiscal retrenchment, which could further deepen its recession. There, but for the grace of the dollar-as-international-reserve currency, could go the United States, said Krugman.

Somehow interpreting this as an attack on the Irish national character, the editors of the Irish Central website responded with a passionate defense of their nation, citing recovery from the potato famine, Yeats, peace in Northern Ireland, and Bono as examples of "indomitable Irishry" about which those ignorant Americans would know nothing.

Cringe-inducing for Irish people, no doubt, although at least it's not their newspapers of record indulging in this stuff.

History Will Be Kind

When I lived nearby and used to shop at Thorndon New World, I would occasionally see Michael Cullen, smartly dressed in dark suit and red tie, wandering up and down the aisles with a shopping basket. Dr Cullen seemed to enjoy prowling through the local supermarket as any ordinary person would (though perhaps he was keeping an eye on the price of cheese?).

In my view, Cullen is far and away the best Minister of Finance New Zealand has had in my lifetime. I'm sure history will be kind to his prudent approach of paying down debt, encouraging savings, and finding ways to 'spread the wealth around' in what remains a small and poorly-diversified economy.

I also have quite a bit of sympathy for him as a politician. The public impression is of an intellectual who was content to immerse himself in the technically most difficult jobs, had few aspirations for leadership that would have required excessive ingratiation and politicking, and occasionally lost the ability to suffer fools.

I know that Cullen has inspired strong negative feelings in some who adhere to other parts of the political spectrum, but the intensity of those feelings probably says more about those who bear them than the man himself. At worst, perhaps he could be said to suffer from that classic Kiwi ailment of being 'too smart for your own good'.

I therefore was pleased to see Cullen interviewed in reflective mode in the Sunday Star Times this week, on his way to a quieter life with NZ Post and free from the need to follow party lines. A couple of the quotes are worth repeating, not just because they're pretty close to what I think, but because they articulate some core principles with striking brevity and common sense:

"We didn't believe that wealth is best created at the top and then trickles down. We believed that wealth is created by the efforts of everybody that participates in the economy and needed to have some fairness in distribution. In part this was because in a country like ours particularly you can't afford to have a large part of the population unable to contribute effectively because they've fallen out."

Cullen believes "only a tiny group of highly entrepreneurial people will make their way out of any situation, because they've got this enormous gift and it's a lucky gift they've got". Other people[, he said,] needed to have the comfort of a safety net if they were going to chance their arm in the economy.

If a political party could consistently articulate such thoughts, rather than trying to repeat the lines focussed-grouped by their communications advisors, they might be surprised at how well they do.

Fujimori Sentenced to 25 Years In Prison

The breaking news is that former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori has been sentenced to 25 years in prison by a special criminal commission of the Peruvian Supreme Court. Fujimori was found guilty of four charges relating to massacres in La Cantuta and Barrios Altos in 1991 and 1992, as well as the kidnapping and torture of journalist Gustavo Gorritti and businessman Samuel Dyer.

The verdict came after 160 sessions spread over 15 months, following Fujimori's extradition from Chile in September 2007.

This is a momentous event, the first occasion in which a former head of state has been successfully tried in his own country for human rights abuses, by a court internationally recognised as independent and respectful of due process. It is a powerful strike against the concept that anybody can be above the law.

In an interview in La Republica, investigative journalist Ángel Páez, a longstanding critic of Fujimori, says that:

...we can sure, after this case, , with absolute clarity, that nothing justifies the systematic and permanent violation of human rights as part of a government policy.

Imbalances and the Global Crisis

A number of erudite commentators point to 'underlying economic imbalances' as a major factor in the current global crisis. They argue that the situation where some parts of the world produce and save more than they consume, while others live beyond their means, has helped create the conditions for the financial speculation that has led us to the present meltdown. Paul Krugman makes a case something like this here and here.

When boiled down to its bare bones, the argument goes more or less as follows: China keeps selling things to the West and saving the money. It then lends that money back to allow Westerners to continue their spendthrift ways and put it on the tab. But this is unsustainable, and eventually all that debt has to be unwound. A solution would have to involve Western consumers being more prudent and creditors like the Chinese spending more.

The way it's described makes it sound like millions of thrifty Chinese shopkeepers being tight with their cash and refusing to spend on luxuries. Easy for readers to visualize, but surely this isn't the reality? China is an authoritarian state, with the exchange rate controlled centrally, and if the earnings from exports are banked, this is not done by individual workers but by the government and corporate elites. Surely the problem isn't that the Chinese masses prefer holding US Treasury bills to consuming goods and services, but that they are paid much less than the real value of their labour? 'China' might save too much, but it's questionable whether Chinese do.

Meanwhile, the situation of China has a flow-on effect on the rest of the world. Thomas Pogge argues here that by winning the race to the bottom in terms of labour and environmental standards, China has restricted the potential for export-led growth in other developing nations. So those who control China's economy could be denying not only their own citizens, but those of other countries, the possibility to consume in line with their productive ability.

If imbalances in the real economy are behind the bursting financial bubbles, would it be suprising if these were in turn underlaid by imbalances of power and resources that are essentially political?

South Africa 2010: Latest Qualifying Rounds Continued

March 31-- April 1 continued

The stunning result of the round was Bolivia's 6-1 win over Argentina in La Paz. It's a tough place to play: at 3,600 metres, walking a couple of blocks is enough to make you out of breath; I've no idea what playing football at that altitude is like. Yet, at the same venue Chile won and Colombia and Uruguay drew. Questions have to be asked about Argentina's tactics and commitment. I'm not sure about Diego Maradona as coach. Almost without exception, male Argentinians hero-worship him; I wonder whether he manages to have a balanced professional relationship with his players. Of course, a great player does not necessarily make a savvy manager.

The end result of the latest two rounds is that, with Paraguay only picking up one of four possible points, qualifying spots are still wide open with six games left. Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia are only three to five points off fifth place, and an Andean team could yet make it to South Africa. Not Peru, though -- they were trounced again, this time 3-0 by Brazil, and are now last by five points.

In the North American zone, the US beat Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica dampened El Salvador's hopes with a 1-0 home win, and Honduras upset Mexico 3-1. The US and Costa Rica are looking good, but all teams still have a chance to qualify.

In Europe, both Denmark and Hungary won soundly, leaving Portugal six points back in third spot and facing an uphill struggle just to get a playoff spot. Spain completed home and away wins over nearest rivals Turkey to all but seal their spot at the World Cup, while Holland has maximum points are six games as well and has effectively qualified. England maintained a perfect record by beating the Ukraine 2-1, while Germany and Italy are both comfortable at the top of their groups, though Italy was held 1-1 at home to Ireland after playing most of the game with ten men.

Scotland beat Iceland 2-1 to retain second spot in Holland's group, while Israel lost 1-2 away to Greece to slip to third behind Greece and Switzerland. Home and away wins over Lithuania have resurrected France's position, now just two points behind leaders Serbia, whom they have already beaten. But the fairy story continued to be Northern Ireland, who beat Slovenia 1-0 to hold top spot in the most intriguing group. The dark horses there are Slovakia, who are only a point behind with two games in hand.

Hmm, and I suppose I should mention Australia, who with their 2-0 home win in Uzbekistan, have one foot in Capetown. The other Asian group is more interesting, with South Korea winning 1-0 over their estranged North Korean neighbours to hold top spot. In the ongoing race to be New Zealand's playoff opponent, it's now looking like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, but Iran, Uzbekistan, and Qatar are still in the hunt. The odds are on the All Whites going somewhere hot and sandy.

South Africa 2010: Latest Qualifying Rounds

28--29 March

Once again, not great news for the teams I follow. Peru lost 1-3 at home to arch-rivals Chile and sink deeper into the bottom of the table. Colombia beat second-bottom Bolivia 2-0, but with Uruguay's 2-0 win over leaders Paraguay, the Southern Cone further strengthened its hold on the qualifying positions.

In Europe, Portugal had another 0-0 draw, this time at home to Sweden, apparently squandering numerous chances and confirming once again that you never make it without a decent striker. They're four points behind Hungary and leaders Denmark (who have a game in hand), and only one point ahead of Sweden, also with a game in hand. It's really not looking good for the Portuguese.

On a more positive note, Spain and the Netherlands are in pretty impregnable positions in their groups, although the way the Dutch play nowadays I can't really call myself a supporter any more. Despite a number of talented players, the current outfitis nothing like the attractive sides of 1998 and 2000, let alone that of 1974. Scotland still lost 0-3 to them, and will need to battle it out with Iceland and Norway for a playoff spot. Italy's 2-0 win over Montenegro put them clear at the top, with Ireland being held to 1-1 against Bulgaria. Israel has slipped to third, one point behind Greece and Switzerland, but that group is still wide open.

Most interesting is probably group 3, where Northern Ireland beat Poland 3-2 to go top. Five teams (Northern Ireland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia) are separated by just three points, and with two of them never having qualified before, there is lots to play for.

What could compensate for most of my favoured teams facing elimination? The United States being defeated by El Salvador would be a heart warming story. And that looked like being on the cards, when the Central American team went 2-0 up after 72 minutes. But the US fought back, Germany-like, to score in the 77th and 88th minutes to draw 2-2.

31 March--1 April

A bad start, with Colombia being defeated 2-0 in Venezuela in the earliest game of the round. Yes, that's right. A loss to the baseball-playing 'vinotintos'. It looks like Colombia's hopes of a qualifying spot are also slipping away.

The Millenium Development Goals: Still New Zealand's Focus?

On Saturday morning I attended the first two sessions of a symposium on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) at Victoria University's Pipitea Campus downtown.

In the opening session, Labour MP and former head of Oxfam International Phil Twyford critiqued the intentions signalled by Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully to change New Zealand's aid emphasis on poverty elimination to a focus on economic growth, and possibly to roll back NZAID into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Twyford said McCully's proposals threaten to "turn the clock back" on eight years of building more effective development aid, undermine New Zealand's standing in the Pacific and repudiate signed commitments to the MDGs. Furthermore, they would involve changes to spending of $500 million of taxpayer's money without public debate or consultation.

According to Twyford, at the opening of the symposium on Friday night at Parliament Buildings, National's John Hayes, Chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committe, had indicated that the government wants to channel aid to support tourism, trade and infrastructure in the Pacific.

But this raises the question of what the purpose of economic development is. For Twyford, development aims to 'lift people out of poverty and expand the possibilities of human freedom.' The purpose of economic development is to serve the needs of people – the ultimate goal is still poverty elimination.

Twyford said that sixty years of experience shows that economic growth is necessary but not sufficient for reducing poverty and improving wellbeing. Growth alone can be captured by elites and lead to environmental damage, as in the disastrous destruction of rainforest in the Solomon Islands. Despite rapid economic growth, India continues to have higher levels of malnutrition and child mortality than sub-Saharan Africa, while Bangladesh has reduced child mortality more quickly than India, despite being poorer.

Likewise, Vietnam has been much more effective at reducing poverty than a country like Peru, largely because the poorest 20 percent in Vietnam have a four times greater share of national income. Greater inequality in Latin America is a familiar story. However, Twyford pointed out that in Brazil since 1998, extreme poverty has fallen by 3 times the MDG target rate, and the Gini coefficient has fallen by 3 points. This illustrates what is possible with committed leadership.

(See this post for a more detailed discussion of growth vs poverty reduction).

Twyford concluded that a focus on trade and growth alone is not going to work. The NZAID strategy of working in an integrated with other donors and country governments is "more likely to be effective". But such approaches could be threatened by the absorbtion of NZAID back into MFAT.

Twyford referred to the original report from a Ministerial review which recommended the establishment of NZAID eight years ago. The report found that the official development assistance branch within MFAT had confused objectives, lacked professionalism, and could be typified as a "training ground for diplomats, and a dumping ground for non-performers".

Twyford saus that NZAID "is not perfect", but has made considerable progress, especially with the sector-wide approaches in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. He said that the Progressives, Greens, United Future and Labour parties would be holding their own summit on the future of NZAID on Friday 27 March.

The symposium was sponsored by Victoria University's Institute of Policy Studies, the Council for International Development, Oxfam New Zealand and the British High Commission. Sources connected to NZAID said that they would have joined in the co-hosting but had been prevented from adding their name to the programme by order of the Minister.

At the beginning of Phil Twyford's speech, he queried whether any of his parliamentary colleagues had joined him at the symposium. There was no repsonse from the gallery.

The Economist Agrees

I don't agree with The Economist on everything, and in fact strongly disagree on some matters. But their articles are generally lucid and interesting and they rarely fail to provide at least the semblance of a reasonable argument.

This editorial, in advance of the United Nations summit on drug policy, is one of the magazine's finer moments. With typical pithiness, the editorial declares that "prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution"

There's a fair-minded evaluation of both sides of the question:

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

In short, while ending prohibition could on balance be a good thing for the rich countries where people take most of the drugs, the real benefits would be in the poor countries that are currently being turned into war zones by the gangsterism that illegality promotes. This is basically what I've argued before on this blog, but the editorial puts it particularly well:

In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

An aside. The horrors of drug-related crime and violence suffered by Colombia in the 1990s are well known. The country is somewhat more peaceful and orderly now, which is often credited to the hard-line security policies of Alvaro Uribe. Taking a longer view, histories of the cocaine trade describe how the centre of power moved from Colombia to Mexico in the 1990s after resources were poured into defeating the Cali and Medellin cartels and shutting down the Caribbean routes into the US. Is the current chaos in Mexico coincidental, or have all the law enforcement battles merely shifted the violence from one country to another?

As a staunchly internationalist, though anglocentric, publication, the Economist is able to point out how ludicrous it is to address addiction in Western cities by turning Latin America, Asia and Africa into a battle zone, Sadly, with their eye on the the anxieties of their own middle class voters, the politicans attending the latest international conference in Vienna may not see it the same way.

A War on Drugs, Or On Peasants?

A good article in the Guardian describes how US-funded aerial spraying of coca plants in Colombia is poisoning people, crops and livestock, while cocaine production continues to increase. Grace Livingstone, who has visited and interviewed Colombian coca growers, reports information received from a parish priest in Caquetá that spraying of herbicide is having a marked effect on human and animal health. As she notes:

The US focuses on one element of the trafficking chain, the poverty-stricken peasant. But the policy is not even effective. When their land is poisoned, peasants migrate and start growing coca again. They have no alternative. Spraying simply displaces the problem. Despite decades of spraying, coca cultivation in Colombia has grown by 500% since the 1980s, according to US state department figures. US politicians heralded a drop in cultivation after the launch of Plan Colombia, but the area of land covered by coca crops is now larger than when the plan was launched. Perhaps the clearest indication that the policy is failing is the falling price of cocaine, suggesting more, not less, of the drug is entering the US market.

To quote a previous post, "there's little that's more perverse than a social problem in the rich world being tackled by spraying poison all over environmentally fragile land in a much poorer country".

Slowly But Surely...

...Andean Observer 1.0 is coming together. There are now basically complete pages of images with Nat-Geo style captions covering Lake Titicaca to La Paz, Iquitos and the Amazon, Bolivia's Spectacular Southwest, Climbing in the Andes, Peru's Varied Cuisine, and Flora and Fauna of the Andes and Amazon (NB: click to enlarge the images).

Many of the images are scanned from print photos and are not fantastic quality, but there's lots of interesting places and moments that would otherwise be gathering dust. This is something of a labour of love and could be described as an attempt to present all that I've learned and experienced from my times in Latin America.

I had intended to do a 'Travel Information' section that would help answer those periodic requests for advice I get from people planning a trip to South America. However, it's been over two years since I was there, so I'm not even sure my travel advice is even good any more. I'll wait until my planned trip in the middle of the year to make sure I'm up to date and to refresh my memory on some of the details.

It's clear that as I move on to updating and improving sections of this website, and adding other features, I'll need a better way of managing the content. I'd also like to give it a more attractive and professional appearance. I can maybe learn how to make some of these improvements, but I'm not sure I have the time. If anybody out there is a budding web designer/developer and is interested in practicing on an amateur project, consider dropping me a line. The next task is to develop Andean Observer 2.0.

Brain Exhaustion

If I'm looking for excuses for poor exercise performance, here is an alternative explanation. The story cites British research that found people became fatigued more quickly when doing exercise if they had previously undertaken strenuous mental activity. Although the heart and muscles functioned no differently, a higher 'perception of effort' made people reach exhaustion sooner, Perhaps its not so much living on the flat land, as the drain of extra work and study, that's been setting me back.

Yes, I know we're looking at one study involving just sixteen people with no real information on experimental design or possible bias. Of course, such considerations never stop the newspapers from declaring 'research proves' something controversial or oversimplified, and I'm going to claim some milage from this one.

It provides some evidential basis for my frequent claims that work with the brain is one of the most tiring kinds of all. It may also provide some solace to all those office workers who keep finding they can't quite motivate themselves to go to the gym or for a run, and when they do, that their limbs and lungs just don't seem to work as well as they should.

What, if anything, can be done about it is a different question.

The Price of Food

It's a pleasant surprise to find an article on the Stuff website on a real and topical issue with readers' comments that intelligently challenge and add to the original content, rather than descending into an inane mess of partisan bickering and name calling (such dignified interactions are relatively common on independent blogs but mainstream sites tend to be the electronic version of talkback radio).

The article from the Sunday Star Times is headlined 'Kiwis hooked on unhealthy food'. Working hard to strike a sensational tone, it reports 'confidential data leaked to the [newspaper]' showing that soft drink and snack foods dominate the list of 40 top-selling products in New Zealand supermarkets. There are three 1.5-litre soft drinks in the top 10, and a bottle of Coke is right at head of the list.

The article quotes a nutritionist and (of course) Sue Kedgley expressing their concern at the poor quality of New Zealanders' diet and blaming it on the 'sophisticated marketing techniques' of advertisers.

A flood of comments ensued (87 at the time of writing). Pleasingly, many people pointed out the obvious fact that by only counting standardised packaged items and excluding fresh fruit and vegetables, the survey was biased.

I'd also point out that the mere fact that the suvey was in a supermarket makes the results relatively predictable. Aside from fruit and vegetables, dried goods like beans and nuts will probably not have been counted. In addition, meat, soups, wholegrain breads, cereals are sold in varying brands, styles and quantities. Almost by definition, more interesting and healthier foods are not going to move large numbers of units -- and many of them are sold in smaller more specialised stores.

Expressing concern at the generally low nutritional levels of food people buy in supermarkets is a little like being disappointed to find that people in bars are mostly drinking alcohol.

However, a more important point made by people in the comments section was that healthy and nutritious food is not cheap. The biggest-selling items are the ones that are often on special in bulk, and invariably are the ones with poor nutritional value, full of sugar and fluff. Meanwhile, the 'healthy alternatives' cost two or three times as much. A number of people critiqued the hectoring tone of comfotably middle-class nutritionists and politicians who worry about obesity but have little appreciation of the average working person's struggle to get by on a meagre budget.

Others still argued that eating well is perfectly possible with a bit of commonsense and imagination, and that 'Coke is cheaper than milk' is no argument when tap water is free (I concur with this last point).

The debate is continued here, following a piece where a columnist recounts her attempt to spend a week eating 'frugally'.

I've commented before on the cost of nutritious food and the difficulty in eating well, and I mused about whether rich countries are actually richer in this respect. There's no doubt that something is not quite right about what and how many of us eat.

In a future post or two, I might try to unpick some of the reasons for this. In the meantime, I know some regular readers have opinions and theories on this topic, which they're welcome to post here.

It's Not Cricket

I am just now following on CricInfo the opening session of the 1st cricket test between Australia and South Africa at the Wanderers in Johannesburg. The scoreboard reads 18/2. Batting for Australia are Michael Hussey (2,900 test runs at 59.4) and Ricky Ponting (10,700 runs at 57.0), facing Dale Steyn (156 test wickets at 22.8) and Makhaya Ntini (378 wickets at 28.3).

It doesn't get any better. This is the pinnacle of the sport. It's even on at prime time. Yet Sky TV, which manages to show all manner of inane novelty sports, and endless highlights packages of irrelevant rugby, league and 20/20 cricket matches, is not showing any coverage. Right now we have a juvenile 'magazine' style show and three channels of golf. This is what we get for our subscription fee?

Return of the Zing?

When I first moved to Wellington, I lived in Karepa St in Brooklyn, high up on the way towards the wind turbine, though still in the older part of established trees and tasteful houses, below the windswept pastel mansions of Ashton Fitchett Drive.

From the bottom end of Karepa St, about five minutes from where I lived, there's a pathway that runs directly down to Aro St. (That's the start of the pathway next to where Noam and his girlfriend Rachel are standing in the picture). I used to go by this route to get to and from the city, and from spring through to autumn would often make it my way home from work

The walk was about thirty to fifty minutes one way, depending on which end of town I was heading to, and it took a few minutes more on the uphill than the downhill leg. People thought I was crazy to trudge so far all the time, but I preferred it.

One of the reasons was the quality of the bus service: the southwestern suburbs are served even more poorly by public transport than elsewhere in Wellington. The No.7 Kowhai Park bus that ran directly past my place was infrequent, and non-existent in the weekends. To get to the bus stop at the Brooklyn shops took only a few minutes less than walking to Aro St. The buses that ran from there between 8 and 9 am were often obscenely crowded, and the bus company just lapped it up rather than put on an extra vehicle. When the bus got to the bottom of Brooklyn Rd, it spent several minutes more crawling through the series of intersections at Webb, Aro, Abel Smith, Vivian and Ghuznee St, each of which siphoned out impatient streams of passenger vehicles. A rainy morning enduring this would be enough to put anyone off public transport permanently.

But I also just enjoyed the experience of walking. For the first few months after moving to Wellington I was still enchanted by its verticality, the ability to drop down little pathways through stands of bush, and come out in another place with a different view, different surroundings, even different weather.

Up on Karepa St where I lived, our front window looked out over the Tararuas, and from the back garden you could see both the harbour and Cook Strait. You could even watch the interislander ferry coming into the harbour and a plane taking off from the airport at the same time. The area was sheltered from the south, but the northerly was remorseless. At times it felt like being in Wuthering Heights, as the wind shrieked through the pines and hammered at the windows.

As I walked down the route to Aro Valley, the wind would lessen. Sometimes it would have dropped significantly even by the end of Karepa St. By the time I got to Mortimer Terrace, from where there are views like in this picture, a gale would have turned into a gentle zephyr, and it would be almost calm in Epuni St, which runs in a narrow little north-facing canyon the final couple of blocks to Aro St. With the lush vegetation that clambers down its sides, Epuni St seems to have its own microclimate, and I've often thought that it's probably one of the warmest places in central Wellington.

Of course, the process would be reversed when I walked back up the hill. But the steep climb would turn a cool or mild day into a warm, humid one. By the time I climbed the last twenty steps to the house I would be soaked with sweat.

I enjoyed watching the seasonal changes. In spring and early summer, riots of wildflowers tumbled down the front yards and pathways of the houses on my route, terrain too step to be tamed by the suburban gardener. There were also quite a few southern rata trees in the area, and during December they would throw splashes of red over the landscape. From about the middle of January, the cicadas would start up, spreading themselves out on the concrete power poles and chattering madly through to the end of April. In the La Niña summers of the early 2000s, we would occasionally get a warm northeast flow over the Rimutakas. The clouds would be high and slow-moving; the harbour glassy.

Memory favours the pleasant bits: a more common experience was probably being assaulted by an intense rain shower blown horizontal by sudden wind gusts that sprang from a cloudy but quiet-looking sky, five minutes after leaving home.

The point of recounting this is that I've since concluded that all the walking up and down hills was excellent fitness conditioning. After about a year in Wellington, some work colleagues convinced me to enter into a half marathon. I had never really done any running, and had barely six weeks to prepare, but found that I was gradually able to extend my training runs to longer distances. And when the race came around, I managed 1:34 -- a good result for a first timer.

I never really persisted with the training, and far too many weekends were buried in a haze of beer and cigarettes to make much real progress with fitness. But I did start to run the 5km races organised on Tuesday evenings by a couple of the Wellington running clubs. On the days when recovery from Friday night had been smoother, I usually ran under 20 minutes, and managed a best time of 18:56 on a rather uneven Old Hutt Rd course. I also bettered my half marathon time, running 1:31 in the 2003 Harbour Capital race, with the Welsh winner, who finished in around 1:09, reported as saying it was the windiest conditions he'd ever run in.

The base level of fitness also stood me in good stead when I ended up trying to climb mountains in South America. I didn't prepare well for the attempt to scale either 6,075-metre Nevado Chachani or 5,825-metre El Misti, but in both climbs I managed to carry on to the top, while less than half of those at base camp made it to the summit.

Since returning to Wellington I've been living near sea level, and despite gradually reducing my intake of all manner of toxic substances, fitness levels have never been the same. The sedentary nature of work and study hardly helps, and despite repeated resolutions, it's been mostly downhill.

Whenever I 've tried to go for a run I've been beset by screaming calves and jarring sinews. At no stage have I achieved the famed 'runner's high', which seems to only cut in after about 45 minutes, and not at all if you don't last that long.

I've tried to compensate in the gym, but There have been minor sucesses: at different points I got up to rowing 4,850 metres in 20 minutes, bench pressing 85kg, squatting 110kg (my body weight averages around 78kg) , and doing 12 supine chin ups in a single set. But when I don't obsessively stick with the same exercise multiple times per week, I immediately go backwards.

Athletic endeavour in the last couple of years is better characterised by the outcome of my attendance at yoga classes. I went weekly for about six months, hoping to improve my lamentable flexibility and strengthen core muscles. At some stage, I pushed a backward bend a little too far, urged on by the instructor's quiet incredulity that I couldn’t take it any further. The bit of me that had to bend objected strongly, and that was the end of yoga. Before I had fully recovered, I aggravated the injury playing indoor football; then I made it worse by returning too quickly to football. I think there was a premature attempt to do deadlifts mixed in there somewhere too. By the middle of last year I was reduced to a hobbling wreck.

The way the stiffness and discomfort migrated from the lower back down through the butt and leg, I figured it had to be a tendon or ligament in the hip. For about a month, any rapid vertical or lateral movement was painful. I would have to carefully raise and lower myself out of chairs, and getting out of bed was a challenge -- even rolling over during the night had to be done in stages. In the morning it was a triumph if I could get my socks on in less than a minute.

I've tended to blame it on the encroachments of age and decrepitude. Yet I've noticed that many people around my age are actually in reasonable shape. Before last year’s Olympics, I recall reading about two brothers aged 34 and 32 who were to represent New Zealand and the United States respectively at triathlon. In the 2006 World Cup, 34-year old Zinedine Zidane was probably the best, if not the quickest or the best-behaved, player. Sure, age will catch up with us all in the end, but I probably shouldn't be using that excuse just yet.

It's only recently that I think I've hit on the missing ingredient: discipline and motivation. Ironically, all those long treks up Brooklyn Hill meant that in the past, it all came too easily. Age and a sedentary job are formidable adversaries, and past a certain point vanity doesn't cut it. You've got to have a mission.

I've always meant to climb some more mountains, and with a long awaited trip back to South America planned for the middle of the year, my thoughts have turned to the highest peaks in the Arequipa region: Ampato and Coropuna. The goal has been put into sharper focus by my older sister Terri's recent outstanding achievement of scaling Argentina's 7,000-metre Aconcagua – the highest peak outside the Himalayas.

But I'm definitely not going to be able to tackle the Andes if I get short of breath walking up to the Kelburn campus. It's by telling myself this I've been able to push myself to go from two gym trips weekly, to three or four, and to turn a craven 35 minutes into 50. I strain at the weights. I sit at the rower, sweating, puffing and cursing. Slowly but surely, I've felt something of the old physical condition return.

The other night I went for a run in the evening after work. It was cool with a bit of a drizzle but almost no wind: near perfect conditions for running. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I was moving easily, the calves weren't complaining, and that I might just keep on going (I didn't; I decided not to spoil the experience by pushing too hard). That was a run of around 6km; the next time I'll make it 8, then 10, and then, who knows, that 'runner's high' might cut in.

Now, I'd better finish this post before the steadily increasing number of days since my last serious exercise begin to falsify everything I've just written.

New Blog Resolutions

Late last year, I managed to scribble a brief note saying that I was suffering from post-study brain exhaustion and could hardly have a coherent thought, let alone put it in writing.

I feel like I've almost recovered from that state now, but it took me a long time. Having finished studies at the end of October, by the first week of January my brain was still emerging from the swamp. In a couple of weeks I'll be back at university (assuming I don't fall afoul of the Kafkaesque enrolment procedures) and it will be all too easy to let blogging stagnate before it even really starts again.

So, inspired by the example of Terence Wood, I'm going to make a list of topics for future posts. Hopefully, this will commit me to actually following through and finishing them. Current ideas include:

• A review of David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and reflections on its implications for development studies.
• A post titled 'Why We Should Spread the Wealth Around', inspired by the the Republican attempts to portray Barack Obama as a socialist during the last days of the presidential campaign, and Obama's reluctance to provide any direct defense of redistributionist policies
• Following the recent public transport theme, and in the 'personal philosophy' category, a post on why I prefer trains.

And In Today's Mindlessness...

The theoretical role of New Zealand media is to inform and entertain. In fulfilling the first of these functions, you'd imagine that basic literacy and numeracy would be key ingredients. Sadly, that expectation is sometimes disappointed.

Here, the New Zealand Herald reports on the National Institute of Air and Water (NIWA) summary of January's weather. Take a brief look at both the NIWA press release and the Herald article, and you'll see that it's virtually a cut and paste. One of the few places where the Herald reporter departs from the NIWA text is in the statement that:

Sunshine hours were more than double normal for most of the country except Southland and Otago, where they were near or below average.

This turns out to be one of the things seized on by the headline writer, who declares January hotter than normal with twice as much sun - NIWA.

Twice as much sun? Now, we know that, childhood memories notwithstanding, a New Zealand summer hardly offers unlimited sunshine. But if you guessed that on average about 8 0r 9 of the possible 14 hours per day during the summer months are sunny, you'd be on the right track.

Therefore, in order for it to be twice as sunny, we would not only have to pass the entire month without a single cloud, but the sun would have to stay above the horizon 2--4 hours longer than is permitted by physical laws.

Look back at the NIWA press release and you'll see what they actually reported:

January sunshine totals were above average (more than 110% of normal) for most of New Zealand, except in Southland and Otago where they were near or below average.

So, sunshine was at least 110% of normal, or 10% above the average. For 'double normal' to be the correct interpretation, it would have to have said '210% of the average', or '110% more than average. But it hardly takes mathematical or even grammatical sophistication to spot the mistake -- common sense will do.

This is a small point, and it's only the weather, but when a newspaper aspires to inform you about the world and help shape your opinions, it's worth checking their grasp on reality.

The Winding Road to the Airport

OK, so here are the reasons why Wellington's aiport bus service is much worse than it needs to be.

1. As mentioned in the previous post, you can almost run from the city to the aiport in the time the bus takes to get there. Contributing to this is the 5 or 6 minutes it can take to crawl down Courtenay Place during busy times. This is a problem with the wider transport system and city layout, which is kind of off limits for this post. However, the real drag is the byzantine route the bus takes once it passes through the Mt Victoria tunnel.

Instead of continuing on the direct Cobham Drive-Calabar Road route, the bus veers off on a circumlocution through Kilbirnie, stopping to pick up and drop off local passengers, then takes a scenic loop around Lyall Bay and into the back entrance to the airport through a tunnel apparently explicitly designed for buses. The logic completely escapes me. Why must the airport bus act as a local shopping trolley when the area is already covered by several other services? Why would you build a special tunnel to open up a much slower route?

2. In addition to not being an express airport bus, this is not even a city to airport bus. Rather, it is an Upper Hutt to aiport bus, run by the same company which operates services in the Hutt Valley itself, and from the Hutt to the city. I'm presuming somebody thought this was an appropriate combination of routes when they were handing out concessions.

This means that the Flyer has to work its way in from the Hutt Valley, negotiating Wellington's fickle motorway traffic, and as a result is never ever on time. The half hour intervals it is supposed to arrive are pure fiction. From bitter experience, I've found that you must try to catch the bus before the one that will get you to the aiport to check in on time. When the orange no. 91 does show up, you usually have no way of knowing whether it's erratically early or lamentably late.

3. For all its problems, the bus does get you to and from the airport. Except when it stops running, which is well before the last planes of the evening. During the week, the last bus is at 8:30, while the flights run until nearly midnight. Arrive after this hour, as I have done several times, and you can take a shuttle, which when there is no bus competition will try to charge you at least $18 just to the city, or you can pay $30 for a taxi.

4. The one good point of the Airport Flyer used to be that it had nice spacious luggage racks in the front. Those lugging big backpacks or cumbersome suitcases could dispense with them after boarding and enjoy a reasonably comfortable seat. When I took my most recent trip, I got on to what I found was a slightly newer coach, with more seats, but no luggage rack. With the need to negotiate a steep step half way down the bus and battle along a narrow aisle, I and several other passengers stumbled, staggered, and nearly injured ourselves in the search for a seat.

Reluctant as I am to claim a conspiracy, it's hard to find another plausible explanation. The infrequency, unreliability and poor value of the aiport bus mainly benefits the shuttle services and the taxi companies. The airport company is also unlikely to be too concerned about poor public transport, as it can charge access to the shuttles and taxis, and makes money out of car parking.

But let's take a reality check. Aren't I making a big deal out of nothing here? Why should we care about a bus that runs to the airport, anyway? If you can afford to fly, you can afford to get a taxi, right?

I beg to differ. The airport is the gateway to the city, and is the first experience travellers have of a place. Backpackers, families visting relatives, and others on a budget also travel by air, and failure to offer decent public transport shows a fundamental disdain for their experiences. The $30 it takes to get a taxi into town is not a pittance: two week's coffee, several family meals, or a monthly internet package.

Furthermore, an important constituency of Wellington airport is business travellers and public servants. The fact that transport usually doesn't come from their pocket perhaps encourages the expectation that 'everyone just gets a taxi'. But with Wellington's compressed business district, a single route could easily serve almost all of these people. As economic times get tougher, aren't there potential savings here for taxpayers and shareholders?

In any case, the main point of this post was to point out the ways in which bad public transport is not the inevitable result of difficult geography, smaller population and lower GDP. The really frustrating things about the Wellington aiport service are the route, schedule and vehicles. If public transport is to be improved, these details would be a good place to start, which would at least demonstrate that the idea of a public service is taken half seriously.

Categories: New Zealand, Wellington,public transport,Brisbane,

The Public Transport Gap

When I was in better shape and used to go for longer runs, it took me about 30 minutes to make my way from Te Papa on the Wellington waterfront to the roundabout at the end of Cobham Drive, from where it's only another few minutes to the international aiport (though my route didn't take me that way).

When I recently took the bus from central Wellington to the airport to fly south for Christmas, the ironically-named Airport Flyer took roughly 35 minutes to cover the same distance.

Brisbane's airport is around twice the distance to its city centre as Wellington's, but when I landed there on my way to visit my girlfriend Paola, the trip downtown in the express train took hardly a quarter of an hour.

[Cost of 35-minute ride in bumpy, claustrophobic bus that was a quarter hour late: $6.50
Cost of 15-minute journey in smooth, comfortable, air-conditioned express train that swished up to the platform exactly on schedule: $14]

Every time I go to Australia I get a fresh reminder of how much better their urban public transport is than ours. I only know Melbourne and Brisbane, but I'm reliably informed that Sydney and Adelaide also have excellent public transport for their respective sizes.

Brisbane has six to eight train lines (depending on how you count) spidering out from the city, and linking the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast. Its bus network is supported by dedicated busways that run north, south and east of the centre. And while Melbourne has its trams as a showpiece, Brisbane has its ferries.

The 'City Cats' are fast, rakish-looking vessels that trek their way along the inner-city route between the University of Queensland and Apollo Rd near the mouth of the Brisbane river. They have rows of comfortable seats inside, with a big screen showing news and weather. But in all but the most inclement weather, most people prefer to sit outside on the front and back decks, taking in the views and the breeze. The trip along the river is so pleasant that many tourists (including yours truly) ride up and down and treat it as a pleasure cruise.

The great thing is that all services are linked under the Queensland government's TransLink umbrella, enabling a single ticket to take you across all the different transport modes and allowing steep discounts on bulk purchases. For example, just $23 buys a weekly ticket that will give you unlimited travel on any train, bus or ferry within zones 1 and 2 (an area at least the size of Wellington City and Lower Hutt combined).

Compare this with the motley collection of transport providers in the Wellington area and the stingy deals on offer. There are no weekly tickets; the best you can do is a monthly ticket for about $100 for either bus or train, covering about the equivalent area of Brisbane's zones 1 and 2. There are only a couple of combined bus and train offers with very limited conditions, and the Eastbourne and Seatoun ferries are right out of the picture.

I'm also doing Wellington the favour of pretending to compare like with like. To be fair we should note the rather more modern, fast and comfortable nature of Brisbane's transport. The train and ferry services are also supported by an entire infrastructure of stations with broad platforms, seating, shelter, ticket machines, water fountains, and route and timetable maps. Most of the train stations even have staff.

My uncle and aunt who live in Brisbane say that the public transport has been rather neglected over the years, the congestion on the artertial routes is terrible, and the local government is trying to address the problems through misguided, delayed, poorly organised attempts to build more highways. That sounds pretty familiar: I guess everything is relative.

At this point, defenders of the New Zealand status quo will point out the differences in geography, population and economics that mean public transport just can't reach the same standards as in Australian cities. With 1.9 million people, Brisbane is larger than any New Zealand city, while Sydney and Melbourne are much larger and denser again. They also all sit on large areas of relatively flat land, allowing transport to be organised in an efficient, hub-and-spokes system. And of course, Australia is 'richer' than us and can spend more -- though I would point out that Queensland is not one of the wealthiest states and the per-capita income is probably not dissimilar to Wellington, New Zealand's richest place.

I remain convinced that public transport can be a lot better in New Zealand's largest cities, and that its current state is as much a result of attitudes as of intrinsic limitations. But let's accept for argument's sake that we can't match Australia. I can still make a case that the Wellington airport route is a special embarassment. That will be the topic of the next post.

Hell Is Other People

To clarify: I don't mean that. This post is actually about how, despite what Jean Paul Sartre might have thought, and despite their irritating qualities, you can't really do without other people at all.

If you're not a mathematical genius, a gifted artist, or one of the few novelists whose intense introversion actually speaks to the human condition, communicating and getting along with other people is vital to achieving most anything useful.

The older you get and the more you learn, the more you realise how partial is any knowledge, how limited is any talent, how weak and qualified is 'being right'. Even where you might have been ahead of the game in having an insight or drawing a conclusion, it's not worth much unless you can communicate it to other people in a way that makes sense to them. Even then, you probably stole most of it off someone else without realising it.

This all might seem painfully obvious, but for me, last year was a learning curve in a number of ways. I suppose the lessons were there before, but I wasn't mature enough to notice them.

Theory provided small revelations. In development studies, it became clearer than ever that there was no best political or economic system that would solve everyone's problems. The wisest philosopher kings have generally failed to drag the majority along with them. Societies that have managed to achieve material prosperity and a degree of freedom for their citizens have done so by making or doing things that appeal to other people ('markets'), or organising their affairs in a way that the majority -- not just the enlightened few-- find moderately fair and reasonable ('good government').

[We leave aside the useful ability to overwhelm others by superior force, although even that requires teamwork.]

Modern theories on development also give a lot of credence to 'institutions', that mish mash of rules, conventions, and processes, and their observance by groups ranging from school boards to small claims courts to select committees. [How could I have known, when the dark mysteries of world poverty and inequality pushed me towards development studies, that the secret to progress lay in well-run meetings with an agreed agenda?]

Meanwhile, in real life I had occasion to take minor leadership roles in a couple of areas, and was a little taken aback by the experience. I have always favoured getting on with ones's own work as the best way to make a contribution, and been mildly scornful of the 'relationship management skills' that make an appearance in most job descriptions. But the year's experiences forced me to reassess this view.

On the one hand, there are always people smarter and more experienced than you are. When you have spurned the limiting dedication to a single trade, profession or discipline in favour of a cultivated dilettantism, you can be sure that in any field you operate you will always need to relate to those who have greater expertise.

On the other hand, in social and political contexts -- the only ones where I'm likely to be working in the immediate future -- things get done not by people who are 'right' but by those who can persuade others to agree with them.

At work, the project-like effort for which I received the most praise was generally seen as having been more valuable for the process and for the range of people that participated, than for its actual content or conclusions. I had to acknowledge the frightening reality that my most significant achievement was getting people to come to a meeting.

At university, I had an interesting experience of group work. In the past, I'd smugly shunned working in groups, as my instinctive revulsion at writing by committee was backed up by studies which showed that at many tasks, the best individuals consistently outperform most teams. However, development policy is if nothing else about the interaction of groups of people, so I had to acknowledge the raison d'etre.

It turned out that my background and experience made me one our group's natural leaders. I was keen that there would be no hierarchies but that open and constructive debate would trump wishy-washy consensus. However, I was a little taken aback to find that I'm not actually that good at being challenged or taking constructive criticism. Although I had lots of ideas, and some of them were good, they weren't always the best or the only ones. Yet I found I was stuck in contrarian, argumentative mode, what my father used to call 'having to have the last word'.

Worse, I rediscovered a latent tendency towards micromanagement. When tasks have to be to spread around, it doesn't matter whether you know exactly how everything should go (which as we've agreed, you probably don't); you have to trust in other people's ability to play their part in their own style. Sadly, I found that the facile corporatese edict to 'empower those around you' was sometimes a bridge too far.

When we had our anonymised written peer assessments, some adjectives that appeared in mine more than once (admittedly amidst mostly positive feedback) included 'dictatorial' and 'dominating', and I had to acknowledge they were fair.

By the end of 2008, I had to come to the conclusion that, like it or not, 'relating to other people' is a specific and valuable skill that needs to be worked at.

Having said all that, people have tendencies, and mine is that I'll generally behavely awkwardly in groups and will struggle to be a good team player. And the realisation that relatively harmonious collaboration is a desirable goal doesn't have to make it the starting point. Working my way through David S Landes' epic The Wealth and Poverty of Nations in the holidays (review to come), I found a defense of grumpy individualism.

Landes argues that the competitive desire to improve on and outdo one's contemporaries was part of what drove the scientific and industrial revolutions in Europe. Even prior to that period, the existence of many competing political entities in Europe, and the development of cities, provided individuals the option of migration, thus putting a ceiling on political tyranny and allowing the survival of new ideas. Meanwhile, the Chinese Middle Kingdom (technologically far ahead at the start of the Middle Ages) quietly ossified, as any individual genius that threatened the harmony and order of the whole was quietly tucked away or repressed.

There's affirmation there for those of us that are naturally repelled by the stifling conformity -- especially prevalent in the teaching, nursing and management professions as well as in most large organisations -- that is slyly enforced through a rhetoric of team spirit and rears its head most distastefully at 'planning days' or 'retreats'. The lesson from history is that there needs to be room to say: 'this is lame; I'm gonna make a face and opt out'.

And of course, the great irony of cooperation and teamwork is that the strongest and most cohesive team is the one that has just kicked somone else's ass.

Animalitos Great and Small

I have Paola to thank for dragging me along to Australia Zoo and Sea World during my recent time in Brisbane. The stated motivation for visiting the parks was to see 'animalitos', and despite my slightly lesser tendency to melt with tenderness at the sight of a small pet dog on a street corner, I enjoyed it almost as much as she did.

The word which best describes both parks would be 'slick'. Entertainment for tourists is the dominant principle, although both operations push a mild environmental message. The idea in Australia Zoo seems to be that by making snakes and crocodiles part of a showbiz spectacle, people will see what wonderful creatures they are and therefore want to protect them and their environment. However, there's no real link to a wider ecological context, and the razmatazz tends to drown out any other message.

Sea World sticks to the standard tactic of showcasing the most lovable marine animals, and are so successful that despite the environmental angle being even thinner than at Australia Zoo, most visitors who have seen the sea lion and dolphin shows would probably depart feeling inclined to tear apart a drift net with their hands and teeth if necessary.

The photos are 800 x 600 and can be enlarged by clicking.


Close to the best, as well as the most manipulative, spectacle at Sea World was the 20-minute 'Fish Detetectives' show, a semi-coherent narrative about illegal overfishing in which the actors included two sea lions and one seal. Cued by hand signals, and regularly rewarded for good performance by a fish or three, the marine mammals slid, swam, searched, chased, saluted, whispered and embraced, leaving most of the female audience members to file out in a tearful state of joy at their overwhelming cuteness.

As part of the twice-daily show at Sea World, the trainers surf across the pool on the back of the dolphins -- or rather, the dolphins agree to carry the trainers for a short burst in return for generous servings of fish.


But the real stars of the show are the dolphins themselves, who splash, leap and somersault with such enthusiasm that it's easy to forget they do it on cue twice daily.

As we filed out the side of the open-air theatre after the show, a couple of the trainers were taking questions and explaining things to the last handful of people to leave. The dolphins swam right up to edge of the pool and milled about, allowing me to get several close-up photos.

Elephant feeding is a daily feature at Australia Zoo. We just missed forming part of the hundred or so people who lined up to serve each Asian elephant a carrot, which it politely snaffled with its trunk and deposited into its mouth. These animals certainly get their 5+ per day.

At Australia Zoo, visitors can look through glass windows into a small enclosure where animal trainers play with eighteen-month old Sumatran tiger cubs. According to one of the trainers, who sustained a running commentary over the microphone, they work with the tigers daily, encouraging them to engage in natural behaviours of running, leaping and attacking, but also building a relationship of discipline and respect (kind of like coaching the under-16 rugby team).

In the 'Crocoseum' at Australia Zoo, Steve Irwin's wife still carries on the family tradition of baiting a 15-foot crocodile with strips of meat, as well as her and the other zoo staff's presence. In another part of the show, the crocodile attacked a dangling 'leg-like' object attached to the end of a long stick. The trainer doing the running commentary became ecstatic as the croc twisted and battered the object into submission. "Two, three, four death rolls!", he enthused. "Four death rolls -- that's a new record!".

Walking In the Mountains

The trip down south for Christmas is usually an opportunity for a welcome bout of outdoor activity. On a bright sunny Monday, my Dad took my sister Cecilia and I up into the mountains, to the border of Arthur's Pass National Park. From there we climbed up the Bealey Spur, through shady mountain beech forest, along the rim of a canyon dropping into a river gorge, and into the fragile alpine grasslands from where there were spectacular views across the mountains and the deep, glacier-carved valleys below.

These photos have been uploaded at full resolution, and can be enlarged to full screen size with a click.


This view from the Arthur's Pass road looks back east, following the Waimakariri river downstream. This stretch is part of the kayaking section of the Coast to Coast race in March.

At a rest stop climbing up the Bealey Spur just above the treeline, a fat blue mountain dragonfly was very taken with Cecilia's backpack, perhaps spying a family resemblance in its colours.



A herbfield's eye view towards the mountains of the main divide, in which the camera overruled my view that its focus should be on the mountain daisies in the foreground rather than the distant peaks.

Cecilia and my Dad feature in this view looking west towards the headwaters of the Bealey river, which flows out of this valley and joins up with the Waimakariri (first picture in this post). They are seated at the edge of an alpine herb field, which the GPS told us was just over 1,000 metres above sea level. The mountains at the head of the valley form the main divide between Canterbury and the West Coast, with the highest peaks in this picture reaching around 2,300 metres.

The rata vine winds its way parasitically around the trunk of its host tree (in this case a southern beech), stealing its nutrients and gradually strangling the host plant, until it has built up enough of a structure to support itself.


In a spirit of ironic intertextuality, the author inserts himself into a scene made famous by painter Rita Angus, near the main highway between Arthur's Pass and Craigieburn Forest. The lonesomeness suggested by the solitary railway station building against the backdrop of a sombre pine and brooding hills is emphasised by the weighty, post-impressionist brushstrokes of Rita Angus. Here, the effect is slightly undermined by the daytripper from Christchurch who has wondered over from the nearby parked car.

Notes from Academia

I'm putting up some of my university work this year on the Andean Observer website. So far, I have an essay on Latin America and dependency theory (some brief background here), and a literature review on 'Poverty and anti-poverty strategies in Peru'. They're both pretty short given the weight of the topics, but that's because of the approach taken to the development studies course: none of our assignments had more than a 2,500-word limit. This means that some serious questions are skimmed over pretty lightly. On the other hand, it may make some dry material a bit more readable.

If nothing else, there's a reasonable set of references, many hyperlinked, for anyone interested in the topics.

Although it's probably a bad idea to recommend something still half-finished, I'll still put in a plug for the images pages of the Andean Observer site. The 'Arequipa' and 'Cuzco' pages are pretty much there, and I'm working on tidying up the rest. Comments are welcome.

World Cup Qualifiers: My Teams Take a Bath

While I was squirreling away on my studies and unable to blog, the latest round of double-headers in World Cup qualifying took place. For the teams I follow across three continents, it went about as badly as it could do.

The worst reversal was in the North American zone where a perfect storm of results saw Guatemala lose 1-2 away to lowly Cuba while Trinidad & Tobago pulled off an upset 2-1 result over the previously impregnable United States. The last round of the group was played on November 19, and Guatemala's demise was confirmed as they lost to the US while Trinidad & Tobago comfortably defeated Cuba.

Those two teams now go into a final group with El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico to decide three qualifiers and one playoff candidate.

Results were hardly better in South America. In the previous two rounds Peru showed signs of shedding basket-case status, but in the latest double header they lost 0-3 away to Bolivia and 0-1 away to Paraguay to sink to dead last and lose any chance of qualifying for South Africa. The real disappointment, however, is Colombia. A 0-0 draw with Brazil at the Maracana might have seemed like an achievement to balance a home loss to Paraguay. But having made some early running, the Colombians have now scored only four measly goals in ten games and are lingering in seventh.

The most notable result was a 1-0 win for Chile over Argentina, which would have been a memorable occasion for the Chileans, but mainly served to consolidate the Southern Cone countries into the five potential qualifying spots.

In Europe, Portugal didn't score a goal in either of their games (incuding a 0-0 draw at home to Albania) and are in an uncomfortable equal third position going into the next round of matches. It's all been pretty smooth so far for Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Fabio Capello's rejuvenated England, all of whom are at least three points clear at the top of their groups. The other big team to be in some trouble is France, in a three-way tie for third, five points behind Serbia and Lithuania.

It's still pretty early days in Africa, with 20 teams for the final qualifying groups only just decided. In Asia, however, it's looking good for previous qualifiers Australia, Japan, Iran and South Korea. If those four emerging powers stay in their current positions, the fifth Asian team to meet New Zealand in a playoff looks like being Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea.

It will make for an interesting situation. New Zealand's government derailed the national football team's home tie against Fiji by refusing a visa to the reserve goalkeeper because he was related to a member of the sanctioned military administration. Given that at least two of our likely playoff opponents hail from objectionable totalitarian dictatorships (assuming we exclude relatively 'liberal' Qatar), will we also be scrutinising the team members for connections with those in positions of political privilege in their home country?