The second round of voting in the Peruvian presidential elections is now almost certain to pit Alan Garcia against Ollanta Humala. Lourdes Flores' Unidad Nacional party hasn't yet given up, and are contesting the legitimacy of votes from some polling stations, but with all votes counted Lourdes is 0.6 percent, or 60,000 votes, behind Alan.
The two remaining candidates have already made proxy starts to their second-round campaigns, each making visits to the other's stronghold. Alan visited Puno, a region which voted heavily for Humala, while Ollanta appeared in Trujillo, the traditional base of support for Alan Garcia's party APRA.
At present, almost nobody is willing to predict the outcome of the second round, largely because, of the 45 percent of Peruvians who didn't vote for either Alan or Ollanta, many would be loathe to support wither candidate.
For all that Humala is feared for his authoritarian tendencies, there are a lot of people who could never bring themselves to back Alan after his disastrous first presidency. My friends Hugo and Lizbeth are an example. They both voted Lourdes in the first round, but, though they don't have much confidence in what an Humala presidency would mean for tourism, they will be voting for Ollanta in the second round. "We can't stand Alan", they both said. Among other things, they blame him for terrorism getting out of hand in the late 80s.
Another friend of mine and her cousin are taking a different strategy. "Word is that Alan is likely to win", she told me. "If so, they say APRA party members will probably get good jobs. So we've joined the party and signed up to be election observers for the second round. Though of course we aren't apristas - we both voted Lourdes".
Author Mario Vargas Llosa - who really should decide whether he's going to be a public intellectual or a politician - announced his opinion that Unidad Nacional and APRA should form a "democratic alliance" to keep out the authoritarian Ollanta Humala. This would effectively mean handing Lourdes' votes to Alan.
Most commentators think this is a silly strategy that would likely backfire. On the one hand, it would strengthen Humala's battling outsider status. On the other, it does look rather like an attempt at majoritarian strategy to continue the exclusion of the marginalized 30 percent of the population whose vote for Ollanta was more than anything a cry of protest at the status quo. And most simply, it's not exactly in the best interests of democracy to tell people how to vote.
Meanwhile, international figures continue to stick their beaks into Peru's domestic politics. Bolivian president Evo Morales recently called current Peruvian leader Alejandro Toledo "a traitor" to Andean solidarity for his decision to sign a free trade agreement with the US (it still has to be ratified by Congress in both countries).
Toledo responded that Morales' compadre Hugo Chavez himself had betrayed his avowed "Bolivarian" ideals of Andean integration by retiring Venezuela from the Comunidad Andina (CAN) alliance, a move which looks to be matched by Morales and Bolivia.
Yesterday in a press conference Chavez himself had his say. He blamed Colombia and Peru for the erosion of CAN because they had signed free trade agreements with the US. To continue in CAN would allow "susbsidised American goods" into Venezuela through the back door. "Unless", said Chavez, "the next president of Peru - and let's hope that's Ollanta Humala - throws out the free trade agreement".
Chavez had a parting shot for Lourdes Flores. "The candidate who made the free trade agreement a platform of her campaign is now on the sidelines", he said. "Well, Doña Lourdes - five more years".
It remains to be seen what effect this sniping from foreign leaders will have on the Peruvian campaign. Perhaps it will give Ollanta Humala a boost. Or maybe Peruvians will actually summon some of their famed patriotism and decide that no one foreign - be they American or Venezuelan - will tell them how to vote.
Categories: South America, Peru, Peruvian Elections, Lourdes Flores, Ollanta Humala, Alan Garcia, Hugo Chavez
Friday, April 28, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Nothing Is Ever Quite the Same
April is close to the best time of the year in Arequipa. The skies are permanently sunny - the intermittent cloud and very occasional rain of January - March is gone - but the nights aren't yet as bitterly cold as in June and July. The heat of the day keeps the drifts of breeze warm until even a little after sundown, unlike some times of the year when it starts to get chilly by 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon.
Best of all, the mountains still have a decent amount of snow from the rainy season. On the volcano El Misti there's barely a streak or two, but 6,075-metre Chachani has an almost Alps-like covering, and even the smaller Picchu Picchu range to the east has a layer of snow.
I spent almost six months in Arequipa during my last trip to South America. I fell in love with the place shortly after arriving; in addition to its natural beauty it seemed to have a combination of dignity and joie de vivre which especially appealed to me.
About two hours after arriving from Lima on Friday morning, I felt like I'd never left. A short tour round the workplaces of friends and acquaintances, and I'd received more hugs and kisses than in the entire previous year. My friends Hugo and Lizbeth immediately demanded that I come and stay at their place, and on Saturday night organized a "welcome barbeque" with marinated pork steaks, papa a la huancaina and lashings of sangria and beer.
When I returned to New Zealand, my life here quickly started to seem like a dream. But having returned, the minor changes only serve to underline the familarities.
Some people have put on weight, others have died their hair. One or two have changed jobs. There's been a couple of pregnancies. Ulises, the owner of the Casa la Reyna hostel where I stayed when I first arrived here, was stripping the layers of plaster and paint off the stone facade of his hotel. "It's being naturalised", he said. "Without the plaster the stone can breathe, and it lasts better". My friend Blanca had modified the entrance to her popular internet cafe, put in a new counter, and painted it in bright colours.
Hugo and Lizbeth's house which they share with the families of Hugo's brothers and his mother, has been substantially modified, with new rooms occupying space that was an outside terrace, and an attractive back patio. Their adventure travel agencies have been slowly gaining more business in a static market, and they now also have t-shirts, stickers and sandwich boards featuring the flying-condors design which I used for the Incaventura web page I put together last year (me, a logo designer? Few things have left me more chuffed).
More notably, Hugo and Lizbeth's son Gerardo has undergone a remarkable change. He's still an anxious child, but after a couple of visits to a psychologist, a change of school, and getting his own room, he seems to have conquered the tendency for constant screaming and crying fits, can now speak more or less normally, and can play happily with other kids.
But only one thing is drastically different. As some who read this blog will know, much of my time in South America last year was spent in a long and involved relationship with a girl from Arequipa. It was at times fraught and turbulent but (for me at least) seldom boring
That all finished some time ago, but inevitably colours how I see the place now. Almost everything is infused with memories of the things we did together During the first couple of days here I was hit a couple of times by a wave of sad nostalgia, and a feeling that the way things have turned out changes not only the present, but also how I view the past.
On the other hand, I realised even at the time that I was living in a reality that was romantic, but a little one-dimensional. So distracted was I by the ups and downs of el amor a la arequipeña that a lot of the more interesting concrete features of the place passed me by. Already in my few days here, I've done things that I never managed to get around to when I was with Paola. In a way, I feel like I'm getting to know Arequipa all over again.
Sadly, my travel plans, which I set in stone before coming, mean I don't have much more time here.
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
Best of all, the mountains still have a decent amount of snow from the rainy season. On the volcano El Misti there's barely a streak or two, but 6,075-metre Chachani has an almost Alps-like covering, and even the smaller Picchu Picchu range to the east has a layer of snow.
I spent almost six months in Arequipa during my last trip to South America. I fell in love with the place shortly after arriving; in addition to its natural beauty it seemed to have a combination of dignity and joie de vivre which especially appealed to me.
About two hours after arriving from Lima on Friday morning, I felt like I'd never left. A short tour round the workplaces of friends and acquaintances, and I'd received more hugs and kisses than in the entire previous year. My friends Hugo and Lizbeth immediately demanded that I come and stay at their place, and on Saturday night organized a "welcome barbeque" with marinated pork steaks, papa a la huancaina and lashings of sangria and beer.
When I returned to New Zealand, my life here quickly started to seem like a dream. But having returned, the minor changes only serve to underline the familarities.
Some people have put on weight, others have died their hair. One or two have changed jobs. There's been a couple of pregnancies. Ulises, the owner of the Casa la Reyna hostel where I stayed when I first arrived here, was stripping the layers of plaster and paint off the stone facade of his hotel. "It's being naturalised", he said. "Without the plaster the stone can breathe, and it lasts better". My friend Blanca had modified the entrance to her popular internet cafe, put in a new counter, and painted it in bright colours.
Hugo and Lizbeth's house which they share with the families of Hugo's brothers and his mother, has been substantially modified, with new rooms occupying space that was an outside terrace, and an attractive back patio. Their adventure travel agencies have been slowly gaining more business in a static market, and they now also have t-shirts, stickers and sandwich boards featuring the flying-condors design which I used for the Incaventura web page I put together last year (me, a logo designer? Few things have left me more chuffed).
More notably, Hugo and Lizbeth's son Gerardo has undergone a remarkable change. He's still an anxious child, but after a couple of visits to a psychologist, a change of school, and getting his own room, he seems to have conquered the tendency for constant screaming and crying fits, can now speak more or less normally, and can play happily with other kids.
But only one thing is drastically different. As some who read this blog will know, much of my time in South America last year was spent in a long and involved relationship with a girl from Arequipa. It was at times fraught and turbulent but (for me at least) seldom boring
That all finished some time ago, but inevitably colours how I see the place now. Almost everything is infused with memories of the things we did together During the first couple of days here I was hit a couple of times by a wave of sad nostalgia, and a feeling that the way things have turned out changes not only the present, but also how I view the past.
On the other hand, I realised even at the time that I was living in a reality that was romantic, but a little one-dimensional. So distracted was I by the ups and downs of el amor a la arequipeña that a lot of the more interesting concrete features of the place passed me by. Already in my few days here, I've done things that I never managed to get around to when I was with Paola. In a way, I feel like I'm getting to know Arequipa all over again.
Sadly, my travel plans, which I set in stone before coming, mean I don't have much more time here.
Categories: Arequipa, South America, Peru
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Learning to Love Lima
The sense of being in Peru rushed back as soon I got off the plane. With large queues waiting at immigration, the staff were backlogged because one of their machines was "malograda". As the crowds threatened to back up to the air bridge, the decision was made to open up a couple of extra counters.
"Señorita! Close off that gap between the lines so people don't come through there" one of the immigration officials shouted at a harried assistant. She started to rush off but then stopped. "It is closed" she said in frustration..
When I finally got my turn, the woman at immigration confirmed my flight number and started filling out my form. I noticed she had written "30" on my entry form. "You're only giving me 30 days?", I queried. "Why, how many do you need?", she asked. "Ah, maybe 35, to be on the safe side", I replied. "Hmm, ok, we'll go for 90", she said, proceeding to change the 3s to 9s.
So why didn't I get 90 in the first place? On all the other occasions I've come into Peru I've been given 90 automatically. Something to do with having come in from Chile? Note to Peru: generally you want to at least give gringo tourists the option of staying longer and spending more money.
Driving out of the airport though the port suburb of Callao, the air blowing through the taxi window carried a familiar thickness of humidity, tar, petrol, and fish. The driver steered in wide arcs around potholes, as the odd person wandered aimlessly into the poorly lit streets. I was definitely back in Peru.
In previous conversations with Peruvian friends in MSN Messenger, without exception they emitted cybernetic groans when the elections were mentioned. They had all voted for Lourdes Flores, and were despressed by the prospect of a choice between Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala. Perhaps not surprising, given that my friends are all middle class, including a language teacher, a law student, a designer, and a number who work in or rely on touism.
However, it seems that in Lima the pro-Lourdes sentiments go beyond the upper crust. I asked my taxi driver Carlos, a native of working-class Callao, who he wanted to win in the elections. "The woman - Lourdes", he said. The young guy on the nightshift at my little family-run hostel in Miraflores? "Lourdes", he confirmed without hesitation.
In the morning I talked with Juan, the young guy who manages the hostel, about travel into the jungle. He had travelled quite extensively in the "ceja de selva", the area between the Andes and the jungle proper, and had gone downriver for one day, but not as far as Iquitos.
He dismissed the dangers of drug traffickers and terrorists. "Really, the provinces are tranquil", he said. To be honest, there's much more danger here in Lima than in out there" (almost certainly true).
"Forget about being robbed or whatever", added Juan. "What you really have to watch out for in the jungle regions is the women".
My plan for the day was to secure a ticket to Arequipa for the following night, and make a visit to the Mueso de la Nacion, which houses many of the archeological treasures of the pre-Incan and Incan eras.
On the way out to the bus station, my taxi driver was a jovial guy named Leo. "Watch out for las charapas (women from Iquitos and around)", he warned me when I told him of my travel plans.
I asked him how business was. "Hmm, some days good, some days bad", he shrugged. It's hard making money. We have the cheapest taxis in South America. And the most expensive gasoline in South America. Everything here is expensive", he grumbled.
Leo was my first encounter with a non-Lourdes voter. "Alan Garcia's the man", he said, giving the thumbs up. "Ollanta would be a disaster. Nationalisation? That's crazy. It'd scare away the foreign capital. You're a foreigner, you want to invest here; you're not going to do it without security, guarantees".
But didn't Alan already have his turn at being president, I asked cautiously. "Ah, he's changed. He's matured" said Leo confidently.
Later, on my way out to the Museo de la Nacion, I saw a piece of graffiti scrawled in big, awkward letters on an underpass. "Alan hasn't changed", it proclaimed.
The musuem had a fantastic collection of artefacts, particularly from the pre-Incan cultures. By then the jet lag was kicking in a little, so my stamina waned, and I'll probably go back on my next trip to Lima. I was already enamoured of the extraordinarily lifelike and expressive ceramics produced by the 7th-century Moche culture, which I had seen in Chiclayo. But what grabbed me most on the museum visit were the carved stone pillars and feline heads from the BC-era Chavin de Huantar de culture.
With a centre in the Huaraz area, this was the first "horizon culture" in Peru which unified people over a significant area through government and religion. Its stone artwork shows great skill and control, revealing a striking, almost demonic, iconography.
The musuem was a somewhat surprising place to meet my first Ollanta Humala voters. I got to talking to two women in the forties, Rosa and Cristina, who were also looking at the artefacts. Rosa lived in London, and had ended up teaching continuing education classes on Peruvian culture. She said she was "catching up"; she'd never taken that much of an interest in her country's cultural history until she found herself teaching it to foreigners.
Cristina said she lived in the poor shantytown area of Comas and was a trained physiotherapist. I asked if physiotherapy paid reasonably well. More or less, she said, but she also worked in preventative health, and that was definitely on a voluntary basis. I imagined that such work must be really necesary and valuable. "That's right", said Cristina. "That's why we're very much supporting Ollanta".
"Oh yes, she's in love with Ollanta", said Rosa. She even has a picture of him" she said, searching in her own purse. Unfortunately the picture of Ollanta was nowhere to be found.
Politely, I didn't press them on the question of what specific actions they thought Ollanta Humala would take to improve life for people in the pueblos jovenes.
From the bus station to the musuem and back to the hostel, I travelled in kombis, the mainly antiquated minibuses and vans which roar along the streets, stopping wherever there are passengers to pick up. They dominate Peruvian cities, and Lima in particular, to such an extent, that I feel if you're not confident travelling in them you'll never really get a feel for daily life in the city. You can't take taxis forever.
I didn't do that great on my way out to the musuem, and it took me three tries to get to the right stop. Lesson learned: if you want someone to point out your stop, you really need to remind them more than once. But on the way back to Miraflores (minimum two kombis), I got it right first time.
Miraflores and San Isidro might be what the women in the museum called the "snooty" parts of Lima, but they're still democratised by the endless stream of kombi vans belching smoke and bouncing frenetically along the worn streets, the young assistants leaning out the open doors and shouting out their destinations.
Lima is huge, incomprehensible, polluted and dangerous, and appalls even most people who live there. At the same time it's diverse, exciting, friendly, and especially in April while the sun is still shining, has an odd sense of hope. Once you settle into its rhythms a little, the dominant impression is of constant, frenetic movement. After it stops frightening you, it's an energizing place, and you may even feel that you're beginning to like it.
Categories: Lima, South America, Peru
"Señorita! Close off that gap between the lines so people don't come through there" one of the immigration officials shouted at a harried assistant. She started to rush off but then stopped. "It is closed" she said in frustration..
When I finally got my turn, the woman at immigration confirmed my flight number and started filling out my form. I noticed she had written "30" on my entry form. "You're only giving me 30 days?", I queried. "Why, how many do you need?", she asked. "Ah, maybe 35, to be on the safe side", I replied. "Hmm, ok, we'll go for 90", she said, proceeding to change the 3s to 9s.
So why didn't I get 90 in the first place? On all the other occasions I've come into Peru I've been given 90 automatically. Something to do with having come in from Chile? Note to Peru: generally you want to at least give gringo tourists the option of staying longer and spending more money.
Driving out of the airport though the port suburb of Callao, the air blowing through the taxi window carried a familiar thickness of humidity, tar, petrol, and fish. The driver steered in wide arcs around potholes, as the odd person wandered aimlessly into the poorly lit streets. I was definitely back in Peru.
In previous conversations with Peruvian friends in MSN Messenger, without exception they emitted cybernetic groans when the elections were mentioned. They had all voted for Lourdes Flores, and were despressed by the prospect of a choice between Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala. Perhaps not surprising, given that my friends are all middle class, including a language teacher, a law student, a designer, and a number who work in or rely on touism.
However, it seems that in Lima the pro-Lourdes sentiments go beyond the upper crust. I asked my taxi driver Carlos, a native of working-class Callao, who he wanted to win in the elections. "The woman - Lourdes", he said. The young guy on the nightshift at my little family-run hostel in Miraflores? "Lourdes", he confirmed without hesitation.
In the morning I talked with Juan, the young guy who manages the hostel, about travel into the jungle. He had travelled quite extensively in the "ceja de selva", the area between the Andes and the jungle proper, and had gone downriver for one day, but not as far as Iquitos.
He dismissed the dangers of drug traffickers and terrorists. "Really, the provinces are tranquil", he said. To be honest, there's much more danger here in Lima than in out there" (almost certainly true).
"Forget about being robbed or whatever", added Juan. "What you really have to watch out for in the jungle regions is the women".
My plan for the day was to secure a ticket to Arequipa for the following night, and make a visit to the Mueso de la Nacion, which houses many of the archeological treasures of the pre-Incan and Incan eras.
On the way out to the bus station, my taxi driver was a jovial guy named Leo. "Watch out for las charapas (women from Iquitos and around)", he warned me when I told him of my travel plans.
I asked him how business was. "Hmm, some days good, some days bad", he shrugged. It's hard making money. We have the cheapest taxis in South America. And the most expensive gasoline in South America. Everything here is expensive", he grumbled.
Leo was my first encounter with a non-Lourdes voter. "Alan Garcia's the man", he said, giving the thumbs up. "Ollanta would be a disaster. Nationalisation? That's crazy. It'd scare away the foreign capital. You're a foreigner, you want to invest here; you're not going to do it without security, guarantees".
But didn't Alan already have his turn at being president, I asked cautiously. "Ah, he's changed. He's matured" said Leo confidently.
Later, on my way out to the Museo de la Nacion, I saw a piece of graffiti scrawled in big, awkward letters on an underpass. "Alan hasn't changed", it proclaimed.
The musuem had a fantastic collection of artefacts, particularly from the pre-Incan cultures. By then the jet lag was kicking in a little, so my stamina waned, and I'll probably go back on my next trip to Lima. I was already enamoured of the extraordinarily lifelike and expressive ceramics produced by the 7th-century Moche culture, which I had seen in Chiclayo. But what grabbed me most on the museum visit were the carved stone pillars and feline heads from the BC-era Chavin de Huantar de culture.
With a centre in the Huaraz area, this was the first "horizon culture" in Peru which unified people over a significant area through government and religion. Its stone artwork shows great skill and control, revealing a striking, almost demonic, iconography.
The musuem was a somewhat surprising place to meet my first Ollanta Humala voters. I got to talking to two women in the forties, Rosa and Cristina, who were also looking at the artefacts. Rosa lived in London, and had ended up teaching continuing education classes on Peruvian culture. She said she was "catching up"; she'd never taken that much of an interest in her country's cultural history until she found herself teaching it to foreigners.
Cristina said she lived in the poor shantytown area of Comas and was a trained physiotherapist. I asked if physiotherapy paid reasonably well. More or less, she said, but she also worked in preventative health, and that was definitely on a voluntary basis. I imagined that such work must be really necesary and valuable. "That's right", said Cristina. "That's why we're very much supporting Ollanta".
"Oh yes, she's in love with Ollanta", said Rosa. She even has a picture of him" she said, searching in her own purse. Unfortunately the picture of Ollanta was nowhere to be found.
Politely, I didn't press them on the question of what specific actions they thought Ollanta Humala would take to improve life for people in the pueblos jovenes.
From the bus station to the musuem and back to the hostel, I travelled in kombis, the mainly antiquated minibuses and vans which roar along the streets, stopping wherever there are passengers to pick up. They dominate Peruvian cities, and Lima in particular, to such an extent, that I feel if you're not confident travelling in them you'll never really get a feel for daily life in the city. You can't take taxis forever.
I didn't do that great on my way out to the musuem, and it took me three tries to get to the right stop. Lesson learned: if you want someone to point out your stop, you really need to remind them more than once. But on the way back to Miraflores (minimum two kombis), I got it right first time.
Miraflores and San Isidro might be what the women in the museum called the "snooty" parts of Lima, but they're still democratised by the endless stream of kombi vans belching smoke and bouncing frenetically along the worn streets, the young assistants leaning out the open doors and shouting out their destinations.
Lima is huge, incomprehensible, polluted and dangerous, and appalls even most people who live there. At the same time it's diverse, exciting, friendly, and especially in April while the sun is still shining, has an odd sense of hope. Once you settle into its rhythms a little, the dominant impression is of constant, frenetic movement. After it stops frightening you, it's an energizing place, and you may even feel that you're beginning to like it.
Categories: Lima, South America, Peru
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Layover in Santiago
If this trip is intended to be arduous and challenging, I guess I'm easing my way in. Right now, I'm ensconced in Lan Chile's VIP lounge in Santiago, during a 7-hour layover before my flight to Lima.
As everyone was moving into the transit lounge, someone from Lan was handing out fliers saying they've "extended their VIP access" to all their passengers, andfor only US $18, we too could enjoy the comfy surroundings, showers and free internet.
After having a wander round the transit area and figuring that I would probably spend close to that much on food and internet anyway, I decided to go for it. After just taking a hot shower and getting myself cleaned up, I've confirmed that it was a very good idea.
Didn't get much sleep the night before leaving, and then the trip to Auckland, check in etc took up the rest of the day. The flight to Santiago was, once again, sleepless, due to the overheated cabin (what is it with Chilean travel companies and wacking up the heating?), a bit of turbulence just when I was dropping off, and I think the fact that that the Airbus jets which seem popuar with all and sundry now, have significantly less space than the Boeings ("cattle class" seems appropriate).
Some of the sheer magic of travel seems to have gone for me now. I used to get a tremendous buzz just getting on any plane that was leaving the country, but up till now it's all seemed pretty routine. However, some of that may be due to the fact that I'm not yet on the way to my final destination.
On the way over, sat next to an Argentinian girl who had been coaching the junior Argentinian women's aerobic gymnastics team at world championships in Japan. She was a full-time phys ed teacher as well, and was heading back to start work again tomorrow morning, massive jet lag and all.
I thankfully will be spared any commitments to early morning activity for the present. I will try and make the most of my time in Lima by going to see the gold museum, so will be pushing though a bit until I manage to grab a night bus to Arequipa (hopefully Thursday). Then, dios mio, am I going to sleep. Perhaps a nice quiet double room at the Casa la Reyna hostel, putting off Hugo and Lizbeth's invitation to come and stay at their place for a couple of days...
I'm hoping that my posts will gradually get more interesting from here.
As everyone was moving into the transit lounge, someone from Lan was handing out fliers saying they've "extended their VIP access" to all their passengers, andfor only US $18, we too could enjoy the comfy surroundings, showers and free internet.
After having a wander round the transit area and figuring that I would probably spend close to that much on food and internet anyway, I decided to go for it. After just taking a hot shower and getting myself cleaned up, I've confirmed that it was a very good idea.
Didn't get much sleep the night before leaving, and then the trip to Auckland, check in etc took up the rest of the day. The flight to Santiago was, once again, sleepless, due to the overheated cabin (what is it with Chilean travel companies and wacking up the heating?), a bit of turbulence just when I was dropping off, and I think the fact that that the Airbus jets which seem popuar with all and sundry now, have significantly less space than the Boeings ("cattle class" seems appropriate).
Some of the sheer magic of travel seems to have gone for me now. I used to get a tremendous buzz just getting on any plane that was leaving the country, but up till now it's all seemed pretty routine. However, some of that may be due to the fact that I'm not yet on the way to my final destination.
On the way over, sat next to an Argentinian girl who had been coaching the junior Argentinian women's aerobic gymnastics team at world championships in Japan. She was a full-time phys ed teacher as well, and was heading back to start work again tomorrow morning, massive jet lag and all.
I thankfully will be spared any commitments to early morning activity for the present. I will try and make the most of my time in Lima by going to see the gold museum, so will be pushing though a bit until I manage to grab a night bus to Arequipa (hopefully Thursday). Then, dios mio, am I going to sleep. Perhaps a nice quiet double room at the Casa la Reyna hostel, putting off Hugo and Lizbeth's invitation to come and stay at their place for a couple of days...
I'm hoping that my posts will gradually get more interesting from here.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Peru Elections
The Peruvian elections went off without too much of a hitch last Sunday 9 April. As counting began, the early trends confirmed what the most recent polls had shown. While Ollanta Humala was looking to get a clear 30-31 percent of the vote and go through the run-off, things were super tight between Lourdes Flores and Alan Garcia.
Exit polls showed both would get about 24-25 percent, with the margin between them less than the margin of error. Lourdes led early, as the votes from the cities came in first. Then, after about 50 percent was counted, Alan surged into second place. He moved to 1.0-1.2 percent and stayed there. Then, when about 80 percent of the vote had been counted and the tension was rising....everyone went on holiday.
Yep, it's one of those things you've got to love about Peru. The most important political event for five years, but not a patch on the Easter church services and all day bbqs. Only on Good Friday itself did the vote count not progress at all, on the official site of the electoral commission, ONPE. But over the whole of the weekend, the total vote count has managed to rise from 84% to 89%.
To be fair, many of the later votes will be coming in from remote rural areas, and from overseas.
As the count slowly climbs, Lourdes has begun to make up some ground, and is now less than 1 percent behind Alan. A lot depends on the impact of the overseas votes, where she has about 60 percent support (as opposed to 24 percent overall). There's an estimated total of 185,000 of overseas votes to come in, but over half of these have now been counted. On my back of the envelope calculations, it won't be enough for Lourdes Flores to overtake Alan.
Interestingly, 137 Peruvians in New Zealand voted (for Peruvians, voting is compulsory). There were 112 in Auckland and 25 in Wellington. Overall, Lourdes Flores received 76 percent of the valid votes. However, in Wellington 17 out of 20 valid votes (85 percent) were cast for Lourdes, and no one at all supported rabble-rouser Humala. Who said Aucklanders were more right wing?
After bitching and sniping at each other in recent times, it now looks like Lourdes and Alan may be building bridges, in order to try and shut out Humala in the second round. El Comercio reported that their two parties are tentatively looking at some kind of front which sets "democracy against authoritarianism".
I'll try and squeeze in an opinion piece on all this amidst my snappy, regular (let's hope) updates on my travels.
Exit polls showed both would get about 24-25 percent, with the margin between them less than the margin of error. Lourdes led early, as the votes from the cities came in first. Then, after about 50 percent was counted, Alan surged into second place. He moved to 1.0-1.2 percent and stayed there. Then, when about 80 percent of the vote had been counted and the tension was rising....everyone went on holiday.
Yep, it's one of those things you've got to love about Peru. The most important political event for five years, but not a patch on the Easter church services and all day bbqs. Only on Good Friday itself did the vote count not progress at all, on the official site of the electoral commission, ONPE. But over the whole of the weekend, the total vote count has managed to rise from 84% to 89%.
To be fair, many of the later votes will be coming in from remote rural areas, and from overseas.
As the count slowly climbs, Lourdes has begun to make up some ground, and is now less than 1 percent behind Alan. A lot depends on the impact of the overseas votes, where she has about 60 percent support (as opposed to 24 percent overall). There's an estimated total of 185,000 of overseas votes to come in, but over half of these have now been counted. On my back of the envelope calculations, it won't be enough for Lourdes Flores to overtake Alan.
Interestingly, 137 Peruvians in New Zealand voted (for Peruvians, voting is compulsory). There were 112 in Auckland and 25 in Wellington. Overall, Lourdes Flores received 76 percent of the valid votes. However, in Wellington 17 out of 20 valid votes (85 percent) were cast for Lourdes, and no one at all supported rabble-rouser Humala. Who said Aucklanders were more right wing?
After bitching and sniping at each other in recent times, it now looks like Lourdes and Alan may be building bridges, in order to try and shut out Humala in the second round. El Comercio reported that their two parties are tentatively looking at some kind of front which sets "democracy against authoritarianism".
I'll try and squeeze in an opinion piece on all this amidst my snappy, regular (let's hope) updates on my travels.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
The Daily Minion
Unfortunately, over the last three weeks I haven't had a chance to add to or update the Daily Minion. I'll be in South America for the next six weeks, and it's unlikely that I'll be able to add anything during this time either.
But there's plenty more material in the pipeline, and when I get back I will make a big effort to get it finished and on the site. So for those of you who have visted the site and found any level of interest and amusement, don't worry - it will be carrying on after a brief interlude.
But there's plenty more material in the pipeline, and when I get back I will make a big effort to get it finished and on the site. So for those of you who have visted the site and found any level of interest and amusement, don't worry - it will be carrying on after a brief interlude.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Corporate Reform 101
My recommendations for increasing productivity and output quality in the public and private sector:
1. Fewer meetings
2. More time spent doing actual substantive work
3. More time spent discussing and debating one-on-one with workmates, people in other parts of the organization, external clients, and people in the same or related fields.
4. More time (at least 10 percent) spent reading, understanding, critiquing, and learning from your team mates' work.
5. NEVER skipping scheduled exercise or other enjoyable, sanity-enhancing activities for routine or internal meetings.
6. Fewer meetings
7. Fewer meetings.
8. Fewer meetings.
In about five years, some Chicago business theorist will discover these simple rules and publicise them in a mega-selling book, which will be acclaimed throughout the developed world.
1. Fewer meetings
2. More time spent doing actual substantive work
3. More time spent discussing and debating one-on-one with workmates, people in other parts of the organization, external clients, and people in the same or related fields.
4. More time (at least 10 percent) spent reading, understanding, critiquing, and learning from your team mates' work.
5. NEVER skipping scheduled exercise or other enjoyable, sanity-enhancing activities for routine or internal meetings.
6. Fewer meetings
7. Fewer meetings.
8. Fewer meetings.
In about five years, some Chicago business theorist will discover these simple rules and publicise them in a mega-selling book, which will be acclaimed throughout the developed world.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Peruvian Politics 102
The previous post introduced the three main candidates for the presidency of Peru and described something of the political dynamic between them. In the last couple of days before the polls, extra edge has been added to the campaign, with Ollanta Humala saying that if Lourdes Flores wins the election "she won't last a year in power".
To the protests that he was inciting a revolt, Humala added the clarification that "the people" would rise up because of the continuation of failed neoliberal policies under Flores. But he has been roundly condemned for these statements by the media and other politicians, including fellow presidential rival Alan Garcia, who said Humala "needs to learn some democratic manners".
To round out the picture of the Peruvian election, it's necessary to mention a couple of the minor candidates.
Valentin Paniagua
Interim president from 2000-2001 folowing the resignation of Fujimori. Peruvian writer Herbert Morote, in his acerbic lament Requiem por Peru, mi Patria, says while imagining the damning assessment awaiting each corrupt and incompetent Peruvian president when they reach heaven's gate:
"We'll pass over Valentin Paniagua, who had little to do in barely a year that he governed following Fujimori. Panigua was a transitional president and apart from calling elections didn't do anything else. I lie, he also named the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [on the Shining Path insurgency], whose work is the most important that has occurred in all Peru's republican history.
Praised be God! Thinking about it again, reflecting carefully, perhaps the best thing for Peru is to have presidents that only last a year and don't do anything"
Paniagua is a centrist candidate whose party is called Frente del Centro. In recent polls, he has maintained a steady 6-7 percent. This is irking the supporters of Lourdes Flores, who feel he is splitting the middle class vote. In the 2001 elections, he did a Ralph Nader and allowed Alan Garcia to pip Flores at the post for second place and a place in the run off. In 2006, as Alan's poll numbers make a late surge, the same may happen.
Martha Chavez
If the description of Peru's election so far seems like a soap opera of recurring characters seeking revenge or redemption, the one name missing is that which dominated the 1990s - Alberto Fujimori.
Martha Chavez is effectively Fujimori's candidate. Her party is called Alianza por el Futuroo, but she is also affiliated with Fujimori's Si Cumple party. Her running mate is Santiago Fujimori, Alberto Fujumori's brother.
Fujimori himself tried to register as a candidate for the presidential elections, but the constitutional court ruled that this was not permissible, as there is a congressional ban on him holding office for ten years.
In November 2005, Fujimori, who has been in self-imposed exile in Japan, flew to Santiago in Chile, via Mexico. There, he was detailed by the Chilean police on request from the Peruvian government, and extradition proceedings have begun against him to face accusations of corruption and human rights abuses. These are no tlikely to be resolved for a good six months.
Meanwhile. Martha Chavez is maintaing 7 percent support in the polls, while her Alianza por el Futuro party has risen to 16 percent in the congressional election polls.
Since then however, it has all been downhill.
There have been scandals relating to the discovery of an illegitimate daughter whom Toledo refused to acknowledge; allegations that Toledo's party Peru Posible forged membership signatures before the 2000 elections (there's a rather odd law that political parties have to have a certain number of members to be allowed to field candidates); the appointment of a highly unpopular politican as foreign minister; criticisms of the presidential salary.
When I was in Peru it was de rigeur for everyone from politicians and the media, to striking street marchers, to the opportunist "rebels" in Andahuaylas, to demand the resignation of Toledo. His approval rating dropped at one stage to 7 percent, the lowest for an incumbent Peruvian president.
Yet to the outsider, none of the criticisms of Toledo seemed that damning. His sins seemed to have a touch of the Clintonesque - in the context of the country's history hardly the worst indicment.
Rather than especially bad or even incompetent, Toledo's main failings seem to be that he is weak, naiive, and out of touch. In his book, Herbert Morote tells an anecdote of seeing Toledo attend a conference in Madrid with international business leader; rather than promote the potential of investment in Peru, Toledo recounted his life as a child and how his suffering gave him solidarity with the poor. Says Morote, "it was like he was making an election speech in the town square".
Toledo's time in power is rather summed up by his reaction to the discovery of a fifth leak (within fourteen months) in the flagship gas pipeline from the Camisea field in Cuzco to Lima. Toledo said that if the international consortium which constructed the pipeline could be shown to be responsible for the failures, "they'll have to pay" -- conveniently overlooking the point that the time to play hardball on quality control with the consortium would have been while the pipeline was being built.
Nevertheless the dissatisfaction with Toledo probably has less to do with the man himself than with Peruvians' impatience with their lot in life. Overall, things haven't been that bad in the last five years, which have seen the return of democracy, a free and vibrant press, macroeconomic stability, and average economic growth of 4.7 percent per annum - close to the best in Latin America.
Unfortunately, this hasn't flowed through to provide much benefit to the population. Unemployment, high prices for basic goods such as petrol, rampant crime, poor infrastructure - these remain the realities for most.
Better can surely be achieved, though no politician will be able to deliver more than slow and incremental improvements - Peru's problems go muc deeper than quality of its leaders. Yet the flip side of the hero to zero complex suffered by Peruvian politicans is that the population still expects and demands transformative change.
In order to be successful, the new Peruvian president needs to not only convince the people that this is unrealistic, but that they themselves are a crucial part of any set of solutions. In about 24 hours, we'll have the first idea of who is likely to have that task.
Categories: South America, Peru, Peruvian Elections, elecciones peruanas, Lourdes Flores, Ollanta Humala, Alan Garcia
To the protests that he was inciting a revolt, Humala added the clarification that "the people" would rise up because of the continuation of failed neoliberal policies under Flores. But he has been roundly condemned for these statements by the media and other politicians, including fellow presidential rival Alan Garcia, who said Humala "needs to learn some democratic manners".
To round out the picture of the Peruvian election, it's necessary to mention a couple of the minor candidates.
Valentin Paniagua
Interim president from 2000-2001 folowing the resignation of Fujimori. Peruvian writer Herbert Morote, in his acerbic lament Requiem por Peru, mi Patria, says while imagining the damning assessment awaiting each corrupt and incompetent Peruvian president when they reach heaven's gate:
"We'll pass over Valentin Paniagua, who had little to do in barely a year that he governed following Fujimori. Panigua was a transitional president and apart from calling elections didn't do anything else. I lie, he also named the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [on the Shining Path insurgency], whose work is the most important that has occurred in all Peru's republican history.
Praised be God! Thinking about it again, reflecting carefully, perhaps the best thing for Peru is to have presidents that only last a year and don't do anything"
Paniagua is a centrist candidate whose party is called Frente del Centro. In recent polls, he has maintained a steady 6-7 percent. This is irking the supporters of Lourdes Flores, who feel he is splitting the middle class vote. In the 2001 elections, he did a Ralph Nader and allowed Alan Garcia to pip Flores at the post for second place and a place in the run off. In 2006, as Alan's poll numbers make a late surge, the same may happen.
Martha Chavez
If the description of Peru's election so far seems like a soap opera of recurring characters seeking revenge or redemption, the one name missing is that which dominated the 1990s - Alberto Fujimori.
Martha Chavez is effectively Fujimori's candidate. Her party is called Alianza por el Futuroo, but she is also affiliated with Fujimori's Si Cumple party. Her running mate is Santiago Fujimori, Alberto Fujumori's brother.
Fujimori himself tried to register as a candidate for the presidential elections, but the constitutional court ruled that this was not permissible, as there is a congressional ban on him holding office for ten years.
In November 2005, Fujimori, who has been in self-imposed exile in Japan, flew to Santiago in Chile, via Mexico. There, he was detailed by the Chilean police on request from the Peruvian government, and extradition proceedings have begun against him to face accusations of corruption and human rights abuses. These are no tlikely to be resolved for a good six months.
Meanwhile. Martha Chavez is maintaing 7 percent support in the polls, while her Alianza por el Futuro party has risen to 16 percent in the congressional election polls.
None of this entirely makes sense without the context provided by the incumbent president:
Alejandro Toledo
Toledo provides another version of the familiar Peruvian story of a leader arriving with great expectations but proving to be a big disappointment
Toledo's story is a rags-to-riches fairytale of an indigenous kid from an impoverished family in Chimbote who worked as a shoeshine boy before winning a scholarship to school in the United States and eventually to Stamford University. He got a PhD in economics and later worked for a range of international organizations, including the United Nations, World Bank, and OECD.
In the 2000 and 2001 elections, Toledo led the democratic opposition to the corrupt and authoritarian Fujimori regime. After eventually winning the 2001 election run off against Alan Garcia, he had a 59 percent approval rating; not only did he seem to have the technocratic credentials to run the country, he was also an indigenous "cholo" who had broken into the white-dominated world of Lima politics.Since then however, it has all been downhill.
There have been scandals relating to the discovery of an illegitimate daughter whom Toledo refused to acknowledge; allegations that Toledo's party Peru Posible forged membership signatures before the 2000 elections (there's a rather odd law that political parties have to have a certain number of members to be allowed to field candidates); the appointment of a highly unpopular politican as foreign minister; criticisms of the presidential salary.
When I was in Peru it was de rigeur for everyone from politicians and the media, to striking street marchers, to the opportunist "rebels" in Andahuaylas, to demand the resignation of Toledo. His approval rating dropped at one stage to 7 percent, the lowest for an incumbent Peruvian president.
Yet to the outsider, none of the criticisms of Toledo seemed that damning. His sins seemed to have a touch of the Clintonesque - in the context of the country's history hardly the worst indicment.
Rather than especially bad or even incompetent, Toledo's main failings seem to be that he is weak, naiive, and out of touch. In his book, Herbert Morote tells an anecdote of seeing Toledo attend a conference in Madrid with international business leader; rather than promote the potential of investment in Peru, Toledo recounted his life as a child and how his suffering gave him solidarity with the poor. Says Morote, "it was like he was making an election speech in the town square".
Toledo's time in power is rather summed up by his reaction to the discovery of a fifth leak (within fourteen months) in the flagship gas pipeline from the Camisea field in Cuzco to Lima. Toledo said that if the international consortium which constructed the pipeline could be shown to be responsible for the failures, "they'll have to pay" -- conveniently overlooking the point that the time to play hardball on quality control with the consortium would have been while the pipeline was being built.
Nevertheless the dissatisfaction with Toledo probably has less to do with the man himself than with Peruvians' impatience with their lot in life. Overall, things haven't been that bad in the last five years, which have seen the return of democracy, a free and vibrant press, macroeconomic stability, and average economic growth of 4.7 percent per annum - close to the best in Latin America.
Unfortunately, this hasn't flowed through to provide much benefit to the population. Unemployment, high prices for basic goods such as petrol, rampant crime, poor infrastructure - these remain the realities for most.
Better can surely be achieved, though no politician will be able to deliver more than slow and incremental improvements - Peru's problems go muc deeper than quality of its leaders. Yet the flip side of the hero to zero complex suffered by Peruvian politicans is that the population still expects and demands transformative change.
In order to be successful, the new Peruvian president needs to not only convince the people that this is unrealistic, but that they themselves are a crucial part of any set of solutions. In about 24 hours, we'll have the first idea of who is likely to have that task.
Categories: South America, Peru, Peruvian Elections, elecciones peruanas, Lourdes Flores, Ollanta Humala, Alan Garcia
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Peruvian Politics 101
On Sunday 9 April, Peru will go to the polls to elect a new President and Congress. Since there will almost certainly not be a clear majority for any candidate, a second round of voting for president is expected to take place on 7 May.
It's a significant time for Peru; after all the turmoil of the last twenty years, it will be a substantial achievement for the process to run calmly, produce a clear set of results, and deliver an orderly handover of power.
Beyond that, the election will have a major influence on how the country develops over the next five years. There are fairly stark political differences between the presidential candidates, and the eventual outcome will give weight to one of the competing visions of the overall political and economic direction of South America.
The presidential candidates in Peru and their parties are:
Lourdes Flores Nano
The candidate for the Unidad Nacional party, Lourdes Flores is hoping to follow the example of Chile's Michele Bachelet and be the second woman elected president of a South American country. Described by some as a "right-wing conservative", she is in truth more of a pragmatist and a social liberal. Her policies and even some of her language appear to be modelled on those of Alvaro Uribe, the popular centre-right president of Colombia.
In congress since 1990, Flores distinguished herself by being among the staunchest opponents of Alberto Fujimori's constitutional coup in 1992 and a consistent critic of the Fujimori administration. In the last five years she has generally supported the neoliberal, trade-oriented policies of Alejandro Toledo.
Though she was a clear leader in polls as late as December 2005, Flores has gradually been overtaken by Ollanta Humala (see below). The latest poll shows her second, on 27 percent. However, on a head-to-head basis with Humala - likely to be the case in the second round of voting - polls have her preferred by 53 to 47 percent.
According to a poll reported by Peruvian TV station 90 Segundos, of those who say they will vote for Lourdes Flores, only 7 percent are motivated by a belief that she will combat corruption. Twenty-one percent say they will vote for her simply because she is a woman, while 39 percent favour her proposed policies.
She promises to modernize the armed forces, create 650,000 jobs per year through mixed public and private investment, and lift tourism from 1,200,000 to 2 million visitors per annum. Her contribution to the obligatory rhetorical bashing of traditional enemy Chile has been a call to beat Peru's southern neighbour at its own game by strengthening commerce and "winninng the war of globalization".
Her campaign to date has focussed on an exhausting schedule of streetside meet and greet sessions in different parts of Peru. She danced the marinera (the national folk dance) in a visit to the north coast, and got down to reggaeton in the jungle city of Pucallpa.
Despite these efforts, and her clear, concrete policies, critics say that she is struggling to shake off her image as the "candidate of the rich" and to connect emotionally with majority of poor, marginalised Peruvians.
Ollanta Humala
Formerly a lieutenant colonel in the Peruvian army, Humala is head of the Partido Nacionalista, but for the election he and his candidates are running under the banner of the liberal Union por el Peru.
Along with his father Isaac and his brothers Antauro and Ulises, Ollanta Humala is a founder of the "etnocacerist" movement, which combines promotion of power for indigenous people with economic nationalism.
Widely described as a "left-wing populist", Humala sees himself as being in the mould of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and newly elected Bolivian leader Evo Morales. In January he attended the visit of president-elect Morales to the presidential palace in Caracas, where both Chavez and Morales pledged their support.
He promises to "stamp out" corruption and restore dignity to the Peruvian armed forces, which he says have been corrupted by involvement in drug trafficking and domination by graduates of the CIA-influenced School of the Americas (where he himself trained). He opposes foreign control of economic resources in Peru (especially by Chile) and proposes renationalization of key industries, beginning with the most recently privatized.
However, he has stressed a commitment to South American integration and "brotherhood", and boasted of his meetings with Chavez, Morales, Kirchner (Argentina) and Lula (Brazil) - pointedly, of course, leaving out Chile.
Humala has a chequered military and political history. In 1992 he commanded a unit near Tingo Maria during the struggle against the Shining Path, where it is alleged that he involved in human rights abuses. Investigations into this matter are ongoing.
In 2000, he led an "uprising" against Fujimori in the sierra of the Tacna region, along with about 60 other soldiers. Hugo Chavez recently called this a "quixotic" effort, but others have suggested that it was a piece of grandstanding, at a time when Fujimori's government was already crumbling.
Antauro is currently in jail, after his own abortive "uprising" in Andahualylas in January 2005, which I wrote about at the time (there's also some further background on etnocacerism in that post), in which four policemen and one rebel were killed.
Ollanta, who was at the time a military attache in South Korea, gave a rather extraordinary interview to the BBC (here, in Spanish), in which he appeared to both distance himself from the actions of his brother and also justify them.
His campaign has involved many large public rallies, at which he rouses the crowds with stirring rhetoric.
As he has developed his candidacy, Ollanta Humala has been at pains to distance himself from some of the more extreme pronouncements of his family. His father Isaac openly embraces a racial politics, promoting power for "the brown race", and has called the childless Lourdes Flores "an old maid", while his mother Elena has made violently anti-gay remarks. Antauro has contented himself with suggesting that the current president, his wife, and the prime minister "should be shot".
Ollanta has reportedly told his parents to stop making public pronouncements, and groaned at a press conference that "sometimes I wonder if Antauro is actually an enemy".
However, Antauro was today (6 April) recorded as saying from his jail cell that the distance established between himself and Ollanta is "strategic" and that "[their] objective is the same".
The Lima-based media views Humala with fear and loathing. News and current affairs outlets openly warn of his authoritarian tendencies and his "threat to democracy". They reacted with some horror to the perceived subtext of Humala's suggestion that, under his presidency, media would be enlisted as "allies in the battle against corruption".
However, this is all rather counter-productive, as it simply cements the reputation of Humala as an outsider who is distinct from the traditional political class.
Neither the finger-wagging of the Lima elites nor the human rights abuse allegations have defused the visceral response of Humala's supporters, who simply see an underdog that shakes his fist on their behalf at the rich, white, and poweful. His appeal is especially strong with voters who are poor, uneducated, and male.
The 90 Segundos poll found that of those who would vote for Humala, the most popular reason was "because he will address corruption" (29 percent), while all of 1o percent would vote for him simply because he is ex-military.
Alan Garcia
Former president of Peru, 1985-90. Garcia, known to all and sundry in Peru simply as "Alan", is the the leader of the APRA party. Founded in 1924 by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, APRA is the oldest of the Peruvian parties. Originally Marxist, now turned social democratic, it was periodically banned up until 1979.
When APRA and the fresh-faced, 36 year-old Alan Garcia were elected in the 1985 polls, there was a wave of optimism, and he began his term with the support and hopes of a large proportion of the population.
Instead, his term was an unmitigated debacle, characterized by hyperinflation of a cumulative two million percent, the intensifying of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorist insurgency, human rights abuses by the military, a 20 percent fall in Peruvian GDP, and an estimated additional five million Peruvians dropping below the poverty line.
Among other achievements, funding allocated for a desparately needed mass transit system in Lima "disappeared", and the project has only recently recommenced.
Meanwhile, Alan Garcia managed to enrich himself. Some allege that during the 1990 elections he and APRA clandestinely backed Alberto Fujimori in the second round of voting against the first-round winner, author Mario Vargas Llosa, whose party had promised to investigate allegations of corruption against Garcia.
But following Fujimori's auto-coup in 1992, charges were re-opened against Alan Garcia. He escaped to Colombia, where he remained until 2001, when the statute of limitations was deemed to have run out. Forty-eight days after arriving back in Peru, he ran as a candidate in the presidential election, where he won 48% of the vote (Peruvians being tigers for punishment) and was narrowly defeated by Alejandro Toledo.
This time around he has averaged around 21 percent in the polls, consistently in third place, though in a late surge there's a chance he could push Lourdes Flores out of second spot. Most polls show that in a run-off between Humala and Alan Garcia, Humala would win easily.
His greatest claim to fame in recent times was when during a protest march he allegedly kicked the backside of a poor homeless man who got in his way. This was siezed on by many as a truer representative of his personality than his stirring oratory, and "la patada (kick) de Alan" is frequently referred to in discussions of Peruvian politics.
Though the media tends to present him as a failed and petulant buffoon, he is definitely viewed as the lesser of two evils when compared to Humala. Not only is it assumed that he and his party learned their lessons from the disasters of the 80s, but more importantly he is a known quantity, a stable and predictable part of the political establishment.
In my next post, I'll look at the possible influence of the minor candidates, and the legacy of the outgoing president, Alejandro Toledo.
Categories: South America, Peru, Peruvian Elections, elecciones peruanas, Lourdes Flores, Ollanta Humala, Alan Garcia
It's a significant time for Peru; after all the turmoil of the last twenty years, it will be a substantial achievement for the process to run calmly, produce a clear set of results, and deliver an orderly handover of power.
Beyond that, the election will have a major influence on how the country develops over the next five years. There are fairly stark political differences between the presidential candidates, and the eventual outcome will give weight to one of the competing visions of the overall political and economic direction of South America.
The presidential candidates in Peru and their parties are:
Lourdes Flores Nano
The candidate for the Unidad Nacional party, Lourdes Flores is hoping to follow the example of Chile's Michele Bachelet and be the second woman elected president of a South American country. Described by some as a "right-wing conservative", she is in truth more of a pragmatist and a social liberal. Her policies and even some of her language appear to be modelled on those of Alvaro Uribe, the popular centre-right president of Colombia.
In congress since 1990, Flores distinguished herself by being among the staunchest opponents of Alberto Fujimori's constitutional coup in 1992 and a consistent critic of the Fujimori administration. In the last five years she has generally supported the neoliberal, trade-oriented policies of Alejandro Toledo.
Though she was a clear leader in polls as late as December 2005, Flores has gradually been overtaken by Ollanta Humala (see below). The latest poll shows her second, on 27 percent. However, on a head-to-head basis with Humala - likely to be the case in the second round of voting - polls have her preferred by 53 to 47 percent.
According to a poll reported by Peruvian TV station 90 Segundos, of those who say they will vote for Lourdes Flores, only 7 percent are motivated by a belief that she will combat corruption. Twenty-one percent say they will vote for her simply because she is a woman, while 39 percent favour her proposed policies.
She promises to modernize the armed forces, create 650,000 jobs per year through mixed public and private investment, and lift tourism from 1,200,000 to 2 million visitors per annum. Her contribution to the obligatory rhetorical bashing of traditional enemy Chile has been a call to beat Peru's southern neighbour at its own game by strengthening commerce and "winninng the war of globalization".
Her campaign to date has focussed on an exhausting schedule of streetside meet and greet sessions in different parts of Peru. She danced the marinera (the national folk dance) in a visit to the north coast, and got down to reggaeton in the jungle city of Pucallpa.
Despite these efforts, and her clear, concrete policies, critics say that she is struggling to shake off her image as the "candidate of the rich" and to connect emotionally with majority of poor, marginalised Peruvians.
Ollanta Humala
Formerly a lieutenant colonel in the Peruvian army, Humala is head of the Partido Nacionalista, but for the election he and his candidates are running under the banner of the liberal Union por el Peru.
Along with his father Isaac and his brothers Antauro and Ulises, Ollanta Humala is a founder of the "etnocacerist" movement, which combines promotion of power for indigenous people with economic nationalism.
Widely described as a "left-wing populist", Humala sees himself as being in the mould of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and newly elected Bolivian leader Evo Morales. In January he attended the visit of president-elect Morales to the presidential palace in Caracas, where both Chavez and Morales pledged their support.
He promises to "stamp out" corruption and restore dignity to the Peruvian armed forces, which he says have been corrupted by involvement in drug trafficking and domination by graduates of the CIA-influenced School of the Americas (where he himself trained). He opposes foreign control of economic resources in Peru (especially by Chile) and proposes renationalization of key industries, beginning with the most recently privatized.
However, he has stressed a commitment to South American integration and "brotherhood", and boasted of his meetings with Chavez, Morales, Kirchner (Argentina) and Lula (Brazil) - pointedly, of course, leaving out Chile.
Humala has a chequered military and political history. In 1992 he commanded a unit near Tingo Maria during the struggle against the Shining Path, where it is alleged that he involved in human rights abuses. Investigations into this matter are ongoing.
In 2000, he led an "uprising" against Fujimori in the sierra of the Tacna region, along with about 60 other soldiers. Hugo Chavez recently called this a "quixotic" effort, but others have suggested that it was a piece of grandstanding, at a time when Fujimori's government was already crumbling.
Antauro is currently in jail, after his own abortive "uprising" in Andahualylas in January 2005, which I wrote about at the time (there's also some further background on etnocacerism in that post), in which four policemen and one rebel were killed.
Ollanta, who was at the time a military attache in South Korea, gave a rather extraordinary interview to the BBC (here, in Spanish), in which he appeared to both distance himself from the actions of his brother and also justify them.
His campaign has involved many large public rallies, at which he rouses the crowds with stirring rhetoric.
As he has developed his candidacy, Ollanta Humala has been at pains to distance himself from some of the more extreme pronouncements of his family. His father Isaac openly embraces a racial politics, promoting power for "the brown race", and has called the childless Lourdes Flores "an old maid", while his mother Elena has made violently anti-gay remarks. Antauro has contented himself with suggesting that the current president, his wife, and the prime minister "should be shot".
Ollanta has reportedly told his parents to stop making public pronouncements, and groaned at a press conference that "sometimes I wonder if Antauro is actually an enemy".
However, Antauro was today (6 April) recorded as saying from his jail cell that the distance established between himself and Ollanta is "strategic" and that "[their] objective is the same".
The Lima-based media views Humala with fear and loathing. News and current affairs outlets openly warn of his authoritarian tendencies and his "threat to democracy". They reacted with some horror to the perceived subtext of Humala's suggestion that, under his presidency, media would be enlisted as "allies in the battle against corruption".
However, this is all rather counter-productive, as it simply cements the reputation of Humala as an outsider who is distinct from the traditional political class.
Neither the finger-wagging of the Lima elites nor the human rights abuse allegations have defused the visceral response of Humala's supporters, who simply see an underdog that shakes his fist on their behalf at the rich, white, and poweful. His appeal is especially strong with voters who are poor, uneducated, and male.
The 90 Segundos poll found that of those who would vote for Humala, the most popular reason was "because he will address corruption" (29 percent), while all of 1o percent would vote for him simply because he is ex-military.
Alan Garcia
Former president of Peru, 1985-90. Garcia, known to all and sundry in Peru simply as "Alan", is the the leader of the APRA party. Founded in 1924 by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, APRA is the oldest of the Peruvian parties. Originally Marxist, now turned social democratic, it was periodically banned up until 1979.
When APRA and the fresh-faced, 36 year-old Alan Garcia were elected in the 1985 polls, there was a wave of optimism, and he began his term with the support and hopes of a large proportion of the population.
Instead, his term was an unmitigated debacle, characterized by hyperinflation of a cumulative two million percent, the intensifying of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorist insurgency, human rights abuses by the military, a 20 percent fall in Peruvian GDP, and an estimated additional five million Peruvians dropping below the poverty line.
Among other achievements, funding allocated for a desparately needed mass transit system in Lima "disappeared", and the project has only recently recommenced.
Meanwhile, Alan Garcia managed to enrich himself. Some allege that during the 1990 elections he and APRA clandestinely backed Alberto Fujimori in the second round of voting against the first-round winner, author Mario Vargas Llosa, whose party had promised to investigate allegations of corruption against Garcia.
But following Fujimori's auto-coup in 1992, charges were re-opened against Alan Garcia. He escaped to Colombia, where he remained until 2001, when the statute of limitations was deemed to have run out. Forty-eight days after arriving back in Peru, he ran as a candidate in the presidential election, where he won 48% of the vote (Peruvians being tigers for punishment) and was narrowly defeated by Alejandro Toledo.
This time around he has averaged around 21 percent in the polls, consistently in third place, though in a late surge there's a chance he could push Lourdes Flores out of second spot. Most polls show that in a run-off between Humala and Alan Garcia, Humala would win easily.
His greatest claim to fame in recent times was when during a protest march he allegedly kicked the backside of a poor homeless man who got in his way. This was siezed on by many as a truer representative of his personality than his stirring oratory, and "la patada (kick) de Alan" is frequently referred to in discussions of Peruvian politics.
Though the media tends to present him as a failed and petulant buffoon, he is definitely viewed as the lesser of two evils when compared to Humala. Not only is it assumed that he and his party learned their lessons from the disasters of the 80s, but more importantly he is a known quantity, a stable and predictable part of the political establishment.
In my next post, I'll look at the possible influence of the minor candidates, and the legacy of the outgoing president, Alejandro Toledo.
Categories: South America, Peru, Peruvian Elections, elecciones peruanas, Lourdes Flores, Ollanta Humala, Alan Garcia
Monday, March 27, 2006
South America Again
Casual readers of this blog might wonder why it's called "South America Bidsta". Ok, so actually it's a bit of a dumb name and I should probably change it at some stage.
"Bidsta" is me; one of those blokey monikers your friends give you. Originally I called the blog "Bidsta Blog": back in 2003 I was still among the first few million early adopters of blogging, so it still seemed like a less than completely lame idea to put "blog" in the title.
Then, when I was in South America (where I spent a year from April 2004 - April 2005), I decided to add Google's Adsense code to my site, in the hope that I'd get a few visitors who'd click on the ads and make me a few cents from my blogging (yes, I should have known better...). It then ocurred to me that if I added "South America" to the title of the blog, Google's robots would figure that my posts were mostly about SOUTH AMERICA and post appropriate ads - probably about travel to said continent.
People who visited my site would then be so intrigued by my fascinating tales of life in Peru and elsewhere, they'd probably want to think about going there. Aha! - they'd look to the top of the page to find a travel agency offering adventure tours. Click! And I make nineteen cents US.
A nice, naiive theory, spoiled by the fact that Google seems to have made a big experiment out of how it applies ads to people's pages (my posts on South America now have ads for travel there - many months after anyone might have read them). In addition, about 1 percent of people visiting a website tend to click on the ads, no matter how relevant they might be. And finally, at that stage I hadn't figured out how to publicise the blog to anyone but my friends and family (most of whom had forgotten who I was by late 2004), and had got a bit sporadic with my posts amidst my commitments to romance and adventure amidst the towering Andes etc etc.
With the results that my insightful updates on Peruvian politics and dashing tales of trekking im the wilderness were read by a total of about three people. Which kind of cut down the percentages at ad-click time.
Now, I've been back for about a year and have posted (ranted, perhaps) on all kinds of things, with a recent trend towards complaining about getting woken up in the morning. Though my AdSense clicks are a lost cause, my average traffic has gradually climbed, thanks to my links into Technorati, a handful of regular readers, and oh, all of about three people who have been so kind as to exchange links with me. I should be refining my position as a boutique pundit on New Zealand affairs.
But, at this pivotal moment, it turns out that I'm actually going to South America again. Yes, on the 18th of April I fly out from Auckland, bound for Lima.
This will be quite a different trip from last time. Then, I spent a year with the general goal of meeting people, making friends, learning something about the culture and history , and ticking off as many tourist highlights as possible.
It worked out pretty well. Like many before me, I was enchanted by the beauty and joie de vivre of the city of Arequipa in southern Peru, which I ended up making by base and my home for about six months.
I walked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and did the Death Road and Salar de Uyuni in Boliva. I climbed 6,000-metre mountains and trekked though the remote back country of the Andes. I went rafting and horse riding in Argentina, visited the coffee-growing centre of Colombia, and explored the ruins of the Lambayeque, Moche, Chimu, Wari and Nazca cultures on Peru's desert coast. I compared the nightime carrete, juerga and rumba in Santiago, Lima, Cali, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. I met the taciturn natives of Lake Titicaca and the staggeringly beautiful girls of Cordoba.
At all times I stuck strictly to the moutains, deserts, canyons, coasts and cities. Although if you look at a map of South America you will see an enormous green swathe which takes up almost a third of the continent's land mass, I did not once set foot in the Amazon. In my total of eighteen months spent in Latin America I've never yet been into the jungle. I admit, I'm a little squeamish about it.
But this time I'm biting the bullet. After a week to ten days catching up with friends in Arequipa, I intend to head back to Lima and then make the arduous and mildly dangerous trip across the Andes and into the lowlands, all the way to the frontier town of Pucallpa, which is the end of the road.
From there, it's by boat, four days down river to Iquitos, a city of 500,000 people - the world's largest with no road connection. This, I understand, is a trip you probably want to do once; most people who can afford it take the plane. Hot, dirty, crowded, terrible food, surrounded by beggars and thieves, I'll almost certainly suffer, and will probably regret ever deciding to do it.
Jungle tours can be arranged from Iquitos (and I understand it has quite a nightlife), but you're still not fully in the virgin Amazon. So I plan to take another boat even further downriver, to Leticia. This is small town, actually in Colombia, but right at the point where the borders of Colombia, Peru and Brazil meet. If you were really motivated to do so, this is probably a spot you could disappear and erase your identity.
Leticia is a backwater with almost mythical status; a kind of lost Macondo in the steaming jungle. I've read a bit about the area, and am eager to see it for real.
From Leticia there really is no way back unless you want to spend a week plugging upriver. So, assuming I've got that far and haven't been struck down by malaria, I'll grab a spot on a local plane into Bogota. What Garcia Marquez derided as a grey and serious city should be very welcome after my sojourn in the insect-ridden Amazon. From there I fly out to Santiago (ci-vi-li-zacion! as the bus driver called out when we crossed the Bolivian frontier into Chile on my last trip) for three days, then finally back to Enzed.
There's a lot I want to achieve on this trip. Just for a start, to properly record some of the many colorful, larger-than-life stories my friends and acquantainces from Arequipa tell so eloquently. And to finally get hold of a decent selection of CDs of the huaynos, chicha and tecno-cumbia that, for me, makes Peru Mexico's rival in richness of musical culture and its superior in originality.
In addition, I want to push my comfort boundaries a bit and dig a bit deeper into learning about people's lives. Last time I thought I figured out quite a lot about what makes Peru tick, but I didn't really scratch too far beneath the surface. This time I will be attempting to tear myself away from another round of pisco sours and flirting with the cute girls dancing merengue, and do some of the possibly difficult, tiresome and unpleasant work of understanding the place better
It's the Peruvian elections on the 9th of April, and what will almost certainly be a second round of the presidential vote in May when I'm there. This will be a fairly pivotal moment, not only for Peru, but for helping define the overall direction of South America and its political future for the next five to ten years.
I'll try and post on that while I'm there, as well as providing regular updates on my trip into the jungle (and apologies if I'm making it sound like Heart of Darkness). In the meantime, in the next few weeks expect a couple of (possibly rather serious) posts on South America, and in particular that strange bundle of contradictions and absurdities which is Peru and its political life.
Categories: South America, Peru, Colombia
"Bidsta" is me; one of those blokey monikers your friends give you. Originally I called the blog "Bidsta Blog": back in 2003 I was still among the first few million early adopters of blogging, so it still seemed like a less than completely lame idea to put "blog" in the title.
Then, when I was in South America (where I spent a year from April 2004 - April 2005), I decided to add Google's Adsense code to my site, in the hope that I'd get a few visitors who'd click on the ads and make me a few cents from my blogging (yes, I should have known better...). It then ocurred to me that if I added "South America" to the title of the blog, Google's robots would figure that my posts were mostly about SOUTH AMERICA and post appropriate ads - probably about travel to said continent.
People who visited my site would then be so intrigued by my fascinating tales of life in Peru and elsewhere, they'd probably want to think about going there. Aha! - they'd look to the top of the page to find a travel agency offering adventure tours. Click! And I make nineteen cents US.
A nice, naiive theory, spoiled by the fact that Google seems to have made a big experiment out of how it applies ads to people's pages (my posts on South America now have ads for travel there - many months after anyone might have read them). In addition, about 1 percent of people visiting a website tend to click on the ads, no matter how relevant they might be. And finally, at that stage I hadn't figured out how to publicise the blog to anyone but my friends and family (most of whom had forgotten who I was by late 2004), and had got a bit sporadic with my posts amidst my commitments to romance and adventure amidst the towering Andes etc etc.
With the results that my insightful updates on Peruvian politics and dashing tales of trekking im the wilderness were read by a total of about three people. Which kind of cut down the percentages at ad-click time.
Now, I've been back for about a year and have posted (ranted, perhaps) on all kinds of things, with a recent trend towards complaining about getting woken up in the morning. Though my AdSense clicks are a lost cause, my average traffic has gradually climbed, thanks to my links into Technorati, a handful of regular readers, and oh, all of about three people who have been so kind as to exchange links with me. I should be refining my position as a boutique pundit on New Zealand affairs.
But, at this pivotal moment, it turns out that I'm actually going to South America again. Yes, on the 18th of April I fly out from Auckland, bound for Lima.
This will be quite a different trip from last time. Then, I spent a year with the general goal of meeting people, making friends, learning something about the culture and history , and ticking off as many tourist highlights as possible.
It worked out pretty well. Like many before me, I was enchanted by the beauty and joie de vivre of the city of Arequipa in southern Peru, which I ended up making by base and my home for about six months.
I walked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and did the Death Road and Salar de Uyuni in Boliva. I climbed 6,000-metre mountains and trekked though the remote back country of the Andes. I went rafting and horse riding in Argentina, visited the coffee-growing centre of Colombia, and explored the ruins of the Lambayeque, Moche, Chimu, Wari and Nazca cultures on Peru's desert coast. I compared the nightime carrete, juerga and rumba in Santiago, Lima, Cali, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. I met the taciturn natives of Lake Titicaca and the staggeringly beautiful girls of Cordoba.
At all times I stuck strictly to the moutains, deserts, canyons, coasts and cities. Although if you look at a map of South America you will see an enormous green swathe which takes up almost a third of the continent's land mass, I did not once set foot in the Amazon. In my total of eighteen months spent in Latin America I've never yet been into the jungle. I admit, I'm a little squeamish about it.
But this time I'm biting the bullet. After a week to ten days catching up with friends in Arequipa, I intend to head back to Lima and then make the arduous and mildly dangerous trip across the Andes and into the lowlands, all the way to the frontier town of Pucallpa, which is the end of the road.
From there, it's by boat, four days down river to Iquitos, a city of 500,000 people - the world's largest with no road connection. This, I understand, is a trip you probably want to do once; most people who can afford it take the plane. Hot, dirty, crowded, terrible food, surrounded by beggars and thieves, I'll almost certainly suffer, and will probably regret ever deciding to do it.
Jungle tours can be arranged from Iquitos (and I understand it has quite a nightlife), but you're still not fully in the virgin Amazon. So I plan to take another boat even further downriver, to Leticia. This is small town, actually in Colombia, but right at the point where the borders of Colombia, Peru and Brazil meet. If you were really motivated to do so, this is probably a spot you could disappear and erase your identity.
Leticia is a backwater with almost mythical status; a kind of lost Macondo in the steaming jungle. I've read a bit about the area, and am eager to see it for real.
From Leticia there really is no way back unless you want to spend a week plugging upriver. So, assuming I've got that far and haven't been struck down by malaria, I'll grab a spot on a local plane into Bogota. What Garcia Marquez derided as a grey and serious city should be very welcome after my sojourn in the insect-ridden Amazon. From there I fly out to Santiago (ci-vi-li-zacion! as the bus driver called out when we crossed the Bolivian frontier into Chile on my last trip) for three days, then finally back to Enzed.
There's a lot I want to achieve on this trip. Just for a start, to properly record some of the many colorful, larger-than-life stories my friends and acquantainces from Arequipa tell so eloquently. And to finally get hold of a decent selection of CDs of the huaynos, chicha and tecno-cumbia that, for me, makes Peru Mexico's rival in richness of musical culture and its superior in originality.
In addition, I want to push my comfort boundaries a bit and dig a bit deeper into learning about people's lives. Last time I thought I figured out quite a lot about what makes Peru tick, but I didn't really scratch too far beneath the surface. This time I will be attempting to tear myself away from another round of pisco sours and flirting with the cute girls dancing merengue, and do some of the possibly difficult, tiresome and unpleasant work of understanding the place better
It's the Peruvian elections on the 9th of April, and what will almost certainly be a second round of the presidential vote in May when I'm there. This will be a fairly pivotal moment, not only for Peru, but for helping define the overall direction of South America and its political future for the next five to ten years.
I'll try and post on that while I'm there, as well as providing regular updates on my trip into the jungle (and apologies if I'm making it sound like Heart of Darkness). In the meantime, in the next few weeks expect a couple of (possibly rather serious) posts on South America, and in particular that strange bundle of contradictions and absurdities which is Peru and its political life.
Categories: South America, Peru, Colombia
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The "Man Drought" Strikes Back
Last August I posted on the so-called New Zealand "man drought". Uncovered by an opportunistic Australian who had read off some numbers from the 2001 census, this "drought" involved an apparent demographic gender imbalance in the 20-49 age group.
It was quickly seized upon by the print media, TV, watercooler chatter, and people like my flatmate's 24 year-old friend who rang her up and asked anxiously: "Did you hear? There's a man drought in Wellington!" (with a tone that might have been suitable for "earthquake" or "bird flu epidemic"). [Postscript: I saw said friend at a party a few weeks later, surrounded by at least four eager and jostling males].
Though I had some personal perspectives and theories on why the "drought" was becoming an instant cultural myth, my initial priority was to post on its lamentably dumb, credulous treatment in the media. I was going to do a follow up, but as time went by, figured it was maybe too silly a topic to waste the effort on.
But now the man drought is back in the news. "New Zealand women settle for less" shouted the headline in last weeks Christchurch Press. Supposedly a trend has been identified of women "marrying down", by choosing partners of lower educational, and sometimes economic, status, because of a lack of eligible men.
The resident expert is again boffiny Wellington economist Paul Callister, who appeared in print and on TV last time around spouting off about the future dynamics of relationships.
He has been contracted by the Department of Labour to investigate the demographic imbalance. Among his findings are that, surprise surprise, the "man drought" has been overhyped. The gap in women and men in the 20-49 age group is actually more like 33,000 rather than the 53,000 depicted by the 2001 census.
But he thinks he has uncovered a drought of sorts - one of smart blokes:
Callister said the most significant finding of his research was a 10 per cent increase in the past two decades in highly educated women marrying men with fewer qualifications and, in many cases, lower-paid jobs. This had happened largely because of a lack of eligible partners of equal educational or economic status, he said.
The Press article eagerly extended the metaphor of scarcity , talking of "slim pickings" for women. Predictably, Michael Laws got uncouthly in on the act in the Sunday Star Times, commenting that "the man drought...has had the effect of single women searching out any male with a pulse in an attempt to copulate and breed".
But as appealing as the idea might be to some of scores of frustrated women casting around for well-educated men (someone point them out, please), I just don't buy it.
Assuming that the statistics actually have the significance that's claimed, how's this for an alternative interpretation? Maybe New Zealand women, increasingly likely to be well-educated and with independent means, are simply indulging their existing inclination to partner up with the rugby players, farmers and tradespeople who our culture constantly tells us are the only really acceptable Kiwi blokes?
But in fact there is reason to suspect that the meaning of the stats has been twisted. To know what the significance is of 10 percent more highly educated women "marrying down", you'd have to know some other facts, including what the overall increase has been in highly educated women over the last two decades. If, as is likely, this has increased by more than 10 percent, the number of women "marrying down" might have increased, but not the proportion.
In other words, highly educated women are no more likely to "marry down"; there are just more of them. So it's not about a paucity of men at all - but the fact that there's more girls with degrees.
Seen this way, the discussion appears to be less about what is still a dubious and poorly quantified gender imbalance, and more a somewhat sexist insecurity about disturbance to the natural order of things.
Categories: New Zealand, man drought
It was quickly seized upon by the print media, TV, watercooler chatter, and people like my flatmate's 24 year-old friend who rang her up and asked anxiously: "Did you hear? There's a man drought in Wellington!" (with a tone that might have been suitable for "earthquake" or "bird flu epidemic"). [Postscript: I saw said friend at a party a few weeks later, surrounded by at least four eager and jostling males].
Though I had some personal perspectives and theories on why the "drought" was becoming an instant cultural myth, my initial priority was to post on its lamentably dumb, credulous treatment in the media. I was going to do a follow up, but as time went by, figured it was maybe too silly a topic to waste the effort on.
But now the man drought is back in the news. "New Zealand women settle for less" shouted the headline in last weeks Christchurch Press. Supposedly a trend has been identified of women "marrying down", by choosing partners of lower educational, and sometimes economic, status, because of a lack of eligible men.
The resident expert is again boffiny Wellington economist Paul Callister, who appeared in print and on TV last time around spouting off about the future dynamics of relationships.
He has been contracted by the Department of Labour to investigate the demographic imbalance. Among his findings are that, surprise surprise, the "man drought" has been overhyped. The gap in women and men in the 20-49 age group is actually more like 33,000 rather than the 53,000 depicted by the 2001 census.
But he thinks he has uncovered a drought of sorts - one of smart blokes:
Callister said the most significant finding of his research was a 10 per cent increase in the past two decades in highly educated women marrying men with fewer qualifications and, in many cases, lower-paid jobs. This had happened largely because of a lack of eligible partners of equal educational or economic status, he said.
The Press article eagerly extended the metaphor of scarcity , talking of "slim pickings" for women. Predictably, Michael Laws got uncouthly in on the act in the Sunday Star Times, commenting that "the man drought...has had the effect of single women searching out any male with a pulse in an attempt to copulate and breed".
But as appealing as the idea might be to some of scores of frustrated women casting around for well-educated men (someone point them out, please), I just don't buy it.
Assuming that the statistics actually have the significance that's claimed, how's this for an alternative interpretation? Maybe New Zealand women, increasingly likely to be well-educated and with independent means, are simply indulging their existing inclination to partner up with the rugby players, farmers and tradespeople who our culture constantly tells us are the only really acceptable Kiwi blokes?
But in fact there is reason to suspect that the meaning of the stats has been twisted. To know what the significance is of 10 percent more highly educated women "marrying down", you'd have to know some other facts, including what the overall increase has been in highly educated women over the last two decades. If, as is likely, this has increased by more than 10 percent, the number of women "marrying down" might have increased, but not the proportion.
In other words, highly educated women are no more likely to "marry down"; there are just more of them. So it's not about a paucity of men at all - but the fact that there's more girls with degrees.
Seen this way, the discussion appears to be less about what is still a dubious and poorly quantified gender imbalance, and more a somewhat sexist insecurity about disturbance to the natural order of things.
Categories: New Zealand, man drought
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Kiwi towns
Apparently, John Cleese trashed Palmerston North on his website, describing it as "suicide capital of New Zealand" after his recent visit here.
While Manawatu luminaries naturally feigned surprise and outrage, NZPA columnist Belinda McCammon thought it an opportune moment to dredge up all the nasty things that celebrities (from Charles Darwin on) had said about NZ (I don't know; you try and be a smart ass, and find that you've actually taken a literal tone...)
Cleese was hardly being original, anyway. PN is the currently accepted whipping-post for NZers wanting to dump all their fears about being provincial and backward onto a single place.
I forget exactly who was the recently returned NZ author, exiled in Europe for many years, who wrote in a column in the Dom Post that: "Those who grew up in Palmerston North dreamed of escape. Those who gew up in Fielding dreamed only of death".
Invercargill, immortalised by Keith Richards as "the asshole of the world", has now been rehabilitated somewhat. It seems you can't stay rock bottom for too long before you become edgy and avant garde.
A litle while ago a fashion-conscious friend of mine even suggested it could be a hidden gem. "Study journalism at the tech nearly for free; do a diving course; fresh oysters; great walking tracks on your doorstep; Queenstown and Central Otago just up the road", she listed with growing conviction. Mind you, she did grow up in AshVegas.
It's all put me in the mood to make a new "best and worst list". New Zealand is a country where urban development often seems to have been treated as an afterthought, and NZers and foreigners alike have long written off particular places as unbelievably dull, sterile and provincial (until recently, foreign travel writers often did this to NZ towns and cities en masse) . Yet it's not all bad - there have always been spots with some charm and flair. And other places with potential that sadly hasn't been realised.
Having travelled around most (though not all) of New Zealand in several tours with a folk-rock covers band, I've also been a keen observer of how the atmosphere and character changes from place to place.
Here are my picks and special mentions:
Ugliest town: Very hard to go past Huntly. Kind of Hull-on-the-Waikato ambience. Has a depressed and slightly creepy feeling. There was a fuss a couple of years ago when a motorway extension was being built in the area and local Maori claimed that a taniwha was being disturbed. Not hard to believe. Drive past the area aptly known as Long Swamp, not far north of Huntly, and you get the distinct impression that several mean-spirited taniwhas lurk nearby.
Honourable mention: Blenheim - I haven't been there for a few years, and people tell me that all the sauvignon blanc money that's poured in has changed the face of it a bit. But it would be a slow process prettifying a place which seemed to have made a serious study in defying the surrounding natural beauty by being as featureless and dull as possible.
Most attractive town: no obvious winner. Of course, New Zealand is full of diverse and dramatic natural beauty. Some of the urban spots which haven't squandered the benefits of their settings, and have even added to them, include: Paihia and Russell, Picton, Akaroa, Arrowtown, Clyde, Lyttelton, Oamaru, Hanmer and Martinborough.
Most underated: 1. Cromwell - before it became Pinot Noirsville, there was an austere charm to Cromwell, nestled in its desert setting under the Pisa Range. Most of the old stone town centre was drowned when the Clyde Dam created Lake Dunstan, but some of it is still preserved. Less well acknowledged, the new town was innovative (for NZ) with its "greenway" which ensures swathes of green public space between the residential crescents and cul-de-sacs.
Summers are actually hotter than in neighbouring Alexandra, and the general atomsphere is much nicer. There's a lazy rural feel and people are open and extra friendly. Though I'm still not sure about those giant fruit...
2. Westport - walk down Wesport's main street and it feels like you're stepping back thirty, or even fifty years. It has an uncontrived nostalgia, almost a sense of being forgotten. With almost everywhere these days featuring compulsory snappy cafes with fusion cuisine and latte, there's something comforting about heading down to the tearooms for a greasy mixed grill with shoddy filter coffee. The fact that, since its heyday, change has always come slowly to this remote spot, gives it a lingering sense of history. It's got a lush, mild feel, and is on the doorstep of some wild, beautiful scenery.
As a touring band, it would have to rank among the top few places we ever played. At the Black & White pub, gigs were genuinely wild, as locals and folk in from the bush mixed with backpackers sensing this was one place they could throw off their inhibitions and have a truly good time.
Most overrated: 1. Nelson. Don't get me wrong, the natural setting is absolutely outstanding, between the sea and three different ranges of mountains. The layout of the town is attractive enough as well, with its greenery, cathedral set amidst gardens, and the white hospital on the hill. But the cold, snobbish ambience is exactly what you'd expect if you took Christchurch, with all its stratified reserve, and shrunk it to one seventh its size.
2. Motueka - again, the sun and scenery flatter to deceive. This is Timaru with grapefruit. Stay around too long and you start to hear the banjos being plucked.
Biggest failure to take advantage of natural attributes: Napier and Hastings - the only real natural drawback of the twin Bay cities is that they're a bit isolated. In their favour is a decent port, perhaps the best climate in New Zealand, historic wealth from the hinterland - now with international prominence for its Bordeaux-style red wines - collective population great than Dunedin, and the silver lining of having to start afresh after the 1931 earthquake.
Yet Napier and Hastings have divided themselves rigidly along class lines, carried on internecine squabbles over infrastructure, and ended up creating a rather dull place which has little cultural, economic, educational or political impact on the New Zealand scene.
Honourable mention: Whangarei - warm, lush, surrounded by unique mangrove swamps, native bush and bird life, and island-dotted bays and beaches so beautiful they make you weep, you'd think the town could have been inspired to do better. But again, class differences and poverty are the strongest impressions.
Please post your own views of the best and worst of NZ's towns. I realise there's a distinct South Island bias in the ones I've mentioned here. Some parts I haven't really visited at all include Southland, Eastern Bay of Plenty and East Cape. And some of my judgements are based on more fleeting impressions than others, so feel free to vehemently disagree.
Categories: New Zealand, New Zealand towns
While Manawatu luminaries naturally feigned surprise and outrage, NZPA columnist Belinda McCammon thought it an opportune moment to dredge up all the nasty things that celebrities (from Charles Darwin on) had said about NZ (I don't know; you try and be a smart ass, and find that you've actually taken a literal tone...)
Cleese was hardly being original, anyway. PN is the currently accepted whipping-post for NZers wanting to dump all their fears about being provincial and backward onto a single place.
I forget exactly who was the recently returned NZ author, exiled in Europe for many years, who wrote in a column in the Dom Post that: "Those who grew up in Palmerston North dreamed of escape. Those who gew up in Fielding dreamed only of death".
Invercargill, immortalised by Keith Richards as "the asshole of the world", has now been rehabilitated somewhat. It seems you can't stay rock bottom for too long before you become edgy and avant garde.
A litle while ago a fashion-conscious friend of mine even suggested it could be a hidden gem. "Study journalism at the tech nearly for free; do a diving course; fresh oysters; great walking tracks on your doorstep; Queenstown and Central Otago just up the road", she listed with growing conviction. Mind you, she did grow up in AshVegas.
It's all put me in the mood to make a new "best and worst list". New Zealand is a country where urban development often seems to have been treated as an afterthought, and NZers and foreigners alike have long written off particular places as unbelievably dull, sterile and provincial (until recently, foreign travel writers often did this to NZ towns and cities en masse) . Yet it's not all bad - there have always been spots with some charm and flair. And other places with potential that sadly hasn't been realised.
Having travelled around most (though not all) of New Zealand in several tours with a folk-rock covers band, I've also been a keen observer of how the atmosphere and character changes from place to place.
Here are my picks and special mentions:
Ugliest town: Very hard to go past Huntly. Kind of Hull-on-the-Waikato ambience. Has a depressed and slightly creepy feeling. There was a fuss a couple of years ago when a motorway extension was being built in the area and local Maori claimed that a taniwha was being disturbed. Not hard to believe. Drive past the area aptly known as Long Swamp, not far north of Huntly, and you get the distinct impression that several mean-spirited taniwhas lurk nearby.
Honourable mention: Blenheim - I haven't been there for a few years, and people tell me that all the sauvignon blanc money that's poured in has changed the face of it a bit. But it would be a slow process prettifying a place which seemed to have made a serious study in defying the surrounding natural beauty by being as featureless and dull as possible.
Most attractive town: no obvious winner. Of course, New Zealand is full of diverse and dramatic natural beauty. Some of the urban spots which haven't squandered the benefits of their settings, and have even added to them, include: Paihia and Russell, Picton, Akaroa, Arrowtown, Clyde, Lyttelton, Oamaru, Hanmer and Martinborough.
Most underated: 1. Cromwell - before it became Pinot Noirsville, there was an austere charm to Cromwell, nestled in its desert setting under the Pisa Range. Most of the old stone town centre was drowned when the Clyde Dam created Lake Dunstan, but some of it is still preserved. Less well acknowledged, the new town was innovative (for NZ) with its "greenway" which ensures swathes of green public space between the residential crescents and cul-de-sacs.
Summers are actually hotter than in neighbouring Alexandra, and the general atomsphere is much nicer. There's a lazy rural feel and people are open and extra friendly. Though I'm still not sure about those giant fruit...
2. Westport - walk down Wesport's main street and it feels like you're stepping back thirty, or even fifty years. It has an uncontrived nostalgia, almost a sense of being forgotten. With almost everywhere these days featuring compulsory snappy cafes with fusion cuisine and latte, there's something comforting about heading down to the tearooms for a greasy mixed grill with shoddy filter coffee. The fact that, since its heyday, change has always come slowly to this remote spot, gives it a lingering sense of history. It's got a lush, mild feel, and is on the doorstep of some wild, beautiful scenery.
As a touring band, it would have to rank among the top few places we ever played. At the Black & White pub, gigs were genuinely wild, as locals and folk in from the bush mixed with backpackers sensing this was one place they could throw off their inhibitions and have a truly good time.
Most overrated: 1. Nelson. Don't get me wrong, the natural setting is absolutely outstanding, between the sea and three different ranges of mountains. The layout of the town is attractive enough as well, with its greenery, cathedral set amidst gardens, and the white hospital on the hill. But the cold, snobbish ambience is exactly what you'd expect if you took Christchurch, with all its stratified reserve, and shrunk it to one seventh its size.
2. Motueka - again, the sun and scenery flatter to deceive. This is Timaru with grapefruit. Stay around too long and you start to hear the banjos being plucked.
Biggest failure to take advantage of natural attributes: Napier and Hastings - the only real natural drawback of the twin Bay cities is that they're a bit isolated. In their favour is a decent port, perhaps the best climate in New Zealand, historic wealth from the hinterland - now with international prominence for its Bordeaux-style red wines - collective population great than Dunedin, and the silver lining of having to start afresh after the 1931 earthquake.
Yet Napier and Hastings have divided themselves rigidly along class lines, carried on internecine squabbles over infrastructure, and ended up creating a rather dull place which has little cultural, economic, educational or political impact on the New Zealand scene.
Honourable mention: Whangarei - warm, lush, surrounded by unique mangrove swamps, native bush and bird life, and island-dotted bays and beaches so beautiful they make you weep, you'd think the town could have been inspired to do better. But again, class differences and poverty are the strongest impressions.
Please post your own views of the best and worst of NZ's towns. I realise there's a distinct South Island bias in the ones I've mentioned here. Some parts I haven't really visited at all include Southland, Eastern Bay of Plenty and East Cape. And some of my judgements are based on more fleeting impressions than others, so feel free to vehemently disagree.
Categories: New Zealand, New Zealand towns
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Melbourne
I spent from Tuesday evening to Friday afternoon last week in Melbourne on work-related business, and it was my first visit there. What a great city! It's a place which comes close to living up to the platitudes from the tourist brochures.
The first thing you notice, coming into the city centre from the freeway which sweeps in from the airport, is the mix of grand, aspirational architecture, Victorian and modern. Walking around at ground level, you then discover the generous areas apportioned to well trimmed and watered parks and gardens.
Trains and trams loop around the central quadrant and out to their suburban spokes with what seems like unflappable logic, leaving the inner-city traffic thin and tolerable. Wandering through the CBD, you find both shady Old World backstreets with little cafes, and futuristic multi-level plazas and galleries hedged between skyscrapers.
The weather was great, too: clear and sunny all four days, and heating up later in the week. It hit 34 degrees on Thursday and 35 degrees on Friday. I find genuine heat invigorating; it speeds up the blood and makes you feel more alive. If Wellington could manage just a few weeks of such hot weather every year it would be a much more atractive place.
When visiting a new city, I can't help trying to find points of comparison with places I already know. My first impressions were that the generously broad sidewalks shaded by drought-resistant oak, maple and plane trees had touches of Argentinian cities like Cordoba and Mendoza. Something of Toronto, too, in the evidence of forward-thinking urban planning to integrate the historic and the modern, plus the wide choice of excellent food.
Later I saw little old pubs that would fit seamlessly into a London street, and 19th-century apartment blocks which gave a distinctly Parisian feel to some areas (part of Collins St in the eastern CBD is actually known as the "Paris end").
People have often told me that Melbourne is "like Wellington", both in ambience and weather. Well, maybe it's the obvious trans-Tasman comparator, if we assume that Auckland chases after Sydney. And both places have a good standard of coffee. But beyond that, I don't really see it.
The overall feel is more like how Christchurch would be in its wildest, most grandiose dreams - if only it had the imagination. As for the weather, Melbourne is known to be fickle by Australian standards, but let's face it, they're not quite the same as New Zealand's. Suffice it to say that if Wellington ever had a minor heat wave like Melbourne last week, it would be unprecedented.
Of course, there wasn't enough time to get a real feel for the ambience and personality of the place, but as far as I could tell it had a confident, friendly vibe. The conference dinner on Wednesday was a small but riotous affair at a cheery Greek taverna which rolled out Atkins-sized quantities of meat, fish and cheese, tempered by lashings of artery-clearing red wine.
On Thursday evening I went out with some fellow conference attendees for dinner and what we thought would a quiet drink or three in an inner-city Irish pub.
About 10:30pm the place was invaded by an entourage of orientation-week students from Monash University. They had a theme of "the Commonwealth Games" for their party, and there were many risque variations on athletes, netballers and hockey players.
For the next couple of hours the students swarmed through the pub indulging in flesh-baring, cross-dressing, and gratuitous public displays of canoodling, while we all sat there feeling old. Apart from the fact that some of the students didn't look a day older than twelve, I was a bit perturbed that they seemed to be having the kind of uninhibited, decadent fun that we dreamt about, but never quite managed, during my time at university.
Is this generation more liberated and in touch with their hedonistic impulses? Or do Australians just have a better time?
With most of Friday free, I had a chance to wander further. I walked down Flinders St to Flinders St station, cavernous and painted in creamy yellow, preserved in its Victorian pomp, and with a palpable aura of nostalgia despite the throngs of people which still pass through it.
Across the road I admired the rather daringly Cubist buildings of Federation Square, which include the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. I crossed the Yarra River, looking upstream to the floodlight towers of the MCG, and walked a little way into the Alexandra and Victoria gardens in the "Yarra Green Belt". I strolled a way down the riverside promenade of glass towers, nouveau riche bistros and boutiques on Southbank and crossed the bridge back to Flinders St.
I didn't make it far out of the central city area. The tourist guide (as well laid out and coherent as the city itself) and acquaintances had suggested a trip either north to retro Brunswick or south to trendy St Kilda. But there wasn't really time.
My one indulgence was a free guided tour through the Victorian Parliament. I thought it might give me some insight into a city which gives the strong impression of never having been short of money, nor afraid to spend it.
The Parliament buildings form a broad, slate grey-edifice fronted by a row of Doric columns. They are made of Grampian stone, named after the hills in eastern Victoria from which it is sourced. Inside is a rather breathtaking opulence; ornate vaulted ceilings are lined with genuine 23-carat gold leaf.
Our tour guide Tony explained the sweet irony which accompanied the establishment of the colony of Victoria. On July 1, 1851 the state gained its independence from New South Wales, which had been "robbing us blind". Six days later, gold was discovered, the start of a forty-year rush which pumped wealth into the region.
The houses of Parliament were started in 1856, and this year is their 150th anniversary. The original design was even more grandiose, and called for the eventual replacement of the vaulted ceilings by huge glass domes. But by the 1890s the gold was running out, and further construction was canned. In fact, the buildings have never been completed to design. Apparently, Premier Jeff Kennett had a plan to finish them off in 1996, but balked at the $300 million cost in an election year.
I left thinking that Melbourne was well summed up by the name of the state of which it is the capital. As far as I could tell on my brief acquaintance, it seemed to have grown up in accordance with distinctly Victorian philosophies. Conservative in the sense of wanting to preserve tradition and believing in a hierarchy of values, but embracing progress and modernity. Materialism tempered by a strong sense of the public good.
I'm not sure that any New Zealand town has consistently struck that balance - though I also suspect that none has been quite so rich.
Maybe Melbourne doesn't have the "edge" and sense of excitement of the few truly great cities. And I've no idea what kind of job you need to be able to live anywhere close to the centre. But with its strikingly cheap public transport, along with everything else going for it, my impression is that it's close to the most complete and liveable city in Australasia.
NB - will add photos to this post later in the week.
Categories: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Wellington
The first thing you notice, coming into the city centre from the freeway which sweeps in from the airport, is the mix of grand, aspirational architecture, Victorian and modern. Walking around at ground level, you then discover the generous areas apportioned to well trimmed and watered parks and gardens.
Trains and trams loop around the central quadrant and out to their suburban spokes with what seems like unflappable logic, leaving the inner-city traffic thin and tolerable. Wandering through the CBD, you find both shady Old World backstreets with little cafes, and futuristic multi-level plazas and galleries hedged between skyscrapers.
The weather was great, too: clear and sunny all four days, and heating up later in the week. It hit 34 degrees on Thursday and 35 degrees on Friday. I find genuine heat invigorating; it speeds up the blood and makes you feel more alive. If Wellington could manage just a few weeks of such hot weather every year it would be a much more atractive place.
When visiting a new city, I can't help trying to find points of comparison with places I already know. My first impressions were that the generously broad sidewalks shaded by drought-resistant oak, maple and plane trees had touches of Argentinian cities like Cordoba and Mendoza. Something of Toronto, too, in the evidence of forward-thinking urban planning to integrate the historic and the modern, plus the wide choice of excellent food.
Later I saw little old pubs that would fit seamlessly into a London street, and 19th-century apartment blocks which gave a distinctly Parisian feel to some areas (part of Collins St in the eastern CBD is actually known as the "Paris end").
People have often told me that Melbourne is "like Wellington", both in ambience and weather. Well, maybe it's the obvious trans-Tasman comparator, if we assume that Auckland chases after Sydney. And both places have a good standard of coffee. But beyond that, I don't really see it.
The overall feel is more like how Christchurch would be in its wildest, most grandiose dreams - if only it had the imagination. As for the weather, Melbourne is known to be fickle by Australian standards, but let's face it, they're not quite the same as New Zealand's. Suffice it to say that if Wellington ever had a minor heat wave like Melbourne last week, it would be unprecedented.
Of course, there wasn't enough time to get a real feel for the ambience and personality of the place, but as far as I could tell it had a confident, friendly vibe. The conference dinner on Wednesday was a small but riotous affair at a cheery Greek taverna which rolled out Atkins-sized quantities of meat, fish and cheese, tempered by lashings of artery-clearing red wine.
On Thursday evening I went out with some fellow conference attendees for dinner and what we thought would a quiet drink or three in an inner-city Irish pub.
About 10:30pm the place was invaded by an entourage of orientation-week students from Monash University. They had a theme of "the Commonwealth Games" for their party, and there were many risque variations on athletes, netballers and hockey players.
For the next couple of hours the students swarmed through the pub indulging in flesh-baring, cross-dressing, and gratuitous public displays of canoodling, while we all sat there feeling old. Apart from the fact that some of the students didn't look a day older than twelve, I was a bit perturbed that they seemed to be having the kind of uninhibited, decadent fun that we dreamt about, but never quite managed, during my time at university.
Is this generation more liberated and in touch with their hedonistic impulses? Or do Australians just have a better time?
With most of Friday free, I had a chance to wander further. I walked down Flinders St to Flinders St station, cavernous and painted in creamy yellow, preserved in its Victorian pomp, and with a palpable aura of nostalgia despite the throngs of people which still pass through it.
Across the road I admired the rather daringly Cubist buildings of Federation Square, which include the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. I crossed the Yarra River, looking upstream to the floodlight towers of the MCG, and walked a little way into the Alexandra and Victoria gardens in the "Yarra Green Belt". I strolled a way down the riverside promenade of glass towers, nouveau riche bistros and boutiques on Southbank and crossed the bridge back to Flinders St.
I didn't make it far out of the central city area. The tourist guide (as well laid out and coherent as the city itself) and acquaintances had suggested a trip either north to retro Brunswick or south to trendy St Kilda. But there wasn't really time.
My one indulgence was a free guided tour through the Victorian Parliament. I thought it might give me some insight into a city which gives the strong impression of never having been short of money, nor afraid to spend it.
The Parliament buildings form a broad, slate grey-edifice fronted by a row of Doric columns. They are made of Grampian stone, named after the hills in eastern Victoria from which it is sourced. Inside is a rather breathtaking opulence; ornate vaulted ceilings are lined with genuine 23-carat gold leaf.
Our tour guide Tony explained the sweet irony which accompanied the establishment of the colony of Victoria. On July 1, 1851 the state gained its independence from New South Wales, which had been "robbing us blind". Six days later, gold was discovered, the start of a forty-year rush which pumped wealth into the region.
The houses of Parliament were started in 1856, and this year is their 150th anniversary. The original design was even more grandiose, and called for the eventual replacement of the vaulted ceilings by huge glass domes. But by the 1890s the gold was running out, and further construction was canned. In fact, the buildings have never been completed to design. Apparently, Premier Jeff Kennett had a plan to finish them off in 1996, but balked at the $300 million cost in an election year.
I left thinking that Melbourne was well summed up by the name of the state of which it is the capital. As far as I could tell on my brief acquaintance, it seemed to have grown up in accordance with distinctly Victorian philosophies. Conservative in the sense of wanting to preserve tradition and believing in a hierarchy of values, but embracing progress and modernity. Materialism tempered by a strong sense of the public good.
I'm not sure that any New Zealand town has consistently struck that balance - though I also suspect that none has been quite so rich.
Maybe Melbourne doesn't have the "edge" and sense of excitement of the few truly great cities. And I've no idea what kind of job you need to be able to live anywhere close to the centre. But with its strikingly cheap public transport, along with everything else going for it, my impression is that it's close to the most complete and liveable city in Australasia.
NB - will add photos to this post later in the week.
Categories: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Wellington
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Making It Pay
Post summary: No one has yet figured out how to "monetize" the provision of content on the internet; bloggers and even large publications are struggling to make any money. Reliance on advertising or clunky schemes like "premium content" are not the answer. However, I believe people would be prepared to pay in small increments of a few cents at a time for online content if it were made easy and simple enough.
This could be done through a "broker" with whom users would have an account, and who would deduct the appropriate amount when a user accessed a participating content provider's site. Content aggregators such as Google, Yahoo or MSN would be obvious candidates to become such brokers, but it could easily be somebody else.
Such a system could support the viability of more small and medium-sized publications and higher-quality blogs; it could even help breathe new life into those venerable media insititutions that are currently failing financially.
******************************************************
But there was one point that couldn't be denied: right now, nobody is making much money. Butterworth quoted two women who run a hugely popular gossip site which receives up to 100,000 hits a day as saying that they make "more than a case of beer, but not enough to quit our day jobs".
What he didn't acknowledge was that the puzzle of how to turn traffic into cash is just as tricky for established media and prominent print publications as it is for amateur bloggers. It's become clear that people love sifting through the great shifting sands of information and opinion on the internet. It's just that no one has quite figured out how to appropriately reward those who generate it.
Traditional print media has varied in how it has embraced the internet - ranging from the simplicity, verve and openness of the Observer / Guardian to the tardy, somewhat clunky approach of the likes of the New York Times.
But no one is that far ahead in a business sense. The differences seem to come down to philosophy; the Guardian sees being read as a good thing in itself, a chance to spread and promote their brand. Others have viewed the internet as a threat and have somewhat resentfully posted a minimum number of articles, with the rest protected as "premium content", for which you must pay a fee.
The owners of the New Zealand Herald fall into the latter category. That paper's experiment with "premium content" has been rightly lampooned in the New Zealand blogosphere. I mean, when you can buy the print edition of the Herald for $1.50, and read a huge array of erudite comment from throughout the world for free, are you really going to go to the trouble of getting out your credit card and coughing up $2.99, or whatever, to access the Herald's op-ed writers?
Most magazines and niche publications have gone for a mixed model: they provide a third to a half of their content free online, usually with the requirement of free registration; the rest is available to subscribers only.
Meanwhile, most bloggers continue rely on "pay-per-click" advertising to earn revenue. Overwhelmingly, this is through Google's AdSense scheme. Google makes code available for content providers, such as bloggers, to post on their web sites. Google's robots then automatically check out the content on the web site, and, in theory at least, assign it appropriate ads. Advertisers pay Google for each click on an ad, a portion of which is passed on to the content provider.
There are problems with this model. First, it is open to abuse, both through "click fraud" (people generating artificially large numbers of clicks on their website ads) and by sites set up to be "ad farms". Usually with minimal or no content, these sites simply have large numbers of ads, and often use a misspelling of a popular site (e.g wikipeda.org or crikcet.org) as a domain name, in order to attract traffic.
Secondly, Google has been less than fully transparent both about what percentage of advertising revenue goes to the content provider, and their process for assigning ads to pages. Sometimes they just seem to be running a big experiment, and I'm not the only one to wonder in frustration how ads are selected for my pages.
In any case, traditional, static ads don't seem to provide a decent revenue stream for anyone. Otherwise there wouldn't be the fuss about "premium content", and respectable sites wouldn't keep throwing up ever more intrusive dynamic ads which crawl across your screen and hover for about 10 seconds before you can close them down. These are infuriating; I don't think they're going to be the answer either.
So, if you count time as money, at the moment pretty much everyone is making a loss. Yet in theory the internet should provide an ideal medium for a great range of publications to be viable. Print publishing has traditionally involved sinking a large amount of money into machinery, paper and distribution, quite apart from assembling the content. And mostly, the audience has been limited by geography. These days, most surviving publications are either very big and corporate, or very small and niche-oriented.
On the internet, however, production and distribution costs are practically zero, and the potential audience is almost unlimited. The maths suggest that with a large audience paying small, even tiny amounts, many different providers should be able to make at least a modest living. So what's going wrong? Why is everybody struggling?
You might answer that the internet is seen as one big freebie and people just aren't prepared to pay directly for the swathes of information they feel it is their right to access. I don't believe that's the case. People are prepared to fritter away their money on things they value less than their online reading. Look at texting, in particular at people's readiness to spend money on text-message voting on music shows such as C4. I myself end up losing about $20-25 per month through overuse of my eftpos card, because it's convenient and I don't notice that I'm paying.
The problem is that payment for internet content is being demanded in the wrong format. Take the online magazine subscription for example. Many of these are pretty cheap. But for not more much more you can get a print subscription. It does make sense to get a print subscription to your favourite couple of magazines. You get to read through all the articles and reviews, do the crosswords, take the magazine to bed and fall asleep with it. You can pile back copies on your bookshelf and let visitors know how erudite / left-wing / neoliberal / avant-garde you are.
But an online subscription? Do you really want to pore over the magazine's entire content hunched in front of your computer? And once you've subscribed to one, where do you stop? The whole point of the internet is that you jump from page to page, searching for content, digesting and comparing opinion. Will you now need to stump up for full access to the 10 or 12 other publications you regularly check? The most interesting premium content might be in The Nation one week, and Science the next.
The unit of payment needs to be much smaller and more flexible. The precedent is Apple's iTunes store, which lets users download songs for 99c a time. Now, a song is a more substantive piece of work than even the hardest-hitting article, so the equivalent would be 5c or even 2c at a time. Let's say you look at 20 news articles (1-2c) in a day, and 10 op-ed pieces (5c). For less than 1/3 of a coffee, you get full content, no scrolling ads, and no annoying need to register.
Even more importantly, it needs to be easy to pay. The reason premium content is doomed is that people just can't be bothered. I have to get out my credit card and enter all my details just to access one article in the Herald? Then I have to do it all over again to read an op-ed in the New York Times? No way. It has to be very straightforward, involving no more than a couple of clicks each time.
Content aggregators such as Google, Yahoo and MSN could be candidates to act as such brokers. Most people already have a trusting relationship with at least two of these companies, and would be prepared to have them handle their transactions. Users could choose from a range of deals, just as you can pay x cents per text to your cellphone provider, or get unlimited for $10 per month as part of a different plan.
In fact, a “brokering” system like I've described already exists in a sense. The comparison is with the major databases which compile medical literature, such as Ovid, or legal and journalistic material, such as LexisNexis. These database providers mainly interact with large institutions such as universities, and members of those insititutions can access the content as part of their study or employment.
Categories: blogs, internet, google, adsense, media
This could be done through a "broker" with whom users would have an account, and who would deduct the appropriate amount when a user accessed a participating content provider's site. Content aggregators such as Google, Yahoo or MSN would be obvious candidates to become such brokers, but it could easily be somebody else.
Such a system could support the viability of more small and medium-sized publications and higher-quality blogs; it could even help breathe new life into those venerable media insititutions that are currently failing financially.
******************************************************
In response to Trevor Butterworth's Financial Times article on blogging, many people (myself included) posted comments defending the potential of blogs. In particular, it was felt he had underestimated the possibilities for comment by niche experts, or for a fresher, less constrained journalism.
But there was one point that couldn't be denied: right now, nobody is making much money. Butterworth quoted two women who run a hugely popular gossip site which receives up to 100,000 hits a day as saying that they make "more than a case of beer, but not enough to quit our day jobs".
What he didn't acknowledge was that the puzzle of how to turn traffic into cash is just as tricky for established media and prominent print publications as it is for amateur bloggers. It's become clear that people love sifting through the great shifting sands of information and opinion on the internet. It's just that no one has quite figured out how to appropriately reward those who generate it.
Traditional print media has varied in how it has embraced the internet - ranging from the simplicity, verve and openness of the Observer / Guardian to the tardy, somewhat clunky approach of the likes of the New York Times.
But no one is that far ahead in a business sense. The differences seem to come down to philosophy; the Guardian sees being read as a good thing in itself, a chance to spread and promote their brand. Others have viewed the internet as a threat and have somewhat resentfully posted a minimum number of articles, with the rest protected as "premium content", for which you must pay a fee.
The owners of the New Zealand Herald fall into the latter category. That paper's experiment with "premium content" has been rightly lampooned in the New Zealand blogosphere. I mean, when you can buy the print edition of the Herald for $1.50, and read a huge array of erudite comment from throughout the world for free, are you really going to go to the trouble of getting out your credit card and coughing up $2.99, or whatever, to access the Herald's op-ed writers?
Most magazines and niche publications have gone for a mixed model: they provide a third to a half of their content free online, usually with the requirement of free registration; the rest is available to subscribers only.
Meanwhile, most bloggers continue rely on "pay-per-click" advertising to earn revenue. Overwhelmingly, this is through Google's AdSense scheme. Google makes code available for content providers, such as bloggers, to post on their web sites. Google's robots then automatically check out the content on the web site, and, in theory at least, assign it appropriate ads. Advertisers pay Google for each click on an ad, a portion of which is passed on to the content provider.
There are problems with this model. First, it is open to abuse, both through "click fraud" (people generating artificially large numbers of clicks on their website ads) and by sites set up to be "ad farms". Usually with minimal or no content, these sites simply have large numbers of ads, and often use a misspelling of a popular site (e.g wikipeda.org or crikcet.org) as a domain name, in order to attract traffic.
Secondly, Google has been less than fully transparent both about what percentage of advertising revenue goes to the content provider, and their process for assigning ads to pages. Sometimes they just seem to be running a big experiment, and I'm not the only one to wonder in frustration how ads are selected for my pages.
In any case, traditional, static ads don't seem to provide a decent revenue stream for anyone. Otherwise there wouldn't be the fuss about "premium content", and respectable sites wouldn't keep throwing up ever more intrusive dynamic ads which crawl across your screen and hover for about 10 seconds before you can close them down. These are infuriating; I don't think they're going to be the answer either.
So, if you count time as money, at the moment pretty much everyone is making a loss. Yet in theory the internet should provide an ideal medium for a great range of publications to be viable. Print publishing has traditionally involved sinking a large amount of money into machinery, paper and distribution, quite apart from assembling the content. And mostly, the audience has been limited by geography. These days, most surviving publications are either very big and corporate, or very small and niche-oriented.
On the internet, however, production and distribution costs are practically zero, and the potential audience is almost unlimited. The maths suggest that with a large audience paying small, even tiny amounts, many different providers should be able to make at least a modest living. So what's going wrong? Why is everybody struggling?
You might answer that the internet is seen as one big freebie and people just aren't prepared to pay directly for the swathes of information they feel it is their right to access. I don't believe that's the case. People are prepared to fritter away their money on things they value less than their online reading. Look at texting, in particular at people's readiness to spend money on text-message voting on music shows such as C4. I myself end up losing about $20-25 per month through overuse of my eftpos card, because it's convenient and I don't notice that I'm paying.
The problem is that payment for internet content is being demanded in the wrong format. Take the online magazine subscription for example. Many of these are pretty cheap. But for not more much more you can get a print subscription. It does make sense to get a print subscription to your favourite couple of magazines. You get to read through all the articles and reviews, do the crosswords, take the magazine to bed and fall asleep with it. You can pile back copies on your bookshelf and let visitors know how erudite / left-wing / neoliberal / avant-garde you are.
But an online subscription? Do you really want to pore over the magazine's entire content hunched in front of your computer? And once you've subscribed to one, where do you stop? The whole point of the internet is that you jump from page to page, searching for content, digesting and comparing opinion. Will you now need to stump up for full access to the 10 or 12 other publications you regularly check? The most interesting premium content might be in The Nation one week, and Science the next.
The unit of payment needs to be much smaller and more flexible. The precedent is Apple's iTunes store, which lets users download songs for 99c a time. Now, a song is a more substantive piece of work than even the hardest-hitting article, so the equivalent would be 5c or even 2c at a time. Let's say you look at 20 news articles (1-2c) in a day, and 10 op-ed pieces (5c). For less than 1/3 of a coffee, you get full content, no scrolling ads, and no annoying need to register.
Even more importantly, it needs to be easy to pay. The reason premium content is doomed is that people just can't be bothered. I have to get out my credit card and enter all my details just to access one article in the Herald? Then I have to do it all over again to read an op-ed in the New York Times? No way. It has to be very straightforward, involving no more than a couple of clicks each time.
How could this happen? You would need somebody to act as a broker for a wide variety of content providers. The broker would set themselves up to accept payments and provide internet users with an account. They would then deduct your little 2c payments from your account each time you wanted to view a web page that carried a price tag. Content providers would sign up with a broker, set their prices, and have their share of the payments passed through to them.
Content aggregators such as Google, Yahoo and MSN could be candidates to act as such brokers. Most people already have a trusting relationship with at least two of these companies, and would be prepared to have them handle their transactions. Users could choose from a range of deals, just as you can pay x cents per text to your cellphone provider, or get unlimited for $10 per month as part of a different plan.
Of course, it could just as well be someone else, and in fact somebody new is perhaps more likely, since exisiting players often find it hard to see past their current paradigm.
In fact, a “brokering” system like I've described already exists in a sense. The comparison is with the major databases which compile medical literature, such as Ovid, or legal and journalistic material, such as LexisNexis. These database providers mainly interact with large institutions such as universities, and members of those insititutions can access the content as part of their study or employment.
The challenge is to adapt this to the democratic, freewheeling, piecemeal exchange of information and views on the wider internet.
If this is possible, everyone could benefit. With only a moderate amount of traffic, bloggers and small-scale magazines would be able to pay the bills and break their dependence on advertising. We should then see a lift in the quality of blogs, the evolution of new forms and styles, and something a bit closer to a democratic media revolution than what we have now.
This is something that serious writers and editors should care about as much as amateur, bedroom-bound bloggers. After years of bemoaning the lack of any consistently quality publication in New Zealand, I was chastened recently to find out that several of my most admired titles, including the New Yorker, make huge losses, and only survive through the patronage of billionaire philanthropists. And, as it was pointed in the comments thread on Trevor Butterworth's article, the Financial Times itself operates in the red.
So, are serious publications just vanity publishing then? Maybe some would be happy to smugly argue that indeed they are nothing more than the self-satisfied twitterings of a cultural elite. But most of us would like to believe this isn't so. Unleashing the economies of scale of the internet offers the chance to prove it, just as it offers the better bedroom op-ed writers fair reward for their labour. The future for blogs is the future for everyone.
Categories: blogs, internet, google, adsense, media
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Blog on Blog
Financial Times journalist Trevor Butterworth has written a thoughtful, sceptical article on blogging. His mission: to deflate the hype which suggests that blogs are the new big thing and will take over a substantial part of the role of the mainstream media.
He points out that almost no bloggers make any money, and that most political blogging, at least, is parasitical ("fleas sucking from fleas") on traditional media, where people still do real research and write proper, thoughtful articles. He laments the low quality, stream of consciousness style of the 4-5 posts-a-day aesthetic, and wonders what George Orwell or Karl Marx would have been like, had they been able to blog.
Mostly commonsensical stuff, spiced with a bit of traditional journo's defensiveness. He does feel the need to throw in a "but what are blogs" bit; supposedly 62 percent of people still don't know. Hmmm...
The FT have set up a blog for people to comment on the original article, so I thought I'd have my say. I was preceded by about 80 previous comments, though many of them are Trevor responding in full to other people's comments. Apparently he just got kicked out of the wi-fi cafe where he was hanging out - just after I had posted my comment. So I don't know whether I'll get a response to my two cents, which is below:
[start Bidsta comment]
Trevor, great article. I agree with most of what you say: blogs are way overhyped, both as something “new”, and as a challenge to the role of the mainstream media. As you note, the economics are terrible at the moment, even for popular bloggers.
And yes, opinion has now become the new pornography. It’s a flea-on-flea feeding frenzy. And at some point there has to be some meat, so the likes of the New York Times will always be needed to generate some substance and act as an anchor for debates.
You wonder what the ability to blog might have done for writers like Orwell who were overinclined to share their every impression and opinion. It’s true that the ease of publishing leads to an atomization of discourse, and acts against the discipline needed to write something half decent. Every blogger knows the pressure to keep content rolling in order to maintain even the small audience he might have (“post or perish”, you might say).
But I think your discussion is overall a little pessimistic. You look at blogs as a media phenomenon and conclude that they’re not the revolution they’re cracked up to be. But you pass a little lightly over the role they can have in holding the established media to account. The endless dissecting and deconstructing of news articles may get tiresome, but it’s better than just sucking up the scandal mongering and warmed-over press releases forwarded to us by the corporate press.
For the non-Europeans among us who were never able to sift through the erudite alternatives of the Times, The Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent, it’s exciting not to have to simply be passively instructed on “the issues” by an increasingly monolithic media establishment.
Also, though you discuss the LA Times’ disastrous wiki-torial, you don’t mention at all the great triumph of internet democratism: Wikipedia, which is reckoned to be as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and is infinitely more up-to-date and in tune with the zeitgeist. The Invisible Hand of the information market really works!
Is it all just pointless scribbling? Marx was obviously suffering from cabin fever when he grumbled of his and Engels’ journalism that “Ce n’est pas le guerre” – but there’s a flipside to being action-oriented. You can heroically struggle for years, but if no one ever documents it, did it really happen? If so, what did it mean?
I’ve recently been reading John Pilger’s collection of investigative journalism, which besides being heroic, inspiring stuff, gives an understanding of how difficult it can be to take an unpopular angle or uncover something that people have an interest in not knowing about.
It’s just possible that blogs could make this kind of writing easier. At the least, they offer a medium for reporting and opinion which is fresher, more direct, more personal, perhaps more gonzo, than would fit within the constraints of most publications concerned with their advertisers and their circulation.
An example that comes to mind is Steven Vincent’s posts from Iraq (though tragically, he paid for what he wrote with his life). They had an immediacy not matched by anything I’ve seen in the standard media.
So, while blogs are not some revolutionary phenomenon that will render other media obsolescent, they shouldn’t just be dismissed as overheated chatter. At best they might provide a contribution to the truth not found elsewhere. And who knows – someone might even figure out a way to make money from them sometime. [end Bidsta comment]
Of course, the layers of irony get quite dizzying. The article was all about blogging and how it's just flea-sucking ad infinitum. The article, reliant on those very blogs for its topic, itself became a blog, where it has attracted blog comments. Now here I am, indulgently blogging on the comments on the blog of the comment on the blogs.
I guess while we're examining our navels, civilization might just collapse. Now that would make an interesting post.
Categories: blogs, Trevor Butterworth, Financial Times
He points out that almost no bloggers make any money, and that most political blogging, at least, is parasitical ("fleas sucking from fleas") on traditional media, where people still do real research and write proper, thoughtful articles. He laments the low quality, stream of consciousness style of the 4-5 posts-a-day aesthetic, and wonders what George Orwell or Karl Marx would have been like, had they been able to blog.
Mostly commonsensical stuff, spiced with a bit of traditional journo's defensiveness. He does feel the need to throw in a "but what are blogs" bit; supposedly 62 percent of people still don't know. Hmmm...
The FT have set up a blog for people to comment on the original article, so I thought I'd have my say. I was preceded by about 80 previous comments, though many of them are Trevor responding in full to other people's comments. Apparently he just got kicked out of the wi-fi cafe where he was hanging out - just after I had posted my comment. So I don't know whether I'll get a response to my two cents, which is below:
[start Bidsta comment]
Trevor, great article. I agree with most of what you say: blogs are way overhyped, both as something “new”, and as a challenge to the role of the mainstream media. As you note, the economics are terrible at the moment, even for popular bloggers.
And yes, opinion has now become the new pornography. It’s a flea-on-flea feeding frenzy. And at some point there has to be some meat, so the likes of the New York Times will always be needed to generate some substance and act as an anchor for debates.
You wonder what the ability to blog might have done for writers like Orwell who were overinclined to share their every impression and opinion. It’s true that the ease of publishing leads to an atomization of discourse, and acts against the discipline needed to write something half decent. Every blogger knows the pressure to keep content rolling in order to maintain even the small audience he might have (“post or perish”, you might say).
But I think your discussion is overall a little pessimistic. You look at blogs as a media phenomenon and conclude that they’re not the revolution they’re cracked up to be. But you pass a little lightly over the role they can have in holding the established media to account. The endless dissecting and deconstructing of news articles may get tiresome, but it’s better than just sucking up the scandal mongering and warmed-over press releases forwarded to us by the corporate press.
For the non-Europeans among us who were never able to sift through the erudite alternatives of the Times, The Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent, it’s exciting not to have to simply be passively instructed on “the issues” by an increasingly monolithic media establishment.
Also, though you discuss the LA Times’ disastrous wiki-torial, you don’t mention at all the great triumph of internet democratism: Wikipedia, which is reckoned to be as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and is infinitely more up-to-date and in tune with the zeitgeist. The Invisible Hand of the information market really works!
Is it all just pointless scribbling? Marx was obviously suffering from cabin fever when he grumbled of his and Engels’ journalism that “Ce n’est pas le guerre” – but there’s a flipside to being action-oriented. You can heroically struggle for years, but if no one ever documents it, did it really happen? If so, what did it mean?
I’ve recently been reading John Pilger’s collection of investigative journalism, which besides being heroic, inspiring stuff, gives an understanding of how difficult it can be to take an unpopular angle or uncover something that people have an interest in not knowing about.
It’s just possible that blogs could make this kind of writing easier. At the least, they offer a medium for reporting and opinion which is fresher, more direct, more personal, perhaps more gonzo, than would fit within the constraints of most publications concerned with their advertisers and their circulation.
An example that comes to mind is Steven Vincent’s posts from Iraq (though tragically, he paid for what he wrote with his life). They had an immediacy not matched by anything I’ve seen in the standard media.
So, while blogs are not some revolutionary phenomenon that will render other media obsolescent, they shouldn’t just be dismissed as overheated chatter. At best they might provide a contribution to the truth not found elsewhere. And who knows – someone might even figure out a way to make money from them sometime. [end Bidsta comment]
Of course, the layers of irony get quite dizzying. The article was all about blogging and how it's just flea-sucking ad infinitum. The article, reliant on those very blogs for its topic, itself became a blog, where it has attracted blog comments. Now here I am, indulgently blogging on the comments on the blog of the comment on the blogs.
I guess while we're examining our navels, civilization might just collapse. Now that would make an interesting post.
Categories: blogs, Trevor Butterworth, Financial Times
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Dawn Choruses
The good news: when Wellington composer Nic MacGowan broadcast a 25-minue "futuristic concert" consisting of wailing sounds dubbed the Synth Birds of Dawn, at 6:30 am from the hills surrounding Island Bay, at least eleven people complained to noise control.
It's heartening that people are now prepared to demand the same respect for peace in the morning hours, as in the evening.
On the other hand, McGowan was clearly unrepentant, and of the view that complaints were driven by mere philistinism. He appeared on the front page of the Dominion Post, defiant on a hilltop beside his Dawn Synth machine. The sounds had apparently been inspired by the dawn chorus and, god forbid, church bells.
The synthesizers and speakers on three hilltops were intended to create "soft creature-like tones" across the valley. "We were basically playing Island Bay like an instrument" he said. "it was an incredible sound, you get all these slapback echoes".
Right on. But get this, dude. At 6:30 am, many people are bloody well sleeping. I wouldn't care if it were the choirs of seraphim themselves that were singing - my response would be the same as when the unidentified council contractor chose 6:55 am as a good time to clean up the verge outside my window with a weedeater the other day.
In our rather frantic modern existence, sleep is a rare, precious commodity. And for me, and I suspect quite a few others, it is sweetest of all in the early hours of the morning. As much as we try and squeeze ourselves into the 9-5 mould demanded by this society, our metabolisms know better. You early risers are welcome to leap out of bed before the crack of dawn - but please, give us the same respect as we do to you when you stagger off to bed bleary-eyed at 10pm.
The upshot of the compaints were that McGowan decided to shift the time of his second "concert" planned for the following morning - to 7:30 am. I'm just glad I live very far away from Island Bay.
In the end, though, I understand his creative urges. So I'd like to pass this message to the misunderstood composer:
Nic, I too was disappointed that many Island Bay residents failed to appreciate your futuristic and innovative concert the other morning. I appreciate what you were trying to do.
You see, I'm an aspiring experimental musician too. Right now I'm interested in the sounds created by the interaction of organic and industrial objects. One thing I'd like to do is take a stick, a piece of driftwood, maybe, and run it up and down the colorsteel roof of a house. The driftwood the bow; the roof the instrument. A meeting of the driftwood's weathered curves, shaped by wind and tide, with the rigidly corrugated, industrial surface of the steel. You know?
Nic, can I come over and do it at your place? I would "play" your house. I'll be over to do a 30 -minute concert, ok? Starting at 11:30 pm on Tuesday night?
Categories: Wellington, noise, sleep
It's heartening that people are now prepared to demand the same respect for peace in the morning hours, as in the evening.
On the other hand, McGowan was clearly unrepentant, and of the view that complaints were driven by mere philistinism. He appeared on the front page of the Dominion Post, defiant on a hilltop beside his Dawn Synth machine. The sounds had apparently been inspired by the dawn chorus and, god forbid, church bells.
The synthesizers and speakers on three hilltops were intended to create "soft creature-like tones" across the valley. "We were basically playing Island Bay like an instrument" he said. "it was an incredible sound, you get all these slapback echoes".
Right on. But get this, dude. At 6:30 am, many people are bloody well sleeping. I wouldn't care if it were the choirs of seraphim themselves that were singing - my response would be the same as when the unidentified council contractor chose 6:55 am as a good time to clean up the verge outside my window with a weedeater the other day.
In our rather frantic modern existence, sleep is a rare, precious commodity. And for me, and I suspect quite a few others, it is sweetest of all in the early hours of the morning. As much as we try and squeeze ourselves into the 9-5 mould demanded by this society, our metabolisms know better. You early risers are welcome to leap out of bed before the crack of dawn - but please, give us the same respect as we do to you when you stagger off to bed bleary-eyed at 10pm.
The upshot of the compaints were that McGowan decided to shift the time of his second "concert" planned for the following morning - to 7:30 am. I'm just glad I live very far away from Island Bay.
In the end, though, I understand his creative urges. So I'd like to pass this message to the misunderstood composer:
Nic, I too was disappointed that many Island Bay residents failed to appreciate your futuristic and innovative concert the other morning. I appreciate what you were trying to do.
You see, I'm an aspiring experimental musician too. Right now I'm interested in the sounds created by the interaction of organic and industrial objects. One thing I'd like to do is take a stick, a piece of driftwood, maybe, and run it up and down the colorsteel roof of a house. The driftwood the bow; the roof the instrument. A meeting of the driftwood's weathered curves, shaped by wind and tide, with the rigidly corrugated, industrial surface of the steel. You know?
Nic, can I come over and do it at your place? I would "play" your house. I'll be over to do a 30 -minute concert, ok? Starting at 11:30 pm on Tuesday night?
Categories: Wellington, noise, sleep
Sunday, February 12, 2006
The Daily Minion is Online
The Daily Minion is a New Zealand-slanted news satire and absurdist site, which is now up and running at: http://www.dailyminion.com
It is in pretty rudimentary form at present. Depending on feedback, it may be enhanced and expanded in the future with more images, more sophisticated layout and some interactive elements.
Despite the title, it will not be updated daily. Nor is there the intention to produce entirely new "issues" on a regular basis. Rather, the content will be updated on a rolling basis, with new content being added to the front page and the old content being retired to the archives (under the headings of news, sport, entertainment, etc. that you can see on the left-hand menu).
Any feedback would be welcomed. The editorial staff can be contacted at editor@dailyminion.com There is also a link to this address on the site itself.
It is in pretty rudimentary form at present. Depending on feedback, it may be enhanced and expanded in the future with more images, more sophisticated layout and some interactive elements.
Despite the title, it will not be updated daily. Nor is there the intention to produce entirely new "issues" on a regular basis. Rather, the content will be updated on a rolling basis, with new content being added to the front page and the old content being retired to the archives (under the headings of news, sport, entertainment, etc. that you can see on the left-hand menu).
Any feedback would be welcomed. The editorial staff can be contacted at editor@dailyminion.com There is also a link to this address on the site itself.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Social Lives
I'm wondering what other people think who've moved to a new town or returned somewhere after a significant absence. How hard is it to meet people and make friends? How does New Zealand compare to other places? How does Wellington?
Those who know me will know that this is a favourite topic. Several different things have set me to thinking about it again recently.
One: in an idle moment, following a couple of links from David Farrar's blog (I don't recommend doing this too often; you will waste a lot of time), I ended up reading about the tortured social and sexual interactions of a group of Auckland twentysomethings. One girl in particular appeared to be quite a nasty piece of work. But one comment on her blog (which was one of the links from DPF's site), gave me pause. To paraphrase, she said:
"Anyway, why would anyone want to hang out with people they don't know? If you don't have your own friends already you must be a total loser"
Though her thoughts and actions, described on her own blog and elsewhere, appeared to border on the sociopathic, this rang true; maybe she was just being open and unabashed about what seems to be a widely (if perhaps subconsciously) held view.
This would explain why it's so tortuous trying to make friends in this country. If you don't already have a set of "mates", you're a bit suspect -- and this of course exacerbates the problem.
Another stimulus for thinking about this issue was a visit from a friend who lives in Sydney and is thinking about moving to Wellington with his girlfriend. We went out for dinner and drinks last weekend, which was, of course, sevens weekend. Wellington was alive with the carnival spirit, full of bonhomie and joie de vivre (you see, us Anglo Saxons don't even have the right words). We had a great time; it was really difficult trying to convince him it's not normally like that. He in turn claimed that Sydney was truly unfriendly, and wouldn't believe that Wellington was worse.
Another was this amusing article by Will Hide in the Observer about going looking for romance in New York. He writes:
Second, if you're alone but hoping not to be, Americans are much more approachable than we British, be it at the food store, the pub or the gym. You can chat to complete strangers without feeling like a total psycho. Third, if you're simply on your own and happy that way, New York is a great place just to hang out because everyone does it. Going to the cinema alone in Britain? Sad git. Going to the cinema alone in New York? Hey, cool, a chance for some quality 'me' time. Lunch for one in Blighty? Obviously Billy No-mates. Lunch for one in Manhattan? Alluring. A bit mysterious even.
Swap "New Zealand" for "Britain" in this passage, and the above is a pretty fair description of attitudes.
After much discussion and argument on this topic, I've modified my views a little bit. First, it's not fair to make comparisons with travelling, when you always meet people and make friends - partly because you run into a lot of like-minded people, partly because you're perceived as exotic and interesting, and partly because you yourself behave more openly.
Secondly, there's a continuum here. New Zealand is probably better than, say, northern England. Wellington is better than Christchurch. The United States has a noticeably more open social culture, at least in major urban areas. Very big cities are best of all -- it seems strange to me that many pople don't like the big-city anonymity which allows you to reinvent and renew yourself, and consequently seems to make people more open and interesting.
But it's frustrating to read the advice that pops up on places like MSN about how to get over your breakup / meet "dates" / lose weight / look for a new career. This is specific to the American context, and is always telling you to get involved and join things, where you're bound to meet lots of like-minded people.
Thing is, I've got involved in or joined several things in my life here. All of them were because I particularly wanted to do the relevant activity, rather than to meet people--though I certainly would have been open to that. But in all cases, it was the wider social situation writ small. People were always nice enough, but as soon as said activity was over we usually all disappeared back to our own lives as quickly as possible.
One thing driving this is of course the tyranny of the couple, which dominates social interactions of every type in Wellington. It's extraordinary; in Third World, Catholic Peru, there seemed to be hordes of people who were at least in principle single. In secular, late-marrying, urban, highly educated Wellington, the single person over 25 is practically an endangered species.
Supposedly there's a surplus of single women in this town (the fabled "man drought"). If so, it seems they have decided to protest the demographic imbalance by collectively going into hiding.
But I digress -- that's all for another post. Even if you discount way mass coupledom limits socialising -- since two people have exponentially more inertia than one -- it's just really hard to get social traction in this town. If you do join something, or start a new job, don't expect people to go "Hey - you're new. Do you want to come with us to have a drink / go to the game / watch a movie?" That's American stuff. Everyone will be off to hang out with their "partner" or "mates", and will expect that you will too.
If you're around for, say a year, there may be some kind of compulsory social event (say, a company party, or end-of-season prizegiving) where people from the group will see you out of the normal context and figure that you might be non-toxic. Over a couple of drinks, you might find some common ground with one or two people. Perhaps you strike a rapport, which could even lead to hanging out with them again. But you must be patient.
Anyway, this is just me opining, when I'd asked for other views. Maybe it's just me. What do you think? Has anyone else experienced the same problems? Is New Zealand any worse than anywhere else?
Categories: Wellington, New Zealand, Social Life
Those who know me will know that this is a favourite topic. Several different things have set me to thinking about it again recently.
One: in an idle moment, following a couple of links from David Farrar's blog (I don't recommend doing this too often; you will waste a lot of time), I ended up reading about the tortured social and sexual interactions of a group of Auckland twentysomethings. One girl in particular appeared to be quite a nasty piece of work. But one comment on her blog (which was one of the links from DPF's site), gave me pause. To paraphrase, she said:
"Anyway, why would anyone want to hang out with people they don't know? If you don't have your own friends already you must be a total loser"
Though her thoughts and actions, described on her own blog and elsewhere, appeared to border on the sociopathic, this rang true; maybe she was just being open and unabashed about what seems to be a widely (if perhaps subconsciously) held view.
This would explain why it's so tortuous trying to make friends in this country. If you don't already have a set of "mates", you're a bit suspect -- and this of course exacerbates the problem.
Another stimulus for thinking about this issue was a visit from a friend who lives in Sydney and is thinking about moving to Wellington with his girlfriend. We went out for dinner and drinks last weekend, which was, of course, sevens weekend. Wellington was alive with the carnival spirit, full of bonhomie and joie de vivre (you see, us Anglo Saxons don't even have the right words). We had a great time; it was really difficult trying to convince him it's not normally like that. He in turn claimed that Sydney was truly unfriendly, and wouldn't believe that Wellington was worse.
Another was this amusing article by Will Hide in the Observer about going looking for romance in New York. He writes:
Second, if you're alone but hoping not to be, Americans are much more approachable than we British, be it at the food store, the pub or the gym. You can chat to complete strangers without feeling like a total psycho. Third, if you're simply on your own and happy that way, New York is a great place just to hang out because everyone does it. Going to the cinema alone in Britain? Sad git. Going to the cinema alone in New York? Hey, cool, a chance for some quality 'me' time. Lunch for one in Blighty? Obviously Billy No-mates. Lunch for one in Manhattan? Alluring. A bit mysterious even.
Swap "New Zealand" for "Britain" in this passage, and the above is a pretty fair description of attitudes.
After much discussion and argument on this topic, I've modified my views a little bit. First, it's not fair to make comparisons with travelling, when you always meet people and make friends - partly because you run into a lot of like-minded people, partly because you're perceived as exotic and interesting, and partly because you yourself behave more openly.
Secondly, there's a continuum here. New Zealand is probably better than, say, northern England. Wellington is better than Christchurch. The United States has a noticeably more open social culture, at least in major urban areas. Very big cities are best of all -- it seems strange to me that many pople don't like the big-city anonymity which allows you to reinvent and renew yourself, and consequently seems to make people more open and interesting.
But it's frustrating to read the advice that pops up on places like MSN about how to get over your breakup / meet "dates" / lose weight / look for a new career. This is specific to the American context, and is always telling you to get involved and join things, where you're bound to meet lots of like-minded people.
Thing is, I've got involved in or joined several things in my life here. All of them were because I particularly wanted to do the relevant activity, rather than to meet people--though I certainly would have been open to that. But in all cases, it was the wider social situation writ small. People were always nice enough, but as soon as said activity was over we usually all disappeared back to our own lives as quickly as possible.
One thing driving this is of course the tyranny of the couple, which dominates social interactions of every type in Wellington. It's extraordinary; in Third World, Catholic Peru, there seemed to be hordes of people who were at least in principle single. In secular, late-marrying, urban, highly educated Wellington, the single person over 25 is practically an endangered species.
Supposedly there's a surplus of single women in this town (the fabled "man drought"). If so, it seems they have decided to protest the demographic imbalance by collectively going into hiding.
But I digress -- that's all for another post. Even if you discount way mass coupledom limits socialising -- since two people have exponentially more inertia than one -- it's just really hard to get social traction in this town. If you do join something, or start a new job, don't expect people to go "Hey - you're new. Do you want to come with us to have a drink / go to the game / watch a movie?" That's American stuff. Everyone will be off to hang out with their "partner" or "mates", and will expect that you will too.
If you're around for, say a year, there may be some kind of compulsory social event (say, a company party, or end-of-season prizegiving) where people from the group will see you out of the normal context and figure that you might be non-toxic. Over a couple of drinks, you might find some common ground with one or two people. Perhaps you strike a rapport, which could even lead to hanging out with them again. But you must be patient.
Anyway, this is just me opining, when I'd asked for other views. Maybe it's just me. What do you think? Has anyone else experienced the same problems? Is New Zealand any worse than anywhere else?
Categories: Wellington, New Zealand, Social Life
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Charged with Taking a Walk on the Wild Side
A couple of days ago, "Once Were Warriors" director Lee Tamahori was arrested in Los Angeles in a police sting operation while wearing a woman's dress and wig. He had offered an undercover policeman sex in exchange for money, and was charged with prostitution and loitering in a public place.
While this news will have shocked or titillated some, my main reactions were:
1. They still run "sting" operations to catch transvestites soliciting? An undercover cop sits all night in a car and waits to snare unwary prostitutes so they can be charged with a misdemeanour? Is this really the wisest use of police resources?
2. You can get arrested for loitering?? Wow. I thought that was a joke about how in LA you can get charged with walking, but I guess not.
While this news will have shocked or titillated some, my main reactions were:
1. They still run "sting" operations to catch transvestites soliciting? An undercover cop sits all night in a car and waits to snare unwary prostitutes so they can be charged with a misdemeanour? Is this really the wisest use of police resources?
2. You can get arrested for loitering?? Wow. I thought that was a joke about how in LA you can get charged with walking, but I guess not.
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