A Different Drummer

They might be undervaluing me slightly, but I'm not one to complain :)



Its good to know I have some backup collateral if times get tough :)

It was an empty street in a small, plain little town, and I was out the front of the train station, trying to work out which country I was in. This was a first for me, and one of those things that you want to have on a "100 things to do before I die" list - I needed to work out which country I was in, preferably as soon as possible.

It wasnt such a difficult task. I had a 50/50 chance of guessing - I was either in the Netherlands or Belgium. But after that, there wasnt really much guiding me. I was on the train from Rotterdam to Brussels, daydreaming and listening to my music, when the train stopped. We stayed still for about twenty minutes, until the announcer told us, in Dutch, then French, then English, that the train had to stop due to "technical challenges", and that we needed to get out and wait for the next one, which would be arriving in 45 minutes. This was going to make me late for a meeting, so I needed to make a phone call - but first, I thought, I should really work out which country I am in.

The station was called "Essen", and all the signs were in Dutch - but that doesnt mean much, because this half of Belgium is all Dutch/Flemish speaking. The architecture, street signs and general look of the place didnt help, because there is really little visual difference between the Netherlands and Flemish Belgium.

Eventually, after walking around for a while, I found the answer, in the form of a "Belgecom" payphone box - I was in Belgium. I suppose I could have just walked into a store and asked which country I was in - but this was not in my plans for two reasons - one, it was just too lame a question to ask someone behind the counter in a small town, and two, it would have been too easy and spoilt the challenge.

I've had a good month for this surreal international intercultural weirdness. In London, Sarah took me to a huge Diwaali (Hindu religious festival), held in Trafalgar square. There was some speeches, followed by "cultural dances". I have to admit, seeing a crowd of 20,000 people cheer on a group of British-Indian girls in full Indian dress, dancing on a huge stage to "Waterloo" by Abba, at the base of Nelson's column, was wonderful on too many levels. I'm sure Lord Nelson would have been proud. Confused, but proud.

Now, I'm sitting in a shoebox sized bar out the front of Brussels North station, waiting for the train home to Rotterdam. Its a Belgian old man bar, and they are all merrily drunk on Stella Artois, singing along in unision to an electronic remix of "California Dreaming". The fun never stops.....

For something fairly mundane, I needed to know the names of each day of the week, in Dutch. I googled, and got this. I dont think I could really ask for much more.

O' oracle, tell me truths....

After a brief Waking Life viewing on the train home from London, and I just felt compelled to scribe down and post this stunner of a monologue from one of the characters, a message to humanity from an alien about to leave Earth:

"You have began to find your answers, and although it will seem difficult, the rewards will be great. Excercise your human mind as fully as possible, knowing that it is only an excercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savour the input from all the senses, feel the joy, the sorrow, the laughter, the empathy, compassion, and tuck the emotional memory in your travel bag..."

For the Waking Life fans out there - yes, I'm looking at you....Here is something pretty cool. Obviously, if you havent seen Waking Life, do it as soon as possible - you are lucky in a way, because a wonderful treasure of the world is awaiting you.....

Well, the last few days in London have been great, a much better experience of London than previous times. Its not that I had negative experiences here in the past, just indifferent ones. I think I appreciated the place more after being away from "my" people for a couple of years.

Being submersed in weirdness and foreign ways is one of my favourite things, but it really is nice to be in a country where you feel among your own, at least for a few days every couple of years. I'd kind of forgotten that English is actually spoken as a native language in some places - having become so used to travelling and living in non-English countries, I had stopped even trying to read random street posters, or listen to announcements in railway stations, or eavesdrop on interesting conversations between groups at nearby tables in cafes.

Beyond language, its just a certain way of life, a way of being, that you just immediately understand and feel a part of, probably among any country in the English speaking world, but particularly the Commonwealth.

Even getting to eat some good Chinese food for once made me feel strangely at home.

Anyhow, its back to Rotterdam tonight, and hopefully the deflation of returning to a decidedly smaller and more average city than London will be offset by a weekend in Amsterdam, which kicks 6 different flavours of arse. I'm going to miss the tube though - I certainly know the underground of London better than the above ground.

I really cherish those times when you discover a new musician, book, film, website or whatever, and can just endlessly soak yourself in its greatness for days on end, never becoming sick of it. The book you cant put down, the album you can listen to 10 times over, the blog that you can read the entire archives of....These new discoveries are a big part of what makes life worth living for me.

Well, right now, I am on a big time Nick Drake binge. Just fucking incredible. I got to Sarah's house on Saturday and she had him playing in her room, and since then I have either being listening or thinking about this incredible music.

A member of the "died in mid-1970's in mid to late twenties from a drug overdose" crowd, I'm just amazed that I've never heard of him before. Such phenomenally beautiful music - just go and find some right now, I promise it will enrich your life no end.....

The most interesting story from the whole New Orleans disaster may end up being the one that isn't a story at all....

And they came back to back, as a pair. Disconnected yet the same....

On the way home from central station tonight I am walking down an empty alleyway, nobody around. I hear the sound of a couple of small motorcycle engines coming behind me and move to the side of the road. Then, crusing past me, come two motor scooters, both with their front wheels high in the air. It is a traffic policemen and a pizza delivery boy, riding along side each other laughing their asses of, having a compteition to see who can ride their scooter on one wheel the longest. It was beautiful.

I get home, flip on my computer, and get on MSN. I start speaking with Frances, who is currently on a sales trip in Norway. They are stuck inside the house and can't get out, because a rowdy gathering of "Blood Anarchists" as they are known in Norway, have starting going nuts on the street outside and busting shit up, with a heavy live punk metal soundtrack.

Humanity is still performing performing its magic show at any moment, all across the world.....

My Norwegian weekend was like dipping my toes into the water of that whole part of the world - Scandinavia seems to be a great place to be and I am looking forward to spending some proper time there someday. I was chairing NTMS, the AIESEC conference for new members in Norway, so like any conference anywhere in the world, it was more like experiencing Norway from within the bubble of a conference - hotels, airport buses, etc. But what I saw of the place, I really liked.

What I saw of the people - well, that was another story. Norwegians are a really wonderful people. and far more different from the typical "western" mindset than I was expecting. They really have their own thing going on up there. On one side of things, there really is a modern day "Men of the North" Viking mode that the average Norwegian guy can enter into once the beer was flowing. I was absolutely confident that if I grabbed a bunch of the more loaded ones on Saturday night and found us a sturdy longboat, a solid round of pillaging could begin - provided the beer kept flowing.

Keeping the beer, or any consumer product, flowing, is actually a much more difficult task, especially when your a only carrying small amounts of insignificant European currency. Norway has a deceptively promising exchange rate of 8 Norwegian Krone to the euro, pretty much identical to the exchange rate of the Egyptain pound. But thats where the comparison ends. Prices in Norway are just incredible - almost a tourist attraction in itself. Paying 8 euro for a beer could concievably be promoted as a must-do experience, although I would reccomend promoting it to petrodollar rich Gulf Arabs and ironic Silicon Valley dot com billionaires rather than the average price wary tourist.

It is something worth seeing though, and I guess as a visible, living barometer of national wealth, prices in stores being roughly twice the level of London has to count for something.

The cool thing about Norway and Scandinavia in general is that they have two great, incredibly contrasting historical stereotypes or "roles" to live up to, and although both can be in conflict, both are something to be incredibly proud of. Theres the pillaging Viking routine, which is most valuable as an envigorating party trick (drunk people talking Norwegian sound consistently like they are planning the next raid), and theres the more modern trait, the great independant, civilised mediator of the world. As easy as it would of been to raise a vigorous manly raiding party in the evenings, in the daytime, I'm pretty sure I could have mobilised a team of 4 or 5 people who could be organising a two state solution in Tel Aviv with a few hours of preparation.

I was thinking about this a lot, and I couldnt stop relating it back to Australians. We are in many ways like the Irish - riding on the wave of one of the best national "brands" of any people in the world. Australia conjures up beaches, laid back party people, drinkers, sportmen, the innocent folk down under who are just having a good time, mate. I dont think this sells us short as badly as the Irish are with their national brand, which is essentially defined by alcohol alone. But maybe it would be cool for us to start outwardly positioning ourselves into a second model - keeping the first one, not only because its completely true, but because it is a good one to have. But can we get also be known for something a little more worldly?

The Norwegian equivelant of the laid back sun drenched Aussie, or the drunk drunk drunk Irishman, is the Viking. Rough beard flowing, cold ale in one hand being drunk from a horn, axe in the other, ready for a busy afternoons raiding and a long night of beer drinking and eating joints of roast meat with your hands. It appeals to a more primal conciousness of instant satisfaction, living on desires and a lot of things that will be permantly burned into the male conciousness, no matter how outdated it becomes when compared to our comfortable urban environment. But where the Norweians have gone one step ahead is to get together a secondary national trait, one reflecting the modern age. And its pretty sweet.

Norwegians are rich, generous capitalists who have made socialism work like nowhere else on earth. They are one of a few countries who havent pissed their oil money up the wall, instead using it to build a welfare state with the consistenly highest standard of living in the world, a massive $150 billion fund for the future, and absolutely no external debt. On top of all this, they are in many ways a role model for international co-operation, with incredibly effective international mediators, a huge international aid contribution, and Norwegians being seen everywhere in "international circles".

This probably wouldnt fit Australians, and we probably wouldnt want it to. Our independance isn't famous, and we are firmly on the "side" of the UK, and more importantly the US, in pretty much any major international issue. I suppose "pressure from Washington" could end up getting John Howard a gig as UN secretary general in 2007 (it nearly got Foreign Minister Alexander Downer appointed head of the International Atomic Energy Agency) , but I don't think we'd be fooling anybody.

Instead, I think we would fit a sort of globe trotting scientific/business leaders concept. Aussies have done super well in terms of top management in international business, as I pointed out on my blog last year. And Australian researchers and inventors are no slackers either.

Anyhow, all off topic. Congratulations Norway for that whole Norway thing you have going on up there. It was nice to be a part of it, if only for a few days, and I look forward to being there again soon. Hopefully, next time I will bring enough money to last for an afternoon....

I have been spending a lot of time talking to a really cool girl here who is from Iraq, and who's family went through seven degrees of hell before eventually getting the fuck out of the place and making it to Norway. I was chatting with her about the role of religion and morality in the Middle East, when I realised that it was Ramadan, and she wasnt fasting. So I wanted to work out her religion. The process of elimination began....

"Are you Sunni?" - No

"Shia" - No

"Christian" - No. I am.....I am from a smaller religion that you probably havent heard of....

That was like music to my ears. I relish this kind of stuff, and my determination to solve the puzzle took over...

"Zoroastrian?" - No

"Baha'i?" - No

"Jew?" - No

"Parsi?" - No

She had me defeated. I was clueless. I had to give up. I caved in, and asked her to tell me from what incredibly obscure religion she came from....

"I am a Mandean. There is only about 30,000 of us, and most have left Iraq. Saddam did not like Mandeans very much...."

Mandean hey? My good friend the Oracle can help me with this one......

"Mandaeanism is a religion which has been classified by scholars as Gnostic (a blanket term for various mostly mystical religions and sects, in the first century AD).

Since the 1st century AD the Mandaeans (Mandai) have mainly lived in the borderland areas of Iraq and Iran. Many have fled the region since the 1990s due to the unstable political climate and have migrated worldwide. This problem has worsened considerably since the US invasion of Iraq; over half of the community have emigrated and there is now considerable concern about the community's long-term viability. There is no official census of the Mandaeans; conservative guesses at current population size have been made in the range of 50,000 to 70,000."

You learn something new every day......

Um, yeah, as the title suggests, I'm in Norway. Bergen, actually.

My first reaction was - cold and expensive. Great. I'm in frigging Dublin again.....

Second, more considered reaction - pretty, mountains, snow, ocean and city all in one delicious bite sized packet. Lovely. Still cold and expensive though, but you get over these things.....

Ramadan starts today. Well, it starts today in the Middle East, and tomorrow in Europe. But I'll be fasting in spiritual brotherhood with my Egyptian brethren, so I begin today.

Ramadan was one of the most amazing experiences of my life last year in Egypt. I wrote a few postings during that time, which you can read if you are interested. I also finished off Ramadan with a trip to one of the most amazing places on earth, which you can also read all about.

Anyhow, Ramadan Kareem, brothers and sisters.

One sure sign of a rebuilding country on the full path to nationhood - its politicians learn to start talking some serious smack at the leaders of other countries.

Iraq, therefore, must well be on the way, after the Iraqi Interior Minister gave Saudi Arabia a proper bollocking, in response to Saudi suggestions that Iraq is being overly influenced by its Shia neighbour Iran. Says the BBC:

"Bayan Jabr said Iraqis were proud of their country, and would not accept lessons on human rights and democracy from Saudi Arabia......

He added: "This Iraq is the cradle of civilisation that taught humanity reading and writing, and some Bedouin riding a camel wants to teach us......."

Oooh, Snap! That last one has to hurt. After spending a year in Egypt, this certainly isnt the first time I have heard Saudi's referred to as uncivilised Bedouins - an insult which, although buffered by their layers of gold and US dollars, must still hurt on the inside to a lot of Saudi's. Saudi's, especially the higher up ones, are well known to have a "they only love me for my money" emotional complex, as well as a big time cultural inferiority complex when grouped with the inheritors of great ancient civilisations (Egypt, Iran, Iraq) or the direct descendants of the Prophet Mohammed (Jordan).

Its good to see this kind of criticism happening between countries in the Middle East - especially when directed at the real assholes of the region, rather than the hostility between equally noble civilisations (Iran - Iraq or Egypt - Iran).