If you’ve been stalking me on either Twitter or Facebook, the next piece of news probably won’t come as a surprise. Truth be told, I’m going a little crazy here in cold, grey, snowy, dismal England. I don’t ever recall having this much trouble getting through the winter — something has changed within me, something is not the same. It’s like… the rules of the game have changed and I’m no longer satisfied with sitting here in front of my computers.

So I’m going to NORWAY, baby. Middle of March through until some time in April. I will experience the FJORDS and… er… I don’t know — cute, blonde inbred Scandinavian Übermensch? (That’s a Google Images link by the way — I’m not going to go and pick favourites, sheesh.)

(Photo not mine — just showing you what a fjord can look like…)

But yes, despite the brief moments of testosteronic superiority, the real reason I’m going is the fjords. Often described as the most beautiful natural wonders of the world, the fjords of Norway line the entire coast of the Scandinavian Peninsula and make up 7% of Norway’s total area. For some reason, Norway has one of the lowest densities in the world with only 4.8 million people in the entire country. Considering they have one of the best standards of living, and a huge income from oil, I really have no idea why no one lives there. Maybe there’s a disease (like the Faroe Islands), or maybe it’s the ol’ ‘it’s too damn cold for 80% of the year’ thing.

My friend in Bergen has a house on (by?) Hardangerfjord, which is one of the biggest. Have a look at Svein Ulvund’s photos of the fjord and nearby — insane, eh? March is when they’re meant to be at their finest, after most of the snow has been and gone. I hope I can do them justice — and I may need to buy a new camera before I go…

Anyway, I’ll be going to Bergen and Trondheim — here’s a map:

I actually had no idea they were so far north… Trondheim is further north than my trip to the Faroe Islands! At this time of year, there probably won’t be much sunlight — but by the time March rolls around, it should be at least 4C or 39F… so not that cold, really. Yet again I’ll miss the Arctic Circle by a few hundred miles, dammit!

We’ll try to drive around a bit, but I think only one of my hosts has a car — we’ll likely stay close to Bergen and Trondheim. Maybe they have skidoos that we can buzz around and churn snow with? Our plans are still in their formative stage, but I’ll be booking flights in the next few days… so there’s no going back.

If anyone’s been to Norway (Chele?), now’s the time to throw in any advice. And does anyone live in Norway? Maybe I can pay a fleeting visit!

* * *

Because it’s Tuesday, I have photos; mostly alternates for yesterday’s 52 Weeks. They’re not amazing, but perhaps they’re interesting — you decide!

(You might not be able to see it on your screen, but the leaf is reflecting a pink sunset — if you can’t see it, trust me! It’s pretty!)

(Again, there’s some lovely pinks and blues in this photo, but you might not be able to see them! I chased the birds around for ages, but they finally settled down in the tree for a photo. So kind of them.)

The last two are obviously a bit ‘experimental’ — my favourite bits are the golden ‘halos’ where the sunset hits the water at an odd angle. Very cool.

Healthcare (or health care if you’re a colonial) means different things to different people. Depending on where you live, your background and your income, it might be synonymous with either insurance or the treatment of illness — and in some cases, it can even mean the public health of a nation or zone.

It’s important to think about these three things as separate entities: despite prevailing culture, you can’t mix up health insurance with the actual treatment of illness — they can both exist, but must be independent of each other. Health insurance, in countries without publicly-funded systems, is simply the way health care is paid for. In countries with ‘universal coverage’ like the UK, health insurance is used to pay for private care, or ‘complementary medicine’ (i.e. new/weird science). Public health is the overarching effort to improve health through improved knowledge and awareness, such as eating five portions of vegetables a day, ‘got milk?’, and so on.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s tuck in.

Healthcare is vital in the most true sense of the word. Without it we would die, immediately in a blaze of flame, or in a laboriously drawn-out fashion — it doesn’t matter: health care stops us from dying. Healthcare is so vital (there’s that word again) that about 10% of a Western nation’s GDP — 10% of its entire income — is spent on it. Some would argue that’s a small price to pay, for longevity of life. By comparison, most nations spend between 2 and 4% of their GDP on military/defence, and education comes in at about 5-7% of a nation’s GDP. So, as you can see, and have no doubt heard from Obama, health care is the biggest human issue.

But it’s all a damn mess; a horrible void of misunderstanding and overspending. And it all derives from a ‘knowledge gap’, between the doctor and the patient. The same can be said for most professions, but with healthcare the distance is most significant. Even if you don’t know the basic fundamentals of household plumbing, or how data traverses the Internet, you can still sleep soundly at night. But what if you’ve just been told you have cancer? Or that you’re being treated with Interferon beta-1a? You get a little jumpy, a little nervous — because you might die.

If we’ve learnt anything about the human body in the last 100 years, it’s that we should fear the inevitable onrush of death. Somewhere along the line we made the switch from ‘the most rugged and tenacious mammal on the planet’ to ‘wuss’. We used to live — and die. Now there are many more steps on the meter: alive, stressed, ill, broken, comatose, dead — and thousands more slotted in between.

Something doesn’t make sense. Why are we more afraid of our health now than 100 years ago? I’m not saying no one cared about death back then — people certainly put a lot of effort into making sure things were left tidy, and that the relevant gods would receive them into the afterlife — but it was just part of living. I think it has something to do with knowledge, and thus certainty and confidence. If you’re brought up with the knowledge that you will die by the age of 60 and you will die if you mistreat your body, that’s some stable knowledge that you can operate with. You can go out and live life.

What do we know about life and death today? Do you know how long you will live for, or if the quality of your life is assured? If I eat this burger, will it shorten my life — does that even matter? Should I be worried about senility, or will biotechnology/biopharmacy save me from that feckless fate?

It’s pretty weird to be confused about your own mortality, eh? A long, healthy life is the single most desirable wish — yet it is the one thing we are most uncertain about! I want to tie this in to the downfall of faith/belief and the rescinded promise of eternal (after)life, but I’m not sure I can yet — but it would make sense that, up until the last century, death was just been a temporary setback… but now it’s personal. (I kid, I kid, but you get the idea.)

To fix this problem, we need to close the gap between bleeding-edge research, the doctors, and us. We have to know more about our bodies and what they’re capable of; education obviously ties in at this point. I think we’re regularly reminded, and amazed, by what humans are capable of and how resilient we are — but at the same time, we have never been more aware of just how defenceless we ultimately are. Back then, we just died. No one knew why, we just died.

Now we die of cancer, heart disease, sclerosis, embolism — all invisible, all able to pounce at any time with little or no warning. But they’ve always been there, just like gravity or hydrogen. If we want to live long and healthy lives, we must teach about healthcare in schools. We must learn more about the body than the knee bone’s connection to the thigh bone, more than veins and arteries — like ancient Rome and Athens, education must be contemporary and hot on the heels of research.

I thought I’d spend a little time discussing the marvels of sexual fetishes and fantasies in east Asia. The region is special because of the time it spent disconnected from the Christian religion of the west and mid-east — Japan and south-east Asia never ‘enjoyed’ the medieval sex-is-bad-and-depraved Dark Ages. As a result, those Japanese (and the Thai, and any other Buddhist/Shinto countries in the region) have some really different ideas of what’s normal, and what’s sexually amoral.

For a start, the penis is good. Just like in Rome or Greece or anywhere pre-Christianity, the penis is a sign of fertility! Of strength and power! That never really went away in the East (check out the Japanese Fertility Festival for evidence!)

But, as you know, depravity feeds depravity. It’s a slippery slope, which is probably why the Bible/Testament-based faiths are so strict — those old prophet dudes knew that if you didn’t nip it in the bud, shit went south real darn quick. It might start with sodomizing your neighbour, but before you know it, you’re rubbing your ass in old oven fat and screaming ‘BANZAAAI!’ at the top of your lungs.

So, anyway, to both educate and disgust, I’ve compiled a list of the weirder fetishes and practices to come out of the East. For more TMI (because you can be sure that the next bit is going to be really gratuitous), check out Lilu’s blog.

From here on out, the links might not be safe for work. I’m not going to link you to porn, but there are descriptive diagrams… Also, that image above is a boy. Well, kind of… a ladyboy… she was once a boy.

Bukkake / pronunciation: boo-kah-kee

Ah, the poster-boy (or girl) of disgusting eastern culture! This is perhaps the most ‘popular’ of weird sex acts — not to say it’s a common practice, but it’s been the staple of western porn for quite a few years now, so it’s quite ‘well known’.

Bukkake, from the Japanese ‘bukkakeru’ meaning ‘to splash’, if you didn’t already know, is when multiple males shoot their (often voluminous) load on the face of some poor, (un?)suspecting victim.

It actually came about due to the ban on distribution of obscene materials in 1907 — you can’t show the genitals, but you can show everything else… thus… bukkake! What a great work-around…

Omarashi / pronunciation: om-ah-ras-ee

This one’s pretty weird. Literally ‘leaking’, omarashi is all about… wetting yourself. Or, more accurately, about girls with bladders that are full-to-bursting. Mostly this isn’t a hardcore thing — it’s deriving (sexual) pleasure from watching someone that really needs to pee. They can be fully dressed, or naked, it’s not really important.

There are also Japanese game shows which involve heroic tests of bladder strength…

Hentai

Ah, my personal favourite! (Well, some of it.)

You’ve probably heard of Manga, or anime — the ‘Japanese style’ of comics and animation, but you might not have heard of hentai. Actually, if you’re an Internet nerd, you’ve probably heard of it… or even seen it (and as you know, hentai is one of those things that can not be unseen).

Hentai, other than graphic depicting sex (obviously), is infamous for two reasons: it often involves protagonists that look very young (both male and female), and tentacles — big, gribbly, dribbly tentacles. You might know the term ‘tentacle rape’ — that comes from hentai.

If you’ve never seen hentai, it’s definitely an eye-opening experience, if only to appreciate the sound effects made by the voice actors… (seemingly, it’s quite hard to accurately produce penetrative tentacle noises in the foley studio).

A brief nod in the direction of Lolicon and Shotacon should also be mentioned at this stage (you should only really read those if you’re of a hardened disposition though…)

The Ladyboys of Bangkok

I had to end with the most exciting prospect of a trip to Asia: a run-in with the kathoey ladyboys of Thailand. They’re actually quite common all over south-east Asia, but mostly in Thailand and the Philippines. I have no idea why, but I find it better to not question such things. (It’s probably due to Buddhism and its different way of thinking about such things.)

They range from transsexuals to intersexuals, to cross-dressing and merely effeminate males. And they’re not just prostitutes, escorts or courtesans, that’s the weird/cool thing — they basically fill the entire role of… being female. They work in beauty salons and serve in restaurants. They dance in clubs, they model, they become pop acts… basically, all the ‘eww, weird’ stigma that we have in the West doesn’t exist over there.

I was a little bit torn when titling (heehee) this post. Originally, I had planned to paint my face brown, make myself one of those conical rice-farmer hats and take some self-portraits in my garden. But Abi told me I couldn’t: ‘That’s just plain wrong, Seb. Think of the children.’ — and she’s right, it would’ve been completely insensitive and political suicide… but it would’ve been really damn funny. Ah well. Maybe I can still get a shot of myself in a conical rice-farmer hat when I visit ASIA!

Last week I looked at Africa, this week it’s Asia’s turn.

As a reminder, if you haven’t read about my Grand 2010 Tour, the plan is to cover south-east Asia: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines — you get the idea. The more I think about it, I’m pretty sure South Korea and Japan (and China?) will have to wait for another trip. I could however hop down to New Zealand, stay there for a few weeks, and then over to Los Angeles (there’s a big ‘around America’ tour I’ve been thinking about for years, I’m just not sure when to do it!)

Anyway, Asia, after a little more research, is a lot more affluent than Africa — probably because of the secular, capitalistic powerhouses of Korea, Japan and Singapore. It’s a little rougher up on the mainland: if I go to Cambodia or Vietnam life is dirtier and more dangerous — but they have ELEPHANTS (so does Thailand, mind you… so I could probably just skip over potential-death-by-land-mine and head for the transsexuals of Bangkok.)

Re: Thailand, there probably isn’t much you don’t already know through the wonders of the modern media. It’s a melting pot of everything and anything, where east and west culture collides and something not wholly human emerges in the aftermath. Thailand appeals to my hedonistic streak because I get the feeling you can ‘find’ anything there: salvation and debauchery, food and drink — but also beautiful vistas and remnants of ancient civilisations. I guess it’s a ‘gateway’ country, much like Greece or Turkey — the multitudinous influences from every other culture in the vicinity have surely left their mark on Thailand.

For some reason (I’m going to research it more, but if anyone has the answer, let me know), the entirety of east Asia is really populated. Thailand with 63 million people has the same population as the UK, Vietnam has 85 million, the Philippines 92 million — and Indonesia has a stonking 231 million! At least Malaysia and Cambodia are fairly sparsely populated, so I’ll have a chance to spread my legs there. Is it simply because they’re really big countries? And I know less-developed nations tend to have more children for lots of reasons… maybe they grew big in the last 100 years, and now they’re slowing down as their ‘development index‘ increases? Oh, incidentally, Singapore is the third most-dense place in the world… more so than Hong Kong. It’s going to be a tight squeeze to get me in. 19,000 people per square mile, in Singapore — 12,000 per square mile in London, and 5,500 in urban New York City, by comparison. (They also speak Singlish in Singapore… which I am quite eager to hear! The other south-east Asia islands have similar pidgin languages right? Indo-English, Malay-English?)

Did you know that Russia has 11 time zones? And you thought scheduling in the US was hard! They go all the way from UTC+2 to UTC+12… which means Russia runs almost half the circumference of Earth… eep. Just threw that one in there, sorry. (Seriously, the amount of random shit in my head…)

It’s now time for this week’s ’site of photographic interest’, this week… Sumatra!

Sumatra

The first thing that caught my eye was the name: ‘Coffee!!’ Sumatra, along with Java (the main Indonesian island) are two of the most recognisable names when it comes to coffee. It’s no surprise tho’, considering all of the world’s coffee is grown within a narrow band around the equator — coffee beans come from trees that do best in hot-and-wet rainforests (and incidentally, the coffee infographic/comic by Oatmeal is very, very good).

So, it’s rainy, quite heavily forested and also right smack-bang on a fault line. The west ridge of the island is one long line of volcanoes! And there are elephants! (I’d really like to ride an elephant — I can’t think of a more apt mount for my gargantuan self.) Just look at this photo by Hank Hammatt (I don’t know who he is, but he takes nice photos it seems):

That’s Sumatra. I don’t even know how such a landscape is possible. It looks like a painting. God knows, really, but I want to find out!

* * *

Anyway, this week you get some totally unrelated photos. We had a light snow a few days ago which started to look really pretty when the sun eventually came out. They’re just assorted photos from around my garden and estate, and all using a 50mm lens in the hope of getting a little better at using it!

(In another photo you can see the number of rings… it was only about 60 or 70 years old. Quite young for a fallen tree!)

(I like the streaks of snow-free grass, from where sun has shone from between tall trees to the right)

(Look! A little… blob of snow!)

Now to brainstorm a disgusting story involving Vietcong rice-farmers and Japanese school girls…

I don’t know where to start with this, the subject that surely supersedes all others. It — life, necessity and peace — begins and ends with education. With a good education the world is your oyster. Without education… God, it’s so tricky to put into words, but I’ll try.

The expanse of your knowledge, your wisdom, your skills and ‘working set of data’ is only limited by your ability to learn, to educate yourself; or to be educated. But it’s a feedback loop: you can’t emerge from a dark cave at the age of 40 and suddenly be wise. Knowledge must be accumulated, wisdom and skills are cumulative — they must be continually renewed and refreshed or it becomes the stuff of stale housewife tale. Because it’s a feedback loop, the longer you stay out of the loop the worse it gets. Even worse, the further out of the loop you are, the less chance you have of realising it…

The world is moving fast. Really, really fast. Every day we uncover new data about the world we exist within, and new rules and relationships that elucidate and underline the lives we live. Every day the goalposts move back a little bit. In the past it might’ve taken a century for a significant change in world view to occur, but now it happens quickly – not so rapidly that we can’t keep up, but fast enough that things can change in the blink of an eye.

And therein lies the problem. We can’t keep up. We’re not trained by school, state or society to keep up. Sure, there are a few individuals that sit on the ever-expanding cusp of new knowledge, but not enough. More problematic is the fact that these great thinkers don’t have anyone to share their knowledge and thoughts with.

This problem is so endemic that it’s almost impossible to think with. How do you think outside the box when you’re in the damn box? You’ve probably all had run-ins with ignorant people — or maybe you’re ignorant yourself. Ever met someone that’s not exactly dumb, but totally unreceptive to information they don’t already know?

There are people out there, 40, 50, 60 year-olds that are still parroting stuff they learnt at school, or hand-me-down ‘wisdom’ from ma and pa. Not for a moment do they think that their knowledge is stale, out-dated or simply wrong — that’s their world view and they’re sticking to it. But they’re not dumb people! I might have just described your mother or grandfather, I might even have described you. But it’s not your fault; it’s endemic to society. It’s inescapable; you enter the infinite loop simply by being born.

It’s all because we lack critical thinking. We don’t question what we learn. We don’t interrogate our surroundings, nor do we question the credibility of arbitrary authority — just because someone says it is so does not make it so. The world didn’t turn out to be flat, nor does the Sun orbit Earth — but would you like to take a guess at how long it took for those two beliefs to leave the body of common knowledge?

We’ve long known the danger of false information. We know that sometimes it is distributed with propagandistic intent, and sometimes it’s just a half-truth or something that we can’t yet measure. But for some reason these things stick. For some reason we find it very easy to ignore new data that doesn’t align with what we already know to be ‘true’. There are some that believe the science of 2,000 years ago still supersedes that of today.

That’s insane! It’s utterly insane. After almost four millennia of modern civilization we’re still uncomfortable at throwing out old knowledge so that it can be replaced with the new.

Most of the world is currently operating on stale knowledge. Our mothers and fathers and teachers, and even our military generals and world leaders are trying to use incorrect data. The implications of this fact are numerous; all of them are scary. Most importantly, it perpetuates, from mother to child, from teacher to young person, and ultimately from society to adult.

It’s a loop that’s almost impossible to break without a complete overhaul of how we think, and thus how we educate. Currently we’re taught what we need to know. What we need to be taught is how to think.

The method we use now — teaching what we think children need to know — could work in theory, with a syllabus that is updated very regularly. In fact, that’s probably how this method came to be in the first place: discovery of knowledge and new facts was once so slow that a syllabus made sense. ‘These are the facts. We have known them for centuries. Go learn them.’ If you could somehow devise a list of ‘everything that you need to know’, a contemporary list that kept pace with modern technology, then this method might work. But lumbering under the bureaucratic umbrella, such a system would never get off the ground. The syllabus would be outdated by the time it made it through the first two committees — who knows what it would look like after the fifth or sixth…

That leaves the other method — teaching kids how to think. Don’t misconstrue this — I don’t mean instilling ideologies of thought. I simply mean that school, at the moment, doesn’t require a lot of actual thinking. You read what you’re told to read, you write what you’re told to write — there isn’t a lot of thought actually going on. In school we study for the singular purpose of passing exams and, through the rewards of university, a job and affluence, such behaviour is actually enforced. If you try to go your own way and actually learn something pertinent, God help you — you’re on your own. Critical thinking, thinking outside the box, is simply a waste of time — why bother jumping in the deep end when it’s not necessary? Don’t you have an ‘exam-writing technique’ class to go to anyway?

Because this situation is both omnipresent and self-perpetuating, it’s incredibly hard to fix. You need new teachers first — teachers with parents that have instilled them with free thought. And then you need those teachers to pass it on to children. You only have to do it once, for one generation, because it too would be self-perpetuating. In 50 years you could have a world where everyone has the potential to be the next Einstein or Edison.

* * *

This expands on the basic framework for Education in my Empire’s Manifesto.

There he stood, sharpening his long, smooth, folded-steel machete.

There she stood, licking her lips, looking first at him, and then down at the ground demurely.

“Give it to me!”

“Never!” She sprang from the warm rock with a derisive snort and flick of her tail. Her pace quickened as she bounded into the tall grass, her paws finding, gripping and rebounding rapidly from the firm soil. She could hear him clumsily pushing the tall grass aside in an attempt to join the chase. Escape would hardly be a challenge, but would escape be the most fun? Her thoughts drifted and her pace slowed a little.

She found herself thinking of the rainy season. Six months ago, but the memories were still vivid and sharp, wet and slick — bitter… and sweet. They’d first met six months ago. She had run and he had chased, just like today — but back then she had slipped and he had caught her. Writhing in the wet, slippery glass of the savannah, his grip too strong even for her savage muscles, he had made her his bitch.

The reverie almost caused her to slip and fall. She could hear him gaining, gathering speed, the tell-tale swish of machete clearing a path for his clumsy human footfalls. Would it be so awful if he caught her again? Her pace faltered, complex thought not coming easily to her prehensile, feline brain — humans have it easy — just two legs! How am I meant to push my way through tall grass and think of him? She found herself plunged back into the six-month-old memory.

First he had tackled her to the ground. They had slid and bounced a few feet, only stopping when the limited friction of the wet grass and ground had finally gripped them. Then he was on top of her, wrestling her arms down until she was spread and pinned. The bulk of his weight and strength of his thighs were expertly employed to hold her hips firmly against the ground. That was when they had made eye-contact for the first time. He looked vicious, his muscles and veins bulging, the throbbing pulse of his carotid artery clearly visible. There was a hint of shining victory in his eyes, but she knew the fight wasn’t yet over. He leaned down until his face was almost level with hers, until they could both feel and taste and smell each other’s ragged breathing. Before she knew it, he had pulled a length of rope from his waist and had begun to tie her paws together. Before she knew it, he had turned her over and lifted her hind legs.

She was shocked back into real time by the sinewy weight of the man throwing himself upon her. She didn’t struggle as he quickly flipped her onto her back. He took a long, hard look at his catch and smiled.

* * *

Forgive me, for I have sinned. I wrote this all in one go, without any planning. It just… sprung from… somewhere deep within.  There’s more TMI (and probably less furry porn) over on Lilu’s blog.

No, not crocs like the ones in my full-frontal photo… crocs, like… Crocodile Dundee! This post references yesterday’s post on The 2010 Tour.

The next few weeks will probably see a flurry of posts about Africa and Asia. You’ll have to forgive me if that kind of thing doesn’t interest you — but this blog’s about what interests me! I’m sure I’ll throw in a few delicious curve balls to keep you on your toes anyway.

Unlike the Faroe Islands, a grand tour to either Asia or Africa requires a lot of planning. The Faroes, by virtue of their Danish owners, are one of the most developed nations in the world. The Asian countries rank higher on the ‘Quality-of-life’ index, but that might simply be because most of Africa hasn’t been ranked yet. I have a nagging feeling that Asia is probably safer… if it wasn’t for the earthquakes and tsnuamis and suicide bombings…

Only Mozambique and Tanzania are on the ‘least developed countries’ list (and Malawi and Madagascar, if I visit those) — and even then they’re doing better than the central African countries, with regard to GDP per capita and disease and genocidal maniacs. Malawi and Tanzania are both meant to be very safe. Madagascar has some really funky rules/customs incidentally, called ‘fady’ — in some towns you’re not allowed to wear specific colours, or eat certain foods. They’re handed down from the ancestors, or something like that.

Language-wise, most of east Africa speaks English. It’s not the ‘common’ language — more the stuff reserved to those that have been to college, or work in a modern sector. Short of learning Swahili, there isn’t really a better option though. I imagine most touristy folk speak English too. Over in Asia, the islands (Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and I think Singapore) speak very good English. Not so great in Korea, Thailand, Cambodia — but if you wave some cash around, you can probably get most things simply by pointing. Including women (incidentally, you can get jailed for a looong time if you sleep with the wrong girls in most of Asia — not such a problem in Africa, but they’ve got HIV instead.)

Now, because I’m a photographer, I should probably highlight one ‘beautiful vista’ each time I make a post like this — first, so that you can whet your appetite; second, so that I can plan how best to photograph the landscapes of Africa… or Asia!

Because it’s easy, I’m going to start with Tanzania and their world-famous, omg-it’s-the-prettiest-place-in-the-world, Ngorongoro Crater — aka The Cradle of Civilization (hominid remains from 3 million years ago have been found there). With a name like that, it better deliver, right? Well… it does:

(Click for larger)

Within the crater there are zebra, gazelles, wildebeest (never understood why it’s spelt ‘beest’…) — even some rhinos and hippopotamuses!

The crater is a caldera, (102 square miles), created by a giant volcano that exploded and then collapsed in on itself. A pretty frackin’ big volcano. The fact that the crater is so ‘closed in’ apparently causes problems for some of the animals there — the lion colonies there are inbred! It’s just like the deep south…

There are tons more photos over on the Wiki page, and I’m sure on Flickr too — go have a look, if you can’t wait for my TOUR. I almost want to go purely because it’s called Ngorongoro — get this, the name comes from the sound of the drums used by a group of Masai warriors called ilkorongoro. They conquered the crater back in 1800, apparently.

* * *

Anyway, with all the research (and some really pissy-grey weather that needs to stop already), I haven’t had a chance to take any pretty pictures this week. Unless you think a knife-wielding psycho is pretty (what were the chances?) — in which case you’re in luck!

(Black and white version over on Flickr. I like my eyelashes in the B&W one…)

(Stick a knife in me, I’m dun…)

(I’m holding a knife up! But you can’t see it, so this just looks like a stressed profile shot. Don’t think I’ve shown you my profile before, so… ta’da!)

Now to plan some kind of African safari slash/fan-fiction for TMI Thursday…

The snow has melted! The sun is… almost shining! The ambient temperature is WAY above 3 centigrade (37F) now and heading towards a balmy 5 or 6. Soon the delightful showers of Spring will be upon us — and before I know it, April will turn to May. May, if you’re new to this blog or my life, is the month when everything happens — we have something like 10 immediate-family birthdays in May, and this year we also have a wedding! May is also the best month to be in England (potential tourists, take heed!) The weather’s fresh (with a hint of the warmth to come) and the late-Spring flowers begin to bloom. The bulbs of March and April fade away to be replaced by the delicious lime-green leaves of May and all in all it’s just lovely.

But once May has passed, when all the important bits are out of the way and the best of British has been devoured, it’s time to fly. (I tried to work in ‘gonna fly now’ from Rocky, but failed — it just made me sound like a gangster-homie.)

It’s time to discuss where I’ll be travelling in 2010.  A few months ago I got lucky and scored a very well-paid writing job, so by the time May rolls around I should have enough money to go just about anywhere and do just about anything. It’s quite an exciting prospect! I can actually go on tour. When faced with a shanty, shared on-its-last-legs taxi, I can opt for the personal driver and tour guide. I can pay for the company and pleasure of not one, but nine concubines. Basically, this year, I have options.

First, though, I have to actually choose where to go. It’s time to get out of the Western world; out of Europe, out of America — but into … where exactly?

I have the plans for two primary tours bouncing around in my head at the moment: East Africa and East Asia.

BRING OUT THE MAPS!

East Africa Tour (Provisional, January 2010)

Countries visited: South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya

Via (uncertain): Zimbabwe (safer than I thought), Madagascar (bit out of the way, but safe), Malawi (safe, just not sure about)

Synopsis: East Africa is the safest part of the continent, which is obviously a huge bonus. Most of the countries on the list are also ex-British colonies, which means you’re generally safe and/or revered as a white tourist. The only real risk is being mugged, but being 6′5″ and scary lookin’, that’s not normally a problem. Other risks are Muslim extremism (but this is more of a problem further north, towards the Red Sea) and malaria. Really, I was quite shocked to discover just how safe my East Africa Tour could be.

Sightseeing-wise, Tanzania and Kenya have some of the best nature reserves in the world. Madagascar must surely have some unique vistas/plants/animals too. I have friends in South Africa and some connections in Tanzania. The only bit I’m not really sure about is Zimbabwe — but apparently it’s on the ’safe to travel’ list again, so… we’ll see!

I don’t know which direction I would go in — north to south or vice versa. Need to check flights and connections.

East Asia Tour (Provisional, January 2010)

Countries visited: Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia

Via (time/money permitting): South Korea, Japan, Philippines, New Zealand

Synopsis: Now this one’s a little more tricky and much more time-consuming! Africa’s just a few hours by plane, but Singapore is 12 hours away — as is the ‘hop’ from Japan to New Zealand! South-east Asia requires a lot of island-hopping — I don’t think the domestic/small-hop flights will be expensive, but getting to and from airports is always a pain. I could always limit my trip to just south-east Asia, dropping Korea and Japan entirely… but still, how do I get to New Zealand and back again? (I could fly to Los Angeles…)

Safety-wise, Asia’s on par with east Africa, but there’s more risk of terrorism. Tap water is undrinkable, there’s some malaria, some tuberculosis — less HIV than Africa though, hooray! It’s tempting to do a ’super safe’ tour to Japan, Singapore and New Zealand, but again… it would be an awfully long trip at great expense. I think I’d rather do a grand tour of just China.

If I did the entire circle — perhaps flying into Japan, and then going anti-clockwise? — I’d be looking at 3 months at least I think. I’m told you can lose yourself for weeks in New Zealand. As a photographer, I’m sure that’d be an understatement.

Gods, the more I think about it, Asia needs to be cut up into smaller slices. North Asia (Japan, Korea, China?), South Asia, and then New Zealand and the ‘wonders’ of Tasmania.

Analysis, Pros/Cons

I’m leaning towards the East Africa Tour simply because it’s easier to execute. It’s linear, with the only required flight being the one to Madagascar — for the same reason it would probably be cheaper too. Actual cost of living/day-to-day expenses are probably very similar — most of my money would go on tour guides, safaris and other excursions.

Africa’s also closer to home, which makes the whole thing a little easier to swallow. One thing I need to look into is relative English literacy — I assume it would be better in ex-colonial Africa.

Asia has culture though — those Far East cultures! The seat of ancient-and-then-modern religion! I bet Asia has better views too, with all that sea… and jungle! I’d have to include the Congo in my African tour if I wanted jungle, and it’s not very safe there at the moment.

This is the bit where I throw the floor wide open for suggestions — I don’t expect much advice/info re: Africa, but you might have something to say about Asia!

I’m not sure why I want to tell you this story. I don’t even know if it counts as ‘too much information’. I mean, it involves a bunch of teenagers being thrown into the communal showers at school, but I don’t know if that itself is enough. The real reason I want to tell you this story is because it’s the last time I played sports. Sure, I still hit a ball around occasionally, and I still play a little table tennis, but this story is the reason I never took part in organised sports at school after the age of 14.

Like most bad experiences at schools the world over, throughout history, it involved a bad teacher. Oh, and it included bullies too. Bad teachers and bullies, the stuff of collective, pubescent nightmare.

You can probably tell this isn’t going to be a happy story, further adding to my concern that this isn’t really TMI fodder — head on over to Lilu’s blog if you want happier fare. But I assure you, before this story is out, you’re going to feel like I’ve told you too much.

We always played sports in the winter. I don’t know why. It was always damn cold and damn wet. There’s no damp like English damp, it chills right to the bone. It actually all began when I turned up to football practice in some warmer sweatpants/sports trousers — you know, the flannel/fleecy kind. I figured if we were going to run around like retards, I’d at least like to keep some sensation in my legs. There’s nothing like having a hard, cold football kicked into your bare legs, by the way. The brief cessation of all feeling followed by the flooding return of stinging pain as your numb, cold thighs register the impact. That’s why I wanted to wear more than shorts. Protection… safety… you know, normal human urges.

But my teacher wasn’t a normal human being. He was pretty young — early 20s maybe — and a complete, draconian dick. He was a football nut — as in the kind of person that actually thrives on running around in the cold and kicking a ball — and as such tried to impose his own ludicrous view of the world upon us poor teenagers. He didn’t like that I wasn’t wearing shorts. In fact, shorts were the uniform in his sports lessons.

“Take them off.”

“But I don’t have any shorts with me.”

“Take them off!”

And so I played football in my underwear. It was as shit and as painful as you can imagine, and about twice as cold.

I wore those tiny sportsshorts after that and made do with bruised, stinging thighs. It was marginally better than being told to strip down to underwear in front of my friends.

I guess this was probably when my rebellious streak really kicked in. Or wait, not rebellious… sane streak. Some of my other friends also kicked up a fuss, but they all eventually fell into line under this sports teacher (though ‘teacher’ is too generous. He was basically a thug with a whistle.) I could never quite kick the idea that running around in a field, in the cold, in the rain, in the fucking sleet, with tiny shorts on… well, it always felt a bit stupid. Like the crazy ideology of a mad man: Ja! These children will run in ze cold! In tiny shorts and vests! Zis will make them into men! – or something like that.

And then there were the showers. My school wasn’t a very classy affair. The changing room was this brutally cold, hard room with seemingly no heating. It had a huge door that led outside to the sports field, a door into the school itself, and a communal shower in the corner.

Showering was part of the sports ritual. According to our tyrant of a teacher anyway. Everyone stripping down and jumping into the shower for a good ol’… I don’t know. Tussle? Convivial soapy sponge-down? Fuck, I haven’t thought about these memories in 10 years, but we were forced to shower together.

Cold water too. Sometimes we got warm water, sometimes we didn’t. Mostly it was ice cold. The jocks — there were a few — jumped in first. The rest of us, the cautious dissenters, usually waited until we were forced to undress and waddle protectively into a corner of the shower. I think it was worse than it should’ve been because I was so young, some two years younger than most of the other boys. It’s not so weird for a 14-year-old to question whether he wants to jump into a communal shower with some ‘big’ 16-year-olds, right? This wasn’t the only chain of incidents that triggered my self-esteem issues, but it played a big part.

The whole showering thing happened three times until I finally stopped turning up to sports classes. I would actually hide somewhere in the school when it was time for sports. The teacher rounded me up a few times, frog-marching me to the football field, before finally giving up on me. I guess I wasn’t destined to be one of those idiots that liked running around in the cold.

Can you guess where I usually hid? The computer room. And that was that.

I’m meant to be NOT typing today, so as to give my RSI-ridden fingers a chance to recuperate, so… just enjoy the photos. There are a few notes, if you hover over them. In the case of the one with the tiny moon, you’re going to have to buy a print to actually see the moon — I think it’s the smallest new moon I’ve ever seen.

Also, one of these photos is dedicated to a friend of mine whose birthday was a few days ago. I don’t do it often, but I do it occasionally — I also do children’s parties and hen nights, if the price is right.

(The new moon is on the left side, about half way up… no, it’s not a speck of dirt on your screen…)

(Another 50mm landscape. Quite a ‘dense’ view, eh? But pretty.)

The sun is setting behind me — this is looking almost directly east I think.)