On YOUR Bike!

On a whim, not without external inspiration, I decided to search today for the meaning of the song “Nine million bicycles in beijing”, performed by Katie Melua, written by Mike Batt. I googled, and googled some more. I fancy myself as being quite proficient in googling, seeing it as the modern day equivalent of “thinking” or “memorising” and infinitely less stress. Yet in the entire netiverse, it appears there is noone who really can explain the relevance of the catchtag for this song, its reference to bicycles. That it's a love song, yes. That its inspiration came from a trip to Beijing and a mention of Bicycles, yes. Why the two belong together and formed a hit, no idea.  A clue may however be in Batt's pedigree, known for no less than the Wombles and Watership Down.  How could it fail...

Katie finds nine million to be a remarkably large number, which it arguably is. Unless you're talking Greek bailouts or number of light years across the observable universe... and this immensity makes her feel understandably small – which is where she loses interest in connecting this to the subject of love (“[despite this?] you're the one I love most of all”). Sweet nothings, honey dripper.  Cheeky.

As it happens, Beijing is a City of 20Million (“more or less”) with 9 Million bicycles, while Holland is a country of a comparable 16 Million (“more or less”), with a much more impressive 18 Million Bicycles. Not only bigger numbers, but equivalent to nearly 3 times as many bikes per head. Factor in also that Beijing is turning rapidly and increasingly to cars and better public transport, and Melua should be looking for a more impressive, more durable anchor for her smallness.. uh.. and love.

Perhaps Holland?  Bikes DO have a special status in holland.  Akin... nay... fully kinned to LOVE.

For those familiar with geography, and or history, you'll appreciate not only is Holland flat and suitable for bikes, but also is right next to the Country that went ape-shit in WorldWar two and invaded all its neighbours. And this episode, more commonly termed World War II, still occupies a special, cold, dark place in Dutch hearts.

Mention “the war” and “Germany” in Holland, in the one sentence, and it conjures up not genocide, un-named soldiers, oppression, starvation or general hardship. Rather, “mijn fiets terug!” or “those bastards stole our bicycles”. Both during the occupation, when bikes were confiscated, in part to limit subversive activities, and at the conclusion of the war when Germans fled a rather manageable 100km back to the Fatherland, having fleeced any remaining bikes.

But, however long and passionate the love affair with the bike, Holland was in no way at the forefront of its development. This took place in England, Germany, and France in the 19^th century. The first Dutch bicycle manufacturers copied their work and in fact did not contribute to the initial development and success of the bicycle. This strong design tradition persists today with unapologetically heavy and unsophisticated Dutch brands that excel only in price above their competitors.

Yet Holland did however quickly adopt the bike as their own, for the obvious reasons; it's cheap and Holland is flat. This grew and grew, and now perhaps more than anywhere else, the bike forms an integral part of the Dutch psyche. And society.

Manufacturing grew too. A Dutch-made bike is held in the same esteem, locally, that Americans reserve for american made motorcars, or New Zealanders for NZ sheep. And they are now popping up elsewhere – probably for nostalgia value – from Walmart's 2011 Hollandia model to Brooklyn Cruisers.

But there are bikes and there are bikes. A man on an “oma fiets” (or “grandma bike”), a bike without crossbar, named as if it is somehow more heavy and sedate a ride than the heavy and sedate competition, is deemed about as manly as a man asking for tea and milk (a “kinder” thee) and receives looks to boot (trust me...).

Biking in Holland also has a highly developed etiquette, status and to some reckonings, Superpower. Traffic signals, or indeed obvious traffic hazards, cease to exist for the magical Dutch bike. This is even captured in Dutch law, where the lawbooks enshrine the unique tenet “Innocent until proven guilty... unless a guy on a bike was injured, in which case we regret rescinding the death sentence!”.

Drivers and even pedestrians are relegated to "tolerated" by this famously tolerant country. You think that the dork tapping on your window in London traffic and blabbering something about fumes is annoying, here too there is no shortage of self-satisfaction and contempt that comes with sticking a bike seat between your legs.

This is not only obvious in day to day challenges of negotiating crossings, bike paths or in fact footpaths without embedding a 10kg bike frame in your hip or losing an ankle, but it is a contempt solidly built into the infrastructure.

crossing button

Accustomed to riding smooth, frequently re-cobbled (another story) and superbly lit bike lanes along the scheveningen forest every day (dreamy), a punctured tyre gave me the opportunity to taste how the other half live. I was forced to walk rather than ride the self-same route. In stark contrast to the beautiful bike paths from which I'd have little problem eating a 3 course meal, the walking paths set into the forest immediately adjacent were unlit, craggy and morbid affairs reminiscent of the Spider Shelob's lair, in the Ephel Duath mountains around Lord of the Ring's Mordor. Spectres of great cats lurked in the wild dark brush, contorted vines patrolled the path waiting on careless steps.

And this hopefully unrepeated walk home was what triggered me to write this piece, or more precisely as I found myself pushing on a Pedestrian button, above which was posted a large picture of an incredibly gormless looking man in bad pants pushing the Pedestrian button.  Contrast with the super nippy cool guy on the Bike button sticker!  The Pedestrian Gorm sticker is incredibly large so that it had the effect that people stepping up to the plate and pushing the button are painfully aware of branding themselves publicly as the guy in the picture. The message, "next time, ride a bike!"

So if Beijing's medium sized but dwindling bike population has the power to make people feel small and insignificant, I ask you, what does this say about Holland.

Safety advisor, 39, quits job to become Clint Eastwood lookalike after colleagues tell him he looks like the famed Director, actor and political activist

A safety advisor for a major oil company has quit his job as a Safety advisor to become a Clint Eastwood lookalike.

Aroby Arby, 39, is constantly mistaken for Clint Eastwood, in fact, even his girlfriend can't tell the two apart.

He now squeezes out a pretty meagre existence charging up to 50E a day for public appearances.

Spot the differences

"People would point and say, "That's him!". Aroby understood this to mean he looked remarkably similar to Clint Eastwood.

Aroby knew it was time to throw in his work at an oil and gas major after he deducted that many colleagues were probably mistaking him for Clint Eastwood.  "People would come in and point at me and say "That's him, that's the Space Cowboy" (a classic Eastwood flick from 2000) or as they passed my room would scream "Hang him High!" ['68], with a comic-menacing grin.  It was getting ridiculous."

But the real tipping point came when Aroby found his colleagues had not only entered him in, but had initiated a Company "Dead Pool" ['88] specifically in his honour.  A dead pool is common in workplaces, whereby colleagues assemble a collection of usually-celebrities and place small bets on who is most likely to pass away earliest.  "Yeah, I mean, I don't usually go for these things, but sure, this was a real sweet gesture so I put 5E on Obama.  My colleagues, huh, they were joshing me and suggesting I should double up and place it on Aroby Arby!  It's important to have kidders like that in the workplace - it's what I go - uh, went, to work for!" says Aroby.

Aroby Arby's Gran Torino

Aroby first played along, trading in his Nissan Almera hatch for a beaten up Gran Torino.   "I'd get colleagues to guess how many office-stressballs I'd fired at them in the past hour... "I know what you're thinking, did he fire 5 stressballs or 6..... Now to tell you the truth, I forgot, myself, in all this excitement... ask yourself a question, "do I feel lucky".  Haw Haw, yeah, I kind miss it."

The crunch moment was apparently when colleagues found Aroby talking to an empty chair in his office - always the joker!  They insisted he consider leaving and pursuing his real talents. "Without that push, I guess I wouldn't be here to day" says Aroby.

Aroby says weird requests do come in; the weirdest thing he has been asked to do as Clint involved two girls, one cup and a mule and he'd rather not discuss it.  When responding to criticism that there are already enough Lookalikes out there, or that Clint Eastwood is making himself available in person for any kind of engagement (as was shown at the recent Republican Convention), Aroby offers an inspirational note; "It's just was i was born to do."

Lying which wardrobe?

Wanted... I like quiet walks in the park, empty streets, early dinners, grumpy old people, and chavs. I'm as happy eating "foam" in 100 flavours at expensive restaurants, as I am frikadels from a febo window. Am looking to meet partner city for lasting relationship.

Must be spontaneous, love crowds, enjoy mountains, sun and outdoors, know how to make a good cocktail, eating great food, and partying. 28 days later

This blog was intended to be entitled 28 days later, and, predictably, was intended to be 28 days after my return to the Hague.

Alas, time and lethargy hooked their claws in me and ... well, 3 months later just isn't as catchy. Returning to the Hague, I found myself walking the streets one Saturday morning, the broad avenues empty of all life, an occasional loose piece of litter fluttering across an undriven road, climbing onto an untread pavement, circling a while before idling in a dusty corner. It reminded me of the movie where a virus takes hold of the UK, and the heroes walk through a vacant Piccadilly Circus which for all the world seems like time has stopped and they are the last people on earth (this is before being attacked by monkey like infected people wanting to tear strips out of their necks).

The lion the witch and the wardrobe
In such circumstances, your average inhabitant's attention drifts to more domestic attractions. I was heartened to hear recently that Steve Jobs would spend 8 years looking for the perfect couch. Not only because it is a convenient link to the genius and commercial mega success of Jobs, but because until then I did feel somewhat alone in the world as I searched the web endlessly for the perfect "Italian style not too expensive just the right colour, style and shape couch which hopefully someone would deliver too, while removing the old skanky one free of charge". A fairly straightforward proposition that has consumed my first 3 months here (ok, not 8 years… yet).

Similarly the wardrobe. It turns out, moving in with someone, that 1+1=5 and we have a rear bedroom absolutely full with boxes. A quick trip to Ikea improved the situation slightly and we now have something like Fashion week meets X Files warehouse, with rack after open rack of clothes butted up against mountains of boxes. These boxes are of considerable importance. They are the end result of a series of clean-out permutations and efficiency drives that result in a very select remnant. These are known as the "shit that no-one quite knows what to do with". One box was even labelled dramatically and presciently by the London movers as "ITEMS FROM SPACE", another helpfully, if not a little ominously, advises us that it contains "EVERYTHING".

As time drifts on, inevitably these spaces earn also a prestigious title; "room that all the shit goes in when you can't really think of a place to put stuff". There is no need in such an oversized wardrobe-house to have an ethereal backing that leads to a mysterious icy wonderland. It's quite possible to get lost among the boxes, where a person can regularly discover weird and wonderful things on a regular basis.

To give you a taste, this room-wonderland is home to 7x multi-multi point extension plugs (the kind that 1920's Dutch houses love to fry), a tin painting and a piece of broken door from Carolina's college days, a motorbike battery, 5x half finished painted canvases and a miniature wood model man, a romanesque pot holder, a Marimekko giant beanbag, training manuals, an air dust cleaner, and a Barcelona Ottoman without a cushion.

It's clear to the reader that this is no throwaway bric a brac to be trifled with - it's more the kind of stuff that makes up Michael Macintyre's "Man Draw"; seemingly useless stuff whose purpose will ultimately become abundantly clear when we receive a knock on the door from Dutch homeland security, calling for our help to solve a problem that requires a beanbag, a small dummy, a pot holder and a beanbag (with the manuals unbelievably indicating how the whole assembly avoids global disaster and restores balance to the world once again).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgUpDGAIdds

The Lion Witch Wardrobe backroom will not disappear in a hurry. It will probably linger until we appreciate it's full necessity and give up thoughts of installing a small office, second bedroom or walk in wardrobe (of the more organised and intentional variety).

 Winter is approaching….

The circle of life

As I come toward the end of my stay here in the far east, the steppes, it's only fitting I go back to my first blog, before I decided I was an investigative journalist and got all off subject. So, some of you may recognise the landscape in the adjacent picture as the same landscape, or at least same shot from way back in early 2010. The tree came, it went, then sprouted forth in glorious strands of LED driven bloom, set off against an iridescent trippy astroturf. It's surprisingly convincing up close, and my first comment to a fellow commuter was that the grass wouldn't last the summer. The electrico-trees, I suspected, were not entirely natural. Perhaps GM.

I was first disappointed and cynical at finding out the whole garden is plastic, fake, driven by high doses of electricity and presumably hazardous luminescent chemicals. But I've come to love this little garden over the past week. It has an uplifting, cheerful quality reminiscent of the Telly-tubby's TV set, but is made out of chloro-boro-benzo-carbonate materials tougher than nature can concoct. And Atyrau needs cheering up.
There's a guy here I see in the lift, who I greet with a, no doubt gratingly cheerful, "hello, hows it going?" a couple of times a week. He doesn't know what to do with the human contact. He sits in the company paid for cafeteria, focussed on his buffet quality lunch, at an empty table for four, amused not even by the TV. He's like a young male Eleanor Rigby, and he's not one individual but he's every fourth guy I see.
After my own recent foray into the stockmarket, money seems such and ethereal (..) thing to make a person come out to a frontier like this, to endure boredom, loneliness and separation. But then money's a powerful elixir (my ill-fated foray into the stockmarket has been my kryptonite, when it comes to getting too attached to money).
The tree's evoke another response too - what's wrong with something artificial, where nature can't provide. I struggled with this first when working briefly in Abu Dhabi, and drove from the city 250km to a power and desalination plant; the road was lined three deep with thick foliage, practically fueled by an equivalent number of kilometres of polyethylene veins, pulsing with millions of litres of water purified through oil fueled desalination, delivered by giant oil fueled compressors that form the steel heart of this system.
The then head of Abu Dhabi emirate, Sheik Zayed, foreseeing one day the end of oil perhaps, had a vision of this desolate desert nation becoming not only a nerve centre for business in the middle east but a giant ecological oasis, made possible by a somehow perverse but somehow appealing and logical cycle, by combusting the epochs-old decayed plant matter in turbines that chug out pressure and energy to give life. The theory was apparently that if enough foliage could be induced to grow, it would eventually reach a critical mass that exerted it's influence on the climate and soils to a point of sustainable growth.
The idea seems at one time optimistic and naive but perhaps also has a touching altruism. It is one I've learned since is shared elsewhere, even here in Kazakhstan. Polymer LED trees aside, the planting programmes also continue in Atyrau, along all the roads and highways and in the parks, sucking water from the Ural and aquifers, and employing an army of gardeners who bravely face what looks like an eternal struggle.

The revolution WILL be televised

Gil Scot Heron roused 70's black americans, close on the heels of the Watts riots, with the promise that the revolution would not be televised, that we would not be able to skip out for beer in the commercials, that there would be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in instant replay (..."the revolution will be live...").


As far as Egypt's goes, he couldn't be more wrong. BBC has shown virtually nothing but the Egyptian revolution since unrest began, pictures of stone throwing and assaults by undercover police abound, and I was indeed able to skip to the kitchen for a beer without missing too much. He was correct that it will not be brought to us by Xerox, whose recent growth in the region will no doubt be hit by developments (although Exxon is pretty much Xerox spelled backwards and a few letters changed).

Mubarak, Egypt's fourth and longest standing president should be seen as a success story. Not only does he look great for a guy born in '28, he's held on to office for 30 years, and rising from his poor origins, leaves office with an estimated $30-70 Billion for his toils. A regular Rockefeller, squirrelling away whatever pennies chanced to come his way.

The revolution has concerned the arab world, sparking worries that unrest is spreading to other states led by overstaying heads of state, including Yemen (small peaceful crowds), Algeria (pressured now to end a 19 year state of emergency) and Jordan (firing their government and experiencing largest protests in 20 years) to name a few. Similar predictions, after Tunisia's fall, accurately placed Egypt at the top of the list.

And concerns extend further afield. China has censored internet searches on Egypt, lest the population get any ideas. It's easy to extrapolate that, beyond China, peoples around the globe are questioning just how absolute their leaders' power really is.

It's a massive event. And a massive event gets round the clock television attention.

Prior to the Tunis crisis, much of my news hour was being taken up by news of Laurent Gbago of Cote D'ivoire, who refused to step down from his presidency after disputed electoral results. Gbago had come to power 10 years earlier. Interestingly, this was by popular uprising and there's some reason to doubt global news coverage of this event, which repeatedly and near exclusively cites the irrelevant, non-constitutional "Ivory Coast Electoral Commission". It is also led by French protestations. The French are far from the ideal, objective interlocutor, owning for example 45% of Cd'I land (UN sources). French assisted insurrection and prolonged tensions in the country over the course of Gbago's reign, for example arming mercenaries and plotting assassination attempts.

And in the not too distant past, BBC viewers' blood boiled as British led news and the international community rained condemnation on Mugabe's treatment of white farmers. White farmers who still owned 40% of land confiscated in many cases only 40 years or so earlier.

You probably won't see it televised, well, quite like that.

Baron Acton once muttered (via letter) that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." It's interesting that last phrase eludes the collective memory, as it carries perhaps more resonance than the earlier. With this in mind, we see a bigger picture than surrounds the dramas of the petty despots or tyrannical regimes in Africa, Indonesia, Asia or the Middle East. The dramas involve our own governments, our Great Men (and women), our histories and legacies and therefore ourselves - they demand our interest.

A news issue that requires no introduction is the Wikileaks scandal. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the leaks, there can be few that see the heavy handed and surreptitious attempts to get hold of Assange and his followers as fair and honest (except perhaps Sarah Palin, who has no doubt superimposed a target over his location, on her electioneering site). Unless you would like to believe Gadaffi's take on it in the Egypt context, that Wikileaks indirectly provokes this kind of discontent. But where is the media condemnation or even cynicism.

Similarly, a friend with interests in Cote D'Ivoire has followed intensely developments there, trawling French and Cd'I internet news-sites and blogs to filter out the genuine or balanced truth. Ban ki-Moon rejects Gbago's suggestion of a vote recount as a "grave injustice" (why does that take me back to the year 2000 in Florida?) or, on Egypt, the head of this international body offers the vacuous "I urge restraint by all sides". Meanwhile, the media and television offers us the minimalist, superficial account with repeated footage of four young men yelling Mubarak is a thief, or a woman on a cellfone saying she want's everyone to get along. It offers a "trailer" - the main acts, the main facts never arrive. This was one of Assange's stated motivations for Wikileaks, to compensate for the death of journalism.

There is certainly drama in the moment, in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria and beyond. The moment and the drama will pass, the televised natures of these affairs will only grow, as will our responsibility to filter or interpret them. Problem is, how often do we question, how often do we dive deeper; as Aesop Rock raps, "if the revolution ain't gonna be televised, then f*** I'll probably miss it".

The revolution WILL be televised, but he won't be missing much.

Feed the World ... but what to serve...?

It's Autumn. The trees outside my window have come and gone, as predictably as the seasons. Planted without any real sense of optimism in the spring, they stand broke, battered yet resolute, to meet their inevitable fate (buried beneath the gardener's whimsical spade) as the clouds gathered and the temperature shuddered downwards toward lows that turn mere breaths into showers of crystals, as winter truly takes hold.

I recently gave my time to entertain groups of enthusiastic english students who came to polish their varying levels of the language, and replace the classroom twang bred from the best efforts of their kazakh tutors with an incomprehensible indian, dutch or, worse, kiwi accent. The motivation was generally that they will be better positioned to pursue rewarding careers or perhaps lives overseas, with the added advantage in my case that they they've also witnessed a "genuine" maori Haka and received a 20minute lecture on climate change. There seems to be a big appetite here, in this booming oil town, a town of definite haves and have nots, for English skills. English is available in schools, however Kazakhstan's isolation and the wall that invariably develops between the lives of expats and their hosts means there is little opportunity to polish it with English speakers. Bingo.

Hold the applause. Like the trees, I recently gave up.

The story begins a little while ago when a good kazakh friend approached myself and a few others with an idea to help orphanages by supplying clothing. Her concept was to purchase cheap clothing of varying and likely ill-fitting styles and sizes from the local markets, then hand it to our orphan beneficiaries - it seemed promising if a little rough around the edges. I thought of the charities that ask you to give a goat. These had given me the occasional sleepless night wondering (like the dyslexic insomniac agnostic who stayed awake all night, wondering whether there really was a Dog) whether there really was a goat - or at least a need for one (I guess they send photographs?).

Being as I was a "non-giver" it's fair to assume I may have been looking for ways to justify and maintain this aphilanthropic state. But no, it started me thinking "is there something I could do to help that I could be less of a pain in the ass about?".

The Celestine Prophecy is a pseudo-philosophical pseudo-non-fiction book that has since been matched in writing prowess only by the likes of the Da Vinci Code. The writer informs us that there are 9 stages of Insight, the first of which is the ability to recognise coincidences for what they are, an indication of a greater power or destiny at work, a series of coincidental events that lead to a higher path. The Matrix, brilliant yet not altogether outwith the above genre, developed this theme and had us all fretting even more than usual about deja vu and cats crossing our paths.

So it was, that after this first brief and cryptic encounter with the concept of volunteering, and genuinely desiring to be part of a solution rather than a problem, a series of coincidental events occurred that took me more deeply into the matter, down the rabbithole, through the looking glass. I edged closer to the Matrix's red pill.

The challenge was laid down - if not keeping Kazakhs in tracksuits and imitation crocs, what was I going to do to discharge my duty as a global citizen toward charity.

It was at this time the second coincidence happened. I was inadvertently delegated to be my company's Social Responsibility contact in the country. Not an official position, but more a designation bestowed upon me by virtue of them not knowing anyone else in this far away posting.

Furiously, or at least mildly animated, brainstorming and briefing discussions ensued, flying back and forth (by fibre optics and satellite) between the Hague and Atyrau. The role required me to step back and consider what were the viable opportunities to assist, largely on a volunteer basis, and how would I motivate a pool of volunteers. I managed to tame my imaginings of repopulating the Caspian with air-drops of flamingo-friendly estuarine dolphins, reared with a genetically induced inclination to protect sturgeon. Having at least a passing acquaintance with the nuances and pitfalls of responsible aid and volunteering, I knew well enough to consider "where is the appetite; what do people want, what do people need, what will they accept?" and to harness any efforts already underway and offer support.

A colourful example of the pitfalls of poorly placed social efforts comes from a friend who was a lead development advisor to a small pacific nation. He told of an international effort that responded to a need for sustainable sanitation on a tiny island state by providing composting toilets. This solution smartly addressed the meagre technical competencies as well as the space limitations on the island. The project went ahead, the effort failed miserably and the toilets promptly descended into disuse and disrepair. They had failed to recognise the social and religious context to the islanders' ablutions.

Previously, islanders had evacuated their bowels on an apparent opportunity basis around the beaches of the island, which seemed less than ideal from a sanitation, health or beach volley perspective. Following the introduction of the fancy toilets, islanders still continued in this way - why? It turns out that a culture akin to voodoo was present, and the seemingly random distribution of intimate body matter was in fact an intentional or at least extremely convenient mechanism for remaining anonymous and safe from vindictive neighbours who are itching to stick pins in a cushion styled in their likeness, and presumably caked in their discards.

In assembling ideas for helping out here in Atyrau, the orphanage assistance idea was on the radar. With slight modifications and some consideration, it might be a reasonable component of any aid package. But what else...

Enter the third coincidence. Meeting with my local friend, the conversation uncovers that outside of the clothes idea, many foreign workers here are lending their time and money to assist in local charity efforts. This is not specifically driven by an obvious screaming need for charity here, but the simple good nature and pro-activity of the volunteers; I can imagine them doing the same anywhere. However, as I was offering to lend coordination and profile to the efforts, and by now wielding lofty thoughts of a much expanded volunteer base via web tools and company muscle, they let me in on a few nuances of volunteering.

It became clearer that the proposal to help orphans with new randomly bought cheap clothes had evolved based on quite sound recognition of some very real and quite complex challenges.

The first, applicable in many countries where aid is most needed, is the dilemma of whether cold hard cash actually gets to the intended beneficiary. Kazakhstan sits in 2010 at 107th equal on the list of the world's most corrupt countries, sharing its privileged position with the likes of Zimbabwe, Eritrea and Belarus. Compare this with my privileged upbringing in a country that sits only second to Iceland (..hmm…a review may be in order) as least corrupt. In a country where family expat postings are prevented due to the desperately poor state of health services, the Minister of Health was recently compelled to simulate a stroke in order to avoid an investigation into embezzlement. He nevertheless received adequate hospital care, as his inventive, evasive coronary was supported by Doctors' fraudulent statements.

Another, that the options for assisting worthy causes, including this orphanage, by donating directly one's time and enthusiasm is not without a host of perils. Companies had been fined, wives sent home, offers of assistance rejected due to governmental or imagined restrictions, work permits compromised, locals unfamiliar with the concept of charity left feeling insulted.

It evolved that even the choice of clothing rather than for example, toys, was a deliberate sidestep of complex and painful certification requirements for doned toys. Glaxxo Smith Kline possibly expended less effort obtaining approval for experimental drugs from the Bush's Food and Drug Administration than if the Corporation were to donate 20 Tickle-me-Elmos to a former CIS orphanage.

Nor could it be second hand clothes, particularly from the West (at this news, the Orphanage manager, friend and myself shared commiserations that we hadn't seen our own clothes until late teens). These are popular criticised for devaluing local clothing industries or, in this case, being perceived as a potential epidemiological threat and consequently garnering restrictions.

Enter the fourth coincidence. My friend's Facebook status pops up with a research article she's written about a rising trend for Voluntourism, in particular AIDS orphans. The article, causing quite a rattle even now, months afterward, criticises a growing volunteer industry on a number of grounds. One reason is that it fuels growth of unnecessary, unsafe and even bogus orphanages. In Ghana for example it is estimated that around 90% of children in orphanages have at least one parent. Bear in mind that institiutional care is broadly considered inferior to assistance in homecare. A second reason is that, on psychological grounds, a tourist volunteer offers only a temporary attachment and the inevitability of dealing with further abandonment. Damn, I said, this is getting complicated.

A fifth coincidence involved me sitting down to dinner with a philosophical and contentious Frenchman over dinner after one of my English sessions. Conversation of course turned to what I had been doing, and my friend upon hearing of the volunteering immediately voiced that he had no time or belief for such activities. Intrigued, I asked why. He was fresh from having his nose buried in "War Games", a recent popular book that painfully describes the ironies of the Aid Industry; that it has become an industry aimed at sustaining itself, and one where the baddies of the world are now clued onto the equation; more headlines, more aid, more money, more guns - more headlines, more.... Intentional maiming in Sierra Leone, poisoning of lands and forced servitude in Ethiopia were done with the deliberate intention of attracting aid dollars, diverted to the warmongers. Some may remember the latter as the subject of the extremely successful Liveaid and Bandaid funding efforts), with the deliberate purpose of attracting aid.

The list goes on; the incestuous relationship between NGO's and the press, which is responsible for aid going not necessarily where most needed but instead where most "popular", or where the photo opportunities are. We hear of the feeding and protection of Hutu genocidist soldiers in Zaire camps crowded out with NGO insignia, while they foster genocidist sentiment and ensure that those who are sympathetic or seek peace risk being found dead in a ditch. And of the boom bust cycle, where massive amounts of NGO funding hit a trouble spot for a relatively short time, attract away all the good talent from local hospitals and so forth, then leave as quickly as they arrived, with the next BBC headlines.

I was thinking these were all quite high level examples and perhaps still something could be done by the individual, when he finished with a story of his own.

His wife had called from Africa to announce that their housemaid, long held dear, had contract AIDS. The wife understandably was pushing him that they help the poor girl in some way. With trepidations that I now understand, he agreed on the grounds that the assistance be carefully controlled. The story ends 2 weeks later with the maid found beaten to death in a remote part of the locale. Earnings (including the money given for medication) inevitably come back to the family in such a country, and tragically families also see AIDS victims as bringing great shame upon them. She had ceased to become a breadwinner and now was simply a liability.

I borrowed the book, by Linda Polman, who herself hails from Netherlands, a country that contributes one of the greatest per capita Aid chunks. And indeed the case is compelling. An excellently written book, it only disappoints when it comes to offering a way forward. Well, perhaps has more failings on reflection. I, like my friend, was left with a great disillusionment in the efforts of NGOs and government aid. What way forward then for the disillusioned masses… Polman's book makes the case that good intentions are not only "not enough" ("we couldn't not help…") but can be exceptionally destructive. She argues that the public should challenge where there money is going, and try to understand it, before contributing.

This is all easier said than done. I haven't been back to English classes since hearing of the American volunteer wife who was sent home for this, but I am escorting a busload of orphans to the movies this Saturday. Hopefully issues of attachment or creating an orphan bus movie industry will be kept in check by my non-existent Russian and abrasive personality, at least until I get a clear way forward on how better to help.

Watching some articles on BBC some weeks later, through different eyes, I sobered in my newfound animosity toward UNICEF, MSF and all the other F'in NGOs. I still perceived there are good things happening; inadvertently contributing to genocide was clearly wrong, but kids in Sierra leone selling off contraband UNICEF ponchos was worth the price. There seemed a chance of a balance.

I was still watching BBC and musing on Polman's difficult final advice, to give aid where it's needed and demand transparency, when I was presented with a curious programme called the BBC Worldchallenge (worldchallenge.co.uk, webpage overloaded when I visited, and not to be confused with *.org, a Christian ministry).

The programme, which has been running for weeks on BBC, confronted the viewer with a rotating line up of bright youths, devoted volunteers and community groups, bent on providing solar electricity or clean water to villages, or compassionate care to ostracised leprosy sufferers in an urban setting.

It was the unusual format of the programme that gave food for thought. In this age of Pop Idols and Big Brother, perhaps it was only natural that I sat and watched a community leader rouse his group of rural african children to song, in a hastily penned pop plea for votes, so that their village could win funding for critical water infrastructure. I watched an enticing sample of aid causes roll by me on the TV screen before a voice and a flashing web address enthusiastically entreatied "YOU can choose who is most deserving of assistance, CAST YOUR VOTE".

Throne of Blood

Warning: For those who don't read headings - this blog is not easy listening. Also, the facts have been selectively cropped and may be a bit shaky...

I recently returned a borrowed DVD on the history of Genghis Khan (a bloody 50mins delivered with the courtesy of the british taxpayer by the wonderful BBC) to my DVD benefactor, who had selflessly lent the disc unseen, fresh and resplendent in its store cellophane. Displaying some impatience and the incisive need to solve and simplify that all engineers share in common, he asked me "so what was his secret, was he a diplomat or a barbarian"?

A fact that tyrants, and probably most politicians in charge of great states, divine, or more likely assume early, is that all great feats are built on blood. And so it is with great civilizations.

We pondered the success of the Romans, whose conquests translate down the ages as civilized, "light-touch" conquests, firm to be sure but fair. The romans' earmark may have been organization and discipline, from societal and governmental structures to sophisticated logistics, public engineering and taxation (haven't the Italians come so far?!). But they were nothing if not masters of warfare, with the military arts at the core of their society. The sword of harsh retribution hung suspended over every diplomatic endeavour, responded to every rebellion in the ungrateful and barbaric provinces.

That their reputation, filtered through the lens of the ages, appears as a success based on statesmanship, may be fair but is perhaps a result more of their wiliness rather than their restraint. In the era 100-BC to 300 AD in Egypt, which at the time was the granary of the Roman empire, so vital to Rome's stability, oceans of blood were shed but rarely by the Roman's themselves, preferring the vicious equilibrium resulting from localized rivalry among the Greek, Jewish and Christian inhabitants. Although its army occasionally waded in with some devastating purges, the area was largely off limits to Roman politicians, finding direct suppression and unnecessary involvement more often incited unrest or weakened its hold.

In Britain, outright Roman conquest was preceded by lengthy periods where the island gladly paid tribute, or at least eagerly sought "terms" right on the eve of invasion, so long as one would be so kind as to not invade one quite just yet, thank you kindly, terribly sorry for the inconvenience...

The Romans' did not reach their dominant position without repeated use of direct force - quite the opposite - by the time of a British invasion, word of the Romans' military might had long before reached the shores. And despite the acquiescing and diplomacy, Britain's time soon came; after a wee debacle where Caligula ordered his army to attack the English Channel then collect seashells as plunder, General Plautius (under Claudius) brought the Romans back to Blighty and forced surrender of substantial british forces after a shock and awe naval battle ending in the Thames.

I look out the window at the Hotel Kazakhstan, and ponder the Cyrillic "K" shaped neon. The K is not shaped as in the western alphabet but in cyrillic script appears tailed by what might be a trickle of ink or, given the topics I'm mulling, blood. The silty steppes, inhospitable and bare, have for millenniums been a ready sponge to soak up the life fluid of invaders and defenders, feuders and usurpers. There's no surprise that one of the most violent and shocking empirical forces the world has seen came from this hostile hand to mouth environment and the times in which Genghis lived.

Genghis' formative years commence with the slaughter of his father, promptly followed by the abduction and rape of his newly wed, and not long after the bloody betrayal of his childhood friend and co-chieftan. This once friend, Jamuka, seals the end of their alliance by boiling alive all of Genghis' generals in an impressive and presumably crowded iron cauldron, following a decisive (and disappointing for Genghis) first show-down. Genghis veritable baptism in blood should have ensured that Jamuka would go no more quietly into his good night than Genghis' generals screaming, spitting and bubbling away. But instead Genghis offered his childhood friend to join him again, and on refusal granted his request for a quiet and noble death (although the slow and purposeful breaking of someone's back might not sound it to us). He was a military genius, a leader of men, and wily in diplomacy. But like the areas other big hitters, the Huns, the Scythians, and Tamerlane (who in one battle sent burning, screaming camels against his terrified enemy to incite panic in their elephant vanguard), he was a man of the sword.

So the answer to the engineer's question was "yes"; barbarity and violence, and, equally, the threat thereof. It's an urban myth that Genghis Khan, voracious in his sexual appetites, past his genes to 20% of the modern world (probably more like 0.5%, but traced to his clan not to him as an individual). But it's well documented that he slaughtered up to 30% of the populations in the territories he conquered. The "scorched earth" policy of warfare was first traced to his Steppes precedents, the Scythians, and Genghis embraced it wholeheartedly and effectively, offering all towns in his path the option to (a) surrender or (b) to have their city razed to the ground and the inhabitants subjected to raping, wholesale murder and looting. They didn't always opt for the seemingly logical option (which in fairness, often turned out to be "C", "all of the above")

Violent, yes, and when he died, he presided over an empire stretching from Beijing to Europe, further than that of Alexander the Great, and going on to become the largest empire in history. Mr Khan is on record while lying upon his deathbed as being disappointed, nevertheless, that he hadn't quite taken the world.