Our travel plans of four years ago: what happened?
February 7th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Exactly four years ago today, I did a posting on this blog about our possible future travel plans. At the time, I had visited 52 countries, but the total is now 57.
In that posting, I speculated about five possible future trips. So, what actually happened?
- Easter 2009 – return trip to Prague to see our ‘second family’. We did make this trip and you can read my notes on Prague here.
- Autumn 2009 – holiday in Iran in the year of the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Again this happened and you can read an account of our trip here.
- Easter 2010 – return trip to China with our ‘Chinese family’ in Oxford . Once again the plan worked out and you can read the account of that trip here.
- Autumn 2010 – holiday in Kiev, Ukraine. This didn’t happen – but it’s still on the list.
- Sometime in 2011 – the BIG ONE: a trip to Australia and New Zealand to mark our 30 years together. This didn’t happen either – but it’s going to happen. Next month, we will visited both Oz and NZ, stopping in Bangkok on the way out and in San Francisco on the way back, so we will literally go round the world. Now that is the BIG one!
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“Good morning, Viet-nam!”
February 6th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
A good American friend of mine has just started a tour of Vietnam and Cambodia and sent me these observations on the first country:
“Vietnam is a country of nearly 90 million on a land mass about one-third the size of Texas, putting it the top 15 of the most populous nations in the world. Most of the country is mountains and the size of farmable land is limited. Seventy percent of the population is under 40, the result of a generation lost to war and a baby-boom after reunification in 1975.
The country is going through an economic transformation as a result of economic liberalization and the end of the US trade embargo in 1995.
Our program manager is a young man born in 1976 after the war. He is a Vietnamese Baby Boomer with a wife and two children. He lived through the “miseries” or as is sometimes called “the dark days.” His story is fascinating.
After reunification in 1975, the Party imposed Soviet-style collectivization on the South. The results were an economic calamity, a time characterized by hunger and want. “We were like the people of North Korea today,” he explains. “I never want my children to live through that.” Change started in 1985 with new Party leadership committed to economic openness and accelerated after the U.S lifted the trade embargo in 1995 and opened trade relations.
Today, Vietnam is one of the fastest growing of the developing nations, but continues to lag on human rights.
The Communist government here has made an unspoken deal with the people similar to China: we will leave you alone to make as much money as you can and you will leave us alone to run the country. Political dissent or open criticism of the Party of any kind is simply not permitted. The government may not arrest you, but they can make your difficult in other ways. People just don’t do it.
Interestingly, I am told the government does not control the internet as tightly as the Chinese. The Vietnamese blogs apparently are alive with political and civic discussion. There is much discontent with the current Prime Minister and economic growth, which was bubbling along a 8-10% has slowed. The Prime Minister is blamed for pursuing economic policies favoring state-owned enterprises despite continued significant losses which have created a drag on the entire economy.
The country also faces many other challenges. Population growth is an issue. The government does not mandate a two-child policy, but it is “strongly advised .” Failure to observe the policy can block career advancement, for example, particularly if you are a member of the Party.
I am told that obtaining Party membership is very difficult. Your background is checked back to three generations (if your or your spouse’s grandfather fought in the SV army, forget it). A very small portion of the population are Party members.
But this country is as Communist as the Mafia. Young people have no ideology or allegiance to the Party. As our tour manger explains, young people care about getting their education, a career, making money, getting a good apartment, getting married and having children. They have no personal relationship to the revolution or the American War. They care more about what Beyonce is wearing than what Ho had to say.
But there is growing dissent underneath. And if not in his generation, the tour manager is certain that change will come in his children’s generation. “The internet is too powerful. People know what’s going on. Our Arab Spring will come when the right person stands forth. The government is really afraid of that,” he thinks.”
In fact, Vee and I have been to Vietnam and Cambodia and you can read an account of our visit here.
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The discovery of King Richard III
February 5th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
In our household, we’re quite excited by the public confirmation today that the body located in the Leicester car park is indeed Richard III. Vee loves television programmes on history and archaeology and has been following the news on this discovery for some months. I’ve always liked the name Richard so much that I gave the name to my son and my sister lives in Leicester so I visit the city regularly.
This evening, we sat together and watched a special programme on Channel Four explaining how the body was discovered and how it was confirmed to be Richard III. It was a particular triumph for Philippa Langley who heads up the Richard III Society and proposed the dig in the car park .
Posted in History | Comments (1)
A review of the new movie “Flight”
February 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Two of my great interests are the cinema and aviation and they come together in the new movie “Flight” starring the brilliant Denzel Washington. You can read my review of the film here.
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Why capitalism needs fundamental reform
February 3rd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
One of the most frequently occurring political themes of this blog is that we live in societies where income, wealth and power are distributed massively unevenly and unfairly and this creates poverty and unhappiness at the individual level and terrible social outcomes at the national and international level.
Therefore I was pleased to see a trenchant editorial in today’s “Observer” newspaper with the headline” “The growing wealth gap is unsustainable”.
A fact from the UK:
“Britain has more than 10 million adults living on between £12,000 and £30,000 gross, the majority in work..”
A fact from the USA:
“In the US, in 2008, 400 billionaires were ‘worth’ more than 150 million of the US population.”
The editorial asserts:
” .. an awareness is growing across the political spectrum, and on both sides of the Atlantic, that a radical recalibration of capitalism is essential, not least because the wealthiest and least productive are in danger of allowing their own avarice to sabotage the very system on which they have become so hideously bloated.”
The editorial explains that:
“‘Free’ markets with the rules written by the richest result in a shrinking public sector, deregulation, unemployment, low taxes for the most affluent and the threat of globalisation, depressing wages still further.”
The “Observer” quotes some of the remedies advocated by Robert Reich, professor of public policy at Harvard, in a new documentary “Inequality For All”:
“Reich’s agenda for positive change includes more jobs; greater investment in skills and higher education; a just taxation regime; strong unions; investment in public infrastructure; a living wage and a narrowing of the earnings gap.”
You can read the full editorial here and you can read about the documentary here.
Posted in American current affairs, British current affairs, Social policy, World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of “Zero Dark Thirty”
February 2nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
A favourite for the Academy Awards and one of the best films you’re likely to see this year is Kathryn Bigelow’s movie on the hunt for Osama bin Laden. You can read my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Naming children in Iceland – and around the world
February 1st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I’m fascinated by naming practices around the world which differ far more than you might imagine.
So I was interested this week to see a news item about how a girl in Iceland had had to go to court to win the right to use the first name given to her by her mother: Blaer – which means “light breeze”
So many of the implicit assumptions that citizens of the English-speaking nations make about names in other countries are simply wrong:
- It is assumed that the meaning of names is unknown and unimportant – but (virtually) all names have meaning if only we knew it and, in many, many cultures, names are chosen precisely because of their meaning.
- It is assumed that given names are gender-specific – but many African and all Chinese given names can be applied to boys and girls.
- It is assumed that, when someone has more than one given name, the first is the one used in everyday life – but in Germany it is the second or the given name nearest the family name that is the ‘call name’.
- It is assumed that people have a single family name – but, in Spain and Portugal, they have two.
- It is assumed that people take their family name from their father – but girls in Iceland take their family name from their mother.
- It is assumed that family names are not gender-specific – but, in most Slavonic countries, family names ending with ‘-ov’ and ‘-in’ add an ‘a’ in their female form and Polish and Lithuanian have their own endings for female last names.
- It is assumed that given names come first and family names come last – but the reverse is the case in countries like China, Japan, Vietnam and even Hungary.
- It is assumed that all countries have family names as well as first names – but Burma and large parts of India do not have family names.
You will find my comprehensive review of naming practices around the world here.
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The music of Emeli Sande and Ellie Goulding
January 31st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I may be a 64 year old man but I try to keep up with at least some popular music. My most recent CD purchsaes have been music by the Scottish Emile Sande and the English Ellie Goulding. So I’m listening to “Our Version Of Events” (special edition) and “Halcyon” respectively – really enjoyable.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (1)
Aleppo: then and now
January 30th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Aleppo in Syria is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world with origins dating back to the early second millennium BC. Until recently, it was a thriving urban community of some 2.3 million. Today it is a city ravaged by civil war.
Less than two years ago and just a week or two before the current political unrest commenced, I was on a visit to Aleppo as a tourist and marvelled at the citadel and the souq. You can read a short account of my time in the historic city here.
For months now, Aleppo – like most other cities in Syria – has been blighted by fighting. This week, we learned of the horror of more than 100 men being bound and shot and abandoned. You can read a news item on the massacre here.
While I long for the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and his regime, I despair at the death, destruction and displacement and fear for the future of the country.
Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)
Word of the day: paraprosdokian
January 29th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and frequently humorous. Winston Churchill was keen on the concept.
A few examples are:
1. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
2. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
3. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
4. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
5. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
Further information and examples here.
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