On the Move

I finally got to Europe in 1994 – a rather belated OE. My soon-to-be wife and I returned home to begin 1995, pregnant with elder son. We settled, staying put in NZ.

Save some brief trips to the USA, Sth Pacific islands and Aussie for family or work, I’ve been fully kiwi’d in matter and kind for 25 yrs. So a 2 mth break last year was an absolute treat, a trip to Lisbon via Qatar and Ireland, homeward bound via a chum in France and friends in London.  Go on, flight shame me.

Qatar – 2.5 million or so people on a small spot of land where the desert meets the Persian Gulf.  300,000 Qatari’s in residence, an arab kingdom where monarchy calls the shots and the 2 million or so interloping Africans, Sri Lankans, and Indians, muscle on down in the hot sun doing the menial stuff, no doubt grateful for the opportunity to upgrade their thirdworldness, & make some $ on the back of the local gentry’s exploitation of mother natures geological bounty. 

Ireland, and an easy chat with strangers at every turn. Stories, conversations, folk singers on the streets and in the bars.

Awash also with east coast americans in tour buses looking for their history, chasing a cheeseburger and obligatory Guinness. $15 a pint for the black stuff downtown Dublin. Ireland, the country that hit the skids hardball post GFC, due to greedypig shortcuts in big bubble finance and low tax schemes for foreign money. Out of intensive care for now, no small thanks to tourism.

Portugal, another one nailed to the mast post-GFC, holding on by a few loose nuts, a washer or two ahead of Greece, low wage economy, but still at least an economy. Grilling sardines as fast as it can for the visitors emptying out of its airports and cruise ship’s tag-teaming up the Targus.  

Love that McDonalds and other global fast-food monsters have only managed a slender foothold – there’s just too many small ma n’ pa custard tart cafes – in all probability, it’s likely what makes Porto, Lisbon et all so popular on the tourist trail. That and the easy bang for buck on the euro.

Portugal, a still-proud country that for centuries led it’s european neighbours around the world, exploring and righteously pillaging, sticking their flag in foreign soil, a nod from jesus every step. Seagoing men-O-war in their day, now paddling to keep up. 

France – a few days in the rural south visiting a friend hardly makes for a grounded impression, but with an elastic political climate it’s anyone’s guess where they are likely to position in the changing EU. Home to an economist I follow, Thomas Picketty - a man calling time on the colonization of our times - global finance.

London.

I didn’t much like my take on it a couple of decades back. Thatcher had done her work and the faces on the street seemed beaten, beggared and broken. Even the well-to-do looked anxious, worried the cockney rebels - the jnr Corbinista’s, were getting a run-up, set to kick over the monopoly board – hotels, utilities, Eton rifles, the lot.

Good old Blighty. Every ethnicity of human in London. Much has changed, much hasn’t, but my take on it has. Only a few days to speed date our love you longtime friends that made the call to move to London, better opportunities, never coming back. I’m older now with kids behind me, a less-desperate hand to mouth lens on the place.

On being a tourist … 

The virgin drive of discovery peeking out the window from the airport - the faces, behavior, how people hold themselves, the smells, the do’s and dont’s.  

So grateful those of us with the means can explore distant shores and spheres. Like a lollyshop olympic games, still with notes of competition but w/out the workout. Unless you’re on the hell bumsore cycle trail. 

In Lisbon I spent time with an outdoor guide, a guy who delights in connecting his charges with trail walking, sea kayaking and cycling along coastlines and through forests. Folks he reports, that ‘largely spend their working lives in front of computers and in meetings.’ He said to me “what could be cooler than making that outdoors connection for them?” Connecting with nature, bringing cultures together, assisting revenue stream, all in the brochure. 

Something fantastic about experiencing other cultures, whether fully immersed or just breezing through. Global connection, reaching out, exchanging values and views. 

Seems all my former truths are bought into question when on the move –  just when you think you’ve got it down, the converse appears. And so long as we survive, a little friction can be a rewarding thing. 

Back in ’94 on that trip to London I was arrested for busking in Tokyo. A senior police officer raged at me about my mother being a whore – via his younger interpreter. Neither having never met her – she was more into knitting cardy’s than putting it about. Truly, live theatre money couldn’t buy. 

The more I laughed, the more he lost it. Shameless Gaijin ! 

Cultural Connection is the best. Here in NZ I love our immigrant families. That we share our underpopulated country with others from around the globe – for better or worse, is a fine thing. 

In the market for a 7 seater a few yrs ago, $5k to spend, I got to meet Ishmael, Achmed and Pradeep.  All living in the Mt Roskill/Mangere belt of immigrant families/muslim communities. What a treat. Invited in, drinking spiced tea on the prayer mat with people I would otherwise never meet. Achmed’s 1998 Toyota Ipsum is still getting WOf’s and carting my crew around. 

Migration and tourism. We’re on the move brethren, part the seas. 

She’s a pretty expensive sea to part where I live. On Waiheke Island, the lucky tourist can expect to get shorn like a merino. Here where commerce has a capital T, our kids turn a $ espressing the tourist with coffee, wine, food and a smile. Money that pays for their food/shelter/study and travel. 

Thank you dear tourists, for your help in feeding my kids. 

The pro’s and cons of Tourism. Me, I prefer mine in small caps. 

Capital T in the worlds fave spots can be a bit frightening, with hordes of us, adequately heeled global go-getters marching up and down the waterfront, armies of lager louts and Sharon’s doing shots n’ sangria, que’s of babbling busloads ticking off the attractions. We have a hedonistic hunger for experiences. Mostly I’m keener on a quieter time observing difference.

And back with an economic lens, tourism is fickle as a flyboy. 

Throw a single spoke and the roulette wheel can spin off the table taking the house down with it. One vanload of explosives by some disaffected individual on the tourist trail must do’s, and the entire industry tightens like an asshole, people’s livelihoods truncated. 

Or a change in mood by mother nature – hurricane/earthquake/tsunami, volcanic blow. A nutjob political populist … pick your fave action mag drama. 

In the bigger scheme of things, tourism is a bit of a pop-up shop. A little bit is ok, like when the circus or the Easter show comes to town - but it’s contrary.  The caravans move on, unlike our need for consistent food, shelter and community. I raise an eyebrow when tourism is a country’s life support. Our communities – local, national, global, virtual, could do better than rely on a game less than robust. 

Imagine declining air travel, or shipping. 

There’s a bunch of reasons why and how this might happen, likely by degree’s.

Strait of Hormuz anyone ? We’ll no doubt be privy to a mixed bag of transport postponements and terminations in the coming yrs. 

The IMF and World Bank have been increasingly introspective – not a bad thing. They’re concerned about hot variables, the ones with too many wildcard tendrils. Can you write an algorithm for pass the parcel? Musical chairs ? Working round the clock on that one, least I hope they are. I hope we are. 

My repeating theme – if and when economic infrastructure goes hallucinogenic, have we the resources, networks and conflict/resolution skills to survive. 

Can’t eat an eftpos card. Food and shelter in peacetime. Can it be done ?

Irish folksinger Christy Moore sings about our contemporary nomadism, and he’s not talking cruise ships and tourists. The irish know all about dispossession of self and land. If you’re thinking the potato famine injustices of the 19^thcentury, you’re way late. Our lyrical ancestors have been Mother England’s bob-a-job, if they got paid at all, since time immemorial – and dynamic times looming for Ireland now with brexit border issues, that sleeping giant The Troubles waking from it's slumber.

Back in the Med we're all up on a desperate form of movement where the hungry and war-torn of north Africa and the east try to get a foothold on European soil. Can’t blame them chasing a better life for themselves, their children. 

One of my chums works on a superyacht on those seas, owned by an American megastore fiefdom. He informs me that when they come across these particular types of travellers out there on the briney, they turn off their gps/comm’s and hang a U-turn. Maritime law requires them to render assistance, but it just doesn’t go with the gold fittings, jet ski’s and onboard celebrities.

When the comm’s have an electrical outage there’s not a lot one can do. 

In 1973, british economist EF Schumacher wrote a collection of essays ‘Small is Beautiful’. He banged on about the only way we get through this ie C20/C21st life/survival of the human species, is to share our skills in small communities, locally grown food, locally harvested skillbases. With a focus on sharing resource. Anyone heard of the Transition Towns movement?

What was attractive about the small pockets of rural Europe I visited were the close walkable/cyclable proximities of small villages. Villages that produced life sustaining stuff, like bread, cheese, olive oil - soils that sustained local fruit and vegetables. Cottages constructed of stone, some permanence and provenance in the shelter. Small waterways, waterbores. 

Seems idyllic, of course, never is. Under pressure ? No doubt. Growing populations, pollution, modern chemicals/commerce etc, help and hinder process. 

And cycling round Tokyo 25 yrs ago, i realised the city was a collection of small communities, prefectures where teeny plots of soil everywhere were intensely manicured for food and aesthetic.

Small communities needn't be rural. 

I wonder how much longer will we be able to roam - whether adventure or survival, or trade, across increasingly crowded and polluted skies and seas ? 

Maybe the Portugese and other coastal mariners with their centuries of sailing legacy will rise again, sailing actual sailing ships, like ones with sails, across the oceans with a different quest, rigs that can ride out the new school of storms. Maybe this time they’ll leave their flags, muskets and jesus at home. 

Sure, take your flag if you must, just don’t stick it anywhere.