Travel – Page 47 – a sibilant intake of breath

Reminiscing about LIFE

Since I was feeling vaguely ill all day, I made lunch and dinner stir-fries with large amounts of ginger. I don’t know why, but I’ve always found that ginger helps with nausea and general feelings of being unwell. The captain of the Duen first told me about it, during the first LIFEboat flotilla. A floating sustainability conference which took place on more than a dozen tall ships, the LIFEboat flotilla was one of the best weeks of my life, even though I was ridiculously seasick for much of it, on account of gale force winds and huge waves.

The Duen was a small ship – far smaller than the Pacific Swift, which was my berth for the second Flotilla. When tacking upwind, the boat listed at an angle of about thirty degrees, with me clinging to the upper lip in a borrowed survival suit: lent to me because I had to be on deck in the pouring rain all the time because I was so seasick. For years afterwards, I couldn’t stand the sight, smell, or taste of scones, because that’s what people kept trying to feed me. Despite all that, spending a week traveling through British Columbia’s Gulf Islands in a tall ship is an amazing experience. More so when you’re in a group like the one Jeff Gibbs created and which has been supported by people like David Suzuki and Jane Goodall, who I actually met during the first flotilla.

Leadership Initiative for Earth (LIFE) is a Vancouver based environmental organization that I was involved with for several years. I attended a conference of theirs at a high school with Jonathan. I then took part in two Flotillas, each of which required a large amount of environmentally related community service in order to be eligible. Jonathan and I worked at the Wild Bird Trust in North Vancouver, planting trees and pulling out poles from a frozen swamp. We also had to give presentations and slide shows afterwards. I gave one at the Vancouver Folk Festival, after the second flotilla. It was really excellent, because I got a free Folk Festival pass in the process.

One of the best things about the two flotillas was learning a bit of marine navigation. Because of the complexity of the Gulf Islands and their tides, the importance of maps, navigation, and location there are considerable. There are many passes that can only be used at certain times, because of the tides. During the second flotilla, I got to help with the coordination of the fleet overall: managing where different ships would stop at different times. The flotilla mostly took place on the ships, interacting with the members of your group, but there were also excursions on shore. We visited a sustainably harvested forest and got to touch sea cucumbers brought up by divers.

I wish I had some photos to post, but they are all in Vancouver in non-digital form. The one above wasn’t taken by me, but it does show the ship I was on for the first flotilla, in a place much like many we visited.

The original WildLIFE conference happened in 1995, when I was only twelve. As such, I probably didn’t get as much from it as most participants, nor was I able to contribute very effectively. The Flotillas were in 1997 and 1998, respectively. Since then, I’ve largely lost touch with the organization. The only participant with whom I’ve had any contact is Kevin Millsip, one of the two leaders of my group in 1996. He is now a Trustee on the Vancouver School Board; perhaps Sasha Wiley will meet him one day.

At one point, it seemed that LIFE had changed its name. At other points, I couldn’t seem to find anything about it at all. I am glad to see that they seem to be active at the moment. Apparently, “there have now been five Flotillas, all extraordinary learning adventures for the 750 youth who participated.” I wish I had stayed in contact with members of my two groups. At the time, I think being rather younger than most of the other participants impacted my ability to relate directly with them. Even so, I am incredibly glad to have been involved.

I strongly suspect the whole LIFE experience has impacted on my choice of discipline and sub-field. To be simultaneously exposed to a place as beautifully alive as the Gulf Islands and such a group of committed and motivated people is a powerful combination, as Gibbs must have anticipated. I am sure my fellow participants are also grateful for his imagination and initiative.

in vino veritas

The following is a critical question for students everywhere. Despite the effects of globalization, the answer remains persistently local:

What are the best cheap wines?

In British Columbia, the best wine at around four quid a bottle is Farnese red, an Italian wine. (It is important that you let it breathe for at least half an hour.) It seems to be completely unavailable in the UK. The best wine in B.C. under seven and a half quid is Yellow Tail Merlot (red label), though some other Yellow Tail fans prefer the Shiraz Cabernet (purple label).

What are the equivalent wines in the UK? This question is especially pressing because I have been charged with bringing wine to a birthday party likely to be well populated with clever, highly cultured sorts of people.

Where to next?

While peeking at the Ryanair website the other day, I was startled to see that they have flights to Dublin for nothing but the price of taxes. You need to book two weeks in advance, but can do so for any time between the end of this month and mid-October. Similarly inexpesive flights can be had to Berlin, Krakow, Rome, and a great many other places I would like to visit.

If at all possible, I would like to work three or four week-long European trips into the time period between the end of Trinity Term and the start of the next Michealmas Term. Istanbul is my top choice of destination at the moment. I am not particularly keen on travelling alone, so I am hoping that similarly inclined people will emerge and I will have the chance to travel with them. As the experiences in Tallinn with Sarah and in Malta with my mother demonstrate, it is much more satisfying to travel with company. Doing so deepens the extent to which you engage with what you’re seeing, provided the other person is similarly interested.

If people were going to choose four European cities to spend a week in, staying in hostels and adopting the museums-and-wandering school of inexpensive tourism, which would they be? Photogenic cities are especially welcome. Of the ones listed above, I’ve only been to Rome. I’ve also never been to Paris, despite having spent brief periods of time in France on several occassions. Of course, going somewhere where I know someone is definitely preferable; such local knowledge is generally invaluable for a traveller.

PS. Yes, my newfound and abiding interest in getting out of here is related to having to write an essay on the topic “What today defines a ‘great power’? Are we living in a unipolar world?” as well as my research design essay in the next week or so. I have an increasingly scary looking annotated bibliography that I mean to put at the end, instead of just a generic alphabetical listing of sources.

Happy May Day

Happy Birthday Roham Alvandi

This morning’s May Day celebrations, which I attended with Kai and Roz, were interesting and unique. They felt like a special glimpse into parts of England never seen: what I might have experienced if I had succeeded in finding a Guy Fawkes Day celebration, in the fall. Up near the northern end of the Port Meadow, we watched the early Morris Dancing in the cold and drizzle. Unlike whatever was happening at the Magdalen Bridge, this was a largely suburban affair: adults with umbrellas and a smattering of children clearly taking more or less well to the rain and early hour. At the end of the dancing there was a straightforward participatory dance that reminded me a great deal of the kind of square dancing we used to do as part of gym class in high school.

Roz and I left the celebration after a cup of coffee to wander southwards and see a bit more of what was going on. There was more Morris Dancing on Broad Street, as well as fairly large numbers of people outside everywhere. Remarkably for England at an odd hour, all the pubs were open. Indeed, after watching some energetic and potent drumming at the corner beside Carfax Tower for a while, we stopped at Freud’s for a 9:00am glass of champagne on the way home, as is apparently one of many interlocking traditions here.

Having decided to simply stay up for the 6:00am departure, I didn’t find myself able to keep staying up. Problematically, my intended short nap ended in mid-afternoon. It is time, then, to re-deploy to the SSL and carry on reading about the end of the Cold War (which we all know Ronald Reagan won singlehandedly). Thankfully, my productivity last night wasn’t entirely confined to reading The Economist and fixing hundreds of posts in the new WordPress blog: I also charted out the outline of my thesis presentation for tomorrow afternoon.

NASCA and the BPG

As Fernando pointed out to me, the final report of the Bi-National Planning Group (PDF), with whom we met while on the NORAD trip, has specifically endorsed some recommendations from the report (PDF) that I wrote on behalf of our group.

[The fifth] BPG recommendation supports key recommendations identified by the North American Security Cooperation Assessment (NASCA): “The United States and Canada should increase the transparency of the process by which they engage in bi-lateral defence negotiations, policy development, and operations; This process should include a focus on public understanding and involvement; Projects undertaken by academic institutions, and other civilian research organizations should be supported, particularly as means of generating transparency in, and awareness about, the defence planning process.The NASCA report was prepared by members of the University of British Columbia (UBC) International Relations Students Association (IRSA) in 2005, and their observations were compiled by Milan Ilnyckyj-obtained from http://www.irsa.ca. (51)

It’s your classic self-interested academic appeal for more research to be done – especially by people like the person doing the suggesting – but it’s still good to be mentioned. I shall have to read the entirety of their report once we finish cleaning up the flat from the party last night.

Malta photos, from film!

Along with some much appreciated Easter chocolates, the scans and negatives from the Malta trip arrived from my mother today. My thanks to her for all of them. Based on a very rapid survey, I picked out my seventeen favourites and added them to the Photo.net album. I will give them all a closer look after the QT.

A photographer’s self-portrait is included. All told, this one is my favourite; it was worth soaking my feet for. The square block you can see in the distance on the left is the castle on Comino that served as the Chateau d’If for the new Count of Monte Cristo film.

Technical details

The black and white shots were all taken on Kodak T-Max 400 film. The colour is Kodak HD400. It doesn’t surprise me at all that I generally prefer the black and white photos to the colour ones. All were taken using a Canon Elan 7N body, and a Canon 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM II lens. Collectively, the gear these shots were taken on is worth about six times as much as my A510. Are they six times better? I would say not. If you care to compare, all the photos in this presentation were taken using my Canon Powershot A510 consumer-level digital camera.

Not having to worry about fungus to edit out of images is awfully nice, though I forgot how visible the vignetting can be when I use my circular polarizer at 28mm. Scans from Lens and Shutter also require markedly less sharpening than shots from my A510. I may well come back and give some of these more thoughtful editing, after the QT. Some of the B&W shots could definitely use some playing around with contrast.

As always, full sized image files are available upon request. Comments are always appreciated.

Travel plans

As the days get brighter, I have been plotting out travel plans for the period between now and the end of the M.Phil. My primary objective is to see the more interesting, less well known parts of Europe. Much as I enjoy Tuscany or the Italian coastline, it seems more intelligent overall to have a look at places like Estonia, Turkey, and Croatia, while they are reasonably close at hand. Indeed, Instanbul is my top European target at the moment; I am waiting for some combination of free time, money, and a traveling companion to come together. Within the UK, Dublin is the place I would most like to see – ideally with someone like Tristan.

The appeal of Istanbul has much to do with how exotic is seems. Especially after seeing the photos that Emily and Bryony brought back from Morocco, I am hoping to travel somewhere with an Arabic character. It should also afford a good number of photographic opportunities, which is becoming a critical consideration for travel destinations for me.

As much of Europe as their remains to see, I think it’s essential that I see some other regions sooner rather than later. At the top of that list is Africa. Three sub-regions have particular appeal: French speaking West Africa (like Ghana and Benin), South Africa, and Kenya and Tanzania. I remain seriously interested in the possibility of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in the summer of 2007, as a follow-up to the M.Phil. To finish an academic program, then climb 5.8km straight up one of the world’s most interesting mountains would make an excellent pairing. I’ve also heard a lot about how people have had their climbs sponsored and, in so doing, raised a lot of money for charity. While the time right before the QT isn’t right for contemplating such expeditions, it’s a good thing to keep in the back of one’s mind.

Asia is another major region that I need to visit. I would very much like to go to Japan but, like Africa, it’s a place I would much rather go along with someone who has local experience and, ideally, appropriate language skills. I can do well enough in Europe with English and French. I think that would be less true farther afield, especially if I want to experience things beyond the simply touristic.

Visiting Nick Sayeg in Australia would be a lot of fun, especially if it was a part of a trip that also involved Sidney and a good amount of New Zealand. Alex’s photos from there are enough to ensure it a place on the relatively long list of potential destinations.

Of course, that leaves South America. For me, South America is more interesting as a quasi-athletic possibility than as a straightforwardly touristic one. My father went cycling in Peru, and Astrid did her incredible looking Andean hiking. It would also be really cool to see Tierra del Fuego, and even Antarctica, if it could somehow be managed.

One third of my Eight Year Plan, the overall strategic framework that should see me through until I am thirty, is defined as “travel everywhere important, or that I really want to see.” Through a combination of planning, intelligent selection of jobs and schools, and opportunism, I definitely mean to do so.

Short Cambridge foray

I just returned from Cambridge, after a long coach ride in the same clothes I wore last night, on account of having forgotten the change of clothes I packed in Wadham. Largely due to time constraints, I saw hardly any of Cambridge. I saw the inside of Christ College, where we had dinner, and some of the surrounding streets. From the coach, I saw the river.

Like St. John’s College, in Oxford, Christ College seems to extend back in fairly linear fashion from the porter’s lodge. Meeting some of the students at our sister college, as well as a surprising number of Wadham graduates who I don’t recall having spoken with before, made it a fairly good use of 24 hours. The knowledge that I only have 15 days left before my qualifying test led to me going to bed enormously earlier than most people seem to have done.

Obviously, I will need to return at some point. I am off to shower and get back to reading.

PS. Mica has two new videos online.

Malta Trip Photos: Final Installment of Digital Camera Shots

Regrettably, there will probably be some duplication once the film gets developed and scanned. Even so, I thought these were worth putting up.

Harbours, boats, and clear seas

Interesting rock formations

Limestone farmhouse

Fisherman’s chapel

Field of flowers

My mother certainly has a disapproving look here, probably because of how much the wide angle effect increases the apparent size of the bottle.

Malta Trip Photos: Second Installment

I will keep posting photos here that are not quite arty enough to be part of the Photo.net album, but which have some documentary value that compensates. As a bonus, all photos on the blog are included at 1024×768 resolution, while those on Photo.net are a maximum of 800×600. People wanting the full 2048×1536 jpeg files my camera produces can request them by email or comment.

Valletta’s status as a frequently invaded city is demonstrated by the elaborate fortifications that have been constructed around the harbour.

An important trans-shipment point between the countries circling the Mediterranean, Malta has extensive ship building and material transfer capabilities, both in Valletta Harbour and on the south side of the island near the main power plant.

The interior of St. John’s Co-Cathedral is both elaborate and unusual. The church is rectangular, with alcoves along the edges and a semi-cylindrical roof. Also, can anyone – perhaps Tony – enlighten me as to the meaning of a ‘co’ cathedral?

The emergence of skeletonized dead from tombs is an exceptionally common motif on the panels that make up the cathedral floor, each of which seems to be a grave marker.

My mother under an archway in central Valletta.