Sic Transit Glorious Walkabout

March 31, 2007

In the waning hours of Walkabout 2007 I pen this post from the premium transit lounge of Hong Kong airport. I flew in last evening and am overnighting here until my penultimate AM flight takes me over the pole 15 hours to JFK. It is perhaps fitting that after my wanderings of the past months through many countries I spend my last evening decompressing –a safety stop, as divers say – in no country at all. I didn’t pass through immigration and China doesn’t know I’m here, or care for that matter, since I will fly out as unannounced as I arrived. I am in that peculiar twilight zone known as “In Transit”.

Back in grade school I recall reading some patriotic pablum called “The Man Without a Country”. If memory serves, a dude who dissed the US is condemned to spend his remaining days on shipboard, and realizes how barren life is separated from his native soil. Well sure, it is a nausea inducing prospect, but mostly because of the separation from dry land of any species. Had he been condemned to the transit lounges of the international aviation system it wouldn’t have been half bad.

Here in Hong Kong’s Premium Travelers’ Lounge I’ve got a comfy leather chair, a convenient plug for my laptop, unlimited free coffee and snacks, periodicals of the world at my elbow, showers and TVs, plus a complementary 15 minute chair massage (which, it turns out, is in no way related to a lap dance, but is nice anyhow). Plus -- get this – my package entitles me to 8 hours of nap time in these little curtained rooms they have upstairs. None of this may be a surprise to those of you accustomed to first class travel, members of hoity toity airline clubs, to the manner born. But Dave is a Walkabout of the people and unaccustomed to such luxury. It is rather nice, and a chance to catch up on my blogging, of which I am woefully behind. Perhaps I’ll push my flight back a day or two…

It turns out the fly in the ointment, the worm in the apple, the Bush in the White House, if you will, is that those little Asian nap rooms aren’t sized to the Olympian proportions of the Walkabout. The beds (cots really) are rather short and Walkabout is rather tall. And – here’s the key point – he sleeps on his stomach. “If I don’t sleep on my stomach,” he maintains, “whose stomach should I sleep on!” Well said, Walkabout! There is no use debating the merits of stomach sleeping – it is one of those things that you are or aren’t, like being right handed or left, Jewish or Christian, Democrat or Republican. One is just right and the other just wrong, but you’ll never convince those who err so don’t bother trying.

The singular drawback of being a stomach sleeper is that you have to add several horizontal inches of clearance for toes, and several more for arms. Normally this can be accomplished through overhang. I cantilever nicely. But the nap cots were encircled by a guard rail so this wasn’t an option. I was left to curl uncomfortably like a pretzel. Why put guard rails on perfectly good beds? Are bed plummets really such a hazard? I raise the same existential question about footboards and, to a lesser extent, headboards. Why would a kind and merciful god inflict them upon us?

There is much more I could productively add on Walkabout’s theory of beds and bedding. But time is short, and I must stay on task. Still, I cannot leave this topic without passing on what may be my most valuable tip for would-be adventurers. This requires me to reveal perhaps my deepest, darkest secret, but I can hold nothing back from you, my faithful readers. I travel with a pillow. I will pause briefly while you finish snickering.

OK, I know what you are thinking. This doesn’t fit the dashing, debonair image we expect of Walkabout Dave. Bringing along his favorite pillow is something you would expect a nerdy little boy to do on a sleepover. Not so. I left my pillow home on many childhood sleepovers with unfortunate results. Only as an adult have I mastered the confidence not to leave it behind as well as the theoretical foundation in pillow theory to support my position. The facts speak for themselves: in nearly 90 nights travel I have had nearly 90 decent nights sleep. For the mathematically inclined, that is a success rate of 100%, nearly. Hotel pillows vary greatly in height and density. Many have feathers that can trigger allergies. Some smell. And think of all the heads that have lain on that hotel pillow! And all of the dread diseases of the hair, scalp and/or cheeks those heads may have harbored! And all the other parade of horribles that might merit exclamation points! You get the idea.

My own pillow, I call him Boris (no I don’t, really), is a half size foam pillow that compresses to virtually nothing in my suitcase and makes a useful protection for my laptop while on the move. I keep it in a pink pillow case to make it more conspicuous, the better to be mocked by a world that would keep me in the closet (the linen closet, that is). It also keeps me from forgetting it in hotel rooms, and hotel maids from walking off with it.

There. I’ve made my embarrassing personal admission, it’s your turn. Make it good, I could use a laugh.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Travel -- Why bother?

March 30, 2007

Why do we leave the familiar and comfortable and journey to places far and strange? In these final days of this global adventure of mine a little synthesis is due. I offer for your consideration Walkabout’s Theory of Travel (which I will abbreviate as “TOT” for no particular reason, since I won’t use the abbreviation ever again).

First off, travel isn’t the same as going places. Lots of people fly long distances just to see cool stuff that happens to be far away. They are just sight seeing. If Machu Pichu or the Pyramids were in West Hartford they would be happy to see them there. They aren’t interested in experiencing Peru or Egypt, modern or ancient. They just want to see a lot of impressive stones that made it to somebody’s list of Wonders of the World.

I don’t disdain that sort of voyaging. There is no law that says you need to play amateur archeologist or anthropologist. Sometimes you just want to look at something bigger than yourself and say “wow!” And I’ve purposefully ticked off a considerable number of the “1000 Things to See Before you Die” on this little outing of mine, just to whittle down the list. I haven’t done the final tally, but I suspect at this point that if I maintain a rate of one per month I’ve got a fighting shot, assuming standard actuarial tables and what not.

Or sometimes people go places far away just to warm up in the winter or cool down in the summer. That’s not travel as I mean it, just climate control by airplane. Once they are on the beach and have learned the local phrase for “bring me another pina colada” they could care less what hemisphere they are in.

Real travel in the Walkaboutian sense of the term means going to unfamiliar places, where people, language, culture or environment are different and perhaps challenging, in order to experience those differences. Those elements are not obstacles on your way to the pile of stones or the beach, they are the reason you are there. And, rather than insulating yourself from the experience through fancy hotels, familiar food and escorted tours, you immerse yourself in it.

Opening ourselves up to the travel experience entails discomfort, confusion and effort. But the payoff is immense. We go through our day to day lives seeing just a small fraction of what is around us. We are so accustomed to things that we no longer pay attention, since everything is where and how we expect it to be. Our houses, cars, streets and cities, restaurants, shops, neighbors, language and customs are all so familiar that we no longer see them. But in a foreign land we are required to open our senses since things are different in ways great and small. As a small thing, I wrote in a previous blog about foreign power outlets, which use weird shapes and voltages – when was the last time you gave any thought to electrical fixtures? As a stranger in a strange land you find yourself in a surprising and interesting world. It is a throwback to when you were a child and things as mundane as power outlets were new and curious. You went through life with your eyes wide open, taking it all in with a sense of wonder. In a word, that is what travel is about – wonder. In our day to day lives we can go months at a time without really experiencing it. When you travel properly, you are experiencing about as much of it as you can absorb.

This sort of wonder doesn’t require a “Wonder of the World”, or something listed in the “1000 Places to See Before You Die” book. In Phnom Phen I saw someone transporting perhaps 50 live ducks on the back of a motorbike, dangling squawking by the feet. Throughout Indochina I wondered at what people managed to carry on motorbike or bicycle. Baskets of piglets were no problem, but you cannot carry a full grown pig on a motorcycle – you need two, for balance. The record for human motorcycle passengers I am told is six, though I personally never saw more than four.

There are satisfactions that come from this sort of travel, when you are open and receptive to new thoughts and experiences. You have the satisfied feeling of knowing that a tiny bit more of the infinite strangeness and variety of this world is now captured within you. You feel you are living a little more intensely and fully than you typically do when at home.

The flip side is that it is draining, and there is a limit to how long one can do it productively. At a certain point you start becoming numb to the experience. And after three months of travel I expect I have reached that point. Initially I made an effort to learn as much of the language, history and customs of each country I was visiting. But of late I have to work on waking up to remember which country I’m in, and if I can recall how to say hello in the local lingo I consider it sufficient. In paying for a purchase I sometimes open my wallet and point to the dollars, bhat and dong therein and ask which of this stuff they take. The three month duration of this trip was something of a compromise. I thought nine months would be a good trip and Kathy suggested 90 days, so we settled on three months. As usual, Kathy was right and it’s time to come home.

The trick, of course, is to use the practice you get in traveling at keeping your eyes open, and the exercise that you have given your sense of wonder, when you are back home. I intend to put this all to great use to enrich all aspects of my day to day life back in Connecticut. To live each moment fully, awake and wondering, as an adventurer in my own land. But first, I have a lot of television shows to catch up on.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

The most depressing Walkabout post yet!

I hired a Tuk tuk to take me out to the killing fields. A Tuk tuk is standard motorcycle hooked up to tow a two-wheeled passenger compartment. It is a descendent of the rickshaw and a good way to go shorter distances in crowded Asian streets. The name comes from the “tuk tuk tuk…” of a two stroke engine. They are common in Thailand, and here in Phnom Penn where there are few cars and taxis they are essential transportation. There were six Tuk tuks waiting outside my hotel in hopes of a fare. In a spirit of charity I chose a shabby one with an even shabbier driver, elderly and twitching, and offered $12 for the 3 hour round trip. The driver was thrilled, but apologized that he would need a $1 advance to buy gasoline for the trip. He used some of the dollar to buy me a paper face mask to protect against the dust and gravel that passes for roads in today’s Cambodia.

Half way down the 15 kilometer road it became clear there was a problem. The engine sound became more of a “…tuk……tuk……tuk” and we slowed to a crawl. The driver pretended nothing was wrong as he tried to eek enough out of the machine to finish the trip. He clearly was terrified I would bail out and he would lose his fare. I helped by getting out to push it up several hills. When we finally reached the killing fields I left him tinkering frantically with the engine while I looked for a fellow tourist to beg a ride back. When I told my driver I wouldn’t be going back with him, but gave him the remaining $11 anyway, he practically hugged me.

Phnom Penh is a sad little city and capital of a sad little country. It is still very much defined by the killing fields I was visiting; one of hundreds of similar sites of Pol Pot’s genocide of the 1970s. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces came to power in 1975 he ordered Phnom Penh's two million inhabitants into the countryside. The shopkeepers, professionals, old and young spent the next several years trying to grow enough rice to avert starvation. Anyone suspected of subversive acts or thought was sent to a torture prison and ended up in a mass grave in one of the killing fields. The ultimate death toll may have been as high as three million people.

Perhaps it’s a function of my age, but the whole Cambodian tragedy looms large in my psyche. I vividly remember seeing it on the news, reading about it in the daily paper, and being moved by Sydney Schanberg’s reporting in the New York Times and his later book and movie. Perhaps at that point, in my early 20s, I was still idealistic enough to be surprised, shocked, and horrified that despite vows of “never again” the world was sitting idly by watching the deaths of millions of innocents. Since then we’ve seen genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan and elsewhere, and I have to admit that I’ve pretty much stopped paying attention. I didn’t go to Cambodia to dredge this up. Like everyone else I came to visit the temples of Angkor Wat. But once here I was compelled to take a look.

And while the Cambodian genocide happened 30 years ago, in Phnom Penh the legacy is still all around, and the city feels like a place where a war has just ended. Phnom Penh was once known as the “Pearl of Asia” – the loveliest of French colonial cities. Its pleasant boulevards were lined with shade trees and bougainvillea, Buddhist temples, sidewalk cafes, elegant restaurants, and an occasional opium den to spice things up. It is still possible to imagine what the city must have been like back then. Some of the pieces are still there in a sunny park or graceful colonial façade. But the stronger sense is of a place neglected, crumbling and irreparably broken. Damaged structures are everywhere, as are damaged people missing limbs from combat or land mines. There has been no resolution. No trial of the perpetrators has ever taken place, though there is finally movement in that direction for those still alive. Some of the torturers live freely, and prosperously, here in the city. The government includes former Khmer Rouge and is notoriously corrupt. Its ministries are surrounded by armed guards and rusting barbed wire. Though there is a good deal of foreign aid, much of it is misdirected and ineffective.

Yes, there are signs of new life. Some buildings are being repaired and many small shops are open. And perhaps I am being too bleak. But it seems more like desperation than vitality. I never got my Tuk tuk driver’s story; he didn’t speak enough English and the volume of a Tuk tuk isn’t conducive to conversation. But he was undoubtedly a victim, one way or another, of his country’s wars and its barren peace. I wonder whether as we were driving to the killing fields he was thinking of his friends and relatives who must certainly lie interred there. Or was he only wondering whether he would earn enough to eat that night and repair his Tuk tuk to start again tomorrow.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Who among us is so small as to not love an Elephant?

From Bangkok I flew to Chiang Mai, the capital of Thailand’s northwest region and launching site for treks into the hill country. The treks go by truck and then foot to visit Thailand’s remote hill people – ethnically and culturally separate tribes that eek out a primitive subsistence in much the same way their ancestors did. At least that is the way it is billed. Of course it ends up being a nice demonstration of Heizenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – observing a phenomenon irreparably alters it. Though there are a lot of these hill villages there are even more tour groups traipsing through them. Just seeing the alien foreigners decked out by LL Beans must have an impact. And they have gotten very adept at separating tourists from their dollars (or Thai Bhat, as the case may be). The villages are now able to afford a few televisions (powered by solar cells) and you wonder how longer any native culture can survive weekly viewings of Desperate Housewives. They are also starting to buy motor scooters and other accoutrements of civilization, and the kids are moving off to the cities. I’m told there are even more remote villages you can find further up in Burma or Laos, but basically if you care to see one you best helicopter in next week since there will be a McDonalds moving in the week after.

I did a two day trek – several hours of hiking each way with an overnight stay in one of the villages. It was a fascinating visit, and I don’t want to dismiss the dramatic differences you can still see in their way of life. They live on very little, have few material possessions, and do seem to be happy. I just wonder if their increasing contact with our civilization will change that though. They didn’t know they were poor until we arrived to show them.

On the way up we visited an elephant preserve and had a chance to ride elephants for an hour or so. They really are marvelous creatures, and it is one of the great deficiencies of our modern lifestyle that elephants no longer participate. I feel we should encourage greater elephant usage and propose, as a modest first step, that we require all parking lots to have at least one elephant space. It could be located next to the handicapped space, and would be similar in size but would have one of those elevated platforms for mounting and dismounting the beast.

Each elephant has a dedicated caretaker, called a Mahout, who is paired with the animal when both are young. They learn each others quirks and grow old together. If the elephant dies I believe the Mahout is burned on the same funeral pyre, though it is possible I am either confused or just making this up. One fun thing you can do in Chiang Mai is become a Mahout for a day. You are paired with an elephant and learn to feed it and bathe it in the river. Bathing an elephant is no quick task – just cleaning under the armpits can take hours. Is anyone out there interested in investing with me in a chain of brushless walk-through elephant washes? Tusk waxing would be available at an additional charge.

Not surprisingly, elephants aren’t particularly fuel efficient – they are the SUVs of the passenger animal world. Before ascending we were encouraged to buy bundles of bananas “to make friendly with elephant”. Our particular pachyderm got about 50 feet to the banana. He would stop short and refuse to go any further until we offered up another to his probing snout. He would also make that wonderful trumpeting noise that elephants make. We were quite concerned that we would run out of bananas and be stranded in the forest. Fortunately, the Mahouts had thought this through and placed strategic elephant refueling stations along the route where local children, sitting on platforms 10 feet off the ground, would restock us for 50 cents a bundle. Elephants turn out to be flexible-fuel vehicles and can also be made friendly with sugar cane. That takes longer to crunch than a banana so they will get about 200 feet to a 10 inch section of cane. The trunk of an elephant really is a miraculous thing to behold. I accidentally dropped my water bottle on the ground and ours picked it up and handed it back to me, none the worse if you don’t mind elephant snot.

Your faithful correspondent

Walkabout Dave

A tale of two cities

From Singapore I flew to Bangkok. Taking to heart the less than stellar reviews of my Singapore post I am going to spare you the full compare and contrast with Bangkok, though it may come up as an essay question on the final exam (wink, wink). I have come to accept that most of you prefer turtle erotica or pretty doggie pictures to cogent social analysis and will stoop to your level.

I will say that Bangkok is sort of an anti-Singapore. Where the Lion City is clean, orderly, efficient, conservative and safe, Bangkok is the Wild West. It is a crowded, dirty, hot and noisy, anything goes sort of place. It has much more life and excitement than Singapore and feels more real and genuine. It has true history and character and is far more likable. On that other hand, it is far less livable and after 48 hours I was glad to get out.

I visited the Royal Palace to pay homage to Thailand’s Kings, and especially its greatest king, Yul Brynner. I have always admired Yul as a role model for us bald people, though I think making Thais eat with forks instead of chopsticks was a big mistake. Eating with chopsticks is part of the appeal of Asian food. I kid of course. You will recall that Yul played Thailand’s King Mongkut in the musical “The King and I”. That musical is barred in Thailand because they feel it ridicules the King and country and is replete with historical inaccuracies, and I’m sure it is. The Thai kings did a really impressive job preserving and building a kingdom between powerful neighbors – first the Khmer, Chinese and Burmese and later the English and French colonial powers. Did you know that Thailand is the only country in Southern Asia that was never under foreign domination? Did you also know that Yul Brynner was the only Thai king ever to have won an Oscar?

The Royal Palace is fabulous and I will post photos at some point. Also, in central Bangkok you can’t swing an eight armed statute of Vishnu without hitting a gorgeous Bhuddist temple. They are known as “Wats” and are everywhere. It’s a shame that they don’t have something called a “Why” or a “Who”, or we would have the making of a great “who’s on first?” routine. (As of now it is a little dry: “what did you see today?”, “Yes”, “Yes what?”, “Yes, Wat!”….). The Wats are fabulously ornamented and decorated, and you get all sorts of fancy Buddhas, in jade or silver or gold, or encrusted with diamonds. Or sometimes they just go for quantity and you get hundreds of them in one room, or size and they are enormous. These aren’t fat Buddhas, by the way. They are reasonably svelt. Perhaps the fat ones are in China or India, I couldn’t say.

One problem with Bangkok is that they have few streets, and the ones they have are organized like tree branches, radiating into smaller and smaller alleyways. All the traffic is funneled to a few main thoroughfares and is horrific most of the time. That’s one drawback of not having been colonized. The French would have gladly bulldozed whole neighborhoods down to put in grand boulevards. They would also have taught the Thais how to make a decent croissant. You wonder why Anna didn’t tell Yul to forget about the chopsticks already and put in some decent streets. And sidewalks too, while he was at it. The few they have are narrow, riddled with pot holes, and covered with street vendors – all at the same time. Also, since the French weren’t around to impose a roman alphabet on the Thai language (as they did for the Vietnamese), and most street signs are only in Thai, navigation is a particular challenge. Walkabout’s philosophy is that the only real way to get to know a city is to, well, walk about it. And Bangkok makes that quite perilous. There were times when I practically had to hail a cab just to get across the street.

Bangkok is modernizing quickly, and in the midst of the chaos there are office and residential towers and shopping plazas springing up that, in them selves, would not be out of place in Singapore. The problem is that the basic infrastructure of roads and transport wasn’t there to support them. They are being creative in cobbling together solutions, including elevated highways and rail lines over some of the main avenues. It feels a bit short of the task and is in danger of creating a “Blade Runner” type of future world where the old decaying city exists underneath the modern world of skyscrapers. But I said I’d stop with the societal critiques, so I will. Bye.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Charting the Peregrinations of the Walkabout

To permit you armchair travelers to better follow along, I’m pleased to present a map showing my travels to date (the blue line) and projecting forward my remaining adventures (the red).

I note with mixed feeling that the blue line is now longer than the red and that at my present stopping point in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I have reached the furthest limit of my explorations. Henceforth each passing day will bring me closer home. And though that occasions regret for the places I will not visit or people meet on this particular trip, I do feel the pull of hearth and home, of friends and kin, and look forward to reuniting with you all. But do not think that my return will mean the end of my walkabout. I will continue to be an adventurer, as should we all. Whether in exotic Asian lands or in my own backyard, many further explorations await before the last chapter of the Walkabout saga is written.

But enough with the schmaltz. The boo requested an upside down map, eliminating the Northern-hemisphere-centric approach of most maps produced in our latitudes. I am pleased to also present that here. This shows how the adventures of the Walkabout appear to readers in the Southern hemisphere, at least the dyslexic ones:

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

I have seen the future, and it is pretty creepy

From Down Under I crossed the equator and am now Up Over in Singapore. The Lion City, as they call it, is a pint-size city state, perhaps a quarter of a Rhode Island but don’t hold me to it. It is an economic dynamo, one of the “Asian Tigers” along with Taiwan, Hong Kong and a few others (any Google monkeys out there care to help out?) The population of 4.6 million is mostly ethnic Chinese, with a minority of Malays and Indians, and a handful of former European colonists and their progeny who don’t seem to know when to go home.

In a few short decades Singapore is said to have made an amazing leap from third world to first, from rickshaws to monorails. I don’t know that this quite captures it since Singapore doesn’t feel like any first world place I’ve ever been. It’s a sort of over-scaled post-modern future world theme park of a place. As though it blew right through first world to something else entirely and we need a new term. There’s a lot to admire in Singapore, and some things to make one feel uneasy.

The Singapore city center is a sea of skyscrapers and immense shopping complexes, many named for sponsoring corporate giants. Everything is connected by underpasses, overpasses, and more escalators than I thought existed on the planet. LCD screens and neon are everywhere, computerized voices talk to you from all sides, a hyper-efficient bus and subway system runs throughout. The subway, called the MRT, is the sleekest I’ve seen with whisper quiet trains, a magnetic fare card you just wave, and helpful signs and maps everywhere. The streets are meticulously marked, with huge LCD screens reminding you to have a nice day, and you are never far from a public restroom or bench. Everything is insanely efficient and absolutely nothing is ever out of order.

Beyond efficiency, the place is pretty. There are extensive public parks between the skyscrapers. The architecture is innovative and sometimes interesting. The harbor and river from an attractive setting for open air restaurants and bars. The streets and highways are lined with lush plantings. Public art – murals, mosaics, fountains and sculpture -- is everywhere. I went on a walking tour of the old harbor district that was cleverly illustrated with life-size bronze figures– coolies unloading bullock carts, money lenders on the docks, street urchins diving into the river, and so on.

The thing about Singapore that I just couldn’t get over was how clean it is. As an experiment I timed five minutes of random strolling before finding a piece of litter. I was there for the Chinese New Year celebration with a parade and hundreds of thousands of spectators. Moments after it ended the cleaning trucks came by to sweep the streets. But so well trained are the Singaporeans that I didn’t see anything on the streets worth cleaning.

It’s clearly a hardworking city, but there is nothing grim about it. Leisure activities of choice seem to be primarily of shopping and eating, and opportunities for both are everywhere. For fun and games there is an extensive recreation complex on the offshore island of Sentosa, reachable by road, ferry, cable car and monorail, that offers all manner of theme-park-esque amusements. The people are polite and most speak some English. Crime in is minimal, the streets are safe at all hours, and violence hardly known. Public housing is readily available and people can buy their flats and become homeowners. Amid all this modernity the cultural roots still show through. The Chinese, Indian and Malay strands seem firmly represented in food, clothing, shopping and arts. Skyscrapers aren’t built until they are certified as having correct feng shui and fortune tellers and herbal remedies cooexist amid the modern stores and malls.

So what is the catch? I’m not sure there is one. A typical criticism you hear of Singapore is that it achieves its spic and span prosperity with draconian laws. There are harsh fines for littering and chewing gum is illegal. Well, at the risk of forfeiting my ACLU membership, is that so terrible? What civil liberty is exercised by throwing trash on the street or scrawling graffiti on a public wall? I suppose that a right to chew gum might be found in a constitutional penumbra somewhere, but I can’t say I miss the wads of gum stuck to the underside of every horizontal surface. They have the death penalty for drug dealers, and you can certainly dispute that, but with a history of crippling drug addiction going back to the opium dens I can’t argue with harsh punishment for drug trafficking. To the extent they have managed to virtually eliminate illegal drug use, isn’t that more humane than the US’ confused approach with a huge prison population held for minor drug offenses Singapore doesn’t feel like a police state; you don’t see armed men on the street, though with Singaporean efficiency, I expect they see all that goes on through video cameras. Yes, there is something nannyish, if not ominous, about a government that posts signs by urinals reminding people not to puddle. Still, you appreciate the lack of floor puddles.

“What gives, Walkabout?” I hear you cry. “We look to you as a noble defender of freedom and civil liberties, even though you have never really done anything beyond make small annual contributions to organizations that pester you sufficiently by mail. Yet here you are, making apologies for what appears to be a Nazi Disneyland.” And you make a valid point, at least as to my nobility. But it is more complicated than that. I don’t think that disorder equates to freedom or that order is by any means its enemy. I’d go so far as to say assert that disorder more frequently results in loss of freedoms (cases look at Weimer Germany, Russia in the ‘90s, and post 9/11 America). People will choose orderly tyranny over chaotic freedom so best not to give them that choice. It is illusory to depend on governmental incompetence to safeguard freedom. The Soviet government was generally incompetent, but that didn’t stop the KGB from being a first rate secret police. About the only thing Saddam Hussein was any good at was suppressing his people. I’m not defending the state of civil liberties in Singapore – I don’t know enough to comment. I’m just saying that I don’t see where hefty fines for littering abridges any personal freedoms worth preserving.

The criticism of Singapore that for me sinks a little deeper is more of an aesthetic than a political one. All of this cleanliness, order and efficiency has a sort of sterility to it. It is like living inside a shopping mall. Everything seems designed by neutral passionless corporations to be pleasant, productive and profitable. Your local main street, if you are lucky enough to still have a real one, isn’t necessarily as clean, orderly or efficient. Some of the shop owners don’t keep their sidewalks clean, the food in the local restaurant may not be as consistently edible as Olive Garden, the stores may not be as well stocked or the prices as low as at Best Buy. But the stores are owned and run by real people who hopefully care about their customers and products, not just employees following a script written in Bentonville Arkansas, or wherever. And while the result may sometimes be poor, it may also be excellent. And the overall experience is far more human and satisfying.

A good illustration is the new Singapore National Museum. They took an old colonial building and gutted it, adding cavernous glass atriums. They must have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it, as well as a bunch of slickly packaged 360 degree movies, slide shows and displays on Singapore history, food, art and so on. All these were connected with the ubiquitous escalators going every which way and a bizarre mag card access system you need to swipe to get into each room. You are also given a personal video walkman “companion” to guide you.

The problem is it was all ghastly. They had managed to sandblast away any history in the original building and produce an empty glass box. It looked like the product of a faceless committee that had surveyed national museums around the world, found out what was most popular, and then awarded contacts to local marketing companies to put together flashy films or displays. It was one of the more boring and depressing places I’ve been. And this is their place to show visitors what their country is all about!

So my basic criticism is of the corporate mentality permeating the place. Corporations can be real good at running profitable businesses. They can put together neat and tidy and profitable shopping malls and office towers, but they fall short on tasks requiring creativity and inspiration and where that is needed what they produce is often hollow. The best corporations recognize this as a challenge and look for ways to free up the creativity of their employees. But it is a challenge, since the essence of a corporation is that you are responsible up the chain and ultimately will be judged not on creativity but on measurable contributions to the bottom line. We certainly have plenty of this attitude in the US. Singapore just seems to have gone a bit further down that road and may show us where we are heading. And that is responsible both for the enviable economic success of the place and the feeling of unease it leaves me with.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Note to Self –

Self, this post is long and tedious. It lacks the crisp wit we strive for. Where is the irony? The tortured logic, paradox and self-referential maze that characterize a good Walkabout post are entirely missing. As is the schizoid trick where we create a foil to argue both sides of an issue. (Well, actually there is a bit of that in the 7^th paragraph. Quite right, sorry, and also in this Note, now that I mention it.) Also, we never get around to abusing our sub-sentient scum of a readership. This is definitely not a candidate for the ‘best of the Walkabout Blog’ reruns we will post over the Summer. Most importantly, remember to delete this Note when we post to the blog! I mean the entire Note, not just the

You don't scare me, Mr. Vice President

February 26, 2007

Call me paranoid, but just a few days ago I was in Australia and the Vice President made a state visit. Now I'm in Singapore and he made an "unscheduled" stop. I think I'm being stalked by Dick Cheney.

Now those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning know it is not about politics. I have scrupulously avoided making any disparaging comments about our shit-for-brains President or his minions. I have no wish to gratuitously offend any of the cretinous imbeciles who still support this administration. And I have nothing but respect for the office of the President. After all, I'm a pretty fair carpenter but wouldn't know where to begin to make an oval-shaped room.

But now Cheney has taken the gloves off. I don't know whether he intends to reveal that my wife Kathy is a CIA operative (oops ... I guess at this point he needn't bother ...) or plans to mistake my face for a quail (he wouldn't be the first), but whatever his dark satanic scheme is, I'm prepared.

I must go now. I'm hearing strange noises, like the tick tick tick of a pacemaker and the trickle and ooze of a few drops of blood through a network of stents barely capable of supporting life.

Is that you, Mr. Cheney? No, Mr. Cheney don't, please don't....

Argh, argh......

Argh....

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Notes from the land down under

I just stopped for an overnight stay in Melbourne, the land down under. I have to say that I didn’t see a single woman glow or man plunder, so I’m not sure what Men at Work were talking about.

The flight over from Auckland was interesting. It seems Quantas now staffs their flight crews primarily with kangaroos. It is one of those ideas that seem appealing in theory. And it is amusing to watch the roos hop up and down the aisles with the meal service. But it grows old real fast, what with knocked over beverage carts and the like. And the noises coming from the cockpit are rather disconcerting. And do you know how they pass out the headphones for in-flight movies? That’s right, boomerangs!

I was only in Australia for 24 hours, and to be honest I just went there so that I could say I visited the continent. I’m up to six now by the way. Just one left, but it’s the tough one. See if you can guess which while I hum the Final Jeopardy theme… dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum (it sounds better in my head). Yes, it was Antarctica, but I can’t give you credit since you neglected to phrase it in the form of a question. Some American dude on my travels was telling me that he had done an over flight of Antarctica from Patagonia, in Southern Chile, or maybe Argentina. Basically, they just got on a jet plane, flew a few hours south, cruised around maybe buzzing a few penguins, and returned to where they started. I asked him why and the only thing he could come up with was that he had already been to the other six continents. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that flying over a continent doesn’t count as having “been” there. I once spent a few hours in the transit lounge at Tokyo airport, but I would never claim to have “been” to Tokyo. Everyone knows that to get credit for “being” in a place you have to be on the ground, go through customs, and go to the bathroom there (number 1 will suffice). He didn’t come close on Antarctica.

Even though I have now officially been to Australia, I am uncharacteristically going to withhold any comment on it. One of my iron rules is not to voice an opinion on an entire continent unless I have spent at least 48 hours there. I’m sure there’s a lot to be said about Australia, and much of it has been said very wittily by Bill Bryson in his book In a Sunburned Country. I think Bryson nailed it, but I’d need another 24 hours or so of time down under to be sure.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

We open up the Walkabout reader mailbag

To repeat a warm but obviously bogus platitude, I couldn’t write this Blog without you, my dear friends and devoted readership. I’d like to acknowledge each of your comments and letters individually, but I can’t be bothered. So today we open up the Reader mailbag and collectively address the comments I have received thus far.

Couch Potato Greg takes umbrage at my criticism of the readership for not commenting. Rest assured, Couch Potato (and I’m sure you do little else but rest) I was not referring to you, or to Loyal Reader or Faithful Reader either for that matter. You are all illustrative of what I am looking for in my blogocites – loyal, faithful, and not overly feisty. (By the way Couch Potato, I was thinking of you in writing about the Segway. It would make a great commuting vehicle to take you from your armchair to the refrigerator for a fresh beer.)

Luddite, on the other hand, may become a problem. Responding to my epistle on fear and bungee jumping he asks “How about you confront your fear of full time employment here in the good ol' US of A?” Firstly, my dear Ludd, a certain tone of respect is due me as Blog Master. Perhaps I have myself to blame. Some posts ago I referred to one reader as an “obsequious moron” and I’m afraid this may have been misinterpreted. I was concerned that the term “moron”, though entirely accurate, might come across as overly harsh. I added the modifier “obsequious” to temper it and give credit where credit was due. I meant it in the positive sense of “slavish”, “fawning” or “sycophantic”, qualities that are certainly admirable in those who comment on this Blog.

As for the substance of Luddite’s query, in the words of Ecclesiastes, “to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven”. This is my season for slacking off. Please don’t cramp my style. And when I do finally get around to looking for a job I will be able to add at the bottom of my resume those magic words that all employers look for: “Segway-capable and bungee-tested.” When coupled with my other obvious qualifications (for example, I always know the exact amount of time to reheat anything in a microwave) I will be virtually un-unemployable. And don’t forget, I will have a weather predicting howler monkey to accompany me on all my interviews. Enough said on the subject of job search. We will speak of this no more.

To Faithful Reader and Loyal Reader, thank you for your faithful and loyal comments. But are you sure you are separate individuals? If so you might want to meet up as you have much in common. And yes, I would urge you to get the physical conditioning program cracking post-haste. After all my adventures to date I have legs like steel bands. Unless yours are of titanium quality, or at least molybnium, you have no hope of keeping up. If they are merely rubber bands, perhaps you should try bungee jumping.

Solesister, feels that there is a diagnostic code for someone who bungee jumps at age 50. Yes there is: IB2Gr84U! You clearly overlook the therapeutic potential of the b-jump. Think of it as a replication of the birth trauma, but with a longer umbilical cord. Also, no one charged me $300 to be born. The screaming was much the same though.

To KC, it is wonderful to see you emerge from your lurking shadows, even if it is to question my sexual orientation just because I accompanied my dear family on the Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg. Intolerance is an ugly thing. Remember, we are all children of god. Except for me. I am his first cousin. (Solesister, I expect you have a diagnostic code for that too.)

Anonymous writes “I want to see the turtles! Come on everyone - TURTLES! TURTLES! TURTLES”. For shame! And you wonder why you remain anonymous!

the boo offers a puzzler in the Korean tongue. The word is pronounced: ban-chi choam-puh and relates to bungee jumping. She provides the unhelpful hint that there is no J in the Korean alphabet. I am at a loss. Any Korean scholars out there?

Tom's Neighbor offers to link me up to other bloggers. But Walkabout is like the shark, he swims alone, a lonely predator of the deep… (Oh yea, Walkabout was going to bag that analogy before he gets locked up). I’m still new to this blogging stuff. What does it mean to link to another blog. Is there a risk of infection? Is it true that you are linking to any blog they have ever linked to? In theory I am open to anything that will help spread Walkabout’s good news, and am considering morphing this from a travel blog to an evangelical religion. I could live on the t-shirt sales alone.

pizzadawgy! Wants to know if she can come on my next midlife crisis. Sorry pizzadawgy, but my next crisis will be a latelife crisis in which I will be hobbling the world in my walker, looking for good bingo games. I don’t think you would enjoy it. But you can certainly have your own early-life crisis. I’m sure your parents would appreciate that. And there’s still time to get it out of the way before your next regularly scheduled crisis (called being a teenager).

Petey wants to know how come I never mention any dogs in my blog. It is curious he should bring that up since, entirely coincidentally, I was preparing to inaugurate a new blog feature – Dogs of the Pacific Rim. For our first installment, here’s a photo I took while visiting friends on the North Island:

They have eight dogs! No two alike (like snowflakes) though a preponderance of terriers. I couldn’t get them to line up for the photo.

They also have five cats, a ratio that puts the cats at a distinct disadvantage. Does anyone know a mathematical formula to establish the proper ratio of cats to dogs in multi-animal households?

Also, they didn’t have a single collie. Have you ever noticed that you don’t see collies anymore? When I was growing up, in the Lassie days, every second dog seemed to be a collie. Boys named Timmy couldn’t get themselves trapped in caves without collies lining up to form search parties or weave their collars into rescue ladders. Where have all the collies gone? Perhaps they are like the elves who, in the waning days of middle earth, saw that their time was over and sailed off to the far elfin lands. If I ever find myself in collie land, pizzadawgy!, I’ll be sure to report fully.

To those commentors I have missed, my apologies. Send me another note and I will catch up next time we reach into the Walkabout reader mailbag.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Dave braves the depths of Mordor and returns to brag about it

February 19, 2007

I have completed the fabled Tongiriro Crossing in the central North Island of New Zealand. This is a 10 mile trek climbing 900 meters up and across a wild mountain plateau, threading between three majestic and sometimes active volcanic peaks, across ancient dry volcanic lake beds and around not so dry volcanic lakes. It crosses landscapes so alien and striking that I have given up all hope of written description and finally gone to the bother of figuring out how to post pictures.

Here goes:




















If that tallest peak looks eerily familiar, no you are not channeling back to some ancient past life as a Maori. Rather, that is Mount Doom, deep in the depths of Mordor, where Frodo and his faithful sidekick Sam, accompanied by Gollum, went to return the ring of power to the fires from which it was forged. They did some special effects to the top to get it to spew fire (in the studio, I mean, not to the actual volcano), but otherwise it looks pretty much as I recall from the film.

Here's a photo of your faithful correspondent approaching Mt Doom. You can see how the dark power of the ring is weakening me; the evil wizard Sauren finding my weakest point and sending his orc hosts against them (my iliotibial bands of course). But I persevered with minimal ITB issues. Take that, forces of darkness!




















Here are some more photos of terrain that may look familiar to LOR fans:



Altogether an excellent hike and much recommended.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Stupid things foreigners do that annoy me, part 2

I arrived in the Wellington in the midst of a perfect storm of public celebration that made the city quite lively, if crowded. The Chinese New Year was underway, together with some sort of Rugby championship, as well as a three game cricket match between New Zealand and their arch-enemy Australia. Chinese New Year is colorful and fun, with lots of eating and parading and I’ve got no problem at all with that. Rugby I don’t claim to understand, but from what I’ve seen it is a fine sport with a lot of the strategic and tactical complexity that makes American football interesting, without the constant stops and starts and penalties that seem designed only to provide slots for commercials. There is also a good level of violence and a surprising lack of padding which, as a spectator, I appreciate.

Cricket, on the other hand, is a ridiculous sport and for that reason I am naming it number 2 on my list of things foreigners do that annoy me. Baseball is clearly a more highly evolved game and once it was invented by Abner Doubleday (or whomever – that’s one argument I could care less about) cricket should have gracefully faded to extinction. But it didn’t. It’s as though people still rode those funny bicycles with the enormous wheel now that we have 15 speed racing cycles. The key innovation of baseball is that there are parameters that constantly change as the game progresses, including balls, strikes, outs, men on base, batter up and on deck, and so on. These create moments of drama and tension that are simply missing in cricket. Too, in baseball, runs tend to come in clumps -- once men start getting on base it is possible to start chalking up large totals -- so dramatic comebacks are always possible even into the last inning. (By the way, do you think that “Too” is a grammatically-correct way to start a sentence? I don’t but thought I’d give it a try. Sorry for the interruption.) In cricket there is a sameness throughout, and aside from the bowler and batter most of the players don’t seem to have anything much to do for hours at a time.

So as to better report to you, my faithful readers, I watched a fair amount of the Wellington matches. To be honest, it was impossible to get a beer in a local pub without seeing it, so I was captive. The matches seemed interminable, but actually were a shortened one day version. I’m told traditionally they stretch over five days. You literally get to watch grass grow. The general view expressed to me by locals was that cricket is a beautiful game even if it is rather boring. The big story was that New Zealand, the underdog, won all three matches against Australia, occasioning a celebration not seen in the country since VJ day. They take their cricket seriously even if they aren’t sure why. If anyone is interested in offering a defense of the game I’d love to hear it.

While I am adding to my list of stupid things foreigners do that annoy me, let me mention that the British serve a fruit and bread pudding they call "spotted dick". Though a fine name for a disease this is obviously a ludicrous name for a dessert. That they share it with their Commonwealth is reason enough to be glad we fought a revolution. Now despite my collection of advanced degrees I’ll be the first to admit that I never emotionally graduated junior high school. But some things are just too great a temptation and I don’t think Mother Theresa could avoid the giggles if they tried to serve her some spotted dick. And she’s dead. Here's the astonishing part – they don’t even realize how juvenile they sound. When one English member of my bicycle tour group had the effrontery to offer to share his spotted dick with me I had no choice but to illustrate their error by telling them about an American dessert called "Inflamed Testicles". Oh what hilarity ensued as they gullibly asked the others in the group whether they had ever had Inflamed Testicles. That would have had them rolling in the halls at A.B. Davis Middle School! So if an Englishman ever asks you what Inflamed Testicles are like, please play along. Tell them they are similar to Pears and Scrotum, only lumpier.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Go North, middle aged man

February 18, 2007

From Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island, I flew to Wellington on the more populous North Island. As a city, Wellington is kind of like me – cosmopolitan, cultured, sophisticated, fairly tidy, and only occasionally gridlocked. It is situated on a broad natural harbor and the waterfront has been redeveloped with bars and restaurants and a theater and museum complex (excuse me, “a theatre and musemu complxe”). I saw a nice performance of an American play called “Doubt”. As the capital there are also governmental offices, the parliament, state libraries and the like, and some pretty good shopping opportunities.

I took a guided tour of the city. But no buses for your intrepid Walkabout; as part of my commitment to remain on the cutting edge of societal evolution I Segwayed. You remember the Segway -- that miraculous new personal transportation device introduced to much mystery and hype a few years back. Then we didn’t hear anything more about it, except when Bush fell off one. Well they are still around and turn out to be a nifty way to do a city tour, at least for a compact place like Wellington with good sidewalks and parks. Fifteen minutes of instruction had me up and running, if that is the word, and I don’t see how it could be. You move forward and backward by shifting your weight; the more you lean the faster you travel. A rotating handgrip lets you turn left and right. The only tricky part is getting the correct lean in the turns so that centrifugal forces don’t chuck you off – kind of like in skiing. It quickly became intuitive and I was zipping around town at 12 kilometers per hour, up and down steep slopes. I can’t recall anything we saw on the tour, but it was great fun playing with the device. I know many of you are starting to put together your gift lists for my birthday, Hanukah, Christmas, or Walkabout Appreciation Day, so I’ll just mention in passing that I don’t currently own a Segway.

Before I segue from the Segway though, I will say that I’m not sure it works yet as a mobility device for the elderly. It is a little tricky at higher speeds and not the sort of thing you would put a frail and brittle-boned aunt on. You also need to stand up, which is a tiring for extended periods. I expect there’s further work to be done on that front. At present, other than as a toy better uses would be for police patrolling in urban environments or for commutes between home and local mass transit stations.

Wellington also has a really top notch national history and culture museum called Te Papa, which means something or other in Maori. The Kiwis are good about using the Maori language alongside English – fair compensation, I suppose, for stealing their country. I spent the better part of a day wandering the museum learning fun facts to know and tell about New Zealand. To confirm your worst fears, I intend to share them with you now. The museum is one of these new style interactive ones with lots of buttons to push and panels to slide, perfect for people like me with limited attention spans. I appreciate that you don’t have the benefits of audio visual aids so to liven this up I recommend the following: put a bottle of wine, beer or other age appropriate beverage in front of you while reading these fun facts. Each time a fact surprises you and you think, “How fascinating! I’ll have to remember that!” pour yourself a refreshing glass. Alternatively, each time you think “Why is Walkabout telling me all this drivel? I wonder what’s on the telly?” hit yourself over the head with the bottle.

New Zealand is the remotest significantly inhabited spot on earth. Once there, a four hour plane flight is needed to get you to the second most remote, Australia. The museum illustrated this with a nifty New Zealand-centric map. Aside from Australia and Antarctica, you can go 6,000 or 8,000 miles in any direction and find only water. Perhaps in consequence, New Zealand is also the most recently inhabited significant piece of real estate. It was settled by the Polynesian ancestors of today’s Maori about 1,000 years ago. The Maori had no written language prior to the arrival of whites in the early 1800s, but kept elaborate records of ancestry through wooden carvings and oral tradition. Remarkably, individual Maori can trace their lineage back to one of nine long boats that reached the islands a millennium ago. This had been dismissed as legend, but recent genealogical studies confirm that all Maori come from only 90 female lines and each boat would have carried 10 women. The navigational skill of the first settlers was remarkable. At a time when European sailors were hugging the Mediterranean coasts, the Polynesians were regularly crossing thousands of miles of open Pacific to precise locations. It is thought that they had located the “Land of the Long White Cloud” on previous expeditions and the first nine long boats expected to find it just where they did. Take a moment to consider how incredible that was! When you are done, move on the next paragraph.

The natural history of New Zealand is similarly surprising. It broke away some 80 million years ago from the super-continent of Gondwanaland. Current thinking is that this happened on a Tuesday. It has been isolated ever since so it retained a primitive flora and fauna with virtually no mammals. On other significant land masses (Australia excepted) we mammals were fabulously successful, taking over from the dinosaurs as herbivores and carnivores of all shapes and sizes. Take a moment to consider how cool we mammals are and how great it is to be a mammal! OK, now take another moment to consider how stupid that thought was.

As we saw in the Galapagos, without mammals filling their customary niches other species evolved in unique ways. Without grazing mammals, numerous species of flightless birds evolved – including the colossal Moa which reached 12 feet in height and weighed up to 550 pounds, a sort of bird giraffe. Without tigers or wolves the giant Haast eagle with a 10 foot wingspan evolved to be a terrifying predator. And the Kiwi itself, the symbol of New Zealand and New Zealanders, evolved as a cute little furry bird running about on the ground. Without predators it had no use for wings.

The original natural world of New Zealand must have been quite something, but it was irreparably changed by the coming of man. Some species, such as the Moa, were hunted to extinction by Maori. Others were lost to environmental changes –Maori burned huge areas of forest, partly in an effort to flush out the Moa as they became increasingly rare. Perhaps the most significant impact came from introduction of new species. Rats may have reached the islands even before the Maori settlement, carried by early Polynesian explorers who relied on them as a food source. Numerous native species or their eggs would have been defenseless against them. The loss of any one species set off ripple effects on others that relied on them. Without Moa to prey on, the Haast eagles died off. (An alternative theory I find plausible is that they were hunted down by Maori who got testy when the eagles carried their children away.)

All these effects accelerated by orders of magnitude once the Europeans arrived. They intentionally introduced numerous new plant and animal species and engaged in wholesale burning in an effort to turn New Zealand into a sort of antipodal England. In a sense they were remarkably successful. There are beautiful grassy hills and fields divided by hedgerows, grazing with sheep and cows. Apart from the more dramatic volcanic contours of the land you might think yourself in England. If you recall what the Hobbit lands in the Lord of the Rings trilogy looked like, that was filmed on the North Island and is not atypical.

But if you look more closely at the landscapes of New Zealand you realize this transformation doesn’t quite work; there is a kind of sterility to it. While the landscape is beautiful it is incomplete and a little sad. Even to my untrained eye it is apparent that much of the richness of a true natural landscape isn’t there. It isn’t an English field or hedgerow; half the cast of Wind in the Willows just isn’t there. Of course they can’t introduce Mr. Hedgehog or Mr. Badger, since they would happily eat Mr. Kiwi who is hanging on by a thread as it is. They are good environmentalist and know enough harm has been done already. The border controls to prevent introduction of new species or pests are tougher than anything I’ve ever seen to stop terrorists. And they are doing good things to preserve and restore some of the species that are threatened, but they can never get the lost ones back. Looking across the dramatic rivers, fields and mountains of New Zealand you realize that you are meant to see herds of huge Moa grazing with Haast Eagles stalking them from the sky. But that will never be seen again.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

From the department of cross cultural sensitivity…

I am considering adding a new feature to this Blog intended to foster inter-cultural understanding. I might call it “Top 10 Stupid Things Foreigners Do That Annoy Me” though I doubt I’ll be able to stop at 10. Here’s the first entry. What is the story behind on/off switches on their power outlets? They are everywhere and they make absolutely no sense. In the good ole USA we manage to run a pretty successful country without them. Here you plug something in, say a lamp. You flick the switch on the lamp and it doesn’t work, because you forgot to also flick the switch on the outlet. Haven’t they noticed that every device that needs an on/off switch already has one a lot more conveniently located then 6 inches off the floor, behind the couch? The only conceivable benefit I can think of (beyond added profits to electrical device manufacturers) is that if your kid jams a paperclip into the outlet there is only a 50/50 chance of it electrocuting him. Though if it does it is more likely to kill since they have 220 not 110 voltage. (Don't get me started on that.) If anyone out there has a plausible explanation for the switches please share it.

There was a Canon S70! When come such another?

February 15, 2007

It is with great sorrow that I must report the passing of a valued member of Team Walkabout – my Canon camera. I appreciate that since I haven’t gotten around to posting any of my photos the significance of this loss won’t be fully apparent. But trust me, it hurts deeply. I am of the "take pictures first, ask questions later" school of traveling. Given the marvel of cost-free digital photography I take hundreds each day. There will be plenty of time when I get home to look at them and figure out if it was a good trip. With my camera gone it is a unique opportunity to look at the world unfiltered through a viewfinder. Who am I kidding – it is a unique opportunity to buy a new toy. The only question is whether to buy one while I am still in New Zealand, where things are pricey and they have a steep VAT, or wait till I get to Singapore in a week which should be an electronics shopping nirvana. In the latter case though, I won't have any photos of my travels through the North Island to not bother posting for you.

My camera died during the single rain storm we experienced on our biking trip. It was in the front compartment of the canvas handle-bar bag on the bike, conveniently placed so that I could get at it without stopping the bike. The rain soaked through and I failed to follow the elementary rule on electronics and water, which I repeat here as a Walkabout public service: if it gets wet, remove the battery immediately and don’t turn it on until it has fully dried out.

Here's the curious thing though – of the nine of us on the bike trip, two others had digital cameras die in the same way in the same rain storm. I ask you – coincidence, or cause of action? Look at it this way – Adventure South provided the bicycles and the bags, they led us on a tour through the wettest part of New Zealand (some 30 feet of rain a year!), their marketing flyers promote photographic opportunities and they know people store cameras in those bags. Assume further that we learn on deposition that a 33% camera attrition rate on their tours is not atypical. And yet they failed to give us any warning of the hazards we faced! Also make the unlikely assumption that there was no effective disclaimer of liability in any of the paper we signed with them (who bothers to read that crap?).

My efforts to organize a class action were met with grumbles about litigious Americans and several lawyers jokes – all of which I have heard before. And I really don’t intend to sue over an almost obsolete $500 camera. I’m not that psychotic. But the elements of a claim do seem to be here (duty of care, breach, damages and causation). And perhaps they should be, since some fear of liability on Adventure South’s part might save some cameras and avoid some aggravation. Or it might just increase costs and reduce availability of bike tours and adventure sports that are a key draw here. And for that reason, or just because of a culture of self reliance, New Zealand has restrictive laws about what claims can be made. I suspect that in the US we have gone too far in the direction of finding a legal recourse for everything that goes wrong. There does need to be a range of middle ground – people do dumb things, stuff happens and it doesn’t always mean you sue someone.

But I don’t think we are nearly as out of whack in the US as some of the anecdotal cases suggest. The infamous McDonalds coffee case is a good example of how things get twisted in the media. The story you hear is that some woman got $3 million for spilling hot coffee on her lap. But there are facts you don’t hear. McDonalds served their coffee at about 180 degrees, 30 degrees hotter than most of their competitors. Their studies showed this enhances flavor for people who add a lot of milk. At temperatures that high a spill will cause third degree burns unless clothing is removed and skin cooled within 10 seconds. The plaintiff experienced severely painful burns on her groin and was disfiguring for life. McDonalds knew of numerous injuries of this type, particularly with coffee served in drive through windows. They had been unsuccessfully sued several hundred times before. Based on their cost/benefit analysis comparing profits from greater coffee sales and risk from lawsuits they chose to continue serving exceptionally hot coffee without any disclosure of the added risk. The $3 million verdict was arrived at by the jury based on a calculation of a single days profit to McDonalds and was their effort to send them some sort of message. It was reduced by the judge. (All this comes from my recollection of an excellent American Lawyer piece written at the time, so my account may be slightly off.)

Based on these facts, I’d say the jury in the McDonalds case was pretty much on target. I’d also say that overall you have far more instances where fear of litigation improves service and drives dangerous products off the market than where it stifles legitimate innovation. Like the Ford Pinto which tended to blow up in any rear end collision, or lawn darts which frequently impaled themselves in children’s sculls. I’m proud to be a lawyer. Of course, I am a corporate lawyer, and not like those ambulance-chasing trial lawyer scum…

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave