Welcome to Heathrow – again

Given that the Olympics is opening in London in the middle of this year it is clear that Immigration Officials have been on more “country ambassador” courses.  I have to share with you my monosyllable exchange this week with a charming female Immigration Officer. Her body language as I approached dictated the direction of our interaction even before it began.  My answers are in italic.

Good morning (said with a smile)

Why are you here?  (Here we go thinks me)

Business

Who do you work for?

Xxxx

Who is xxxx?

They are a business

What sort of business?

They make things

What sort of things?

Internet things

What are you going to do here?

Attend Meetings

Who with?

People

Who are these people?

People who have flown in to have this meeting

Why are you going?

Because it is my meeting

When you leave, where are you going?

Home

Where is home?

Amsterdam

Do you have a Visa?

No

Why not?

I don’t need one

Why don’t you need one?

I am a permanent resident

Where was this passport issued?

London

You haven’t filled in that question on the form

Apologies, thank you for filling it in

Yes, we are here to help  (oh yes, very clearly)

 

Laura Dekker – why Holland has no modern heroes

Laura Dekker the 16-year-old Dutch girl, is about to complete her circumnavigation of the world in her twin masted sailboat ‘Guppy’.  This young girl is remarkable.  At the age of 6 she was sailing a small boat across lakes, at 13 she sailed from The Netherlands to England, and back.  She is the youngest person to ever have completed this trip.

So why my comment in the headline?  When it became public knowledge that Laura, then aged 13 was planning this trip, in jumps Dutch authorities - Netherlands Youth Institute.  Without meeting her and without talking to her they made a court application to have her removed from her father and locked up in a secure facility to prevent her from leaving.  When this failed, they went back to court four more times.  Fortunately the judiciary had more intelligence than the Youth Institute.  So eventually, she is free to go and heads off on her adventure.  It would be reasonable at this point to expect that the authorities expended their energies on how to support this remarkable young girl, but no, earlier this month truancy officers issued her father with a summons claiming that the schoolgirl had been failing to complete her homework on time.  She doesn’t always have access to the internet and her time is usually preoccupied with storms, sleeping and the safety of herself and Guppy.  Frankly I find it amazing that the authorities here have not reached the conclusion that any 14-year-old that can learn all the skills needed to sail a boat single-handedly around the world, would probably not benefit from a standard Dutch education.

So having done something of this magnitude, you would expect that Laura is about to return to a heroes welcome in Holland.  Sadly not. Instead Laura chose the Dutch Caribbean island of St Maarten as the arrival point because she feared the presence of social services if she returned directly to her native Netherlands

The opportunity that Laura presents for this country as a symbol of determination, skill, intelligence, spirit and individual courage is clearly not as important as this years version of “Voice of Holland” where the country goes into a frenzy to vote and applaud someone who will slide into utter obscurity within 6 months.  It cannot come as any surprise that Laura says that although she loves the Netherlands, she is unlikely to return because she finds it too stifling – now there is a surprise!

I do have to point out that Laura was actually born on a boat in Whangarei Harbour, New Zealand

You can read the full news article on the BBC website.  You can also read her story on her own website here.

 

‘Wild’ broadband technology leap in the UK

I read with wry grin this week the news item that Virgin Media is going to double broadband speeds for approx 4 million of their customers in the UK to a ‘blinding’ 120Mbit/s (download).  This piece of news was of such national importance that it prompted the Prime Minister to comment that “the investment would be a great boost to the UK”. 

Andrew Ferguson, of independent broadband review site thinkbroadband.com added: “The news is good for UK broadband as a whole and should highlight that the UK is not the internet backwater sometimes it is portrayed as.

Accuse me of being cynical but I do feel obliged to remind both Andrew and David (Cameron), that the UK is an internet backwater and this announcement is reflective of the general state of all UK infrastructure, as anyone who transits Heathrow on a regular basis can attest.  The simple fact that the UK ranks around 35th in the world when it comes to average broadband download speeds tends to underscore the reality.

I pondered why this announcement required a statement from someone of no lesser stature than the country’s Prime Minister and I came to the conclusion that it helps to somehow address a national sense of under achievement.  “Paul, that is too harsh you cynical bastard” I hear you say?  Perhaps, however (by sheer coincidence) a card came into my mailbox this week from KPN - the Dutch SP (telephone company) advising that if I switch to them I can have 500Mbit/s internet.  This was of such national importance that not only did the Dutch Prime Minister resist the urge to comment but neither did the local free newspaper.

Oh, and by the way, we don’t have data caps in Holland either!

Dreams and Reality, which is which?

I read something that began an interesting thought trail that I thought would be worth sharing.  The excerpt was related to dreams and the comment was that it is only in our dreams that we are truly ourselves.  This prompted quite a bit of thought.

Are we really our true selves in our dreams?  Do we engage and create in our dreams as we truly are, without filters?  If we are, then who are we when we are awake?  Are we really ourselves or are we just projecting the persona that is either established for that audience or alternatively creating a persona that we believe the other person(s) needs to see. Each time we do this, how much of that is driven by our ego?  As you think about this, consider honestly how much of the real you is in the persona that you have developed with your partner, siblings, parents, relatives, work colleagues, people in stores, people at church (if you go), people in nightclubs, bars, on public transport.  In each and every one of these situations you adjust some element of your persona so that you are hopefully perceived in a certain way and usually with the intention of determining an outcome.  Then consider that everyone is doing this.

So what is really reality?  Is it your unfiltered dreams (where you are really you), or is it what we tend to think of as reality which is our awake state and no one is really showing who they are and what they really think, acting in a massive multi-layered ego driven tableau?

Think it through, it’s very interesting.  Let me know

Wicked Start to 2012

I was made aware of the this site called ‘WickedStart‘ which is such a cool idea.  I am constantly amazed at the sophistication of the products and material that you can leverage at little or no cost.  This site has been set up to help people who don’t have a lot of prior business experience, set up a business from scratch.  It is a comprehensive idea-to-launch guide where you set up the details on-line and it guides you through all the key steps to set yourself up successfully.  Having had a few interesting conversations with people in NZ over the last few weeks I can see that this site would benefit them enormously.  Kudos to the people behind this site.  I think it will help save a few people from themselves.

You sexy little Chihuahua!

When you think you have heard everything, here is one I bet you haven’t heard of.

A wheel-chair bound drug addict has been jailed for 10 years for having sex with a Chihuahua while high on crystal meth.  The 55-year-old has been jailed for 10 years and has been registered as a sex offender.

You can read about it here.  Perhaps it was the big adorable eyes that got him!

Obedient Wives Club

The OWC began in Malaysia but now has branches in the UK, Australia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Singapore and Indonesia.  It is a Muslim organisation that claims it can curb things like prostitution and infidelity by showing Muslim women how to be more submissive and keep their husbands happy in the bedroom, encouraging them to behave like “a first class whore” with their husbands if they want their marriages to succeed.

 A group called Global Ikhwan launched the club, which also goes by the name the Global Polygamy Club.  They claim to have 3,000 members globally of which 800 are in polygamous relationships.

You can of course check out the Facebook page.

Severe Dislocation

Arrived back home at 6.00am this morning after a trip of 30 hours, which includes the 4 hours at KL airport.  I stepped out of the taxi outside of our home and was hit with this feeling that it was only a very short time since I was actually stepping into the taxi to go the airport and then to NZ. It was then that I realised how dislocated I really felt. 

It was a very weird feeling which continued for most of today.  We are continuosly being given the opportunity to get from one point on the globe to another in ever shorter travel times which results in greater dislocation.  I shifted 12 hours in time zone, from summer at 21C to winter at 11C, from bright sunshine that needed sunglasses to washed out winter light, from living on a beach back to an apartment, from constant personal interaction (there was 8 of us together all of the time) back to the quiet of home, from all surrounding communication in English back to Dutch and then later this week back to work.  The actual transistion from one state to another is in itself a unique experience.  Because I have travelled long distances all of my adult life I have a set of behaviours that I slot into automatically and results in “suspended reality”.  I go into this ‘zone’ of not talking to anyone at all, watching films, reading or sleeping and not being aware of how long I have been travelling for or how long before I arrive, it just happens. When I look back on it, I don’t actually remember anything about the trip.

Coming back to this reality, here, will take a few days.  Thank god I had the common sense to take additional days off before I start work.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 57 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy New Year for 2012

Admittedly this is just a little early, but one of the peculiarities of being in NZ is that you are one of the very first countries in the world to see in the new year and tomorrow I will be in a pressurised aluminium tube for 24 hours flying back to Amsterdam.

So for everyone who reads this blog on a regular basis and even those who chance upon it, I wish you all the very, very best for 2012 and I will be curious to see what transpires over the next 12 months.