Waiheke, the elections and my 40s

I still find it hard to write about NZ.... I love NZ in a way that I wish I could love Argentina... NZ as given me everything I needed, and only asked me to do my job and be fair...

Nowehere else a person with no past, or future, like me 10 years ago, walking the streets without knowing not even one soul in the country and 300 bucks in my pocket, could today be in the position I’m now.

Every person in NZ came from somewhere else, escaping, wanting a new better life... if the 1st person born in NZ was still alive it would be around 900 old, their parents used a technology to arrive here that still be used today in many parts... the 1st European born in NZ, if alive would be around 200 years... that is only a few generations back... that is so unique... we all had the opportunity to make a better life...

But I don’t love NZ for only that, is much more that inspires me and makes me feel that I’m coming “home” every time I land in Auckland.

NZ was born by consensus, 2 very different people decided to make an agreement instead of keep killing each other as it was the way every where else at the time... that simple fact is unheard in any other history... if it wasn’t for that... we will be no different from Australia, and I have not meet any NZder that like to hear that...

Yes... the treaty was misleading, abused, non respected, whatever... all agreements have some of that... and as with a pendulum, when you forcibly keep it on one extreme, it would swing to the other extreme, but is only a matter of time until it find balance and works...

For me that mixture of origins is what make our country so unique... Jeff Wilson going completely off while doing the Haka before a game, Tane the Masterton maori guy I meet in Armenia that is doing his PhD in Soviet Engineering history... the success of a movie like the whale rider...

The fact that I treasure (even as a foreigner) that unique diversity is what made NZ my home and has rooted me to the country. Election time is bashing time in NZ... foreigners this and that, Maori this and that... the only positive outcome I see about the rednecks complaining about immigrants (like their forefathers!) not adapting to the local culture, not learning the language, abusing of the environment... is that finally they understand how Maori must have felt about their forefathers...

Taxes are important, and having money as well... but remember that Bush campaign was based as well, on tax cuts!

And that NZ I love is even more manifest, for me now that we moved to Waiheke, chill out, beautiful, with nice people, beach life, and 35 minutes from my twice-weekly dose of city and university. Felix and Vibeke are enjoying it big way... I’m very happy about having moved there...

And tomorrow (16/9) is my 40th birthday... big birthday the 40s apparently... mid life crisis... but so what... I still do radio shows, play in gigs, are the height of my professional career, making good money, extremely happily married to a beautiful and great woman, mother and friend, have two very cute and cool characters as children, dropping full moon surfs, swimming across bays, lucky enough to have fantastic friends from all ways of life and times ... and as my mate Niel here in Manila said... I still live in a world in which that guy who I don’t know anything about, that is working in a road repair in the most polluted and hot city in the world, whose life realities are so different to my ones while being stuck in the traffic in the back of a manila taxi... we still find the humanity and time to smile and greet each other... even if we never are going to cross paths again... I’m a happy man.

World Bank Paris Dub

What ever you think about Paris, must be the city with the biggest personality and/or charm in world... whatever way you want to measure it... culture, museums, multiculturalism, wealth, beauty, music, bars, beautiful and horrible people, public transport facilities...

Is no way I could enjoy living here... But, is great for a couple of weeks or training under a scholarship!

And that is what I’m doing.... the World Bank organizes an annual course on “Environmental Economics for Development Policy”, you apply and based on some obscure standards some 30 persons from around the world get chosen... et voila... here I’m.

The main reason why I’m doing it is because I was in Europe anyway, and I got cheap flat to rent for the 2 weeks I’m here... Paris is just so incredible expensive... any form of dinner is at least from 20-25 to ∞ € per head in any restaurant... 2 cafés in Trocadero 9.20€!

However, the course very impressive, in all aspects... basically is about economics of regulatory decision making, how to calculate the values of natural resources, ecosystems, human and social capitals, and how to perform the cost benefit analysis of whatever regulatory instruments you are planning to use, and use that as a tool for the design of the most convenient method... we are discussing present issues; global warming, fisheries, deforestation, traffic and congestions, oil, energy, sustainability indexes, paradoxes, and so on... without going into details... the situation is VERY somber... even this sort of people is agreeing on that. (the former director of the Environmental area of the WB started the 1st day saying that he found it embarrassing to live under Bush)

I like the feeling of my brain going... mhhhh.... and the buzz of learning... particularly when like in this case, is kind of cutting edge thinking... the guys that are doing the lectures are the top people in their fields, honoris causa from college of London, MIT I don’t know what, director of the Swedish Environmental Economics institute, and so on.... plus the top layer of the environmental economics section of the world bank...

Is very intensive... all day in the meeting room of the World Bank building in Paris (200m for le arc do triumphe).... all very posh... there is a permanent bottle of Evian in front of me, a very nice bloke called “Claude” that does the best espresso, and all sorts of characters as my “coleages”... from some ultra unbearable, to people I would be friends wherever we had meet. (i.e. Mandy the southafrican biologist that is friend from the people of “African Dope” a music label from Cape Town that blow my mind away while there)

Even if it is for my own interest and I get never to use what I’m leaning, it is worth all the effort to be here (I even learn the new PC lingo for the underdeveloped world: "2nd best world"... you just have to love some of this people)

Anyway... I’m living in the 11th Arrondesiment, in la Rue de St Maur, that remind me to Buenos Aires in the 80's, the bars, people out late... sitting in the street talking shit... but obviously more multicultural... today's Bs As is more crime ridden... but well.... btw.... i saw a car chase and the police in plainclothes (i would have never said they where police!) jump out of a trendy Peugeot 306 and busted some 2 blokes and a girl... while the neighbors keep eating their baguettes and bierre...

The place I rented is small, a bit decrepit, with no view and in a 4th floor ... i don't mind to be here... feeling like a student again... Coincidentally I stayed no far away in 1983 or 84, when I was roaming around Europe trying life...

L’ Rue de Oberkamp (200 from my apartment), is today, definitively the place to be for our demographic, all bars and restaurants slightly of beat, alternative, multiculturalists, some people with babies, and so on...

Vib came for the weekend after a 7 year absence from Paris, but this time instead of trying to make it into a Daft Punk concert and finishing the night on a 60€ per vodka bottle type of club, she just brought Kika with her.

The Paris scene has become really multicultural, the variety of people you see on the Metro is amazing; the change in the last 20 years is massive, I guess that part of the resentment that fill the far right and the power of Le Pen almost challenging the presidency a few years ago... I guess the image of the Parisian as a white man with the baguette under the arm is gone for good... the same image today has a man of every potential color.

The local music just reflect that, radios are great (particularly Nova 101 FM, that yesterday played NZ ‘s own “le Fat Freddy’s drop”) and the local Dub is just... scarily good... as the 100€ dent in my finance will testify

French economy is very sluggish, the “no” at the EU constitution was for that reason, I been told that by friends that have been here for years as well as for the locals.... however the influx of tourism is impressive, even in the middle of summer... which is justifiable, because it is a very beautiful city... every thing is so well maintained and decorated, all is very grandiose... that could only be built at a time of “magnificent” social inequalities, there is no way that you could pay today people for that level of attention to detail in public building.

Everything has changed a lot since last time since I was here, but you still find the yoghurts in glass jars and the bread done in wood ovens... i like that... make me smile.

Africa in the news

Africa is a lot in the media today... (weird to be writing about this from Vienna airport! on my way back from Armenia)...
I’m no expert... but it always wonder how people refer to it as like it is 1 big country... is kind of bizarre... even with the European Union nobody refer to it as 1 country... nobody puts Italy and Finland in the same bag... (even if they are all white!) So why with Africa? (because they are all black?)...

Debt relieve and fair trade are good things... should be done... but I believe that beyond... that is up to the African countries to find their own way out of were they are...

We lived in Mozambique, and even in the same country it was so much disparity... from leafy Maputo in the south, (where Shona and Shangane people live) to the forgotten Quirimbas in the North... people from one place would not be able to communicate with people from the other place... up in the Quirimbas... Portuguese did not make a lot of sense to the people I worked with... KwaZahili would have been better or even Arabic (and that is on top of the local language)...

I guess the only common factor was the coolness of most people, the best smiles ever and the most incredible light... from sunrise to blue skies, to storms, to just incredible sunsets...

Back to politics... “white” solutions have a lot to blame on the actual state of affairs there... and we still insist...

I remember talking to Joao, a guy that worked with me at the Ministry of Fisheries... I was moaning about the speed at which the president's convoy of 7 identical black Mercedes Benz drived along Avenida Mao Tse Tung (where we used to live) on his way to the airport, where he take his private plane to go somewhere... while millions of his countryman live in extreme poverty... I was questioning the need of the opulence and the 7 identical cars... (The prime minister had 5 white Mercedes!)...

So Joao asked me... so how does the NZ prime minister moves around?
I said that she drove around mostly in her own car, and that at Wellington she had 1 normal car... and that she flew on normal commercial flights along the country and outside...

But she must fly business class he said, already worried...

Well... i imagine that she does on overseas flights, but no nationally... NZ does not have business class in domestic flights... I said...

He was quite perplexed with my answers... and he said... jesus... I didn’t imagined that NZ was so poor....

What does make sense to me... did not made sense to him... and we worked together on daily basis, had simmilar education... and is not that I grow up in a full 1st world country... even if live now in one.

I like to be optimist... but I still have the feeling the developed world still trying to buy their guilt for the fuckups done during the colonial periods... as can't impose democracy... you can't impose your ideas of what “development” should be...

All people I meet, that spent time in African countries do however agree, that whatever your experience there... you may leave Africa as a whole... but the whole of Africa does not leaves you... and most of the time, those memories come out with a smile...

My shoes and Yerevan...

Almost to my surprise, I see my feet walking the streets of Yerevan... I like to think that they recognise each other with a mixture of reserve and happiness...

The cafes and restaurants recognise me, and some of the waiters apparently do as well...

Summer make the streets bloom with green squares full of flowers, cafes and fountains, the men still there, with the same pointy mocassinos, the same black trousers and silky kind of t-shirt (black of course) that was perhaps under the jackets the last time I saw them... they still eating seeds and talking to each other with the overhanging bellies and their smell of rancid sweat... cheap sunglasses have been added.... There are exemptions of course... some alternatives hang around... some hip hopers.. and fair share oh heavies... after all one of the most known Armenian bands System of a Down do very well overseas... but the black dressed seed eaters are a noticeable majority (even if some go for beige, partricuallarlly if the have mobiles)

The women still here as well, my dearly admired Armenian women... they seem to have pushed even further the limits of materials science in terms of textile stretchiness, the levels of discomfort tolerance at such compressed dress code, the size of the stilettos has overpass the heights that traditional physics is able to explain, the g-strings are only to be seen in the anti-material dimension and the colour range of the clothes in contrast with the hair, make up of their lips and eyelids, definitively escapes the range of normal human vision... There are exemptions of course... But seriously... I really believe that if this country were to give their women a more prominent role in running government institutions, Armenia would be much better off... Adventurous aesthetics reflects, decision making power, particularly in societies as structured as this one...


The music still sounding... the international baroque festival, the Tokyo String Quartet, The Armenian Philharmonic and the young composers festival happening over the next 3 weeks!

The work I’m doing is a review of what I did last year, and an expansion into further products for exports for the EU.... but I’m working for the Americans! I worked with the ASME project last year while here with the EU and seems to have made an impression because they brought me back here almost to my surprise, we had talk about it last year.... but it seemed to complicated... as all USAID funded programmes need to employ Americans, flying American airlines (The Fly America Act!)... I’m not American and there were no American lines from Holland to here... but yeah... they agree to by pass all those issues... (EU programs are required as well to employ EU citizens, and so on)

Is quite interesting to see the different working mentalities, the EU gave me some Euros and sent me here... no office, no nothing... I had to work it all out by my self... the Americans picked me up from the airport, put me in the Marriot (poshest hotel here), and a team of people that came and introduced them selves and knew who and what I was doing. The EU does paper, legislation, institutional support, capacity building and so on... this guys do market research, upgrade factories, take Armenians to food expos, they are in the move constantelly...

Big part of my life has been about breaking my preconceptions; I grow up in society that had preconceptions towards Americans (gringos), Jewish, British, other Europeans, homosexuals, capitalists, communists, Turks, artists, body builders, rugby players, drug users, etc (Argentina of the 70’s-80’s was complicated, and so is my family)

Since then I try to break with all them, and I’m proud of having done so, however and even more since the Bush reign of terror, I’m very “anti American” and tend to put them all in the same basket... and here I am...

Is VERY refreshing to hear Americans criticize they own government actions and foreign policy, I guess the ones I’m working with have the option of being outside and see how the world see them. Some of the guys I have partially talk here have said the roughest things I heard saying...

I suggested that in the next elections 90% of decision for the new president should be based on American votes and 10% on a global election process... after all, the actions of their government impact the rest of us... and we don’t get to choose them... the guys here liked the idea... but I don’t think is going to go far do...


Anyway... I went with some of the younger guys here to the opening of a fruit drying plant in a village (not far from the place in the picture), based on supporting the cooperative of fruit planters... it was cool... very cool... big horovats (grilled meat), home made wine, vodka (of course), local musicians... and so on...

it was a beautiful afternoon and then night, big full moon and warm... they drinking lead to a lot of dancing on which I shamelessly took part (some local dancing it looks very much like pericon and malambo, Argentina’s traditional dance!)... I even went for a haka at the end... that caused too much impression as some o the children run away... but anyway... it was good to feel that the dancing has such a plainfield effect... mayor, politician, cleaner, planter, foreigner... we are the same there....

after the dancing the singing comes up... and man... still give me goose bumps.... Armenian history is very sad... and so are some of the songs... you dance to celebrate being alive, but you sing to remember the ones that are gone... either killed or emigrated....

in such musical country like this, singing is seriously amazing... this ladies would sing so beautifully sad... that I just had to cry... I had no idea what they were saying... but I knew what they were about... an old lady came and gave me a hug... the translator told me she did it because I’m away from family as well... and thanks to my family is that i can afford to be here... strong stuff, mate...

Some of the songs go back to the 3rd and 4th century (remember this a 3000 years old culture!)... and they all know them... I feel sometime envious of that (as with Maori at home in NZ), as they have such strong connection with their history and roots... while people like me seems to have problems even to explain where I live...

Is good to be here do...

Normal Holland and the Achterhoek

I remember coming to Vibeke’s native Holland after we left Mozambique... and I remember feeling that everything was so nice and organized that it was “not normal”, I find Holland (the Nederlands, as they like to call it here) a wonderfully abnormal country... just because they take a very wide view of normality....

The chaos we normally experience in the developing world seems “more normal” to me... that a place where all looks like some omnipotent grandma has been cleaning and making order overnight... where bicycles rule and everything has a legal framework around it, discussing issues rationally is the national occupation, where people complain that 25 % of the population can't afford to go in holidays, where you can go and buy a spliff legally, get your self a professional prostitute from a window shop in a normal house, marry you same sex partner or chose euthanasia as way to die...

And here we are again, in what is now pretty much an anual summer migration out of NZ

But anyway... Vibeke’s original Holland, where her parents and family live is deep rural Holland... no the one that tourist get to see... she lives in the East... in the Achterhoek... and spent most our time in the near Barchem... her parents and family are still close related to farming, either as ex, hobby, or actual farmers...

Seeing where she comes from was eye-opening for me, after all, what we knew from each other was only what we told each other and our “history” in our adopted NZ... seeing her history of cycling 20 km to go to school in a rural town, seeing her pictures wining prices as show jumping rider, seeing how “normal” and somehow privileged life she had... made me value even more her adaptability, understanding, and overall coolness during some of the situations and experiences we have as a “nomad” family...

We spend time in the house you see next, there Margreet (vib’s mum)(parents divorced a while ago) lives with Barthold (who owns the farm), they don’t farm it anymore as they took a government offer to keep most of the farm as an “scenic reserve”, meaning keeping it nice (and getting paid by the government to do it), while some other parts are leased to farmers and tree planting... the cows at the top are the front neighbours... the closest house is Barthold’s cousin (Gert) farm, at least 150 m away... and then nothing at less than 400mt... Barchem it self is not much... 1000 people? A pub café, the best bakery in the region, a mini supermarket and a farm shop... end of story

But then... they rent a shed to a local Bloke that makes didgeridoos! And winter-horns like a traditional old instrument from the region that looks and sound like a didgeridoo... reality is way more strange than fiction....

Vib’s dad (retired vet) lives a good 30 minutes away by car in the near of Winterswijk, but even in more remote location (and there is where Vib grow up).

Vib’s cousin Erik (34) is a full time farmer and has a relatively hi-tech milk farm of 60 hectares and over 200 cows... extremely intensive farming compared to the ones I see in the parts we hang out... I really like him... we always have good chats... he has good vision of the world... we like to spent time with him because he and his wife (Berendien) they are similar minded and aged and have 3 children... Felix just loves it there...
It could be a cliche for me to start criticising the subsidies and the environmental cost of intensive farming, but I realize that I would be missing the point... starting with the fact that his farm was just water 30 years ago (as big part of Holland)... If I could find a way to measure the effort that people put into farming vs. the rewards out of it, and scaled to the cost of living in that country... then I guess I could compare and if necessary draw an argument... but until then...

I just keep enjoying the Achterhoek...

Filipino postcards

Out of the Philippines... was good... I’m pleased of having been here... this job was different to all others; 2 months for a 5mb document...
it may help... the difference is that until now I used to do the jobs that others had proposed... now I’m writing things that somebody else would put in place...

Beyond the job... some images that would reside in my mind forever, are the other main outcome of this job. Just to name a few:

>the bizarre Chinese cemetery of Manila with hundreds of art-deco and traditional tombs some with aircon bars, that looks like a city with families actually living there (like the picture in the top) and more pictures here



>the 12 hr ferry ride from Coron to Manila in the cheapest class (deck) surrounded by literally thousand locals ranging from friendly to non-interested but never unfriendly...
>for first time in more than 25 years in boats been waken up by (various) rooster in the middle of the ocean (I mention cockfighting is BIG here)
>the hidden freshwater lake of Coron islands
>the saltwater hotpools in the mangroves of Sangat island
>the simplicity of life in the Batanes
>the Kazakhstan vs Filipinas basketball game! (globalization is here to stay)
>the good laughs with locals everywhere
>the coincidences
>the peoples names (Gaylord Recto, Rey Abuso, Victory Habito y Willy Enverga for example)
>eating Puto with sugar
>the music
>the crossroad banners celebrating the locals education achievements
>the complete acceptance that sexuality is your own business and is all good...
>the incredible flavour of the mangoes
>the jeepney’s art

but overall, my respect to the resilience and dignity of Pilipinos along history

Taxi, Fat Freddy's, Traffic and Globalization

Lunch time...

Mr Motoomul from from the Bureau of Product Standards of the Department of Trade and Industry called me... No other option than take a taxi to go and pick up a document.

Taxi diver asked me where are u from?

- I live in NZ, i say.

Ah NZ! i have a tape that a man gave me when i took him to the airport. Is nice! you wanna listen it?

- yes, sure...

Fat Freddy's Seconds started playing (you know ... a name that suits my personality...)

I got all dreamy and still overloaded by the globalization I’m part of...

traffic didn't matter much after that

Wick-end (wicked weekend)

Friday afternoon was already weird...

I have been spending 12 hrs day over my mac preparing a preliminary report that I kind of finished this afternoon...I had read somewhere that in the neighbourhood there was a massage “clinic” run by blind masseurs, so I decided to go and see them.

As I suspected it was in the complex of the Salesians in the Don Bosco school, while been “allergic” to dogmatic religions in general, I’m very conscious that in many countries education is key to opportunities, and if that education comes with an attached dogma... so be it... good on them.... you can quit the dogma part later on...

I can’t be partial... I did my primary education in backwaters of Argentina at a salesian school “Escuela San Rafael” in Curuzu Cuatia in the province of Corrientes

Anyway, there I went and after wandering around the school for a while I found the clinic, a small room with 3 blind masseurs at that time... I guess not many foreigners go there... so they were quite surprised, and they started asking me questions about where I come from and so on...

As I lie down on the stretcher I realise the bizarreness of the décor and colours combinations of the whole place... which kind of made sense based on the fact that they wouldn’t really know, and most sheets and curtains must have been given to them...

I was kind of carried away by my daydreaming about blind decorators, and the masseurs started his job... he started, i guess... checking my body out... and saying: Oh you very big person... and then I realize that there was no way that they could have known that I’m almost 2 m tall... he started having the giggles... and me too... he kept going down my legs and realize they were hanging out of the stretcher like by 40 cm... By then he was laughing full on... and obviously me too... then his colleagues must have asked him (in Tagalog) something like:
- hei broh what going on?

And the laughing dialogue must have gone on something like:
- I have a very long guy here, man this funny...
- Really?
- Yea man...
- Can we check it out?

And then the question (in English) came: Can my friends come and help me?

At that stage, all was very surreal, so I say: yeah sure... you can all come...

So they came, and it was one the most bizarre situations... I’m used to people “checking me out”, seeing me tall, and making comments about it.... but I never before I had people “touching me out”, feeling me tall, and cracking up laughing.... and in a room with the most bizarre colour combination in terms of sheet, different colour curtains, and so on... it was just... fantastic... again... these situations are my fuel and my drug...

So basically I had the 2 guys going over my whole body for 1 hour for the equivalent of 250 pesos (5USD)... It was very good by the way... (I left then 500 pesos)
So I come back home and the Team Leader of the mission, Alejandro de la Peña, a VERY nice and relaxed mexican guy (former Mexico’s ambassador to WTO), and his (as nice as him) Uruguayan wife Lujan, invited me to dinner in a very posh restaurant as he hosted the Mexican Ambassadress here in the Philippines, and some other Mexican diplomats here in the city...

So there is was surrounded by this very non stereotypical diplomats, drinking wine, eating gnocchi with the local band singing to us mariachi songs.... feeling overload by life and wondering how can I REALLY take my life seriously.... when Imelda Marcos... (the 3000 shoes woman, that in reality were only 1060) sited next to us!

I was like... no way... this is just like... tripping... Imelda is an icon... for most of the wrong reasons of course... but... you know... like in 1993 she was sentenced to 1,824 years imprisonment on charges of corruption... but then... like a present day Evita....

She has incredible pearls of wisdom, like:

“If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are.”

"I was born ostentatious. They will list my name in the dictionary someday. They will use 'Imeldific' to mean ostentatious extravagance."

"It's the rich you can terrorize. The poor have nothing to lose."

"I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty."

"It is terribly important to do certain things, such as wear overembroidered dresses. After all, the mass follows class. Class never follows mass."

And my favourite:
“When they see me holding fish, they can see that I am comfortable with kings as well as with paupers.”

Anyway... there she was... as we spoke Spanish, and we had ambassadors and so on... she sat with us... and talk, being very taken by us... while in our case we just like seen her like a cultural panache... and of course the compulsory picture...


Where I have the biggest, and at that stage of the day permanent grin in my face.

I guess having Vibeke next to me, and look each other with kid in a toy shop understanding we have, was the only thing I could have ask the make the day better

Anyway...that was enough for that for Friday... so Saturday I work on a proposal for a job in Vietnam (Hanoi) so be aware of next postings!

Then at night (after great tacos and quesadillas by Lujan)... I went into as place I wanted to check out for a while, and that I can only recommend, and it would be my favourite place in manila the SaGuijo Cafe. A very cool place, downstairs a grungy live band venue, café, bar and so on, and upstairs a very cool op shop and a gallery. It was packed, as I imagined because was a gig organised by ternorecordings the local label of the Radioactive Sago Project, Wajijuara, and the incredibly pumping Brownbeat, were funk meet Ska... it was fantastic night and again o had the great feeling of being the only obviously foreign guy in the whole place... this produced some conversations, which took to other conversations, and to know other people, and so on...

I’m looking forward to be a guest DJ at 88.3 JAM FM, and seeing the Milagros Dancehall sound system... that apparently are the bomb...

Saturday night in one of many Manilas... see it for your self:

Manila on my window

Has been a while... somehow I can’t write about NZ (even if for me, Auckland’s North Shore is as foreign as Mozambique or Armenia), but anyway… some e-mails asked for the travel log so here is back… (actually I don’t have copies of my old one, so I appreciate if somebody sent them back to me... One day all this would be history)

I guess all overseas development jobs are different, and that is what keeps drawing me back to it, particular after a quite pitiful attempt of having a “real” job in NZ, to which I fail miserably.

But this in Manila is more different than others… as I’m taking a step off fisheries (perhaps for 1st time in my working life!).

There are 2 main objectives to any fisheries activity, subsistence and trade (this in the broadest sense). Let leave subsistence aside this time... I always believed that if you are going to intervene on the fisheries resource under whatever management structure your country decided to use (and I’m not going to discuss the alternatives now), the outcome of that intervention has to maximize the potential benefit out of it. In other terms, if you are going to potentially f*#ck your resource, do it for the best outcome possible, if not there is a double waste.

There is where trade comes in... to trade fish internationally (where the big $ is) there are “rules” set by WTO, as many importing countries have Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standard (SPS) (mostly around food safety and biosecurity) to be oblige in order to accept those products. If you think that over 50% of the “development” world trade with the “developed” one is based on fish, fruit, meat, grains, nuts, and other low process food items, then any “failure” in achieving those SPS has massive consequences. Particularly, when there is the suspicion that those standards are used aTechnical Barriers to Trade (TBTs).

Good, where I’m trying to go, I have kind of specialized over the years on various aspects of fisheries, being the SPS related, one of my most common jobs… so in this occasion I was asked to be part of a team of 4 people that is assessing the needs at policy level, that the Philippines government and institutions have in order to maximise their potential for international trade under the WTO rules… in other words what they need to do in order to not get further screwed by opportunistic market forces at importing country level… my area is SPS in general (not only fish), and funnily do, I’m paid by the EU.

So I spent a lot of time in ministries, directorates, universities, factories, embassies, labs, and so on talking to people, and compiling the issues they have in order to rationalize the and suggest what type of assistance, would be needed to better address the problems… a long way from measuring fish, and training people in boats and factories…

Manila…. Over 10 million (10000000!) people in one big urban conglomerate. But I don’t think we can call it a city… is actually like 7 or 8 that re juggled into each other… what I see from my window in the 27th floor I could be in Hong Kong…



but then this is Makati, the business/embassy city… as soon as you leave things change big time. Is quite full on, (as most big Asian cities) but somehow has its enchantments mostly born out of it madness…

Snippets of it: barefoot basketball everywhere, children boxing in the streets off Malate, boxing is the 3rd most popular sport after basketball and Cockfights, going to the cockpit La Libertad… the massive amount and the painting on the jeepneys (like a bus made of extended Jeep) with winie the poo and Jesus painted together on the sides, or a girl with her mango (presumably the daughter of the driver) and the plane of top gun, Virgin Mary and Elvis on a hug…the “villages” low key compounds where the middle class live, in some sort of slow passed greenish oasis fenced out of the street madness… the openness of cross-dressing and prostitution everywhere, the toilet masseurs in “las reinas” a live band joint ( you go for pee and this blokes give you a neck massage while you go on with your business, just as part of the services of the place… you may leave some money on the way out), the helicopters cruising the sky in the morning and afternoon taking the very rich in and out of their office, the incredible amount of malls everywhere (megamall has 1 km long, 300 m wide and 4 floors!), the cheapness of the food (80 nz$ dinner for 3 with 2 bottles of wine in the poshest district of the country)… the night scene and the clubs going off at 3-4 am… and so on

people is cool… I find them holding a lot of dignity… they have the shitiest history of foreign domination … I guess 80% of their heroes were killed by some invader or another Spanish (for 333 years), Japanese, Americans) but they keep going on, and on… hard workers… no problems where, what and when… they just go and do it… honestly there are Filipino Overseas Workers (FOW) everywhere working their life to help the ones left here... actually there are over 8000 in Iraq (3rd biggest group of foreigners there?)

I find so moving the respect the have for education; you go to the smallest neighbourhood or villages in the other islands, and you see the banners across the road saying: “welcome xxxxx xxxxx graduate in “whatever” from such university or college or high school”, you make us proud… I think is so cool… particularly because I see how many people is see in the “development world“ take the right to education as a given and even waste it… while in countries like this one, is the difference in between a life with hope and one of just pure resilience.

I actually really like that I don’t have to repeat and spell my name all the time… Francisco is soo common… actually most names are Spanish… even if not many do speak Spanish at all… imagine you meet somebody named Jonathan Smith and he does not speaks English at all! Will not be a kind of funny situation?

Music is cool, I may not like a of the Pinoy (Filipino) Original Music and rock, but they cover all styles… I went to see some bands, and I have been really surprised by a free jazz kind of band theRadioactive Sago Project and a very cool dub combo by the name of Junior Kilat , worth to download some stuff from them.

Very much looking forward, to leave manila again… the weekend and the waves at Puraran where fantastic… even if I had the worst longboard ever… I’m keen to go for a dive… but then… I’m here working…

More to come