After a break I'm back with a vengence

Kia ora 2009 and readers of my blog - whom I hope will grow in numbers, both through word of mouth, and breeding. I hearby commit to you that 2009 will be a year of regular - though not neccessarily prolific - blogging. I will continue to cross-post onto g.blog where I see fit.

A couple of thoughts to start the year from my new years road trip, which took me to Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne, and north to the Coromandel afterwards.

1) We have a serious drug problem in this country in many ways (and remember, when I use the word "drug" when referring to recreational drugs, this always includes alcohol, which is the worst of the worst.) Having travelled around quite a bit last year, I saw that it's the same in many senses in many countries, but stastically we are one of the worst countries in terms of alcohol abuse. We just drink so much so quickly, and among many people, we lack the ability to have a beer or two or a glass of wine for the enjoyment of it. It's all or nothing. Many of us - especially of my age, but definitely not exclusively - also lack the ability to think beyond drinking as the only option for a Friday or Saturday night. I have my own opinions about how to deal with this - and raising the drinking age is not one of them. We need a shift in our thinking, especially in seeing alcohol as the harmful drug that it is. We should have fun with drugs, expand our relationships and our minds, but not over-indulge.

2) Greater wealth and the accumulation of stuff is the driver of so many people - Whangamata being case and point at this time of year. It definitely is not the driver for me, but drives our current economy. We need to snap out of the dream and focus on what's really important, and realistic. Our environment is in dire straights, but there is currently enough to go around. So freakin' share already!

(The picture above is at Whangamata harbour. What is it that you desire in the photo - the jetski and the "biscuit", or the pristine environment, and the protection of the rare and sensitive ecosystem below the water? What do you think we'll be thinking in 50 years time? It's about having fun, but not over-indulging.)

(Due to a lack of enthusiasm for photography this year, above and below are from a year ago at BW Campgrounds, where my friends and I stayed again in Gisborne for Rhythm and Vines. It was pretty much the same though. Above is New Years day and one of the casualities recuperating from the night before. Below is the workers, paid about $14 an hour this time, predominently brown, many quite young, cleaning up mountains of waste for rich white folk).

Disclaimer: I go to Rhythm and Vines because it's such a huge gathering of my friends and people I know. There's good music and lots of good times. But I ache when I see the mountains of waste from our throw-away existence, even if I may not show it so much at the time.

May your 2009 bring you greater consciousness in your relationships and your understanding of all those things that are bigger than us.

Should you give money to beggars?

An interesting poll this (last) week. Seems the viewers of my blog were split on this moral issue which has no clear answer.

In my opinion of course you can't give a definitive answer that fits with every case. Of course the best thing you can do to help their situation is give them a way to improve their situation greatly, and I'm no expert in this field. But it obviously varies from situation to situation what that might be - some of them have mental and drug problems, others are just simply poor and don't have a place fit in in this world. So I would say it depends on their situation whether you should give them money or not, but if you want to save your resources for more structured programs than that's not a bad thing - as long as you follow through. It's just difficult to judge when the situation presents itself raw in front of your eyes to know what's best. Unfortunately, especially in the countries I've been visiting, there are far too many people like that. Responsibility to do something has to fall on Governments and communities - but in some countries they have many problems of poverty to deal with.

My previous post discussing this issue is here.

Tequila! It makes me happy

This week´s biggest travel story is that I went to Tequila! It is a little bit north of Guadalajara, and is the place where the popular drink is named after. There´s lots of touristy stuff related to this - including ridiculous looking vehicles to take people on tours, ranging from trains to barrels in shape. I didn´t go on them. What I did do though is take a tour of the first (and still functioning) Jose Cuervo factory, and also go to the Tequila museum where the above photo was taken. So much tequila, and no way of getting at it...

Tequila is produced only in certain regions around the country (by law) where the Blue Agave plant can be cultivated properly. The Blue Agave looks like a cactus, but is really a bulb, in the lily family. After 6 to 12 years of growth it is mature enough to be cut out of the ground and cut up as shown above. All the spikey bits are chopped off, and then the heart is cut in half for the baking. The heart is basically all starch, but once baked it becomes sugary sweet, like sugar cane.

After it becomes sugary sweet like sugar cane it is fermented, then distilled twice. It is then aged, either for a short time in lightly charred oak barrels (no more than a month) to make silver tequila, or up to three or more years in heavily charred oak barrels to make amber stuff, of the kind you would only drink straight.

After the tour of the factory I was (because I paid enough money - not that much though as Mexico is cheap) given a lesson on how the Tequila Masters taste Tequila. So don´t try and pull one over me - I know my stuff now. And I also now have developed a taste for Tequila, which was never there before. Damn capitilist pigs with their tours making me like Tequila.

The rest of the week I´ve been hanging with my sister really, and her boyfriend. That is because tomorrow I head to the beach (called San Blás) for a few days, returning on Thursday and flying to Canada on Friday. So don´t be surprised if you don´t here from me for a week. Tequila sunrise here I come!

Favela

Yesterday I did a Favela (or slum) tour, with Marcelo Armstrong`s company. He was the pioneer of the Favela tour, but now there are many companies that do it. Marcelo`s tour takes you to the biggest Favela in Rio (and second biggest in the world - with 60,000 inhabitants) Hocinha. It`s above Ipanema beach area. It also goes to a small Favela, with only 3,000 people, called Villa Canoas.
The whole notion of a Favela tour in the first place can seem a little bit wrong. In a friend`s hostel, someone wrote "It`s not a zoo!" on an advertising poster. However, apparently the communities were consulted before they started getting big, and they decided that they wanted the tours. They bring money, and change people`s perceptions. The first stop, for example, had a small market of local artist`s work to sell to tourists. The tour I went on partially funds a "school" - though really it`s a place to go outside of the short school hours to get fed, taken care of and have extra academic help. I certainly learnt a lot more about Favelas and what they`re actually like.

Favelas are a huge part of Rio. They are unusual in that they are scattered through out the city, instead of being on the outskirts (as they seemed to be in Sao Paulo). Some now famous people - such as sports stars - grew up in Favelas. They are also the driver that started Carneval in Rio, and apparently have the best after-parties. There are about 160 in Rio, so a large amount of people live in them.

On the way to Hocinha there was a graphic illustration of the appalling wealth divide. We went past a private school and saw all the cars and their chauffeurs waiting for the students to come out. Then, just around the corner, we hit the main (and only proper) road in Hocinha (shown in the first picture).

It was different from what I imagined. There`s all the problems you hear about - the low standard of living, the fact that organised crime units run the place and that police are actually worse than the drug dealers who keep the law and order and the buildings that are erected out of the materials people could find, with no building codes adhered to, and no meters attached to the web of power lines. (The gangs are only really are violent over drugs, and if there`s a war between them and another gang unit, or the police. The police on the other hand are lowly paid and corrupt, even robbing a bank not long after in opened in Hocinha). But the reality is they are the same as any people - clean, dressed in normal clothes, and going about their daily lives. There were shops, banks, buses, cars and bikes. They just earn a lot less, are less educated, and live in much more crowded conditions (though things are pretty crowded all over Rio, being a big city and all).

The second Favela, Villa Canoas, was a little different. It was sandwiched between wealthy houses and a golf course, again showing the wealth divide and the integrated nature of the Favelas. But it was small, and more like a labarenth. The houses were a few stories high (some piled on top of each other), and the "streets" were only just wide enough to fit two people across. The buildings closed in above, limiting the penetration of natural light. It was very strange, like walking through a dungeon, but with peoples` houses and even shops on either side. A very claustrophobic existence.

Villa Canoas, being so small and manageable, has had some reforms put in place. There are meters for power, street names, and a sewage system (I think). The federal Government is planning to put this kind of infrastructure in all Favelas - which is very ambitious, and will take some time (of course, being run by the Government) if it happens at all. It`s a trade-off - the people will have more regulation, paying for power and probably taxes too, which they don`t now, but then they get important and vital infrastructure in return.

A great experience, I learnt a lot.

Party time!

Last night I had my official leaving party for my trip. It was three weeks out from it, but still a good excuse to party and drink binge-ing-ly. The collection of bottles wasn't majorly impressive as you can see, but as usual some people had too much to drink. Silly kiwis.

Sorry for those of you who should have been invited but weren't - I'm only human. But there's still time to say good bye. And thanks to all that came - great to see you (slash meet you in a couple cases).

But yes, party time is such a great human invention. Connections with others are so vital to our lives, and it's fantastic to be able to talk to so many people in one night, as well as just generally have a good time and have a beer (or two...). There's so many good people in this world, and we are so lucky in New Zealand. I will miss everyone and I will miss Wellington.

For those who still aren't in the know (and for those who have never met me), here is the run-down of my trip that I published for my party's "Information Table" so that I didn't have to talk about it over and over last night:

Zack’s Trip

(So that you don’t have to ask him about the details ‘cause he’s already talked about his trip heaps).

Zack leaves on 26 April to Sao Paulo in Brazil. It is here he will be attending the second Global Green and Global Young Greens Congress. This is a body of over one hundred associated Green Parties around the world. The theme of the Congress is Climate Change, though more issues will be discussed.

He then has two weeks of freedom during which his only plans are to make it to Rio de Janeiro, which isn’t too far north of Sao Paulo. From here he will start a tour, which will take him up to the Amazon River and into Venezuela, ending up in the capital Caracas.

From Caracas he flies on 1 July to Guadalajara in Mexico where his sister currently resides. He will spend a month of QT there. From here he flies on 1 August to Ottawa. This is where most of his extended Canadian family lives, and he will spend a month of QT with these simple, friendly Canadian folk.

Finally, after spending a few days in LA with some random peeps, he will return to NZ on 5 September 2008AD, after spending over four months on the trip the that would later be regarded as the journey that made him great, and that would subsequently lead him to change the world forever. (Perhaps a wee premature, but just you wait).

Mmm... Drugs.

In my search for a source for my claim in my post last night that alcohol should be classified as a Class B drug (which I heard twice on National radio - one from a Lincoln University study, and another from an English academic who was visiting NZ and is an expert on drugs. But evidently they don't keep full archives on their website) I came across this interesting graph on the BBC website. It was from a Science Select Committee inquiry in Britain in 2006. They recommended that a more evidence-based rating system for drugs be introduced, showing the true harm rating of drugs, rather than this Class A B C system that both they and us have, which is widely off the mark. Note Class A drugs that are way down the scale, including Ecstasy (given a bad reputation because old people don't like young people staying up all night and dancing) and LSD (given a bad rep from old squares not liking hippies). Alcohol comes in the fifth most harmful drug, with BZPs close behind (which have been illegal in Britain for some time). But the colouration of the graph best sums things up about our current, dishonest and unconstructive system.

On another note, a couple of my friends who used to take BZP pills tried some of the new pills last night. At the time they said they were crap and had little effect. Don't know about all the varieties, and there are supposedly more on the way, but for those wanting energy, could be best to stick to caffeine and guarana.

RIP BZP, hello... um... WTF?

Congratulations to Jim Anderton for perpetuating the "Wack-A-Mole" syndrome in the "War on Drugs". (Sorry to use such horribly American terms, but it seems, as usual, the US is at the forefront of this stupid, futile and costly war). Yes, earlier this week BZP was made illegal thanks to him, but I still can't quite figure out why. It is now a Class C drug - whereas alcohol should be a Class B drug. Yet he hasn't made that illegal (I will endeavour to find a source for that statement). In fact it has become more and more readily available in recent years, with the numbers of outlets selling alcohol increasing exponentially. And now, of course, there is a new legal drug all ready to go on the market - and we don't even know what's in it!

A couple of points. Firstly, I thought the outlawing of BZP was going to come with a change to the Misuse of Drugs Act that would make it mandatory that companies had to prove themselves that the new drug they are putting on the market is safe before it went on the market, rather than the Government having to "prove" that it is harmful enough to be illegal before making it illegal. However, I understand that the Act is going to be amended later on this year, and that is a change that will probably be put into it. However...

(Point number two before I go out and have some good sober times on a Friday night. So that I can party harder tomorrow night.) Some minor, or even major amendments to the Misuse of Drugs will not have much of an effect. Why? Because we have such an inconsistent and dishonest approach to drugs in the country (and in much of the world). Inconsistencies in Government policy, where one drug is are allowed to be sold and advertised everywhere pretty much, when it is an extremely harmful drug, and most other drugs are criminal offences even just to possess. But there are misunderstandings on both sides. Of course the law-makers want to be doing what they can to protect citizens, especially younger ones, from harm. They're not going to do that by making them criminals though. If we are ever to grow out of our binge drinking culture, and be able to move to a stage where most people can enjoy drugs safely most of the time (yes, drugs are not all bad. They are a lot of fun, mind expanding, relaxing - many things to many people. We are never going to rid our society of them, and why should we?) we need to be much more level headed and mature when talking about them, and start a dialogue between the different groups in society that have differing views. It's hard, especially when so many people have been affected adversely by drugs, but it is the only way we can move forward.

PS Alcohol is a drug!