Archive for the ‘Non-Travel’ Category

There’s a nice article over on Going Local Travel about how the Argentinians are claiming that they invented the internet (or the word at least). Obviously this is a little bit of fun (I hope so) but it does raise the question of how we define which country invented what. We might say that it was the British that invented the railway or the French the guillotine, when in fact it was an individual from those countries that did the actual inventing.

However it can be confusing if the person doing the inventing has, at some point, changed countries. Which country can lay claim to the invention? This came up recently as I was having a discussion with an Argentine friend about the inventions that had come from Argentina. At one point he claimed that the ballpoint pen was an Argentina invention. Being a trivia nerd, I patiently explained that a Mr Laszlo Biro had been the inventor of that particular implement and that I was pretty sure (as I know 110%) that he was Hungarian, not Argentinian.

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Indignantly he pointed out that whilst being born in Hungary, Mr Biro had moved to Argentina and had died as an Argentine citizen, therefore the ballpoint pen is to be considered Argentinian. Indeed, Argentina has even gone so far as to commemorate Inventor’s Day on 25th September, the man’s birthday.

Biro did indeed, with his brother, move to Buenos Aires in 1940, fleeing the Nazis. And in 1943 patented the pen in question in Argentina. However, he filed the initial patent in 1938, 2 years before moving away from Hungary. The pen was first produced and sold in Argentina as a “birome”, (the Biro brothers’ partner was another Hungarian emigré called Meyne) and it is still called by that name to this day.

Now, I’m in no position to resolve this; my gut feeling is that the man was born Hungarian but died an Argentinian so I think both countries can lay claim to him and to his legacy. They didn’t invent the Internet though, I’m not letting them get away with that one…

Last year I volunteered for 3 months for a youth club in Buenos Aires, helping out with English lessons, homework and all sorts of stuff. In November I organised (and wrote) a quiz [singlepic id=42 w=160 h=120 float=left]to help raise some funds, and last week the club organised another fund-raising event and I was asked to write the questions. I’m publishing them here for your enjoyment (the answers are below in white text – highlight to see them, but no cheating!). If anybody wants to use or adapt them for another quiz, feel free. Or if you need a quiz writing, let me know!

Round One:

1. What is the currency of South Africa?
2. Which country was founded in 1948?
3. What type of animal was the first in space?
4. By value, oil is the most traded product in the world what is the second?
5. Which chess piece can only move diagonally?
6. Who was the first president of Argentina?
7. Theoretically, what is the minimum number of strokes a player needs to make to win a set at tennis?
8. The Amazon river rises in which country?
9. What was the name of the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb?
10. How old is current teen heartthrob, singer Justin Bieber?

Round Two:

1. Geneva stands on which river?
2. Who did Diana Spencer marry?
3. On which island was Nelson Mandela imprisoned?
4. What is the capital of Canada?
5. Which film won the 2010 Best Movie Oscar?
6. How many countries does the equator pass through?
7. In which month, of which year did Neil Armstrong land on the moon?
8. Which small Norwegian town hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics?
9. How is Norma Jean Baker better known?
10. Sebastien Loeb has been the World Champion for the last 6 years in which sport?

Round Three:

1. Name the road-system that links Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia.
2. True or False: Elizabeth Taylor has been married 7 times.
3. The mobile phone company Nokia is from which European country?
4. Who is the CEO of Apple?
5. Who did Sirhan Sirhan assassinate in 1968?
6. On the pH scale, what number is pure water?
7. 61 is the international telephone dialling code for which country?
8. In cooking, what is the main characteristic of a dish described as all’Arrabbiata?
9. Vicentico is the lead singer of which Argentian group?
10. Which is the largest fish in the world?

Round Four:

1. How old was Elvis Presley when he died?
2. Which are the 2 ingredients of a Screwdriver cocktail?
3. In which direction can Derek Zoolander NOT turn?
4. If a piece of music contains the instruction “p”, what does that mean?
5. What do the letters HTML stand for?
6. Which has more calories – 1 banana, 1 apple or 1 orange?
7. Which South American artist is famous for painting fat people?
8. Of the 30 players called by coach Diego Maradona to the preliminary squad for the 2010 World Cup, how many currently play club football in Argentina?
9. In which year did Ronald Reagan take office?
10. According to the 2008 US Census, which is the 3^rd largest city in the USA, by population?

ANSWERS

ROUND ONE ANSWERS

Rand
Israel
Dog
Coffee
Bishop
Bernadino Rivadavia
12
Peru
Enola Gay

ROUND TWO ANSWERS
Rhone
Prince Charles
Robben Island
Ottawa
The Hurt Locker
12 (Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon, Republic of The Congo, Democratic Republic of The Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil )
July 1969
Lillehammer
Marilyn Monroe
10.Rally Driving
ROUND THREE ANSWERS
Pan-American Highway
False (8 times to 7 husbands)
Finland
Steve Jobs
Bobby Kennedy
7
Australia
Spicy Hot
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
10.The Whale Shark
ROUND FOUR ANSWERS
42
Vodka and Orange Juice
Left
To be played quietly
HyperText Markup Language
1 banana
Botero
10 (Palermo, Veron, Sosa, Mercier, Blanco, Rodriguez, Otamendi, Insaurralde, Garcé, Pozo)
1981
10.Chicago (1. New York, 2. LA, 3. Chicago, 4. Houston, 5. Phoenix)

Now, this is supposed to be a blog all about my travels, rather than indulging in my nerdy gadget-love, but I’m going to make an exception and tell you all about my PowerMonkey (well there’s a sentence I never saw myself writing).

Before you get all excited and report me for primate abuse, a Powermonkey is a solar-powered charger that ensures that none of your gadgets need ever to run out of juice on that long flight or bus journey. And honestly, it’s one of those things that doesn’t need to sell itself any further, at least not to me.

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I have found this thing insanely useful and whilst travelling used it pretty much every day. It’s very simple – it has a central charging unit which you charge when near a plug socket or using the solar panel. This central unit can then be used with a variety of adaptors to charge your gadgets.

2 big problems stand out – I didn’t actually get the solar charging to work. I would leave it charging in the Colombian sunshine for an hour or so, the bar on the charging unit would show power going in, but when I unplugged it, the level was the same as before. Now this could just be that I needed to leave it longer, who knows, but to be honest I was never so far away from a plug socket (the other, more traditional way of charging it) that this was a problem.

Secondly I only actually used it for my iPod. It doesn’t charge laptops (for that you need to spend another 30 quid or something for the PowerGorilla, and even then I’m not sure it charges a Mac), my camera has an external charger and the adaptor for my phone didn’t work very well. And then I lost the phone, so that was that!

However, simply being able to charge the iPod made this an absolute must-have gadget – particularly when not travelling with a laptop – thanks Rach!

Well, after hours of farting around, I have finally decided on my new theme for the blog. Hope you like it! I don’t think it’s the final one, so it could well be changing again in the months to come – let me know what you think.

Slightly off-topic from my normal stuff but easy to forget what that day felt like.

It has been brought to my attention, by one of my more sensitive readers, that the language I use is somewhat, how shall I say, vulgar and unnecessary.

Always willing to keep things civil, I would like to apologise for any offence I have caused and shall endeavour to refrain from using such profanity in the future.

How’s that Dad? Not an F-Word in sight ;o)

If you want to be shot in Alaska, other than doing it yourself (which, given the low levels of sunlight in winter it seems a lot of people do. The state has the highest per capita suicide rate in the US), there are 2 ways. Say the wrong thing about Sarah Palin to the wrong person or announce loudly and proudly that you eat farmed fish. Man, they hate that. On the surface (or under it at least, ha ha!) farming seems a sensible solution. In areas where the salmon population has been overfished, give the wild ones a chance to recover by placing huge net cages near the shore and grow the little blighters like chickens. That way, the supermarkets remain stocked with nutritious tasty fishies, jobs are provided for areas hit by a collapsed fishing industry (by necessity, fish farms are set up in areas where the salmon occur naturally, often at the mouth of a spawning stream) and nature is untouched to carry on doing what it does. Right?

Well, no as it happens. The fish farms are messing up the environment just as much, if not more as fishing. Fish, like chickens, are not designed to confined to a cage in huge numbers. When one fish gets an infection, a lot of the other salmon, being in close proximity, also become infected. The infection affects the skin and the fish shed flakes of infected scales. As they are in a net, these flakes float out into the sea, where the wild salmon either leaving or returning to their natal stream swim through a huge cloud of horribleness. Wild fish in turn become infected, making it very hard for the natural population to recover and/or stay healthy.

Strike one for the fish farms. Strike two is the fact that in order to combat the infections, fish farms pump a lot of antibiotics into the water, which not only cause mutations in the farmed salmon (which we then eat, even the mututated ones), also of course cause untold damage to the wild population beyond the nets. And thirdly, farmed fish tastes awful, really fucking bad. As I said earlier, I used to think I didn’t like fish, I know realise I love fish, just none of the fish I’ve eaten before. I’ve been lucky enough to eat a lot of fresh seafood in the last 3 weeks. Halibut, rockfish, lingcod, shrimps, crab and, of course, salmon. It truly and honestly tastes fantastic – fresh, delicate and healthy. I’ve eaten it every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’ve not eaten meat for 3 weeks (aside from a hot dog, gimme a break, I was drunk) and have felt no desire to. From a raw chunk sliced from a beautiful, whole, deep red coho (sockeye), rockfish tacos, home-smoked king salmon to crab cakes, I’ve stuffed my face.

I’ve eaten corn-fed beef from happy cows and it does taste “nicer” than feedlot cattle, but the difference between farmed salmon and wild salmon is staggering. It’s a million miles from what we in Europe (or me at least) know as fish. I loved it. Obviously, I was lucky enough to be in a place where some of the world’s finest is plucked directly from the ocean, if you catch it yourself, sea to plate in 3 hours. Very few of the 175 million make their way to Europe and when they do the price is often prohibitive for mere mortals, but if you ever get the chance to try it, leap (see what I did there?) at it. And do us all a favour, when you eat fish, eat sustainably caught fish and secondly, you’d always buy free-range chickens so please don’t eat farmed fish, it’s really not worth it.

Back on the good ship Columbia. Of all the places I’ve left in the last few months, leaving Ketchikan was the hardest. It was always the aim of my trip, originally the plan was to get there overland from Buenos Aires. Well, that didn’t quite work out, but nevertheless, I got there. I made it. Look at it on a map, seriously, do it, 7 months ago I was in Ushuaia. Look where that is and look where Ketchikan is. It doesn’t matter that I “cheated” and flew a big chunk of the middle, even coming from San Diego up to there overland is more than most Americans will ever do.

But that aside, leaving the place itself has hit me hard. I don’t have a very big family and having 3 of my 5 cousins living in the US, one of them in Alaska, it has been in my consciousness for a long time. Up until a couple of years ago I hadn’t seen Valerie (my Alaskan cousin) since 1986 and something like only 5 times in my life, so getting up there and seeing it and her was a big deal. It’s been such a great experience on 2 levels.

Firstly the place itself is beautiful and wild, outside of the largely fat and clueless tourists from cruise ships crawling up and down the dock, barely touched by tourism. I was very lucky with the weather (locals kept telling me how it was the best summer for 20 years), and have been fishing twice (and ate my catch), flown on a float plane over Misty Fjords National Park, driven a 4 wheel-drive buggy along old logging roads, seen bears plucking salmon from a river, eagles swooping down, taking fish from the sea, whales breaching, sea otters looking cute, salmon leaping upstream and countless other incredible sights. It all seems so once-in-a-lifetime like.

And secondly, I’ve spent time with my cousin and seen where she lives, seen what she has done, tasted what she has lived through, and bugger me, it’s one hell of a story and one hell of a place. It’s kind of hard to forget when in Ketchup itself, but this place is seriously isolated (literally). It’s on Revilla Gegido island and can only be reached by boat (from the south it is 6hrs from Prince Rupert in Canada or 38hrs from Bellingham in Washington State, from the north, the nearest large town is Juneau nearly 24hrs away) or by plane (2hrs from Seattle or Anchorage). There’s only 30 miles of road, and it just stops at each end. It’s wild. The week before I arrived a bear walked through her back garden. A bear. People here don’t bat an eyelid about bears. I do. Lots of eyelids.

Ketchikan is big round here, referred to simply as “town”. After I’d been there a week we caught a 3 hour ferry to Hollis on Prince of Wales Island, drove 45 minutes to get to the town of Craig where Valerie’s husband Michael is building a bank. Not quite single-handedly, he has Jimmy and Matt, but the 3 of them are building a bank. He builds lot of things. Anyway, Craig was mighty change from Ketchikan, smaller of course, but much more of a frontier town. I felt very self-concisous driving round in Valerie’s “normal” car. We didn’t have a pick-up, we must have stood out a mile. And it’s beautiful, surrounded on all three sides by the sea, backed by huge mountains covered in pine forest (apart from the bits that have had the hell logged out of them). Yet, not a tourist in sight. Just fishermen and 3 blokes building a bank.

Valerie and Michael had lived in Craig for a short time and she had not been back since moving to “town” 15 years ago. It was quite an emotional trip for her, a serious trip down memory lane. The last time she’d been there there were no paved roads. Yet, even more incredibly, at one time they had considered Craig as “town”. For over 10 years they lived in Edna Bay, on an island off Prince of Wales, a 2 hour boat ride from Craig. Edna Bay has a population of 49. Not 49,000, just 49. Although when they lived there the population was 68. This is two hippies who met in the early 80s and basically decided they would live in Alaska, and fish for a living. They’d never done it before, Valerie is from Connecticut and Michael is from Utah. Not many salmon there.

As I listened to their stories the enormity of what they had achieved hit me. Early on, and luckily for them, there were “adopted” by an older native Indian couple, David and Alice, who took them under their wing and started to show them the ropes. Where the fishing was best, underwater hazards to avoid, what can be eaten (beach asparagus anyone?), what can’t (Devil’s club), that sort of thing. For years they lived on a float house. Which is not a houseboat, it’s a house (doors, roof, kitchen, bathroom, garden, shed, workshop) that floats. On logs. To get it to Edna Bay they towed it from Garcia Bay near Craig for 36 hours against the tide. With barely the slightest clue of what they were doing. That’s what I call moving house. After the float house got a bit old and leaky, Michael built them a real house. They chopped down trees to get the wood, and built everything. Water tanks, walkway through the wood to the beach, septic system, everything.

And all the while they were making a living (of sorts) by fishing and Valerie taught at the school (16 pupils between the ages of 4 and 18) and bringing up 4 children. They had an old boat (which was held together by the woodworms holding hands) and fished. Salmon, halibut (flat fish that can grow up to 6 feet long – you don’t just bop them on the head to kill them, you shoot them with a .44), dived for abalone. 2 people who just decided to live like that and made it a success (those 4 children are all grown up now and are wonderful, it’s been great meeting them). I’d heard of Edna Bay, heard a couple of the tales, and told lots of people about my cousin in Alaska (without knowing any of the details) but seeing it all, imagining what they had been through, the things they had seen and achieved, it really hit home. I can’t even begin to picture the highs and lows such a life would bring. It was a privilege to share a small part of it with them and it is an honour to be part of their family. Although Valerie was too chicken to take me on at crib…