Richard Peters -in the Sai Kung Country Park

10K and rising

I know, I know –there are lots of websites out there that get ten-, even a hundred-times that traffic per hour, but that's not the point. Just knowing that so many of you lovely people have wandered my way makes me... feel... sort-of... warm and fuzzy, that's all. Gee –I love you all!

And the most YouTube hits goes to...

According to this website, the Bieb (not The Beeb which is much more wholesome as far as I'm concerned) scores the tops for YouTube vids –half a billion, if you will believe it. More to my disappointment, Charlie Bit My Finger comes out 6th with a mere 430 million. By this thorough statistical analysis it can be concluded that the world's masturbational teenagers can't get enough of tousled-haired heart-throbs, whereas cute bald biting babies, as always, are a bit of an after-thought. I suppose it were ever thus. It probably accounts for a significant amount of the bald biting babies currently pushed around by masturbational teenagers...

Enough of silly videos, what of serious websites? well, discounting the mighty Google search engine, the most obvious is Facebook. This should come as no surprise considering the incredible hold it has on some. As a means on checking up on family, friends new and old and work colleagues it cannot be beaten, except that it relies entirely upon the Facebooker to regularly update his or her status. Enough column inches have been wasted on this somewhat insidious on-line means of 'finding out' exactly who you are, what you are doing, with whom and when. The confessional phrase, 'I have nothing to hide' may not be quite the platitudinous guilt-free statement in years to come, particularly if there is a little unsavoury skeleton in the cupboard.

It's true, Facebook scan your mind with invisible lasers

According to this source, Mark Zuckerberg owns the lions share 28.2%, Accel Partners own the next 10%, Zuckerberg's roommate Dustin Moskowitz with 7.6%, Russian-owned Digital Sky Technologies with a mere 5.4%, further down the list is Microsoft's paltry 1.6%, Goldman Sachs at 1%, our very own Li Ka Shing at 0.8%. At no visible presence is the CIA, despite the alarmist protestations in on-line articles a few years back that before long the Men in Black would know everything about you at your own admission. It still is an interesting concept, that there aren't enough torturers in the world to wheedle out the kind of information we happily blurt out on a daily basis.

And the most hits for blogs and social media and photos and that...

As blogs go, this one is certainly not one of the greats. It's too... nuanced, too anglophilic, idiosyncratic (not to say egocentric) and therefore couldn't possible compete for those with wider global appeal. The Huffington Post may be the most massivelee popliar blog everr, but I suspect there might be more than one person putting that baby together. There are, of course, a whole host more too numerous to mention.

What of the futuuuuuuuure?

Well, we all have our chance to speak now. We are able to tell whoever wishes to read it that we have had a lovely dinner, found an interesting video, met up with some interesting friends, behaved well or badly, been there and done that. But that's just so boring. I'm waiting for the next thing –website entries from the other side, blogs describing endless heaven or hell, flickr pictures of the afterlife, ebay ads from someone selling their old bodies, "one careful owner, a bit tatty around the edges but well loved". If that ever happens they might all have to amend their body part policies like Ebay's, but it would surely be worth it!

Blog of Blogs

I think it’s about time I did the meta-thing: a blog entry to discuss my blog. I know this might seem a little… introspective, but keeping a blog, albeit irregularly, is somewhat fascinating. Perhaps I ought to blog about this blog entry too: Oh, conundrums and mysteries and wheels within wheels!

To be more precise, I want to write about the route by which fresh eyes rest upon the site and the sometimes circuitous route by which this blog page is opened by the curious, not-so curious and (quite probably) the furious.

With a review of blog stats, I can also view the links that have lead General Public to the blog. I do have the regulars, of course  –those that follow and those who directly check on posted links from Facebook. For those folks that haven’t yet, why not click on “follow” –y’all come back regular, ya hear? 

I suppose the real reason I write on this theme today is the last astonishing Search that lead a needy soul here. It was, and I kid you not, “a juicy vagina being nicely fucked by a penis”. Quite apart from the mental image or the fairly artistic phraseology (I’m somewhat compelled by the implication of juicyness/niceness), perhaps the more astonishing aspect is that with the Everest-sized mountain of porn out there my humble blog achieved any kind of hit at all!

Another recent novelty was a traduction Français of the blog entry on the Siege of Malta –the tangled web of the web reaches even those shadowy Gauloises-smoking and mustachioed cheese eating regions. I also get a lot of hits for my review of 1000 Years of Annoying the French! 

Hitherto the most salacious search that ended with ‘Richard Peters in the Country Park’ cheerily pop up onto a screen glowing in the dark was shortly after the bombing in Marrakech. My blog entry irresistibly piqued the interest of someone looking for ‘sexy Moroccan boys’. Hmmm… Perhaps I should be embracing the more corporeally-minded African enthusiasts amongst the general public. Just give ‘em what they want, that’s what I say. Bread and circuses? Free tissues and guilt-free jiggly tits, more like.

Like most ploddy blogs, most hits are from the embedded pics. I admit that many of them are actually mine and I do spend quite a bit of time resourcing the other images for the sake of accuracy. In the true Anarchist spirit that all property is theft, I probably get as many of my images nicked as I liberate. I’m not even going to enter into discussion about intellectual rights or crediting internet image sources –I often feel the need to sleep. Oh, brothers and sisters, oh for a utopia in which the need to freely lift is gone…

My biggest hit for an image is a picture of a human kidney removed mid-surgery. I wrote a quick throw-away entry about a kid in China who sold his kidney for an I-pad and I-phone and lifted the best image I could source. This one pic accounts for about 80-90% of all picture searches, a fact that has led me to a horrible deduction about thems that conducts the searches –people that want to buy a kidney (the desperate, pleading and praying for life) and people that want to sell their kidney (the desperate, pleading and praying for cash). Either way, these searches indicated a lively trade in even-livelier body parts I’m none-too keen on (the issues surrounding Transplant Surgery require a much more tactful blog entry for another time). I suppose I should be grateful that I’m comfortable enough that I can view such astonishing things with incredulity.

My biggest hit on one day has been 78, my least none. And that’s the instant problem with counting pageviews –watching those distracting numbers and… yes… come on… yes… nearly there… woo-hoo… 5000 hits!! Consider the ridiculous millions of hits notched up on something inane such as Cat Face cartoon or WTF Kitty (all hits by puerile bedroom door-locked pre-teens who, from the state of their poorly-spelt, offensive or inane congratulatory messages, can’t be very far along the road to Mental Acuity Town). I see this stuff and want my 30 seconds of life back and despair about humanity.

So has this bloggy stuff taught me anything? Not much, but it is fun; an excuse to rant a bit, to examine something I find of interest and then leave a quippy -30- (that’s American journalistic parlance for the end of a story, don’t ya know), to show whoever is prepared to see the wonders of the Sai Kung Country Park, to wear a bit of my heart upon my electronic sleeve. I hope you will find it's the sort of thing that can be merrily read over a weekend morning cuppa.

Now, all I can presume is that if fresh eyes have reached this page it’s likely their search has has been concocted from, “juicy vagina”+ “penis”+ “porn”+ “sexy Moroccan boys”+”jiggly tits”+ “images”,+“pre-teen” + “kidney”. Now producing THAT sort of heady webpage gets you a visit from the Feds!

Excellent Big Lychee/Hemlock's Rant on English, the ESF and Pierce Lam (who he...?)

A frequent diversion (in proper grown-up's language) on matters Hong Kong can be found at Big Lychee, a long-established territory-centred blog. I have yet to find a poorly-worded or ill-thought comment (by the author, at least).  Each entry is bang up-to-date and well-researched. The opinions can be quite scathing, but are generally fair -after all, this city of ours is a bit of a mad, mixed-up and contradictory circus and if you hang on for five minutes someone is bound to say something crazy or do something worse!

The blog has been around for quite a while, was hitherto known as Hemlock, and has connections with the wonderful, but sadly buried, Not The South China Morning Post.

I therefore have no hesitation in endorsing this blog -particularly the review, about two-thirds of the way down, of the recent outing by a letter written to the South China Morning Post by a certain Pierce Lam (Central) on April 11th. This finely-worded rant, it appears, hails from a Chinese with big fat chips on his shoulder regarding the use of English in Hong Kong, deep-seated reserve towards anything non-Sino focused and the pointlessness of the English Schools Foundation. The Big Lychee correctly points out that these efforts may have their origins in a troubled past. More worrying, at least for me, would be the effect such an opinion might have on a government policy-maker or, if such a position properly exists, government economic planner.

Heightened attention on China, and centrally-'controlled' Chinese economics in particular, is likely in the coming weeks. I think the news will all be negative, if not downright dire. It's tempting to become a doom-monger and hail the end-of-the-world (as we know it), but from desperate times often come desperate measures. I only hope that the English-bashing rhetoric of those such as Pierce Lam will be drowned in a sea of good-old Chinese common-sense.

Talking of which, aerial pigs are expected over Hong Kong skies anytime soon.

Morocco Atlas Adventure 2010

Morocco Atlas Adventure Diary

Day 1 Flights, Flights, Flights…

This is my entry on the KGV School trip blog -mostly for the benefit of the students involved (and their parents).

 

I tried to transfer it directly, but it didn't work – GoogleSites is not the best tool for this sort of thing.

 

Consequently, some of the pics don't work too well or are a little misplaced. 

 

To see it in its full glory (and if the link still works), check out: 

https://sites.google.com/a/kgv.hk/morocco-atlas-adventure/Home-Page/blog

EK381 HKG–Dubai – good.

EK751 Dubai–Casablanca – good.

8-hr wait at Casablanca for connecting flight of 45 minutes to Marrakech – not good.

Note to self: always check connecting flights/times! One of the things one does not realise when booking using an agent is exactly how thorough their preparation has been: we could have taken at least one flight to Marrakech in the time spent waiting for the one booked. Or got the train or bus.

Once in Marrakech quickly to the Hotel Foucauld, just off the madness that is the Jemaa el Fnaa square: centrally located, friendly and functional.  The electrics, however, are suspect, the showers sometimes cold and the noise from the street constant. Hmmm…  Straight to bed.

Day 2 Marrakech

A Saturday of looking around the great city of Marrakech with our guide, Hajj.

A quick tour of; the outside of the Koutoubia Mosque with its’ 70 metre minaret, the magnificent Bab Agnaou stone gateway entrance to the medina, the Saadian Tombs, the Jewish quarter, the Berber Pharmacy and the souks. Marrakech has an unpretentious feel to it and the Moroccans are keen on welcoming their cash-carrying quarry. If they don’t speak your language, you need to come more often! 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch at rooftop café overlooking the city.

 

 

Afternoon trip by horse-drawn calash to the Jardins Majorelle, the exquisitely designed gardens of Yves Saint Laurent. An excellent blend of cacti and succulents with palms and bamboo, of shape and forms and the fusion of bold colours, these gardens are a beautiful restful must-do for any visitor to Marrakech.

Dinner at the hotel and early evening shopping in the souks: clearly not enough time given over to this activity for the inveterate Hong Kong shopper!

Day 3 Road Trip

 From Marrakech by minibus into the mountains.

The rainclouds parted after the summit of the Tichka pass (2,260m) to reveal a spectacular landscape of rock and ravine. After the turn-off to Telouet the road deteriorated with each mile and our bones began to shake.

Lunch at Mohamad’s restaurant at Telhouet which included the magnificent local dish, pastilla –nuts, minced lamb and fruits in a pastry case: delicieux! 

 

Stopped the minibus at Anmiter to take the final few kilometres walk up the valley to Tighza through lush valleys, beneath staggering rocky mountains and to meeting gorgeous Berber people.

Dinner at the Kasbah. We will all get fat.

Day 4 The Rain, the Cold and the Howling Wind

A difficult night with difficult mountain weather, but awoke to double rainbows! The tree-planting was called off, so took a trip in the rickety local minibus to the local Anmiter Salt Mine, an astonishing twinkling, hand-dug cave that reminds us all exam results do matter.

 

 

Later travelled to Telouet to visit Mohamad’s carpet showroom where he craftily weaved the stories of the Berber traditions and symbols found in the warp and weft.

Lunch back at Tighza. Paid a visit to the local primary school to play football in the playground, teach English and kept the excited children entertained for nearly 2 hours.

  

 

Dinner back at the Kasbah, the decision was taken to take advantage of the lull in the weather to hike up to the lake next morning. This will involve camping… at night… in the dark… in tents. I suppose we find out the hard way. 

Day 5 Into the Mountains

A (relatively) early start and a walk up to the lake. Sounded simple enough –up to the lake and be back at the camp ground for dinner. What few had taken into consideration was the sheer effort required. It took its’ toll on some, and the plod-plod-plodding up and up through the brilliantly verdant river valley and the wide expanse of the high meadows and even higher pasture left many weary, if not exhausted.

 

We found Lake Tamda to be a high alpine lake in a natural amphitheatre of even higher mountains. It is bright blue, full of trout which occasionally splash out of the surface and a perfect backdrop for our lunch!

 

 

    

Then began our lengthy descent across the spectacular biblical landscape, this time with the aid of mules, to the camp ground by the ford of the river.  After our evening’s food around the fireside emerged the stars which, even with firelight, astounded through their intensity.  And with cloudless night skies the temperature plummeted. By the freezing early light of day the romance of open mountain living, of twinkly stars and of long wilderness treks had completely evaporated, only to slowly condense again through the warming rays of the sun.

 

 
Day 6 Back to Tighza

A beautiful, restful place where even the sound of a passing aeroplane is unusual, the Tighza valley has an unhurried feel to it. Finished our hike down the river valley, past the little fields, the fruit trees and homesteads.

Lunch at the Kasbah. Then rest time. Lots of rest time.

Just before dinner we were shown the lamb ready for our meshwe dinner, and the veg prepared for tagine. Our hosts also show us the Kasbah which will be our eco-friendly home on future visits.

  

After our Meshwe and tagine dinner on the star-lit balcony, we retired to one of the salons for our night’s ‘entertainment’; quite the weirdest magic trick any of us have ever seen involving a man, a blue waistband and a marble and, of course, our own ‘spontaneous performances’. A night we shall never forget!

 

Day 7 Farewell Tighza, Hello Marrakech

A beautiful sunlit morning. Breakfast arrived along with a clear view of the ochre sandstone mountains set against a sky the colour of the deepest blue Berber jallaba (the full-length one-piece hooded clothing worn by many here). After our goodbyes to our host Carolyn, we set off to Telouet to see the magnificent Kasbah, the seat of the once-powerful Glaoui Lords of the High Atlas. This astonishing palace/castle is being slowly restored and contains wonderful tessellated tiling, detailed painted woodwork and intricate stucco doorways. It truly is a showpiece for Moroccan and Berber heritage and design.

 

Then came a welcome lunch stop at a local restaurant by the river at Taddart on our way down to Marrakech. For a distance of just over 126 km the journey is nearly 6 hours!

 

 

Once in the city the souks beckoned once again and the night welcomed those dedicated to its’ gastronomic pleasures –in this case it was Jemaa el Fna square, incessant gnawa music from the region, freshly-squeezed orange juice, and escargot and sheep’s head (for those with the stomach for it). Some did, some didn’t, and some had second-helpings!

 

Day 8 Getting home

Another sunny morning in Marrakech and a fond farewell to Mohammad our excellent host (or should that have been an au revoir?)  After our last bread-filled breakfast and bus it to the airport, we finally took leave of Morocco.

 

 

AT800 Marrakech–Casablanca

EK752 Casablanca–Dubai

EK384 Dubai–Bangkok–Hong Kong – this last one being on the enormous A380. It don’t matter which way you cut it, Marrakech is a long way from Hong Kong.

What a great Challenge Week. I want to give out a big thank you to all you Moroccan travellers –you made it so special. I know you are all a little weary now and personally challenged by the trip, but also I’m glad you had a good time. And a specially grand merci to Mrs Tranter and her hard work (especially in the mornings) and without whom the week would clearly not have been possible.

Bessehha!

!تحيا مراكش

Life in the 80s

Last night we attended an 80s Party. For clarification purposes, let me state that this was not a celebration of octogenarians, but a remembrance of all things circa 1980-90.

A decade is a long time, of course, and there’s a lot that went on during the 80s. Jigging about to Spandau Ballet's Gold and Marc Almond’s Tainted Love got me reminiscing. But instead of trawling through the golden oldies of yesteryear, here’s my review.

I remember when the 70s were finally over: An insufferable romantic, I stood in the yard of our North Audley Street basement flat and, like some moron, looked sorrowfully up at the ever-pinkish London midnight clouds and plaintively wailed as Big Ben clanged, “Oh 70s where hast thou gone?” I remember the strange sensation that we were onto something new, modern and exciting: Who knew where it would take us.

So, I started the decade living in Mayfair. My Mother, sister and I were living in such splendid surroundings courtesy of my Uncle Bruce who at that time was a rising star in property development. I attended the Purcell School of Music in Harrow-on-the-Hill, so each day walked up Baker Street to get the near-empty Metropolitan Line trains out of the heart of London (everyone else was packed into trains going in the opposite direction). Mum worked at the big Marks and Sparks at the bottom of Baker Street (now gone). My sister worked at John Jones Frames just off Bond Street framing the pictures of the great and glorious including the large portrait that appeared behind the opening doors each week on This Is Your Life (but she could never tell who and was sworn to secrecy).

We had moved to Knightsbridge and then to Chelsea before Mum moved to Lynton in North Devon in 1983. I stayed with my mate Dan’s family in Harrow for the last few months of school. These were great summer days full of cricket, girlfriends, naughty lunchtime trips to the pub and partying. We were young, free and penniless!

I remember thinking that 80s fashions were really crap. Part of that was my highly opinionated adolescent appreciation of all things under heaven, but part of that was the plain obvious. Pixie boots? Off the shoulder dots and stripes t-shirts? Asinine ‘Frankie Says’ sloganeering? I mean, come on…

There are, of course, those for whom this was their best time of it. Not I. I was trying to make something of it in London when my mother broke her arm and she asked if I would come down and help run the creaking ghostly guest house she had at that time. A fiery autumn turned into a bleak dreary winter of daytime TV and long tramps across Exmoor. Although this aspect was nice, having no money wasn’t. I hitch-hiked everywhere. Or walked.

The 80s were momentous. Thatcher began her process of privatisation and the Miners went on strike. President Reagan deployed nuclear weapons across Europe and the Greenham Common lesbians struck camp: the Cold War was in full swing, the Soviets fought a terrible war in Afghanistan, the Ethiopian famine provoked Live Aid (I gave £5, ya know) and Zimbabwe became independent. Mount St Helens erupted, Chernobyl poisoned half the world with lethal radiation and the Challenger Shuttle exploded live on TV! Communism crumbled across Eastern Europe and the Tiananmen Square protests were mercilessly crushed. And much, much more...

I took Flavia to see Life of Brian, Sam to The Meaning of Life and Rosie to Gandhi (and Amadeus with me Mum).

I met Brenda at Tim Welch’s 21st birthday party. I don’t think we thought much about each other at first. We both liked Jethro Tull. She said she had some friends who’d like to see them at the Albert Hall, I thought I could get tickets. Time elapsed. I wrote and explained my fiscal embarrassment which meant I couldn’t get tickets. She replied that her friends were thinking twice about an expensive trip to London. And so began 7 months of letter writing during which we realised we would be married. We knew we had to wait until we had both finished college in Hull and that was difficult –Hull’s terrible! For some reason getting married is an extraordinarily important and urgent thing to do when you’re young. But wait we did and on November 1st 1987 we finally got hitched in St Albans (because it was the most central spot for our families). Phew!

I got my first computer –an Atari ST! This baby enabled me to put together electronic music: Wow! Many nights were filled with little compositions, big band moments and quirky electronic ditties that pleased me at the time. Sometimes they completely disappeared into the eternal nether-regions of "disk error", sometimes they saved. I still have a tape somewhere.

By the end of the decade Brenda and I were living in Hastings expecting our first baby. I remember watching the terrible news of Tiananmen in 1989 with a tiny Rachel Peters on my lap and wondering if there would be some sort of connection –us and China. How strange life can be.

We bought our little basement flat at the height of the housing price hike and it immediately fell into negative equity. Our first rung on the property ladder snapped under us. Brenda went off to do her Masters at Manchester University. So, we said goodbye to the South and lived with Brenda’s Mum in Bolton for a little more than a year.

And that was the 80s. We came downstairs in our dressing gowns to watch the countdown on telly. At 5-past midnight Brenda’s mum popped her head around the door to wish us a Happy New Year and caught us in flagrante –our first act of the 90s!