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Election watchdogs are reporting that 9 million ballot papers were ordered for the 5.9 million registered voters in Zimbabwe. News of this comes in the same week that Jack Straw, the UK’s Secretary of State for Justice, proposed plans for electoral reform that would see, amongst other things, the introduction of compulsory voting in Britain. If our eligible voters, only 61% of whom voted in the 2005 general election, showed half as much as enthusiasm as their Zimbabwean counterparts, who aren’t just voting once, but one and a half times, then maybe we wouldn’t have the same problem with turnout that we’ve had for the last decade or so.

Yes, voters in Zimbabwe are so enthusiastic about the democratic process that in their general election they’re voting not just once, but one and a half times. Zimbabwe’s government has responded to the election fervour by stepping up production on ballot papers, struggling to produce enough to match their people’s insatiable thirst for voting, even if it means allowing them to come back for seconds. It’s a far cry from 61%. Try 152%. Those mathematics tell me one thing and one thing only: Those Africans sure know how to vote. They’ve got democracy down to a T (even if that T arguably stands for ‘tampering’). Let’s compare the mathematics of this enthusiasm to that of other countries around the world…
(Click on the below picture to continue reading this article).

Last month I spent two weeks in China. I found the Chinese to be kind, hospitable and excited to be hosting one of the world’s most celebrated sporting events. As British cynicism towards the 2012 Olympics starts to grow, I long for some good old fashioned, state controlled TV to inject some enthusiasm into the British public. Well, almost. Read my latest Club Relaford article here.

To improve his Chinese writing Tom, who is studying the language here in Beijing, has started to write a daily diary. He showed me an entry. I understood it all except for one word. No, sorry, I meant to say I didn’t understand any of it except for one word, and that was my name, Aidan, and it was written in English, so I’d have been hard pressed not to score at least one point in the reading Tom’s diary game. I asked Tom how would you spell a foreign name like Aidan using Chinese characters. He explained that you’d probably do it phonetically, taking the Aye-dan sound and using the words it most sounds like in the Chinese spoken language. So my name would translate back to English as Love Egg. I asked Tom what his would be. He said Soup Mother.

Two days after I arrived in Beijing, Soup Mother’s brother Tim and his girlfriend Manchi landed and we spent the next week ticking off the tourist boxes around China’s capital, as Tom introduced us to the ways and whys of Chinese culture. We ate and drank far too much than is good for us, especially as most of the food consisted of baozi (pronounced bow-sa) and jiaozi (pronounced jow-sa), meat filled Chinese dumplings. When I landed I asked Tom what cultural etiquette I should be aware of. He said none, and that in China there’s a lot of spitting and throwing things on the floor at meal times anyway. This pleased me, as I can be an embarrassing enough meal partner even with a knife and fork, let alone chopsticks. When we went for a meal with Tom’s “dad in China,” one Professor Yuan, I proceeded to make a series of Chinese social faux-pas, thus reminding Tom that there is indeed a lot of etiquette to be aware of, and I was breaking many of them.

One of these was quite charming: In China, it is not proper to thank someone too much when they take you out for a meal, as it shows the other person that you are not as good a friend to them as they are to you. He pointed this out as I was thanking Prof. Yuan every 60 seconds, whether for beer, food, or opening the door for me. I pointed out to Tom that I would probably never get to repay the debt to the Prof., so I was justified in presenting myself as an unworthy friend. Although that wasn’t why I was dribbling food down my chin. That was because I am an oaf.

On February 14th, Tim and Manchi flew back to England, so Tom and I decided to do what best befits single men on Valentines day: we took a 28 hour train ride to the South of the country, polished off an Economist (available in China) and stuffed our faces with pot noodles all the way there. Sadly, at some point between consuming my first pot noodle around 12pm on VD, and my third and final one at 10am the following morning, I caught a case of man flu. Now, I’ll be the first to accept criticism that men play up colds. But when we arrived in Guilin and settled into our otherwise comfortable hotel room, Tom explained that the reason the room was cold was because in south China there is no such thing as central heating. So in the absence of a hot cup of tea and something resembling heated walls, my man flu did indeed prove justifiably debilitating. However, that didn’t stop our ‘holiday within a holiday’ from being fun, as we repeatedly and unwillingly found ourselves guests to unstoppable Chinese hospitality, meeting people on our days out and ending up being guests as they paid for meal before we could protest.

These people showed me that China, although cold on the outside, is warm and hospitable on the inside. Unless you’re a victim of human rights abuse. But for the sake of niceties we’ll brush them under the rug for now.

I’ve got a new article up at Rooster Talk. It’s brief and to the point and says that, basically, what British general elections need to sex themselves up is private jets and helicopters. Read it here.

It took me coming to the Communist People’s Republic of China to see it, but it’s true: money CAN buy you happiness. Or at least that’s what the Chinese think. It can certainly buy you relative happiness; like the joy that became me when I invested 129RMB (9 quid) in a brand spanking new coat to combat the harshness of China’s -5degC winter. (I had landed with a suitcase full of thin bright T shirts and shorts; perfect for beach hopping Australia and New Zealand but I might have looked a tad out of place bearing the skin of my legs and forearms in Beijing’s icy streets).

 

I landed on February 6th, the New Years Eve of the Chinese calender. When my plane crossed into Chinese air space the view was fantastic - sprawling cities below covered in the random patchwork of a thousand fireworks exploding in the night air. This also meant the walk from the taxi to Tom’s house (a school friend who is studying here for a year)  was like being in a de-militarized zone. Regular readers may notice I often make flippant comparisons to life during wartime (Glastonbury for example, in reality anything but), but Beijing on Chinese New Year really is. Fireworks are constantly let off on every street corner resulting in a cacophony of bangs and machine gun-esque clatter . We had to approach Tom’s front door under constant cover, car by car, doorway by doorway, scared in case I got mauled by a stray firework before I’d even put my backpack down after the trip from the airport.

 

To mark the beginning of the Chinese year of the rat (incidentally, me and my 1984 cohorts are rats), Tom and I stuck a poster on his front door displaying 福 (the Chinese character for wealth). This wasn’t to wish it upon the neighbours, but to wish it upon ourselves. The next day as I took my first roam around China’s capital, Tom explained to me that the Chinese don’t understand the term ‘money can’t buy you happiness.’ For them, it’s a fact: you simply can. It’s interesting that in the Capitalist west we make phrases like ‘money can’t buy you happiness’ and in the Communist East they feel the opposite is true. But then, we have to believe the opposite to cushion ourselves against life’s inevitable failures, something our Commie cousins don’t have to do.

 

Happy Chinese new year everyone, and remember: Money can buy you happiness. But only if you live in a country that restricts individual capitalist gain.

China is known for it’s freedom of speech the way Iraq is known for it’s political stability. So it was with a certain amount of panic that I reacted when the customs card on my flight to Beijing asked me if I had about my person ‘any political materials that are against the public good and contradict the laws of the People’s Republic of China,’ or some such jargon. I shat my pants; I had with me two magazines of highly incendiary and subversive nature - The Economist and Time. If I had just one, maybe I could get away with it - but two?! They’d probably have my arms broken and strung up in a rural prison quicker than you can say “Chairman Mao was a big poo-poo head!’

 

In the cold sweat of panic, I did what any sane person would do. I ditched those magazines in the seat in front of me and calmly exited the plane, wiping my brow to hide my unease. Five minutes later I was outside the airport without so much as a frisk. When Tom greeted me, he found my reaction to the customs card hilarious, all the more so because you can actually buy said magazines in China, something proved a few days later when we visited a book shop. That’s $17 I’ll never get back. In my defence, I was still a bit shaken from the $220AUD fine slapped on me for not declaring my ham sandwich in Sydney. That’s the world we live in, folks, a world where the armchair critic criticisms of the Economist fly in China, and two slices of bread and a ham slice are met with the long arm of Australian immigration law.

My atheism and lapsed Catholicism, has left me with a fear of death, the consequence of an acquired absence of belief in a tangible heaven. Driving through the South Island I was, as I’m sure many were, upset by the early demise of talented actor Heath Ledger. His intense performance in Ang Lee’s moving romantic drama Brokeback Mountain hinted that this former pin up could well have had the acting chops to be the next Marlon Brando. Trailers for this summer’s blockbuster The Dark Knight indicate his could will be a performance that is either entertainingly manic, totally disturbing, or both - but either way impressive. As with, I assume (as I was too young to be concerned by) the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley, and countless others before my time, Ledger’s death is an untimely end to a career which had just started to show massive promise.

 

Thinking about this, life, death, all things in between and the number 42, I asked Amanda, who was driving at the time, what she thought comes after death. She thought for a brief second or two, then said, “Lots of fun things. Trampolines.” I may be an atheist, and the greatest minds in history have struggled to come up with a satisfactory answer to that question which has plagued us since the dawn of humanity, but it’s hard for me to argue with that kind of brisk optimism.

Death: Fun things and trampolines.

In Alex Garland’s 1996 novel The Beach, a trippy tale of backpackers looking for paradise and finding themselves in an island Utopia turned hellish nightmare, the central character tells the reader he doesn’t take photos because the resulting collection of images ultimately replaces the actual emotional travel experience in your memory. Or something like that. I haven’t read the book in years. I’d like to say I’ve taken a similarly anti-technology way of experiencing the world on my recent travels. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m principally travelling so I can look cool on Facebook, with ostentatious  pictures of me grinning gormlessly in such striking visual landmarks as New Zealand’s Remarkables, India’s Taj Mahal and Vietnam’s Halong Bay all taking their turn to be the picture of choice on profile page. What was that about emotional experience, Alex?

My lack of disconnection from the technological world is evident every day of my trip, whether it’s the fact I’ve probably spent about $300 using the Internet since I landed in Australia on November 18th, or being depressed for three days after getting sand in my camera lens leading to all my pictures being punctuated with huge blurred blotches on New Zealand’s summer skyline, to spending hours painstakingly removing said blotches on Paint so I can upload the photos onto Facebook and still impress. The lack of comments on these pictures only shows that is not happening.

Nevertheless, here are the final set of photos from my trip in New Zealand. I land in China on February 6th, so depending on how just how great the Great Firewall of China is, you might not hear much from me in the next two weeks. But I’ll try.

A slice of Chinese history from a NZ museum.

Drinking a teapot cocktail in Queenstown, New Zealand's party capital.

The Remarkables rest above Queenstown.

Kawarau River. Doubled as the River Anduin in the first Lord of the Rings movie.

Drinking in Minus 5, Queenstown's famous ice bar.

Drunken fun with the ice sculptures.

More minus 5 craziness.
Ice bar. Literally a bar made of ice.
Our trans-European Queenstown based drinking buddies.

Deer Park Heights, Queenstown. No prizes for why it got the name.

Mountain goats on Deer Park Heights.

Lake view from Deer Park Heights.
This is the rock that Aragorn falls off during the Warg attack in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
Another Lord of the Rings location... This is used in the scene where Gimli falls off his horse after proclaiming



Above is Legolas’ POV in The Two Towers as the Wargs begin to attack; just before the bit where he does the spectacular leap onto the horse. In real life there’s a fake Korean prison right next to this hill; it was used in the 1988 film The Rescue. We couldn’t get access because they’re currently filming the new X Men film; more annoyingly, Hugh Jackman was due on set, but not until the day after we left town.

Other animal life on Deer Park Heights.

Antler-tastic.

Milford Sound.
Boatside view of Milford Sound.

More Milford Sound.

Milford Sound.

Milford Sound.

Waterfall in Milford Sound.

Location we passed on the way back from Milford Sound.

Aoraki/Mount Cook, the largest in New Zealand.

Close up of Mount Cook.

Towards the Mackenzie Basin.

The Tasman Glacier, concealed by mud and water for much of this photo.

Sunset over the Alps.

My name is Aidan, and I have a problem. (Quiet applause). I’m an addict. (More quiet applause). But it’s not alcohol, drugs or prescription medicine that I’m hooked on. It’s the United States presidential elections and boy, if I don’t get some primary stats in my veins quick, I might explode. (Yet more quiet applause. Fellow election junkies pat me on the back, several people murmur “well done, Aidan.”) It took a lot for me to admit that.

If you want to know what my trip to Australia and New Zealand is really like, you’d best click here and read my return article for Club Relaford’s monthly political magazine. It explains the addiction that has plagued me since I landed in Cairns nearly three months ago.

(And for the record, it wasn’t my idea to put ’the great Aidan McCaffery’ under the article photo. I, appropriately, look pale and ill, like a drug user…)

What’s the most expensive sandwich you’ve ever eaten? I don’t think I’ve ever forked out much more than what you pay at Subway for a 12 incher. Until today that is. As part of my adventure through continents, cultures and cuisines, the new figure for my most expensive sandwich ever stands at  $220AUD, or about 101GBP, depending on
the exchange rate. Below is a breakdown of the content of my sandwich.

INGREDIENTS:
Ham (cost: $1.27NZ).
Ranch salad (cost: $2.20NZ).
Wholemeal bread ($1.15NZ).
Margarine ($2.20NZ).

So what’s the secret ingredient? The $215 seasoning that made the sandwich so expensive? The budget busting extra that would make most vacuum walleted backpackers blush with economic embarrassment? Well, the clue lies in the fact that the sandwich ingredients listed above were paid for in New Zealand dollars, but the extra cost was paid for in Australian currency. The extra ingredient, folks, is… not declaring said ham sandwich to customs before I got off my connecting flight from Auckland to Sydney.

And to top it off, I didn’t even get to eat it. So I’ll never know if that sandwich, put together after a trip to NZ budget supermarket Pak ‘n’ Save and packed with the hearty filler of an Australian customs fine, was even worth it. One can only imagine.

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