It's a lazy Sunday arvo...
What better way to share my thoughts with the world than via the medium of modern telecommunications and its finest product, the internet. It's no longer just an place for nut-bag political conspiracy theorists, amateur pornographers and suicidal degenerates to feel at home - now it's for me as well.
Strap yourself in for a bumpy ride. My hope is that this blog will catalogue my various obscure and largely unrelated interests. Media and communications. Travel to obscure places. Elections. Counter-culture. Trams, trains and buses. North Korea. The Collingwood Football Club. There's something for everyone, but except for me, probably not everything for someone.
Let's start with the second last one first. Come the end of the year, I hope to travel to North Korea (actually, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. That's the one without elections. Where 3 million people starved to death in the 1990s. With a head of state revered more than any monarch could possibly ever be. Well, they got the Korea bit right). Perhaps the place is not quite as opaque and impenetrable as previously thought. One person to sample the delights that the DPRK has to offer is Peter Crowcroft, and you can check it out here http://www.crowcroft.net/dprk.htm
What strikes me is how vibrant and lively the city shots seem to be, compared at least to expectations (and Hobart).
I guess perceptions and reality differ somewhat like the way perception and reality differed in the former Soviet Union. Every mental picture most of us on the other side of the iron curtain have is of cold, dark, graying, lifeless streets. Why is it so? Did the sun not shine where Communism thrived? Did people lose all aesthetic sense? Of course not. Just the same is the case, it seems, in downtown Pyongyang.
Strap yourself in for a bumpy ride. My hope is that this blog will catalogue my various obscure and largely unrelated interests. Media and communications. Travel to obscure places. Elections. Counter-culture. Trams, trains and buses. North Korea. The Collingwood Football Club. There's something for everyone, but except for me, probably not everything for someone.
Let's start with the second last one first. Come the end of the year, I hope to travel to North Korea (actually, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. That's the one without elections. Where 3 million people starved to death in the 1990s. With a head of state revered more than any monarch could possibly ever be. Well, they got the Korea bit right). Perhaps the place is not quite as opaque and impenetrable as previously thought. One person to sample the delights that the DPRK has to offer is Peter Crowcroft, and you can check it out here http://www.crowcroft.net/dprk.htm
What strikes me is how vibrant and lively the city shots seem to be, compared at least to expectations (and Hobart).
I guess perceptions and reality differ somewhat like the way perception and reality differed in the former Soviet Union. Every mental picture most of us on the other side of the iron curtain have is of cold, dark, graying, lifeless streets. Why is it so? Did the sun not shine where Communism thrived? Did people lose all aesthetic sense? Of course not. Just the same is the case, it seems, in downtown Pyongyang.
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