Category: Life

People make the place

I’m always suspicious of lists.* For example, who is actually qualified to name the top 100 movies of all time? Surely the starting point would be to have seen every movie ever made – which, of course, is impossible.

So I approached the Travel + Leisure magazine list of World’s Unfriendliest Cities with my usual caution. To be fair to T+L, they make it clear that it’s based on a poll in which readers were asked to rank 266 cities. (This also resulted in a World’s Friendliest Cities list, but how much fun is that?)

I assume that none of the respondents had been to all 266 cities, but I guess if the sample of respondents was large enough (again I don’t know if it was), then some sort of reliable pattern would have emerged. Or at least a snapshot of what constitutes a warm welcome to the readers of T+L.

What worried me was that the losers included some places that I like a lot — Moscow, St Petersburg, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Frankfurt.

It took a while, but then I realised why I liked those places — in each case I was travelling with someone who was a local, or was able to introduce me to locals. So, rather than the hit-and-run approach  tourists often take, I was at least a little immersed in these places.

In Philadelphia, I was staying with an old university friend and his wife, and we went together to New York.  In Cambridge, near Boston, I was staying with friends of those friends, and we went to some out-of-the-way places (along with the compulsory “Cheers” bar, the Bull & Finch).

I visited Moscow and St Petersburg with a friend from Belarus, who not only spoke Russian, but was able to secure us cheap, cheerful, apartment-style accommodation in residential areas away from (but close to) the tourist traps.

Some of my worst travel experiences have been when I’ve stayed at those hotels where there’s a kind of false welcome from people who know they are never going to see you again.

My point here is that your perception of how “friendly” a city is very much depends on the people you meet. And that’s always a lottery – especially when you’re travelling solo or on a package deal.

*Apart from this one, which calls me an “influential journalist”.

Safety first

When I was a child, my grandfather used to come and visit our family every Sunday morning.

He and my father would catch up over a root beer (actually it was Horehound, a then-popular non-alcoholic beverage) and, when he left, Grandpop would let us — my brother and me and the Campbell kids from across the road —  jump into the back of his old ute (what Americans would call a pick-up) and travel to the bottom of the street. We’d then  jump off and run back home.

It was all good fun, but I wouldn’t have dreamt of allowing any child under my care to do something as risky as that that 20 years later, and I certainly would not approve of it happening now.

For me, the defining moment in understanding the importance of road safety was when I was 11 and one of my school friends died in a car accident. He was not wearing a seatbelt, and his body was propelled through the windscreen of his parents’ car. A whole community mourned his death and, I hope, learned a lesson.

I will never drive with children in the car unless they are restrained. If the seatbelt comes off, the car stops.

But it’s not just me. In the 40-something years since I was a child, the common understanding of what is safe, and what is not, has changed in Australia, and across most of the developed world.It has not, sadly, changed where I know live — in the United Arab Emirates.

Normal, safe, sensible ways of driving simply do not apply here. I know that’s a blunt statement to make, but it is true.

Almost nobody uses their indicator lights — a fact so well recognised that it’s become fodder for satire — speeding is endemic, almost every driver tailgates, mobile phones are commonly used while driging and, as a consequence, the road toll in the UAE is unacceptably high.

A World Health Organisation report reveals that the road-fatality rate in the UAE is more than twice that of Australia and almost four times that of the United Kingdom.

That is unacceptable in a country that aspires to — and had achieved — a very high standard of living.

Even casual observers will witness extreme speeding, drivers talking on their  phones and children who are unrestrained within vehicles — and sometimes even hanging out of vehicles, via the windows or the sunroof.

The authorities need to drill down into the reasons why people do not obey simple road rules. Are they not aware of the potential consequences, or do they simply not care?

The question that needs to be answered — and quickly — is how we can drive the message home? I just hope that it won’t take until everyone suffers the pain of a friend dying unnecessarily.

 

Lucky to be alive

If I’d been born 200 years ago, I’d be dead by now. Before you say, or think, “Well, der, obviously …”, by “by now” I don’t mean the year 2015, I mean the age I am now, which is 54.

In fact, it was only 100 years ago, in 1915, that 54 was about the average life expectancy at birth for a human male. If we account for the fact that most deaths occur in the first few years of life, if I’d already made it to 20 in 1915 (and I didn’t subsequently get killed in the Great War), I’d probably still have only made it to 60. (Of course, your life expectancy increases the older you get, because it’s only an average. This interactive map for the US will provide you with some more fun facts.)

In my case, however, my undoing might have been as simple as the broken ankle I sustained in my mid-twenties. If I had been born before modern medical health care was available, nearby and affordable — and I’d sustained the same injury I did that night I was dancing with Sid Vicious* — I’d at least have spent the rest of my life walking with a pronounced limp. Depending on the time and place of my birth, and the prevailing cultur, that is If, say, I’d been a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe, I’d probably have been left to die.

What I’m getting around to is the fact that I’m feeling lucky to be alive, and especially so because that’s purely due to an accident of birth. (There, two cliches in one sentence, beat that Will Shakespeare.) Being born at the time I was and into a family with reasonably robust DNA — I had a great grandmother who lived past 100 (although her daughter died in her 50s) — has served me well. As have the facts that I had the proper childhood vaccinations, I’ve not been being killed in an accident and I haven’t had to serve in the military at a time of war.

Not only are we living longer, we are also, in general, much healthier — physically and psychologically. My mother, who is very active in her 80s,  noted that her grandparents “behaved old” when they were in their 50s. Attitude — your own and the way others see you — counts for a lot, too.

As far as work goes, I have plenty more in me. The Australian government expects me to keep going until I’m 67 — although there’s every reason to be believe that by the time I get there, the official retirement age will be even older. I will certainly be up for it, if it’s the kind of work I’m doing now.  From my point of view, I am as good as,  or better than,  I have ever bee; certainly have more skills than I did when I was 20 — because I need, and like, to keep up with new technology –and I have greater experience and knowledge, while retaining the same mental dexterity and passion for what I do. Physically, I won’t be running a four-minute mile, but then I never did.

In many ways, I’m living in the best of times. I have no idea what’s around the corner, but as long as it’s not a speeding bus with my name on it, I don’t really care. Or even if it is, I’ll at least know that things were pretty good, most of the time. As a friend, who just had two unanticipated career changes in a matter of months, has become fond of saying, onwards and upwards!

 

*Not the actual Sid Vicious, but the very talented writer, director and actor David Brown, who was playing Sid in a show of his own creation.