My Myanmar Moment

Last night I ate grilled meat on a stick while a street kid begged for scraps. It was just another moment during this journey through Myanmar that has reminded me how lucky I am.

In a crowded laneway of Rangoon myself and some lovely guests feasted on soft shell crab, grilled fish and tasty bits on skewers. When the beer ran out we ordered more beer. When the sticks ran out we ordered more of them too. As usual we ordered a little too much and struggled to manage the 200 metre walk back to our bus. 

#firstworldproblems

Myanmar is not a third world nation, it's just a country that has been hidden from the west and has developed more slowly under a military regime. Myanmar shares first world problems and third world problems. As we gorged on protein and alcohol a team of prostitutes walked up the laneway, heading for night clubs or bars. I wondered if the little street kid belonged to one of those women.

The contrast in fortune was powerful at that moment, the lottery of life that begins with where you were born and what your parents do in order to live. Back at the hotel a bunch of privileged white American males were screaming on CNN about their right to own an room full of automatic weapons. 

Few people ever rise above their upbringing, it's a failing of our education system in western countries.

We like to think that class mobility is the norm, but in reality the idealistic potential for mobility is offered as a smoke screen for grinding socio-economic factors that begin long before we can talk. Our lot in life is heavily loaded by pre-existing conditions. The achievement of the few to migrate to the next class is mistaken as the promise for all. 

Not everybody wants to move up a class, or even recognises they are in one. The majority of Australians are ignorant of their good fortune. Ignorance is bliss but it does little for sensible voting patterns. As a nation we have squandered our wealth and as individuals we are lazy and underachieving. Watch this space when China doesn't need our minerals any more. Ignorance is a ticking time bomb.

My parents were nut jobs, but at least I didn't have to grow up on the streets of Rangoon like a lost puppy. There was a time when I thought I had it tough. My father was deeply depressed and tried to kill himself so many times that I wished he had succeeded the first time and saved everyone else the grief. My mother made a bid for freedom from a violent marriage and ended up with a violent alcoholic.

A little childhood trauma goes a long way. I rarely feel guilty for having good fortune these days, I figure I've done my time and have earned a little good luck. That doesn't always cut it of course. Increasingly I feel my luck outweighs the hardship and anything resembling a "trickle down effect" is just a cop out when it comes to the genuine struggles of the poor majority on this planet. 

The numbers are staggering. So many human lives are intensely difficult while so few in the west enjoy massive wealth. 

Some people see this imbalance and devote their live to changing it. I have not done that, which makes me almost as bad as those gun-loving idiots on cable TV. I have an ethical awareness about my good fortune, and rejecting corporations who put profits before people, but deep down I am resigned to the fact that inequality is the human condition. I have no expectation that across the fullness of human existence on Earth that life will be any different. 

There will always be winner and losers. What matters most is learning to win gracefully and still be able to recognise your own good fortune.

For two weeks I have travelled across Myanmar with the most wonderful group of people. Some are recent "regulars" to my adventures with the camera, some are so regular I forget how many times we've had each others company. All are unique and different, all are exceptional companions on the road. The very fact that we are here means we are the fortunate ones in life. 

One is our guide, a local fellow of immense charm and kind spirit. He will be one of life's winners, he will continue to be successful and will rise above his childhood too. That little street kid was not invisible to him either.

The Punctuated Revolution

Back in the 1980s there were dire predictions of global climate change and warnings that in less than 100 years the planet could be thrown into environmental turmoil. The gist of it has proven true, only it's taking place much faster than expected.

The same is now true for the fate of traditional media.

Change is not linear and consistent, it's punctuated by events of great disruption. One year you're buying CD's from a "record store", and the next you're complaining about download speeds while sucking an entire series of TV onto your iPad.

We're still getting word from the old boys in the Main Stream Media that it's time to look seriously at the threat posed by the internet. Actually that threat was obvious at least 5 years ago and what they're now watching is the tipping of an ice berg. It starts slowly at first, with a few groans and pops, then suddenly the entire mass of ice is rolling forward like an unstoppable boulder the size of Uluru.

More recently the twitter-sphere has erupted with derision over the manifest failure of #MSM (Main Stream Media) to deliver even remotely reasonable journalism to a knowledge thirsty audience. The problem with this model is that we no longer have a Main Stream Media. All that is left of the daily papers and nightly news bulletins are marginalised entertainment units that have to scream increasingly loud to get attention.

Real news apparently doesn't sell enough advertising any more, so extreme news is used to boost the numbers. Trouble is that each time the editors jump the shark they push away a little more of their old audience and set the bar for indifference even higher. It's a spiral of death where advertisers cut their spend accordingly, journalists get the sack to keep the business profitable and the cycle spins ever tighter into itself.

At first the spiral into oblivion for a newspaper is slow and broad, resembling an editorial shift over many years as good journos are sent out to chase bad stories. The tighter the spiral descends the faster the collapse, signalled by ever more dreadful excuses for journos being given ever greater column inches. In some cases even a TV show.

We're in the final phases now, where the future of mastheads can be counted in months instead of years. Don't blink, you just might miss the moment of truth. Only a few titles will survive the wash up, and they won't be the ones that sacked all the proper journos either. Who needs to pay $2 a day to read newsprint filled with rumour and fiction, when you can jump on Twitter and get it for free?

The old boys in print are equally keen to boast that "social media" doesn't have any real journalists so what good is Twitter when you want to find out the truth. Irony is lost on them and so is mathematics. The biggest circulating newspaper in Australia claims 100,000 copies a day, which puts it narrowly in front of Annabel Crabb and her 70,000 (and growing) twitter followers.

Sure that's not 70,000 daily readers, but there's a hundred Annabels out there and each of them are eminently retweetable. The numbers scale quickly and in a targeted fashion. For all the hoo-ha over Alan Jones and his "influence", his greatest gift to the media landscape is to act as a human warning to others.

Annabel has the added advantage of offering 100% informed opinion without the distraction of advertising. A single reader can follow a few hundred news sources and tap into a network of information that is orders of magnitude greater than anything offered by every Australian newspaper put together. Put that information gathering ability behind some nice apps on your iPad, such as FlipBoard or Zyte, and you have a far superior experience in every possible way.

You can even send feedback directly to the source to let them know if they hit the mark or not. The reader is in control, not the editor. That is the revolution. Newspapers don't fear unqualified journos on Twitter, they fear being accountable to their audience.

Recent news events such as the infamous misogyny speech by Prime Minister Gillard and the Ashby conspiracy to depose the Speaker of the House failed to get due attention in the #MSM. Thankfully overseas papers like the Guardian provided newsworthy accounts of both for Twitter followers in Australia.

But the #MSM is not really main stream, it's actually the fringe. They just haven't realised it yet and neither have most of the people who object to their scale of bias. These dying mastheads are like a school yard bully, if you ignore them enough they will simply go away.

Given their rate of rabidity and desperation over the last 12 months they will be going away even sooner than anyone could have predicted.




Newspaper Death Watch
http://newspaperdeathwatch.com/

The Failed Estate / Jim Parker
http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com.au/

Let The Great Unhinging Begin / Scott Steel
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/

Prissy Shrieks of Fear and Loathing / Mike Carlton
http://www.theage.com.au/

The $100 Brand

Every time I get a Dell brochure in the mail I am reminded of how a $100 failure can ruin a brands reputation. Failure to deliver, in this case quite literally, has lost that company tens of thousands of dollars worth of business. It was avoidable.

Three years ago I bought $100 worth of printer and paper online. Dell had a special offer. Only problem was they didn't have any printers. So they took the money and promised to sort out delivery some time later. That never happened. It took several goes to track down the problem, but after many months I had to ask for a refund.

As is often the case, a large company with inflexible systems stumbles on small matters of detail. Soon after the purchase of a phantom printer my credit card experienced fraudulent activity, and was hence cancelled. Unable to refund to my credit card, Dell said they would send me a cheque. Seems simple enough, only they didn't do this. Someone made a mistake and attempted to refund a dead card anyway.

Two years pass and I raise the problem with someone important in branding based in the USA. They make squeaky noises of shame and email important people in Australia to seek action and get it sorted. After 6 more months those important people in Australia have kicked the can down the road until a nit-wit repeats the original error but in more spectacular style.

At no point has anyone simply said,. "Oh yes, we've made an error, lets see if we can fix that."

What does it cost Dell to ignore the problem? In this case quite a bit. Due to my personal experience with failure to deliver goods, similar problems from friends of mine who failed to receive far more expensive items, and the failure to manage a simple mistake I now avoid their products totally.

That means in my office and in my editorial. I never recommend them to anyone because frankly how can I? You judge a brand by how they respond when things go wrong. Airlines that put you up in a nice hotel room and get you on the first plane to Sydney rate very highly with me. Airlines that send you a text message three hours before a flight to say "Please don't turn up to the airport until 3pm tomorrow, good luck getting a room while Bangkok floods." do not rate so well.

Dell failed every single test.

My business, and those I offer direct recommendations to, have hence not purchased any Dell items either. In the three years past that adds up to about $35,000 worth of goods we bought elsewhere. And do you think I'd miss a chance to click on their paid ads when online? I know where that money comes from, and I'm pretty sure we've spent that $100 they robbed from me by now.

I know I'm not the only one who got the short end of Dell Australia's tendency to sell products they don't actually have in stock. Perhaps you'll have more luck than me getting your refund, but if not then just spend your money elsewhere and let your friends know why.

And every month when that brochure arrives in the mail I am reminded of how big companies overlook the little people, and how much it costs them. If only they knew.

There are plenty of brands with better service than Dell. Plenty.

Extra giggles?

 Misleading information from Holland Winfield (Holland_Winfield@dell.com) who was the nit-wit in question who turned a small error into a spectacular one. Sending an unusable printer was icing on the cake and he still seems to be confused about cheques and credit card refunds. That's why the mistake was never rectified.

Farewell to my best friend

It's wrong to have favourites but truth is we always do. Twyzle was a rescue cat from the RSPCA and it was girlfriends idea at the time to adopt. It was me who got custody when we broke up but Twyzle was the kind of cat who would be happy with anybody's company. I loved him dearly, and cried a river when he died 6 weeks ago. But he was not my favourite.




Merv was a few weeks old when he was abandoned by a stray. His mother was discovered in a friends attic and she fled, stealing away most of the litter but leaving behind two runts. I raised Merv by hand, and needles to say he loved me in ways he could never love anyone else. Total trust, he was the kitten who never grew up.

When Twyzle died it felt as though his time had come, like a soul ready to move on to his next life. Twyzle was eager to live beyond the boundaries of our four walls. Merv was the opposite. He had no interest beyond his home because everything he wanted was right here. A happier cat has never lived. His departure was sudden and reluctant, as though his soul was not ready to go. I was not ready for it either. Twyzle was ill for 12 months and had survived cancer, car accidents and a jaw reconstruction. I was ready for his death for the last ten years, and the day we put him to sleep after a fatal blood clot was relief. Sad, but ready. His time had come.

In the weeks since Twyzle died I found the company offered by Merv ever more valuable. He was filling the place of two souls now, and soaking up the love. Last night Merv suffered a debilitating blood clot as well, and I knew instantly what was to come. Both cats had developed hyperactive thyroids in their senior years, and despite reasonably effective drugs the likelihood of heart complications and clotting was always high. I had chosen to ignore the truth and hoped Merv would live forever.



It's hard to explain how losing a pet can create such emotional distress unless you've been there too. For the last 16 years Merv was always there. Every day he sought affection, endeared with his little attempts to communicate and bring a peaceful purr to my spirit. Not once when I found myself emotional or upset did he fail to come to my side and offer his companionship. I'll never know what he understood inside his little cat brain, but he often surprised me.

Merv was my favourite. I saved his life and for every extra day on this earth he thanked me for it. At my lowest points, which have been many, he came to join me and I was reminded that I got at least one thing right. I helped him grow healthy and happy.

Over the years Merv grew into a happier soul. He gained confidence, revelled in the love of new companions and found great peace in his small world. Who knew a creature so small could fill so much of the world with joy and love? I changed over those years too, learning to be a better person through the responsibility of his care, learning to gain confidence just as he did. Now that Merv is gone I feel a little of myself has gone too.

I wish I could have him back, I'm not ready to lose my best friend.


Merv...















Twyzle...








Twyzle Loves Merv...










When Merv Was Really Really Little...