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After a busy couple of weeks travelling, I am left with only good memories, a few pictures, and a sunburn courtesy of that famous Scottish sun.

Scotland is a wonderful place. My only complaint with the vacation was that it was too short. Everywhere I went I would have liked to have a spent at least a couple more days. Some day (maybe next year!) I will go back and do the complete West Highland walk from Glasgow to Ben Nevis. Although this time I might bring a raincoat ;). The Islands, too, need much further exploration. They remind me strongly of what I love about Newfoundland, except with a full coat of emerald green painted on everything. Still, it was great to get a small sense of the place, to smell the salt in the air, and even got a chance to take a short swim in the Ocean. We also played some very challenging links golf, visited the oldest monastry in Scotland (and burial place of the real Macbeth), saw three thousand year old standing stones and ruins of houses so old there were giant elms growing through the middle of them, spotted the highland coo (or cow) in its natural environment, and of course, caught up on the latest British "Big Brother" action. All in all, it was great to see Matt and Fiona, and a big thank you to them for being such great hosts, remembering my birthday when I had forgotten it, and managing to stay quiet while I freaked out driving through downtown Glasgow on the wrong side of the road. I've got most of my pictures developed and I'm waiting on one more roll. I'll post some of the highlights when I get them scanned.

Slainte!
I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Edinburgh, waiting for a train to bring me back to Glasgow. I'm still feeling that 'everything is but a dream' glaze that comes from the newness of places, mixed with a healthy dose of jet lag. Edinburgh, the city itself, adds to that feeling. It's that rare type of place like Prague, that almost doesn't exist except in fairytales and disney movies. The ancientness of the city would be overbearing if it weren't quite so charming. Of course, the most immediate thing I noticed coming from Glasgow was the number of tourists that seemed to appear in droves. I could walk around with my camera out and not feel like a idiot tourist because, well, everyone else, it seemed, were tourists too, walking around with their cameras out looking like idiot tourists. I took a cheesy distillery museum tour, complete with tour guides who wanted to pretend to be time travellers (Andrew--it oh so reminiscent of the Keith's brewery tour in Halifax) and a "barrel ride" disney-style through the history of scotch making. It was actually alright for that type of thing and gives me a heads up for visiting a real distillery later in the week (probably Oban or Tobermory). I also saw the home of John Knox , who brought protestantism to Scotland in the 16th century, it was done up very well and was extremely interesting, comparable to my favourite museum of Mendel in Brno.

Of course, the main reason I went to Scotland was to see Matt. And it's good to see him in form. He's just got an extremely well paying job for a traveller on a limited visa. And his apartment is spectatular. I'm so jealous. It's in a tentament house just outside the centre of Glasgow with 12 foot ceilings, hardwood, floors and came partially furnished with these fantastic antique pieces that must cost a fortune. He claims apartments like these are a dime a dozen here and certainly Fiona's mother seemed mildly horrified that her daughter was living in such a place.

My train is coming so I should run. More fun upcoming!

A Wee Trip

Well, I'm nearly off to Scotland. I'd like to say my bags are packed but I have at least 2 and a half hours until I leave--can't be too prepared! It'll be a whirlwind trip, but hopefully whirlwind fun too. Fiona's mum is picking me up from the airport, which is extremely nice of her and I'm also very curious to meet her. After getting my bearing in Glasgow, I'm going to Edinburgh for a day, while Matt's at work. On Saturday, Matt's friends "The Ryans" are coming which should make for a wild night out on the town. Then, we head on the road, driving up to Oban and the Isle of Mull and then Fort Williams to hopefully do a little hiking around Ben Nevis, Scotland's tallest mountain. I'm very excited. It should be good wholesome fun.

In other traveller news, Renee has made her first real post. For a little taste, here's a photo from her travels.

Through the woods to grandmother's house
My usual running route around my house involved a tour around my neighbourhood. Streets of suburban 50's style houses defined only by whether the garage is on the left side or the right intermixed with newer monster homes built by people who decided that they didn't want to pay massive amounts of money to live in a bungalow. It's flat and boring, as you would expect. On the weekend, I decided to mix it up a little and go through Earl Bales park, a park I thought that epitomizes suburban parks. I had been there before on numerous occassions, and had only noticed the mowed grass aspects of it. But this time I entered the park through a different entrance and took a path that I never had before. Now, I feel foolish for never having noticed it before, but it's part of the West Don Valley park system and it's gorgeous. There are ravines and cliffs and the woods around it feels wild, not national park type of wilderness but enough that you can pretend that you're not in the city anymore. Of course, that wilderness comes with a price and today while out running I was stopped by some people in a City truck, who warned me to be careful because someone had been bitten by a coyote there earlier in the day. Awesome, I thought--coyotes! In Toronto!

Fortunately, however, I have not seen any large predators yet and hope not to have to "make a lot of noise" as the City animal control person advised me, but I am very pleased that they are so close. It makes me feel that much better about this neighbourhood.

Get your Mugabe on
The paper today seemed full of story about Africa. Well, not really about Africa--they were about Mugabe. You've probably heard of him. Worst dictator ever. That sort of thing. The problem is, is that it just isn't true.

Well, it's a lot true. In fact, the facts are correct. Mugabe is a thug. I'm not condoning Mugabe's thug like action over the past decade, but there is more to the story than is recognized here. It is a much different issue than you probably believe, judging by the tales in the Globe and Mail today, anyway. As Paul Knox writes, "Meantime, Mr. Mugabe, "re-elected" last year, drives his country and its 13 million people to the brink of ruin with expropriations of private land, rampant corruption and flagrant human-rights abuses." And this is one of the more tame descriptions that I've read.

The problem for me is that it wasn't very long ago that Mugabe, and Zimbabwe, was regarded as one of the success stories of Africa. They had a thriving economy (well, until the IMF implemented liberalization), decent infrastructure, elections, relatively peaceful turnover from colonial rule etc., etc. Then, all of a sudden, the rhetoric changes. Zimbabwe is a disaster, in economic ruin, rampant corruption, etc., etc.

So what changed? First, and most importantly, Mugabe overstayed his welcome. He has been unquestionably in power for too long and needs to step down. Needed to step down years ago, actually. Secondly, and most notably, the rhetoric changed when Mugabe started to implement a plan that he had been promising for decades. That plan was land redistribution.

You have to understand about Zimbabwe that after colonial rule most of the country belonged to a few individuals and families who owned massive amounts of the country. And these people didn't "earn" the land in that libertarian type of way. It was uncontrovertably one of the effects of colonialism. One of Mugabe's initial platforms was to have some of that land redistributed fairly, i.e., such as granting property rights to people who were living on or farming land that technically didn't belong to them. Even the landowners granted, and still grant, to some respect that some redistribution was in order.

However, for most of Mugabe's time in power, land redistribution was put on the back-burner, for the most part. It was simply too contentious an issue. There was some land that was turned into National Parks and such, but the bulk of it was untouched.

Recently, that changed. Maybe it was a heritage thing-Chretien-style. Maybe it was building complaints among his party and his people that this hadn't been done. Maybe it was something he didn't want to touch until he knew he was at the end of the game. Who knows? Whatever it was, Mugabe began the land redistribution program in earnest.

Now, of course, the redistribution program is a disaster. How much of a disaster it really is and how much is blown out of proportion may be more of an open question that it seems. I can only imagine the number of potential problems. People who don't want to leave. People getting a bad deal. Unfair distribution systems. There's so much in there that would be problematic and I'm not surprised that it didn't go smoothly.

But I want to make this clear. Even if it should have happened 25 years ago, it was a program that everyone thought was going to happen and should happen. It's not a surprise. It's not simply a power/money/land grab. It is a program with a rational and fair basis behind it, despite its obvious and predictable problems.

So the world position on Mugabe can be illustrated like this: Great leader --> implements land reform --> Worst dictator ever. It was only when Mugabe started implementing the land re-distribution program (taking away land from "farmers" who were of course white) that he suddenly develops this reputation. Screw your country, doesn't matter. Screw white people, that's a problem.

Hmm. What I don't know about Zimbabwe could fill volumes of books that I haven't read, but I do find it very suspicious.

The other thing I'd like to point out about Zimbabwe is that the leader of the opposition party MDC, Morgan Tsvangari is a creep. I don't trust him with a ten foot pole. He's a thug and his party the MDC is responsible for its own human rights abuses, which shouldn't be forgotten. Let's also not forget his role in one of the weirdest political stories I've ever heard (and which he is, quite rightly, on trial for). During the lead-up to the 2000 Zim election, a videotape came out where Tsvangari is shown quite clearly hiring people to kill Mugabe. Now, to be fair, he was also quite clearly set-up. The Canadian involved appears to be one of the world's most untrustworthy characters. Still, no matter the circumstances, politicians should not get invovled with worldwide famous untrustworthy characters to plot to assassinate. Any which way you spin that, it shows unbelievably bad judgment.

What a strange web we weave

Yesterday, I got a link from this website to check it out. It was probably not exciting, but what I did find was a website of an unknown person who reads the Monkey Copter site regularly. There's even a long post in there somewhere responding to one of Andrew's post's. I find this quite cool.

How much are you worth?
A new study came out recently showing that husband and wives are often give dramatically different answers when asked how much they make or how much they're worth. In fact 10% of respondents differed by over $100,000 when asked about their net worth. The research, though, were at a loss to say who, husbands or wives, were more accurate. Although amusing, this is a pretty substantive issue for me as I'll be using the Canadian equivalent of the longitudinal survey that was used in that research. It won't make too much of a difference because the differences appear to be random, but it'll will add extra error to a variable that is already fraught with it.

Other things browsed recently:

Learn to be a Libertarian: required reading for anyone who has an opinion about Ayn Rand. Very funny. Favorite quote: " Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralized leadership."

The life of Salam Pax: A Slate piece from a journalist who figured out he had been hanging out with Salam for days and didn't know. A nice description. Also, if you haven't seen it, read the Guardian interview with Salam.

www.ure.org is a fascinating attempt to make art with the internet. It doesn't always work as art and especially not as literature, but it's extremely interesting. There's one piece where a "story" is laid out on a three dimensional surface, and by the use of the mouse, you can control the story and its reading.

Talking about the Man

[Reading:] I tend to be a binge reader. I'll read nothing for months and then reading dozens of books in a short span of time. Usually this happens around Christmas and the influx of new books that season tends to bring. Right now however it feels like Christmas in June as I've discovered the literature section at the University library. All these books for free! It's the Kazaa of books! I'm mean I've used libraries before, but they've always been tainted with the stench of schoolwork. I've taken full advantage of it, reading some mighty fine books the past week including Don Delillo's Mao II, Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot, Rick Moody's Demonology, Wayne Johnston's Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and Ursula le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea trilogy (plus the prequel and the recent addition to the series). It's really nice to be reading again and I've heartily enjoyed each one. My Dad also sent me as Hubert Aquin's The Next Episode (the Canada reads book) as an earlier birthday present so I'm up to my ears in novels. It's excellent.

[Watching:] Took advantage of the $2 Blue Jay tickets to go see them get destroyed by Chicago. I've been to two games this year and the combined score has been Toronto-1, Opponents-19. And they've actually been doing pretty well otherwise. I've got another set of tickets from the "A little TO" package deal, which I plan to redeem when the Expos come at the end of the month. In other watching news, I saw Man without a Past on Friday, which is this oddly beautiful Finnish movie, about a man who has lost his memory. There were some wonderful moments and some fanastic cinematography, but I'm not sure if the movie was equal to the sum of its parts. There was something lacking overall. Man without a Past is not to be confused with Man on a Train, which I'm also looking forward to seeing. (Also looking forward to: Winged Desire--a movie from the point of view of birds, and Whale Rider).

[Listening:] www.cdbaby.com, the world's cutest online music store, lived up to their reputation and sent a really cute email about my experiences with them including such lines as "Did the package arrive fast? Or did the postman take it home and listen to it first?" But the musical experience of the week was of course the reunion of Superfriendz on Saturday. They've got a whole new album coming out this summer and it sounds like it going to be excellent. It was fun too seeing Matt Murphy having to share the limelight again. And seeing the crowd go crazy for "10 lbs." Album comes out on the 24th of June!

[Waiting for:] Next wednesday when I fly to Glasgow. Current plans are to go climb Ben Lomond. Yay!

[Also waiting for:] Renee, a recent migrant in Uganda, has made her first small steps towards blogdom. Looking forward to reading about her experiences there soon!