Fernando’s Desk

The election of an Old Etonian to the Mayorship of London and the likely election of another alumni of that school to the Prime Ministership of the UK has raised the question of exactly how meritocratic modern Britain really is. In today’s Guardian, John Harris explores this in piece entitled, Networked from Birth.

The article highlights how over-represented the beneficiaries of privately funded education are in the upper realms of politics (especially, but not exclusively the conservative side). In a sense that’s a story we always knew, though it is alarming that in recent years the trend towards meritocracy seems to have been reversed. What’s more revealing (and far more disconcerting), is how networks formed very early in life appear to be quite closed, even before university and how crucial they are to future successes not just in politics, but in other careers such as journalism.

“But what is really going on? Lee Elliott Major is the research director of the Sutton Trust, which has made highlighting the apparent shutting-out of state-educated people from large swathes of public life its raison d’etre. To start with, he slightly echoes Johnson by claiming that whereas private schools often used to fall well short of academic excellence, these days they are often the educational powerhouses they claim to be. “But the other thing,” he goes on, “is that when you send your children to one of those schools, you’re also - and I’ve heard lots of people from independent schools say this - creating networks at a very early age. When we’ve done these studies, we’ve said to people, ‘Was it at Oxford that you got to know everybody you know now?’ And they’ve said, ‘No, actually it was at school that I met a lot of these people.’ While the rest of the population are hanging around, just being teenagers, there’s a small proportion of the population who are already developing the networks that will help them in later life.

“What we’re worried about,” he goes on, “is that things are getting even worse. The reason for that is that areas of public life - such as politics and journalism - are predominantly based in London, which is an increasingly expensive place to live. And more and more, you have to get over all sorts of barriers to even get a start in these professions. In journalism, you increasingly need to do a postgraduate degree, which means being able to afford the fees. In politics, with the young researchers who are employed in the political world, the ones who are able to survive are the ones with money to support them. Plus, they’ve got the contacts to get there in the first place.”"

I’m a product of the Australian State school system and my high school was what would be described in the UK as a “bog-standard comprehensive” (with the emphasis on the bog). In recent years I’ve had the odd email exchange with old school aquaintences (mostly typical of the early mid-life desire to put the school years in context). But, in terms of real-life conversations, I’ve only had three with people from my school years in the last decade! One was a chance meeting at the theatre in Sydney, another was an even more random meeting at church in Delhi and the third was with the only person from my school years who has remained as as friend. Even then, the friendship was not forged by being at the same school, but was a consequence of being at the same church.

So, it goes without saying that my school never really played a positive role in the advancement of my career or any of the jobs I’ve held. In fact, if my schooling had any direction at all, it was towards a trade or factory job, which as my careers advisor reminded me, was a good “fit” for someone from my ethnic background.
Sure, I have made friends and networks that have helped to advance my work over the years, but these relationships were mostly founded in my twenties and thirties. What’s interesting about the picture of the new conservatism in the UK is that for these leaders networks are closing at around the time that for people with my kind of upbringing networks are only just starting to develop. To be honest, that mirrors my own experience of living in London. Quite a few people seemed to have closed the book on new friendships by the time they graduated university. It’s not that people were not nice, or friendly, it’s just that all invitations for the banquet had already been sent - so to speak.

This issue has tremendous importance, not just for the question of how representative a country’s leadership is, but for the problem of social cohesion in a multicultural and globalised era. Closed networks don’t just breed resentment, they also encourage ghetto-isation and sectarianism.

It’s deeply ironic that what may well have been Britain’s greatest period of meritocracy has breed a neo-elitism. But, the bitter twist could well come if this new class-based leadership undoes the benefits that have enjoyed from participating openly in the global economy.

Technorati Tags: Eton, Meritocracy, Class, Britain

“Hebrew & Christian Scriptures are stuffed (sorry) with food imagery - stories of eating, rule about eating, recipes, metaphor upon metaphor that draws on foodstuff. I think my eating is often screwed up, but my spiritual diet is often even more screwed up. Far too much of the spirit and mystery in my life is snuffed out, is processed, packaged and relegated to the cheap bin near the express check-out.”
The Corner - A Plate Of Foodstuff Musings

I’ve had that quote kicking around my desk since Bob posted it back in January. Over this year I’ve been spending a lot of time pondering the connections between spirituality and ordinary everyday activities like cooking and eating (as well as shopping, organising, tidying and disposing of junk). The interest in quotidian spirituality is not a new thing, but it has a acquired a greater sense of urgency in recent years.

Despite all our public affection for healthy and organic food, if you are actually committed to cooking and eating whole food it sometimes feels like you’ve placed yourself in a small and surprisingly unpopular minority. It’s not unlike what happens if you commit yourself to costly and self-examined spirituality. Pretty soon the accusations of “unrealistic expectations,” “moral superiority” and being “old-fashioned, traditional and out of date,” start to surface.

In a sense, there are potential shared weaknesses between a commitment to good food and a commitment to deep spirituality. After all, both paths can make one elitist, judgemental or socially disconnected. But those are faults, exaggerations and errors of judgement. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Food and cooking can be a gateway to a better and deeper connection with our world, with the cycles and rhythms of life, the seasons of growth and decay and of patterns and moods of our own bodies. The problem is that we are so disconnected from our neighbours, from the earth and so conditioned to not listen to our bodies that re-engaging these aspects of our existence in a consistent everyday way seems so hard and so taxing to us. Now, isn’t that, at it’s core, a thoroughly spiritual problem?

Technorati Tags: Spirituality, Lifestyle

On Monday, the South China Morning Post published my letter to the editor on local educational issues. Here is the letter,

The recent letter, “ESF segregation contradicts idea of diversity,”April 24 is the latest in a steady stream of letters to the SCMP that prosecutes the motivations of international parents and students in
Hong Kong.  It is outrageous and incendiary to claim that these parents  ”desire segregated education.”

Parents of international students are making educational choices based on a long term view of what is best for their children’s educational future, given that their schooling and in particular university, lies
beyond Hong Kong.  This logic is no different from that of international parents in any major global city and marks the key difference between the needs of the relocating international student
and the settling immigrant student.

Implying that segregation from local students is a desired outcome presumes a racist motivation that simply doesn’t measure up to close scrutiny.  It may well be that the judgmentalism in these letters
purporting to second-guess the motives of international parents belies a far, far greater threat to Hong Kong’s future as a diverse and cosmopolitan city than any current educational policies.

Technorati Tags: SCMP

Yes folks, there is a new X-Files movie coming out in July. Its called I Want To Believe and to be honest, it’s an apt title.

I want to believe it will be a good movie - but given how disappointing that first X-Files film was and the sad way the TV series petered out, I’m less than optimistic. The first four television seasons were regular viewing in our home and I loved the whole conspiracy/alien/geek angle of the show (not to mention the excellent music and cinematography).

But then it all went wrong. The series really should have ended after five years but it kept going and kept losing direction. In a lot of ways. I’m surprised the original stars have come back, especially Gillian Anderson who has established herself with some really good roles (onstage, on film with The House of Mirth and on TV with Bleak House).

Still, there’s always hope that Chris Carter, the show’s creator, has a few tricks left up his sleeve. No doubt many old X-Philes are awaiting the trailer and saying - I want to believe too.

Technorati Tags: X-Files

Just back from a relaxing long weekend in Tokyo. It’s hard and maybe a little unfair to make comparisons between Tokyo and Hong Kong - so let’s just leave at saying that in every way, Tokyo was a fantastic experience. Pictures and more reports to come.

“The Internet is to human interaction as Pringles are to potatoes. Closeness and companionship are ground up into an unrecognisable slurry then artificially reconstituted into a mockery of their natural form.”

Priceless. I’ve become a a real fan of the Alt Text vidcasts and this one really sums up a lot of my feelings about social networking and especially the micro-quotidian aspects of sites like Twitter and Facebook. It’s not that these sites lack value, in fact I really appreciate the reconnecting aspect of Facebook, it’s just that it shouldn’t be confused with deeper aspects of human interaction. Sometimes less communication can mean more relation.

And, if you have time, check out the vidcast on Logical Fallacies (great if you have ever been sucked into inline debates).

Good news for Hong Kong residents; we finally have a local version of Time Out magazine. Editor Paul Kay opens up the first edition with an ambitious and truculent editorial,

“Some people, I have found, will tell you things about Hong Kong that aren’t true. I’ve heard it said, for example, that there’s no live music scene here. Others claim our city is no place for artists to blossom, and that business and excess are the only crafts at which we excel. I’ve even been told that Hong Kong is a cultural ‘desert’.

It is with satisfaction, and great delight, that I show these people the error of their ways. Stray a little out of your comfort zone and you’ll find Hong Kong is teeming with expressions of arts and culture, as these 112 pages testify.”

Bold stuff. I was already keen to read the magazine, but as someone who is prone to making the kinds of criticisms Kay lambasts, I felt personally challenged as well. Did I have it all wrong about Hong Kong’s cultural landscape? Was there really a vibrant underground here that rivalled other great global cities in both scope and local originality?

Honestly, I hoped the magazine would show me up and prove that Hong Kong really is a city “…teeming with expressions of arts and culture.” That would make living here a lot more fulfilling. Sadly, it didn’t even come close. But, maybe that doesn’t really matter; at least in the short-term.

Reading Time Out supports the clear sense that Hong Kong has a lot going for it in terms of places to eat (possibly one of the best in the world), high and low end fashion shopping (brilliant) and DJ-driven night-clubs (not my thing, but great if it’s yours). Beyond that, the coverage thins dramatically.

The section on Art starts not with “local expressions” but with a touring show of art featuring Banksy (yawn). The Music section starts with a good article on local musician Wong Ka-Kueng, but then leans heavily into upcoming touring shows by You Say Party! and James Blunt. The Classical music section features touring shows by the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire (the Le French May features heavily throughout the magazine) and pianist Michelle Kim. The Children’s section is a little more promising, with a feature on the Guangzhou Acrobatic Troupe, before turning to the inspiring idea of getting your kids to visit local rock-pools (really, first edition and that’s the best you could come up with for kids in Hong Kong?!?).

Touring shows - can you see a theme emerging?

I’ve never heard anyone claim there is no culture, art or live music in Hong Kong, so let’s assume that is a straw-man exaggeration. The meat in the criticism has to placed in the context of Hong Kong’s wealth, size and the claims it makes about itself (Asia’s Global City). You can visit lots of obscure places on this earth and find artists, musicians and writers at work. What makes a global and creative city unique is not the presence of such culture, but it’s depth, breadth and local flavour.

This edition of Time Out doesn’t defeat my argument about Hong Kong; it supports it. So many of the cultural events listed are touring events, not manifestations of local culture. There is a significant and meaningful difference between culture as entertainment and consumption compared to culture as creation and innovation. Hong Kong has a fair bit of the former, but far less than cities like London, New York, Tokyo, Sydney, etc. It also has some of the latter, but there it trails even further behind (with the exception of film and new media).

In the end, I don’t think this matters in terms of Time Out’s potential benefit to people living in Hong Kong. The city needs this magazine. In time it should help publicise the events that do take place here, especially the smaller ones, as well as providing more publicity for local artists. Towards this more modest goal, Time Out Hong Kong, edition one, looks like a promising start indeed.

Technorati Tags: Hong Kong

Richard Florida is one of favourite contemporary authors. His book, The Rise of the Creative Class is one of the best things I’ve ever read; a book that I constantly recommend and a tremendous help in clarifying the trends that are shaping our globalised world.

Florida’s latest book is Who’s Your City, which builds on the ideas of The Creative Class and looks at the way our place of residence effects our lifestyle. Florida’s contention is that we typically devote a lot of energy to the who and what questions of our lives - who to marry, who to befriend, what to do for work and what to believe - but not enough on the where question.

But, where we live has a tremendous impact on our education, work prospects, sense of identity and even our potential happiness. Who’s Your City explores a wealth of research into how people feel about the places where they live, why people move from location to location and what makes a location ideal for a certain way of life. Unlike The Creative Class, which was focussed on a specific set of demographics, Who’s Your City explores a much wider set of potential career and lifestyle options and also looks at the needs we face in different stages of life.

In essence Florida is trying to help us clarify what to look for in a potential community or neighbourhood. It’s not just fact upon fact; there are lots of questions and opportunities for self-reflection and self-examination. I found reading the book helped me to think more clearly about why I find Hong Kong to be such a dissatisfying place to live (a point I hope to return to in a future blogpost) and why I’ve had the feelings I’ve had about other cities. I’ve also taken Florida’s advice and started to build a little research project into possible future places to live.

If the book has one weakness for me, it is that most of the concrete examples and detailed research are focussed on the US. But, the book is not totally US-centric in so far as the concepts, principles and ideas are applicable to any global location. Hopefully we will one day see a similar book that deals with international locations in a more nuanced way, especially as ex-pats have more freedom to choose potential working locations and retirees continue to look globally for the best places to enjoy their stage of life.

Who’s Your City is a challenging, well-researched (there’s lots of secondary references) and thought-provoking read. I strongly recommend it to anyone looking to change communities, either by choice, or because of commitments. In particular, it is a useful book for people transitioning from one life stage to another (college to work, having children, entering retirement).

Technorati Tags: Who’s Your City, Richard Florida

In Who’s Your City, Richard Florida references Albert O. Hirschman’s contention that discontent and loyalty can be deeply intertwined.

“In his 1970 classic Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Hirschman argued that when faced with an unsatisfactory situation we can either “exit” the situation or “voice” our discontent. The more “loyalty” we feel, the more likely we are to use the latter option.”

What I find challenging and not a little unnerving about this argument is that my experience of church (both my personal journey and what I’ve seen around me) suggests that when people voice their discontent they are, more frequently than not, treated as being disloyal.

What a fundamentally disorienting response - people voicing their discontent out of loyalty, out a caring concern for things to be better, but treated as if they are being disloyal (with all the implications of untrustworthyness, subversion and inconstancy that carries).

Probably not. But, that hasn’t stopped me thinking along those lines recently…

Back in 2006 I wrote a somewhat longwinded set of blogposts reviewing Spencer Burke’s book, A Heretics Guide To Eternity.” In amongst that verbiage, I said,

“I’m all for dispensing with the illusions of Christianity and for jettisoning the broken structures. But, I think A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity goes further than I’m prepared to go. There is something for me about church-ness that is not just an idea, or abstraction, but is a still a reality, hope and calling. I still believe that something church-like is part of God’s providential plan for the world.”

I was a little harsh in the review because I still felt that church-ing (the sense of intentionally doing church together) was still something worth aspiring to. Of course, the reality was I had been through a pretty turbulent few years on the church front and was struggling to find a church “home” in a new city. The critical sense in that review was my hopeful voice speaking from an ever dimming memory of what church could be.

The staggering thing I now have to admit to myself as I close on my 40th birthday (later this year), is that I’m looking back on a decade where I almost never used the phrase “my church.” Sure, I’ve struggled, tried, sacrificed, put the effort in, etc. But, it’s been patchy at best and close to desolate at worst.

Just this week I discovered that the church we attend (I can’t really call it “my church”) has a presence on Facebook. Rather tellingly, I didn’t join. Surely that says a lot.

So, it was engaging to read Steve’s “Some Thoughts On Being Post-Congregational” this week. In particular, these thoughts leap out,

“Those I know who are choosing the route of post-congregationalism (if that’s even a word) are doing so out of a missional motivation to intentionally be the Church outside of traditional church structures in order to be salt and light amongst a largely de-churched world.”

The funny thing is, that’s where I am, but not really by choice. I could be melodramatic and say the church has let me down (OK, a few years ago I was that melodramatic and I did say that) - but it is more subtle really. I’m just finding there is a kind irreconcilability between being missional and being conventionally congregational in a give-every-spare-second-to-the church kind of way.

Which leaves me with this tantalising word Steve threw in there - post-congregationalism. Perhaps post-congregationalism might be the complete rejection of congregationalism, but rather the informed questioning of why it never fulfilled its promise (in the same way that really interesting forms of post-modernism are not just reactions against modernism, but rather explorations of the limits of modernism).

Technorati Tags: Baptist, Ecclesiology, Post-Congregational

A while back I tried to write a series of blogposts on some key ethical issues facing our world today. After first drafts, it just sat there, unfinished, testament of my inability to write extended blog pieces. I love the long essay format, but there’s something about writing in that style that, for me at least, doesn’t work on a blog (even when cut into bite-sized pieces). So, I’m taking another pass at the idea of outlining some global ethical problems in a shorter, more notesy format. This is still a draft, but outlines some key points.

Biofuels and Food - Biofuels have been advocated as a way to respond to the geopolitical problems of oil supply and the need for cleaner fuel sources. But, there are real questions about how green such fuels are and to what extent they are being produced in competition with food supplies (which have been steadily rising in cost, both to producers and consumers). Moreover, there are ecological and economic questions that need to asked specifically about the promotion of sugar cane and corn monocultures.

Gender Imbalances in Asia - In many parts of Asia there is a growing imbalance in the number of men versus women. There is a large debate as to the reasons for this, but selective reproduction is clearly playing a part (i.e, abortion of female foetuses). History warns us that gender imbalances can promote significant social unrest. Moreover, such imbalances can put pressure on women to conform to traditional (often subservient) roles and can lead to increases in sexual violence and/or sexual commerce.

Human Trafficking and Slavery - It’s difficult to truly grasp the size of the the global trade in people - From illegal immigrants packed tight in trucks and containers while crossing borders, to the many young woman shipped around the world to cater to the global sex trade.

Pharmacolosation of Emotion - We have now reached a stage where major drug firms are mining the everyday human experience looking for emotions that can be repackaged as conditions, thus creating new markets for their drugs. It is not only alarming that so many everyday states of being are being re-imagined as diseases but in many cases treating these conditions with existing drugs is approved with less stringent testing that would be the case for new drugs. That is, of course, remembering that some companies have been less than honest with their approval research in the first place. Finally, the big question here is what happens to the identity of people who live long term with drugs shaping their emotions, or more acutely, who grow up on drugs.

Debt - If a knucklehead like me could predict a year ago that we were headed for a financial disaster because unsustainable levels of bad debt, then the problem must have been huge. Well, we are now living that disaster and many are only starting to feel the pain. Debt has become such an accepted part of life that many will now find it hard to create long term wealth without access to cheap loans. Moreover, we are experiencing a change in the the psychology of debt and foreclosure as more and more people view debt failure as not carrying social stigma.

Resentment - Barak Obama got in a lot of hot water and was repeatedly misquoted for putting the issue of resentment and the lack of social trust on the political agenda. He may have been wrong to generalise so extensively, but in terms of the trends that drive glocalisation, he was totally right. Resentment is the fuel that drives fundamentalism.

Obesity - We are fast moving from a world where malnutrition meant under-nutrition to a world where malnutrition means unbalanced over-nutrition. In part this is connected to the new wealth of globalisation and in part to the more pernicious aspects of the industrialised food system.

There are a few more issues I would like to throw in at a future revision, but for now I’d be interested to read any comments or ideas.

Thanks to Bruce at Mainstream Baptist for drawing my attention to the release of Martha Nussbaum’s new book, Equal Liberty of Conscience. I as aware this was coming, but had not noticed it’s launch. As I understand it, Nussbaum goes back to Roger Williams’ understanding of liberty of conscience as a way to re-understand the notion of the separation of church and state.

Those of you who know me or regularly read this blog can guess why that idea alone is enough t get me enthused.

To me liberty of conscience is the radically non-constantinian idea that lets us re-think church for a pluralistic society (and cosmopolitan society). Too often, it is assumed that this is some kind of liberal (in the Lockian sense, not the FoxNews sense) compromise. Rather, I see it as the development away from Locke and towards real plurality.

It’s fascinating that our troubled and challenging times are seeing a resurrection of Williams’ ideas and I’m keen to see what a thinker like Nussbaum, who is literate with both liberal philosophy and the politics of globalisation, can make of it.

Technorati Tags: Liberty Of Conscience

“Some theologians feel that “the Christian thing” is either a story or it is nothing that can speak to contemporary sensibility. This is a counsel of despair. The New Testament faith is not just a story. It is also a strenuous effort to show how the import of the story must be made out: not only understood but, above all, appropriated. That requires theological work. Moreover, both as story and as theology the Christian faith has now, and has always had, to compete with other stories and other theologies. So I think it is a fundamental and far-reaching mistake to suppose that telling the story is the whole thing. What one makes of the world and of one’s own existence on the strength of the story: that is the payoff.”
Julian Hartt

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

That’s the subtitle of Michael Pollan’s excellent In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and, as he admits, an apt summary of it’s argument. As a statement about proper eating, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” is almost trite in its simplicity. The genius of Pollan’s book is the way he opens up each of the statements in that sentence to reveal so much of what is wrong with contemporary eating habits, industrialised food and the cult of nutritionism.

“Mostly plants” might sound like a call to some kind of semi-vegan mentality but that is not the case. What Pollan outlines is the extent to which the western/industrial approach to food is built on grains and seeds, rather than plants themselves and the extent to which the stuff of everyday fast food is grain and especially corn-based. This is a stark contrast with most traditional diets (especially the much vaunted Mediterranean ones), which feature a lot less meat and a lot more vegetables and fruits (and within those a much greater variety). Even in terms of meat, the role of plants as basic feed for animals has been pushed aside in favour of grains, with frequently devastating effects. “Mostly plants” is not just a call to have a few extra salads, but rather to rethink the whole food chain that goes from plant to plate.

“Not too much” seems obvious given the dramatic rise of obesity as a global problem. Over-consumption is such a prevalent problem that we need to redefine malnutrition not just as a lack of food per se, but a lack of the body obtaining what it needs from increasingly large quantities of food. Pollan indicates in a number of different ways how the foods we consume today are frequently less satisfying and less full of the stuff we need to live than they once were. Industrial-Supermarket fruit and veg is a wonder of modern science, selectively bred and engineered to look better, give more yield and transport further - but nutritionally it is often suspect. The typical Apple today might be brighter, shinier and less prone to bugs than in our grandparents day, but it might well be only 2/3rds as nutritious.

All too often the way food is packaged misleads or sucks us into over consumption. A big part of the reason for this is what Pollan calls nutritionism, or what I’ve started calling, the cult of nutrition. Enormous effort has gone into trying to determine what it is in food that our body needs. This has lead to a series of (at times contradictory) nutritional fashions (high-carb, low-carb, low-fat, good-fat, omega-fat, etc.).

This has two broad effects. First, it breaks the connection with our traditional knowledge and understanding of food. Second, it breeds a mindset in which food is seen as nothing but a carrier for nutrients. This makes it much easier to foist on the public a range of products that look like food, that claim to do what food does, but that really have their genesis in the laboratory and could turn out to be yet another false nutritional hope (there’s an inporta case-study of this in the recent Observer article, Fruit and veg diet ‘danger for toddlers’). As Pollan makes clear, nutritionism has given us many benefits, but has also made a number of key mistakes. Moreover, in a number of important areas we still simply don’t know what it is in a food that makes it so good for us and the evidence keeps coming in that many of the hard to capture micro-nutrients are of extreme importance.

Moreover, a lot of the health claims made my food marketers border on the ludicrous. Do lower fat corn chips really signal health when they are still obscenely high in fat? Would organic Coke really mean healthier coke? Sadly, studies have time and again shown that when people are presented with these kinds of spurious health claims they are prone to consume beyond the point of the health saving. So we take our lower fat corn chips and eat more of them, finally consuming a higher fat level than with the old product!

One of Pollan’s great suggestions for approaching industrialised food is this — imagine you are going to a supermarket with your great-grandparent. If you find a product that your ancestor does not identify as food, don’t buy it. If you have to explain the product, don’t buy it.

Typically, I find books about diet and nutrition depressing and disempowering. In Defense Of Food helped me see why that is (the paradigm of nutritionism) and affirmed the many good lessons of food preparation and selection that I learnt as a child. It’s a book about healthy eating that has inspired me to get back into the kitchen more often and to enjoy food more thoroughly. Most of all, it has made my visits to the supermarket a lot simpler and quicker.

Technorati Tags: Michael Pollan, In Defense Of Food

It’s a story you just knew would blow up one-day. Former Lonely Planet writer Thomas Kohnstamm claims to have written about Colombia without having ever visited the country.

“They didn’t pay me enough to go to Colombia,” he told Australia’s Sunday Herald Sun newspaper.

“I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating who was in an intern in the Colombian consulate.”

In reality, the story is a little sensational than it seems.

“Lonely Planet publisher Piers Pickard told Associated Press that Kohnstamm’s revelation of not having been to Colombia was “disingenuous” because he was hired to write about the country’s history and not to travel there to review accommodation and restaurants.

Kohnstamm later told AP: “It was expected I would never go to Colombia.”

Maybe this story has traction because there is more than a hint of scepticism towards travel writing today? To be fair, I only know one professional travel writer in person and he is exceptionally well travelled and familiar with the destinations he writes about. But, I’ve also done enough travel and seen enough destinations that don’t measure up to the copy to know that there is a bit of fiction out there as well.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Travel writing, good accurate travel writing is a tough gig. Given the number of junkets around and the sheer cost of producing guidebooks and magazine features, some corners must be cut. So, just like used car salesman, not every travel writer is a disreputable. Caveat Emptor.

Technorati Tags: Travel, Journalism