August 7, 2010
From the 9th September it will cost $14 to get your Esta (officially an “Electronic System for Travel Authorisation”) – which is the absolutely necessary form required if you want to visit the United States from a visa waiver country.
The fee has been introduced to fund a programme which aims to promote tourism in the US and attract foreign spending. BBC News
So people who are already visiting the United States will be encouraging other people to visit. Makes sense, that’s more or less what should be happening isn’t it?
Happy visitors tell their friends. Very happy visitors retell stories over and over until we’re bored to death, but also brainwashed into accepting that yes, their holiday must have been really great. We’re encouraged to go and visit places based on these recommendations. Technology has made it even easier (and dare I say, less annoying) — facebook & twitter updates saying how good a trip was are wonderful promotion: “New York is amazing”, “so happy after trip to Grand Canyon”, “just saw the Hollywood sign, so excited” — holiday envy aside, we’re happy to read that our online friends are happy. These days people are even able to share hundreds of holiday photos without losing friends, we can ignore the endless “me in front of X, Y & Z” but still be inspired by photographs of the places visited, tempted to one day go visit them ourselves.
But from September, instead of this traditional word of mouth promotion, visitors to the US will be paying a fee to help promote the country. It feels almost insulting, thanks for visiting us but you’re not enough, we want you to bring others too. You’re not doing a good enough job on your own to encourage other tourists so we’re going to take your money and do it our way. It makes me think that the people who are visiting the US don’t have good stories to tell …
On the other side it’s rather egotistical to force every visitor into promoting tourism to your country. If you’ve had a poor trip, left the United States with bad experiences and feel you’d rather not recommend a visit to anyone well tough, you’ve already paid the $14 to help promote the country whether you like it or not. Your fourteen dollars will be working with all the rest to say how wonderful America is, come visit us. That’ll be some kick in the teeth.
July 20, 2010
There are many defining moments in our lives, some change the entire world and some, no less historic events for ourselves, that no one else will ever know about. This is somewhere in between.
It’s Aberdeen and it’s 1983. If you were there you probably already know what I’m talking about, if you know Scottish football then you really should know. To set the scene I’ve never been a big follower of football myself, in fact the closest I’ve come in many years now is only the retelling of an old, old joke of mine when asked: “Who do you support?”, self-deprecatingly I’ll reply “I’m not really a football fan – I follow Aberdeen”.
Despite this seeming disinterest one of the most memorable set of events during my childhood was football related. It’s difficult for me as a non-fan to convey the level of success Aberdeen FC had during the early eighties — in my memory it feels similar to if Scotland had won the recent World Cup. They kept winning games against teams and in tournaments that felt far grander than the wee small town I lived in tucked away up in the chilly North East corner of Scotland.
I don’t recall much about the football itself, what I remember vividly is living in a city that was almost entirely behind the local team when they were doing well. Aberdeen was fortunate in this respect with a single top league team there was no division, no rivalry within the city itself and I guess things were different back then, people simply followed the local team: there was no marketing of “superclub” brands from down South to buy into and “steal” support from the local teams.
This all meant that the success of the football team infused the entire city (Helped no doubt by plentiful oil money at the time!) but for me as a young boy it was Aberdeen FC that were responsible. The city, our city, my city felt like it was the best in the world, the sense of achievement was tangible, the sense of optimism was everywhere, anything seemed possible. There was a real sense that the world was going to be a great place, we were going to make sure of that. But then maybe all children feel like that for a while when they’re growing up?
This blog post is the first in (hopefully!) a series about Aberdeen: local history, favourite places and personal memories.
March 24, 2009
I’m uncharacteristically enthused by my current project, I’m using my limited DIY & woodworking talents to fashion a decent house for some gerbils. The plans for our gerbilarium started as just making a lid for the 16 gallon (20 US gallons) tank but it just didn’t seem enough so I am designing and building them a tank-topper that will, hopefully, be suitable for gerbil royalty. The enthusiasm is refreshing and I think it’s down to being creative in a manner that feels new to me, I’ve spent so long building intangible web solutions and for years now creating only digital photographs that I lost the joy of creation, the pleasure to be had from making something real and physical, something that exists in the physical world to step back from and be admired once I am finished.
Of course I shan’t finish it, like many of my creations it will go to permanent beta, built in modules and easily added to later. This is the way I create, I rarely see the finished object when starting out on a project, I see potentials. I saw an empty glass tank and in my head it becomes a three storey gerbil mansion. Sometimes I look at seeds and see not just the tree that will grow but the forest, complete with birds flitting about above early morning dog-walkers calling on Rover as he chases squirrels through the undergrowth!
My lesson to learn is to control my creative outpourings, to direct them towards a useful end and to learn to recognise when that has been reached and to stop. Afterall, if I never finish things how can I fully enjoy starting the new and the exciting!
This tank was left by a previous tenant, the temptation to clean it and then set it up as home for a pair of gerbils was too much for me to resist. This was the first stage of my preparations, there is more of everything now – except still no gerbils!
