Yearly Archives: 2000

In transit, Stromboli, Wanderer

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05:05 monday 14 august – mv carpaccio

i’m sitting on the top deck with the stars bright above me , the wake disappearing in the darkness , a hot breeze caressing my face and arms . the last of the scarlet moon , close to full , slips beneath the horizon . i have slept for a couple of hours . within another half hour we shall be at stromboli .

the excitement which began to rise in me as we drew into rome is still growing . we drew into napoli punctually at half past eight . i leapt into a taxi and asked to be taken quickly to the quay for stromboli. the driver laughed and pointed out that final check-in was half an hour before sailing , ie half past eight . i shrugged and joined his laughter . he drove as only the the neapolitans can drive , dodging in and out of tram lanes , disregarding any notion that certain parts of the road were for use in one direction or another . as we pulled up at the quay he sprang from the car and into staccato conversation with an official . he gestured to me : it’s okay . i was so happy i allowed him to charge me what was clearly a ridiculous sum without caring in the least .

ah ! i can see the lights of stromboli twinkling on the horizon .

i approached the official and asked him if he spoke english . he replied that he spoke very good italian . eventually we reached an understanding that i should go aboard and we’d sort out a ticket once we were underway .

i spent the first part of the voyage speaking with a young neapolitan called gabriele who is off camping on salina . i showed him some of my pictures from st agnes . the mood on the ship is terrific , full of laughter and anticipation , a sense of escape . the complement consists largely of young people , who soon had their sleeping bags and lilos arrayed on every corner of deckspace . several people pulled out guitars and started singing . i managed to speak to mum in england before the mobile reception deteriorated .

the sky is becoming light now in the east .

–

i turn round from my writing and gasp . rising hazy from the sea is the steep cone of stromboli , with even a menacing glow of orange peeping from its crater . i don’t know what i expected , but this … it’s beyond belief . fofo’s urgings come into perspective .

the light strenghtens quite quickly . i can see white houses clustered around the base now .

wow ! a cry goes up and i look round again to see a burst of lava burst from the top of the volcano . it is time to stop writing i think , too much to look at !

: cH

Broken photo links, In transit, Italy, Wanderer

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16:10 sunday 13 august – eurostar , milano to napoli

a month to fill in …

my intention had been to return to britain for just a week , principally to gather with warren langley , craig and henry to discuss the next steps for trampoline and to start organising the sse learning web project with james smith . james had phoned me in milan a few days earlier to let me know that the school’s bid for core funding to cover its development for the next three years had been successful so we could start putting some of our plans into action . this is enormously exciting for me but it also brings new responsibilities . circus must evolve into a more formal structure than has been necessary hitherto .

when my work in london was done i decided not to return to milano immediately , but to head down to mum and dad’s house in gloucestershire and bite the bullet of scanning my slides from last year in the islands . ten days later i had 1050 of them digitised , cropped , resized and catalogued . this represents about half of the slides i took . the experience was a kind of purgatory , both for me and for mum who had to put up with my steadily declining temper . i really hope i never have to do anything like this again .

but the satisfaction of having the archive here on my powerbook is considerable . the process has also given me a clear sense of the raw material i have to work with , should i attempt any kind of publication or exhibition . it was , of course , a strongly nostalgic experience retracing my footsteps through the period , moment by moment . as i reached the final week i felt again the heaviness of each frame , remembering my sense that i was looking at things for the last time , paying my final tributes to places and objects i loved . my heart was in my throat once again .

during those ten days my relationship with sandhurst , my parents’ village , changed somehow . i explored the bank of the river severn on my bike , discovered favourite places to which i returned day after day . likewise the local hill with its views to the malverns on one side and the cotswolds on the other . experiences i overlooked when i lived there as a child . we take so much for granted . it has taken me this long to appreciate the beauty of the area and particularly of the garden mum and dad have created over the last dozen years . for a few days this became my office and i could not have wished for a more idyllic environment in which to pursue my unwelcome labours .

finally it was done and i was free to return to italy . i flew from stansted to brescia with ryan air . bizarrely the ticket cost even less than my previous charter horror but the service ran like clockwork and after an hour’s train journey i was back in fofo’s appartment on via solferino . to my delight my arrival coincided with a brief visit on business by my friend christian , so we had time for a fleeting coffee before he returned to london .

and in milano i have remained , buried in my work for the sse and the scillonia digital workshop . my only escape has been a day with a friend on the shores of lago di como … until today .

fofo and his family have been holidaying on the tiny island of stromboli , just north of sicilia , since my return to milano . finally , a few days ago , my resistance to his urging that i should join them collapsed . for one thing milano has almost completely shut down . over the last week swathes of shops have put up sheets in their windows and announced their closure until september . now that my favourite grocer , fruiterer , fishmonger and bakery have joined the stampede , life is scarcely worth living . on another note , this is a good opportunity to spend a week of retreat preparing the development plan and specifications for the sse learning web . and , of course , i am only too happy to be travelling to a small island once again .

so here i am , just leaving firenze , almost halfway through the six and a half journey to napoli . i had no difficulty deciding to travel by train rather than flying . this is a wonderful introduction to the changing landscapes and architectures of italy . what a trip !

from napoli i will board a ship for the six hour voyage to stromboli , where i shall arrive at five tomorrow morning just as it is getting light . what a way to arrive !

typically i am relying to a daft extent on fortune . i have no accommodation booked on stromboli and this is the peek week of the year , so i am likely to find myself sleeping beneath a tree . also i have no booking for the ferry . and i will have a mere thirty minutes between this train’s scheduled arrival and the ferry’s departure . not really a comfortable margin . who knows how it will all work out .

my absorption in various projects has resulted in a greater backlog of personal correspondence than i have ever accumulated before . it weighs heavy on me . when i return to milano i shall dedicate an hour each day to its reduction . if anyone were to draw the conclusion that their missives were unvalued they would be sorely mistaken . i regret my carelessness .

oh , there’s another batch of photos at
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/snapshots/2000-07-01 . another experimental interface , i’m afraid … this time you only have to * point * at the thumbnails to download the large image ! i’ve already thought of some improvements for the next cluster … when i get round to it .

: cH

In transit, Italy, Wanderer

m i l a n o u n o

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20:55 saturday 1 july – brisa di mare , rapallo

bobo , roberta and i caught a train from milan just after midday , heading south and west towards the coast . the journey was somewhat less luxurious than that from stresa to milano i made a week ago . the rolling stock showed its age , lacked air conditioning and was packed full . we stood in the corridor all the way to genova , watching the surroundings change from urban milan to rich farmland to steep basaltic mountains . at genova we changed to a train which took us the short distance down the coast to rapello , clinging to the mountains around a sweeping bay . here we were met by bobo’s father , enrico , who drove us up to this house , his retreat perched at the top of a hill overlooking the town and harbour , surrounded by terraces of old olive and fig trees .

i sit here on the terrace now with the fountain gurgling and sounds of people in the town below drifting up on the still dusk air . today is the start of a three-day festival in the town . earlier we watched barges being towed into the bay , loaded with fireworks which will be set off later on . i’ve been investigating the rows of yachts in the harbour with the binoculars my parents gave me for for my birthday last year .

the past week has been wonderful .

—

14:20 saturday 8 july – aeroporto malpensa

oh no , it’s happening again . i left the apartment on via solferino soon after midday , took the metro from moscova to cadorna , and from there got the express train to malpensa . my flight to london was due to depart from here at 19:35 . the reason for my uncharacteristically early arrival : a careless misreading of the ticket when i checked it last night . a fortuitous error as it transpires .

i spoke to one of the check-in clerks , who looked puzzled , made a couple of phone calls and told me my flight would in fact be departing from bergamo . which , ironically , was where my doomed inbound flight was intended to land .

so now i’m on a bus ( which has just set off ) taking me back to milano stazione centrale , from where i’ll set out for bergamo .

i phoned the company in britain from whom i bought my ticket ( thomson ) but after half an hour of uninterrupted soft rock i felt sick and hung up . phrases for a letter they’ll be receiving from me begin to assemble themselves in my head …

18:22 – aeroporta orio al serio , bergamo

standing in a queue with a couple of hundred people , slowly being processed through two check-in desks . i notice that the inbound flight is now being predicted to land half an hour late .

i’ve got my powerbook set up on the handle of the luggage trolley . just the right height to type standing up ! i’ll take a photo .

22:50 – connex train , gatwick airport to victoria station

the half hour delay wasn’t augmented and i reached blighty without incident . everything seems grey , cold and shabby . but then it always does . i think it’s a fine thing to be british . but i find it hard to muster much affection or respect for contemporary british society .

: cH

Italy, Wanderer

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16:39 saturday 24 june – restaurant ” est est est ” , gatwick airport
south terminal

damn . i’ve succeeded in booking myself onto today’s flight of doom .
i spoke to a few agents on tuesday and purchased a dirt-cheap seat on a plane operated by one of the myriad charter firms of which nobody’s ever , ever , ever heard .

but as i sit here waiting for my voucher-subsidised pizza , my 15:45 departure receding into the distance ( latest estimate – 19:00 ) , it somehow seems less of a consumer triumph .

the desk where one might expect to find an unctious company rep remains resolutely unattended , a phone cursorily left in front with a number to call . the number , though , has been amended by hand and rendered unintelligible . a shifting coterie of nervous-looking package fodder huddles around it , left rootless by this unforseen gap in the stream of commands by which they secretly prefer their holidays to be organised . nobody is telling them what to do now . even the muttered complaints sound hesitant , half-hearted .

we ( suddenly a community , our uncertain fates fused in this hermetic city , our common submission to the invisible ” them ” who hurl aircraft between continents ) have been issued with ” light refreshment vouchers ” . my experience suggests this is a bad sign . it happened far too quickly . something must be seriously wrong with the plane and the i won’t be surprised if the19:00 prediction slips back further . i dislike the way that airlines routinely lie to their customers , announcing an iterative procession of further delays rather than squaring up right away with the true prognosis . it is as if they wish to toy with us , manipulating our hope and despair on the ground just as they manipulate our sleeping and waking in the air .

—

the pizza has come and gone . a modish confection of roasted vegetables ( scarcely cooked ) on a tomato base ( unseasoned ) with rocket and shaved parmesan . the environment is pleasant though . light wood , modern chairs and white walls . quite unexpected in an airport which aspires more than anything to resemble a shopping mall . indeed one of the syntheticically cheerful voices which springs from the ubiquitous speakers every now and then celebrates the ” south terminal shopping experience ” where ” tax-free prices ” are available to passengers ” for all destinations ” . it is as if the various retailers have collectively willed themselves into a parallel universe in which intra- european duty free was never abolished . presumably they hope to take a few passengers with them .

the last time i flew from gatwick was in december 1998 , on my way to australia . on that occasion my flight departed six hours late . or was it twelve ? or twenty-four ? time somehow changes its substance in these places . incongruously i am reminded of lapland and perpetual daytime . but that experience is one of freedom as opposed to this confined purgatory .

i am glad to have the company of my powerbook , my backlog of correspondence , my scribbling book , the reading i was meant to do for michael young , books by george soros and plato . enough to tide me over , i think . however long i must remain here in limbo .

—

18:04

latest prediction – 20:30 . apparently a replacement aircraft was flown in … and found to be defective . aircraft number three is being sent down from luton . or perhaps they’re constructing it out of the remaining pieces of aircraft numbers one and two ?

—

20:05

about quarter of an hour ago we were all shunted off on the crummy monorail thing to the deserted north terminal . the screens indicated that our flight was now boarding … except that there was no plane at the indicated gate .

an aircraft has now rolled up , with ” european ” painted rather generically down its side . somebody with limited english made an announcement . it sounded like they were informing us we’d be landing at verona rather than bergamo , but surely that can’t be right …
surely … ?

—

11:06 sunday 25 june – express train , stresa to milano

verona it was . by the time my flight entered italian airspace last night bergamo airport was closed . milano’s two airports were too busy to accept additional traffic . so verona it was . we landed around midnight . i explored various options for getting to milano and the party i knew was underway . but it was hopeless .

my night’s accommodation came courtesy of a couple of fortuitously non- showing packageers . their room in a rather grand hotel had already been paid for so i blagged it . what i didn’t altogether grasp was that their hotel room was in stresa , three hours’ drive away on the shore of lake maggiore . i arrived there at half three this morning , feeling slightly jaded .

waking up this morning to the lake , the moutains , the cool air and the hot sun soon put paid to that though . what a gorgeous and unexpected place to spend my first morning in italy . my room had a big terrace surrounded by camelia blossom . i could have asked for nothing more .

now i am on my way to milano on the alpine express , destined beyond that for geneva and venice . it’s a beautifully designed modern train . my ticket cost 18600 lira , about six sterling . a similar service in britain would cost three times as much .

the drive from verona to stresa was a good introduction to northern italy . the road was lined with factories , each with its impeccably designed logo . i don’t get the impression this society is ashamed of old-fashioned heavy industry in the way that britain is . there’s obviously a bit of a fad for high intensity light projectors at the moment , used as a promotional device . i noticed about a dozen of them along the route , tracking their silent beams across the bellies of low clouds .

—

21:15 – fabrizio’s appartment , via solferino , milano

it’s taken a couple of hours to set up but i’ve finally got a free dial-up account working properly . i’ve been phoning bobo every ten minutes or so to get off-the-cuff translation of crucial bits of registration forms i couldn’t work out . he’s working on a painting at his apartment round the corner .

it’s been a fabulous day . brilliant to be with bobo . feeling excited about italy in general . but i’m tired and expect to sleep well tonight . down to work tomorrow .

: cH

Sandhurst, Wanderer

d e v o i d

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00:54 thursday 8 june – sandhurst , gloucestershire

the desk at the end of my parents’ sitting room . mum asleep upstairs . dad away in salisbury .

my powerbook sits amidst evidence of several weeks of my habitation . piled letters and documents . boxes of slides . a quarz-banded pebble from cornwall . a left-over ten dollar note from australia . were it not for these signs i wonder if i would believe in my travel , my activity .

this has been the longest interval between despatches since i began them sixteen months ago . several have been started and abandoned . i am not even certain as i write this that it will be completed and transmitted , but i hope both will be achieved .

perhaps i grow more self-conscious ? all the time i am over-brimming with thoughts and observations , things i yearn to share . yet i remain silent . impotent .

since my last words i have not been static . in cornwall i celebrated my sister’s birthday , met with warren langley and ann tonkin , walked gloriously free of my crutches . in glasgow i attended the launch of the latest school for social entrepreneurs and was newly inspired . in london i planned the next steps for the sse learning web and the circus organisation , caught up with friends old and new . in cambridge i discussed my potential involvement with virt-u , a project to develop a european virtual university . i also dropped in on ray jobling , my old tutor at st john’s , and on ann cotton , a fellow-student from the sse who runs a charity working to increase educational opportunities in sub-saharan africa . ann’s charity , camfed , is funding me to spend a month setting up a project in northern ghana .

indeed , i should have departed for ghana on 6 may . but my project is reliant on a stable electricity supply and that in turn is dependent on the completion of a new building . work on this building is somewhat behind schedule and the rainy season arrived before its roof did . consequently my project cannot begin until october .

it is odd how unsettling this shift has been . i have grown comfortable living with almost complete uncertainty about where i will be and what i shall be doing from month to month . but it threw me off balance to have something which i had regarded as certain suddenly become fluid .

the new timetable is a blessing , though . apart from my ongoing commitments most of my attention is now wrapped up in trampoline and there is a lot of work to do over the coming months. progress seems agonisingly slow , but probably my perspective is distorted . i am typically impatient . the truth is i feel greatly intimidated by the hurdles which lie before me . most of my weaknesses will be exposed by the kinds of task i face : distilling a set of concrete proposals from my maelstrom of ideas , expressing these proposals in a succint and accessible fashion , constructing simple financial models , undertaking structured market research . i have another mountain to climb in my learning about venture finance and investment . somewhere in the midst of this i must try to keep hold of the ideas which sparked the whole thing off . i am unquantifiably grateful to warren langley , james smith and everyone else who’s helping me proceed .

for the months before i leave for ghana i’ve been thinking about taking a house in cornwall , though i’m also considering spending the summer in milan . i’ve scarcely seen my friend bobo since he returned to his roots there and i’ve wanted to learn italian for ages .

in the meantime i’ve been very glad to spend these weeks here in gloucestershire with mum and dad . it’s a long time since i saw so much of them and i certainly don’t remember it ever being so harmonious in the past . the last year hasn’t been easy for them and they had some news from me about my sexuality just before i left for australia . so all in all it was a good time to be with them .

this feels complete so i shall send it before any second thoughts creep in
. i doubt it’ll be such a long time before the next one .

: cH

Broken photo links, Sandhurst

b l i g h t y

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23:27 easter sunday – sandhurst , gloucestershire

i arrived back in britain last tuesday . malaysia was amazing , different
from anything i anticipated .

finally some photos :

http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/2000-03-08
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/2000-03-27
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/2000-04-14

as i awoke this morning i watched a mosquito walking slowly backwards on my
ceiling for what seemed like ages . it struck me as strange .

happy easter everyone

: cH

Australia, Wanderer

d i a g n o s t i c s

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19:54 tuesday 11 april – laura place , melbourne , australia

finally , after several false starts , i’m leaving australia . in four hours i shall board a flight for kuala lumpur , connecting with another to kuantan on the east coast . from there i shall travel north up the coast until i find a quiet village with a nice beach where i can spend a little while reflecting on the past six weeks in australia and looking ahead to a month in britain and the coming adventures in ghana . generally getting my thoughts together really . i aim to get back to britain in time for granny’s birthday on the nineteenth .

it was confirmed this morning that i fractured my right heel in my daredevil fence-top leap . it’s a week since i decided to speak to a doctor about the non-diminishing pain in my foot . the gp prodded at it and sent me for an x-ray .

the hospital to which i was sent was very quiet , very clean , earily empty . you could actually hear the air conditioning . despite the fact i had no appointment i was in and out within half an hour . the film came back with a brief analysis from the radiologist suggesting that the pain was nothing to do with my fence experiences but was in fact due to a tiny spur of bone growing on the base of my heel .

$80

yeah , right .

the gp shrugged her shoulders , prodded my foot a bit more , and said she didn’t know what to do . i could go to an orthopedic consultant if i liked but they were a strange lot , tended to be rather abrupt , too much time looking at bones . she didn’t know any , and gave the impression this was through choice more than chance . when i said that yes , i would quite like to see a consultant , she shrugged and pulled out a phone directory . started scanning her finger down the columns . maybe a female one would be friendlier . and one in a convenient neighbourhood . bingo ! a name was scribbled on a scrap of paper with an address and a phone number .

$120

i smiled , paid the bill and left , my faith in the australian medical profession somewhat diminished . with no intention of calling upon the gp’s random consultant i began to ask everyone i met if they could recommend someone . in the end it was charles young who came up trumps . during a meeting on thursday he called his father , a doctor , and within minutes he’d lined up an appointment the following morning with mr henry bryce . charles had some childhood memory of pushing this fellow’s rolls royce , which sounded encouraging so long as the medical insurance held good .

arriving at mr bryce’s consulting rooms i found them a little less grand than the harley street style leather and potted palms i’d imagined . in fact they were slightly seedy . a scarcely-converted office suite at the top of a tower in the centre of town , with concrete-blasted ceiling , flourescent lights , flimsy partition walls which actually seemed to amplify sound , colourful magazines on thin paper from a year or more ago and people in the waiting area who looked like they were having a bad time of it .

but mr bryce himself was splendid . businesslike and convincing with a very occasional deep wry chuckle . he seemed to have two patients on the go at any point , like an expert cook or a successful polygamist . somehow when he prodded my foot it felt more useful than when the gp did it . he held my x-ray up to the window in a professional kind of way , screwed up his eyes , hrrumphed and bade me look closer . he traced out a line which i could not for the life of me see . could be a fracture , he said . the radiologist’s verdict had been dismissed with a contemptuous grunt .

to be certain i’d need to have a bone scan . more phone calls . i’d have to be there in half an hour . flurry of taxi-hailing and route-finding . another expensively quiet hospital . seriously expensive machines with science fiction names . machines which filled entire rooms , entire floors . and not a hint of taxpayers’ money .

they injected me with something radioactive and stuck me on a trolley . they angled a big metal dish over my foot and i could see my blood sparkling on a screen . when my right foot went under it sparkled a lot more than my left foot .

$350

i returned to mr bryce this morning for his verdict . yes , there is a fracture . no , there’s no time to put a plaster on . yes , i can carry on to malaysia so long as i’m careful and i use crutches .

$150

so i’ve got some crutches , which i aim to exploit for every bit of sympathy i can wring from my surroundings . particularly if i can get an upgrade on my flights . the woman i dealt with at the chemist where they came from dropped them off about an hour ago . amazingly kind .

$20 ( including free delivery )

my faith in the profession is much better now .

i’ve got loads of digital photos from the last six weeks which i intended to stick together before leaving . but heck , i haven’t got round to it .

in about half an hour my thai friend pum will arrive to take me to the airport . we spent a great weekend exploring daylesford and the hills , and area which seems to be filled with rather smart , commercially-astute hippies .

for the next week i shall be disconnected , off-line , 100% tangible . then the mayhem begins again .

: cH

Australia, Wanderer

c e n t r i f u g e

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22:44 saturday 1 april – port campbell , victoria , australia

two pine bunk beds . grey walls . a hardwearing carpet . a single bulb fixed in the middle of the ceiling . the gunshot soundtrack of cheap tv from the lounge next door . middle-brow jazz from a nearby restaurant . occasional twang of a guitar .

i lie on the lower bunk by the window with my powerbook on the pillow . across the room stef ponders today’s edition of the australian and barbara sleeps . it’s been a long day .

this is my first taste of hostel life since i was last in australia . the familiar check-list springs back into action . mattress = good . linen = clean . inmates = free of psychopathic tendencies . obvious ones at least .

i left ross’ flat in sydney and flew down to melbourne last monday . since then i’ve been staying with stef and barbara in their house in fitzroy , the city’s funky/organic/bohemian quarter .

the dull pulse of a commercial house track joins the gentle mellee of sound . where’s it coming from in this little backwater ? stef reckons it’s somebody’s car . i think it might be the video jukebox in the pub we visited earlier .

i like melbourne . it’s more or less flat so cycling is a breaze . the ubiquitous tram tracks are a new challenge though . the vehemence of melbourne’s rivalry with sydney is incomprehensible to anyone outside those two cities . but the contrasts are obvious . sydney lives in primary colours , melbourne in subtle secondaries . it’s more relaxed , less brash , not so beach-centred . the grass is literally greener . i’ve been carrying on with my work but also getting about and meeting people .

this morning stef , barbara and i hired a car and drove west along the great ocean road . a dramatic effort which follows the coast through a succession of landscapes . steep sandstone cliffs , wide-beached bays , temperate rain forest , scrubby savanna . we stopped at various points to explore and watched the sun setting from a deserted clifftop with sage-coloured brush around us and the pacific surf rolling against the rocks far below .

finally we arrived here in port campbell , a small settlement whose economy is , i presume , largely dependent on the tourists who come to visit the nearby apostles , a series of tall rock pillars standing just off the coast . there are six restaurants and three motels on port campbell’s main drag and little else . we ordered fish and chips in a neon-lit room where visitors’ business cards and photos were arrayed beneath the plastic table covers . the proprietress handed us numbered tickets . when i took my seat i found a ticket with the same number as my own ( 84 ) amongst the cards for concrete pourers and munich hairdressers beneath the plastic in front of me . a small co-incidence .

a greater co-incidence last thursday . i joined stef for lunch with a couple of friends of his who are interested in digital community infrastructure . what rapidly emerged was that one of them , vaughan , who’d trained in medicine before getting involved in the web , has been thinking along uncannily similar lines to me . he too is in the early stages of setting up a venture , one which is potentially complementary to trampoline rather than in competition with it . we experienced a depth of common understanding which was unexpected for us both .

we spoke again last night at the drinks to mark his departure from looksmart.com , australia’s most prominent web firm . it ended up with the two of us huddled over a table gabbling intensely . i’ve extended my stay in melbourne til the end of next week so we can talk more .

i’ve been hobbling a bit , having locked myself in stef and barbara’s garden on wednesday morning and resorted to jumping off the fence , barefoot , to escape into the back lane . it provided a good excuse to spend much of wednesday afternoon static on a beach . but i feel very silly .

it seems much longer than two weeks ago i was walking in the blue mountains with duncan . a lifetime since i arrived in sydney .

: cH

Australia, Broken photo links, Wanderer

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12:58 friday 24 march – mundarrah street , clovelly , sydney

onelist.com , the service i’ve been using to host this mailing list , has been assimilated by its main competitor egroups.com . since there was already a list called wanderer on egroups i’ve been compelled to modify the name . so it’s goodbye wanderer and hallo worldwanderer . it’s grossly cheesy , but heck , i couldn’t think of anything better .

i’ve been here in sydney a month now . the days have alternated pretty equally between sun and cloud , for which i’m grateful as it’s made it much easier to maintain a balance between work and shameless lounging . it also means i’ve got a modest tan rather than terminal skin cancer .

last weekend i escaped up to the blue mountains for a couple of days with duncan , a fellow brit i met a couple of days earlier . it was great to be amongst the trees , the aromatic air , the never-silent hush .

one of the main objectives in coming to autralia was to advance another stage in my mobile working endeavours . it’s twenty months since my first step in this direction , when i spent july/august 1998 roving around the isles of scilly , cornwall , gloucestershire and cambridge whilst continuing to work on a website for decca records with a team in london . back then it was just me and my little psion , which restricted my interaction to email except when i was able to hijack someone else’s terminal . i remember being enraptured by the novelty of lying on a beach and being paid for it .

my next step was when i came out to australia in december 1998 . i borrowed a computer out here and carried on working with a couple of clients in london . but my input was still essentially text-based . i didn’t get a whole lot of work done , to be honest . but i learned a lot .

after that came the experiment of spending a whole year in the isles of scilly . this time i had my full battery of equipment with me and was able to participate in a much wider range of activities . i was principally doing work for the school for social entrepreneurs , including consultancy , web production and print production . whenever i left the islands i relied on my psion to maintain email contact .

then in january i got my powerbook , opening up the prospect of being able to continue working on a full range of tasks from anywhere in the world , so long as i can get occasional access to power and telecoms . this trip to australia is the first trial of that theory . after a month it’s working well . i’ve put together a brochure for the sse , which i can send to printers in cornwall via email . i’m much of the way through producing a new website for the sse . i’ve been continuing to play a development role with the scillonia digital workshop , and will be producing a website with its members . i’ve also taken the first steps towards setting up a software development venture , whose working title is trampoline , based on my research over the last eighteen months into dispersed collaboration , learning and decision-making .

in all of these activities i’ve been working with groups of people in different places . these interactions have been structured in ways which enable me to feel i’m involved in ongoing discussions , that part of me is there with the other participants . these are delicate psychological considerations . the potential for misunderstanding , paranoia and defensiveness is much higher in a dispersed collaboration than in a conventional one . the development and sustenance of trust is critical . so in a way these experiments have been about trust , exploring different interactive structures and strategies , seeing where trust flourishes and where it perishes , where i feel like an active participant and where i feel remote , where i feel stimulated to contribute creatively and where i feel inhibited .

trampoline is the result of everything i have learned . i have come to see clear patterns in what works and what doesn’t work . from these insights has emerged a concept for a way to organise communications which will enable organisations , especially information-based organisations , to increase their creative potential .    i am particularly eager that the non-profit sector should benefit from an infrastructure tool like this . charitable organisations are typically under-resourced , thinly-spread and dependent on a wide network of influence and support . they are also blessed with high levels of commitment and shared purpose . trampoline will enable such organisations to marshal their resources more effectively . i am hoping to establish the venture in such a way that non-profit organisations will have access to services on a free or non-profit basis .

these plans took a significant step forward a couple of weeks ago when warren langley , ex-president and ceo of the pacific exchange in san francisco , offered to help guide the project through first-stage financing . there’s an amazing story behind this . at the start of may last year i was on st agnes , packing my belongings into boxes , preparing to move out of tamarisk farm . it was a fresh spring day , plump thrushes hopping about and flooding the breeze with song . there was a knock at the door and i saw a fellow clutching a laptop . warren introduced himself and explained he was staying with tim and sue hicks down at troytown . he was having trouble picking up email and they’d suggested he drop in on me in case i could do anything .

i was completely useless of course , fiddling about for a bit before sheepishly suggesting he should call the support line . but it turned out that warren was interested in social entrepreneurship , particularly social invesment , and we spent the next hour or so in conversation . we’ve remained in touch since then .

as for what brought warren all the way to st agnes , his wife ann had visited many years before on an archeological project and had been returning ever since . fate is indeed a remarkable beast .

oh , i’ve finally organised some photos from my previous trip to australia . nearly two hundred of them in fact . start at
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/oz98 .

: cH