Athens - kicking the can can be fun

Another long blog break and hey presto it's July! We've moved house, sent half our chattels to London, half to Simonstown. We found homes for our dog and cat. We're selling two cars, made umpteen trips to the dump. Change is good they say and it's true but it's also daunting and sad. I had a long run through the suburbs of Rondebosch to say goodbye to all the places I know so well there. Matt, our son, has skipped the nest and is schmoozing around Europe with a couple of mates. They started in Athens and saw some of the demos as parliament debated yet another austerity programme. Once again Greece stepped back from the brink. People say this is just kicking the can down the road. I say yes it's true and what's wrong with that? When I was a kid I used to kick cans down the road and it was fun. Sometimes I'd score a goal. They have no choice. It's the politics stupid. It takes time for politicians to make the compromises necessary to restructure Greek debt in an orderly way, but it can be done. In the meantime keep on kicking. The QSL dates back to 1968 from the Telcoms utility OTE. This is one of the state assets Greece must sell in order to help reduce its sovereign debt.

Humming on Hobie's in Lotos-Eater Land

The two week holiday in Mauritius was fabulous. It is resonant of the Land of the Lotos-Eaters (Tennyson) in which it seemed always to be afternoon because of the languid and peaceful atmosphere. Club Med has a great formula there. Every day it's great food and cocktails, which in normal circumstances would quickly register an extra 5kgs on your bathroom scale. But you burn it off. Each day I exerted myself in a melange of Hobie Cat sailing, water-skiing, petanque, ping pong, water polo for the guests vs the staff and tennis in the evening with the floodlights coming on in the fading light. And it's French! Yes there is a smattering of South Africans and other nationalities but most of the guests are from France with a few from Reunion as well. My French is appalling now, through lack of practice, but within a few days it started to come back and French people are so friendly when you try to speak their langauge, no matter how broken. Club Med has just come out with a big improvement in earnings and it seems they are re-branding higher up the income curve. All I can say is when that Hobie starts to hum through the water and you've one hull way up out of the water, there is no place you'd rather be. The QSL is from Mauritius Broadcasting Corp heard on 684 kHz AM in Johannesburg in 1993.

Chile in sunny Mauritius

Blog has slept for many weeks! In the meantime I holidayed on the intoxicating island of Mauritius. The sun shines, it's warm 24 hours a day, the water is perfect. When it rains it is just enough to keep everything green. We were at a Club Med and I sailed Hobie Cats, water-skid, played tennis, water polo and petananque all day. I needed to get back home to rest! We loved meeting friendly French people there. During our trip, Chile exhumed the body of Salvador Allende in an attempt to finally lay to rest the question about how he died in the military coup that brought Pinochet to power. In the 38 years since then, Chile has become the leading economy in Latin America and is surging again on the back of the buoyant copper price. But it is not just copper that drives Chile. It has significantly broadened its economic base since Allende's disastrous economic path. Pinochet was no saint, of course, with many brutally killed and tortured. The economy failed again in the early 1980s but the country continued to reform and is now a model for many emerging economies. See my article on Chile here http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=144199. The QSL is from Radio Presidente Balmaceda, heard on 31mb in Cape Town in the 1960s.

Good luck coming to West African state near you

Nigeria's elections were a vote for political stability. Despite the initial hitch when the election process had to be delayed for a week, the outcome was hugely positive for perceptions of Nigerian democracy. Although there was some carping about election irregularities, the crushing win of incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, who has a PhD in Zoology, gave a clear mandate to the new government and broke the tradition where the presidency passes from the north to the south and back from cycle to cycle. Already in West Africa, Ghana has held successful elections where power has passed from one party to another without incident. We have also seen recently in Ivory Coast that West Africans will not tolerate an illegitimate leader holding on to power. Gbagbo's departure was humiliating: where he could so easily have stepped down with dignity he chose to cling on to the last and was dragged away in shame. Sub-Saharan Africa in general appears to be coming of age. This is particularly evident in its economic growth path which has been strong over the past decade and has regained momentum after the global credit crunch. The QSL is from FRCN Enugu heard in Cape Town in 1993 on short-wave. Nigerian state QSLs are precious.

Correa corrals the vote

Ecuador goes into a referendum this weekend. Voters are being asked to vote on a list of no less than 10 questions ranging widely from restraints on media ownership and reforming the judiciary to limits on bullfighting and cockfighting and bans on casinos and gambling. Gimme a break! The exercise is more just a popularity test for President Rafael Correa because most people don't really understand what the referendum is all about. Correa has made a successful recovery following last year's police uprising and continues with a programme of spending on schools, hospitals and roads. The strong oil price has provided cash flow for this poor and divided country which defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2008. Only nine years earlier it became the first country to default on Brady bonds (the debt structure created after the Latin American debt crises in the 1980s). The QSL is from Teleradio in Guayaquil, heard on 1350 AM one morning in central London using a Wellbrook 1530 antenna in the garden. It came through crystal clear for a few minutes, enough to get an ID and some programme details. I heard Ondas de la Montana in Medellin, Colombia on the same morning but try as I might never received a QSL.

Branding the Royals

As the confetti settles after the Royal Wedding, the paparazzi wonder where the happy couple will be heading to enjoy their honeymoon. It seems that William will actually first be returning to base to resume his helicopter pilot duties before taking his bride off to some secret resort. We are told that William 'loves Africa' and has enjoyed his trips 'to Africa' over the years. We Africans always wonder what this actually means. After all this is like saying, William 'loves the World'; or 'loves Asia' etc. There are stacks of countries in Africa and they are by no means the same. The continent stretches as far north of the equator as south and has multiple nationalities, tribes, languages, geographies, stages of economic development, political systems, cultures and.... I could go on. Anyway, the Wedding was a brilliant coup for the British royal brand. Up to 2 billion people watched world wide. You don't get better marketing than this and the payback for the UK economy will way exceed the cost. However, one thing that struck me was how poor William's responses were when taking his vows. He has this rather clipped accent. This was evident especially when he was required to say 'I will.' You could barely hear him - his volume was low and he elided the two words. This was a big moment - it's the time you say 'I WILL' clearly and with the best King's English diction. The QSL is from LBC, London, heard on 1152 kHz AM from Johannesburg in 2006.

Makassar, Sulawesi to Macassar, Cape

It's autumn and the sea-swells are building as the north-westers start to come in. Yesterday had the biggest waves at Muizenberg I've seen this year. The wind brought the rain too and the sea was a glassy silver-grey. I got right out to the back and waited for the big sets. Being early it wasn't too crowded. When I arrived at the beach I signalled my wife in our house in Simonstown across the bay (6 miles). She checked though our new telescope to see if I was visible and there I was! So cool. The previous evening I heard Radio Republik Indonesia, Makassar, on the island of Sulawesi on 4750 kHz. The signal was coming in beautifully just before my local sunset, playing gentle pop songs. The station signed off at 1600z, or midnight in Makassar. Meanwhile from our house I could see the beach of Macassar across False Bay, not far from where I surf. It is so named because of the nearby Kramat or holy grave of Sheik Yusuf, an exiled nobleman of Makassar in the former Dutch East Indies who died at the Cape in 1699. The QSL is from another station on Sulawesi, RRI Manado, heard on a DXpedition to Morgan Bay, South Africa in 1990. You'll need to get your Bahasa Indonesia dictionary out to understand it. This is one of a number of RRI stations I've been so pleased to QSL over the years. Also, here is a link to an article I wrote recently about Indonesia's economy: http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=136432