Buenos Aires, Argentina, was my first tango with globalisation, when I met a German who had shipped a camper van to South America and we drove together through Uruguay and Brazil.
Since those carefree Che Guevera days I cannot work out whether it is globalisation or globalization. But as the Americans would say, ‘whatever’.
Globalis(z)ation was created in the Middle East. Long before people were shouting ‘Death to Israel’, the shekel was a global term for currency.
Even my brother, who lives in Japan, is getting in on the act. He met a Singaporean woman in Brisbane, Australia, at Christmas, they flew off to Hong Kong together for New Year’s, and he will be soon visiting her in Dubai, where she is currently based.
I called my editor last week to say sorry. The photo I usually send together with my copy would be late. She was having coffee in Amsterdam.
And the globalisation anecdotes from the Middle East are endless. Arguably the world’s most famous Egyptian, sorry Omar, Mr Fayed, who owns a business in London, wants his day in court with ‘Phil the Greek’ over a drink driving accident in Paris in 1997.
Alcohol – the Middle East contributed this word and distillation to globalis(z)ation as well. Unfortunately, the Americans in Iraq have taken a liking to an Iraqi concoction that has been a contributing factor more often than not in their many breaches of the Geneva Convention.
One American blogger wrote about a certain Egyptian wine, ‘A straw color with tinges of brown in the glass, this wine has a nose of dried grass and hay with elements of stewed apples.’ If you would like the address please contact this newspaper, I will be happy to pass it on.
Maybe that blogger should be in the can? You see, if it wasn’t for globalis(z)ation there wouldn’t be all the troubles in the world. The World Wide Web isn’t democratic, it’s a sticky web.
Mothers should tell their children the three leons of 21st century life. Don’t get involved in a Middle Eastern land war, don’t drink and drive (especially with Iraqi spirits) and don’t tell the truth over the World Wide Web.
Thanks to budget airlines I will be moving amongst the globalcrats during my Easter break in the UK, when I slip over to Amsterdam for dinner one night with Dutch friends I met in Istanbul, then Geneva the next with my Swiss-German buddy I met during the 90s on an Australian cattle station.
Cairo – it is not the center of the universe or the world – but most places in the Eastern hemisphere are within a six-hour flight. But it does need a good street level cocktail bar, if only to keep us from Iraqi spirits. I would call it Parliament, and squeeze it between Maison Thomas and Drinkies on Zamalek’s 26th July Street and serve free drinks to the thousands of Iraqi refugees now living in Cairo.
Drinkies couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me how many cases of the Heineken-owned Stella beer they shift each week from their Zamalek store, nor whether they were interested in a few stools where one could sit and watch the world go by. No vision.
The globalis(z)ation gods will deliver a quality lizard lounge soon enough; they brought Cairo the coffee lounge didn’t they? The global economy is the future. By 2020 a recent tourism report states, 10 percent of us will be working in that industry. Mothers tell your children.
The Middle East, once the seat of advanced learning, knowledge and all things formerly Greek, has a lot of catching up to do. Globalis(z)ation is in the process of ditching the Pyramids’ great wonder status and those fickle sun loving Europeans will discover a new destination anytime soon. Recently unlocked Libya, with her unrivalled Roman sites, beaches and whacky headwear received approximately 150,000 tourists last year.
Couldn’t Robert Fisk have written a bigger book? His “Great War for Civilisation is now by my bedside table and I look forward to reading how globalis(z)ation has led to the conquest of the Middle East. I’ve got Al Gore’s movie on The Unspeakable Truth about global warming, and a new friend from Rhode Island who is working in the 20th century economy for an NGO monitoring Egypt’s election process, would be much more suited to, say, a cocktail barman in a lounge called Parliament.
Predictions, Nostradamus, all nonsense right? But I did write two weeks ago in this column, ‘Ahhh, calypso cricket, I hope they survive.’ Globalis(z)ation strikes again. The English cricket coach of Pakistan, who lives in South Africa, was murdered in Jamaica during the Cricket World Cup.
