Owner: The Road to the Horizon URL:http://theroadtothehorizon.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:34:26 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Short stories about travel to the world's most remote places, working in war torn countries, life as a humanitarian worker, and about the road which is more important than the destination. Site statistics:Click here
Rumble: GPS Navigation for Dummies 2007-03-11 09:02:00 1. Tine wants me to buy a GPS
for the car.You know one of those gimmicks that talks you through to a destination point. And she wants me to buy it fast, as in one month's time we will be driving from Belgium to Italy for our annual family skiing holiday. Each year we have one peak of sweat, blood and tears (and fierce discussions), when -once again- I miss an exit on the highway, or make the wrong turn, or just 'loose it'. I am terrible in finding my way around. Somehow I always get to where I have to be - I guess I have a built in compass like the pigeons- but most of the time it is with a big detour, though ! I am just terrible. I have travelled to the world's most deserted and most remote places, and still, I loose my way in our village, where we have lived for 20 years.I guess my mind only has limited storage capacity (The staff in Afghanistan always thought it was funny when I wore my Tshirt 'Fatal error - Run out of Memory' with a Windows pop up screen). My mind can only st Read more:Navigation
, Dummies
, GPS Navigation
News Round-up: Iraq and Lebanon 2007-03-12 07:58:00 Iraq: Killings Drive Women to Become Suicide Bombers: Um Abdallah, 41, has a difficult task ahead of her - she has to learn how to use a gun and begin preparing for a day she believes is going to be one of God's forgiveness and revenge against foreign forces occupying her country. (Full Story from IRIN)Lebanon
: My Sheep Were My Life:Muhammad Zein el Abidyn Jaber is a 72-year-old farmer who lives with his family of five in the small Lebanese village of Maroun El Ras, on the border with Israel. During the July-August 2006 war between Israel and the armed wing of the political party Hezbollah, he fled his town and left his sheep and cattle behind. When Muhammad returned a few weeks later, he found they had died of hunger and thirst. In addition, his tobacco plantation was heavily damaged by the bombings and he was unable to harvest the few olive trees he made a living from because hundreds of unexploded cluster bombs were strewn on his land. (Full Story from IRIN) And I am sitting here, Read more:Iraq
The Jihadis - A Close Encounter with the Terrorists 2007-03-14 02:20:00 ‘The Jihadis’ is not their real name. I also censored the name of the country this all happened in. You never know…Once upon a time, not so very long ago, our office in [a country in the Middle East, not so very popular in the West] was solely run by female staff. They were a dynamic bunch, and each time I went on mission there, we had loads of fun. You would not think much of them when you saw these ladies on the street, all scarf-ed up, or even veiled up, with dark dull-coloured overcoats. But boy, once indoors, the veils, scarves and all depressive moods stayed at the front door, and they were the most amusing and dynamic bunch.Once while I was on mission to [that country], the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited the key people in our office for a formal evening dinner, and our staff asked me to come along.. You need to know I always dress very casual, and of course, I had no suit nor even decent shoes with me. ‘No problem’, said the lady who invited me, we will find you s Read more:Close
, Encounter
, Terrorists
News Round-up: An Alternative to Famine: Get an Insurance! 2007-03-13 22:02:00 Famine in Third World countries generally follows a grim script: first the rains fail, then aid agencies issue dire warnings, and finally the United Nations scrambles to raise money and send food aid as journalists write stories of horror and tragedy. In the worst cases, real alarms don't go off until the starving appear on television screens. Even when peasants are spared death, they often lose everything they own—including animals and seeds.Does it have to unfold like this? Here is a radical new idea: famine insurance. (Full story) Picture: courtesy WFP/Goni Boulama Read more:Alternative
, Famine
Tips & Tricks: A Guestbook with Buttons 2006-03-13 14:36:00 A guestbook on your site is an easy way to get feedback from your readers. One of the easiest, cleanest, best featured and well supported guestbooks I have found is http://www.ultraguest.com/ .They also have a user forum and a problem reporting system. Important that the Ultraguest guestbook has an anti-spam filter.. And it all comes for free.The way to create the guestbook is pretty self explanatory, once you go onto their site.The fun bit starts in the way you integrate your guestbook within your site, as by default Ultraguest gives you some plain code, which looks (on the screen) like:[Sign my guestbook ] [View my guestbook] Not too attractive for people to click, no?Here is how I created a button for it, like this one (you can actually click this button to see how ultraguest's book looks like): Step by step: Go to one of the free websites that let you make buttons. I use http://cooltext.com/Buttons
. Easy configurable, and they let you save the button you created onto your hard di
News: An Alternative for Famine: Get an Insurance! 2006-01-02 21:17:00 Source: Newsweek web exclusive 13 March 2007By Jeffrey BartholetA U.N. agency has come up with a radical new idea to pre-empt drought-related famines: insurance.Famine
s generally follow a grim script: first the rains fail, then aid agencies issue dire warnings, and finally the United Nations scrambles to raise money and send food aid as journalists write stories of horror and tragedy. In the worst cases, real alarms don't go off until the starving appear on television screens. Even when peasants are spared death, they often lose everything they own—including animals and seeds.Does it have to unfold like this? The World Food Programme is trying a radical new idea: famine insurance. In this approach, a country secures an insurance policy against a catastrophic drought. If the rains come, the insurance company keeps its premium. But if rains fail and disaster is sure to strike, the international insurer pays out well before people go hungry. Richard Wilcox, director of business plannin Read more:Alternative
Rumble: The Things that Are Important to Us 2007-03-15 11:06:00 I was writing in the living room last Sunday when Hannah, our youngest, came to show me a story and a drawing she made: Little Rumble and her hamster.Once upon a time,there was a little girl.She was called Little Rumble.She had a hamster who had the name ‘Rock’,because the hamster liked rock music.It was not a normal hamster,as it spoke Dutch too! One day,Little Rumble did not find her hamster anymore.Because ‘Rock’ liked music,the girl sung in a soft sweet little voice:“Oh my sweet little hamster,Where are you now, where are you now?Oh my sweet little hamster..”And what did she see?“Look”, she cried out, “There comes Rock!”.And from that day,Little Rumble called her hamster:‘Classical’.She is nine.. They keep on surprising me, my girls. It made me think. Within seven weeks, my sabbatical is over. I don't know yet where I will be posted for my next assignment. We change duty stations every two to four years. My assignment in Dubai is over, so up for the next on
Rumble: Sunrises, Inspiration and Human Rights 2007-03-15 07:38:00 Lana and I get up at 6:15 am. I drive her to the railway station at 7 am. This ten minute ride, just around sunrise, is always good enough to give me inspiration to write for the rest of the day... Two things caught my eye in the newspaper yesterday:OESO congratulates Belgium on the efforts towards economic recovery. Quarter front page, plus full page 3 and 4 about the report, the excellent progress etc..The just published annual Human Rights
report classifies Belgium as 3rd worse in Europe. On page 10 of the newspaper. Total of three lines, 20 words....Cracks me up. Anyway, it was a nice sunrise this morning! Read more:Inspiration
, Human Rights
Rumble: "They Heard You !" 2007-03-16 10:59:00 Does this happen to you: You are daydreaming and end up with a thought, an idea or a memory and you think "How did I get here?" Do you then try to trace back what associations your mind made to end up with that final thought? Amazing, hey, the speed of the human mind?Well several things started my train of thoughts, inspiring today's Rumble:In one of my previous posts The Intelligence of a Human Being - Part 2, I rumbled jokingly about "Do you think 'They' are monitoring [this blog]? You know, 'Them' ? I had just re-read another rumble about how we form our opinions. How dependent we really are on how the press presents events to us.Both got me to think about freedom of speech, the privacy we have as individuals in the age where Google Earth shows how we sunbath (in monokini?) in our backyard?.All of that brought back a memory where "an organisation" demonstrated us an automated intelligence system gathering data from all over the world, analyzing keywords and automatically index Read more:Heard
Rumble: "She Kicked my Dog!" 2007-03-16 08:39:00 Ozdzan gave me this recording a long time ago. It still cracks me up!(thanks, Oz!)Hey, you good people out there, give me some feedback about this website! 25,000 of you visited this site last month. Only 5 left a message in the guestbook and 13 filled in the quality poll! I only need five seconds of your time. Here is the place to go:
Tips & Tricks: Displaying Special Characters 2006-03-15 20:53:00 You probably had instances where you need to display a piece of HTML code 'as is' on your blog, or where you need to use special characters like '' etc..Internet browsers easily get confused and often interpret these special characters as HTML code, resulting in goobledegoock displayed on the screen.You might have discovered already that, to display special characters, you need to replace these with a code, prefix-ed with '&', called 'encoding'.So if you want<a href="http://theroadtothehorizon.blogspot.com">The Road to the Horizon</a>to be displayed as is, on your page, it would have to be encoded like this:<a href="http://theroadtothehorizon.blogspot.com">The Road to the Horizon</a>Here is a reference article listing all the special characters: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/reference/article.php/3472611But, this becomes really cumbersome if you want to display whole lines of HTML code or a piece of text with a lot o Read more:Special
, Characters
Rumble: What's In a Gesture? 2007-03-17 10:36:00 Even though, we are all trying to be culture-sensitive, there are sometimes situations where we, the "Foreigners", the "Falangs", the "Muzungus" come out rather embarrassed... Here's one of those, the first time I entered Dubai.I present my passport at the immigration counter. The immigration officer does not speak much of English, and for a couple of minutes flips the pages of my passport over from the left to the right, and back again, and again, and again. He attentively reads all the different visas, and mumbles to himself. He looks up, as to check where his supervisor is, does not see him, and goes back to flipping the pages.Me: "Excuse me, anything wrong?Him: He answers with the (gesture): the fingers folded together, pointing upwards, and slowly moving his hand up and down. I often go to Italy, and that (gesture) means as much as "what the ^^%%** are you talking about?" or "What the ^^%%** do you want?". So I get upset, right? I mean, it is rather rude. I raise my voice a pitc Read more:Gesture
News round-up: The War in Iraq - Happy Anniversary! 2007-03-18 13:08:00 This week, we celebrate the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq
. I still remember the start very well.Time for a calculation.1. The newspaper today states one minute of war in Iraq costs US$380,000. A calculation made by Joseph Stiglitz, a US Nobelprize winning economist. That is almost double the cost of the war in Vietnam.2. According to WFP, the UN's food aid organisation, it costs US$0.19 to feed a child for a day. Nineteen cents. 20,000 children die of hunger every day. The time it took you to read this post, already 15 died.3. Taking those two figures together, one minute of war in Iraq would feed 2,000,000 children for a day. One day of war in Iraq would feed 20,000,000 children for a year. I do not understand. Somewhere the calculation does not make sense. Otherwise all intelligent people in the world would have cried foul. Wouldn't we? ...Wouldn't we? Photo credit: Robert Kasca. Picture taken after the bombing of the UN building in Baghdad. Read more:round
, Happy
, Anniversary
, News round
, Happy Anniversary
News round-up: The Warmest Winter Ever! 2007-03-18 01:21:00 Hey, I was not wrong with my observations in my rumble about climate change! News got out this has been the warmest winter ever. Globally!NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reported that during the past century, global temperatures have increased at about 0.11 degrees per decade. But that increase has been three times larger since 1976. NOAA said the combined land and ocean temperatures for December through February this year were 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average since record keeping began in 1880...You watch what that will do to developing countries who are already struggling with drought and flooding every year!Maybe now is time to think if that Kyoto Treaty should not be signed after all! Foto credit: WFP/Mahamane Goni Boulama Read more:round
, News round
Rumble: The Russians Are Back in Afghanistan! 2007-03-19 10:37:00 (Shortly after the Northern Alliance chased the Taliban from Kabul)We are driving in a convoy from Bagram airport to the capital. There is a huge traffic jam, as one of the bridges on the road was bombed, and a tank is stuck in the middle of the by-pass. There are probably twenty Russian military trucks in front of us. I get out of the car, and see they are all from Emercom, the Russian Emergency services.I find their convoy leader and joke: "So, you Russians
are back in Afghanistan
, hey? Let's hope you will be more successful than last time you guys were here! Hahaha". They did not think it was funny. More stories on this site related to Afghanistan, you find here.
Frequenty Asked Questions 2007-01-04 10:33:00 A summary of questions people regularly ask me:Q: Who are you, where do you live?A: While I am still figuring out who I am, this can help you as a generic introduction:I was trained as a graphical engineer, first worked in a digital graphics research company, then did my civil service (I am a conscientious objector so I refused to go to the army) working at a University where I did software development. Later I moved into computers and networking, and systems' management. My last 'normal' job was working for an international company who manages the worldwide financial transactions between banks. In 1993, it all changed. More on that, you can read here. Since 1994, I have an international aid worker.In my spare time, I sail, ski, read, write and am ham (a radio amateur - ON6TT)."Where I live" is more difficult to define. If "home is where the heart is", then my home is definitively in Belgium with my family, my three girls: Tine, my wife and our daughters Lana (12) and Hannah (10).Bu
News: 19 cents to feed a child for a day. 2006-01-01 10:19:00 I received a lot of queries about the 19 cents it costs to feed a child
a day. Here is some background info:1/ Question: Part of what programme does that figure come from?Answer: That figure comes from the WFP School Feeding Programme. As much as 'feeding the hungry' is a short term solution to the 'hunger issue', 'proper education' is one of the pillars for a longer term solution to the problem of poverty (and 'hunger' as a result of it).To encourage kids to come to school in developing countries, WFP provides them with a free meal.2/ Question: How is the figure calculated. It can not be that low, can it?I asked a WFP expert. Here is herAnswer:It is an average that was calculated in 2000, by simply taking all that WFP spent on school feeding programs by country and dividing it by the number of beneficiaries and then by an estimated average number of school days per year (we used 180). It was across all countries and all types of school feeding (just school breakfast or snacks,
Rumble: What Have You Done Today to Make You Feel Proud? 2007-03-21 09:12:00 Warning: Don't read this post, unless if you are either:- a dreamer- an idealist- a sentimental fool- a humanitarian aid or development worker(Hmm, I guess I qualify for all of the above).Are you ready for this? Ok, here we go...1. "Have You Made a Difference Today
"?I once had a boss in Uganda, who said: "Every day, we -humanitarians- need to ask ourselves 'Have I made a difference today?' Unless if your answer is 'Yes', it was a lost day."This stuck to me. Not only for work, but also for life in general.2. Even More So:Life gives us a lot. It is my belief we need to give back at least as much as we get from life. By changing or influencing the lives of those around us. Not just family, friends. Not just our loved ones. Add our colleagues at work. And people we meet occasionally. We *can* have a positive impact in the lives of those we interact with. Even if it was just a little. Even if it was just for a second. But it does make a difference. Even if it was just a well-meant 'Th Read more:Proud
Rumble: The Adventures of Rageh in Iran 2007-03-20 08:08:00 Talking about Bagram airport in my previous post... One time I met this guy at Bagram. His face was familiar. Even when he introduced himself as Rageh Omaar, that did not ring a bell... Until I saw his companion pulling out a camera with the BBC logo on it... (Sometimes I am hopeless, ha!). He is one of those guys with a very open face, and a very positive aura around him. Something you can not say about all TV personalities and anchors unfortunately.Here is an excellent BBC video from Rageh about life in Teheran. Take a cup of coffee (make that an Xtra Large Latte with sugar for me, please!), or tea, sit back, relax and watch this video. It lasts for 90 minutes, but it is worth it. Views like a movie, I find.... So, Ladies and Gentlemen, the movie tonight is about "Life in Teheran, in Iran, slightly behind the scenes, but surely behind the Western news headlines". Enjoy.(no, I said Xtra Large please!)It was nice to hear this Persian accent again. It has been such a long time. Feels li Read more:Adventures
Rumble: So You Want to Change the World, hey? 2007-03-22 13:15:00 It seems my 30-line post, comparing the cost of the war in Iraq with the cost to feed a child, raised a bit of a stir. About 8,000 people came to read it, after it was posted on digg.com ... On Digg only, there were almost 300 comments (here). The comments are an interesting read.. It makes me think "we still have a long way to go",... if we want to change the world !... Read more:Change
, World
The Adventures of Little Herman in Kosovo 2007-03-21 13:58:00 Story subtitle: First impressions are often right…Pristina, Kosovo. March 2000.For months, we have been looking for a qualified electrician, to maintain our generators in this ‘land of no electricity’. We finally found an excellent resume via the UN Volunteers Programme: an Indian fella, called Herman
….First impression: “Kinda funny name for an Indian. Hmmm..”Second impression: He did not show up for his first day at work. Last week, we received an email from the UN office in New Delhi stating “We have a person called Herman here, who was to report for duty in your office. We regret to inform you, he was denied access to the Swissair flight out of Delhi. He will try again tomorrow”. Hmmm..Today he finally arrived. He is a skinny guy, our Herman. He speaks in nervous chunks of English, with a heavy accent. I mean REAL heavy. I thought for a minute I misunderstood him when he mumbled this was his first time ever outside of India. The resume we received from UNV, stated t Read more:Adventures
Rumble: The Atlantic, Chagcharan and Eva Cassidy 2007-03-23 08:19:00 I dropped Lana at the railway station this morning, came back home, took a cup of coffee, and sat in front of the computer. Got some inspiration at sunrise again. Wanted to write a piece about 'how to become an aidworker', and about something in Afghanistan. The iPod played some random music and stumbled upon Eva Cassidy
. In a flash, everything around me stopped, and the music pulled me back four months when we were racing across the Atlantic delivering a sailing yacht, the Persuader Too, from the UK to the British Virgin Islands.Eva Cassidy
. About the only music both Pete, my watch mate, and I liked. Most of the other stuff I played on the boat -I have a weird music taste, I agree-, Pete did not digg. And vice versa... But Eva Cassidy, we did agree upon.So often, when we had the sunrise watch, we became close friends with Eva. In thoughts... Her music playing through the speakers on deck. A nice stiff breeze filling our sails. The pitch dark night disappearing and the sun climbing u
Tips & Tricks: Text in a Frame 2006-03-23 09:18:00 If you are "HTML-challenged" like I am, even something simple like...displaying a text in a shaded frame... can be a problem.And yet, it is very simple using an HTML "table".The code for the box above is:<table cellspacing="10" cellpadding="10" bgcolor="#cccccc" border="1"><tbody><tr><td><p> displaying a text in a shaded frame </p></td></tr></tbody></table>This table will adapt to the width of the text, and will have the text automatically wrap inside the box.It might look a bit complicated, but it is not, really. Actually, this is already a table with more than the minimum variables !<table cellspacing="10" cellpadding="10" bgcolor="#cccccc" border="1">is the table definition with:- "cellspacing" defines the space (in pixels) between the table and the other elements on your page- "cellpadding" is the space (in pixels) between the table outer border and the contents- "bgcolor" is the hex value of the background (more on Read more:Frame
Rumble: In Need of Inspiration? 2007-03-01 21:43:00 For the YouTube videos:Click once on the icon to activate it, and once to play the video2006 Walk the World Viral Video Contest winner(video courtesy of www.fighthunger.org)"The Logistics of Feeding 100 Million People"(video courtesy www.wfp.org)"HIV/AIDS is a KILLER"(video courtesy Alistair Cook) Read more:Inspiration
What's in a Gesture? 2007-03-01 17:04:00 Dubai, Terminal 2. Early in the Morning... Very early in the morning.I present my passport at the immigration counter. The immigration officer does not speak much of English, and for a couple of minutes flips the pages of my passport over from the left to the right, and back again, and again, and again. He attentively reads all the different visas, and mumbles to himself. He looks up, as to check where his supervisor is, does not see him, and goes back to flipping the pages.Me: "Excuse me, anything wrong?Him: He answers with the (gesture): the fingers folded together, pointing upwards, and slowly moving his hand up and down.I often go to Italy, and that (gesture) means as much as "what the ^^%%** are you talking about?" or "What the ^^%%** do you want?". So I get upset, right? I mean, it is rather rude. I raise my voice a pitch.Me: "Excuse me, I am asking you if there is anything wrong with my passport?"Him: (Gesture
) again. He mumbles something in Arabic, which I do not understand, a
Rumble: Know Your World! 2007-03-27 19:23:00 (Peter on his soapbox)How well do we know our world? This video makes me doubt! :-) Some hints: Germany is NOT part of the Axis of Evil. Kofi Anan is NOT a drink. A mosque is NOT an animal. The West Bank is NOT in New York. And there is only one Eiffel tower in Paris!So you think you know your world? Try this out: a puzzle map of the Middle East .(thanks for the link, Ekram!) Read more:World
Rumble: "Honey, I Forgot Something at Home!" 2007-03-26 17:09:00 We once had a Canadian snow clearing team working in the real remote areas of Afghanistan. They were camping in tents, isolated from the rest of the world. Every day they would go up the mountains with snowscooters to clear avalanges with explosives, so the food convoys could continue to come through the mountain passes. One day, they emailed us this picture, with no text. Still the message was clear!Picture: Jean-Philipe Bourgeois
Rumble: A "Blind Witness" Report of the Fighting in Kinshasa 2007-03-28 11:18:00 MF, a dear friend of mine, works for OCHA in the Democratic Republic of Congo, based in Kinshasa. This is her story about the fighting last week, as described in an email to her friends:Dear all, I (we) have gone through “sheer hell” these past few days. We knew something was in the making. As I was driving to work on Thursday morning, I saw the UN Mission (MONUC) soldiers had reinforced their troops around Bemba’s house (he is the former vice president who also happens to have lost the first democratic elections last year). Bemba is also the man behind last August's fighting and the continued recurrence of violence last fall. Luckily for me, I had to go to the Chinese Embassy to get my visa for the big trip of my life. On my way back to the office, I realised that Bemba’s troops (we recognise them with their red bandannas) and the Government troops were positioning themselves to start fighting. It was eerie. People were fleeing, by foot and by the hundreds. I thought: "I am Read more:Blind
, Witness
, Fighting
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