Facebook v MySpace v Facebook v Microsoft

a couple of good articles re Facebook and MySpace from CNN Money:

Facebook CEO visits Seattle, Microsoft schemes

and

As Facebook takes off, MySpace strikes back

From the Facebook article

This year Facebook apparently expects to make $30m profit on $150m revenue [if this number is right it surprises me; the margin is far lower than I would have expected - but then they're presumably investing heavily in infrastructure / development / scaling]

A good quote:

Facebook is the closest thing the world has to a next-generation Internet, one structured not around Web sites but around people. In the Facebook topology, every data source or service is defined by who else is using it.

The company has, in a crude way, solved the critical problem of Internet identity. Each member's profile is tantamount to their personal Web site, which defines who you are, who you know, what you are interested in, and what you are doing now.

Another good quote re Facebook's potential to advertisers:

Facebook may be the best place yet for marketers to experiment with these new techniques. Unlike its bigger rival MySpace, Facebook's individual profile information is intended to represent a real person precisely and accurately. So by investing in Facebook, Microsoft - or Google or another intrepid company

And on Zuckerman v Gates: who is the nicer person?

It may also be worth quite a few hundred million for any company to get into bed with Mark Zuckerberg.

I have gotten to know him a bit in recent months. He is the closest thing to Bill Gates I've seen since the original. Not only does he have natural gifts for programming, leadership, and marketing - traits that served Gates well in Microsoft's first couple decades. He also, like his industry predecessor, seems mostly driven by a conviction that what he is doing will make the world a better place.

The money will come to him, as it did to Gates, not because he seeks it but as a byproduct of finding effective ways to help society move forward using software.

His focus is extraordinary. What's more, he is a nicer person than is Gates.

It would behoove any company to keep him close. His thinking about the importance and role of what he calls the "social graph" - the network of relationships that underlies a social network - is subtle and unselfish.

And from the MySpace article
"Everyone believes all the b.s. press that says MySpace is done for and Facebook has passed us," moans Tom Anderson.

Now there's starting to be real money in the business, as every major consumer advertiser realizes that if you can engage effectively with these newly networked hordes, they become agents of your brand. Last year MySpace was on the lips of every teenager. Now Facebook is growing faster, is usurping the buzz, and thus has Tom Anderson tied into knots.

But defensiveness does not behoove executives who run a division of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's consummately aggressive company - especially not when that division is the biggest player by far in an explosively expanding business like social networking.

I haven't been on top of the stats and had no idea the numbers were so extreme:

MySpace is the most trafficked website in the U.S.: It registered 45 billion page views in July, according to comScore Media Metrix. Another research firm, Compete.com, calculates that Americans spend about 12% of all their Internet time there.

MySpace v Facebook

Comparing MySpace and Facebook is inevitable because of their dominance in the business, but their differences are profound.

Facebook is intended to be used only to connect you to the people you already know offline; it's a "utility," to use the preferred label of its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Its user interface is clean and tidy, and the whole vibe is efficiency and getting things done.

MySpace, on the other hand, is a mishmash of modern media - rich with music and video and comedy. It's like a rock & roll club - chaotic, loud, and packed. Many user profiles are florid and flamboyant, with flashing text and music that starts playing as soon as you arrive.

Myspace has much bigger ad revenue - this year at least

The research firm eMarketer calculates that in 2007, MySpace will sell $525 million worth of advertising, 58% of the social-networking industry's total. (Facebook will sell $125 million - less than a quarter as much.) One huge upcoming opportunity, says DeWolfe, is ad-supported MySpace on mobile phones.

The platform

In late May, Facebook announced it would open up its site and access to its 41 million members - to software created by anyone, from the largest software companies to dorm-room hackers. That made it, Zuckerberg said, a "platform." There are now more than 4,000 new applications on Facebook - and most of the popular ones replicate features already on MySpace.

Any talk about Facebook and its platform is a great way to spoil the mood around the MySpace offices. It's that defensiveness again. "MySpace has always been a platform," DeWolfe insists. "We have an open platform." What he means is that MySpace allows small software applications, known as "widgets," to appear on the site.

The Rupert anecdote

Murdoch visits the hipster-filled headquarters at least once a month, peppering DeWolfe with questions about membership numbers and sign-up rates. In early 2006, DeWolfe enthusiastically told him that MySpace was about to open its first international site, in Britain.

"I was so excited about it," says DeWolfe. "And he's like [mimicking a deep slow Australian voice], 'How many more this year?' and I said, 'Maybe a couple more.' Then he said, 'How about 12?' So we ended up opening 14." )

Anderson has his own Rupert stories: "He called me once and couldn't log in for some reason. I was trying to help him over the phone, saying, 'Type this. Type that. What do you see on your screen?' And he says, 'It says, 'Welcome John.' And I'm like, 'John? Why does it say John?' and he says [affecting his own version of the deep, slightly cranky voice], 'I don't use my real name on MySpace.'"

Are the MySpace dream team about to jump?

So how is it really going, Chris and Tom? "That this has worked out so well and we both hope to be around for a long time is, I think, a really unique story," expounds DeWolfe, as Anderson nods. "We're almost at our two-year anniversary with News Corp. and we're probably going to sign up for another two years, and ..."

Wait a minute. Probably? When pressed, he looks sheepish.

"I don't know," he says, glancing nervously at his PR person. He hesitates. "We may stay with the company." MySpace's top two employees have spent several months negotiating a renewal of their two-year contract, and it's not a sure thing. They didn't own much stock in the parent company that News Corp. acquired, so for all their successes they have not had a big Internet payout.

The two have reportedly pushed for a $50 million, two-year pact and encountered resistance. To be fair, there is every sign they are deeply engaged in their work and are unlikely to leave. DeWolfe's hesitation in our interview could merely be a negotiating tactic.

fun for high-end geeks - Kevin Rose Kool Kit

This video has found its way to YouTube - it's an in-joke video about Digg founder Kevin Rose. Startups must have way too much time and money on their hands in Silicon Valley. In a scary way this sortof feels like a signal that the good times are coming to an end - like the infamous 99/00 launch parties.

Funny Games - NYT interview with Haneke

I've blogged before about how curious I am about the new Michael Haneke film - an English-language remake of Funny Games.

The NYT has this weekend published an in-depth interview with Haneke about Funny Games and much more. I still have absolutely no idea whether the remake of Funny Games will be brilliant or is a horrible lapse in judgment by Haneke.

The decision to remake his signature work in America with an A-list cast caused considerable controversy among hardcore cinephiles, not least because of Haneke’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s most outspoken critics. Haneke was quick to defend himself. “Of course I’m a critic of the studio system,” he said, as if it were unthinkable not to be. “But that doesn’t mean that one can’t work within that system. ‘Funny Games’ was always made with American audiences in mind, since its subject is Hollywood’s attitude toward violence.

When I asked whether the average American moviegoer was likely to appreciate having his attitude adjusted, Haneke-style, the director thought for a moment, then threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What’s different about my films is this: I’m trying to rape the viewer into independence.”

“Funny Games” occupies a unique place in Haneke’s body of work, not least because of his decision to shoot it twice. “Originally, I approached Michael about optioning ‘Funny Games’ for some other director,” Chris Coen, the film’s producer, told me. “And Michael’s reply was that he’d do it himself, but only if I could get Naomi Watts for the lead. I hadn’t thought about him wanting to do it, to be honest. But he said very clearly that ‘Funny Games’ was the one film of his that he’d allow no one else to direct.” Hollywood has a long and hallowed tradition of buying the rights to art-house hits and refashioning them to suit its own ends — in fact, the director Ron Howard recently acquired the rights to Haneke’s “Caché” — but Haneke’s decision to remake his own film surprised fans and colleagues alike. The peculiarity of the project seems to have been part of its appeal. “To my knowledge, no one has ever remade his own film so precisely,” the director told me in Vienna, with an unmistakable trace of boyish pride. “The new version is the same film superficially, of course, but it’s also very different: a different atmosphere, different performances, a different end result. That in and of itself is interesting.”

Watching both versions of “Funny Games” back to back is especially revealing of Haneke’s skill. Though the dialogue, framing and sequence of shots are identical, the end result is remarkably different: Michael Pitt, the other of the family’s tormentors, brings a disconcerting sweetness to his role; Tim Roth emotes where Ulrich Mahe endured stoically; and Watts herself infuses her character’s suffering with a sexuality that Susanne Lothar, perhaps intentionally, kept at a definite remove.

Haneke’s sudden prominence, and the unfailingly extreme subject matter of his films, has led to comparisons with Quentin Tarantino, with John Woo and with the directors of the so-called Asian Extreme movement, but Haneke himself sees little common ground. “I saw ‘Pulp Fiction,’ of course, and it’s a very well done film,” he said. “The problem, as I see it, is with its comedy — there’s a danger there, because the humor makes the violence consumable. Humor of that kind is all right, even useful, as long as the viewer is made to think about why he’s laughing. But that’s something ‘Pulp Fiction’ fails to do.” When I mentioned Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” another film that “Funny Games” has been compared with, Haneke shrugged. “Stone made the same mistake that Kubrick made. I use that film to illustrate a principle to my students — you can’t make an antifascist statement using fascist methods.”

Bizarre - Kerry heckler tasered

A heckler at a speech by John Kerry in Florida has been tasered - Kerry described the incident as a "good healthy discussion" that was "interrupted" by Andrew Meyer being arrested and Tasered by police!

In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way," Kerry said in a statement. "I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of responding when he was taken into custody."

"I was not aware that a taser was used until after I left the building," he continued. "I hope that neither the student nor any of the police were injured. I regret enormously that a good healthy discussion was interrupted."

See also
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3617810

Meander Falls

M and I went to Tasmania for the weekend for some hiking.

Had a great time on Saturday hiking to Meander Falls. Beautiful scenery, a challenging hike and we had the track almost totally to ourselves... after 2 1/2 hours of hiking we bumped into a few people, then didn't see anyone else the rest of the day.

And I had an awesome time driving the ute the hire-car company gave me instead of the small car I'd requested!

The Chaser's War on Everything - APEC

Finally got around to watching last week's The Chaser's War on Everything, including their infamous infilitration of security at APEC in the guise of being Canadian.

Funny stuff.

Washington Post article on Moby Media / Tolo

Long and interesting article in Friday's Washington Post about Moby Media / Tolo, largely comprising an interview with Saad Mohseni. The article is entitled Reaching His Prime Time in Afghanistan / Murdoch-Like Magnate Builds Media Empire - and it endeavours to draw analogies between Saad and Rupert Murdoch.

They say it's a mark of independence when everyone thinks you're on the other person's side; by that measure it looks like Moby is pretty independent....

A few quotes:

In some ways, Mohseni, 41, is the Rupert Murdoch of Afghanistan.

Not only is he an entrepreneurial media lord with Australian roots who buys his soap operas from Murdoch's Indian Star TV network, his programming has been criticized as sensational, lowbrow and corruptive to the culture -- much as Fox's "The Simpsons" was panned when it hit the U.S. airwaves. And, like many of Murdoch's programs, Mohseni's are wildly popular. Both points of view came through in interviews on the streets of Kabul this week.

We are mindful of the mullahs and clerics," Mohseni said during his Washington visit. He said that his network is the only one that the Taliban talks to, because it is seen as unbiased, yet it also broadcasts Afghanistan's most popular -- and Western-style -- entertainment programs. Tolo even had a dustup with the Afghan attorney general this year that resulted in some staff members being arrested and briefly detained.

"You can kick-start social change with TV," Mohseni said.

Like many expatriate Afghans with a plan, Mohseni came to Kabul after the U.S.-led invasion loosened the Taliban's turn-back-the-clock grip on Afghanistan's business, technological and cultural life.

Mohseni is the son of an Afghan diplomat who was stationed in Tokyo when the Russians invaded his country in 1979. His father resigned his post, moved his family to Melbourne, Australia, (coincidentally, Murdoch's hometown) and settled down.

Mohseni dropped out of college and sped to the business world, becoming first an investment banker in Australia. When that proved too tame, he moved to Uzbekistan in the mid-'90s, as that country was flexing its capitalistic muscles after decades of Soviet control, and became a commodities trader.

After a few years in Central Asia, and a cultural reconnection with other expat Afghans there, Mohseni headed back to Australia looking for opportunity. It came in the wake of the U.S. military response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks . With no media background, Mohseni was not specifically looking to start a media business when he hit the ground in Kabul, but that's where he found the market gap.

By March 2003, Mohseni and his two brothers had launched Afghanistan's first privately run radio station, Arman FM, with their own money and a $228,000 grant from USAID. When Mohseni started Tolo in 2004, USAID kicked in another $2.1 million. The Mohseni brothers say they have so far invested more than $6 million of their own money.

Michael Wolff strikes again

Michael Wolff, the author of Burn Rate (a notorious and bitchy account of life as the founder of an unsuccessful Internet startup) and an excellent and highly experienced journalist, writes in the latest Vanity Fair about newser.com, a news startup which is apparently endeavouring to create a new paradigm in news and in which Wolff has a stake and is involved.

Here's another quirky advantage of the Internet (or, depending, serious disadvantage) and Internet news: people are willing to work for less and, even, for free. That's one result of the Internet's utopianism, that you're doing something of higher purpose, and of the myth of sweat equity, that you're working for future, fabulous riches (which sometimes you are).

Oddly, talking about the plasticity of the Internet, about the possibilities for utopia and riches, actually makes things happen. Somehow something comes into existence. While Google and its creepy form of corporatism dominate this Web era, there are now, given off-the-shelf "solutions" (meaning cheap equipment and cheap, pre-written software), more garage and dorm-room operations than there have ever been (one of which, perhaps sooner rather than later, will challenge Google). Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg's dorm-room companions continue to sue him over the ownership of Facebook because they claim it grew out of more than just idle dorm-room chat. (For the purposes of full disclosure: my financial interest in my hypothetical newspaper is about the same as that of Zuckerberg's roommates in Facebook—I will settle, if big money is made, for a small retirement home on the beach in East Hampton.)

The last few weeks

Life since we arrived back in Melbourne has been crazy. Settling back in, the Melbourne Film Festival, work busy-ness, M's mother getting hit by a car. Anyway, lots of stuff. Still a few travel summaries to come, but snippets follow:

Films
- Black Snake Moan is pretty good. I mean not good as in a good film, but good as in lots of fun.
- A Dirty Carnival is a classic Korean gangster film. It reminded me a little of Number 3, the first Korean film I ever saw. Over-long but definitely worth seeing
- Triple Dare, a Danish film about 3 teenage girls coming of age via a ritual they make u involving daring each other to perform various sex acts is even better than it sounds.
- Teeth is terrifying but good

Computer
My new 24 inch high-def Dell screen rules. Although I'm not sure I yet have the resolution or colour settings quite right.

Photos
Check out my Flickr and Photobucket accounts for preliminary travel photos. More to come.

Lost in Beijing - MIFF

A few more posts coming to round out my blog on our (amazing, incredible) 8 week trip, but we're now back and I'm into the Melbourne Film Festival for the 18th consecutive year.

My first film this year was Lost in Beijing - a Chinese film set in contemporary Beijing and showing off the city to full effect (though I didn't see streets as empty as those shown in the film when I was there last week!). The stock plot revolves around a young couple and an older couple. Through a plot device the younger woman has sex with the older man. She also has sex with her husband. She becomes pregnant. The older couple have no children as the wife is infertile. Who is the father of the younger woman's baby? (dramatic music plays)

Actually there is much to like in the film. Apart from the older woman, the acting is good. Tony Leung (the older man) is excellent as always. The film really does give a sense of life in contemporary Beijing and some of the scenes (particularly the sex scenes and the birth scene) feel particularly 'real'. Horrible camerawork.

7.5 out of 10.

Beijing

Another short one.  Having a great time in Beijing, being shown great hospitality by K.

 

Great Wall yesterday - absolutely amazing, a tourist attraction that lives up to the hype.

 

Awesome peking duck.  Great Iranian food last night.

 

Shopping and massages today.

 

Forbidden City and Tiannanmen tomorrow.

Portofino

It already feels like a long time ago, but last Thursday afternoon we took the train from Levanto to Santa Margherita (spelling?) then walked to Portofino.  SM is a very resorty seaside town.  Portofino is a few kilometres away and is a very exclusive port attracting an international crowd of yachties, playboys and wannabes.  And us.  The walk from SM is boring in parts, but most of it is beautiful and meanders past some amazing clifftop houses.

 

When we arrived we sat at a bar on the harbour for a drink with all the other beautiful people, then went for dinner.  Again with all the beautiful people, except for the woman with the scary plastic surgery at the next table.  Then the best pistacchio gelati I'm ever likely to eat. 

 

All followed by a long, painful train ride back to Levanto.

 

Portofino had the most amazing selection of shops - pretty much every top-end designer name had its own shop there, even though probably only a few hundred people live in the village.  The harbour is extraordinarily pretty and absolutely crammed with boats.  The town square is very pretty also.  Overall a good but slightly surreal experience.

Amsterdam

I still need to blog about Portofino, but right now M and I are staying with D & K in Amsterdam.  They have a beautiful huge and light apartment in the 9 streets; very central.  A great dinner last night at Nomads - a north african feast - then a wander through the central city and the red light district.  Off to Bruge for the weekend.

Cinque Terre

A few great days in the Cinque Terre, staying in Levanto. 

 

Walked from Levanto to Riomaggiore on Tuesday - about 7 1/2 hours.  The walk from Levanto to Monterosso was fantastic - far less busy than the 'cinque terre trail'.  We saw only a few people and it was very beautiful and a fantastic start to the day.  From Monterosso to Vernazza and Vernazza to Corniglia were great walks (very hilly!), Corniglia to Manarola and Manarola to Riomaggiore are nowhere near as interesting. 

 

Levanto, where we were staying, is 1 town further along than the cinque terre.  An italian-style seaside resort - the beach was pretty crappy (at least to Australian eyes) but the europeans all seemed to love it.

 

Tuesday night we had a fantastic pizza right on the Vernazza waterfront.  An amazing view and a fantastic evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucca

Our travels roll on.  We are now in the beautiful Tuscan town of Lucca and looking forward to exploring.

We spent the weekend with A & F in Florence at their fantastic new(ish) apartment near Piazza Santa Croce.  An amazing location.  It's great seeing A in her home environment - it's been more than 6 years now she's been in Florence.  M and I did much wandering around Florence's streets and taking in the atmosphere and had a great dinner at a local Osteria with A & F.

Dinner in Panzano on Thursday night was an experience - the local celebrity butcher (!) has opened a very trendy restaurant which has a set menu of 6 meat courses.  A & F drove down and we all had a fantastic meal in the little town. 

Also this week we visited so many places - Montepulciano, Montelcino, St Gimingano ... the list continues.  Tuscany has many, many beautiful towns.  And some great hiking quite near our base in Lucolena.

It was incredibly rejuvanating settling into a base for a week - the constant packing and unpacking is very draining.  Our little farmhouse was cute and a great base to see the Chianti region and Tuscany more generally.

Chianti

As you will have read, we are presently in siena for the Palio. 

 

We are staying in a little farmhouse in the Chianti Classico region of Tuscany, near a little village called Lucolena.  Lucolena has a few hundred people, a shop and a pizzeria which is fantastic but is open only 3 nights a week.  It is an agricultural village.  We are very lucky - our little farmhouse is very cute and recently renovated and has its own cute little garden with an amazing outlook over tuscan hills.  The satellite TV is eccentric.  2 channels of Al Jazeera, Algerian TV, Abu Dhabi TV, Syrian TV, lots of shopping, an arabic childrens channel, Azerbaijan TV and so very many more.  500 plus channels of TV and radio.  2 channels in english.  BBC International and Bloomberg.

 

In fact the views everywhere are incredible.  We are getting sick of telling eachother to look at the view - they are always good.

 

Food is great.  Pizza, pasta, cheese, bread, olive oil, tomatoes, wine, pastries and so much good coffee.  I had better not get started on the coffee or I will never stop. 

 

So far we've visited Panzano (for an arts festival), Greve, Arezzo, Cortona - and a number of small towns whose names presently escape me.  Such a beautiful part of the world.

 

 

Early post on the Palio

Am in Siena at the Palio - the famous bareback horse race. 

 

It just finished a few minutes ago and was raced and won in sensational circumstances.  There were numerous false starts - the horses simply would not line up in formation.  The race itself was sensational - 3 very very fast laps around the Piazza del Campo on the dirt track.  The end was amazing - green-and-white (GAW) was winning easily but blue was catching up fast.  To M and I it looked like GAW held on for the win.  And GAW fans certainly celebrated.  When the winner's flag was raised, however, blue had won.  Much emotion from green and much jumping up and down and celebrating from blue fans (including many standign near us).  After protests, however, GAW was reinstated as the winner.  It appeared a popular decision overall, but led to much emotion in the blue quarter.  I write this in the blue part of town, and there are many tears and much emotion.  Children and adults are openly weeping in the streets.  The mood is sort of ugly.

 

The horse I was backing - pink and yellow - lost its rider about halfway through the race.

 

An amazing experience. 

 

Perugia and Assisi

Today we visited Assisi - home of St Francis of ...

A beautiful, hilly town with an incredible, massive basilica and shops selling some of the crappiest souvenirs imaginable.  Though I did pick up a very nice St Francis snowdome.  And we ate absolutely spectacularly good pasta.

This afternoon Perugia's huge and impresive gallery of Umbrian art.  Housed in an incredible 13th century building and with more paintings of Madonna-and-Child than you can poke a stick at.

Tonight great pizza and a stroll around the beautiful streets of Perugia.

travel fatigue

One month in.

11 beds.
packed and re-packed my luggage 11 times-
most of my clothes are now stained and/or faded from over-vigorous washing.  And I am sick of the sight of all of them anyway.

Nevertheless having an awesome time.

today in italy

A long logistics day today.  Get up at 4.30, drive to Rhodes Airport, flight to Athens, flight to Rome, train to Rome Central, wait an hour and three-quarters then a 2 and a half hour train to Perugia then a bus then a walk to the hotel.  We made it.  Eventually.

We are now in Perugia - the capital of Umbria and a beautiful city/town.  Had a great wander around town earlier and looking forward to food and further exploration shortly.

Gennadi part 2

M and I are having a very greek time of it here on Rhodes.

 

After my last blog post, yesterday evening we drove to Prassonisi - a famous windsurfing and kiteboarding beach where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean.  The beach is wide and windy and the ocean is literally packed with really really good windsurfers and kiteboarders. 

 

Later that night we returned to Gennadi, where we played more backgammon, ate gyro and drank retsina (one of the most unpleasant drinks I've ever tasted - crappy white wine with strong overtones of pinocleen), then continued playing backgammon while drinking ouzo.  I won the backgammon of course.  In accordance with fine Turkish tradition (taught to me whilst losing to K earlier in the week), upon winning I shoved the board under M's arm and suggested we play again once she'd learned to play the game.

 

Today we drove most of the day and saw much of the island, with lunch at a highly recommended (but unimpressive-looking) fish restaurant called Lucas on the harbour in a little port town.  Awesomely fresh.  Rhodes is a beautiful island - once you get out of Rhodes town.  A very quiet and rural place.

 

Italy tomorrow.

what?

What the hell's going on while I'm away from Australia?!?!

I just checked The Age online and John Howard appears to be issuing passionate emotional appeals about Aboriginal welfare - using Hurricane Katrina metaphors. Weird!

Drop

We shared our 3 night cruise in Turkey with 11 dutchmen. We discovered (painfully) the Dutch obsession with Drop - foul-tasting dutch licorice.

It comes in a variety of forms - from soft to hard and sweet to insanely salty. The soft, sweetish variety is tolerable (but not good). The hard and salty types are beyond bad.

Amazingly enough, among the 11 dutch people on a 1 week holiday they had brought 5 varieties of Drop with them (to make it through those long turkish nights). They were keen to ensure that we tasted all 5 varieties.

Luckily I have a strong stomach and I kept them all down and luckily M is good with people so she avoided the worst few types. The turkish couple on the cruise had neither defence - they were struggling to spit it out before it was too late.

Gennadi and Amos Beach

M and I are presently in Gennadi, a small village on the coast of the Island of Rhodes in Greece. Gennadi (pronounced Yen-adi) is a world away from the horrors of Rhodes Town. It is pretty much unchanged from the first half of the twentieth century, except it's much smaller. More than half of the village's population moved to Australia in the 1950s and the population went from 3,000 at the time of WWII to 650 today. It's a pretty little town with awesome souvlakis and a long pebbly beach (i'm starting to get used to them - i don't think sand has been invented yet in europe). There are few tourists and it is pretty quiet... we're having a great time here.

We are presently caught in a heatwave. In both Turkey and Greece it has been 40 degrees plus for quite a few days now. I saw a thermometer yesterday which had been placed in the shade of a huge tree and it read 41 degrees. Much hotter in direct sun.

M and I are both very brown - me especially. In Turkey people kept talking to me in Turkish and in Greece everyone I meet asks me what part of the country my family is from. I was just told I look like a Greek tv star - I was a little insulted as I'm usually told I look like a film star. As yet no-one has mistaken M for Greek or Turkish.

Turkey was fantastic. Friendly, warm people, sun, beaches (mostly pebbles), backgammon, raki (the national drink - actually it was missable), Efes (the v good local beer), great food and much more. Amos Beach, where we stayed when not on our boat trip, is a beautiful cove near-ish Marmaris.

M's friends K&C - whose holiday house we were staying in - came over from London for a few days and we had a great time hanging out with them. We hired a boat for the day on Saturday and the four of us cruised to a few coves, jumped out of the boat for swims when we were hot and generally had an absolutely fantastic and memorable day. The captain was also memorable. Late 60s, huge white moustache, even bigger smile, so many gold chains it was amazing he could stand up and just a total dude. He thought so too of course - he had a big photo of himself (in slightly younger days and with even funkier hair) up in the boat right next to the wheel. I will post photos of him in due course.

The Kite Runner

Just read The Kite Runner - a novel about a man who had a privileged childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1970s before fleeıng to America after the Soviets invaded.  It returns to Kabul in modern times towards the end.  It ıs beautıfully written by a man who clearly has much affection for hıs homeland - although it ıs a little "neat" for my tastes in the way that all of the threads are wrapped up by the end.  Lıfe tends not to be so neatly packaged.  Thanks to my afghani friend W for the present!