The least laid plans escalate the easiest.

I’m going to go to Maynamar (Burma) with my friend Phil, and I’m leaving in two weeks time. Just going there as a tourist is ethically controversial - see Tourism Concern and Lonely Planet for both sides of the story. I have been persuaded that it is OK to go for two main reasons:

• Aung San Suu Kyi, the charasmatic pro-democracy leader, told tourists not to go to Myanmar a few years ago. However, other members of her party the NLD have said that they think travel there is good, as it opens up communications lines with the outside world.
  • Nowdays you can travel in Myanmar, but spend very little money at government-owned places.

Since deciding to go, my plans have escalated somewhat. First I decided that whilst I’m in the area, I may as well go to Vietnam as well. By that point I was planning to go for two months, so I figured I may as well give up my room here in Cambridge, leaving myself free to travel for longer if I’m enjoying myself. I’d like to make it to China.

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Been busy this week catching up with things. Done some work on the Think Twice conference website. You can now find transcripts of the talks from the last conference.

On Monday I made a CD with a Windows installer for Mozilla on and a local copy of the Cambridge Oxfam Group website. Chris, one of the group members, is taking on the website from me. Actually, I stopped updating the site, and when you give things up, if they are important other people do come along to take them on. On Monday evening I showed him how to use Mozilla composer, so now he can update the site. Hopefully he’ll become adventurous and put a bit more imagination into it than I have!

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Pete, the excellent Half-head challenge chief poobah and bean counter, has finally got to the end of working out how much money we made in September by shaving our heads in half down the middle.

Pete says… “In the end, we raised a rather large £1333.73 to split between the Big Issue Foundation and Jimmy’s NightShelter, so sincere thanks to everyone who either sponsored myself, Guy,Francis or Pete, or donated online, or donated on the day, or generally helped out with any of the organising bits and pieces. Even better - after Gift Aid (which allows the charities involved to recoup from the government 28.5% of money donated if the person donating the money gave their permission), the total rockets up to over £1600! Excellent stuff!”

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Hello! I’m in a cool, chilled internet cafe in Accra (capital of Ghana) at the moment, catching up on the news from the BBC website. It’s the end of the trip, and I don’t feel too physically exhausted, mainly because we’ve managed to get plenty of sleep. I’m sipping Mirinda, a fizzy backcurrant drink.

Even though phyiscally I’m not too tired, mentally I’m exhausted. We’ve travelled all over Ghana, from the colonial slave forts on the coast, to the remote village of Funsi in the Upper West Region, and back. My digital camera is bursting with over 200 photos, and my mind is full of lots of new things. If I can work out how to organise it all I’ll write a separate trip account next week…

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Well, I’ve spent all week in a mild state of packing stress, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything now, and it’s all packed. It’s noticeable that the only things I’ve got which I like were recommended to me by someone. So in return…

Some items that I would recommend: Travel towel (they’re much smaller, and seem really good), Teva sandals (Terra Firma, recommended to me by Ben, thanks Ben!), shaving oil (it rules, a tiny bottle lasts forever, and I think it’s a nicer shave than overly-visible, but underly-useful foam).

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I’ve been away round the UK visiting friends and family last week and the start of this, and have just got back. This evening I met up with Stuart and Graham in London for a planning meeting on Ghana. We leave early Saturday morning.

I’ve read all the instructions on my digital camera (thanks everyone from Creature Labs for giving it to me!), have a spare set of batteries, so perhaps I can upload some pictures here from Accra, or else I’ll do a proper write-up afterwards.

Last Wednesday I went to visit Microrobotics as part of my research into co-operative businesses. This one being particularly relevant to me as it is high tech. Their website describes it as “employee-owned”, which is accurate, although there is lots of interesting history to this. Karl kindly explained it to me, and there are some much more gritty lessons than I got from the CCDA the week before.

A summary and some interesting things:

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Last night the Think Twice nameservers and DNS transferred from Easily (where it was inelegantly forwarding to part of some Demon webpages) to a new account at Pepperfish. This means we can have mailing lists and things, when Daniel sorts them out (thanks Daniel!). Pepperfish rules.

Think Twice was a really good conference this year, and I recommend you go if you’re in Cambridge next spring. OK, even if you’re not. Mark was busily making some flyers for fresher’s fair this week. The conference date is Saturday 22 March 2003, and it’s on the general topic of social justice. What that actually means is that it’s about social injustice, and more importantly about what anyone can do about it. Rather than just whinging.

OK, I’ve decided not to write up my visit to Windhorse Trading as I don’t have enough of a journalistic angle on it, and the trail has gone cold. It’s a Buddhist warehouse business on the outskirts of Cambridge which I had a tour of a couple of weeks ago.

I am interested in it because it is a different form of ethical business. The ethics here comes direct from religious need and experience; in many ways the place is more of a monastry than part of the capitalist system. There are no laws to the ethics of Windhorse, instead they have belief which informs the taking of right-action in the world.

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This week I did some more work at Ravenbrook, and I’m doing more next week. On the shelves there (or perhaps it was Zoonami’s, who they share an office with) I found an excellent book called Creative Company by Andy Law, about an advertising agency in London which turned into a co-operative, equally owned by everyone who works there.

On Wednesday, Mark organised a planning meeting for next year’s Think Twice conference. Last year’s conference had excellent speakers, and was a brilliant day. However, Mark would like the next one to turn more people into action, to actually assert their democratic power. Rather than just whinging.

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