Reading

Here’s a sobering thought. I've now written 14 blog items for (184) Burmese Days over 5 months, and most blogs out there fail to live beyond 6 months; a statistic I'll reinforce because I inadvertently put the length of time into its name.

During those 5 months I have wondered what the demographic of readers might be, or how many people might have read it. That's fun to do, and I can see some statistics, but what has just struck me is how many people couldn't have read it, even if they wanted to.

In the entire world, the number of people with access to the internet is roughly 2.5 billion, leaving more than 4.5 billion people without access, the majority of whom are illiterate women. That’s already a lot of people I've missed out. I appear to be shooting for the rich, educated, male demographic of the world's population, a desperately small and unfair proportion.

Of those who are educated, not everyone speaks English. But, assuming my English writing can be translated to any language via the magic of Her Googleness I don’t have to worry about that number and I can focus instead on the small number of people who have a level of education that stretches beyond 12 years of schooling (i.e. if you started school at 5, then you left school at least aged 17). Without trawling the web for stats, I think we can safely say it isn't very many people at all.

Why 12 years' schooling? Because that's apparently how many years' education you need to understand my blog on the first read without throwing your phone/tablet/laptop/PC out the window, onto the head of a passing pony. I arrived at this figure using the FOG index, which calculates the number of big, bad words you use against the length of your sentences and the banality of your tone. Not really the last one.

This is 6 years more than your average comic book, 4 years more than gossip magazines, and 2 years more than Time magazine. If you haven’t killed any ponies yet then I’d guess you were a bright so and so, and quite above those sniveling Time magaziners. Either that or my calculations are wrong.

This puts it firmly in the “professional business writing” category, which wasn't my intention, and you would rightly scoff at the suggestion. Not many business writers go on about killing ponies.

To reach everyone else, my only option is to walk the streets of the world and shout stuff at everyone, like your local bearded man who you thought was crazy. But now you've got a reason to listen; he’s just trying to maximise his audience. He’s only missing the deaf, the agoraphobic, the infirm elderly, the babies, those who speak different languages, those who ignore him, and those who are at home on the internet reading blogs about Myanmar. And ponies.

Merger

When two objects collide, they ostensibly carry energy with them, whether that’s of the static or kinetic kind, which can be released in different forms. Or something like that, it’s not like I took a great deal of notice in physics lessons; when I was fourteen I was too busy swinging Bowser by the tail. The point is a collision is usually followed with a loud and satisfying BANG. Like running onto a motorway and falling over twice, or accidentally setting yourself on fire with petrol, both of which I’ve proudly done.

Last week, two objects collided. Those objects were Merlin, who I work for, and Save The Children, who I don’t work for (I think). Merlin, a health expert, has been asking financial questions of itself for a couple of years now, because its main source of income is institutional and it has fairly limited flexibility. Save The Children has lots of flexibility but not so much health expertise. So gravity has brought them together and they have collided. Or merged, however you define it.

The outcome of this has been…okay, something of a whimper. But the trembling has definitely begun. On 16^th July, when the news came through that Merlin was merging with Save The Children, at the mutual benefit of both organisations, there was a slight shrug of shoulders from lots of people, including me. That’s fine, we thought, we like Save The Children, and the merger won’t happen for a while.

But of course we also know that a “merger” is a polite form of saying “one of you is the chicken, one of you is the fox. Now FIGHT!” Torn feathers and broken bones will be cast off. And then people will start to lose jobs and there will be tears and people looking for work and questions and goodbyes. And there will be a fox (read: organisation) licking its lips. The ground will be full of splattered blood and a farmer will run out holding a folded shotgun over his arm shouting “ar dang it”, and after all that only a few bits of chicken will be eaten, and only the juicy bits too.

Now I don’t know if I’m a juicy bit or not, I can only hope I finish my contract and find myself with something to move on to, wherever that might be. And I don’t blame the fox. It’s the fox’s nature to be foxy. I just never expected this sort of thing when I was fourteen.

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The news of the merger came the day after my birthday, which was spent on a plane being evacuated from Myanmar to Thailand. Evacuation sounds like a strong term, but it was only because hospitals in Myanmar are not yet up to international standards, whereas the Bangkok hospitals are genuinely world class, if a little like walking into a ministry building in Brazil (the film, not the country).

I had come down with a brief sickness in Yangon, after which I visited a GP and discovered I probably had an infection. A few other things about my heart came up too – nothing serious – which were cause for further investigation. Consequently, I spent my thirty-first alone, thirty-thousand feet in the air and heading for a city that bears more resemblance to Gotham City than real-life.

Everything turned out fine, as I expected, although I didn’t see Batman and the insurance company were keen to keep me there for nearly a week, living in a hotel room which had walls no thicker than skin and a waiter who questioned why I was alone every night in a city where being alone is not, um, all that normal. Needless to say, I wasn’t alone because thankfully the Baha’is of the world once again came to the rescue and I met with some friends who lived nearby in a great flat full of smiles.

Now back in Yangon, I wait with baited breath to see if I can return to Laputta or not…or if my time is up already. At least my birthday wasn’t at work; culturally, I’d have been expected to buy everyone else in the office a present. And this news of a merger gave them one anyway.