Since I ran out of blogging energy and inspiration I've been to Jordan twice and I've been wrestling with (and privately blogging about) some non-obvious choices concerning my mother now 92 and still fiercely independent.  This is in addition to my seduction into the world of Facebook, which I'd pointedly snubbed for the first nine years of its life (and it only began in February 2004).  As you know, I blame my bedouin friend in Wadi Rum

Does all this mean that blogging is an activity for those with nothing else to do? I'm not sure but at the moment, I'm coming to believe it sits quite comfortably alongside picture-based Facebook -- look at Jordan Holiday Blog in the top right corner above and then compare and contrast with: 

JORDAN HOLIDAY BLOG

Gulp; I've joined Facebook. Sorry. I tried to find an alternative, even a surrogate to do the dirty work for me, but it wasn't going to solve the problem. We've been supporting our bedouin friend Saleh in Wadi Rum for nearly four years now; quite successfully. (Have a look!)

However seducing and pontificating can take you only so far. Eventually you need to embrace the unpredicable, uncontrollable, careering world of social media.

It required three 'machines' costing less than €100 in total, took five months and produced almost 10 kgs of what seems to be sustainable weight loss. There's no diet involved but no magic either, just a slow shift of life-style. It's not me, but somebody very close to me, who had a good bmi even before this started.

Ammar is a film-maker, a great photographer, our partner in creating web-sites  and a good friend. He comes from Jordan but travels a lot (see his India and Nepal gallery) and I was lucky to catch him in Amman, soon after I'd met Frits, and for long enough to design and unleash the three blogs;

(see our best example, wadirumtours.com and his own site ammarfakhuri.com)

Frits is a motivator, (see my third post on this blog). I was a bit mealy-mouthed then, as it was still early days. The truth is very plain. I spent four or five years saying I was going to start blogging; I encountered Frits and a couple of weeks later I start blogging. More in the next week or two; meanwhile you'll realise this is not the kind of stuff I normally do;  

have a look at kompasta.nl  -- via Google translator if necessary.

We were at least part of the background noise in the Middle East. It's exactly twenty years since the European Union launched its Med Media programme, to reach out to journalists across the Mediterranean. We ran the biggest of the projects, the Jemstone Network, with over 1,500 journalists from more than 60 media organisations. We helped to open a lot of eyes.

This network still has much to teach us all. We want to re-energise it; reconnect you all.

I guess you have to regard it as a kind of survival guide to this crazy world, from someone who's still finding every day fun and worthwhile. I'm writing it for my kids (five and two halves of them), for my friends (some of whom I've known for over 50 years) and for anyone else who finds it . . .

So the simple answer to the question above is, me. My interests, insights and obsessions. Stuff I've picked up on the journey, which began a long time ago as an early member of the baby-boom generation.