Blogroll
- Critical Logistics
- Fabulous and weird website full of all sorts of info
- Geographical Imaginations
- International Transport Workers' Federation
- Middle East Report
- Object Lessons (on containers)
- Oceans Beyond Piracy
- Paleofutures – good tech stuff
- Port to port
- Progressive Geographies
- Sapping Attention
- STS Blog at Oxford
- The Funambulist
- Visual Complexity
Categories
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Archives
Category Archives: Travels
Why shipping is central to the very fabric of global capitalism
Some of the images in this Verso video may be familiar from my previous posts about my containership trips. Here is choose 5 photographs and talk about them: The photos are the following (not in the order below):
Posted in capital accumulation, labour, logistics, Middle East, transport, Travels
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BBC 3 Free Thinking interview with Matthew Sweet
Matthew Sweet of BBC Free Thinking was a brilliant reader of the book, having read closely and with an eye for fetching detail. We talked for about half an hour, and the interview can be heard here (my part of … Continue reading
The poetry of medieval maritime travel
I have been reading Arab navigation manuals and travelogues, and there is such poetry in the navigation manuals in particular. It is the liminality of the navigation texts in particular – between art and science, familiar and wholly other. I … Continue reading
Posted in Middle East, seafaring, the sea, Travels, Uncategorized
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Medieval Arab Naviation
“More interesting is the testimony of Ibn al-Mujawir who reports that in 626 A.H./1228-9 A.D. a ship arrived in Aden from Qumr (Comoros or Madagascar); the art of navigation of the people of Qumr impressed him as superior to that … Continue reading
Posted in Middle East, ports, seafaring, the sea, Travels, Uncategorized
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Malta-Dubai; 13 August 2016 – Day 4, steaming towards Beirut
13 August 06.00 ship time (GMT+2); 07.00 GPS time (my phone) Steaming towards Beirut The ship left Damietta sometime after midnight, having spent only twelve hours there. The officers must be absolutely shattered, since we will be arriving in Beirut … Continue reading
Posted in 2016 Trip, Travels
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Malta-Dubai; 12 August 2016 – Day 3, Damietta
Friday 12 August 12.15 (GMT +2) Arriving in Damietta You can tell you are approaching port by a number of signs. First is the arrival of the land creatures: swifts, green flies, storks (or something else long-necked and ungainly). Next, … Continue reading
Posted in 2016 Trip, Travels
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Malta-Dubai; 11 August 2016 – Day 2, at sea in the Mediterranean
11 August 2016 10.35 (Ship time. My phone’s GPS says it is actually 11.35) The Mediterranean; steaming towards Damietta The Mediterranean is such a lonely sea. Its vastness is such that one doesn’t really see ships passing except in the … Continue reading
Posted in 2016 Trip, Travels
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Malta-Dubai again; 10 August 2016 – Day 1, Setting Off from Malta
In August 2016, I once again boarded a ship in Malta to travel to Jabal Ali. I had recorded the previous occasion with giddy excitement, all things seeming new and unfamiliar. Perhaps the familiarity of the trip, or the fact … Continue reading
Posted in 2016 Trip, Travels
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Comparing Experiences
Charmaine Chua and I both took containerships roughly at the same time. She was much more involved: her trip took longer, on a different route, and she worked onboard. We talk about our experiences over at the Disorder of Things … Continue reading
Arrival
15 February 2015 16.00 We have arrived too soon, because of steaming at high speed through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, in order for the ship to make it to Ningbo for an earlier … Continue reading
The Gamming 