“One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive, a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.” – From the Bureau of Public Secrets

BEGINS

A rack of small cards, business-card sized, in the lobby of the hotel.  All with small holes in them to hang and representing discounts for various attractions, activities.  Not just in Den Haag, but Amsterdam and various other places with unrecognisable names.  One had a picture of a car on it and I take one.  It is for the car museum. Count the pictures, count the card.  Ten down and seven across – meaning 70 different cards for different attractions.  Notice that there are more than one stack of car cards, so maybe not as many attractions as appears.

Going through the airlock doors.

An old couple with matching brown leather jackets looking in the window of a clock shop.  A small shop window but  home to15 different ornamental clocks. Can’t hear the tick tock.

A life-size native American statue in the street.

A pigeon.  Try following the pigeon.  Moving too slowly, I’m not interested.

An art shop.  A lady in a beige coat with her bicycle parked goes through the prints.  Crap old art.  A few nicer Kandinsky prints.  And there’s the black doll. I took a picture of it last night.  The UK outlawed these dolls  as blatant racist objects decades ago.  They were called Golly-Wogs.  Shocked. This one is in the window of a shop…what kind of shop it is….it’s a manicurist?

A wonderful old shop called Emma with trinkets, chandeliers,  earrings and old dolls and statues…..another black doll!  I think it must be Black Peter.  I thought Black Peter was in Spain.  I must investigate.

Postcard stand with Dutch Royal family all over it.  Old lady I don’t recognise, must be a royal – she looks wrinkly and thick with make-up.

Why am I not actually doing anything?  Just walking and looking.  And breathing heavily.  Pulling on my cigarette.

The street I decide to follow opens up into a plaza.  A hundred tables and chairs completely unoccupied.  It’s November and the floor of the cobbles in the plaza are covered with fat brown leaves.  It’s not cold, but some of the chairs have blankets on them….I wish I could follow a bird, the ones that are flying….no they are going too fast.

A fountain spouts froth.  A man tries to sell me a magazine…maybe the Dutch Big Issue.  Regret not talking to him, but I don’t feel like it.

A red brick building.  A red lion.  Gold.  Hollandia.  So many bicycles, some look hand made.  I’m going to touch the next bicycle I see.  Going to touch the handle bars.  They are rubbery and cold.  It’s a glance rather than a grip.  Man gives me funny look.

I already don’t know where I am.  I am walking down a tram-line, which feels a bit wrong.  Not sure how quiet there approach is.

Standing outside an American Book Shop.  10 copies of Steve Jobs biographies fill the window.  I’m going in.

Wonder why considered American Books? Lots of books by non-Americans.  Heading for the art section and contemporary art books.  Discover Keri Smith’s This Is Not A Book.  Like.   Read book on label tagging cover to cover (it is mostly pictures of label tagging). Leave my small picture of a car inside the guide to guerrilla art book.  Is the book an anomaly? Opposite art books are an array of books on war and politics.  Take This Is Not a Book and place it in front of a book about Tackling Somali Pirates.  Tony Blair grins at me.  I remove all Tony Blair’s books and head for the crime section.  Can’t find it.  Better – I find the horror section and fill the shelves with Blair.  Find a lovely but trite book called Greed – a self-help book about how not to be greedy – with these in my arms I return to the biographies of foul leaders and place the Greed titles in front of George Bush .and friends .

After another twenty minutes I have re-arranged others – mostly art books.  Those people browsing for politics, history and especially romantic fiction might now stumble on some art.

Pay for two Keri Smith books.  Feel ok about the unnoticed rearrangement now.

Sitting on a shiny polished bench, watching people go into the bookshop.

Away from the bookshop another cobbled square.  Autumn grey grand.  Lone protestor carrying his words on a cardboard sign.  I show interest.  He doesn’t.  He has a brightly coloured satin sash around him.  Can make out the word Ir-an on his cardboard next to a picture of a fist and broken chains.  He looks glum.

Despite not wanting to take pictures I cannot resist recording a very public men’s toilet.  In the distance behind the pisser, I see a giant hording of the girl with pearl earrings.  She is everywhere.  The size of Mubarak in the film I have.   The one where he gets torn down by revolutionaries. The girl is the height of the building she is on.  Up close, I can get no purchase on her.  Instead I follow Japanese people down a slope, through glass sliding doors.

No mobile phones.  No cameras.  No bag bigger than an A4 letter size (?).  No vocal recordings of a derive. I have to write not speak.  Decide to tag every toilet roll in the ladies.  Realise I have no tag, so drag one up from the 1983 Bristol graffiti days.  My resurrected tag surprisingly remembered perfectly.  Hopefully will touch the arses of many.

Picking up an audio guide and switch it to Japanese.

Rubens didn’t always paint that well.  Bible stories, fruit, piles of books.  Want to cut the strings holding the paintings, but nothing to do it with.  Hushed mumble mumbled.  Want to shout bums very loud but I don’t.

Switch  back to English to understand van Haecht’s Antwerp Art Collector.  People drinking, playing with a globe.  Emily Godenker tells me it’s an imaginary museum and freaks me out.  It is. A portrait painter Ampelles paints Alexander the Great’s concubine, Campaspe and falls in love.  Alexander gives Ampelles the girl and keeps the painting.  It about the power of the painting says Emily.  It’s about how you can fall in love with a portrait subject I think.

Fucking hell.  In amongst the Holbeins and the Rembrants, Francis Bacon’s crucifixion screams out like a pleasing monster.  It’s next to Van de Weyden’s dead Jesus with a Flemish backdrop.

Up some more stairs and more fucking hell.  The usual red walls filled with salon-style masters – but the frescoed ceilings are crazily daubed by something more contemporary.  Need to know.  It’s Get Lataster. 1987.  Icarus.  Can’t look anywhere but up.

Decide to follow two nuns.  Look at everything they look at.  Pick them up at the Anatomy Lesson.  One nun looks like Larry Grayson.  Gerrit van Honthorst’s violin.  Nuns ignore Rembrant’s laughing man and point excitedly at Gerril Dou’s old woman.  JESU XP PASSIO heart and a cross.

Why place a chair with a sign Geen Zitplaats (don’t sit)?  Is it a work?  Lost the nuns.  Found them again.  Listening to audio guide for a different painting to that which I am looking.  Have idea for making alternative audio guides for great museums.

Bored with the nuns now.  Almost running.  Past Van Gough’s  and Cezanne’s fields.  Nuns appear to be following me now.  Can’t shake them.  And there is the girl.  The one with pearl earrings.

A few hours into my drift.  Fun for me – but may be as interesting as someone else’s dream for others.  Only it is/was real.

Totally escaped the nuns.  Folded the feedback book into shapes.  Now drinking beer.  I don’t really like beer. I write Francis Bacon Rules on a left-behind Napkin.  Exit Through The Gift Shop.  Want to look for a cemetery.

Following the sound of a crowd.  50 protestors.  Shouting.  Don’t understand. There is my Iranian with the sash.  Man in broken English with German and Dutch says Ashraff.  Iraq.  Iran.  Very bad.  Regime change. Dictator.  No good.  Hands me a piece of paper in English, which explains the protest better.  I fraudulently chant.

Feel fraudulent.  Self absorbed. No sign of a graveyard.  Opposite protestors another palace with huge hording –  an Escher painting.  Try to enter, but decide if I have to pay, I won’t.  I have to pay.  I don’t. Seeking ways of illegal entry, but fail.  Pick up an Escher leaflet instead.  Looking for a bench to sit and look at the hording.  No benches.  Distracted by another Black Peter outside the Museum Shop.   Ask a woman with long hair and long eyelashes about Black Peter.  It is Schwarz Pete,  Dutch Santa’s helpers are all black people from Africa.  Schwarz Pete hands out presents to children on 5^th December.  Feeling distinctly uncomfortable with this celebration using, to my British eye,  a racist effigy.  Lady insists Schwarz Pete is good, not bad.  Feel she might be glossing over something.  Need to ask more people.  I pass Bansky Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Been walking for half an hour now in one direction.  Fear I am a bit lost.  No signs or maps.  Flats to rent.  Residential area.  No benches.  Might be going back in the same direction I came, but adamant not to exactly re-trace steps.  Canals.  Bamboo.  Looking for that fountain.

A man with a limp walks by with his girlfriend and I overhear him saying I am a bit scared and lost.  Massive déjà vu.  Nearly get hit by a car – looking the wrong direction as I cross the road.  Smile at woman holding her baby.

This would be ultimately more fun with more than one person.

At last I see Escher again at the far end of an avenue of trees.  Not sticking around – I think he got me lost because I didn’t go in and see his crazy staircases.

I follow the train tracks until my feet ache and happen upon the chairs with blankets again.   Still no people.  I wrap myself in two big black blankets.  Another beer.  Chips.  Mayonnaise.  Be rude not to.  I write Follow The nuns on leaflets for The Mauritshuis.  Ask the Dutch waiter who Schwarz Pete was he said he deliversh giftsh for the little childrensh.  Denied any darkside..perhaps I am asking the wrong people.

Pigeon lands on the table and takes a chip.  Warme Choco Met Slagroom.

ENDS

I have had this travel blog for a number of years now.  I have written about travels in Afghanistan, Pakistan, even Germany and Scotland.  I also wrote during a week in Baghdad a post which proved to be a big hitter – not perhaps because I witnessed a lethal bomb explosion, but because I chose to illustrate the post with a picture of Iraqis playing football in an attempt to show another side to Iraq.

This week, I was thrilled to officially launch another story of my times in Iraq.  My book – A Better Basra touches on the political side to my diplomatic mission in the Southern Iraqi city of Al-Basrah, but is also a warts-n-all personal account of my time there:  As a woman.  As a mother.  And as an out-of-her-depth civilian in a military theatre.  It’s less a sharp analysis of strategy and more “Brigid Jones of Basra”.  But it also proves to be an allegory of the British efforts to reconstruct a blighted city as part of a larger state-building game.

The World Bank blog have kindly published an extract, so I thought I would share with my own blog readers, a different extract – one that speaks less of strategic struggle and one of my battle for sanity.

Extract. Page 53.

During the day, when busy with work or in the cook-house, I was surrounded by people.  The bar provided good company, and even for the short walks between the fortified buildings that made up our compound I fed on chatty banter with anyone and everyone; from the Iraqi laundry man and the one armed gardener; to exchanging a few newly learned Nepalese words with our perimeter guards.  I got to know the Zimbabwean dog handlers and their dogs – Debbie the German Shepherd was a particular favourite.  There were members of the Danish police who always enjoyed conversation; and I loved  chatting to Taha, our one remaining Iraqi advisor.  As friendly as this was, I know myself well enough to know that this constant desire for talking was largely driven by my fear of being alone. 

On my first night in camp I had collapsed into slumber wearing just my sarong, yet it was weeks before I was relaxed enough to get undressed again for bed.  True enough, I had managed to strip down to my swimming costume and take the occasional dip to take the steam out of the 54 degree heat, but at the pool I was not alone and therefore didn’t feel as vulnerable (although in coming months I would find myself both alone and vulnerable there). 

Once the day was over, and colleagues had been bid goodnight it was just me in a concrete bunker, all alone in Iraq.  It was these quiet moments that were the hardest during my first few days at the Palace.  My life at home was so full of friends, children and family that I rarely spent time on my own.  And to be honest, even outside of Iraq I hadn’t been entirely comfortable in my own company.  So I faced all my demons at once – this was the extreme cold turkey approach to learning to be with yourself.  My main fear was quite basically of being killed and leaving my children without a mother (I know, I know, I should have thought of that before volunteering).  My second fear was (having been sternly told to acquaint myself with emergency evacuation procedures) that I would not be ready to get out in a hurry – despite the obligatory emergency bag packed by the side of my bed.  Back home, some young Sri Lankan friends had joked that their parents still had a suitcase packed on top of the wardrobe “just in case” even though they were safe in Tooting.  I wondered if I would become like them?  My emergency suitcase was a small maroon coloured holdall, and I would often wake actually clutching at the handle of the bag and nearly falling out of my bed.  It was not unlike my fitful sleep some 12 years earlier on bringing my first baby home from hospital – so concerned that my little girl would stop breathing in her sleep that I would rest a gentle hand on her chest as she slept in the Moses basket next to my bed.   There was less tenderness as I clutched my holdall of course! 

As well as the maroon bag, I had a small pouch that carried my passport, a pocket torch, a list of phone numbers, photos of my family, a pen, a notebook and my fags.  And yes, I slept with this around my neck too for the first week or so.  The other dilemma was my boots.  I actually wore sandals to work most days, but I knew in an emergency my sturdy desert boots were best, plus (allegedly) you weren’t allowed on a military aircraft without proper ankle covering foot attire, said the rules.  My boots were difficult to lace up at the best of times and would be impossible in a hurry, so the safest option seemed to be to sleep with them on my feet, loosely tied.  As you can imagine, this was not conducive to a decent night’s kip.

The air-conditioner also bothered me.  With it on, the air was cool and dry but it almost completely masked any outside noise.  Many times a night I would rush to switch it off because my ears tricked me into hearing “something” outside.  And until I actually heard my first explosion in Iraq, I wasn’t really sure what sound to expect.  Would it be a crash?  A kerr-boom?  A thud?  A crack?  However with the air-conditioning switched off, although you could hear a pin drop, even in the dead of night, the heat meant that it wasn’t very many minutes before I was a sweltering mess – especially fully dressed with my boots on.

I didn’t have to wait too long before I witnessed my first IDF attack.  IDF means indirect fire – but it felt pretty direct to me (or maybe it is “in direct fire”).  I was outside and on my own at the time, which is a zillion times worse than being inside – it is flipping loud outside and the ground shakes.

I had been in the bar that evening, which was another reinforced concrete building. The ceilings were high, the lights were bright and lusty MTV videos were projected onto the wall as people played darts or pool or sat and chatted on more FCO furnishing.  I met another man named Chris (there were four Chrises in total!) This Chris was an ex-RAF chef who worked for KBR and managed the team of Sri Lankan cooks as well as volunteering to work behind the bar.  Like any good barman he was full of quips, but the first thing I noticed about him was that, unlike the others, he had his ID card strapped to his upper arm.  I took the mickey and we were instant friends. 

Chris and I – together with every other heavy smoker – spent most of our evenings huddled in the disabled toilet at the bar, which was the designated smoking room.  There was no air conditioning and no ventilation in a room that was built to house just a toilet and a small table.  Even with the door open, by the time five of us were in there it was so crowded we were virtually sitting on each other’s laps and the air thick with smoke.  We managed to get at least ten people in there one night, including the much tattooed Sid, who despite being from the military side of camp, wore nasty shiny 1970’s shorts. I mention his shorts only because his testicles had the habit of squeezing themselves out of them whenever he sat down – so I usually chose to sit next-to rather than opposite him for fear of getting an eyeful of bollock!   Apart from his tendency to inadvertently expose himself, he was a lovely guy.

Two things struck me about the smoking room – firstly, that it might have been less of a risk to our health if we actually smoked outside in the open air and secondly – who in their right minds thought a disabled toilet was necessary in a place like this?  We had to fill in a million forms and pass a medical to get here,  surely anyone disabled would have been considered an evacuation difficulty? 

So on about day three of my time in Basra, I emerged choking out of the smoking room, donned my body armour and helmet and prepared myself for the 100 yard dash to my pod.  The bar was usually only open for two hours an evening and it was near enough closing time.  I had my torch at the ready and my door key in hand.  I was in good spirits, despite having drunk next to nothing (being drunk in Iraq held little appeal).  I swung open the heavy metal double doors and stepped out, embarking on my scuttle home.  

After just a few steps, a huge explosion shook the ground; I froze.  I could hear the faint pattering of shrapnel landing nearby. Then another occurred, not quite as close but still loud.  What should I do?  Throw myself to the floor?  Run like buggery?  Hug a Hesco?  Another explosion, closer this time.  I felt a hand on my shoulder and I felt myself being dragged back into the bar – one of the CRG security team guys had clocked me leaving and worked out that I would have been in the thick of it and bravely headed out to pull me back inside.   There were nine mortars that landed in all (no one was hurt, miraculously).  By the time the ninth one landed I was back inside the disabled toilet and my new smoky friends were laughing – “we thought you were going home!?”   Then the sirens started up and the recorded voice over the Tannoys urged us to stay under hard-cover.  No shit.  Everyone groaned as the grills across the bar were pulled meaning the bar had closed and I faced the first tedium of lock-down until the security teams had made safe the main routes.  We were stuck in the closed bar for what seemed like hours.

It was true that in the first few days I couldn’t sleep through being so worried about leaving my children without a mother, but once I experienced that first attack and after witnessing a couple more quiet thuds in the dead of night, it was amazing how quickly one adjusted to the situation.  They say you remember your first, and it was true, I wasn’t ever quite as deeply frightened as that first time outside the bar – despite the increase in attacks and the loss of life to come.

A Better Basra is available in print, ebook, and Kindle from Askance Publishing

I thought I would share an article I wrote for The Guardian (which never got published!).  Travel blog seemed like a good place for “This Is England”

Baffled tourists and gangs of bemused foreign language students looked on in confusion as the English Defence League marched through the streets of the quintessential English city of Cambridge on Saturday.

Cambridge welcomes over four million tourists every year, providing over £350 million for the local economy.  Foreign students come there in their thousands to study the English language or undergraduate courses at the world famous University.  The University boast students from 120 different countries and has educated at least 25 heads of foreign government (and 15 of our own).  Diversity and multi-culturalism is not only part of the place – it is the city’s bread and butter.

The English Defence League may have sat uncomfortably amongst punts and bicycles, as their shouts of “these streets are our streets” met with the blank looks of academics and city folk, but there was perhaps something more disturbing at play.  A counter demonstration had been brewing on social networks calling for the people of Cambridge to Unite Against Fascism.  Insults began flying long before the event and the EDL had been labelled as “sad, fat, losers” by Facebook combatants.

A quick conversation with some of the EDL demonstrators in Cambridge revealed an angry bunch of people, many of them had served in Britain’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Some had seen friends and family killed.  They shouted their support for the military along with their hatred for Muslims, but the overwhelming feeling was of being let down by the system.  Many were tattooed, drunk and offensive, but a great deal more were simply sad, angry and hurt.  Having listened to some of their grievances, something felt very wrong about witnessing the great brains of Cambridge, and the likes of Charlie Veitch – famed Love Police activist – shouting abuse at them across a heavily policed cordon.  Charlie used a megaphone to point out their ignorance and scoffed at their inability to read – humiliating them to the applause of the privialeged middle-classes of Cambridge.  The argument of “united-Cambridge” was suddenly weakened into what appeared to be the age-old Town versus Gown dispute.  A class war.  Even Charlie agreed that the war in Afghanistan may play some part in the way people are feeling, so perhaps we stopped wasting time and public money of petty demonstrations (over 600 police were drafted into Cambridge for the event) and turned superior Cambridge brains into looking at the route causes of extreme behaviour.

One can be proud of multi-cultural Cambridge, but not of it’s quintessential snobbery and it’s inherent dismissal of anyone with a different point of view.  The smart people would be listening and coming up with smart solutions not shouting.

So some further glimpses of Karachi moments, from this, the 10th biggest city in the world (thanks Faraz).

From the images you will see a bunch of gregarious Hindu women road sweepers (with the names of their husbands tattooed on their arms); a boy band (look carefully for McFly….or is that Busted?); A transvestite “surely they have people like me in London”; a beautiful Karachi sunset over the Indian Ocean; a food.  more food.  and yet more food.  Hospitality madness – we are drowning in generosity of spirit here.  Imagine.  Karachi.

Sometimes I am so hell-bent on my own agenda that I completely miss the things that surround me.

We arrived in Karachi less than12 hours ago and went straight into organisation mode.  Phone calls, meetings to set up, rushed smiles and Salams.  Wrapped in head-scarves, my film-making travelling companion and I dashed an hour across town and we found ourselves talking to Fine Art and Film students at Karachi University before I realised I hadn’t had a nights sleep.  My urgency seemed to take them by surprise.  Although the Karachi streets are a busy throng, there is still something calmer, and more laid back that my own rush-hour approach.  Friendships nurtured.  Something a tutor said to me last week clicked into place.  Why don’t I slow down, take things in a little, reflect and allow things to wash over me.  Obsessed with “doing” I can become blinkered and entirely miss the point or what it means to be an artist (to look).

So yes, I will still quietly seek the matching participants for my Cambridge Karachi Portrait – but if  I don’t find them, I can be assured that I have already met a number of remarkable people – who might not “fit the mould” but have just as much to say in a gesture.  Some initial reflections:

The airport: Big family welcomes and laughter.  Gifts of flowers, garlands, petals on the floor.  An old man delighted with a reunion.

Taking a photo of Ameena’s henna’d hands

A pretty shy girl shows me pieces for her final year art show.  Spikes on a baby’s bottle, lipstick and cigarettes.

That film-star look, with native American tattoos amidst a sea of chattering students.

Just glimpses.

So even if the plan seems utterly enthralling, perhaps a more genuine and gentle means of engaging with the world around me needs to happen.  Ironic perhaps that unravelling the agenda hell-bent-ness of the media is a preoccupation.

Tomorrow photos, only photos.

In the meantime, my film schedule is about to begin….and I have my flights booked for the commercial capital of Pakistan.  Karachi here I come!  (Well, limp).

I toyed with the idea of filming or photographing my poor mangled feet to share here, but figured a far more attractive sight was the five of us, who have accepted the Everest Base Camp challenge for DIL.  We met for the first time on Sunday for our first ever trek together.

Wonderfully, I have been given free gym access , a fitness test and a personal training programme by the Students Union (at Anglia Ruskin University).  It has been suggested that I have the muscle and lung capacity of an Ox (albeit a slightly overweight Ox!) and that my Nepalese adventure is perfectly doable. In theory.

I have even done a complete u-turn on my previous staunch opposition to gyms and gym-goers and put in a good few hours thumping the treadmill and pumping iron to the iPoded sounds of Missie Elliot and even a bit of James Brown (I Feel Good).  But Sunday’s organised walk was my first since a Geography field trip nearly 30 years ago and I wasn’t really prepared.

The main problem, as the title of this post suggests, was that I had the wrong shoes.  Every one of my new companions had proper walking boots.  I have been waiting for someone to “sponsor” my boots (despite having asked exactly no-one to do so) and had to scramble around at the last minute looking for something appropriate.  I settled on my desert boots, which had last seen proper action in Iraq in 2006.  I borrowed some of my husbands socks.

After several hours (and ten miles) of walking at a good pace around a millionaires housing estate in Surrey (bizarre I know) – I realised that the company was so good (I did perhaps too much excited talking) and peaking at the luxurious mansions so unexpectedly intriguing, that I had neglected to consider how my poor feet were feeling.

The answer was they were feeling sore and full of water-filled blisters the size of fifty pence pieces.  And as I hobbled into a lecture at University this morning I could see that familiar “she may have bitten off more than she can chew” expression on my colleagues faces.  We watched some funny films in class about a performance artist who stuck a dead badger on his head and carried out Shamanistic rituals.  I wondered whether my whole Everest adventure (including the build up) was just one big performance.  I dunno – are blisters art?  Human, friction-based sculpture?

To sponsor me visit my Just Giving page

To buy me boots contact me directly

I like a challenge.  But not one without meaning.

When DIL asked if I would be part of a small group of trekkers headed for Everest Base Camp in April this year I didn’t hesitate to say yes.  Not because it sounded exhilarating – but because I believe in the work DIL does in Pakistan.  The people of Pakistan have suffered horrendous natural disasters and been caught up in conflict for far too long.  DIL are admirably pouring in support from the diaspora and international communities.

DIL’s website is here: http://www.dil.org/

This short video explains why Books not Bombs are the best weapon in defeating the Taliban: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-W54H0MU2U

The months running up to the trek promise to be as challenging as the expedition itself – those who know me will know I am not the fittest nor youngest of explorers.  Experiences before, during and after will be recorded here.

Today I dropped into Blacks in Cambridge and asked them if they would be able to provide any of my equipment (I have been sent a list which I am yet to glance at).  I have the number of the Head Office, provided by a reasonably enthusiastic manager – so we will see how that turns out.  Meanwhile I really need to find out a bit more about what will be expected from me.  Any comments and advice from previous trekkers very welcome.  Perfectly happy for you to be entertained at my expense over the coming months.  I need to move from fat to fit ’tis true.

If you have other things to offer, like some good boots, media support for DIL or just some Kendal Mint Cake, let me know.  Alternatively if you would like to offer cold hard cash head for my Justgiving page at http://www.justgiving.com/Caroline-Jaine

Those who know me even better will know that I plan to turn this into a creative experience – more of this on http://jaine.info/everest.aspx