Hey Guys,
Thanks to everyone who checked up on Nancy and I to see if I was OK during the riots.
It was all a bit surreal - I never really got close to any of it - Brixton is the next suburb from us, and was one of the first places post Tottenham to start rioting. It wasn't until Sunday night that Clapham Junction got hit quite bad, with Debenhams, a department store getting badly smashed and two buildings getting burnt (the first was a costume store, which got hit first so people could steal masks.. kinda smart actually).
As you can imagine there is a LOT of debate going on right now over here as to the cause of it and why it got so out of hand. I have watched a few things and read a few articles and for the record, here is my understanding of events:
Mark Duggan - a man from Tottenham was shot by police - and it is now clear that he never fired his gun at all. This was the cause of the initial riots in tottenham, where i'm sure the pictures have been broadcast around the world - I believe this was saturday night.
What is also clear is that the police were very slow to respond on Saturday and as mobs generally do, they started burning cars, buildings and looting. Now Mark Duggan is from a council estate (public housing). One thing to remember here is that there is a massive amount of community housing here in London, and they can be found in almost any suburb of greater london. Of course not everyone in these places are bad people but it seems that the vast majority of rioters were from these places. I guess you can imagine the aboringal boy that was killed running from police in Redfern last year and what happened there - but this was on a much larger scale.
Every other riot after Tottenham was pure copycat. I think that people saw how easy it was for those people in Tottenham to get away with looting and rioting and realised there was some quick money to be made. Also, it also seems that the 'gangs' that work in these various areas all actually called an truce and decided to work together to target certain stores and areas - all done via blackberry messenger - another controversial topic right now. None of the rioters that have been interviewed have even pretended that it was anything to do with Mark Duggan - it appear to be purely opportunistic greed. So basically, it just spread and while it was mostly London on Sat and Sunday night, on Monday night it had spread to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool etc, all places where people had never heard of Mark Duggan, but had seen on TV groups of people burning and looting, and no one getting arrested.
Btw - its good to point out that originally, the looters were mostly aged 15-17 - 'street gangs', but as the days moved on, it became much more organised with people in their late 20s getting involved and driving up in cars, loading up the boot etc, and it was much more planned.
So that's where it stands at the moment. Everyone here is trying to understand how this got out of hand, and why so many people feel that they needed to riot. All the usual suspects have been thrown out there:
- Social Divide
- 5% of people own 80% of wealth
- Education Cuts
- Police Cuts
- Lack of opportunity for the people in these housing estates
I'm sure you've all read the articles for yourselves.
Personally, I think it was a combination of all of these things but mostly just the nature of society these days. Everyone wants the get rich quick, no one wants to work hard anymore. I look at the generation before us - and I was taught by my parents that working hard will give you success. Nowadays i guess kids believe that there are shortcuts, and they don't care if its legal or not. Its probably a massive oversimplification but I think that a work ethic has really disappeared from our generation.
Feel free to email me back to discuss :)
Anyway - in other news, we went to Krakow a few weekends ago (it seems like AGES! and i've only spent the last 2 weekends in London), Krakow is a nice place,as with most European cities, it has an old town and boasts hundreds of years of history and culture. On the whole, Polish girls are pretty hot - on average, potentially the best looking girls i've seen in any country so far - but I haven't been yet (France, Belgium, Helsinki, Estonia and Portugal for those keeping count). There were no particular jaw dropping moments but just on average, the waitresses, people walking along the street, were well dressed and good looking.
Highlights of Krakow
- Auschwitz/Birkenau - you can't really call this a highlight but its something that I think is worth seeing. 1.1m million people were killed at these death camps - you don't even call then concentration camps because people literally got off trains from all around Europe at Birkenau and were promptly marched into the gas chambers and killed. In almost all cases they never knew what was coming, they all thought they were simply being relocated. Most people had brought luggage and they dearest belongings. The museum is intense, when you see the tens of thousands of shoes, toothbrushes, suit cases and even human hair (yes you read that right, the Nazis harvested hair from dead bodies to be used in factories to make carpet etc) you start to appreciate the scale of this tragedy. When you talk about 1m people - the number is so large that it almost becomes meaningless, but when you see the personal belongings (and these are only the things that were left behind, because when the soviets came, they had already marched all prisoners that could walk out) it really hits home.
The most harrowing experience was actually walking into one of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. God only know how many people died in there. The nature of German efficiency meant that the furnaces to burn the bodies were simply located next door, 5 meters away and they made other Jewish prisoners collect the bodies and put them in the ovens.
Its hard to imagine cruelty and massacre on such a scale.
- The salt mines are a much more light hearted attraction that consist of an old salt mine - 130m deep into the ground. The amazing thing here is that they have been mining for salt for such depths since the 1300s and was one of the most profitable mines in the world for hundreds of years. Nowadays, they have amazing carvings out of salt and one chamber in particular that is now a church, where they have the last supper carved in salt on the walls, a salt pulpit, salt crystal chandeliers, salt crucifixes - simply stunning. The lines for this are pretty horrendous - it took us about an hour to get in - but i made the most of that time,i lined up about 30 mins to get a hot dog, potentially one of the most inefficient processes I have ever seen in my life - how could you back up a hot dog line for 30 mins ? Just put some more damn hot dogs on the barbecue....
- We also got some culture into us, attending a concert at Wawel castle where we both go in as students. I suspect that it was a fairly legit concert as people came in suits and nice dresses, Nancy and I were definitely the most under dressed people there, it was nice, in a small courtyard in the castle and consisted of a pianist, a clarinet player and a violinist.
Food - No Miles email would be complete without some mention of food!
Food in Krakow is great, they are a meat and potatoes kind of people and I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
The most common thing to eat there appears to be Perogi - basically a meat dumpling, either steamed or fried. Over the 3 days I must have eaten about 30 of them. Other highlights included Zurek, a sauerkraut soup, Beetroot soup and Duck with Apple. Servings were generally generous food was CHEAP - luckily the poles havent got the euro yet, and a 3 course meal at a decent restaurant was about 10 pounds for 2 people, or the price of a pizza in London.
We also went to St John on Friday - the master of nose to tail cooking. 1 Michelin star. I had been warned about this actually, with a large number of asian friends who had been before telling me that they were not impressed so my expectations weren't high. Also, service was supposedly dreadful according to several food bloggers so all in all , things weren't looking great. With the help of some friends, I managed to find 15 other people to share this meal with me as we had ordered the SUCKLING PIG FEAST - where you get an entire suckiling pig, and a selection of starters and desserts.
For starters we had snail and oakleaf (great salad!) and bone marrow and parsley (if you love marrow, you'd love this). The main was the pig and presentation wise, it certainly didnt disappoint - see facebook for photos. The main criticism from almost everyone I had spoken to was that the skin was not crackling. I guess due to the way that they cook it, the skin does not crisp up in that fantastic way you get with roast pork. I had been expecting this so my disappointment was tempered. The pig for me was a mixed bag.
I loved the meat - it was amazingly tender, you didn't need a knife at all, everything literally had fallen apart. I didn't like how something in it gave me asthma - I have no idea what it was but it was getting a bit ugly for a while because I didn't have my puffer but luckily logan came to the rescue. I liked the stuffing, it was quite tasty and complemented the texture of the meat. I didn't like the stuffing because there was too much and it was too fatty. Actually that is the main problem with the pig. It was amazingly fatty. I don't actually think I ate that much pig, but in the end, it sat in my stomach like a lead ball for hours. I daresay that I still felt that pig the next day at about 11am.
Desserts were Peach & Raspberry Pie, Vanilla Ice Cream and Eccles Cake and Lancashire cheese. Ice cream was by far the winner - the rest were too heavy. Dud picks on my part. I think with another meal they would have been fine, but after rich, heavy, fatty pig, it was all too much.
Overall, It was worth the experience, Service was actually quite good, and I liked the starkness of the decor all white. I actually enjoyed my first plate of pig a lot - it was the 2nd and 3rd that I really regret. At 50 pounds a head (including service and wine) I dont' feel like I got ripped off, i walked away full and I've paid more for worse. Would I do it again? Probably not for a few months...
Anyway - I think that catches you guys up on life in London. Hope you guys are all having fun.
Next Stop - Scotland and the Fringe festival!
Write back to let me know how you all are!
Miles
Monday, August 15, 2011
Friday, August 05, 2011
Africa Day 2 - QE2 National Park
Finally - Day 2!
Day 1 went on for a while - in blog terms it was almost 6 months! But we got through and hopefully the rest of the diary won't be as dragged out. We woke up early on day 2, had breakfast - at this point I actually was getting up early enough to have breakfast (usually nutella on toast and milo) packed up our tent and got onto our big yellow truck 'Ben'.

We drove all day to a national park called the QE2 national park and stayed at camp site called Hippo Hills. This would be the first of many days where we wuold literally spend up to 12 hrs on the bus, stopping only to have lunch.
The highlight of the morning was having chicken on a stick - I suspect that these were semi cooked and simply reheated a little bit when people wanted to buy them. There were a lot of sellers of said wings along the dusty ugandan road.
I think only Katie, Bahn and I had chicken on a stick - not everyone was as keen to tempt food poisoning like the 3 of us. Katie was definitely one of my best friends on the trip. She always had a big smile, and the her Bahn and I really hit it off.
That's Rich in the background.
Let me take some time now to describe the lunch process:
The truck pulls over a nice spot which is open and a little way from the road so that we don't get too much road dust.
Each person would then move to various task and as creatures of habit, we always seemed to fall into a similar roles. Some of the boys would pull out the table, and the girls would set up two basins with truck water (Josh would fill out wherever he felt the water was clean, the truck held up to 100L i guess), one for vege washing and one for hand washing. We would then get various vegetables from the truck, depending on what we had bought recently, the vegetables we would have consisted of: Tomatoes, Cucumber, Red Onions, Carrots and tinned betroot. There were probably others but these were our staples. We would slice most of them, and grate the carrots.
At the same time, other members of the group would get out various condiments: butter, mayo, Mrs HS Balls Chutney (AMAZING - such a shame I haven't seen it since - they even have a chip flavoured for this!), and the meat would consist of various hams and usually canned tuna. If we had recently been to the shops we would also have cheese as well.
I think that a few weeks into the trip we had the lunch prep process down to 3 mins FLAT From the bus stopping to us eating..
All the food was kept cold in eski's or in the trucks freezer which help most of the food.
We would also have loaves of bread and crackers and it was pretty much buffet style.
My typical lunch would be tomatoes, carrots, tuna, mayo, MRs HS Balls Chutney and cheese. I actually these lunches were one of the main reasons I lost weight in Africa - these were relatively healthy compared to my normal lunches, and actually quite satisfying and filling.
Others (Deb and Sangee) would typically finish with some fruit also.
There was usually a made rush for the tuna, so you had to be quick for that :D
We wouldn't wash lunch dishes but put them in a bucket to be washed when we got to the campsite.We would then pack everything back into the eskis and wipe the table down, put the table away and get back on the truck. The total time would be approx 30 mins from start to finish.
I think that for the next 60 days I would have this type of lunch for at least 30 of days but i actually didnt get tired of it. If you had offered me this food now, i'm sure I would protest after 2-3 days but strangely I didn't mind. I guess I knew that I didn't have any other options so you just accept it, eat and move on. Strange how quickly you adapt.
Along the way, we also bought some freshly caught river fish which we would have for dinner one of the nights. At some point we had also bought some Goat.
On the way to the park after lunch we saw some Elephants! My FIRST African animal experience!

That night we feasted on river fish, roast chicken and roast pumpkin and potatoes. All we had was 2 small barbecue racks over coals, and we managed to cook that sort of meal. The food was fantastic, and cooked so simply, just a bit of seasoning, eating while watching a beautiful african sunset. We were really in the middle of nowhere now, even though this was an established campsite, it was empty except for us and the sense of being alone with nature was really overpowering.
I enjoyed my first night out of civilisation immensely and fell asleep content. Tomorrow would bring my first 'game drive' and also a river cruise so I was really looking forward to that.
PS. The camp site was named hippo hills because hippos were known to wander up to the campsite at night. Did you know that Hippos are the biggest killer in Africa? They basically charge people and trample them to death.. So we were warned to be careful when we got out of our tents at night.. TIA...
Day 1 went on for a while - in blog terms it was almost 6 months! But we got through and hopefully the rest of the diary won't be as dragged out. We woke up early on day 2, had breakfast - at this point I actually was getting up early enough to have breakfast (usually nutella on toast and milo) packed up our tent and got onto our big yellow truck 'Ben'.
We drove all day to a national park called the QE2 national park and stayed at camp site called Hippo Hills. This would be the first of many days where we wuold literally spend up to 12 hrs on the bus, stopping only to have lunch.
The highlight of the morning was having chicken on a stick - I suspect that these were semi cooked and simply reheated a little bit when people wanted to buy them. There were a lot of sellers of said wings along the dusty ugandan road.
That's Rich in the background.
Let me take some time now to describe the lunch process:
The truck pulls over a nice spot which is open and a little way from the road so that we don't get too much road dust.
Each person would then move to various task and as creatures of habit, we always seemed to fall into a similar roles. Some of the boys would pull out the table, and the girls would set up two basins with truck water (Josh would fill out wherever he felt the water was clean, the truck held up to 100L i guess), one for vege washing and one for hand washing. We would then get various vegetables from the truck, depending on what we had bought recently, the vegetables we would have consisted of: Tomatoes, Cucumber, Red Onions, Carrots and tinned betroot. There were probably others but these were our staples. We would slice most of them, and grate the carrots.
At the same time, other members of the group would get out various condiments: butter, mayo, Mrs HS Balls Chutney (AMAZING - such a shame I haven't seen it since - they even have a chip flavoured for this!), and the meat would consist of various hams and usually canned tuna. If we had recently been to the shops we would also have cheese as well.
I think that a few weeks into the trip we had the lunch prep process down to 3 mins FLAT From the bus stopping to us eating..
All the food was kept cold in eski's or in the trucks freezer which help most of the food.
We would also have loaves of bread and crackers and it was pretty much buffet style.
My typical lunch would be tomatoes, carrots, tuna, mayo, MRs HS Balls Chutney and cheese. I actually these lunches were one of the main reasons I lost weight in Africa - these were relatively healthy compared to my normal lunches, and actually quite satisfying and filling.
Others (Deb and Sangee) would typically finish with some fruit also.
There was usually a made rush for the tuna, so you had to be quick for that :D
We wouldn't wash lunch dishes but put them in a bucket to be washed when we got to the campsite.We would then pack everything back into the eskis and wipe the table down, put the table away and get back on the truck. The total time would be approx 30 mins from start to finish.
I think that for the next 60 days I would have this type of lunch for at least 30 of days but i actually didnt get tired of it. If you had offered me this food now, i'm sure I would protest after 2-3 days but strangely I didn't mind. I guess I knew that I didn't have any other options so you just accept it, eat and move on. Strange how quickly you adapt.
Along the way, we also bought some freshly caught river fish which we would have for dinner one of the nights. At some point we had also bought some Goat.
On the way to the park after lunch we saw some Elephants! My FIRST African animal experience!
That night we feasted on river fish, roast chicken and roast pumpkin and potatoes. All we had was 2 small barbecue racks over coals, and we managed to cook that sort of meal. The food was fantastic, and cooked so simply, just a bit of seasoning, eating while watching a beautiful african sunset. We were really in the middle of nowhere now, even though this was an established campsite, it was empty except for us and the sense of being alone with nature was really overpowering.
I enjoyed my first night out of civilisation immensely and fell asleep content. Tomorrow would bring my first 'game drive' and also a river cruise so I was really looking forward to that.
PS. The camp site was named hippo hills because hippos were known to wander up to the campsite at night. Did you know that Hippos are the biggest killer in Africa? They basically charge people and trample them to death.. So we were warned to be careful when we got out of our tents at night.. TIA...
Lisbon
Hey Guys,
Hope things are going well wherever you are in the world! Hopefully a short and sweet update on whats been happening here over the last 2 weeks... I keep falling behind with these updates and I know that if I don't get around to them, they will become like my Africa Journals (I'm still on day 1/70)...
'Normal' London weather has resumed for the last few weeks - Rainy and Cold and we're talking about Mid July - right in the middle of 'summer'. I am really appreciating the good weather we had in May/June now and can see why Londonders get excited when they get a sunny day on the weekend - it actually allows them to go outside and do stuff! Otherwise I guess you are restricted to the indoors and indoor activities... I hear that the hardest part about living in London from an Australian's point of view is the winters - cold, and dark when you leave the house in the morning for work and dark when you leave the office at night, apparently it takes a massive toll on you psychologically. I'm doing fine right now, (in the middle of summer) but it will be interesting to see how I go come wintertime.. i don't generally mind the cold too much, but i'm not a massive fan of rain...
The last update didn't include our adventures in Lisbon - which I think has so far become my favourite European city not named London. We only spent a weekend there, but really liked it and would definitely go back if we get the chance.. So whats so good about Lisbon? Better than Paris? Better than Bruge? How could this be?
On physical attributes, its hard to explain. Paris, in the right spots (looking over the seine, looking down to the Eiffel tower) is prettier, but in general it is also dirtier and reeks of urine. The food in Paris can be amazing, but you certainly pay for quality. In contrast, Lisbon does not have as many 'OMG this is beautiful' moments, although the view looking down to Plaza de marques de pompal is nice, but instead you get a lot of 'oh, this is a nice spot' moments. It is understated, and it can suprise you. Lisbon is built on seven (I think) hills, which means that you come across some really nice view points and they lisboans have built parks in the perfect places. Lisbon isn't too crowded, and whilst some places can be a bit dirty, it has the same cobblestone, narrow streets that give a lot of European cities its medieval charm.
Food in Lisbon is also generally of a high standard, and the cheapest western European city I've been to so far (probably because the whole country is broke but whatever). The iconic Portuguese food is of course the pateis de nata (portuguese tarts) and the best ones can be found at the Pasteis de Belém - apparently they use a secret recipe from the monastery of geronimos (also worth going to just to see the amazing cloister and main chapel) next door. I had 6 tarts from 6 different place over the weekend all in the name of science of course and these were BY FAR the best. This is definitely affected by the fact that they were warm, (they sell so many, there is always some coming out of the oven) but even then, the flavour was amazing ,the egg was not too runny or too firm and the pastry was amazing crispy, giving the contrast of textures. The other thing I loved is the fact that they have these pastelerias everywhere which all sell various sweet breads, pateis de nata, and espresso coffee, just like cafes everywhere else in the world you say, but the main thing is that a most of the time you STAND. So you feel a bit peckish, don't want to sit down for 30 mins and order stuff off a menu, so you just stand at the coutner, get a pastry and an espresso and eat it then and there and then get the hell out. I love it. I don't want to have to buy food if i'm hungry and then walk and eat - its not enjoyable. Nor do i want to sit down just to have a coffee all the time unless its to catch up with a friend, so this whole experience was revelation.
Other Lisbon food highlights included 100 Maneiras - fine dining for 40 euros (7 courses). This is situated in Barrio Alto which is one of the narrow cobblestone street areas I was talking about except evey second building is a mini bar which can hold approx 30 ppl. So you have dinner and wander into the bar area which doesnt really start pumping till about midnight to 1am. Caparinhas and alcohold in general is relatively cheap and the vibe is pretty good.
We also sought out a 'portuguese chicken' shop called Bonjardims which was fantastc - despite what we think in Australia, portugal is not really famous for roast chicken nor did any ohter places claim to serve this, but this place was the exception - a whole chicken (serves 2) for 12 euros. Good crispy skin, just the right amount of seasoning - always straight from the grill (we went twice).
I found that the city was relatively quiet - apparently all the locals go to the beach during the summer so that might have been the reason, but I found the space quite nice. They have an intersting tourist tram (no. 28) which takes you on a loop around the city that is worth a ride, its goes up and down hills and takes you right to the castle sao geoge which is worth visiting for the great views of the city. I wouldn't say I was suprised by how much I enjoyed it as a few friends had already mentioned that it was a great place, but it certainly lived up to its expectations. Next time I'll have to make sure I get to the beach.
Its already midnight.. writing has once again taken a lot longer than I expect it to and I have to get up at 5:45 tomorrow morning :(
I'll have to leave Krakow (The hottest girls in Europe so far) for another day..
Good night all, and write back so I know you guys are still reading!
Miles
Hope things are going well wherever you are in the world! Hopefully a short and sweet update on whats been happening here over the last 2 weeks... I keep falling behind with these updates and I know that if I don't get around to them, they will become like my Africa Journals (I'm still on day 1/70)...
'Normal' London weather has resumed for the last few weeks - Rainy and Cold and we're talking about Mid July - right in the middle of 'summer'. I am really appreciating the good weather we had in May/June now and can see why Londonders get excited when they get a sunny day on the weekend - it actually allows them to go outside and do stuff! Otherwise I guess you are restricted to the indoors and indoor activities... I hear that the hardest part about living in London from an Australian's point of view is the winters - cold, and dark when you leave the house in the morning for work and dark when you leave the office at night, apparently it takes a massive toll on you psychologically. I'm doing fine right now, (in the middle of summer) but it will be interesting to see how I go come wintertime.. i don't generally mind the cold too much, but i'm not a massive fan of rain...
The last update didn't include our adventures in Lisbon - which I think has so far become my favourite European city not named London. We only spent a weekend there, but really liked it and would definitely go back if we get the chance.. So whats so good about Lisbon? Better than Paris? Better than Bruge? How could this be?
On physical attributes, its hard to explain. Paris, in the right spots (looking over the seine, looking down to the Eiffel tower) is prettier, but in general it is also dirtier and reeks of urine. The food in Paris can be amazing, but you certainly pay for quality. In contrast, Lisbon does not have as many 'OMG this is beautiful' moments, although the view looking down to Plaza de marques de pompal is nice, but instead you get a lot of 'oh, this is a nice spot' moments. It is understated, and it can suprise you. Lisbon is built on seven (I think) hills, which means that you come across some really nice view points and they lisboans have built parks in the perfect places. Lisbon isn't too crowded, and whilst some places can be a bit dirty, it has the same cobblestone, narrow streets that give a lot of European cities its medieval charm.
Food in Lisbon is also generally of a high standard, and the cheapest western European city I've been to so far (probably because the whole country is broke but whatever). The iconic Portuguese food is of course the pateis de nata (portuguese tarts) and the best ones can be found at the Pasteis de Belém - apparently they use a secret recipe from the monastery of geronimos (also worth going to just to see the amazing cloister and main chapel) next door. I had 6 tarts from 6 different place over the weekend all in the name of science of course and these were BY FAR the best. This is definitely affected by the fact that they were warm, (they sell so many, there is always some coming out of the oven) but even then, the flavour was amazing ,the egg was not too runny or too firm and the pastry was amazing crispy, giving the contrast of textures. The other thing I loved is the fact that they have these pastelerias everywhere which all sell various sweet breads, pateis de nata, and espresso coffee, just like cafes everywhere else in the world you say, but the main thing is that a most of the time you STAND. So you feel a bit peckish, don't want to sit down for 30 mins and order stuff off a menu, so you just stand at the coutner, get a pastry and an espresso and eat it then and there and then get the hell out. I love it. I don't want to have to buy food if i'm hungry and then walk and eat - its not enjoyable. Nor do i want to sit down just to have a coffee all the time unless its to catch up with a friend, so this whole experience was revelation.
Other Lisbon food highlights included 100 Maneiras - fine dining for 40 euros (7 courses). This is situated in Barrio Alto which is one of the narrow cobblestone street areas I was talking about except evey second building is a mini bar which can hold approx 30 ppl. So you have dinner and wander into the bar area which doesnt really start pumping till about midnight to 1am. Caparinhas and alcohold in general is relatively cheap and the vibe is pretty good.
We also sought out a 'portuguese chicken' shop called Bonjardims which was fantastc - despite what we think in Australia, portugal is not really famous for roast chicken nor did any ohter places claim to serve this, but this place was the exception - a whole chicken (serves 2) for 12 euros. Good crispy skin, just the right amount of seasoning - always straight from the grill (we went twice).
I found that the city was relatively quiet - apparently all the locals go to the beach during the summer so that might have been the reason, but I found the space quite nice. They have an intersting tourist tram (no. 28) which takes you on a loop around the city that is worth a ride, its goes up and down hills and takes you right to the castle sao geoge which is worth visiting for the great views of the city. I wouldn't say I was suprised by how much I enjoyed it as a few friends had already mentioned that it was a great place, but it certainly lived up to its expectations. Next time I'll have to make sure I get to the beach.
Its already midnight.. writing has once again taken a lot longer than I expect it to and I have to get up at 5:45 tomorrow morning :(
I'll have to leave Krakow (The hottest girls in Europe so far) for another day..
Good night all, and write back so I know you guys are still reading!
Miles
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