The Golden Hinde

RIP MJ

2009-06-25T16:39:00.008-07:00

Billie Jean remains my favourite Michael Jackson track of all and it never fails to get my feet tapping wherever and whenever I come across it.

I remember the live 1983 Motown performance of Billie Jean and I have watched this slice of magic so many, many times on video tape it’s embedded in my memory. It was a seminal performance on so many levels that I would rate it the best live performance of the entire ‘80s. In fact this virtuoso number blew away a certain someone who knew a little about dancing - the legendary Fred Astaire.

This was MJ at his peak. You simply have not lived if you have not seen this bit of pop history.

Enjoy

Israel is a state formed and maintained by war

2009-01-07T15:40:00.016-08:00

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

It's been almost a year since I last made an entry to this blog...so much has happened. It is precisely my absence an indication of how much has been happening in real life that the blog had subsumed to matters more important (and fun...) yet I ironically had so much more to say and share during my period of absence than in any other time.

Yet it is my anger at the recent Israeli assault on Gaza that has prompted me to write a few words. In fact I can write and write and write on the topic but I came across an article by an Iraqi Jew and British historian Avi Shlaim in the Guardian today that summarises my thoughts succinctly.

I urge everyone to read it

One of my favourite wartime reportage books is by an Israeli journalist Amira Hass who chose to live amongst the Palestinians in Gaza and report eloquently on a society the average Israeli (or the rest of the world) have no clue whatsoever about. This is a first hand account from an Israeli who has voluntarily been there, lived there and the only one to do so where others have merely tried.

It's incomprehensible that Israel, a nuclear power and the world's 4th largest arms supplier, is complaining bitterly of being a victim and seeking peace when it acts as an aggressor by subjugating and bullying an entire community of people for decades and right now slaughtering civilians without care. Once again I will be protesting this weekend against the Israeli assault on Gaza.

All Cartoons Are Created Equal, But Some Cartoons Are More Equal Than Others

2008-02-22T21:31:00.021-08:00

The Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) cartoon controversy raised interesting valid points of discussion and the range of opinions expressed was often very revealing regarding what innervated individuals and groups.

I thought the re-publication of one of the more insulting cartoons recently was a bad call by the Danish press. Along with the fact it did not help to promote civil harmony, it came across as petulant, churlish, immature and pathetic as it’s a clear symptom of an unfocused and unhealthy way of expressing chronic underlying problems.

Those who were motivated to riot, destroy property and incite death *and* those who were motivated to defend the “Right of Freedom of Speech” have been both emotionally manipulated unthinkingly by trouble-makers.

And here are my reasons:

Timeline

The cartoons were first published on 30th September 2005, in a country dominated by right-wing parties in parliament, by the right wing paper Jyllands-Posten claiming it was an attempt to highlight issues of self-censorship and difficulties in criticisms of Islam – issues that were certainly worthy of discussion. Public fury by Muslims did not occur, in fact some Danish Muslims supported the paper and some Danes criticised the paper.

An open polite letter to the Danish Prime Minister by Muslim leaders from at least 11 countries to refrain from abusing the rights of democracy and freedom of expression in a growing political climate of a smearing campaign against Islam was sent as well as a call for a meeting – which was rejected. Subsequent Danish court hearings ruled in favour of Jyllands-Posten.

So the cartoons were re-published in February 2006. And in numerous other European papers – which was exactly the textbook way of playing right into the hands of radicals.

By that stage the flames of discontent had been spread deliberately and unwittingly by individuals to the wider Muslim world of even more highly offensive images and cartoons that were not originally published in Denmark. Thus misunderstandings on both sides allowed the proverbial manure to collide with the air-conditioning. Various local political climates resulted in some highly publicised rioting, embassy destruction and death of individuals by a minority of agitators with political agendas riding opportunistically on the coat tails of the controversy. For example, chants of ‘Death to America’ in the Pakistani riots were common – uhm, what exactly did America have anything to do with the cartoons?

There are actually depictions of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) in Islamic art (those not showing his face and those showing his face). God is certainly not allowed to be depicted in Islamic art and that attitude usually extends to the Prophet to prevent the growth of idolatry. The Prophet is held in high respect but not worshipped. Despite the calls of respect from Muslims, the initial repeated printings of the cartoons in 2006 did two things that offended Muslims – first, depicting him in the first place was a minor but significant point but secondly and more importantly, mocking him as a terrorist, truly showed the attitude of some of the Western media to a person whom the Muslims hold in high esteem (and one who had been voted as the most influential person in history)

The Prophet himself was insulted and slandered during his lifetime but he never called for death or rioting on that charge alone. So how can the wanton destruction of property and inciting of death remotely be Islamic behaviour for a Muslim? Muslims should certainly voice their displeasure by other more civilised means and in fact they had but this tended to get ignored by the mainstream press.

There were thousands who protested peacefully in London, Toronto and Montreal, Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin, Oslo, Brussels and other European cities; in Bosnia and in Indonesia, Rabat, Morroco, tens of thousands in Istanbul, Turkey and half a million in Beirut, Lebanon.

An Austrian court had found the right-wing British historian David Irving guilty of denying the Holocaust and sentenced him to three years in prison in February 2006. Irving insisted he never dismissed the Holocaust and that it was only ever a small part of his research.

Censorship exists

The claim by Jyllands-Posten to defend the freedom of speech was patently false as it refused to print a cartoon of the resurrection of Jesus in 2003. The paper feared that publication of the cartoon would provoke anger among Christians.

And in 1984 it campaigned against the artist Jens Jørgen Thorsen, who was commissioned by a local art club to paint the wall of a railway station. The work showed a naked Jesus with an erect penis. But the same paper certainly showed no such sensitivity towards Muslims.

Insult to religion, although not explicitly mentioned in European secular laws, is considered an “ethical crime” in many European countries. These legal arrangements, primarily designed around Christianity, do not see people breaking such rules, and as such are not implemented most of the time. Many European countries ban acts which seriously insult religion and instigate religious hatred – so long as it is Christianity and Judaism, it’s a-okay.

In Denmark where the cartoons were originally published, there are articles in the Danish criminal code for punishing “whoever explicitly insults or humiliates any religions officially recognized” in the country.

This is the law § 140. Den, der offentligt driver spot med eller forhåner noget her i landet lovligt bestående religionssamfunds troslærdomme eller gudsdyrkelse, straffes med bøde eller fængsel indtil 4 måneder...

Translated: "He who in public redicule any, in this country, legal recognised religions, are punished with fine or prison up to 4 months."

Where is the much vaunted freedom of expression again?

And Holocaust denial laws do exist in Europe.

Where is the much vaunted freedom of expression again?

Trouble-makers giving themselves free licence to insult whilst cowering cowardly behind a claimed Right, a Right enshrined by the lives of many past brave souls, not only dishonour themselves and reflect badly on others by inciting animosity, but unwittingly risk curtailing or even losing the very Rights they claim to insincerely fight for when they abuse it.

I support the right of freedom of speech and expression but I also believe in exercising rights with responsibilities. Yes, people had the RIGHT to publish such cartoons but it was IRRESPONSIBLE to do so, especially knowing it would be deemed supremely insulting to the beliefs of the followers of an entire religion, regardless if the original intention was to insult or not. People seem to forget that where a Right “exists” it can also mean having the freedom to tactfully not exercise the Right where appropriate.

The point had been proven in the past so I see nothing to be gained by re-publication of an insulting cartoon – it just comes across as childish and promotes an unhelpful “Us vs Them” attitude. After all there are more elegant and less inflammatory ways to address valid issues.

Sharia shenanigans

2008-02-10T09:16:00.001-08:00

It is hardly an understatement to say Islamic jurisprudence is a huge specialty area yet I am hardly surprised at the knee jerk hysteria of some obtuse people when the word “Sharia” is mentioned. It is a word loaded with negative baggage thanks to sensationalist, ill-informed, irresponsible and ignorant reporting in the media and by the behaviour of certain Muslims themselves.

Besides stating the obvious difference with regards to criminal and civil law, whatever the opinions of individuals regarding the merits of legal pluralism, it has existed and does currently exist under English law. To rail with indignation at what the Archbishop of Canterbury said is unwittingly disregarding and fighting against what English law itself allows.

This is because under English law people may devise their own way to settle a civil dispute before an agreed third party – provided the outcome is reasonable and both parties voluntarily agree to the process. Especially if its quicker, cheaper, fairer and more effective.

Britain had done it before – for example when it ruled India. There was a separate legal code for Muslims, organised and regulated by British experts of law.

Jews in Britain have their own religious civil courts – the Beth Din - and have done so for centuries. Yet where are the cries of fears of stoning to death that will overturn the English way of life?…after all, did anyone not bother to read about Mosaic Law at Sunday school? Does not English law itself have a strong foundation on Biblical teachings? I find it a shame that the majority of British people have voluntarily abandoned their Anglican faith and teachings and have thus lost an essential part of their culture. In fact Catholics, due largely to immigration, now outnumber Anglicans in the UK.

Religious beliefs influencing English law also exist in other areas – for example, medical professionals can legally opt out of performing abortions.

Misinformed people fail to appreciate that such religious civil courts do not replace the state’s civil courts. In addition, state laws must also be complied, such as in a divorce, where both parties must fulfil the religious and civil divorce for it to be legally binding.

If one does not like English law then they should go out and protest at the politicians to amend the laws, rather than rail against what the Archbishop of Canterbury said, who is actually applying English law to be practised which English people seem to quickly and blindly lionise about without any knowledge about what it says or how it came about in the first place. It is clear that it is not a love of England but more a hatred of others that propel much of the knee-jerk completely off topic reactions.

I also want to clear up the term “fatwa” whilst I’m at it since it confuses a lot of people as I still notice erroneous terms like “formal legal ruling…”

A fatwa is not legally binding - it is an opinion at best on matters of Islamic law. The degree to which any Muslim wants to follow any particular fatwa depends on many factors, such as who issued it, the degree of authority ascribed to the author or body of legal scholars, the culture, nationality and faith of the individual. It is only binding on the author.

Just like if any priest stated an opinion regarding any topic, it is not automatically legally binding on all Christians on the planet. Or if the President of the USA stated an opinion, it is not automatically legally binding on all Americans on the planet. Yet it never ceases to amaze me to find how supposedly intelligent people fail at elementary logic and basic common sense where Islam is concerned, …especially seeing non-Muslims and Muslims insist that often contradictory, non-contextual and extreme fatawa issued by uneducated individuals with the most tenuous grip on reality as authentic, binding and the only representative interpretation (!). In fact it is plain to all but them that such an embarrassing insistence is more a reflection of their own prejudices, hatred and ignorance.

With regards to Islam, I have no doubt that extremists exists (like extremists in any belief system – secular or religious) who would want to overturn the status quo to their version of how things ought to be run.

Yet in Islam, if a Muslim lives in a non-Islamic state, it is the Muslim’s duty to obey the laws of the land. And under Shaira, as has been done in the past, non-Muslims in an Islamic state can choose a different legal system to address their civil concerns too. If English law forbids the option of the use of Sharia legal system concerning civil matters, whilst allowing a Jewish one to operate, and that the Sharia legal system itself allows for other legal systems to operate, what kind of message does that send?

That the Sharia legal system is in fact more tolerant and liberal than English law?

Workable Sharia legal pluralism exists in other countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, India and Egypt where there is a separation of criminal and civil law. And like English law, there is no monolithic codified unalterable law with regards to many civil matters – the subtleties of law with new circumstances can change based on agreed precepts.

Legal pluralism also exists in other “western” countries, such as First Nation laws in Canada, which has worked well (there are different types of First Nations, just as there are different types of Muslims all over the world under the rubric of “Islam”) Yet where are the arrogant cries that “European Law” (try to spot the misnomer) would be overturned or that First Nation peoples do not know what the principles of honour, sharing, tolerance, civility and generosity are and that their individualism should be denied? Or that “Europeans” should submit to the laws of the host country? How much have Europeans truly integrated?…or is it, *shock* *horror*…it is they who have unilaterally insisted on their way of life as the best and only way to be imposed on others all over the world?

All criminal matters are reserved for the UK's state courts, and there is no appetite for change in the majority of people of the UK and it rightly should stay that way.

After all, disciples of liberal democracy zealously insist that this is the way people should unquestioningly and unilaterally submit to as the way things should be run in this world.

I Used To Write With A Pen

2008-02-03T18:56:00.000-08:00

…Skulptur…you know I love the embarrassed Bavarian way you pronounce it…

Bloody Hell! The days have whizzed by so fast yet so slow…I have pretty much been working almost everyday for the past month and have so much to say and write yet never seemingly having the time to sit down and uncork my brain. I owe e-mails to so many people everyone must think I don’t give a shit!!!!

I’m pretty sure I will have to move as soon as I have the time to look for a new place in Edinburgh and leave my rather spacious pad I’ve grown fond of. After scouting out my new work place this weekend I bumped into Victoria and her bf at the ice cream (my current and recurrent vice) stand at the local cinemaplex…I was there to see Cloverfield and I must admit it was better than I expected (I do not subscribe to internet hype…let alone hype…for it will always lessen the enjoyment so I went in rather blind). It’s a cross between Godzilla and the Blair Witch Project except it works a thousand times to the power of π better than either of those two utter pants films. If you ignore the giddy camerawork and punctuated mushy contrived moments, the story was succinct, the tension palpable and the H.P. Lovecraftian nightmarish vision and the M.R. Jamesiysh utter lack of a resolution or explanation was what made it delicious for me.

I am also very happy to have re-connected with my long lost German pal Petia. I loathe chain letters but back in the day when I was 14 I got one of these odious snail mail spam. I decided for once (and only time) in my life to forward it (picking on 5 hapless unknown girls from the local Sunday paper…muahahahahaha) and to add my name on the list and send a postcard to the name on the bottom of the list after scoring it out. In theory one should get numerous postcards from all over the world after several weeks…and I DID!!! Postcards from USA, Germany, Indonesia etc came pouring in through my mail-box. And the bizarre thing was they were all girls!?!?!! I wrote back to several who unwittingly gave me their addresses AND told me to write to them…but out of all of them, it was 16 year old artist Petia from Germany with whom I managed to cerebrally connect with the best. All our exchanges were witty (heh), informative (I learnt about the German X’ams tree tradition from her), artistic (we both drew and painted) and above all, amazingly good fun.

After some years we finally got around to actually exchanging photos and I must admit I was pleasantly blown away by her blonde winsomeness and her in turn of my unusual Eurasian background. We’ve since met several times (Germany and UK) and got along great with fantastic memories (and some I have totally forgotten…the Frankfurt Wine festivals was a definite blur as she carried me back to her car but I do remember the inebriated buzz of the München Hofbräuhaus…the meals we made together for a party at her place…the stunning medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber at sunset…and the late night showing of the Wizard of Oz at St Andrews, Scotland - I couldn’t believe she had never seen the 1939 classic and dragged her to a showing and she fell in love with it!!!)

I still have the “Radio Obernburg” mixed cassette tape with all our songs and in-jokes she made for me to this day. We lost touch (my fault really as I got caught up in hectic professional postgraduate exams and kept moving around) We have both wondered how each of us have been since but thanks to the internet (uhmm…all it took was the rather mundane act of googling her name and violà!).

On top of haunting tunes from REM’s “Automatic For The People” (my prime candidate for it being in the Top Ten albums of all time), I do remember us dancing energetically to this awesome track by the Spin Doctors…

The summer of 1993 was a significant turning point in my life from a worldly, academic and spiritual POV. But Our Song has undoubtedly got to be this one by the 4 Non Blondes…for some strange undefined reason it spoke to both of us at our stage in our lives I guess…and where unbeknownst to each other initially we adored this song to death…and then both cheered it together as we witnessed it became a Number 1 hit in Germany.

To my peculiar Petia…:)

SAS At This Moment

2008-01-20T20:10:00.000-08:00

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmpppppppppppppppphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

After the stress of applying for jobs this August pivoted over the past two weeks, just getting the green light from my supervisor chillaxing in her home turf of Melbourne and then a well deserved break in Dundee over tea, muffins and cakes with Reem, I’ve been hanging out with the SAS in my spare time to gain a deeper appreciation of the vital community work done by these extra-ordinary people day in and day out that many just take for granted. I interact with them constantly but truth be told I still know little of the travails that face them in the front line of pre-hospital medical care so I figured…why not? I had previously hung out with SMUR and SAMU in Lille in the 90s and enjoyed the experience even though they were French (heh).

In the space of a shift, we had covered the run of the mill overdoses, domestic disputes, assaults and stab injuries, unconsciousness, fits, difficulty in breathing, falls with fractures, transfers, bleeding, rushed food and toilet breaks, police, drunk teenagers…it makes you wonder how some people live, if you can call it that.

The down to earth chaps were great to hang out with, the bum numbing bumpy rides in the dark and screaming flashing blue lights may get the pulse racing, but the most extracted from this experience was seeing patients in their own microcosms of existences that put their concerns and illnesses in perspective, the difficulties of caring and extracting confused, scared and sometimes violent people and seeing how we are all interconnected as team members to keep the veneer of civilisation from breaking down.

One notable patient I came across had Parkinson’s disease whose condition contributed to her fall resulting in a closed spiral peri-prosthetic fracture of the femur. It reminded me of the high profile publicity the condition got from the amazing Michael J Fox and this led me through a trip down memory lane when I was randomly surfing the Net…I couldn’t believe I found a particularly memorable episode of Family Ties ("hip parents, square kids"), one of the quintessential 80s sitcoms I grew up with, after something like 20 years. I remember having a crush on Justine Bateman and thinking Michael J Fox was oh-so-cool. Shit, can you imagine TV these days having such a cheese mush fest of an opening song? Isn’t it bloody brilliant?!?

I still recall this particular mushy yet poignant episode of “The Real Thing” as if it was literally yesterday and how massive the song “At This Moment” (by Billy Vera & The Beaters) was back in 1987…a song that I had slowed dance to *sigh*. Wow…I haven’t heard this song until like, uhm...just now…and all the synesthesia and emotional feelings it brought back was….*puppy dog noises*. It was one of the more memorable episodes in which the conservative Republican money-minded Alex .P Keaton met the sensitive insightful artist Ellen Reed, both actors (Fox and Pollan) later marrying in real life and are still together after all these years…which I guess is something akin to forever in Hollywood.

Still, the best two-part episode of Family Ties was and still is the Emmy winning “My name is Alex”…but I can’t seem to locate the whole damn thing yet. Surely the series must be on DVD by now??

Fluttering Kites and Shuddering Creeps

2008-01-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

What a surprising joy to have seen this heart tugging film simply because it was better than I had expected despite the controversies, cultural inaccuracies, and cuts and alterations from the book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The entertainment value came principally from the commendable acting and chemistry from a pair of unknowns (especially the superb Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada playing the guileless and loyal young Hassan), beautiful score, panoramic scenery and a well-told story at a measured pace that pitched the mush factor at just the right level of lachrymosity.

It still has all the concentrated contrivances, convenient coincidences and correct clean lines that plague a neatly constructed novel but what the hell…I can see the film’s positive magic touching a lot of people and winning shit-loads of awards (I might cynically add, precisely the kind of stuff the Western world laps up in ladles and loves assembled, pre-packaged and gift wrapped with a neat bow tie about a culture and world still largely unknown to outsiders...and I may add even more cynically, the political climate is ripe for this).

I am also ploughing through my Heroes episodes and enjoying every bit of it even though word has it that the second season is not as good as the first. I can only shudder knowingly when I see Isaac Mendez painting the future when he has precognitive visions beyond his control.

Apparently precognitive dreams are fairly common and I honestly don’t know what to make of them as I have them from time to time (it’s always very vivid as opposed to run-of-the-mill dreams). Most of them are random shit I have no control over. Some related to me, and some seemingly never related to me. But I still remember the morning when my Dad rushed into my bedroom and told me the space shuttle Challenger had exploded – months after I had painted a picture of a space shuttle explosion (the painting was published in my school year book). Or the time my sister phoned me to tell me the Concorde had crashed…weeks after I told her of my hyper-realistic dream of seeing a Concorde (a plane until then that had never crashed) ploughing into a field right after take off near to a motorway and a row of houses. And then I see this in the news:

Most are probably coincidences and selective bias but these two still creeps me out to this day.

Happy Winterval

2007-12-30T17:53:00.001-08:00

The German origin of the modern Christmas tree. The Germans had quite a religious feeling for their Weihnachtsbaum, which in turn stemmed from the pagan ancestral worship of the trees of the wood.

"Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

For the customs of the people [are] vain: for [one] cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

They [are] upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also [is it] in them to do good."

^Yet another reminder against idolatry in Jeremiah 10:2-5 in the King James Version of the Bible. It was also the third Commandment if I remember correctly. But I believe it shouldn’t matter if you are a heathen.

It was a random quirk of my rota that I had a long period off over the Christmas season this year. So we had great moments simply spending time with loved ones and that was what mattered most. I was also most impressed to see the use of the Dyson airblade hand dryer at Gatwick airport and various London train station public toilets as I have been a long-term fan of the Dyson vacuum cleaner because it actually sucks.

But back on topic.

I have spent most of my life celebrating Christmas and I have many fond memories of them too. However I have stopped ritualising this hybrid pagan-Christian holiday years ago the moment I found out about its origins. I could not stand myself being a phoney so I stopped. It was really as simple as that and it’s no big deal. In fact I am more than happy to work over Christmas usually in shift swaps with colleagues as I know how much it means to many people.

I don’t mind at all if others celebrate it and I am not remotely offended so all this PC BS to ban religious symbols is nonsensical. It is often the Jews and Muslims who ask where have all the Christmas cheer gone? After all, you might be a pagan or a Christian (although a Christian should not celebrate Christmas and I know many Christians who don’t. Don’t kid yourselves about how much fun it is for it goes against many teachings of the Bible from the Old to the New Testaments). I find in fact that it is atheists, agnostics and those who are most uncomfortable with religion (and these include nominal Christians) that worship and celebrate the customs of Christmas with the most fervent zeal. When I kindly ask what exactly are they celebrating, it never ceases to amaze me how tongue-tied they become when such a blasphemous thought is introduced.

One has to be profoundly ignorant to be unaware of the numerous pagan customs shoe-horned into the supposed celebration of the ethnically Jewish Jesus’ (PBUH) birthday (why exactly do we give each other gifts if it is his birthday? Yes, it’s another pagan custom…go find out for yourself) or the mass crass commercialisation that has increasingly crept into it year on year. Okay, even if we accept it as a secular commercial holiday, it is still a deadweight loss under orthodox (ahem) microeconomic theory due to the massive surge in gift giving. And for the greenies out there, please consider the environmental impact of the clutter of waste, the millions of trees destroyed for the production of billions of cards and the purely pagan custom of setting up of a “Christmas tree”, the amount of electricity consumed by decorations bright enough to be seen from space or the carbon footprint from transportation of goods, people and junk. What I am saying is that there are greener ways to celebrate Christmas if you must.

Also, being fiscally responsible when you worship and sacrifice your moolah at the altar of the First High Church of Retail Therapy is a must. After all, you won’t be able to afford 72 virgins when you find yourself on the other side of existence called “spiralling debt”.

But surely when this does not amazingly happen (Christmas Day alone accounted for £84 million in online sales in the UK) is it appropriate and fair to place this under “Life & Style” sub-section “Women”? How sexist of the Times! Tsk. Tsk.

Other than that Christmas was great for me this year and I hope everyone else had a Merry Christmas and will have a happy and healthy 2008.

Cheers!

Izzy Boo

2007-12-16T16:57:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend with my 2 year-old niece who is getting to be quite the chatterbox. Amazing sentences like “I’ve got a wedgie!” or announcing proudly in a full train carriage, “I’ve done a big poo!” were run of the mill.

We took her to the Shark Capital of Scotland at Deep Sea World at North Queensferry where she was fascinated by the piranhas, frogs and “ho, ho, ho”. It must have been the fourth Santa she had seen in two days and it’s not clear what she makes of him. She would stare at him timidly for minutes and then declare unanimously, “I want to go home!” Hmmmmmmmmmm. But it was the toys and stickers at the gift shop which would fascinate her more whilst I larked about with a hand held toy shark with movable jaws that bit her bottom making her laugh.

She absolutely loves playing hide-and-seek and we spent many fine minutes hiding in all the rooms, closets, curtains and cupboards at my place. She would loosely count to twenty and declare, “Ready or not, here I come!” accompanied by a devilishly cheeky face with narrowed eyes bent on mischief. She is so utterly adorable.

She thinks she is hidden. ROFL.

And wow, it snowed for the first time as soon as they got here!

She can negotiate. Eyeing and then grabbing a bag of Haribos, she would make her demands pretty clear, “Mommy, Daddy I want sweets!” Tantrums would be Plan B. Never fails. But then she is caring and readily shares the sweets with me freely without any prompting.

She loves to dance and every time a musical interlude she recognises is heard we would hold hands, do a little twirl and shake da booty.

She is very sharp and picks things up quickly after hearing or seeing things only once. She can sing some Christmas Carols in a semi-literate shy way with a huge smile on her face. And she LOVES reading books…or at least she pretends to since the only books at my place have words and no pictures. She would grab a whole pile off the shelves from my towering bookcases and ad lib stories to me in a delightful sing-song fashion.

At the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, she would literally drag me by the hand to take me see the world that is full of delights and try the various hands on exhibits in the science section. And this is the age where everything is questioned with a plaintive “Why?”

She makes the ordinary extraordinary.

Children are essentially a blank cheque for hope. That’s what they are.

A Jew, Muslim, Christian, Atheist And A Vampyre…

2007-12-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

…walked into a bar. Okay, okay…actually they are characters from the last few books I read. Well, along with tempting offers to the mind-numbing paradise that is digital satellite TV, I got yet another Official Warning in the post today from the TV Licensing Board threatening me that if I do not pay my annual TV Licence I could be slapped on the wrist, incarcerated with soap-dropping spotters or horror-of-horrors…forced to watch re-runs of TV reality shows ad nauseum.

Meh.

It’s been over 5 years 5 months since I’ve binned the dead metal. I refuse in principle to pay good money for being a passive consumer of commercial shit. Plus I don’t really have the time to watch shit (far more profitable to waste my time in front of the computer, of course). I’d rather see what I want, when I want (the internet and DVDs serve that purpose well enough for me). But I’ve also ended up reading more books, devouring at least one a week. Anyway…the last random few were…

Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian” (2005)

This book left me anaemic with horror. Horrified at how interminably boring it was.

First off, it’s pretty damn obvious that this is a labour of love for an author who adores history, genealogy, librarians and the legend of Dracula. I mean, that in theory should be a winning combination for me…especially when a character utters thus:

"It's my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than escape from it." (p335)

Yup, pretty much the standard aphorism I do in fact utter but that was all the enjoyment I got I’m afraid because several things annoyed the hell out of me. The novel started off promisingly in a gothic way but vapidly descended in the most protracted way possible into a sappy love story between the standard atheistic dashing academic chap (why of course) and a beautiful atheistic intelligent jaded woman (you don’t say!) using a hybrid attempt of crosses and a touch of Islam to fight off the undead. C’MON! Maybe it's because I am a cynical bastard but there were a lot of suspiciously fortuitous happenstance and serendipity used to drive the narrative from point A to point B plus gratuitous doses of rose tinted idealism between the interactions of human characters that I found utterly unbelievable. They were also convenient walking-talking-encyclopaedias of history, furniture and what-have-you, to the point they all conversed in the same bland way…even Vlad Dracula himself, who just seemed so emasculated and wooden when we finally meet him (who incidentally is the titular “Historian”…to the in-joke of him actually having a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in his own library…*winces*). Seriously, a trimming of the fat here and there and a stake through its heart would have made a more taut novel. Bite me.

(For the record, my favourite Vampyre novel of all time, besides Bram Stoker’s "Dracula" (1897), is the much under-rated Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s "Carmilla" (1872). The 19th century Irish seriously knew how to wield the gothic pen.

For the study of Vampyre lore in literature, Christopher Frayling’s “Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula” (1992) comes highly recommended by moi.)

Sam Bourne’s “The Last Testament” (2007)

Another Da Vinci Code wannabe that actually has a good McGuffin looted from the Iraqi National Museum during the war in 2003 that may change the Middle East conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. It’s the same formulaic religious history thriller in bite sized chapters ending with useless non-suspenseful mini-cliff-hangers, a hot intelligent ballsy lapsed-Catholic babe© and a handsome macho yet sensitive Jewish man© (yes, they do bang each other) in a race against time to locate…well, read it to find out what it is.

But having found out what it is, any Tom, Dick and Ahmed can guess the uncontroversial pedestrian ending. It’s undemanding pulp fiction full of clichéd cardboard characters for people who know jack-shit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Abrahamic religions. Which means it should sell.

Justin Cartwright’s “The Song Before It Is Sung” (2007)

This is a moving well-crafted piece of work that is elegant, morally and intellectually engaging and poetically elegiac. I would rate Cartwright amongst the best of contemporary British writers and this book was simply a delightful find. By the use of differently named characters, it’s essentially a fictionalised historical story of the relationship between Isaiah Berlin, the Jewish Oxford philosopher, and Adam von Trott, the German aristocrat who had been a Rhodes scholar in Oxford, and a token card carrying Nazi but true German patriot who plotted to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the “Wolf’s Lair” in 1944. The book’s narrator, a dreamy Conrad Senior, having been bequeathed various personal documents, becomes obsessed about finding out the past (and the location of the only surviving film of the German patriot’s eventual execution ironically filmed by a Jewish cameraman still living in present day Berlin) to the detriment of his relationship with an emotionally frigid unsympathetic lover who cheats on him.

The history is essentially iffy but ignoring that one stain, the novel’s delving into the larger questions of fate, friendship, and the contrast between talk and action as exemplified by the two main characters was masterful.

Shimon Ballas’ “Outcast” (English translation from Hebrew 2007)

This is a rare little gem from a contemporary Israeli writer originally from Iraq. Admittedly this review was what got me interested:

" . . . reveals more about modern Iraq than nearly all Americans put together know, and Ballas creates one of the most relevant, most important characters in contemporary fiction." – Booklist, Starred Review

Ouch. That was a bit harsh hyperbole heaped on the Americans (even though it might be true…heh). It’s a fictionalised historical memoir of Haroun Sassoon (based on the real figure of Ahmad Nissim Soussa), an Arab Iraqi Jew who embraced Islam in the 1930s and his personal interactions with family and friends set against the tumultuous background of Iraqi politics. Now talk about a Pandora’s box of issues.

I loved the insights the narrator made on himself, people, religion and politics. The depressing narrative sometimes rambles a bit and goes off into seemingly unpromising tangents but it does tap into issues of identity, loyalty and family dynamics as it does so…a scene where the narrator stands in front of the cross of the grave of his wife with his Jewish son and Muslim daughter pretty much sums up the poignancy of his life. This book could probably benefit with a timeline of Iraqi history for the general reader since even with my paltry knowledge I felt it was hard to follow.

Take Turns

2007-11-29T16:19:00.001-08:00

This is the popular right brain vs left brain test

Look at the picture. If you see the dancer turning clockwise, you use more of the right side of your brain. If you see the dancer turning anti-clockwise, you use more of the left side of your brain.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise and if you focus you can also change direction of the dancer.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

What do I see?

I find this is yet more proof my brain is not like 99% of the population.

At first glance, I’m thinking….heyyyyyyyy hot heavenly honey. Okay, seriously. On second glance, I see the nubile nymphet nipples turning clockwise (hmmmmmmm imaginative fantasy based right brain for me then). But I can also make the pretty pirouetting princess pivot anti-clockwise. In fact I can literally make the lithe lap-dancing lassie loop any way I want instantly. I can force the fetching fit filly flip-flop back and forth by fluctuating the graceful glamorous girl clockwise and anti-clockwise alternately at Will without the captivating contoured chick ever circumvolve a full 360 degrees.

That to me is out-right proof that one can alter their perception at Will – but only if one wants to.

Lions For Lambs

2007-11-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

The film was more intellectually engaging than say, The Kingdom or Rendition (but that is not saying much) yet still came across as trite…but then again Redford was deft enough to realize not to delve too deeply on the issues regarding what motivates us as individuals and on the “War on Terror”, vast topics that tends to polarise (or…paralyse) people, lest it might just alienate the movie going American public whose Friday night entertainment peaks at the level of Bee Movie…or whose general knowledge seemingly regresses to primary school level as one gets older…

The tryptich plot, if you can call it that, does not actually visually intersect but is made to intertwine like a braid by the audience’s mental participation of digesting and assimilating the staccato questions and conundrums thrown out like pretzels to the movie-goers (now…don’t choke on ‘em).

Charming Senator Irving (played by everyone’s favourite alien, Tom Cruise) announces exclusively a “new strategy” on the “War on Terror” to the veteran but seemingly naive reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) as a favour, delivering neo-con sound-bites without offering any evidence and blithely admitting “past mistakes” but then goes on repeating more new ones.

Two model soldiers (played by Michael Peña and Derek Luke) who fought the much tougher war of gettin’ outta the ghetto and into higher education are shown to be lionised examples of American patriotism, honour and conviction by having volunteered to fight the war implemented by baa-aaa-ad lambs but end up just being cannon fodder.

Then you have the privileged slacker but very bright student (Andrew Garfield) being given a one-on-one sanctimonious dressing down by a Californian Professor of Political Science (Redford) in order to motivate him to…translate his apathy into action that…THIS WAR IS A TRAGIC WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE. Oh shit…I just gave away the entire plot and message.

It’s sneakily anti-Bush but plays out fairly balanced no matter what side of the political divide you happen to be in…if your whole idea of politics is from a Western centric POV. All we see are American faces. We (might) care for the American faces. We (maybe) cheer for the American faces. We (I sincerely doubt) cry for the American faces. The Afghans are reduced to mere mutterings in the snow and moving black dots on a screen…to be blown to bits by American military hardware like the hapless dime-a-dozen commie bastard Vietcong in Rambo First Blood Part II. I mean who cares on how the policies of the “War on Terror” impacts on others because as Senator Cruise explicitly states, it is the USA that has been attacked! And oh yeah, this film is hardly going to be a box-office draw in Kabul or Tehran.

‘Liberal’ has somehow become a dirty word in American politics and I doubt Redford’s friends see much capital gain from this lite-film (check out the Celebrity Liberal (or Celiberal) Whine Rack and List!) but to be fair, as director and actor, he has done a reasonable job of avoiding the highly tempting route of providing answers but chooses instead to simply rehash the questions that many are now openly asking and is thus a useful catalyst for stoking the fires of debate and discourse before we all return to our comfortable cloistered existence.

It Is Impossible

2007-11-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

Damn. I am still riding on adrenaline.

Just shy of midnight, 50 year-old Mr X walked in complaining of central burning chest pain for the past hour and a half rather than attend work as a taxi-driver on the night shift. I was at the fag end of seeing another patient documenting the notes and wanting some nourishment but had this chap’s ECG placed in front of my I-want-to-go-to-the-loo face for a quick opinion. The nurses are great at their job. Hmmmmm…1 mm ST elevation on V1 and an indeterminate rise on V2 with a very mild ST depression on the lateral leads. Riiiiiiight…I said he needed to be urgently seen next.

I rushed into the cubicle. He looked comfortable sitting on the trolley chatting away and his vital signs were all normal. I introduced myself. Tell me all about it I said. He had been on a proton pump inhibitor for years. He thought it was indigestion and had self-medicated with Rennies with some improvement in symptoms. The pain was almost completely gone. Well so far so good I thought. But closer probing with my rapid fire questioning in the next minute revealed that the pain had involved his left arm associated with very slight dyspnoea and brief sweatiness. Uh oh. That sounded cardiac rather than dyspepsia. And he was a known hypertensive. And a heavy smoker. And his father died in his 40s with a myocardial infarction. As far as I am concerned, that was good enough for me. We needed to get him out of the examination cubicle and move him to the resuscitation bay now.

Cardiac monitor lines were immediately unplugged. Trolley and patient rolled into Resus Bay 1. He looked absolutely fine, non-plussed and slightly amused at the fuss. Oxygen. IV access. Bloods. Sats monitor. Chests leads, BP, pulse, temp and BM. Aspirin and clopidrogrel stat. IV morphine and metoclopramide and GTN. The pain was completely gone now. Wahayy! Can we have a repeat ECG? Yes. It was completely normal. Straight-forward. So it was unstable angina +/- dyspepsia. Whatever. He needed to come in for a M.I. screen. I even weighed him myself to calculate the correct dalteparin dose. You MUST stop smoking I said. I’ve tried and I can’t – it’s impossible he said. Uhhhhhm, sure.

Instead of the regular on-call medical team, I instinctively called the on-call coronary care unit doc…that happened to be at another hospital. God knows why for it was purely a visceral instinct. They had one bed left in reserve only for a thrombolysable MI but another bed for assessment. Sure, he said, we can probably take him but could I fax the ECGs over first? He will call me back and let me know with a final answer. Sure. The ECGs were faxed over. Then the chest pain came back with a vengeance. I gave another IV bolus of morphine. The pain settled completely within minutes. Cool. Can we have another repeat ECG? Yes.

This time there was >2mm ST elevation on leads V1 and V2. Shite…this was a frank MI. I quickly checked that he had no contra-indication to thrombolysis. The call from CCU came back…I interrupted and said we now have a thrombolysable MI so you guys can actually take him. Despite being pain free, the morphine was likely masking the pain. We both agreed that he should be thrombolysed tout de suite.

And then he started gurgling and went into cardiac arrest right in front of me as I was on the phone.

“Uhmmmm…he’s just gone off so I’ll call you back okay?” I put the phone down. The crash team was called. Everyone and their dog ran to the resus bay. WTF. It was ventricular fibrillation. The first shock was delivered after I tried to hop, skip and untangle myself from all the bloody wires. His body convulsed violently with the shock. His face turned a ghastly blue. Chest compressions and bag mask ventilation was resumed. A second shock was delivered at the second cycle. Then the rhythm changed…yaaaaargh. Still no palpable cardiac output. Probable pulseless electrical activity or low cardiac output. Continue CPR and IV adrenaline. Then the rhythm changed to VF. Right…charge, clear, check and shock! Whump…his body convulsed violently. CPR was resumed and intubation attempted. And then a sinus rhythm appeared and he was self-ventilating. Bloody hell. Poised with the prepared tenecteplase in her hand the medical team member asked Was there a contra-indication to thrombolysis? No, I said. He had the green light for it. And the IV bolus was given.

And then he went into VF and a fourth shock was delivered. CPR was resumed. Then he suddenly struggled, sat bolt upright and spat out the Guedel airway. Everyone around him took a step back, with him and us looking at each other collectively with a massive WTF-is-going-on on all our faces.

He wondered out loud if someone could please contact his workplace.

Errrrrrrr. We all looked at each other and collectively spontaneously laughed as the intense tension of the last few minutes just vapourised. Phew.

Repeat ECG showed a massive antero-lateral MI across all chest leads. Arterial blood gas showed only a very mild acidosis. He needed a CCU but should he undertake the long journey to the regional specialist hospital where rescue angioplasty was available should the tenecteplase not achieve reperfusion? After a phone call with the cardiac specialist it was settled that the ECG should be repeated at 90 minutes post thrombolysis. If no improvement occurred by then, then IV tirofiban should be commenced and the patient transferred for emergency coronary angioplasty. Everyone and their dog dispersed to their usual work places.

Mr X was sat upright talking, comfortable, pain free and he was…alive. His concerned work mate came in to chat and joke with him. I went away and resumed whatever I was originally doing after the documentation was completed.

Then the crash team alarm bell was activated. Bloody hell. Whaaaaat now? Reperfusion arrhythmia?

Everyone and their dog ran to the resus bay. Mr. X looked fine and dandy. Mr. X’s concerned work mate lay collapsed on the floor like a star fish. Apparently he gurgled, went pale, unconscious and fell backwards off from the stool he was sitting on…but was now awake whilst a nurse held his legs up. It looked like a vasovagal syncope…a simple faint. A formal examination and check ECG supported that.

Mr. X’s family arrived and came round, chatted and joked with him. At 90 minutes the repeat ECG showed complete resolution of the MI for him. Absolutely amazing. I told him if he had originally chosen to go to work he would have definitely died tonight.

Transfer arrangements were formalized with the ambulance crew and receiving CCU. He thanked me as he realised how close to death he was.

"Look, you MUST stop smoking okay?"

“I already gave up an hour and a half ago!” he said.

Strange Meeting

2007-11-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

"I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now . . ."

- Wilfred Edward Salter Owen 1918

Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence

2007-11-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

The whole synthesizer approach sounds horribly dated yet it gives Enjoy the Silence that undeniable charm as the best example of its genre with its beautiful melodies and concise lyrics that never tires my ears no matter how many times I listen.

Simply one of the best songs ever written by a British group

Words like violence

Break the silence

Come crashing in

Into my little world

Painful to me

Pierce right through me

Can't you understand

Oh my little girl

All I ever wanted

All I ever needed is here in my arms

Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm

Vows are spoken

To be Broken

Feelings are intense

Words are trivial

Pleasures remain

So does the pain

Words are meaningless

And forgettable

All I ever wanted

All I ever needed is here in my arms

Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm

All I ever wanted

All I ever needed is here in my arms

Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm

All I ever wanted

All I ever needed is here in my arms

Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm

Enjoy the silence

Down In Dundee And Dad

2007-10-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Dundee…it tends to be a place I usually rapidly pass by but I liked it at first impressions from up close…it has a noticeably high student population with its two large universities, a rich cultural and scientific patina which I have yet to imbibe, and the city is negotiable on foot with a pedestrianised city centre and the usual shopping trappings to cater to the most essential needs of the inane modern lifestyle. It also seems to be randomly peppered with cemeteries but I think the city just gradually grew around them over time, rather than have the burial places erased away for development.

I worked briefly at Ninewells Hospital the last few days in my time off, more as a fact-finding mission for myself to see how another place operates. It’s not the largest hospital I’ve been to but with it’s expansive multi-storey layout, the place felt like an interior of an aircraft carrier when trying to negotiate my way through the labyrinthine corners, stairs and long corridors, nimbly dodging staff, students, trolleys and vehicles in a hive of industrious activity. I was amazed at the number of people whom I randomly bumped into who have seen me or think they’ve met me or know people who know me (!) I didn’t have time to meet up with Reem but she promised to cook me some food the next time I drop by…plus she’s tempting me further with green tea. How can I refuse an offer like that???

Halloween at Edinburgh tonight was awash with randy Roman centurions, not-so-little Red Riding Hoods, pasty pirates, card-board cowboys, naughty nurses, dastardly doctors and other similar ghoulies and ghosties. And twats, you may be dressed like that guy with a big “S” on his chest and tanked up with alcohol, but please look carefully both ways before crossing the busy road or you’ll end up in Scotland’s busiest A+E department covered in a different type of red and blue.

I’m not feeling too good atm. With my lack of internet access at times for days and my mobile being off when at work, I only just literally got news my Dad has been hospitalised with massive bleeding. It doesn’t help that I know the differential diagnosis inside out. And I was due to see him next month. It’s eerie that for some inexplicable reason at the same time I couldn’t sleep last night and I lost my house keys – something that has never happened to me.

Youth Is Wasted On The Young

2007-10-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

I need to find me one of these for Halloween

I’m currently sipping my astringent jasmine green tea all warm and cuddled as the winter season starts to settle in. I’ve found meself a clinically neat tea-house to feed my green tea addiction even though the prices are twice that of Aberdeen (bah!). It’s becoming a seasonal habit of mine…dark winter nights means an emo-leaning towards moody classical music and warm pots of green tea...sound and taste being the two senses strongly associated with memory for me (my sense of smell is not as powerful as the other two)…after all, winter time in the UK can get fucking boring when soulful reflection can surprisingly be a major activity, as waking up and coming back from work means hardly being greeted by the DNA destroying rays from our friendly yellow ball of gas in the sky.

Ahhhhh, green tea and no sun – just some of the secrets to my disarmingly youthful appearance. Yes, I genuinely confound people. First, after having long ago shaved my oh-so-cool moustache (on the advice of a girl…err, I concede she was actually right) people now think I am much younger than I am actually…from, “Soooo….what are you studying now?” (uhmmm, I’m waaayyyyy past post-graduate)…to the classic…“Can I see some I.D. please?” (uhmm, not only do I not drink, I often treat these drunk and/or assaulted fuckers much younger than I, thank-you-very-much)…to the extraordinary…“Are you old enough to watch this DVD?” (paying for a copy of “Léon” at the till – one of my all time favourite films I can near quote verbatim)…to being flirted by teenage girls young enough to be my daughters. It’s so Nabokovian. I don’t mind though as people younger than me collapse with acute myocardial infarction and it’s me ending up treating them.

And then I open my mouth and from a few choice words they rapidly realise I’m not fresh out of kindergarten...“Sorry, what does that mean?” (NB to self: desist enunciating archaic iambic pentameters)…

…but then I get the second confounding classic, “…that accent…it’s not Scottish…where do you come from…which part of England…it’s so region-less”…to the improbable but already occurring several times, “South Africa? Australia?” (NB to self: WTF??!?).

Nobody guesses correctly I’m from Hong Kong. Not even people from Hong Kong. Not even when I am in Hong Kong. And then their mandibles plunge when this “gweilo” reply in Cantonese. And eyeballs extrude, expand and explode when they hear me colourfully swear in Cantonese.

Then thirdly, the inevitable…“What are you?”…and some inexplicably, for lack of an imagination, settle on something that may just cover it:… ie. ----> “Are you…American?” (Oh the ignominy)

Well, I’m Eurasian if you must know, the next stage in human evolution…

So seriously, how does one go someway in maximising their chances of staying youthful and healthy? Of course where you live and other environmental factors can have a huge impact – poverty, pollution, poor sanitation, crime, ignorance, gamma radiation and inane reality TV shows can really be harmful. But reflecting on my habits the following Ten Commandments is what I actually do and may go some way to explain my Peter Pan appearance:

1) Do NOT smoke.

2) Do NOT consume alcohol.

3) Enjoy life but don’t purposefully spend unnecessary amounts of excessive time in the sun.

4) Plenty of water. Or green tea (heh).

5) Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables – there are onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots, ginger, pulses, cereals, apples, bananas and EXTRA virgin (heh) olive oil and vinegar somewhere in my diet everyday. Oh yes, I eat rice everyday too – potatoes can do as well (I neeeeeed my fuel). Consume lean meat and oily fish. Limit amount of red meat. I allow myself copious amounts of chocolate (gotta treat yourself every once in awhile) but other than that I generally avoid junk food.

(This is not for everyone since for some their genetic make up can’t handle it but I drink lots of whole fat milk (never with green tea) and consume cheeses every bloody day and it’s the high calcium intake that is one of the reasons that keeps me thin. I also eat chillies everyday but that is just a “me” thing of loving spicy food – it’s not for everyone)

6) Hygiene – brush your bloody teeth at least twice a day, wash yourself etc. It’s bloody common sense.

7) Exercise and stretch regularly. Some yoga it or tai-chi it or martial arts it. Whatever works for you. I just walk briskly (I’m %^&*£)£ late for work) at least one hour every day. Occasionally I'm even known to jog. As a bonus, performing salah five times a day, every day actually exercises every joint in the body.

8) Get enough sleep.

9) Be spiritually content (that is totally different and separate from being happy but if you are happy too, then lucky you). Have at least one passion in life (not just mere interest although that is a start!). Exercise, challenge and stimulate the mind mentally with cerebral gymnastics. Be interested in family and people. Love and be loved. Where possible, avoid negative souls who tend to bring out the worst in people. Basically, try to %^&*£)£ minimise stress.

10) The rest is random genetic lottery.

My Overused Quotes

2007-10-22T05:44:00.001-07:00

Chance observation in town the other day:

A man started to cross the road at a zebra crossing and the blonde woman with him followed rapidly behind. The cars and trucks all lined up at the edge of the zebra-crossing were revving their impatient engines and suddenly started to accelerate as per traffic light instructions. Caught off guard and realizing his miscalculation, the chap decided it was safer to back track before being squashed to smithereens. The blonde also had no choice but to retreat with the bloke. She was sooo annoyed.

He purposefully cracked a joke to his mates that the difference between him and her is that he at least always looked where he was going and that she did not and just follows blindly. Laughing ensued. She said nothing and fumed.

I saw the whole thing.

This is what ACTUALLY happened:

The chap did NOT look where he was going when he crossed the road. He just assumed the whole world would revolve around him regardless. This time he did make a mistake until it was almost too late and had no choice but to retreat or risk being seriously hurt.

The woman DID look where she was going before crossing the road. She realised her chap ahead of her was taking a huge risk as she hesitated to join him at first. But she DID choose to join da man eventually…because well, God knows why.

When the mistake became inevitable, both of them had no choice but to retreat.

In order for him to divert attention away from his own stupidity, he chose to crack a joke in front of other males at the expense of the woman to salvage his brittle tumescent ego and sacrosanct pride. She knew the joke wasn’t true but in order to say so, she would have had to admit to her own stupidity of making a bad judgement call of following a stupid man.

Although it can be viewed as a one-off joke about the eternal battle of the sexes, I had a sneaking suspicion that this was a recurrent pattern in their particular interactions when viewing their unspoken body language, which made me think if they will ever learn. This naturally made me think of Santayana’s famous quote:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

I actually first came across Santayana in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (yet another fellow admirer of history and a song written after a conversation with Sean Lennon) and then again in Dachau, outside Munich when I visited the first German concentration camp opened by the Nazis, where his famous quote displayed prominently at the end of the museum held particular poignancy. It’s a quote I am guilty of using frequently since. The other one I use often is:

“The like stick with the like”

This all goes through my brain in a matter of seconds and then I go off on another cerebral tangent…and another…and another. Frequently when people see me pondering and asks me to explain what I am thinking I find it easier to just say….“Oh…nothing much” than to go off on an exhaustive spiel. Heh.

Eid Mubarak

2007-10-12T16:27:00.001-07:00

Satellite image of Earth from space

“He created the heavens and the earth in true proportions. He coils the night upon the day and He coils the day upon the night. He committed the sun and the moon, each running for a finite period. Absolutely, He is the Almighty, the Forgiving.” (Qu’ran 39:5)

"Thou causest the night to merge into the day, and thou causest the day to merge into the night" (Qu’ran 3:27)

"It is God Who alternates the Night and the Day: verily in these things is an instructive example for those who have vision" (Qu’ran 24:44)

"And a sign for them (human beings) is the night. We strip it of the day and they are in darkness." (Qu’ran 36:37)

Thanks to Reem and Rana for the Ramadan greetings and the homemade card, and Mohammed for iftar with his wonderful family. Ramadan always goes by soooo fast and it’s such a refreshing month spiritually. In many ways it’s better than Eid.

And ooooh, Christmas reminders on the importance of retail therapy were already up and running since August. Better hurry or you will miss out on the world biggest religion!: consumerism.

Good Grief!

2007-10-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

I don’t normally read Newsweek but I chanced across an interesting interview of Charles Schulz’s biographer, David Michaelis, offering insights on the life of the phenomenaly succcesful Peanuts comic strip creator.

I love reading biographies. Biographies can be potentially unfair (for the subject and reader unlike) as it is still only a point of view as the subject of the biographer is often at the mercy of the memories of others and varied documents, and the incentive, insight and skill of the biographer in being able to get beneath the skin of the subject. Still, when a timeline is constructed and various sources collated, biographies can afford tremendous insight into the lives and times of others that may allow readers to know the person (only in some ways) better than the person may know themselves.

If the charcater of Charlie Brown is anything to go by, I don’t think anyone should be remotely surprised that the author was a sensitive, anxiety filled, lonely, insecure soul. Authors and artists draw on what they personally know. The enduring popularity of Peanuts touched millions around the world because it expresed much of the human condition.

Reiterating what I had posted in an earlier entry, Charles Schulz sounded typical of the kind of person who refused to change, prefering to remain in their own bubble and happy (ironically) being depressed. Despite being married and surrounded by five children, he constantly mentioned in interviews how he remained lonely, and was emotionally distant, with nagging self-doubts of whether he was loved.

“On his honeymoon [with his first wife, Joyce Halverson, in 1951], he said to Joyce, “I don’t think I can ever be happy.” It wasn’t so much a prediction as a choice.”

Fancy expressing that sentiment, of all times, on your honeymoon! And that was exactly correct – a choice. It’s a perceptual framework. Some people, no matter how much blessings may be bestowed on them can never be happy, making their life a self-fulfilling prophecy, and unwittingly causing discomfort on those immediately around them. He was happy (perhaps “comfortable” is a better word) remaining depressed, even though it made him…errr, depressed.

''Everything has to end,'' Schulz once said. ''This is my excuse for existence. No one else will touch it.'' In November 1999 he was hospitalized for colon cancer and started chemotherapy. On 14th December he announced that his strip would end. But thoughts of death had long since seeped into his strip. ''After you've died, do you get to come back?'' Linus once asked Charlie Brown. He replied, ''If they stamp your hand.''

Donna Mae Johnson, the (real) Little Red Haired Girl who broke Charlie Brown and Schulz heart said, “I'd like to see Charlie Brown kick that football, and if he gets the little red-haired girl, that's fine with me", Donna said around the time Schulz announced his retirement in 1999.

As far as I am aware that never specifically happened. It would go against Schulz’s nature; a nature he refuses to change and break out of for it can take a lot of courage and time to open up at a personal level. His comics was the closest he came to do doing so, which gave pleasure to millions.

One may not be able to change the past, but one can certainly learn from it and live for the future.

''You can't create humour out of happiness,'' Mr. Schulz said in his 1980 book, ''Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Me.''

The superb obituary of Charles M. Schulz by Sarah Boxer.

Suffer Little Children To Come Unto Me

2007-10-02T17:13:00.000-07:00

Walking to work yesterday before my shift started a curious thing happened to me.

I saw an adorable blonde little girl near a very busy traffic roundabout looking rather forlorn. She flagged my attention and I approached her wondering what the matter was. Cars and trucks thundered past us. She had a significant amount of glistening green snot hanging from one nostril in this cold morning but otherwise neat in her school uniform with her tiny school bag. She diffidently expressed that she wanted someone to help her cross the busy roads so that she could attend her school nearby. I was taken aback. This was just shy of 09:15 and there were no other school children and the lollipop lady had long gone. Where’s your mummy or daddy? He is dead she said sadly. He died choking on a pizza. And mummy told me to go to school. She is sleeping at home. This little girl had made it as far as she could go. She was only 4 years old.

After explaining to her that she shouldn’t really be talking to strangers and that her mother should have been with her, I accompanied and navigated her across the roads explaining how traffic lights worked. She became grateful that finally there was help and started to talk in that animated way 4 year olds do. It was just only another 5 minutes walk to her primary school but it might as well have been another universe to her. I escorted her across the empty concrete playground towards the main entrance. She was safely taken in by two members of the teaching staff. I showed them my ID and explained whom I was. I explained I was rather disturbed at this highly irregular set of circumstances and pressed home that this should be investigated and that she must be looked after. They readily agreed to look into the matter.

It was that she was so vulnerable and utterly lovely that it hurt me to see her like that. What the hell was wrong with mother for leaving her own little daughter unsupervised like that? I genuinely feared for her that some other unscrupulous stranger could have easily taken advantage of her if I hadn’t chanced across her.

I had no legal obligation as she was not my patient but ethically and morally I found I could not ignore her plight. I had to be sure she was safe. Once at work it was luckily only a simple matter of knocking a nearby office door of the Child Protection Services and a quick word to get the ball rolling. I have seen too many vulnerable children at risk before and I know if you miss that one window of opportunity to intervene, they could come to serious harm or even be dead the next time. Phone calls were made and the child quickly identified and the school authorities and social services contacted. It turned out it was the right thing to do. Father had indeed died recently and there were bereavement issues at home that I won’t go into.

Oh yes, it’s been über busy for me as usual. I aced the European Paediatric Life Support course in Edinburgh last week (98%). It was an excellent gentle introduction to the management of potential and actual life threatening conditions for children using logical and well-tested principals (there was a DVD too!). Bravo for the faculty for taking the time to share with us candidates their skills and experience. Now I want to up the ante and complete the Advanced Paediatric Life Support course next (!)

Talking about abducted children, and with the Madeleine McCann case still making the media rounds, this has reminded me of Ian McEwan’s novel, The Child in Time (winner of the Whitbread Prize), a remarkable examination of one man’s grief and coping of his faltering marriage after the abduction of his 3 year old daughter one busy Saturday morning. Again, the psychological inhabiting of the non-linearity of Time is a major theme where the past, present and future criss-cross each other. I liked how the emotional pay back of the novel’s ending was pitched at just the right level considering the rather melancholic tone of the whole work. There is an interesting side story of his friend Charles’ descent into manic-depression. The devastating analysis of his plight by Charles’ wife Thelma near the end of the novel was dead on what I would have said.

Anyway, knowing the fickleness and nastiness of the media and human nature, I was fascinated right from the very start of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in guessing how long the publicity engine would last. Regardless of all the inherent privileges Madeleine’s parents already possess, I think they have done remarkably well in harnessing whatever resources they could access in order to locate their missing daughter.

I am surprised the lactic acidosis of media fatigue in the UK has not developed to toxic levels but snipping at the peripheries from other parties and media abroad have also been on-going, with criticisms and gossips fuelled by personal and institutional politics, attention seeking, frustration, boredom, idleness and jealousy at the excessive attention bestowed on this one child. Of course, a child that means the world to its parents, just like the multitude of other missing children to their parents around the world.

Reportage had veered from the positive to downright nasty. Nevertheless, the worst that can happen for Madeleine’s parents in their quest to locate their missing daughter is that she would be forgotten. To not know is already pure torture and although there is a significant chance Madeleine is dead, I still think the correct course is to never give up hope. To forget someone you loved is to spiritually bury and live a life bereft of beauty.

Bring Madeleine Home Website

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see” ~ John W. Whitehead, The Stealing of America, 1983

Alcohol Anonymous

2007-09-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

Yet another case of alcohol abuse

Alcohol is the single most destructive drug in the world – not so much an opinion as plain simple fact, causing more morbidity and mortality than any other substance used by humans - COMBINED. Tobacco does not even come close. It does not register with most people because of the simple matter of perception, stubbornness and the need to satiate our pleasures regardless – alcohol is “legal” and “socially acceptable” in most places of the world and hey presto! It must ergo be okay. Alcohol is a toxin and has to be broken down by the body in order for it to be excreted. Without even beginning to touch on the long list of diseases it directly causes and contributes, alcohol reaches in indirect ways on societies and individuals that tobacco can barely begin to match – such as direct and indirect causes of accidents, family and relationship conflicts in subtle and overt ways, days lost from work and other employment issues, compounding and causes of psychiatric issues, legal issues and crime, effects on children…abuse – sexual, emotional, spiritual, physical, psychological….reproductive…

There are benefits to drinking alcohol too. It’s use as a social lubricant (it’s entertaining!), delivers great taste (in some cases), a multi-billion ££$$ industry, impetus for great art and some medicinal benefits had been touted. Uhm. That’s it. On the great balance sheet of life, the negatives of alcohol outweigh the positives by a long shot. That is the objective stance using any criteria one cares to choose. I mean, without alcohol, how WOULD we possibly entertain ourselves? How would we ever get great TASTE again? How would the economy SURVIVE? How could we ever harness our creative juices to BEGET great art? I mean, how would we attain great HEALTH? Surely the mind boggles. But we humans are subjective illogical stuborn sensual creatures and cannot deny ourselves pleasure. So we pay the price even if it is incredibly steep. Except the fact we can’t afford it doesn’t factor into our ways of thinking.

Seeing the umpteenth head injury, road traffic accident, broken limb, psychiatric breakdown, acopia, rape, and death usually dulls your senses but things can get a little colourful and entertaining like when a guy last week volcanically exploded into an ^($&*% argument with the floor and went nuclear on the A+E staff necessitating security, police, cuffs and sedation. Just another ho hum Saturday night. Yes, I am pissed off, NOT pissed! Huge difference! Oh yes, if it wasn’t for alcohol, I wouldn’t be gainfully employed too! How the hell can I forget that??

Cheers!

"They ask you about intoxicants and gambling: say, 'In them there is a gross sin, and some benefits for the people. But their sinfulness far outweighs their benefit.'" Qur'an 2:219

Atonement

2007-09-10T02:15:00.000-07:00

Getting my internet access set up at my new place apparently can vary anywhere from 48hours to a month...and then it may take a week...but no, it might actually be 15 working days now...according to my helpful broadband helpline that is only available between 7am and 11pm even though it said it was a 24 hour helpline on the start up package...and then, oooops! "Sorry...for some reason we haven't even started to alter the details on our database" even after I have informed them of my change of address and telephone number days ago. Twats (!) Anyway, finding other things to do I made my way towards St Andrews this weekend but fate instead directed me towards Edinburgh.

Whislt there, I made a beeline for just one film I was looking forward to in the past few weeks. The one thing I appreciate about the UGC site at Edinburgh is that although it is a multiplex, each screen is as commodious as the good 'ol fashioned large single screen cinemas of old. Ahhhhh, how I miss them.

The first word that escaped from my lips after imbibing Director Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice in 2005 was "Bravo!", a project I felt was always in danger of being eclipsed by the superb BBC adaptation in 1995. But in Ian McEwan's Atonement, Wright has achieved the impossible again but also exceeding beyond expectations. Let me categorically state that this is the best British film of 2007. Nay, it is the best film of 2007.

Ian McEwan is a writer who is infatuated with words like "clarity" and "precision" and isn't shy in using such words and employing its meanings. When reading his books, I feel a conscious awareness on his part that every sentence has been carefully constructed to create a whole larger than the sum of its parts, much like a painter has an expert command of a brush. And here is it's visual equivalent to compliment a masterful work.

The film opens in an idyllic Merchant Ivory-esque England of 1935, where Robbie Turner (played by everybody's current favourite Scottish actor James McAvoy), from the wrong side of the social tracks to his posh totty amour of Cecillia Tallis (Keira Knightley in superb form) becomes falsely accused of rape due to a potent mixture of an unfortunate set of circumstances and the embroidered imaginations of the naive and cosetted adolescent younger sister of Cecilia, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan in a towering performance that exceeds her petite frame, and the elder Romola Garai, in an understated and more difficult role). The rest of the film examines the rippling effect of the curtailment of life long happiness from that one fateful devastating day on the lives of its protagonists from multiple perspectives stretching from WWII to the present day.

It's one of those rare films where everything falls beautifully into place. Joe Wright clearly understands the vocabulary of film. The direction is measured and well-paced, the cinematography aesthetically seducing, the actors well cast and the acting masterly.

Three things in addition stand out. First, that arresting green dress worn by Keira Knightley is a character in itself. Secondly, the astonishing jaw-dropping continuous tracking shot of the retreating British Expeditionary Forces on the beaches of Dunkirk is simply the scene of the year. I just couldn't help scrutinising the background trying to spot someome or something making a major boo-boo as the shot went on for something like 5 continuous minutes.

And finally, the score. In particular the clickety-clack of the typewriter merging imperceptibly with the piano work, where the tinkling of the ivories imbued the film with a sense of inevitable dread, even though it was a bit overdone at times. Although cliched, the poignant use of Debussy's Clair de Lune at the one juncture or La Boheme's "O soave fanciulla, o dolce viso", where the interchanging male and female voices voiced the thoughts of Robbie and Cecillia, was just oh-so-perfect.

The longing glances, the unspoken passions, the wells of hurt and the depths of shame you would expect from such a book are all there to be savoured like fine wine on film. Atonement manages to balance the difficult task of a happy and sad ending which suits my temperament fine.

If this film does not get a nomination for best picture at the Oscars, then Hollywood can go forth and multiply.

10 out of 10.

STD (Synesthesia, Time And Depression)

2007-09-02T04:29:00.000-07:00

There is something few people know about me. I am a synesthete. Sometimes my involuntary prodigious memory freaks people out only because I manage to spatially or temporally associate things via my other senses. I am a very visual person – I need to see things (part of my voracious appetite in travelling is that I must see the places I visit so that I can build a mental map of the world in my mind’s eye). I have a limited degree of a photographic memory, can “see” music and “see” taste (really) but my forte comes with history where I can literally spatially orientate time in a visual sense. For example, a “year” is a three dimensional map in my mind’s eye.

When I hear Mozart, Beethoven, Guns N’Roses or KT Tunstall,…I don’t just “hear” the music, I can “see” the music. For example, Mozart’s first movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is “alive” with broiling reds. And the colour and form changes as the music changes. The recall is further aided by me having some form of audio memory too. When I want to recall a piece of music I “see” it first and then the “audio” memory instantly comes back. This is perhaps one reason why I am more a “movie” person than a “book” person. But even with my own imagined worlds, my creativity in my mind’s eye far exceeds any film I have seen.

Alternatively I can sometimes taste sight. When I say someone looks sweet, there are moments where it’s not just a literary expression. If you are a non-synesthete you won’t get what the hell I am talking about.

It’s like having a natural perfect pitch.

I have known about this “condition” for a long time but I don’t talk about it much….I feel almost like one of those X-men entities. It’s prevalence can be anywhere from 1 in 23 to 1 in 20,000. Apparently it runs strongly in families and I was surprised through my genealogy research that my 5th cousins (who incidentally are artists and musicians) in Australia also have this ability to see music. And we are separated by over 250 years of history.

With the subject of history, for me it is far from a “boring” subject of mere names and dates. If that were the case, then HELL YES, it would be as dull as ditchwater. But no. History, for which the analyses of events is not only in itself incredibly fascinating, to me is not just based in linear time since Time to me is not just linear. Since from my earliest childhood, I had been fascinated with the concept of Time. Hell, my favouritist bestest story back then from the age of five and still now is H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. In my teens I grasped Einstein’s concept of time slowing relatively for the traveller when speeds approaching that of light is encountered…or the possibility of time going backwards at speeds beyond that of light (which I understand is impossible with objects containing mass….that is why “it” will…disappear…from this world where such things can not exist…and “re-appear” once the “speed” reaches sub-light levels). Paradoxes in Time Travel will happen if Time is viewed simply as linear. As to why we do in fact seem to travel in time in a linear forward fashion I am not entirely sure – perhaps it is the path of least resistance from a mechanistic point of view in an existence with mass and space. I don’t profess to know the nitty gritty physics – however I can juggle concepts easily.

I have also inherently understood that “death” is but a moment…everyone is alive (some “where” or “when” for lack of a better phrase but this is totally separate from a belief in the afterlife). And the study of history to me is most indeed relevant to the “now” as well as the “future” in terms of lessons that could be learned and applied. Plus I believe everything is “pre-determined” (the concept is understood if Time is not viewed as just simply linear from a human perspective) BUT at the same time I am not “fatalistic” for within the human perspective, one has the power to “change” relative to oneself, even though that “change” was already…uhm, “pre-determined” from a more macroscopic God like perspective. Time is relative (and that is an absolute statement…ba dum dum ching).

As a synesthete I view Time in a grand panoramic scale altered spatially in a visual sense. Actual Time is infinite possibilities (“backwards”, “sideways”, “forwards”). Which path we “choose” is up to “us” even though it is “pre-determined” (I am just going to side-step the whole discussion about “Free Will” here but essentially neither is totally wrong). I don’t adhere to the doomed variety of “there-is-no-point-to-it” fatalism and obviously I can’t view the “future” (uhm…actually that is not entirely true too but long story). This weird combination means I inherently have a dislike for fatalistic people or overly optimistic people. Although they are at opposite ends of the same spectrum, both groups are really in massive denial. There are understandable reasons for such individuals to adopt such coping mechanisms, even if such coping mechanisms are inhibiting or even harming them. It is their very denial that allows them to function in their own self-constructed world that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyone who has dealt with manic-depressed people will have an inkling of their own logic they function in. They are not entirely “wrong” in their reality construct but I eventually leave them alone if they don’t want to venture outside their own bubble for they have a very limited capacity for growth. Fear and ignorance essentially shackles them to familiarly for change frightens them. Simply put, they are happy being depressed.

The flip side with this though is that whether something happened “20 years ago” or “20 seconds” ago can be totally irrelevant to me – they are both fresh to me since Time is not just linear. Hence I never, ever forget the “colour” of the memory. Hence because of this, I prefer to focus on the positives and not the negatives since I am acutely aware of both.

Makes one think what “Reality” or “Truth” really is.

September Surprise

2007-09-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

"What’s the difference between Iraq and Vietnam? Hmmm....Bush knew how to get out of Vietnam"

Errr….when even the Daily Torygraph…uhm…I mean the conservative Daily Telegraph, with the majority of it’s readers being Tory supporters, run a front page news story on the top British military brass US ally launching a vitriolic attack against the US administration’s policy on the handling of the Iraq debacle, the candle is clearly burnt at both ends. Of course he can afford to do it in exclusive serials from his memoirs…it’s only near retiring or retiring folk who can afford to let loose the cannons of the depth of feelings….especially when you have an upcoming book to promote and sell. General Sir Mike, who believed in the “legality” of the war and still erroneously believes that even more troops would have done the job good and proper no doubt can sleep soundly at night knowing that in convenient hindsight it wasn’t any of his fault.

Lets pause and take a wild guess now that it’s the first of September as to what Bush is going to do next after his so called glorious “surge” earlier this year. Will he stubbornly ignore everyone yet again with more excuses and press on with this military foray or is he going to stubbornly ignore everyone yet again with more excuses and press on with this military foray?

1408

2007-08-31T21:41:00.001-07:00

I have been reading Stephen King for the past two decades and I don’t think I know of any other contemporary author whose works have been translated to the medium of film as many times as his. Most of the adaptations have been average save for an exceptional few, of which The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me comes to mind (incidentally both stories from the same book Different Seasons).

Although considerably expanded, this latest King adaptation of 1408, about a cynical author who spends a night in a haunted hotel room, manages to keep to the spirit of the slender tale of the same name in Everything’s Eventual, a collection of uneven short stories that failed to scale the same delicious heights of Skeleton Crew since it offered many rehashed familiar fiction from King’s previous works and that of others.

And this is no exception: haunted hotels have been done with The Shining and this stripped down version distils into just one “evil fucking room” (a tongue-in-cheek line which made me laugh out loud as it was clearly tailored specifically for Samuel L. Jackson who played the small but significant role as the hotel proprietor. I half expected him to go...I’ve absolutely positively have HAD it with this motherfucking room in this motherfucking hotel!!!).

Directed by Mikael Håfstrom, the film eschews gore and delivers in spades the psychological tension the moment the disbelieving victim barges his way into the Dolphin Hotel. The excellently cast John Cusack plays the jaded hack Mike Enslin whose own haunted past becomes unhinged in a game of psychological wits with the diabolical room in question. Although some clichés of horror films, from bleeding walls, ominous music and a Twilight Zone-esque ending may cheapen it somewhat, Cusack does very well to keep the audience entertained in this taut tale since the only two actors in the film were essentially him and the room.

Watching his cock-eyed sureness rapidly degenerate in front of the audience’s eyes with pulse quickening moments punctuated by occasional understandable human humour, it’s an actors’ piece through and through delivered via the horrors of the mind. From authors as varied as King and Vonnegut who recognise the art of short stories as like a quick affair and that of the novel like that of a marriage, this piece is one definite quick kiss in the dark delight.

Generation Debt

2007-08-18T18:21:00.002-07:00

The Monkey House in Aberdeen with its labyrinthine route to the toilets, average food and girls with thong-baring-above-jeans backsides. Luverrely.

It’s been a very busy month for me so far…starting a new job with a pay rise, involved in a murder inquiry, Aberdeen becoming more and more like a weekend retreat, assuming a more responsible role at work, teaching the wonderful new batch of juniors the ropes, hunting for new accommodation and moving, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, hunkering down for more professional exams and courses, and the inevitable reading, drinks and eating loads (!)

It’s been a delicate balance but I’m well on track with my financial and professional targets I’ve set myself. I love Aberdeen but because of my new job I will be moving away from this oil capital of Europe, which is now the most expensive city to live in Scotland.

The long evening gaze down Union Street from Castlegate, Aberdeen with the Mercat Cross, built in 1686, in the foreground.

Although it has one of the oldest and most distinguished universities in the United Kingdom it makes me wonder how students here and the rest of the country these days are coping financially. Gosh, I remember my fabulous student digs in the highest risk area for insurance in the whole of the UK (heh) in good ‘ol Liverpool. It was the kind of place where our neighbours a few doors away got robbed or you’d imagine a chalked outline of a body lying outside your front door. A place where I shared the spacious paper-thin walled attic with my roommate Andrew with icicles INSIDE my room in winter, and all of us hunkering down in the living room (or Geoff’s room) for the warmth of the heaters! Seriously, even though we were skint, it was the truly special company that made it fun times, fun times.

With record numbers of students going deeper into the red, the future prospects of nurturing investments and getting onto the property ladder recede even further for many – and this is supposedly the brightest and most able cream of society. What about the “other” growing significant unambitious ill-educated masses who are becoming more disarticulated from society by genuine poverty…where up to three continuous generations consider unemployment the norm, surviving on cheap booze, cigarettes and junk food, worshiping reality TV Z-list celebrities and unwittingly spend more than they get from handouts? Where poor health, sorry education, drug abuse and petty crime are rampant? It’s a dangerous massive-in-denial existence at a societal level. Something is going to give in the very near future. What kind of future does that hold with stratospheric house prices, rising cost of living and mounting interest rates? Is it that surprising that the numbers declared bankrupt or slipping into insolvency in the UK rises year on year?

Even though it was published almost a decade ago (and it's been that long since I perused it), this remains a must read book into the politcs of poverty in the United Kingdom.

I have been fortunate to have the support of a loving family and the brains and hard work to earn a scholarship. This allowed me to enjoy travelling many a time in my student days. But I have also been disciplined and responsible and never been in debt. Seeing more and more people struggle, I have always resolved to avoid negative, unambitious, shallow, selfish or passionless people and to use my God given brain and talents to do the best to help myself, and others I love and care.

Art Or History Or Science

2007-07-30T06:39:00.001-07:00

I made a quick visit to Dunfermline to see some familiar faces (glad to hear everyone is doing well), made some provisional plans for Fringe festival meet ups and to get to grips with the upcoming rota and the following week’s induction course. I am definitely moving away from Aberdeen in the next few weeks but the thought of packing is enough to exhaust me (!). Afterwards I made a beeline for Dunfermline Abbey, its vast refectory and Palace to admire the masonry and moss covered graves. It seems I can never quite let go of my inherent interest in history.

I was amazed to hear that my aunt randomly bumped into my old art teacher in a seaside resort who after retirement now runs the place in San Fernando, La Union in the Philippines. He instantly remembered me as one of his more able students and all my public displays back in my halcyon days in Hong Kong. Oh…I wonder what a different life I would have had if I pursued art instead of science…

Homer's Odyssey A D'Ohnut!

2007-07-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

This is really a film for young ones rather than the more discerning veteran Simpsons fan of intelligent irreverent comedy and black humour we have all come to love since its inception in 1990 (I still remember watching the early Simpsons on the Tracey Ullman show back in 1987!!!!). The movie felt like 4 regular TV episodes stitched together (which wasn’t a totally bad thing considering the consistently high calibre of the show over 18 years but it did sag somewhat in the middle and towards the fag end of the film) with a number of weak side plot lines petering out. I felt the environmental storyline alone was not sustainable for a full 87 minutes…and opportunities to expand other characters’ stories or to give the movie a bigger bang with biting satire was curiously and diffidently left out altogether. Several scenes referred to or revisited previous episodes, so long time fans will appreciate the gags better than those who have not watched the series faithfully. But even though the gag rate was good enough at times to match Airplane! with a few laugh out loud moments, the better TV episodes were more biting in its social satire. Still, the effort was commendable given the impossibly high expectations…and at least it was a relief from watching yet another computer generated penguin dancing in front of our retinas.

If you are interested, wait for the end credits to hear what Maggie utters. Better yet, wait for the DVD when all the deleted scenes (enough to fill at least another two hours) gets compiled by Matt Groening.

Fury - Salman Rushdie

2007-07-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately when the name Salman Rushdie is brought up, controversy is not always far behind ever since “that” episode of The Satanic Verses (which was actually hard to digest and frankly, boring). I remembered the riots in Dhaka, Bangladesh when I landed there in 1989…and I almost bumped into the man himself in Cologne, Germany in the summer of 1993, seeing him looking over his shoulder in fear for his life. Being a highly educated and intelligent man from a Muslim household, he certainly knew there would be trouble for his shit-stirring but I guess even he did not expect such a violent paroxysm from parts of the Muslim world. Back then (and still now) I thought all the brouhaha of death threats and book burnings were OTT hate-mongering and showed the behaviour of certain Muslims in a very bad light.

The recent controversy surrounding the knighthood of Salman Rushdie is an exercise in irony deficiency in some quarters of the Muslim world. It’s immature to blame and threaten Salman Rushdie with renewed threats of death – he did not ask for the “honour”. Nor should one blame the Queen or then Prime Minister, Tony Blair – they did not choose him but they are certainly free to agree or disagree on who are suitable candidates. Suitable candidates are actually put forward by a cabinet committee and one can legitimately argue that such awards may have a political element to it. For example, what can be construed as worthy of debate is whether the quality of Rushdie’s literary works merit a knighthood when there are other talented authors out there, like Ian McEwan. So why him now? For those who find his knighthood award an insult, perhaps they should take note the awarding of a knighthood in 2005 to Iqbal Sacranie, who then served as the General Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. He famously did not retract his statement in interviews conducted as late as 2006 that Salman Rushdie deserved to die, despite the fatwa now being officially retracted. This merely shows that the British establishment can award knighthoods regardless of candidates’ religious or personal persuasions. Nor should critics of the Muslim world fail to forget that the late Dr Zaki Badawi, a well-respected Islamic scholar, publicly offered sanctuary to Salman Rushdie. That plus the fact that most Muslims don’t really give a hoot about Rushdie’s knighthood is hardly newsworthy of course.

Nevertheless, I chose to read Fury from a casual wandering in the library simply due to its short title and slim volume. Based for the large part in the cusp of the Third Millenium New York (a city that “boiled with money”), the story arc concerned Malik Solanka, a 55 year-old academic and passionate doll maker born in Bombay, educated in King’s College, Cambridge and who, despairing the infighting that plagued the academic world and his own insecurities, decided to leave his wife and son in London for a new life in the USA where he ultimately gave birth to a huge show business franchise from a doll called “Little Brain” and getting entangled unwittingly with beautiful women who may yet turn out to be poisoned chalices. As he gets assaulted by despairing phone-calls from his wife and heart rending pleas from his four year old son Asmaan to return, he has to deal with a troublesome simpleton Polish housekeeper and a no-nonsense anti-Semitic plumber amidst an on-going sensationalist serial murders of the privileged daughters of Americana.

It’s a love story. It’s a who-dunnit story. It’s a soul-searching story. It’s also mighty tempting to make out that Malik is Salman’s alter-ego as the reader is taken on a whirlwind furious journey of the protagonist’s thoughts in the body of the narrative where I noticed women in the story were invariably projected as terrifyingly distant beautiful trophies laced with poisonous stings (the allusion to mythological Furies could not be clearer). The tone veers between melancholic tragedy and farcical comedy, between hyperrealism and deft surrealism. The multiple layers of meanings are intellectually stimulating in an accessible way and the dextrous word-play yields surprising delights to the eye and mind.

Salman Rushdie is undeniably a very gifted writer but somehow comes across as a pretentious author with his penchant to name-dropping, allusions to mythologies and pop-cultural and literary references, which he overshoots occasionally (the fact he needed to “explain” a reference to one of my favourite stories by W.W. Jacobs, is to me an overshoot). The ending in a fictional South Pacific Third World country was rather melodramatic and odd, but he makes very excellent insights into human relationships, in particular the questions most people think about but rarely openly ask, particularly concerning marriage and separation.

I think, yes, on the strength of this novella, I would definitely return for further readings of his works.

Transformers The Movie

2007-07-21T19:16:00.000-07:00

From the outset I want to make it clear I never grew up with Transformers so it has nil nostalgia points for me.

This overlong toy and car commercial (with self-indulgent nods to Short Circuit, E.T. and Gremlins with Spielberg as producer) was simultaneously stupid and fun, with a healthy injection of hilarious one-liners, questionable stereotyping and misogyny that works well with a kiddy-niave, adolescent-numbed and man-child nostalgic crowd. Yes, I found the film utterly juvenile – the simpleton asinine plot with Grand Canyon sized plot-holes; the gratuitous display of American military hardware as a substitute for machismo penis insecurity; ridiculously hot girls in tiny skirts who happen to have IQs and sass that exceeds any male yet miraculously submits or clings onto them slavishly like dumb blondes; the deliberate pandering to the lowest geek denominator of how one of them can “heroically save the whole world AND universe AND get the hot girl” BS simplicity which I detest. …and just the whole “concept” of transforming cybernetic organisms from outta space that happen to display human foibles YET it’s us humans (uhm naturally Americans) who teaches these advanced cyber-organisms virtue and nobility (the arrogance of it all). But that is PRECISELY what gets the punters into cinemas and it’s a no-brainer that this movie will be ka-chinging throughout the summer and beyond with all the tie-in products.

On the plus side, the CGI action sequences of the robots were simply top notch (the best of which was the slow-mo crashing through a cross-section of an office skyscraper by the feuding and tangled mass of Optimus Prime and Megatron) but even that was too fast for the eye to assimilate at times. John Turturro (one of my favourite actors) was hilarious as a super serious secret government agent and the other major pleasant surprise was Shia LaBoeuf, who displayed a rare combination of great comic talent, geekyness and leading man credentials all rolled into one and successfully carrying all of it with aplomb.

And of course the eye-scorching candy that is Megan Fox (I can’t help it – I have Y-chromosomes okay?) and the only reason I went to see the film. I really didn’t give a shit about the robots back then as well as now it would seem.

Other than that, that was it. Just another requisite-loud-super-sized-popcorn-Hollywood-by-numbers summer blockbuster that we are all entitled to. I am hoping the jaundiced inhabitants of Springfield will be an improvement. Doh!

Potty Trained

2007-07-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter mania once again sweeps the world tonight. As people lining up for hours, and sometimes days, get their paws on the last instalment of the series for what I consider as light literature at best, I can only guess that its chief popularity lies in its ability to conjure up childhood regression for adults and pure escapism for children by inventive use of characters and plots that a large cross section of what is essentially a dumbed down population can relate to. After all, most Muggles can connect to the wonderful themes of alienation, awkwardness, teen angst, rebellion against authority and the ideals of loyalty, friendships, “good” vs “evil”, schooldays through rose tinted glasses….and just having the excuse for otherwise sober geeks to dress up in balmy costumes without having to wait for annual Halloweens, infrequent stag dos or Hen nights or come to think of it…just your weekly Friday nights.

Here in Aberdeen at a few minutes past midnight, I was amused to witness hordes of adult and children Muggles, witches, wizards and God-knows-what armed with broomsticks, wands, robes and cool, hip, fashionable eyeglasses cheerfully queuing up in slytherinesque queues outside the two Waterstone’s stores for their copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows whilst Muggles walking or zooming by in cars yelled out charmingly “YOU SAD MUTHERFUCKERS!”

Whilst a wand throw away at WHSmith, despite enticing customers with sweets and by offering the exact same book for only £6.99, receives nary a customer proving that Potter fans are indeed potty. After all, it’s the “whole-queuing-experience” that validates your loyalty and not getting the book itself ASAP that is important.

What about me? I was just walking home. I used to work with people….and I mean full grown professional adults…who obsessed over Harry Potter. They would describe to my mono-raised eyebrow the intricacies of Quidditch as if it was a real sport, decorate their workplace every Halloween with Hogwarts paraphernalia and jellybeans as I rolled my eyes heavenwards, and looking back…one of them treated me like Harry Potter because I might perhaps have a passing resemblance to him (I do have a zig-zag scar but not on my forehead hahaha). As a parting gift I was collectively given the first HP novel to read and I brought the rest and read all four of them in four weeks. It was amusing but I still didn’t “get” the phenomenon. When the fifth book came out I REALLY struggled to complete it and it actually took me four attempts over two years before I finished it. I believe the Order of the Phoenix is the least favourite of the fans. As for the sixth book, I barely got beyond the first 20 pages of the borrowed library book before being bored out of my skull and had it returned. Maybe I’ll finish it one day for the sake of completeness, but in the meantime, I couldn’t really care less.

Perth, Scotland

2007-07-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

In one of life’s randomness that tends to afflict me, I ended up in Perth, a former city of aboot 50 thousant fowk, with a rich and turbulent heritage intimately tied with the River Tay, a historical centre for whisky and once the gateway to the Highlands in the age of railways. It’s square shaped layout hinted to a past medieval walled city but the modern streets are clean, colourful and full of art and culture with great shopping and eating choices.

Unfortunately I got there when the whole city was shut.

Smeaton's Bridge, with St. Matthew's Church on the left, looking north from Queen's Bridge.

Incidentally, whilst families with 1.8 children and orthodontically perfect convivial couples strolled or biked around the picturesque parks and riversides, it appears bored roaming teenagers are a common affliction of many UK towns and cities. It’s all so samey with their emblematic “hoodie” look. Ugh.

St. John's Kirk is the center of the town and the oldest building in Perth, dating back to 1159.

Thank You

2007-07-09T01:08:00.000-07:00

With NHS morale at an all time low and with recent revelations that even NHS doctors could be terrorists here’s something more light-hearted instead. Patients occasionally freely give small gifts, write appreciative notes and thank you cards for the treatment and care received from the NHS. I’ve had several of these over the years from children and adults alike. One of the most notable and creative concerned a chap who wrote a lovely humorous poem about his encounter with me for a simple plastic surgical procedure I performed on him. But creative artwork from children is even more fascinating. Here’s a gander of how kids view the NHS that I’ve come across recently at Fort William…

“The Nurses and Doctor”

This kid’s got his pecking order hierarchical priorities right with a depiction of three black torsoed figurines in a gravity-defying feat of Wushu martial arts levitation of a centrally placed mad witch-doctor flanked by two flunky super-nurses. The sense of light and shadow is well observed with the collective group shadow on the floor. Or it’s a massive pool of blood.

Note it’s only the doctor who has the requisite digits all splayed out ready to grab the screaming kid with the “trust-me-I’m-a-doctor” clinically calculated smile and what may appear to be a surgically implanted stethoscope protruding out laterally from his ear in a Piccaso-esque cubist style. Or it could be some organic alien-auroscopic probe.

“The Bones”

This precocious kid has a bright future ahead as he already displays as much anatomical knowledge as the average medical student. He or she could one day be a clinical anatomist, orthopaedic surgeon or an animator for Matt Groening. This minimalist bare bones approach illustrating accurately the axial skeleton of the skull (with parietal suture and orbital cavities!) and individual vertebrae appendaged with humerus, femur and tibia cannot be faulted. Maybe the absence of metacarpals, metatarsals and phalanges could be a legitimate criticism but hey, he’s correctly identified that anterior dislocation of the shoulder is the commonest dislocation presenting to the Accident and Emergency Department so let’s give the kid a break okay?

“The X-Ray Lady”

Okay, this is fucking scary. Maybe it’s the clown like appearance with the weird Marm hairdo, OTT eyeliner with evil eyes staring directly at the petrified bairn and the three midline pom-poms but I think it’s the immense Freddy Krueger razor blade fingers and toes that completes the horrifying nightmarish vision. The Ring and The Grudge has nothing on this. Excellent title and poster for a sci-fi horror B-movie.

“The Baby”

A self-portrait of a happy infant with a bountiful bouffant perhaps? The artist may be hinting at something more sinister since the left foot is entirely missing in this pre-operative snapshot of a re-implantation procedure. It’s as if the artist is cleverly inviting the viewer to play a game in a medical version of ‘guess-which-ice-box-contains-my-amputated-foot’? I’m guessing the one on the left since part of a tibia is poking ominously through the lid.

“Lynt_Ox” ??

This appears to be a moribund anorexic supine figure with a ring of hirsutism all round the visage and floppy sausage like boobs (or muscular upper limbs?) with some black coloured mass expectorated from the open gob. Haemoptysis? Haematemesis? Whatever the hell is going on, this young artist is INTENSE in choosing a critically ill moment for artistic expression.

“Untitled I”

Wow…some of these kids are so perceptive. We have an in-utero foetus within it’s amniotic sac and a glimpse of the umbilical cord. And three small fishes swimming around in the uterus.

“Untitled II”

We have what appears to be a surprised pregnant lady with massive tits standing next to a giant pod. Juxtaposing a seed like vessel for flowering plants with an astonished pregnant mammalian is so damn understated it’s beyond genius. Or maybe it’s just a Sheila with a surfboard.

“The Hospital Bag”

How can you not ignore those aggressive pen strokes swishing from side to side? The subject matter chosen by the young artist is certainly unusual. This looks like an expression of a traumatic incident for what could possibly be in the big black body bag? A giant pod?

“The Baby”

This. Is. Like. Totally. Surreal. A view of the vaginal canal as the baby pops out? Or a metaphorical depiction of how your life spirals out of control once a baby arrives on the scene? I mean, where exactly is the bloody baby?

Crash And Burn

2007-07-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Image courtesy BBC News

What exactly is the logic of a fanatic militant using a seat belt and activated air bag when on a suicide mission?

And why exactly does it take two people to drive a car acting as an incendiary bomb when one "martyr" will do? Does the "side kick" get to share "half" the "reward" in heaven? Or does "coolness by association" also work here?

And why drive erratically your home-made incendiary vehicle to such an extent that would result in knocking over a dustbin before running away NOT gain ANY attention whatsoever?

Or better yet parking illegally your home made vehicle bomb will make it oh-so-inconspicuous?

And construct an incendiary device so expertly that it fails to detonate despite repeated cell phone calls and the sheer quantity of gasoline leaking out from the car appeared to be like smoke and thus draw NO concerned spotlight of notice?

Or Mensa-style tell the whole world days before via an internet chat room what was about to happen to NOT alert authorities?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Despite the stated suspicion that these fanatic militants have possible links to al-Qa'ida (yay! more effective free advertisement for a weak organisation), these aspirant and incompetent "Carry-on" theatrics point to one of two main possibilities: -

1) These are amateurs without the requisite skilled training, patience, competence and experience linked strongly to hardened trans-national terrorist group(s) but acting autonomously or semi-autonomously through inspiration or loose affiliations to emulate the "bigger boys" with the "bigger toys".

2) The trans-national terrorist groups are now so weakened and incapacitated at a tactical level through counter-terrorism measures that effective implementation of their tactics is now reduced to the level of using incompetent foot soldiers, either as pawns for actual strikes effective only at a psychological level (if the "targets" allow it to be), or as a "test run" for more spectacular and professionally managed attacks later.

It's probably a bit of both.

The timing of the carefully planned London attacks was likely political to coincide with the handover of the British leadership, and the second Glasgow attack with an improvised incendiary device was likely a hastily engineered event as the militants realised the net was closing in on them.

I'm glad that the newly installed Prime Minister Gordon Brown, community leaders and the public in the UK have acted calmly, and/or collectively called for a condemnation of such acts by fanatic militants as incompatible with any religion, as Muslims and/or "Asians" and "Middle Easterners" inevitably will feel even more scrutinised and viewed with suspicion. Tarring everyone in a community with the same brush due to the actions of a few is only going to make matters worse. And once again Muslims as a community themselves also need to stop being in denial by simply blaming everyone else but themselves and recognize that radicalization of disaffected individuals do occur and prevent extremist ideas from proliferating amongst themselves and unwittingly succour such fanatics.

These recent events in the UK by fanatic militants provide learning opportunities for counter-terrorism authorities, industries and the public...and the militants themselves. No doubt the latter will strike again.

It is indeed not a conventional military warfare but one of an ideological war that exists only in the minds of those who feel strongly enough about real and perceived injustices, and where "sides" are usually painted in black and white when the reality exist in many gradations of shades. It is right that authorities should hunt down these criminals but wiser analyses need also consider the motivations that drive (uhm pun intended) these people to do what they do rather than just label them as nutjobs. Only fools continually propound the ignorant ideas that are the lifeblood and allowance for this "war" to continue. And this cuts many ways.

The attempted use of incendiary vehicle devices is so emblamatic of what these fanatic militants were trying to achieve: to "get even" and ignite enmity between individuals, families, communities and nations and "unite" other similar minded people. But the failure to successfully ignite the incendiary devices is also emblematic of what is going on - it failed.

Blue Mosque, Istanbul

2007-07-01T17:24:00.000-07:00

Oh, this simply stunning shot of the Blue Mosque by Timothy Neesam has to be shared. With memories of the adhan hypnotically echoing through the rambunctious traffic and chaos of Istanbul’s labyrinthine streets I think the last time I prayed in there must have been just over ten years ago.

ALS in Inverness

2007-07-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Ventricular fibrillation on lead II or the munros of the Scottish Highlands?

June has been a busy month of re-certifying. Last week I moseyed over to Inverness for my Advanced Life Support Course (ALS) for a refresher since the last time I did it I remembered 3 distinct treatment algorithms for cardiac arrest situations (now it’s 2)…but times have moved swiftly on. Management have been pared down to essentials…chest compressions have assumed a more prominent role in relation to rescue breaths…amiodarone is now a more active drug…and there is a greater emphasis on teaching management of peri-arrest situations (I remembered in my more junior days thinking ironically that managing a cadiac arrest patient was sooooo much more easier than the complicated lingering moribund patient with a peri-arrest arrhythmia).

The rest remained pretty much the same – 2 long days of last minute cram reading of the deceptively thin but information dense manual, the quickie power-point lectures, the straight forward skill stations since it’s clinical stuff I engage in on a regular basis, CASTeach scenarios (ooooh what adrenaline rushing fun!)…and the enthusiastic and friendly instructors galore. It was held at the Marriott where in our own groups of about 6, we were shepherded throughout the day in between various function rooms where we got the chance to sharpen our skills and embarrass ourselves in private with mannequins (uhmm, somehow that came out wrong).

My abiding memory though was the evening out – starting first at the civilised Waterside Restaurant by the River Ness where bland menu descriptions turned out to be surprisingly anything but. Like the unimaginatively titled “Turnip soup”. Yes, just “turnip soup” but that turned out to be a highly praised appetiser by many of those who were brave enough to order it (moi!). There was a zucchini/cheese combo that sounded hideous on paper but was simply mouth-watering heaven and extremely rich. That gut bursting main meal however did not dampen the ice-cream/mud cake/fruit dessert. It was all served very slowly and we got to gradually know each other. Most disappeared later back to their rooms for some last minute swotting before the examination the next day.

The instructors and I (the only candidate out for more fun???) went on to the local rustic watering hole, Johnny Foxes, for what turned out to be a surprisingly great night out exchanging stories, hearing and dancing to great music by the live band, drinking and some things that I swore should never, ever, ever be revealed. Ahem: inflatable sheep. I think it was somewhere north of 2:00am before we staggered back for a bright and early bleary-eyed long day that began in just a few hours. I figured the night out was more fun and that I would erm “wing it” on the assessment the next day….and glad I did! Waiting in the wings for your turn in the assessment brought back pleasant memories of coffee-filled bladder instability and sympathetic overdrive of hand sweat glands in professional exams but I got a reasonable 96% on the MCQ and a middle aged man in the coronary care unit with complete heart block and ventricular fibrillation in my simulation scenario (help! airway! atropine! help! airway! CPR! shock! adrenaline! shock! CPR! shock! adrenaline! shock! amiodarone! he lives! now my sinus tachycardia can slow down!).

I really enjoyed the well-organised course and was glad of all the lovely nurses, wonderful doctors and engaging instructors I met and bantered with. Confidence does not necessarily equate to competence and it’s only through practice and critiquing that one can improve. European Paediatric Life Support (EPLS) next!

Holyrood Park, Royal Mile And Fudge

2007-06-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

The amazing thing about this large 650 acres of charming wild land containing lakes, cliffs, hills and an extinct volcano is its proximity to the city centre of Edinburgh. Thanks to the lovely Kim for showing me the way and literally within 15 minutes of walking, I found myself leaving the hustle and bustle of city life and immersed in mist, muddy grass and majestic crags.

Soaked in sweat from the humidity I huffed and puffed my way to every single high point in the park, as is my habit of wanting to view things in a grand panoramic scale from up high, whether it be from Arthur’s Seat or the Salisbury Crags.

Hikers hiked, picnickers picnicked and dog walkers dog walked in the refreshing mountainous air and quiet solitude. I have not come across a European city that allowed you to do all that and still make it back within an hour of walking to piss in a Starbucks toilet.

As I descended parched and hungry I avoided the monstrously exorbitant Holyrood Scottish parliament and made a detour for the Royal Mile. Running from the Palace of the Holyrood House at the bottom end and rising successively upwards towards Edinburgh Castle, this cobbled historical street draws a vast number of visitors from across the globe enunciating anything from gobbledegook German, impetuous Italian, flirtatious French, crazy Cantonese and North American English.

With the sound of bagpipes perfunctorily wafting through from many a tourist trap, it’s the last variety of visitors that laps up all the authentic Scottish knick knacks brazenly displayed to lure the gullible and naïve. Colourful Kilts? Check. Bogus Bagpipes? Check. Scotch whisky? (it’s an experience) Check. Your Family History for only £10? (ORLY?) Check. Kids swords and axes? Check. Loch Ness Monsters? (in 3D too!) Check. After all, there is no need to visit the rest of Scotland when a quick walk down one street covers it all!

It was a lovely warm afternoon and street performers were out in force, tourists mingled with the locals and drinking glasses chattered from the cafes and bars. My snarling stomach made a detour for the mouth-watering Fudge House where a delectable array of neatly stacked blocks of condensed sugary goodness beckoned hypnotically at me from behind the glass display. Especially the words “Triple”, “Dark” and “Chocolate”. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Paralysed by an array of displayed rectangular choices I asked what were the best sellers. The young lady explained that it varied from day to day. But usually it’s the Triple Dark Chocolate and yada yada yada….who cares? I was right!

Happy with my purchase, I walked away and ravenously devoured my saccharine ingot…OMG! It was sooooo gggggggggoooooood! I immediately back-tracked and apologized that I was really a chocolate fiend and asked what was the second best seller. Hazelnut chocolate. Hazelnut chocolate fudge it was. OMG. I swear, chocolate is the second best food invented. EVAR.

I’ve seen most of the historical gems on this beautiful street many moons ago thus I spent most of my time wandering from shop to shop and people watching. I did pop into the The High Kirk of St Giles to admire the stained-glass and austere interior and was fascinated by a photographic display contributed by locals on how they perceived their own city through the eyes of their cameras.

I checked out the Fringe shop and thumbed through the glossy programme for the upcoming festival and felt even more overwhelmed by the array of choices of events then at the Fudge House. I wended my way thoughtfully back to Waverley train station, past the television crew and photographers awaiting for God-knows-who to arrive on the platform.

Well, August here I come!

Burberry turban and tartan suspenders. I kid you not.

ATLS

2007-06-10T06:42:00.001-07:00

Surprisingly it wasn’t that long ago when American surgeons played the important mid-wife role to the concept of offering clear protocols for managing major trauma that allowed doctors to deal with complicated clinical situations in a controlled and structured way. Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) is now regarded as the common international language of trauma care and the course has trained over 700,000 doctors worldwide in over 50 countries.

My ATLS certification was going to run out later this year and I was fortunate enough to secure a place on a course in Edinburgh when a candidate dropped out at the last minute. I remember the time when a two-year despairing waiting list was the norm for what was then not even a requirement for surgical trainees but I had the foresight to know the impact and importance it was going to make and had always got myself certified.

Thanks to the internet, I was able to rapidly assess what upcoming courses were available and I made my intentions (erm, enthusiasm) clear via a mass e-mail campaign (heh). The fact that I stressed I could pay pronto and was available immediately put me at a distinct advantage – availability in cash and person always got the desired attention.

The setting was the Lister and the usual mixed bunch of ATLS provider candidates consisted of doctors from specialties ranging from General Practice, Intensive Care, Accident and Emergency, Acute Medicine, General Surgery, Orthopaedics and Trauma and Anaesthetics, and grades from FY2s/SHOs to Consultant level, with half a dozen nursing staff from the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh as observers.

After the registration process of having our mug shots taken by digicam and candidates tentatively getting to know one another over bladder bursting cups of coffee and cold Saran wrapped sandwiches we had the welcoming talk given by our enthusiastic host followed by brief introductions from each member of the Faculty board. I forgot how it had always been de rigeur for each candidate to stand up in front of everyone and give an impromptu introduction of themselves, and (here is what I like) tell everyone something unique or interesting about themselves (mine: I almost made it to Everest Base Camp…..pfffffffffft) – which was a great way to break the ice in later social settings.

After the familiar important ATLS mantra of A, B, C, D and E (Airway maintenance with cervical spine immobilization; Breathing and ventilation; Circulation with haemorrhage control; Disability: Neurologic status; Exposure/Environmental control: Completely undress the patient, but prevent hypothermia) was drummed into us, the audiovisual lectures whizzed by in rapid succession. I found the more memorable talks had audience participation and simple audio-visual aids to reinforce key messages: to wit, three candidates having a race squirting into a bucket from a short, fat needle, long venflon and an even longer and thinner CVP line attached to syringes full of dihydrogen monoxide to illustrate Poiseuille’s law.

The enjoyable parts (beside the social) were when we as candidates got to DO things. The skill stations were fun as it allowed blood to circulate around our brains and hands instead of our sedentary feet and where techniques such as surgical cricothyroidotomy, endotracheal intubation, chest drains, CVP line insertions, log rolling and practice moulage got going. Reading about something is one thing…it’s only when you get to do something do you realise the nuances specific to practical procedures that you can’t glean from a page of text. It was imperative that everyone should have thoroughly read and highlighted to death the creased and spine destroyed bended manual before attending the course to get maximum benefit.

I noticed the more dramatic procedures of diagnostic peritoneal lavage and pericardiocentesis got relegated to a discussion level when these were actively taught as a procedural skill in the past. But I always thought the chances of an average ATLS provider getting to do these in real life to be unrealistic (I have done a pericadiocentesis only once on a cardiac arrest patient) as the availability and ease of skilled specialty help and imaging such as spiral CT and ultrasound scans in a hospital setting becomes more accessible.

Giovanni’s restaurant (oddly situated on the top floor of the Lister) was the setting for the social. Everyone was friendly and easy going and stories and anecdotes were exchanged over glasses of wine and pork (absolutely perfect for me *rolls eyes*). It was unsurprising that topics such as the recent MTAS debacle and mini-exodus of doctors to other Anglo-phone countries had to rear its gorgeous head.

Oh, the last day with the written exam and moulage was…GREAT FUN!! To coordinate and use all the principles one had (supposedly) learnt in a test situation was actually stressful on the spot. Having a clear, cool calm head, be able to think logically, be able to make sure that each part of the ABCs were effectively managed when identified, skilled help was called when needed, necessary investigations ordered and constant re-evaluations were done were all keys to not screwing up and unwittingly “kill” your patients.

I think such a course should be mandatory for all whose work deals with trauma patients (well, that is pretty near much all doctors then – at least when they start their careers) and should be introduced on a basic form at the undergraduate level. But there is always the question of time and funding…I was surprised that all the FY2s had to fund their own course when not too long ago study leave budgets at least offered a financial buffer. But such is the state of the beleaguered cash strapped NHS these days. Although at times the moulage scenarios were artificial and contrived, it was a necessary evil to force the candidates to think through the principles in order to see and apply them in action so that in real life, everyone will understand and be talking the same vocabulary when both assessment and resuscitation goes on simultaneously by a team in the resuscitation bay. I like the beautiful logic inherent in the system of patient assessment and management.

Thanks has to be extended to the administrative and catering staff and to all the volunteers who gamely got themselves into make-up mode of wounds, cervical collars and splints, and role-playing combative or near moribund patients as the situation demanded in the moulage. And finally extra thanks has to be extended to all the accommodating, enthusiastic and good-humoured faculty staff for taking time from their busy clinical schedules to teach another rag-tag bunch of plebeians to make the world a safer place.

Boing! Boing! Boing!

2007-06-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

Earth continues to revolve around the sun this week. And apparently Summer’s here and the time is right…for trampolining in the garden. Now the days are longer (thanks to the planetary tilt) and toasty (thanks to global warming), I see more and more young ‘uns with banana shaped arms and legs after misadventures with their favourite family entertainment centrepiece: the trampoline. It’s apparently the “must have toy” for the summer and is reportedly the third most wanted gift for children aged 5 to 13.

It never really struck me how popular it was until the mental link of seeing backyard after backyard after backyard of trampolines whizzing by me from the train window in the NE of Scotland and the concomitant relatively high frequency of injured limbs from such activities. I do hope more parents take the time to realize the full implications of their purchase and take reasonable precautions instead of assuming their kids knowing how to use the damn thing properly.

And here’s a popular American home video of a trampoline accident that’s been circulating the internet…(what are friends for eh?)

And it’s not only kids. Nocturnal high jinks (ba dah bum) by inebriated adults who aught to know better had resulted in at least one chap whose sprightly springiness launched him into orbit over the garden fence and into his neighbour’s backyard, shattering both his legs. He was crying both in pain and laughter when he realised how ridiculous it was.

In Tameside, where I’ve lived and worked before, sometimes despite adequate supervision, freak accidents do occur and this can give rise to the parallel claim culture.

Oh, and to cap it off…this is PURIFIED LIQUID GOLD from the most recent episode of The Apprentice...how NOT to sell a trampoline…LMAO!

The RIP Matrix

2007-05-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is a world’s first.

Whilst I was busy preparing an audit project and swotting up on the ATLS manual for my upcoming re-verification course, a Eureka! moment struck me that the whole concept of injury prevention, as exemplified by the Haddon Matrix, could be equally applied to…..er, preventing relationship problems by modifying it into a Relationship Issues Prevention matrix (what an apt acronym…hmmmmm).

Um, yah. Seriously.

Relationship problems should not be consigned to the dustbin as something that “just happens” as if it’s a random and unpredictable outcome of mismatched human interactions leading to much heartache and ever more cycles of dumpages unleashed onto the world. You don’t have to be responsible for romantic Armageddon. Unless you are dealing with an unreasonable bat-shit-crazy-bunny-boiling psycho, core problems should be predicable and preventable. There are unsuitable individuals and unsuitable environments. In combination they provide a series of chain events that lead to relationship problems.

Prevention can be:

1) Primary – elimination of the event from occurring (like, don’t be wantonly late for your friggin’ date or bitch incessantly or cheat)

2) Secondary – accepts the fact that issues may occur but serves to reduce the severity of said injuries (like, learn to use controlled tact and discretion rather than act on emotional impulse, or having time-out….or wearing total body deflector shields when the dishes start flying at you…I keeeeeeed :P)

3) Tertiary – means reducing the consequences of issues once it has occurred (like, make use of back-up social networks from friends and family, or try to change for the better……or “don’t-get-mad-get-even”….again I keeeeeed :P)

In the grand tradition of lateral thinking (Geoff knows what the hell I’m talking about), the Matrix is just a simple conceptual framework using the 3 principal factors of relationship issues causations: 1) the male 2) the female and 3) the environment. There are also 3 phases in which issues and its severity can be modified: 1) the pre-event phase 2) the event phase 3) the post-event phase.

Some tongue in cheek suggestions are given below (but you get the serious idea behind the concept)…since suggestions can be infinite and limited only by one’s lack of imagination or desire to identify problems and improve, as the matrix simply identifies opportunities for prevention that can be adaptable to any situation.

Of course nothing is going to work if there is:

1) Ineffective or no communication
2) At least one party having no desire to want to make it work
3) An act of God

People should reconnect with what really matters and be more understanding of themselves and that of others’ rather than avoid dealing with issues and repeat the same mistakes again. There will always be individuals who are recalcitrant to behaviour change but for some who have suffered through ignorance, carelessness or brief loss of self-control,they may want to give things a shot. This is a framework for those who are willing to try.

“You are either with us or against us” or “This is unfair. It is time that we get even.”

2007-05-26T01:16:00.000-07:00

Whilst it’s easy to point out the hypocrisies of American domestic and foreign policies, even bigger and more numerous hypocrisies lie within the Muslim Ummah. This is because Muslims on the whole have become largely ignorant of the rich beauty of Islam in peace (why that is the case is itself a huge topic). As a consequence, Muslims now reap what they sow and suffer from widespread repression, corruption, violence, killings, miscarriages of justice, abuse of the vulnerable and women, intolerance, illiteracy, poverty…all of which reign supreme and mostly carried out by Muslims on fellow Muslims. Yet many Muslims remain silent and even collude with it. But when non-Muslims commit such acts on Muslims, blame is instantly trumpeted.

When there is a sense of unresolved injustice in failed societies, it breeds resentment. And for growing numbers of militant, dispossessed, bullied, ignorant and angry Muslims in despair, extreme ideas and certainty of beliefs with oversimplified black/white explanations become increasingly attractive and easy to imbibe. This enables the more radical, intolerant stripped-down brands of “Islam” to become favoured by those who wish to wage perpetual violent war against “infidels”. This has become increasingly entrenched in both misguided non-Muslims and some Muslims as to what “Islam” represents because of the acts of fanatics and terrorists that get disproportionate media attention (who is interested in boring good news eh?). In particular is the concept of “Jihad” which has been continually twisted and abused beyond all meaning and relationship to its intent in the Qur'an.

There are the Qur'anic concepts of Greater Jihad and Lesser Jihad.

The Greater Jihad is an internal fight within an individual for spiritual unity and identity with God. It is a fight to overcome selfishness and the negative aspects of the ego's control over man. It is a struggle to rise to higher moral standards of living, both within the individual and the person's role within society.The Lesser Jihad is for when Muslims are attacked. It is the basis for defence, and not a justification for aggression.

Verses about non-Muslims or Muslims considered “hypocrites” should be understood in its context. The Qur’an many times have stressed the permitting of fighting only in self-defence and not as an act of aggression (Sura 2:190 “Fight in the Cause of God Those who fight against you, But do not transgress limits; For God loveth not transgressors”) but men like bin Laden cite such verses to justify continued violence against unbelievers and even encourage suicide bombings yet nowhere in the Qur’an is there the justification of killing of civilians, let alone the condoning of suicide (forbidden in Islam). Yet such verses are often taken out of context, as they often relate to a specific incident and certain time in the early history of Islam, but very often following and other verses are ignored such as the overarching command of peace (Sura 2:193 “But if they cease Let there be no hostility” Sura 8:61 “But if the enemy Incline towards peace, Do thou (also) incline Towards peace, and trust in God: for He is the One That heareth knoweth (All things)” Sura 4:90 “Therefore if they withdraw From you but fight you not, And (instead) send you (Guarantees of) peace, then God Hath opened no way For you (to war against them)”).

Certain fanatical Muslims would point to isolated verses and argue that perpetual violence against unbelievers is allowed. Ill-informed non-Muslims would point to such verses in isolation and the acts of fanatics as cases in point that Islam is a religion of violence and that it must be defeated. Both point fingers at each other but both mindsets are wrong as everyone gets unwittingly tarred with the same brush. Yet both mindsets have followings because interpretations of events in the real world by either side does in fact contain elements of truth (but also mixed with much lies) and each side sees what one wants to see to continually justify their beliefs.

Ignorance is a disease. It has a host (people) and it has a vector of transmission (sermons, classrooms, print, media, internet). It makes no distinction between age, sex, race, beliefs, intelligence, geography, social or economic status. Some revel and parade in it. Some fight against it. It’s ironic that in this age of mass communication and ease of access to almost limitless amounts of information, ignorance is an ever growing and vast problem.

Some hadiths of the Prophet (pbuh):

On the authority of Anas ibn Malik : He said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) say, "Indeed, among the portents of the Hour are that knowledge will decrease, ignorance will abound, adultery will become widespread, wine will be drunk, and men will be few and women will be many, to the extent that there will be a single provider for fifty women." [Bukhari and Muslim]

“Just before the Hour there will be much killing. It is not you killing the disbelievers, but you killing each other, until the man would kill his neighbour, his brother, his uncle and his cousin.” [Ahmad]

"Allah will not retract this knowledge by a withdrawal, [suddenly] withdrawing it from people's hearts, but He will retract knowledge by retracting the scholars, until, when He has left no scholar, people will take ignorant leaders, who will be asked, and will pronounce verdicts without knowledge, thus going astray and leading others astray." [Bukhari, Muslim]

"There shall come upon people deceptive years, in which the liar will be regarded as truthful, the truthful one will be regarded as a liar, the treacherous one will be trusted, the trustworthy one will be mistrusted, and in which al-Ruwaybidah will speak." Someone asked, "What is al-Ruwaybidah?" He said, "A paltry man speaking about the affair/business of the general public." [Ahmad, Ibn Majah, al-Hakim]

“When you see the slave woman giving birth to her master, and you see the shepherds competing in erecting tall buildings, and the bare footed and hungry becoming the leaders, then this is one of the signs of the Hour.” [Ahmad]

Narrated by Thawban: The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The people will soon summon one another to attack you as people when eating invite others to share their dish. Someone asked: Will that be because of our small numbers at that time? He replied: No, you will be numerous at that time: but you will be scum and rubbish like that carried down by a torrent, and Allah will take fear of you from the breasts of your enemy and last enervation into your hearts. Someone asked: What is wahn (enervation). Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him): He replied: Love of the world and dislike of death”.

Who is threatening whom?

2007-05-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

Active US military bases in the Middle East and Central Asia (NB. the US base in Uzbekistan has since been decomissioned from late 2005)
Key: Red = Country hosting US base and troops; Purple = Country hosting US troops; Blue = Country with no evident US military presence

I was not surprised by the results of an Israeli poll conducted with the aid of a pro-Zionist organization for the desire to aggressively spread more military warfare in the guise of peace, democracy and freedom in a region already (I)racked with death and destruction when one does not get one's way. My major criticism of this poorly written "news snippet" was that it did not obviously let it be known the number of people involved in the poll, how the poll was conducted and thus how truly representative of the views of Israeli society it reflects.

Since Israel is wholly capable of military action, what I am more interested in is how many Israelis would want Israel to strike Iran? The subjects of the poll probably would not mind America doing the job for them just as America did for them in Iraq of getting rid of a (former US supported) tyrant and leaving a bigger bloodier mess that continues to destabilise the region further.

And should other nations have the right to strike Israel because of it’s pursuance of its own “nuclear program” despite “failed diplomacy”?

Unchecked hypocrisy and violence unsurprisingly breeds more unchecked hypocrisy and violence. Hard to digest (extreme sarcasm here), but yes, both concepts do miraculously and actually flow both ways.

Metrosexual Poison

2007-05-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

Metrosexual? No, no, no…it does not mean a person who has sex in a subway (unless you are Mexican). The term is usually associated with narcissistic dandies who are actually straight. I tend to view such creatures as unfortunate brainwashed victims who worship at the altar of the First High Church of Modern Fashion Marketing where the ideology is relentlessly promulgated through the sacred texts of FHM, Arena, The Face and GQ via prophets such as David Beckham in collusion with the media (which is their literal and metaphorical mirror - they love each other darrrling)

For me it’s clear the metrosexual poison have already made a vice like grip on the collective consciousness. What. Evar. I am being deliberately misleading here as that’s just my little rant for the week and not what I really want to talk about (oh, spot the irony). In between all the hair care products and painted nails, if I was to stretch the definition to include the embracing of practices by men usually perceived to be the domain of females, then there is one unfortunate rise of incidence of a habit I have anecdotally noticed on an almost daily basis that I find alarming.

Ten years ago I remember seeing the vast majority of cases of deliberate self-harm occurring in females. And within this group it was stereotypically crying-for-attention young Caucasian girls who have had “relationship issues” or Asian (the UK meaning of those from the Indian sub-continent) girls who have had tense “intra-family issues”. Working in the front lines these days I am seeing more and more cases of males presenting with DSH…overwhelmingly due to “relationship issues”. To the extent that I feel the gender ratio is now almost equal. A superficial perusal (yes, I find oxymorons amusing so sue me) does seem to confirm my anecdotal suspicion in which there is particular concern that the DSH rate in young men aged 15–24 years of age is rising more quickly than in any other group.

The cause is probably multi-factorial and multi-layered, but seriously, are men getting so metrosexual these days that the moment their relationship goes pear-shaped they will feel the need to swallow a handful of lethal vitamins in self-pity, and then drama-queen-like, immediately tell anyone who cares to listen to their woes, and thus have ambulances blue-lighting to their rescue?

I am not entirely sure what’s going on here but it’s a very noticeable trend that more and more males are losing their grip. Isn’t that supposed to be the domain of females?

:P

Scooch: Proof That The British Have A Sense Of Humour

2007-05-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

Naffly named like a cheap bottled beverage from a last minute dot com Euro flight and looking like the bastard love child between camp “Steps” and the short lived 90s British comedy TV series “The High Life”, this 4some awesome that is “Scooch” last night flew to the highly commendable runaway position of joint 22nd out of 24 at the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, failing their crash landing target of being last by a nail biting one position.

Actually this was a very good example of the wicked British sense of humour. Knowing they were so amazingly awful meant that they could not possibly take this competition seriously so why not have a bit of a laugh? Last year’s crap UK entry, Daz Sampson, optimistically summarised Scooch’s chances as “I’ve got more chance (of winning this year) and I’m not even going”.

After all their delivery was the audiovisual equivalent of two fingers up your arse. And this is where the British truly understood the nature of this competition when self-parodying to the nth degree came in such lost luggage. By taking the piss out of itself whilst other countries simultaneously took the competition so seriously Britain truly embodied the spirit with “Flying The Flag”, for it’s performance was so diabolically UBER 1000% Eurotrash (oooops Eurovision), ticking all the tacky boxes of catchy, cheesy, fun, gay and kitsch. And you can dance to it with twirling trolleys too!!! The tongue was firmly in bum cheek :P

Tumescent with sexual innuendo lyrics (“Some salted nuts Sir?”) and cumming with class cabaret camp moves (“Your Exits are located here, here and here!!!!”) this atrocious 4some awesome prancing about on stage dressed as an airline cabin crew was SO PLANE PAINFUL TO WATCH it was actually FIRST CLASS! LMAO!

True, that this is not so much a song as a shambles but losing was still no easy matter. It took many days of painful practice and prudent planning to come up with a very bad routine guaranteed to cause national embarrassment. With such a dependably dire dance drill, the entire civilised nation of Little Britain chose the best example of sending itself up to inflict maximum self-flagellation. Even their moment of live national TV glory for David Ducasse, Natalie Powers, Caroline Barnes and Russ Spencer was pure gold of a Monty Python sketch when co-host Terry Wogan mistakenly declared rival Cyndi Almouzini as the winner.

Starting at the top from winning the national competition by failing to even remembering their own lamentable lyrics, failure did not come easy as the quality quartet needed the aid of sympathetic seriously minded European friends in order for them to hit rock bottom before even take-off had commenced.

But the real head scratching anomaly was how something as camp as Ukrainian drag queen Verka Serdyuchka’s German-Boy-George-dressed-as-a-Christmas-bauble performance of “Dancing Lasha Tumbai” came SECOND place with 235 points. Exactly. Song quality means nada in this competition.

Since in the real world the UK have true home grown talent dominating the music industry with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Razorlight, KT Tunstall, Lily Allen and Corinne Bailey Rae chewing the charts is it really surprising that the hated UK does not give a flying fcuk and off-loads a cargo of shite at the arrival lounge every year of the Eurovision song contest to make everyone simultaneously spew into sick bags and laughingly erupt liquid through their nostrils? I mean, even if the farcical rules of this “most-watched-camp-song-contest-in-the-world”© where people vote for the neighbouring countries whom they are friendly with far more than for the quality of the songs, were changed, the UK would still gladly and proudly come last. LMAO!

Scooch - Flying The Flag

This is your captain speaking; I’d like to welcome you aboard this Eurovision flight
The duration will be 3 minutes exactly – now sit back, relax and enjoy the flight

Ba-ba-da, Ba-ba-da, Ba-da-da-ba, ba-da
Duty free madam?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Ba-ba-da, Ba-ba-da, Ba-da-da-ba, ba-da
We’re flying the flag all over the world - Flying the flag for you

London to Berlin
All the way from Paris to Tallinn
Helsinki on to Prague
Don’t matter where we are –yeah yeah ye-ah

Flying high in Amsterdam
Why don’t you catch us if you can
Now we’re cruising in the sky
And we’re singing it for you

Ba-ba-da, Ba-ba-da, Ba-da-da-ba, ba-da
Some salted nuts sir?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Ba-ba-da, Ba-ba-da, Ba-da-da-ba, ba-da

We’re flying the flag all over the world
Flying the flag for you
Would you like a complimentary drink with your meal sir?
We’re flying the flag all over the world
Flying the flag for you…

Ladies & Gentlemen, your exits are located here, here and here
To fasten your seatbelt insert the fitting
To use the life vest, slip it over your head
Pull firmly on the red cord and blow into the mouthpiece

Ba-ba-da, Ba-ba-da, Ba-da-da-ba, ba-da
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Ba-ba-da, Ba-ba-da, Ba-da-da-ba, ba-da

We’re flying the flag all over the world
Flying the flag for you

We’re flying the flag all over the world - yes we’re flying - take you all around the world
Flying the flag for you
Would you like something to suck on for landing sir?
We’re flying the flag all over the world - yes we’re flying - take you all around the world
Flying the flag for you…

We’d like to thank you for flying with us today

Cinematic flirting

2007-05-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

Incredible as it may seem, I actually go to the cinema to watch a film. Evidently some women go to the cinema and flirt with guys. I have mixed feelings about this because on the one hand flirting is fun and flattering, but on the other hand it’s incredibly distracting…especially if they are as hot as or hotter than the actress on the screen (especially when I came all the way to see her acting and elocution of lines…ahem, really). What is more bizarre is when such women are with their dates.

Say, I could be engrossed in the visual pyrotechnics of Jessica Biel rippling and undulating from scene to scene in Next and then the rather attractive blonde next to me decides to play contact sport with footsies and elbow massage on the armrest. Okaaaaaaaay. Then last night at Spiderman 3 (admittedly a rather convoluted film for male geeks that can bore the shit out of the average female mind within ten minutes) there was this whole beautiful-bespectacled-brunette-secretary vibe going on next to me who starts to lean her whole upper body very noticeably over, resting her chin on her fist inches from my face, and crossing her long legs towards me – more times than not. She did cuddle over to her totally unresponsive date at points but that did not last long as she made intermittent disgruntled sighing gestures and preferred spending more time leaning over to my side even when there was no touching involved. Once it’s that obvious I caught her several times momentarily side glancing towards me….on top of the blatant female preening gesture of applying her lipstick no less than 4 times during the course of the entire film…and once rummaging in her purse for said cylindrical-labium-moisturiser during the pyrotechnic display of an extended action sequence when one should usually be concentrating on the US $200 million special effects dancing before one’s eyes and not on one’s lips in a darkened room. There may be no actual physical contact but THAT costless special effect can be electric.

Wowzers. What’s going on here lately? Are they indifferent with their inattentive dates? Disenchanted with the dragging film? Do they do this for a nocturnal weekend thrill? Do I secrete pheromones? Or do I sub-consciously flirt with them too?

Planet Woman, reveal thy secrets please.

Audio Spam

2007-05-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

I loathe telemarketers. Unable to block these invertebrates (because the caller had withheld their number) and despite asking them to take my number off their database, the same pool of moronic drones robotically calls at fairly predictable times. I know they have mouths to feed and are doing their job. But I am doing mine too. Some people DO sleep during the day when they work long nights and are actually NOT interested in ANY of their offers WHATSOEVER but that never sinks through their impervious craniums.

Act 1 Scene 1

*ring ring*

Me: "Hello?"
(click click noise in background)
Me: "Hello?"
(click click noise in background)
Me: "HELLO?!?!?" (just a tad irritatingly)
(the perfunctory 5 second delay occurs as my yell echoes all the way to India down the international call line)
Telemarketer: "Is this Mrs....er Mr. "...."?" (not only can this loverly jubbly accent spectactularly misprounce my one syllable surname, he can also change my sex too)
Me: "No" (Yes)
Telemarketer: "This is Orange Mobile Network"
Me: "Yes?" (Aufurfuksake)
Telemarketer: "How are you today?"
Me: "Annoyed as hell" (Can you just get to the effing point?!?!?)
Telemarketer: "Do you own a mobile phone?"
Me: "No" (Yes, but it's none of your beeswax!!!!)
Telemarketer: "We are offering a FREE mobile phone...yada, yada, yada..."
Me (interjects into his minute long spiel): "Thanks, but I am not interested in any of your products or offers" (get the hell out of my face!!!)
Telemarketer: "...for ONLY ££££ a month....yada, yada, yada..."
Me: "I. AM. NOT. INTERESTED!" (THIS. IS. SPARR. TAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!)
Telemarketer: "Sir, but don't you want a FREE mobile phone?"
Me: "NO!" (It's not free you lying prick!!!!)
Telemarketer: "How do you contact...?"
Me: "I use a carrier pigeon, OH KAYY? Now thanks but no thanks. Goodbye."
Telemarketer: "But Sir, do you use Broadband...?"
Me: Puts phone down
Telemarketer: "........"

Act 1 Scene 2

*ring ring*

Me: "Hello?"
(click click noise in background)
Me: "Hello?"
(click click noise in background)
Me: "HELLO?!?!?" (a tad irritatingly)
(the perfunctory 5 second delay...)
Telemarketer: "Is this Mr "...."? "
Me: BLASTS RADIO AT FULL VOLUME

Act 1 Scene 3

*ring ring*

Me: "Hello?"
(click click noise in background)
Me: "Hello?"
(click click noise in background)
Me: "HELLO?!?!?" (just a wee bit irritatingly)
(the perfunctory 5 second delay occurs...he realises it's me and telemarketer self-ends phonecall rather than "deal" with me)

I haven't got time to "play games" but evidently I am not the only one who heart telemarketers. ROFL

Basically, a "hold on please" and just walking away should do the trick of getting the message across since they play a numbers game of making as many calls as possible. You waste my time? I waste yours.

Familial Bonds

2007-04-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

Sleepy Edinburgh in the morning looking down Princes Street

I went to Dunfermline on Friday evening for a good ‘ol fashioned home cooked family meal at a friend’s place. I noticed there was a lot of new housing hastily being constructed in the suburbs, leapfrogging out from the city in frenzy. I saw evil Tesco had already staked its territory. The average house price in the UK is now £180,000, yet what I am seeing – county Fife - is still the cheapest place in the whole country.

Anyway, what a great chap…and his three adorable children, the youngest being a two-year old wee lass who took a liking to me, and like children that age, danced (literally) on the threshold between being shy and being intensely curious.

There is a natural unadulterated joy and directness that children have we lose as cynical adults. I’m usually okay with kids. She proudly showed me her magnetic doodle drawing board and I deftly drew a simple stick figure with a grinning bubble-head. She giggled and immediately named that as her brother. She copied me but drew one with a bigger bubble-head with lopsided Picasso eyes and nose. That was her eldest brother apparently. She erased that and then drew another one with an even more deformed features and massive head. That’s mum I was informed. No prizes for guessing who had the biggest head in the next drawing.

After a gut-bursting meal and an encore worthy artery-clogging dessert, we chatted about how the UK was going down the loo (a favourite topic of mine of late). After a perfunctory football game with the boys in the backyard, we sleepily drove in the orange-pink hued sunset towards Edinburgh to pick up a piece of IKEA furniture from Olga, a former landlady of my mate, with the shimmering soul calypso of Kevin Lyttle reverberating into the cool evening air from the car stereo.

Olga’s mum, house sitting for her daughter, was a sharp-witted (she guessed my profession straight away) quirky old widow who has been husbandless for 26 years after losing him suddenly to sub-arachnoid haemorrhage. One day he woke up with a God-awful headache, got up to the sink saying he was going to be sick and then popped his clogs just like that. She never re-married. ‘Life goes on’ she quipped as she took a phone call from her grandniece calling from Vancouver. She also has a grandnephew in South Africa and unusually they both keep in touch with her every week. She felt blessed she remarked. She still has a zest for life despite recently fracturing several bones from a road traffic accident…of all things when standing in a mobile communal library that got rammed by another vehicle. It’s funny how some people just tell you their smallest personal details so casually. Such is life but I definitely agree about the family bit. I keep in touch with my folks and sister weekly. I also speak to those regularly whom I care very much.

We wended our way down the bustling streets and passed the cobbled Royal Mile. The ghostly-neon lit magnificent Edinburgh castle stood silently over the city like an ageless sentinel. It still amazes me how safe and parochial downtown Edinburgh felt for a capital city. Maybe it’s a tad far to drunkenly crawl around on all fours but the centre is certainly walkable. George Street was packed with the usual revellers venue-hopping and laughing merrily into the clear moonlit night. Another friend, Lisa, remarked to me recently how money wasn’t really the most important thing in life and that human relations are. I agree (although what with the housing bubble, having a nice financial cushion is highly desirable atm - mwahahahahaha). She’s moving on to her next job next week and wants us to keep in touch and for me to stay over anytime. I’d like to pop back to Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival later in the summer so I’ll pencil that into the diary as a perfect excuse to drop by.

Art...Banksy...Crap...style

2007-04-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

Back in the day when I was deluded enough to buy CDs from high street stores, the first time I came across the subversive guerrilla artist Banksy was when I got hold of Blur's Think Tank (2003). Over the years this anonymous urban artist have raised my eyebrow (yes, I can do that unibrow raise) and a smile with his antics....such as the Disney Guantanamo sculpture stunt (*fist in air*)

or the time he inserted his own CD remixes into America's "It Girl" Paris Hilton's album with titles such as "Why am I Famous?", "What Have I Done?" and "What Am I For?" (*yessssssssssss*)

....or the time he satirised the illegal Israeli West Bank wall from the Palestinian side with mocking idyllic scenes of life on the other side (*happy dance*)

and many more.

Maybe his anti-war stance chimes with me. But the simple truth is he makes me laugh. And in a good way.

I noticed him, or more accurately, his art work, yet again in the news in the past week. First, about the deliberate (or accidental?) paint over of one of his iconic pieces (or graffiti) by workers of Transport for London. To the howling cries of critics and supporters of Banksy, the TfL responded tartly, "We recognise that there are those who view Banksy's work as legitiamte art, but sadly our graffiti removal teams are staffed by professional cleaners, not professional art critics." Ouch.

Maybe the TfL should reconsider. Just a few days later, "Space Girl and Bird" sold for the ridiculous price of £288,000. Imagine how many TfL workers' saleries you can pay with that, eh?

It's clear he has hit a resonant note with a body of souls who appreciate his art work enough to feel passionate about it. In that sense I view he has succeeded as an artist. It's my personal theory that what makes a piece (or pieces) of art "great" (be it in whatever medium) is that it represents a harmonious confluence and collage of its constituents that is able to convey an intuitive unspoken truth appropriate for an audience in a particular place and time. Thus it's only made "great" when enough recipients are "touched" by it and deem it as such, regardless of what the artist may have wanted to convey even. What is great art to someone is literally a pile of elephant shite to another.

Check out more of Bristolian Banksy's art work at his website here.

Virginia Tech Massacre

2007-04-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

When I first heard of the shooting spree that resulted in 32 people dead and scores injured at Virginia Tech (via the Internet of course) my first thought was “Not again”. And my immediate second thought was, “There is unfortunately going to be more.”

23-year old Cho Seung Hui, from all accounts available in the media, appeared to be a social misfit and outcast with a chronic history of disturbing mental behaviour that had unnerved family members and other people he had come across in his life. He was a socially isolated individual permanently withdrawn into a fantasy psychological shell with poor coping skills that needed professional help but such analyses are always 20/20 clear in hindsight. Whilst it’s easy to heap blame on, and label him as a nutjob who acted alone, could he also be seen as a social alarm bell…a symptom of the ills of a much larger problem? Is he a one-off or are there more like him out there? With 220 school shootings in six years (and such mass school shootings are but a small percentage of this frightening total of firearm related deaths in the USA), I would be hard-pressed to be convinced it’s the former.

In a gun-loving society that allows for easy access of firearms to irresponsible individuals, it is hardly surprising that mass murders such as these keep punctuating the news with disturbing frequency.

Americans often tout their “right of the people to keep and bear Arms”. Fine – there is nothing right or wrong with that Right (I would even support that Right) except people tend to forget that is just one half of a maxim. For with Rights come Responsibilities. If one consistently is unable to demonstrate responsibilities for said rights, why let any Tom, Dick and Harry easy access to multiple weapons of mass destruction? If pundits claim that is not entirely true, should communication between different government agencies be reviewed which would have prevented such individuals ease of access to firearms?

Switzerland, another gun loving culture, do not have the same rates of murder with firearms as the USA, and even celebrate firearms as a wholesome community activity. The difference is one of attitude. Switzerland as a nation has demonstrated its Responsibility with its Right. The USA however continually fail at demonstrating said Responsibility with said Right. And until that can be achieved as a nation (which requires a national change in attitude that I don’t realistically see happening too soon), the quickest way of achieving results would be to toughen legislation that allows for easy access to firearms – a mammoth task indeed.

Still focusing on the theme of “prevention”, the other debate would be how to spot such troubled individuals before such tragedies occur (near impossible as too many false positives would be generated). Nevertheless, some form of national and local guidelines of management of troubled individuals as a group in general, commensurate to their problems, needs to be reviewed by politicians, academics and health care professionals alike so that clear lines of responsibility and appropriate actions may help all concerned. Also, contingency planning with review of established emergency plans and communication systems on campuses needs to be done to minimise future casualties. And if anything is implemented, such measures will need to be reviewed and audited to see if it actually works.

Boy, is there a lot of potential work ahead.

Links Market 2007 - The Longest Fair In Europe

2007-04-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

I cruised by to see what the fuss was about as Kirkcaldians would proudly point to the fact that the Links Market has a 700 plus year history (officially having started in 1304). And that it is the longest street fair in Europe that runs for six days around the time of Easter and signals the start of the Showman’s year in Scotland.

Like most British traditions that stem from the pre-Google age, it had mutated beyond original recognition. It is now more akin to a tacky seaside funfair where families can amble about in a disinterested fashion, teenagers congregate collectively to mooch, smooch and drink hooch, enthralled kids can siphon parents’ wages into showmans’ jangling pockets and where antediluvian tartan wrapped pensioners in pushed wheelchairs can have a colourful day out in the bracing cold.

The police were out in force, the paramedics were on stand-by and the public toilets were provided for to ensure the proletarians play faired (pun intended). All one had to do was just waddle up and down the length of scary rides and screaming people and absent-mindedly decide, whilst struggling to fit the candy floss into your gob without getting the sticky sugar all over your annoyed visage, which attractions were worth your time.

The city lad within me found the whole experience rather under-whelming. But sufficient numbers of 21st century British crowds still seem to enjoy bathing in the radiance of the quaint and kitsch so at the end of the day, people-watching turned out to be the most amusing thing of all…

Seagull’s eye view of the Links Market

The average age of clientele must have hovered around the teens

It amazes me how useless tacky goods still wow the crowds

Get stuffed!

…round round baby round round…

The crowd pleasing British addition to authentic Chinese cuisine basically boils down to chips + any sauce!

Staple hearty funfair British grub robust enough to induce lockjaw

The vominator dry spins your insides for a mere £5…or more…if it catapults your loose change all the way to Dysart

Loose dentures, condom packets and Mercedes Benz car keys constantly whistled above the unsuspecting heads of the crowds below

The life and soul of the party attracted an avid array of ankle biters

…whilst Rastas get no love…awwwwww…

House of Lying Backstabbers

2007-04-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

Zhang Yimou delivers his most intense martial artistry to date in Curse of the Golden Flower as audience's retinas are wushu'd to submission by a kaleidoscopic explosion of garish technicolour. One's fatigued ocular muscles, unable to drink in the fountain of opulent palatial detail, welcomes the few scenes of the drab monochrome world beyond the scheming palace walls. This in-your-face schizophrenic display of opulent LSD colours serves as a useful counterpoint and contrast to the dark, tragic Shakespearean theme that plagues this imperial family set during China's Tang dynasty. I haven't seen such a dysfunctional royal family on celluloid since the Tenenbaums (at least The Queen is based on REALITY...mwahahah). The Tenenbaums were quirky cute. This is incestuous tragic.

In the Red corner we have Chow Yun-Fat's artful-goatee-stroking emperor determined to slowly poison his reigning consort with a black Persian mushroom. In the Gold corner, perhaps already mentally unhinged by said fungi, Gong Li's bitchtastic scheming Queen, attended to by a sea of corsetted A-cup courtiers, conspires to usurp the throne with the help of son number two. In the remaining myriad corners of this ever enlarging rainbow coloured polygon, we have the three princes where their combined naivety, natures and nurture prove to be their own Achilles' heel in their undoing when caught up in the scheming ping-pong match of their parents' machinations.

The histrionic operatic denouement takes place at the Festival of the Chrysanthemum as the smug competitors attempts to outdo one another's ruses with their delivery of psychological pain of acupuncture accuracy, or less surgically, with a shock-and-awe array of CGI terra-cotta like armies streaming across the palace grounds or improbable black masked assassins that drop out of the night sky at convenient points to dispose of second rate characters once they served the overcooked plot's purpose.

Students of Shakespeare will recognise shades of Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and Othello embroidered within the film's fabric so don't be surprised by the ending. Yimou's last two similarly themed martial arts films have operated on a delicate balance of emblematic colours and tales of intrigue which somehow delivered with Hero and to a lesser extent, the House of Flying Daggers, but this final act of the trilogy is his weakest in its bombastic plot and dubious logic.

Visually the film is a feast of Chinese banquet proportions but the MSG loaded story makes one emerge from the cinema with a lingering taste of a take away.

212

2007-04-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

I get given fragrances left, right and centre and it will take me eons to work through them all. One notable favourite of mine at present is that of Venezuelan fashion designer Caroline Herrera’s 212 which was given to me by my sister some years ago. I have only now come round to using it regularly after first taking it to Delhi for a friend’s wedding in 2003, partly because the packaging appealed to me (I’m the type that packs one hour before leaving so I had no time to faff around with glass containers for a long haul flight).

When I last met my mum she commented how wonderful I smelled (hmmmmm) and now women at work are commenting how great I smell (even greater hmmmmmmmmmmm) so maybe there is something to it. In fact my mum loved it so much she recently got another 212 for me at Duty Free (gerrrr-rate, now I will get round to using that one in 2012).

The packaging is clever and literally ties in with the message the product wants to convey – sensuality and magnetism. It’s a smooth, solid, palm sized, silver burnished metallic cylinder with the logo in blue glass (that’s fun to shine a light into - heh) that’s unleashed by removing a magnetic cap with a sexy click – no need to flip a 19th century cap or any annoying 20th century unscrewing. I love it!

The fragrance seems quite overpowering at first with a citric tang of bergamot, mandarin and green leaf suffusing your olfactory nerve. But after this energetic introduction, the spicy cardamom, flower petals and pepper takes over sensually. The base note consists of sandalwood, vanilla, bois de gaiac, musk and amber that lingers as some sub-conscious seductive tug for well over an hour (well, I imagine it does…bwahahaha).

The website has the usual macromedia advertising pretentiousness overlain with catwalk sashay music but it’s very simple to navigate and full of snazzy black and white photos of New York and personalities – Americans are very, very good at this display of confident, flamboyant self-assurance. I don’t normally recommend fragrances but this is the only one I have used that has generated the most positive reaction from others.

Seals, Supplies and Sporrans

2007-04-13T20:44:00.000-07:00

Copyright: AP Photo/ IFAW, Stewart Cook, HO, March 25, 2006

Walking in town tonight I saw yet another striding Scot in kilt with a beautiful swinging sporran in front, no doubt merrily heading off to a night of fun and festivities. I love how the Scottish people have their own pride in their rich culture but I also feel that some traditions are not justified.

As international condemnation against Canada hits the media again regarding an increase in quota allowed for the seal hunt this spring, few realise in the UK that Britain is the largest importer of seal furs, and that Scotland in particular is a big consumer of said furs – for the making of that most Scottish of garments, the sporran.

I find most of the arguments supporting the culling of seal pups spurious. Typical points:

1) Seals look cute so they get media coverage.

Yes. So?

2) Why care so much about seals when other animals are slaughtered for food too?

First of all, why link other issues to a discussion (killing seals for totally non-essential fashion accessories vs. killing for food) and by framing such a question assumes that others do not care about the welfare of other animals is a credible “defence”? It is a weak argument to assume that it is simply a cuteness factor (no doubt the cuteness factor does generate media coverage, but like I said, so? Does that suddenly invalidate the totally different point of unnecessary cruelty?). Seals do not spread diseases to humans. Nor are they reared specifically for food consumption. Thus I find it pointless to see unrelated points raised about the killing of cockroaches or the slaughter of sheep.

Secondly, how does the fact that other wrongs committed justify another wrong committed as being acceptable?

3) It is a source of livelihood and income for remote populations in Newfoundland. It is a traditional way of life in Newfoundland.

Firstly, what do they do for the rest of the year?

Secondly, such an argument would be the very anti-thesis for economic change – because you know, it’s a “way of life” so we should therefore continue it forever. In which case lets bring back the slave trade since it was a “way of life” for centuries and a livelihood for many.

4) Eskimos are deprived of their sole trade.

Oh yes, what the hell were they relying on for millennia before the sporran market came about?

I have no qualms about the Innuit killing seals for their own livelihood. They have for many generations killed enough to survive on; no more, no less. Not only is the animal completely dead before it is skinned, the entire animal is not left as a bloody carcass on the ice once it is skinned as every part is used for food and clothing. The fur trade however is driven purely by greed and vanity. No comparison.

5) There are too many seals.

Yes, nature is unable to cope and needs the help of humans for ecological balance.

Yes, the fact that perhaps there may be too many humans instead means that we should start an annual clubbing to death ritual of a few million people perhaps?

Whilst pro-hunters are keen to point out that the seal population has since tripled from the 1970s, the same pundits don’t point out that the population was reduced by two thirds between the 1950s and 1970s – from seal hunting. And now with the increase in global temperatures, more seal pups die due to a lack of ice before the hunting season even begin.

The fact is a lot of the source of ecological imbalance in nature traces back to humans. Culling may be necessary if that is the line of argument but why choose a violent method of dispatch by battering to death helpless pups when other factors that give rise to the increase in seal numbers are not addressed?

The Canadian government issued figures of “landed catch” is often misinterpreted in the media as total number of seals killed. That number is obtained from those seals “landed” at seal processing facilities and does not include those killed in Greenland or those seals that were wounded and escaped (“struck and lost”) or those killed accidentally in fishing nets.

The scientific journal Marine Mammal Science estimated that in 1998 the total number of seals killed was somewhere between 406, 258 to 548, 903 – more than the allowed cull.

6) The seals are depleting the cod stock.

Oh yes, the fact that the primary problem is humans over-fishing cod and destroying the natural predators of seals means we should get all uppity when seals bite into our food-chain! I mean, how dare the seals touch OUR fish!

Is cod the only fish and food that humans subsist on?

7) It is not a violent cull. It is a well-organized controlled harvest conducted in a generally humane fashion.

Clubbing is “not violent”? If a human being was clubbed or hapapiked (a device resembling a heavy ice pick) to death then it can be classed as a humane killing? And how “general” is this “humane” aspect when a helpless baby seal is clubbed several times to death and there is evidence that some are skinned alive?

According to the IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) 79% of the sealers do not check to see if an animal is dead before skinning it. In 40% of the kills a sealer had to strike the seal a second time, presumably because it was still conscious after the first blow or shot. 42% of killed seals examined were found to have minimal or no fractures, suggesting a high probability that these seals were conscious when skinned.

8) Seals are predatory carnivores, fight each other to death, crush their own infants inadvertently, and pups starve to death when their mothers get eaten by killer whales etc. So killing them with a club to the head is kinder. So lets not get all emotional about seals.

Yes we all know nature is “cruel”. Let nature be. How does that therefore justify humans adding unnecessary barbaric cruelty to satisfy a non-essential need?

At the same time, it is ludicrous for bleeding hearts to simply blame Canada. Supply and demand means the British Isles are also complicit in the fur trade continuing.The seal fur sporran trade fuels the supply. Stop the demand by refusing to buy sporrans made of seal fur. Sporrans do not have to be made from seal pup fur. Is that really a huge sacrifice for the Scottish people to make?

Anti-sealing organizations:

harpseals.org

stopthesealhunt.com

Pro-sealing organizations:

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador announced, 23rd March 2007, the launch of a new website to counter "misinformation about the sealing industry that is put in the public domain by international animal rights organizations."

High North Alliance

The North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission

A pro-sealing article by Boris Johnson (!) when he was the editor of the Spectator.

Baby It's You

2007-04-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

I have given up alcohol for nigh on 14 years but the fertile creative minds behind advertisements in the alcohol industry have given us many classic and memorable ads (Guinness have produced consistently high quality ads over the years IMHO). It’s almost exactly a year since the release of one of my favourite ads which I had a chance to see again tonight – Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s La Dolce Vita . Ma ma mia! Linking Italian style and class to their product, UK’s number-one premium Italian lager paid homage to the maestro Fellini by re-creating iconic scenes from the film. The full five minute version can be seen at the Peroni website which also includes a ten minute podcast of the star of the original film, Anita Ekberg.

To me it’s a perfect fusion of stunning black and white photography, subtle lighting, ‘60s couture fashion, a slow kinetic poetry and the awesome use of the popular 1961 top ten hit of the Shirelles, "Baby it’s you", here sung by Maria Antonio. This beautiful classic was reverentially covered by the Beatles in 1963 with Lennon on lead vocals but he admitted in a ‘70s interview rightfully that the original was still the better version.

But to pull off this montage of Italian style, it had to be all convincingly tied up by a breathtaking blonde and in that director Ian Cassie of The Bank did find his mesmerizing muse. Like her admirer visually entranced by her, the audience is invited into the magic moment of seeing her elegantly step off the plane, twirl, bathe and bask in the admiration of the paparazzi. Peroni went so far as to get permission from the Italian government to film in the Trevi Fountain – which hasn’t been done since Fellini in 1959! Bellissimo!!!

Political Football - The British Hostage Crisis

2007-04-07T02:46:00.000-07:00

Courtesy BBC news

Perusing the papers coming home from work on the train, it was interesting to read the inevitable analyses of the British hostage crises that had dominated the local media of late. Oh, and for the FIRST time EVAR, the train was FIVE MINUTES EARLY on arrival at Aberdeen. Well done Virgin trains!

On one level, this was always going to be propaganda war played on cue by both sides but on that benchmark alone it was a clear 1-0 victory for Iran.

It’s largely irrelevant whose claims one chooses to believe regarding encroachment of territorial waters – what is more important and clear was that the Iranians had planned and was determined to see through the capture of British personnel to serve their immediate strategic needs. And in this they succeeded.

The context is that Iran and the USA are in negotiations, through official and unofficial channels, on the future status of Iraq, with Iran being constantly blitzed by rumours that the Americans could be launching a military offensive in the near future. And then there is also the on-going nuclear dispute.

Whilst the western media were quick to paint the Iranians black for instigating this hostage crisis, the status and treatment of five Iranian officials held illegally and captured in a US military raid in northern Iraq since 11th January remains unknown. Sean McCormack, the US State Department spokesman stated “there’s no inclination to let them go” and the Americans have yet to give an answer to Iran regarding consular access to the five.

The creation of a hostage situation involving British personnel thus served several purposes. It demonstrated to their negotiating opposites that the Iranians still had some cards to play by throwing down the element of unpredictability and its ability to cause greater mischief entirely at their own choosing. The Americans barely need reminding of their own protracted hostage crisis with Iran in 1979 that resulted in Jimmy Carter losing his presidential office.

It helped in this particular situation that the hostages weren’t American. This meant US involvement in the subsequent dispute, if any, would be much lower key. The Iranians knew, no matter how indignant the British may get, their bite would ultimately be toothless as they do not have the potential military muscle, like the US, to do anything. This hostage act thus boldly signalled to both the Americans and British that the Iranians were not afraid of a military strike since diplomacy would always going to be the preferred route of resolution. This has the parallel advantage of strengthening the current Iranian regime in the eyes of its own people by simultaneously demonstrating the effeteness of America and Britain despite the presence of their huge military machine at their doorstep.

And after the opaque Iranian government milked the ‘bad cop’ role for all it’s worth, the true powers-to-be let President Ahmadinejad play the ‘good cop’ role by announcing a sudden magnanimous release of the hostages and showering them with ‘gifts’. Definitions aside, the Iranians thus demonstrated to the western world how a civilized nation state handles and treat hostages. Despite accusations of propaganda wiles and psychological torture meted out by the Iranians to the British hostages, it was clear their ordeal paled in comparison as to how Iraqi and Iranian detainees were and are treated by the western powers. The images seared on our collective consciousness that circulated around the world from Abu Ghraib will not be forgotten for a long time yet.

The ineffectiveness of the British government has thus been laid bare for all to see.

It was clear to all that the Iranians always held all the cards from start to finish.

There is no doubt the British military had made a tactical error that inevitably resulted in a political crisis simply by making their own personnel needlessly vulnerable. As such, the military hierarchy will swiftly need to review their operational capabilities and rules of engagement. They must minimise the vulnerability of our own troops in an already unpopular war – not only were the British personnel heavily out-gunned and were left completely vulnerable without back-up air and naval support operating in a war zone near the waters of a nation state threatened with imminent attack by the USA…the Brits had little training in conduct under capture…and above all, the presence of a young mother, 26 year old Faye Turney, in a crew so close to the front lines which handed the Iranians an immense propaganda advantage.

Both the western powers of USA and Britain, and the Iranian regime are cunning players in this complex political cat-and-mouse game. As usual, the biggest losers are the ordinary people of Iraq trapped in an unholy war, and on a much lesser intensity, the ordinary soldiers doing their duty serving the bidding of their political masters in a vast war of propaganda. To claim that only one side is supporting terrorism is to be purposefully and selectively blind and thus unwittingly fuel the cycles of conflict.

Individual Squirrel Account

2007-04-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Of late I have been acting like a squirrel. In addition to devouring a lot of nuts (damn, those roasted monkey nuts are surprisingly addictive!), I have been scurrying around and stashing away my hard earned moolah in anticipation for some perceived future winter of discontent. As is my custom to leave things to the last minute to the nth degree, I have just sorted out squirreling away my maximum ISA allowance for the tax year....that ended yesterday! Woohoo!

ISAs are promoted by the UK government as an investment with tax advantages to encourage its own people to save - there is no UK income tax or capital gains tax to pay on any growth.

First, that is assuming people even know or care about it.

Secondly, that is assuming if people have the money to save.

But to be honest, I rapidly lose interest once the discussion spirals into maxis and minis. This means it has become an annual ritual for me to tap the brains of IFAs to suss out what is on the market at the fag end of a tax year. I inevitably end up having the profile of an adventurous investor and will then make a decidely decisive decision after a careful perusal over several meetings. Ya ha.

With the smug satisfaction of knowing I just got away with another one of life's arbitrary deadlines, I recently found out, as I ambled past his house, that the author of the 'Wealth of Nations' (1776) and the new face of the Bank of England £20 note, Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a resident of Kirkcaldy, the proud little town where I have the pleasure of meeting many of it's inhabitants on a daily front line basis.

From Wealth of Nations to ISAs, Adam Smith's promotion of capitalism still seems to hold significant sway in many parts of the world centuries later. The Scottish people have a strong history of academic excellence and a proud tradition whose influence all over the world seems amazingly disproportionate to the size of the population.

I Heart British Rail

2007-04-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

Once again, we apologise for the delay. This is due to a multi-storey gargantuan reptile wandering randomly causing widespread carnage and wanton destruction. An ASBO will be issued to the offending creature to prevent such future recurrences.

I take the train to work. One thing I can absolutely depend on is its tardiness. The only thing I can't depend on is how tardy it would be. Yesterday the delay was 20 minutes; last week it was one hour. The last 5 explanations I personally heard proffered for delays were:

1) There is a slow carriage ahead
2) We are currently waiting for a free platform
3) There is a problem with the tracks
4) There is a speed restriction
5) There is a signal failure
6) Sometimes there is no explanation at all. It's just normal to be late.

Last week on the sardine packed tardy carriage, I bumped into David and Claire returning home prematurely from work when I was on my merry way to work. Claire felt that the state of British Rail had improved considerably of late, as we sat in the totally stationary stifling carriage. I think my expression was somewhere between dead and pan. But yes, on reflection I think she was correct. Not so long ago British trains were seemingly delayed because of "leaves on the track"...."I don't know what the problem is, I'll just have a look" (SC on Virgin Cross Country service at Oxford, early Nov 1996)..."Deranged female on line" (SC of Leeds - King's Cross train, North of Finsbury Park, circa 1994)..."Children surfing on the side of trains"..."Waiting for the other driver" (Birmingham New Street 1994, when HSTs needed 2 drivers)..."Train is delayed due to Madonna" (at Liverpool Street, 1995 (Great Eastern decided to hold the last train of the evening to allow concert-goers to return from Wembley).

Guilty Pleasure

2007-04-01T09:31:00.001-07:00

Okay, okay, I admit it. I sneaked into another showing of 300 at Aberdeen after last week’s pre-party performance in Edinburgh. Despite the fact that the men’s tits were larger than the women’s, the film was bloody quotable and it appealed to the 13 year old boys within all of us. Let’s see…. barbaric beheadings. Homeric honour. Leprous lesbians. Mutant monsters. Nubile nipples. Treacherous troglodyte. Video-game violence. This isn’t an accurate National Geographic history lesson.

THIS. IS. SATISFACTION!!!!

It’s also not simply a David and Goliath film. It’s more primal than that. The audience is treated to wave after ejaculate wave of countless barbaric hoards trying to penetrate the narrow vaginal pass to deflower virginal Greece whilst like a good Dutch Cap, the small group of elite Spartan hoplites repulsed the ineffectual spermatozoon soldiers at the vulval Hot Gates. Sigmund would have approved.

It was also educational. We learned, for example, that life in Sparta was hard for women. If they weren’t thrown off precipices as babies, they lived on one as adolescents with lascivious old Sith Lords or got rammed by Persian traitors, even if you’re the Queen. PLUS they had to give birth to Spartan men. Whereas men only had to fight off wolves with oversized toothpicks. AND SHOUT A LOT. BUT THE SPARTAN SHOUTING MUST BE QUOTABLE IN A PUB!!!11111111 To wit: “SPARTANS!!! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight we DINE in HELL!!!” You see, try that when you order your pub lunch in a pre-football gathering and it won’t go amiss. Just don’t dress like a Spartan unless it’s a stag night.

One advice: Don’t spoil it by trying to over-analyse and extrapolate such a primal story to current events in the Middle East. Enjoy it for the Saturday night stupidity that it is and save the cerebral political pontificating on a sober Sunday afternoon with other serious minded souls who ‘don’t get it’.

The Other National Drink

2007-03-31T22:05:00.000-07:00

You know you are Scottish when you can pronounce McConnochie, Auchindoun, Ecclefechan, Milngavie, Auchtermuchty and Aufurfuksake. Plus I would know your pair of lungs are working foine. But a true Scots would wheeze their request for the umpteenth can of Irn Bru over Coca Cola any day. It’s so true that McDonald’s caved in to popular demand and was forced to serve Irn-Bru at their Glaswegian outlets after mass protests. That’s how serious a drink it is here. It cures hangovers so I don’t see it’s cult like popularity ever being a threat in Scotland.

Not for the first time have I caught several people sheepishly admitting to drinking at least half a dozen cans of this tangerine cocktail daily…after such information had been outed to me from their eye-rolling exasperated spouse or grandchild. Either I am witnessing yet another successful example of mass corporate marketing of a tasty tonic on the hapless masses or that’s how much these dedicated nationalists want to piss off Coca Cola. Hmmmmm. Tough call.

On the other side of the pond, this sparkling elixir is banned in the good ‘ol God fearing US of A by the overarching FDA. Firstly, because it will beat the shit out of Coke, and secondly, because it contains a carcinogen Ponceau 4R. It’s also a delightful food colouring that may exacerbate the run-of-the-mill hyperactive behaviour in children and it’s also a histamine liberator that may exacerbate symptoms of asthma as I am oft explaining to gasping granny and bewildered parents of hyperkinetic wee ones.

But really, lets put things in perspective for this hallowed national beverage. Who gives a flying monkeys whether one dies slowly in the distant future in extreme old age after a fulfilled life from acute dyspnoea or cancer of the digestive tract? It’s still infinitely safer than the ubiquitous Buckfast (‘Bucky’) so beloved of the community spirited Neds consuming it with relish under their iconic hoodies in public places akin to demilitarised zones. Only cheap cider and alluring alcopops seem to equally have such a vice like grip on the promising youth of tomorrow thus creating mass employment opportunities in police cells and Accident and Emergency departments across the nation. That’s freeduuuuuuum! William Wallace would be so proud.