4-2 United v Dinamo Kiev, great job.
7-0 Arsenal v Slavia Prague, brilliant play!
But 0-0 Rangers v Barcelona? Amazing result.

First of all, thank you LoveFilm.com It’s a really great service and I’m really enjoying the choice during my 30-day trial. Sign up and get a free trial like I did; it’ll change your life. I love going home and finding a great movie on the floor. And it’s damn easy to use as well. So go ahead and do yourself a favour.

Maria is a 17 year old Columbian girl who worked as a flower packer in her small home town untill she got tired of being treated like a sub-human. She sets off to Bogota to find work, and an acquaintance introduces her to Felipe who interviews her for a job by asking about her digestive system.

Yes, Maria Alvarez is to be paid to swallow pellets of cocaine and fly to New Jersey.

One of the other drug carriers or mules she befriends is on the same flight, and so is her friend from the flower factory who also wants to make a quick buck. It is a common tactic to send mules together so that if one does get caught by customs officials, the risk of the others getting stuck is minimised.

A mishap occurs which strands these village girls in America.

This is a most poignant film and I was deeply moved by it.

The next one will be a Chinese movie called “Happy Times Hotel”

I heard a brilliant ad on Classic FM radio this morning on the way in to work.

Anne Bancroft: Please wait till my husband gets home.

Dustin Hoffman: When is he coming back?

Anne Bancroft: My husband will be back quite late. He should be gone for several hours.

Dustin Hoffman: Oh my god.

Anne Bancroft: Pardon?

Dustin Hoffman: Oh no, Mrs. Robinson, oh no.

Anne Bancroft: What’s wrong?

Dustin Hoffman: Mrs. Robinson, you didn’t – I mean, you didn’t expect –

Anne Bancroft: What?

Dustin Hoffman: I mean, you didn’t really think that I would do something like that.

Anne Bancroft: Like what?

Dustin Hoffman: What do you think?

Anne Bancroft: Well, I don’t know.

Dustin Hoffman: For God’s sake, Mrs. Robinson, here we are, you’ve got me into your house. You give me a drink. You put on Classic FM.

Anne Bancroft: So?

Dustin Hoffman: Mrs. Robinson – you are trying to relax me …. Aren’t you?

Ha ha!

(Disclaimer: I obviously didn’t remember the radio ad verbatim so I nicked the original film dialogue from Wikiquotes. Equally obviously it wasn’t Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman doing the ad but voice-actors.)

A heart-breaking programme on telly on Monday about the kidnapping of children in China (Dispatches – China’s Stolen Children)

A very informative programme, and I was surprised to find parents get lower prices for their child if the buyer is rich, because they feel their child will have a better shot at life in a rich family. And conversely, for the best price a parent/guardian must sell their child to a poor family.

I liked the way the interviews were conducted in a non-intrusive manner and the subjects were very open and frank, especially a broker of deals in human beings.

The programme also followed some vigilante rescuers who posed as buyers and then sprung the victims from their captors.

China’s One-Child policy got a lot of blame, and there was a lot to think about.

Yesterday’s movie was a German film The Edukators ‘die Erziehungsberechtigten’ (the film is known as “Die fetten Jahren sind vorbei” in German = The days of High-living are over) who set out to set right the evils of capitalism. Tired of useless demonstrations, they opt for more direct action, which leads to a spiral of events.

I really enjoyed the film for the underlying debate on how rebellion slowly fades into maturity without realising. A line in the film says something like “You rebel, then you start a family, buy a house and then you have commitments, then you want security, education for the kids costs, and suddenly one day you’re at the polls… voting conservative”.

Well, he said it better, but you get me. GO watch it.

Meanwhile at work I have Another Russian Deal to clinch….. 🙂

Yes, my dear readers, this is the advice I saw printed on the top of a jar. Reject if depressed.

But what does it mean? Should I reject somebody if they are depressed? Surely that would only drive them deeper to despair! Or does it refer to when I feel depressed? But if so what is it that I must reject?

I am confused.

Anyway, this jar of free balti sauce is good. Lloyd Grossman, whoever you are, you bespectacled respectacled cooker, you know your sauces.

“Ein Prosit, ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit”.

Munich is the best city in the world to live in.

A winning combination of investment in infrastructure, high-quality housing, low crime, liberal politics, strong media and general feeling of Gemütlichkeit make it a city that should inspire others. (Global Culture – Most liveable cities)

Wikipedia says:-

Gemütlichkeit is a German abstract noun whose closest English equivalent is Cosiness. However, rather than basically just describing a place as not too large, well-heated and nicely furnished (a cosy room, a cosy flat), Gemütlichkeit connotes, much more than cosiness, the notion of belonging, social acceptance, cheerfulness, the absence of anything hectic and the spending of quality time in a place as described above
“Abandon all burden, ye who enter here.”

I always enjoy watching Bruce Parry on BBC’s Tribe; I’ve mentioned this already. But Tuesday’s show, the final one, was really emotional for both me and Bruce.

This time he was living with the Penan people of Sarawak, Malaysia. They are a nomadic hunter gatherer tribe who live off Borneo’s primary forest. Alas commercial logging companies granted permission to log by the Malaysian Government are making deep inroads into their traditional territories, and the clearing of primary forest leads to the growth of secondary forest which they find much harder to hunt in. Apart from the obvious loss of the plants they depend on for both sustenance and medicine, the heavy logging is also causing heavy erosion when it rains, and denying them fresh water supplies due to silt in their water sources. And any land cleared is also taken over by plantations of the infamous tree with the insidious influence, the Palm Oil.

Throughout the series we were shown instances of progress creeping up on the tribes, sometimes silently and sometimes not so silently, ever inexorably. But this time the trusting and simple nature of the Penan juxtaposed with the visible signs of catastrophe looming was rather much, and one could see Bruce trying to be detatched but disturbed at the injustice of it all.

The PMF business:-

In many ways it mirrors broader trends in the world economy as countries switch from manufacturing to services and outsource functions once thought to be the preserve of the state.

PMF stands for Private Military Firms, a USD 120 billion (and growing) global industry.

“Organised as business entities and structured along corporate lines, they mark the corporate evolution of the mercenary trade”

“The rate of growth in the security industry has been phenomenal,” says Deborah Avant, a professor of political science at UCLA. The single largest spur to this boom is the conflict in Iraq.

None of the estimated 48,000 private military operatives in Iraq has been convicted of a crime and no one knows how many Iraqis have been killed by private military forces, because the US does not keep records.

A high-ranking US military commander in Iraq said: “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people.”

Source: The Independent 21 September 2007

And here’s a postscript to this post:-
U.S. Resumes Blackwater Convoys in Iraq

Sudan, watch out!

I saw this story in the Metro paper on the bus today

About a third of Amsterdam’s red-lit windows for prostitutes will disappear from the city centre as one of the main brothel owners is set to sell his empire to a real estate company. (Reuters)

and my mind went back to a report I had read on sky-high Amsterdam house prices and the soaring houseboat market because there was no more land to build on.

I found it amusing that the sex trade wasn’t generating enough money so what stait-laced politicians couldn’t do, market economics managed and people, given the choice, would rather have a house than have sex (and the revenue from it).

I was going to continue reflecting along the lines of “lessons we can learn from Amsterdam”, “prohibition does more damage than good” and “sex isn’t the big deal it’s made out to be” (no, really!) when this later article by Sky News caught my eye with its new twist-

Many of the windows used by prostitutes in Amsterdam’s famous red light district are set to close as part of an attempt to clean up the city.
Authorities say the brothel windows, used by scantily-clad working girls to advertise, are a magnet for crime and money laundering.(Sky News)

A news story about a financially-motivated property deal suddenly gained a moral angle!

Discussing the composition of the weekly Global Property Reviews and how they might be tailored for public consumption, etc., I realised one quote aptly describes the slight misgivings I have towards posing as an expert…

“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”
– Edward R. Murrow

Plus I’m on Lovefilm’s 30-day free DVD rental scheme after which I’ll cancel Mwuaaahahahahaha!!!
(Yes we all know I’ll forget to cancel, and they’ll lock me in, and I’ll have to visit my bank, and I’ll forget, and they’ll have the final laugh, which will be longer in duration).