After a series of delays at Dubai, I emerged from Bangalore airport at 0001 local time on Monday morning. Having been at Manchester airport at 1700 local time on Saturday, you can imagine I was pretty knackered. Thank heavens Yasso and mates were there to hustle me into the car (I got weird looks from them when I snapped my seatbelt on). We still went for a chicken biryani at the Taj Westend, and it was wonderfully topped with fried onions and served with lentils and raita like it should.

Ok, I’m here now, the smells and sounds are old friends. It’s quite dusty, and I’m noticing things that, as a kid, were all part of the environ to me. Things are quite a bit dearer than I remember, and the surprising thing is I expected prices not to have risen. Duh!

The roads are beckoning, familiar and overwhelming. Bangalore has one-ways and overpasses now, and you can’t ride up on to the pavements to overtake anymore. Hehehe. Good to know though that at night stopping at red lights is still user-optional; as long as there is judicious use of a blaring horn you’ll be a-ok.

Laters. There’s a world out there.

Alright folk, this may well be my last post for this year. I’m off to Southern India to get browned in the Tropics and eat all the food I can lay my filthy mitts on. My sister’s fixed up her old bike, a single piston, tub-thumping hulk of a beast, and I shall be looking forward to a few high-speed tumbles. I land in Bangalore this Sunday and head straight to a metal gig my sister’s drumming at.

Plans for Goa are currently afoot. Maybe a flight out to the Andaman islands as well.

Oh, and this is my first post with a piccie. Somehow it had to be a bike! (Yes, I’ve posted youtube videos before photos!)

Oh this movie sucks even more than I remembered it did!!

Scratch my eyes out somebody, please!!!

IMDB says

Tagline: In The Year 2000 Hit And Run Driving Is No Longer A Felony. It’s The National Sport!

Plot Summary: A champion of a brutal cross-country car race of the future where pedestrians are run down for points.

“We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
In an Indian accent.”

I shall be having a super long Christmas holiday starting this Saturday and going all the way to next year.

India here it comes!!

I’m sure all of you have heard about the English teacher Rachel Gibbons who has been languishing in jail in Sudan because she let kids in her class name a teddy bear ‘Muhammed’.

I’m not writing here to comment upon how absurd I find the situation.

Nor am I interested in the welfare of the teacher.

I just find the headline funny. “Gibbons released from Sudan”!! Haha!!

“What is a holiday? It is more a ritual than a real rest. It is a time when you want to feel free, but you aren’t, not really, and not only if you are unwise enough to take your BlackBerry with you. Your holiday does not comprise the things you would do if all your time was your own; it is what you choose to do because most of it isn’t.”

Road to Morocco diary, The Economist

Wiki says

“Interest is repeatedly condemned in the Bible. Aristotle denounced it, the Romans limited it, and the early Christian church prohibited it.
Western theologians eventually distinguished interest from usury, and it was reintroduced to Christians and Muslims around the time of the Renaissance.”

Wikipedia has this to say:-

“blood diamond (also called a conflict diamond, dirty diamond or a war diamond) refers to a diamond mined in a war zone and sold, usually clandestinely, in order to finance an insurgency, invading army’s war efforts, or supporting a warlord’s activity.”

I saw a documentary about the mining of diamonds in Sierra Leone yesterday on Channel 5.
There were scenes of people murdered by the Revolutionary United Front in civil strife and vultures tearing at the dead.
The whole story of the diamond trade financing the civil war was only exposed through a Canadian aid agency, when they heard reports from survivors that as long as the diamond trade would continue, people would die.

This is what Partnership Africa Canada has to say about the Hollywood movies on the subject:-

It is not clear what impact these films will have on African diamond producing countries, to the image of diamonds or the reputation of the Kimberley Process. Certainly the industry has been worried. And Sierra Leoneans are worried that having suffered a terrible war, they will now be punished again if investors shy away and diamond dealers demand a discount because Sierra Leonean goods are seen to be tainted. Certainly there is a long essay to be written about the almost completely negative portrayal of Africa in films, and the idea that African countries and African babies need to be adopted by Hollywood’s glitterati.

But there is nothing in Blood Diamond or any of the other films, there is no horror they can portray, that could be worse than what actually happened in Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone, it was not a 90 minute experience. It was a horrific conflict that lasted twice as long as World War II.

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The harmonica tune on this clip is so lively and happy that it’s being called The Genocide Song. Because even the worst of life’s troubles can be washed away with a good tune.

I have given up the will to live.

I have seen a guy write “…man becoming a munich” when he clearly meant “…man becoming a eunuch”

I don’t know why this bothers me, but little else can rile me the way this does. I’m torn between conflicting emotions of deep loathing and extreme hate.