Almost purple rain

During the last rainfalls here on the Riviera, we had some very warm winds sweeping in. I thought it was quite pleasant. Turns out these winds come from the Sahara dessert, the rain that fell therefore contained a brown/red sand, which is now covering all vehicles, windows, and balcony rails in the region. As a result, 3 of my shirts are now stained by Sahara sand. The only people happy about the situation are probably the car wash owners who must regard it as a blessing from the sky.

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Regrets

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It is easier to come to terms with mistakes you have done, than getting over what you wish you had done but never did.

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The Adonis Dictionary - Tourist

Tourist

tour·ist /ˈtʊər ɪst/ Pronunciation Key [too r-ist]

–noun

A person traveling, especially for pleasure, usaully staying in hotels and going sightseeing. Is often seen walking very slowly in stupid looking clothes, (e.g. flowered shirts, shorts, and sandals with socks in them), with little idea of where they are, what they are looking at, and what they have just ordered in the overprized restaurant with the charmy waitor who invited them from off the street.


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Than the man II

A few hours after I published the previous post about Burma and senior general Than Shwe, I got the news that he is now letting aid organizations into the country unconditionally. I guess he must have read my post and realized the inhumanity in his irrational behavior. It might also be a result of UN chief secretary Ban Ki-Moon's negotiations.

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Than the man

I want to express my disgust for the Burmese military junta for not doing more to help the victims of cyclone Nargir. They are not letting aid organizations into the country freely, so far only a quarter of the 2.4 million affected have received aid. And journalists have extremely limited rights to move around in the effected regions and cover the misery. Through a reporter at the Guardian who managed to slip by government controls, we are given some insight into the ridiculous efforts made by the inhumane and despotic senior general Than Shwe. A camp of 40 tents is set up outside of Rangoon, 40 tents! The handouts of rice are so insufficient that villagers have to draw straws to decide who will get food and who won’t. The only full hearted effort from inside the country comes from Rangoon civilians who have set up small scale aid stations, handing out one cup of rice per person.

It is my hope that the government’s weak response will spur a general discontent with the junta, which will lead to mass protests, (which of course will be met by deadly violence) and later along the line with a little help from some foreign intelligence agency with selfish motives, a coup d’état. Then a western friendly, faux democratic regime is put in place, the country is opened up to western capitalist interests, and people will leave the countryside to work for slave wages at Nike or HM. Hm…

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Orange Jews

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What indians joke about

Patient: "Last night I dreamt I was a Tepee, and the night before I dreamt I was a Wigwam."

Psychiatrist: "Relax, you're two tents!"

[tents sound like tense]

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Hate to say I toad you so

Some people in China are saying that the earthquake could have been predicted, that reports from seismologists about abnormal activity were discarded by the government, that rapidly changing water levels should have been a warning sign, and that strange animal behaviour should have been interpreted as an omen. It is the latter theory that interests me. This strange behaviour includes cows launching themselves into fences, zebras banging their heads on doors, elephants swinging their trunks wildly, and toads swarming a town that was later devastated by the quake. A Chinese TV station did a reportage on the toad infestation. If you want to watch the video, it is still available. It wouldn’t surprise me though if it disappears shortly. People who have been spreading rumors about the quake's possible prediction are going to be punished accoding to the government. The nature of the punishment was not revealed. Also, when a reporter asked a question about these rumors at a live news conference, it was immidiately cut off to show archived footage. When they came back on air, no more questions of this nature were posed.

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The idea that animals can sense when a natural disaster is lurking around the bend is known since long. American scientists have even researched the phenomena but without conclusions. Thinking about it only wrinkles my forehead and I can't come up with any logical or illogical hypothesis.

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There is a lot of superstition surrounding the toad. Some see it as an embodiment of an evil spirit or a witch; some see it as a sign of good fortune, and others, as a sign of impending death! But let’s be reasonable, unless the toad is nature’s own seismometer, this swarming thing was just a fluke. But if I should ever happen to see more than 5 frogs at the same time, I'm not sure I would stick around..

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My body is a wonderland

I have finally started to see some results from my "rigorous” physical training. Without buying a gym card or compromising my lifestyle (beer, wine, cheese etc) too much, I ran a half marathon at a descent amateur time, my muscles are getting bigger and my stomach smaller (with a name like Adonis, you have a lot to live up to). It is like turning back the hands of time in a way when you start to look like you did 5 years ago. So why this shallow fixation with physical appearance? Well, at my age, that is somewhere between 25 and 30, you have to start taking care of yourself if you still want to look like Daniel Craig in James Bond when you’re 45, if you still want to play tennis when you’re 65, and if you still want to play golf when you’re 75. Plus if you let yourself go for too long, your stomach fat will get so attached to your body that the only way to remove it would be through a small but powerful hose (own theory).

I used to think that exercise freaks had their priorities wrong, and if the obsession with fitness takes control of your life, I still regard it as “unhealthy”. But if you view it from an evolutionary theory perspective, exercise freaks and muscle idiots are easier to understand. Ever since the beginning of our history as humans, starting with “Homo Erectus” and to a certain extent even with the plain monkeys, social status and physical appearance have been crucial qualities in fulfilling our strongest drive, sexual reproduction. If you happen to believe in divine creation and all that, and you are offended by the notion of primate forefathers, then I apologize for my omniscient arrogance but I won’t take this perspective into account.

To get back to the point I am trying to make, physical appearance has for a long long time been a key success factor in attracting a partner to mate with. If monkeys and Neanderthals would have had a greater understanding about physiology, they probably would have started to work out. Even though other qualities like social status, intelligence and reliability have more importance to most people in modern times, appearance will always be key quality. So from now on whenever I see muscle freaks, I will no longer think or say anything condescending about them. They are probably just trying to compensate for lack of other key qualities. Only problem is, they are overcompensating. Right girls?

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Sneeze please!

I want to touch upon an important subject. Sneezing and the people who don't. I have come across a few people in my lifetime who hold back their sneezes. One of them is sitting in front of me right now as I type. Whether by chance or not, they have all come across as a bit weird to me. Sneezing, as everybody knows, is the body’s reaction to unwanted particles in the nose or sinuses. It can be something you breath in, dead bacteria going out (a cold), or it can be caused by sharp light. Yes, it’s true, one out of three people sometimes sneeze when exposed to bright light, some doctors call them “photics”.

Holding back a sneeze impulse can be dangerous due to the high pressure exerted on your ear canals. There have even been reports of people suffering from a stroke, trying to suffocate a sneeze impulse. So why do people behave in this way? Because they think it hurts? Because they don't want to contaminate people? Or because they regard it as bad manners to sneeze if it's not in a tissue? And most importantly, why does this irritate me so much?

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Russian Landscape Architects

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Island in the sun

I am going to Corsica, the island of wild boars, for a few days. I have watched those big yellow boats come in and out of the harbor for almost 2 years, and finally I'll be on one. I will be enjoying the amazing beaches of Porto Vechio where we have rented a house, drinking Pietra, the chestnut beer, and eating.. wild boars. As I doubt that the island is dense with internet cafes, I will probably not publish anything until Monday. In case I do come up with, or experience something hilarious that I cannot wait to share, I will of course make it my business to find one.

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Wit

There is a short bus transporting us between the different company sites at work in case we need to go for a meeting or, as in most cases, if we want to eat lunch at the other restaurant. Some time ago, a friend from work told me he had met an older Swedish guy at the bus stop who he had spoken to once or twice before. The following conversation took place:

Older Swedish guy: "Do you also ride the bus?"
My friend: "Yes"
Older Swedish guy: "How lame"


In original language:

"Åker du oxå bussen?"
"Ja"
"Vad mesigt"

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The Swedish King

Caught smoking at a Nobel Prize dinner, the only reaction he can muster is to remove the cigarette from his mouth in the strangest possible manner. Perhaps he thought that by looking like a fool who doesn’t really know how a cigarette works, somehow his innocence would be preserved.

One of the reasons why I don't support the Swedish Monarchy

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Be afraid.. beavery afraid

The funniest news coming out of Sweden since that old lady was caught with 11 swans in her apartment is the beaver attack that occurred yesterday. I read today in a Swedish newspaper that a four year old girl was attacked by a beaver when her father had stopped the car to film the magical creature. According to himself, he had not noticed that his daughter approached the beaver who was sitting peacefully in a field. And the gist of the article is to me the little girls own comment on the mauling. She said she thought "the beaver was stupid."

As she grows up and understands that animals don't really attack people out of stupidity, my bet is that she will hold disregard towards her father who let her approach a wild animal with sharp big teeth, claws and a powerful tail.

Apparently this is not the first beaver mauling in Sweden. In August last year, a grandmother who took a swim with her grandchildren got bit and whipped by this vicious amphibious rodent. And apparently, quite like in a cartoon, a beaver in Norway had a tree fall down over a bus back in 2003. The only person injured in the "accident", was ironically a veterinarian.

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Throwing stones

Do you ever get the feeling that something is wrong with the society of today, except for the usual stuff like starvation, unfair trade balances, ethnic/religious conflicts, climate change, greedy interests of powerful nations etc.? Do you ever ask yourself where we went wrong? Well I’ll tell you.

Most of us spend more than half of our lives (not counting sleep) working more or less meaningless jobs. Don’t get me wrong, almost all of the jobs that exist today fill a purpose, since they are results of our lifestyles. However, many or most of our needs and wants today are invented by commercial enterprises and we are brainwashed into incorporating them as basic needs.

Me, I don’t by into the crap about work being a virtue in itself, no matter what you do. The more affluent human need a job fulfills, the more meaningless it is in a bigger context. I would argue that a baker does a job a 100 times more meaningful than the CEO of Louis Vitton, and a voluntary worker in a NGO does a job a 1000 times more meaningful than the baker. But not many people seem to value their own and other’s jobs based on the purpose it has and what it gives back to society. Personal success and individual value are strongly connected with professional careers, no matter how meaningless a purpose we chose to serve.

So to recap, what’s wrong with today’s society is, we work too much, our jobs are meaningless, and nobody cares about it. About the working too much part, technological evolution is making us more and more efficient, but still we are not working less and less. Even if we could, that would never be the case until employees join forces and claim the right to work less. If we don’t, the increase in efficiency will forever come to gain the corporations and not ourselves. This power shift is of course very hard to achieve as long as the supply of workforce is greater than the demand for it, but still not impossible.

Another thing we could do is to stop consuming so damn much stuff we really don’t need. If the demand for affluent products and services goes down, the supply side would have to follow, and thus, more and more meaningless jobs would disappear from the marketplace. Yeah yeah, like Lennon, of course you can always imagine.. that one day all people will come to their senses and live in harmony with each other and crocodiles and rhinoceros in one great country called Utopia. Of course none of the above solutions are very likely to come about.

And who am I to pass judgment on other people’s jobs and lifestyles? I myself work for a giant IT company in the travel industry. Not too meaningful or altruistic at all. Like Jesus said “May he who is without sin cast the first stone”. Well that might be true in many situations, but on this blog, I’m throwing the damn stones regardless.
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Got a license to live?

Lists are great! They are informative, pedagogical, and they are easy for the mind to consume because our minds are constantly organizing the alternatives we are forced chose between in lists based on the attractiveness and inconvenience of the possible outcomes. So here’s a list for you, the top 5 carbon based living organisms in the world that in my opinion should have to apply for a license to live:

1. Paris Hilton
2. People from the media who put Paris Hilton in the spotlight
3. People who look up to Paris Hilton as a “smart business woman”
4. People who carry around small dogs
5. Celine Dion


The criteria for acquiring a license to live would hence be quite simple.

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Bush & his-story

With the Bush administration finally on its way out, people are starting to sum up the accomplishments and impact of the well spoken Texas rancher. The question of how Bush will be remembered in future generations has been raised. Bush’s own comment on the matter was the following sharp and relevant observation:

“As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.” – George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb 10, 2008

Quite an impressive way to shrug of criticism, guess we’ll have to wait 2-300 years before we pass judgment on Mr. Bush & Co. Contemporary speculation about his legacy is apparently useless.

Some people may disagree with this statement, for example historians themselves. The History News Network (HNN), founded by, and independent of the George Mason University, recently conducted a courageous poll among professional historians, daring to compare Bush to his predecessors, a long time before we have actually reached history.

The survey was open to all historians, and among the respondents were some of the most respected historians, including Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winners. I will let the graphs speak for themselves, and finish of with a few quotes from participating historians that sum up Mr. Bush’s achievements in a clearer way then I ever could. After this, I will let him be.. for a while.

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush, Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.” Another classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .” Still another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”

“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

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Peas in a pod

Steve MartinM.......artin.........John McCain

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Running on plenty

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I apologize for the decreased frequency of posts lately. It has been busy times. In France, after 30th of April, the country stops working. In May, hardly any work gets done due to the many holidays, and from June on, the 5-6 weeks of vacation must be spent. The French therefore do not work seriously again until "la rentree" in September. That means everything that needs to be done has to be done before the 30th of April. So it is no mystery why my workload has increased a lot lately.

I have also started training for a half marathon that will be conducted and hopefully completed on Sunday the 20th. Yes, for those of you who know me and just raised an eybrow, it’s true. Thus I am trying to shed all those 15 months or so of eating brie and chevre croque monsieurs, chocolate crepes, and kebab (which seems to be the only fast food available late at night in this town), in one month. So far I feel marginally lighter. Running 150 meters from my flat to the bus station still exhausts me. It must be the leather shoes without suspension..