Monday 30th October 2006

There is a 'super typhoon' lashing parts of the Philippines. Typhoon Cimaron has so far reached speeds of 230kph (143mph) when it hit the northern Isabela province. It has brought torrential rain, this is not an ordinary typhoon, its a super typhoon. The potential damage would be horrendous. There have already been reports of roofs being blown off and some bridges are now impassable as the rivers rise.
The country is on alert and the population have been advised to stay indoors and 'pray'.






MUFFIN







Muffin, one of childrens first hit TV characters in 1946, celebrates his 60th birthday today. An album featuring the them tune for his show is due to be released at Christmas.The show was presented by Annette Mills, who died in 1955. When the series ended Muffin continued his career in the theatre. The series was shown again last year when it came back to TV using 2D an-nimation.


CORFU

At the four-star Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel in Corfu a family of 4 were found on Thursday morning after they had been overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning.The family of four, two children their father and his partner from Horbury, West Yorkshire, UK were on holiday. The poisonous fumes are thought to have filled the room after they had closed the windows, and turned on the air conditioning. It is thought the air conditioning unit had been incorrectly fitted.
The two children seven and six, were found dead at the scen, the adults were in comas.

You can follow the story here: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100002_30/10/2006_75956

Update

You can all relax now, regarding the guy who was going round on the trains spreading his dung on the seats etc. After slipping through their fingers so many times he has been caught at last.

What is the future?

Today I was sitting at home (it's Sunday-no work), and flicking through the satelite channels when I came across an arab news channel.

As I watched the news feature I suddenly cried out aloud as I saw the shocking scene in Iraq of an American soldier being shot by a sniper. This was followed by another scene of a further soldier elsewhere-shot in the head and yet another one also shot in the head.

These scenes were obviously set up by someone, as the cameraman knew what was about to happen and trained his camera on the soldier waiting for the deadly bullet. The sniper is unknown to us, but whoever they are I hope that they are punished for these dreadful acts. If not in this world, then in the next-for God can surely see the blackness of their hearts.

I felt helpless and extremely hurt that lives are being lost on a daily basis, whether the lives are American, British, Iraqi or anyone else. Its time for this situation to end, people cannot live in safety in Iraq. The children are being orphaned or killed, families are being broken up and scattered.The entire infrastructure of the country is being destroyed.

What will be left of Iraq? When you see the movies depicting the future, there is one out now in the UK called 'Children of Men'. I went to see it last week, and it reminded me of Iraq, this is how Iraq is becoming-this is the their future. The western governments watch and wait for the groups to wipe each other out, they have set them on each other like dogs. It seems pretty strange that the almost daily toll of dead is 50-60. Why not 8-10-15 etc? Most of these unfortunates are found murdered in the same way. The death toll mounts up, and up but the groups still dont realise how they are being manipulated.

WAKE UP-BEFORE THERE ARE NONE OF YOU LEFT TO SMELL THE ROSES!!!

U.S. soldier kidnapped on family visit in Baghdad

Read all about it here: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/24102006/325/u-s-soldier-kidnapped-family-visit-baghdad.html

Reader, let us all pray for the safety of this soldier.

What's in your sandwich?

Each morning on the way to work I can usually find a free Metro newspaper to read as I board the Piccadilly underground train to Cockfosters. I have to move quickly though as everyone else boarding usually has the same idea, and grabbing those papers which have been left on the seats by previous travellers is quite a feat.
There was an amusing article in this morning's which discussed unusual food. If you like chicken or rabbit it seems, then you will enjoy squirrel. It tastes better, in the US, squirrel is considered wild game, there are even recipes. The back legs are considered the best part marinaded with some herbs. Although here in the UK there are droves of the native US squirrel, we would not even think of cooking any of them. There is a restaurant here that sometimes does have it on the menu, and you can contact a game dealer to buy the little beastie, if you fancy some after reading the article.
Iceland is for the experience of hakarl, shark buried in sand for six months, served cold in small pieces. I am not surprised the pieces are small, after six months in sand the smell must be enough to make you gag. The taste is like salty cheese. It is not recommended to prepare this dish at home though-if it is not putrefied perfectly you will be poisoned by the neurotoxins and ammonia
Spiders, especially small tarantulas, are a delicacy very popular in Skuon in Cambodia. Eaten dunked in soy sauce, but not the eggs, abdomen or excrement.

In Switzerland, animal rights activists who planned on rescuing a tiger from a circus, changed their minds when they saw how big it was-and freed a rabbit instead, which belonged to a clown's six-year old daughter.

From today, Buckingham Palace will be lit up at night for the rest of Queen Elizabeth's reign. 59 LED units will activate from sunset till 11pm after the tourist industry expressed concerns that visitors from abroad would not be able to see the palace after 4pm in the winter months. I expect this will provide a perfect land mark for any alien spaceships looking for a place to land.

Any visitors to the UK should be very careful where they sit on the trains in the underground. Since August there have been at least 30 incidents where a passenger has defecated then smeared it inside the carriages. British Transport police have asked fellow passengers to help track down the culprit and they have CCTV images of the man, who is black and in his early 30's. Most of the offences took place in the South-East and have caused £60,000 in damage and cleaning costs.

Its cold, wet and miserable today and according to the weather man last night we are in for heavy rains and storms for the whole week. Makes you want to stay in bed till the weekend. I would love to take a day off work but I cant. Why? Because I get paid by the hour...and my holiday's have all been used up till next year.

I don't drive, have taken a few lessons but never really bothered. When I see all the problems associated with having a car such as congestion charging at £8 per day, parking fines issued at the slightest excuse and costing you £40 or more if you don't pay them on time. Leaving your car somewhere and coming back to find it gone-towed away by the council because you have parked illegally. No signs to tell you that though, I imagine the parking wardens hiding round the corner and jumping out as soon as you leave to issue their tickets (for which they get a hefty commission). I have actually seen them in the morning as I walk to work, moving along the road en masse before fanning out to catch offenders. The cost of petrol is .87p a litre and diesel is 99p a litre. Traffic jams, road rage, tax and insurance, MOT etc etc. Who needs all that? I use the public transport and find it gets me from A-B mostly on time and without mishap- except of course that I have to watch out for that guy and his poo...........

Have a nice day.

Iraq just gets worse

Life in Iraq is absolutely awful. I am in contact with friends who still live out their daily lives in fear. They have to constantly look over their shoulder when they are out going about their simply daily business whether it be shopping for the basics or trying to get to college or school safely. Running the gauntlet of kidnappers and various gangs from different groups makes life as difficult as living in hell must be.
Recently a young woman hairstylist left her work and hailed a taxi home. She never made it. She was dragged out of the taxi by a group of youths who then shot her in the head and left her body where it had fallen on the pavement.It lay there for three hours until removed government forces, who had to fire bullets into the corpse in case it was booby trapped.
What crime had she committed? None, except that of her profession, for hairdressing is considered a front for prostitution by the religious bigots. Other professions also frowned upon are air hostess (they sleep with all the crew), nurse (they are all having affairs with the doctors), secretaries ( with the boss of course). Smoking a cigarette in public denotes that you are a prostitute for sure.

It is a wonderful thing this blogging. When I lived in Iraq there was not such thing. I kept a diary for a while but was always worried in case it got mislaid and found by the wrong person. Then I would have been in big big trouble.

It was the same when we had the satelite dish installed on the roof. Of course it was forbidden to have such a thing, but we thought we could get away with it as we had one of the highest roofs around.It was done at night in utmost secrecy by a close and trusted friend of the family.The penalty at that time for breaking the law was a hefty fine of a quarter of a million dinars.

It was not worth it. Each time the doorbell went we almost died from fright. Quickly turning the TV off and covering the receiver with a cloth. We had to be so careful not to mention anything about the latest news or the fact that we could watch the latest episode of the popular soaps before any of our neighbours because we got them from Kuwait or the Gulf. I remember one time I happened to get into conversation about the Pope with a neighbour. It was the Pope before this one, and he had become ill. I mentioned how ill he looked and she gave me a knowing look. 'Where did see him then' she said. Oops...I lied through my teeth and swore by all that is holy I had seen him on the local news.
The dish itself was camouflaged under a cloth weighed down with bricks, this was also to hide it from the frequent helicopters that flew overhead. Even the cable was painted in a sandy colour to blend in with the brick wall.

The, the law changed (because too many citizens could actually afford to pay the penalty in those days)and simply having a satelite could result in your execution; we decided to dismantle and store it, hoping that the law would change in the future. Others where not so lucky. Unscrupulous satelite sellers had a scam going where they sold the complete system (and the price was exorbitant), install it then wait a few weeks before giving the buyers info to the local Mukhabarat, who would arrest the hapless buyer. The deal was to return the system to the seller as his reward. This is what I heard, of course I have no proof, its hearsay. We were lucky, I hate to think what would have happened if we had been caught.

Good Weekend

Enough of the gloom and doom of the world's woes. This weekend it was time to make some use of the sunshine that we may never see again this month. So, off to Brighton it was in a hired car.
We had been invited to friends for lunch. We stopped on the way to buy gifts for our hostess and her husband. The drive took around two hours, stopping at Tesco we bought a box of Belgium choclates and a bottle of white wine.
Lunch consisted of lasania and salad, washed down with wine and follwoed with our chocolates as desert. A lively time was had by all, the conversation flowed, photos were duly taken of the event and we left about two hours later.
Driving to the promade at Brighton, we decided that as it was a Sunday (free parking all over the Uk) we would park on the seafront.
We had brought a video camera with us and proceeded to use it on and off as we walked along the pier. Oh I forgot to mention, there was myself and our two guests from Iran, my partner and his son.
It was windy though the sun was shining and the sky was blue.I was glad that I had remembered to bring my jacket.
Entering the arcade we got some change and proceeded to lose is all very quickly without winning a thing. I had my eye on some particularly fluffy soft toys, but try as I might could not snare them with the metal grab thingy.
Purse empty it was a joint decision to continue along the pier. Walking along I felt something in my slip-on shoe, kicking the left one off I discovered a £1 coin!

Getting hold of the video camera again to video the Iranian couple as they stood posing I could see nothing in the small view screen. I turned it off again, then on but got the same thing. Apologising to them I went looking for my partner to ask what was wring with the camera. I must admit I was a bit panicky having just bought the camera from the USA.He immediatly saw what was wrong and smiled as he removed the lens cap! Returning to the Iranian couple (who had remained in their pose patiently) I proceeded.

The £1 was spent on chips liberally sprinkled with vinegar and salt. I had a look at some silver rings but the only one I thought was nice did not fit my podgy finger, so I was unlucky. NOTE: Must thin out my fingers before the next visit.

Walking leisurely back to the car we found a penalty charge notice under the windscreen wiper. It seems that Brighton Sea Front is different from the rest of the UK and you have to pay for parking, even on a Sunday. The day was not spoiled though and we began the long drive back home. As the M25 looked very congested a snap decision was made to go via central London. We fell out of the car 3 hours later, tired, hungry and stiff.

Next day trying to pay the charge we descovered that if you want to pay cash you have to go back to Brighton council to do so. They have no online payment facilities either, we could only pay by cheque or over the telephone. Such is progress.