Just for fun

(Blame this on Abi. He had the link to the Helsinki Complaints Choir video Which if you haven't seen, GO NOW! This post can wait.)

Saturday morning. The sun is nowhere to be seen. Which is surprising in London as much as you Californians find that difficult to believe.

Moi: So all visas done! I am going to book Berlin for end April. Thats ok with you?

Bill: Berlin's all cool but I have been there. Lets go to Helsinki.

Moi: The land of Kalevala! Yes, yes but I want to go to Berlin first.

Bill: Okay then we will go the weekend after. Its some early May bank holiday or something.

Moi: Yeah yeah they don't want to sell out to these Communists. No May Day. We will only have an early May bank holiday!

Bill: Yeah man, how dare we give in to those bloody communists in Chicago who think they deserve an eight-hour working day? Ofcourse not!

Moi: Very true. So is there enough to do in Helsinki?

Bill: Sacrilege. What do you mean is there enough to see in Helsinki?

Moi: What?

Bill: We will go see the Penguins!

Moi: Wrong hemisphere. Wrong continent, I think.

Bill: Nonsense. Everyone goes to Helsinki to see the Penguins. You ignoramus!

Moi: What are you talking about?

Bill: Helsinki is a pilgrimage idiot. Not just one of your weekend jaunts.

Moi: Yeah?

Bill: In the beginning there was a dark formless void, much gnashing of teeth and breaking of windows.

Moi: Are you alright?

Bill: There came unto this Earth a holy man and he gave up the sauna to labor hard in a dark stable in his mother's house in Helsinki.

Moi: WTF?

Bill: He looked at his creation finally and saw it was good.

Moi: It looks like in that Jesuit school you went to, they didn't teach you the Word quite as it really is.

Bill: He then went out into the world with the divine revelations carved on pieces of silicon. Every avatar needs a vahanam and he chose the Penguin, that noblest of all creatures.

Moi: Penguins are noble now?

Bill: People like you don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of the Word, which just tells me that you have never seen a angry penguin charging at you in excess of 100mph. You'd be a lot more careful about what you say if you had

Moi: Ah! I see.

Bill: He set out to conquer the world and went up on battle against the armies of Mordor..err..Redmond

Moi: But found to his horror that the dark Lord Gates was a little too much for him. And so he lives on in California, an accidental revolutionary, dreaming of the day he will conquer the world but knowing fully well that the world never belonged to men of the revolution.

Bill: You bloody capitalist pig! You will wake up one day to the world of the Penguin and the Gnu. You will see then!

(Evil laughter)

PS: Yes, all men I know are like this only. Once, in the long distant past, Anoop and I went to the Shedd Aquarium. After shooting the penguins there with his funky SLR for a good hour, he turned to me and said "One day the Penguins will take over the world. One server at a time. You will see".

A school in Cornwall

I was there, yes.

And then they call us Tams unpatriotic

(Whatever that means)

One of two front page headlines in today's Ananda Bazaar Patrika (as Bill translates it):

"11 Bengalis tower over India; in vain fights on one (other) Bengali"

Update: (From pointless discussion with Bill over the past half hour)

Hypothetical situation - Long, distant future. LTTE has gone the IRA way, and on one bright Pongal morning, a 100% Tamil (Tiger flag-waving, Go Cholas[1]) Jaffna team defeats the Indian side. Can you imagine a Tamland newspaper carrying a similar headline without getting slaughtered first by the people inside Tamland and then the rest of India?

(Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that it would be wrong. Of course it isn't and if I were the editor, I would definitely try it but then as my Dad likes to say, I am more Mallu than Tam in some respects. As far as I can see, Mallus are the only other regional group in India who would dare to have a similar headline and get away with it.)

[1] Vetri Vel, Veera Vel

Day of the Shamrock

This in London: Two Lords, three cars and one park bench. All disappear in a flash of orange-red.

This in Chicago: One river. All green.

Guess which works?

There's really only one place to drink this day. By the green, green river.



Hint: There is a river in London.

Update: Okay, forget the river this year. Pakistan is good enough.

Song stuck in head

Chippi Iruukkudhu Muthummirukkudhu Thirandhuparka neramiladi Rajaathi
Sindhai Irukkudhu Sandhamirukkudhu Kavidhai Pada Neramilladi Rajaathi (unlike these people)

I like the song and yeah, agree it is sort of a minor classic and all but its been a week now. What should one do?

(Non Tam readers: Excusez moi. Doesn't translate well.)

Grand Design

The question is not whether Blair will be able to renew the Trident program, the question is whether the Prime Minister has a government paid cook.