Above us only sky, amongst us bigots!

You tell me the world is a smaller place, that there are no borders but only in our minds, that Lennon prophecy of there is no country will soon be reality. You say that globalisation is bringing us that way. I beg to differ.
People are flocking together. People with small minds are flocking together with fellow feeble minded individuals of the same calibre. They are trying to see the difference amongst us rather than rejoice the various journeys that we take to reach our destination. Don't they know that all roads lead to Rome (or Jerusalem!)? Even amongst themselves they aspire to further subdivide and claim superiority over the other. It is always 'they' and 'us'. Even though all DNAs are all 99.99% all the same and they have not found the sequence for stupidity, they still claim that they are 'the chosen one'.
They live in a cocoon contented with they have and swear that there is nothing more that need to explored as they been enlightened millennia ago.
In social medias, as if these man-made divisions are not enough, they have made groups by alma mater, by ethnicity, by sub-ethinicity, etceteras ... And they have hostility against each other, forever trying to find the difference rather than similarities.
Are these all effects of being in the comfort zone for far too long? Are they begging to put in place with a wave of calamity to strike them? History has proven again and again that man will only unite when they have a unconquerable common enemy. It could be a mammoth natural calamity, common abhorrence against an incorrigible tyrant, pathetic living conditions or absolute hopelessness when all of common human dignity is at stake!

What has sorry got to do with it?

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/459087/A-case-of-affluenza-The-drink-drive-killer-16-who-is-too-rich-and-spoiled-for-jail

A case of 'affluenza': The drink-drive killer, 16, who is too rich and spoiled for jail

IT'S the case that’s outraged America: a drunken teenager responsible for four deaths walks free because he’s a ‘victim’ too – of his parents’ wealth

By: Simon Edge

Published: Tue, February 11, 2014

Ethan Couch from Texas, USA, killed four people in a crash while drink-driving [AP]

It was shortly after 10pm on a hot June evening last summer when a bunch of teenagers from an affluent suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, stole two cases of beer from a Walmart supermarket. They had been drinking already and when an hour later 16-year-old Ethan Couch volunteered to run an errand to a late-night chemist some of them told him he was in no fit state. But when he insisted on it they all piled into his father’s red Ford truck, six in the cab and two in the open back.

The truck was accelerating at 70mph in a 40mph residential zone when it ploughed into two parked cars. Breanna Mitchell, a young chef on her way home from work, had stopped with a fl at tyre, and local resident Hollie Boyles and her twenty-something daughter Shelby had come out to help her. Brian Jennings, a youth pastor in his early 40s, had also stopped his car to lend a hand.

All four were thrown 60 yards and died instantly. Emergency staff called to the scene described seeing body parts all over the road. The speeding truck turned over and hit a tree. None of the joyriders were wearing seat belts and two were seriously injured, including Sergio Molina, 16, who was left unable to move, eat or talk as the result of a brain injury.

Meanwhile Jennings’s car, in which two of his children were waiting, was knocked into the path of a passing Volkswagen, one of whose occupants was also injured. Of the 12 survivors, only three did not require hospital treatment.

One of those was Couch. Belligerent with the police, he was so drunk that when he tried to walk away he got tangled in a wire fence. His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit three hours after the crash and he was found to also have valium in his system.

Expressing no remorse, he pleaded guilty to four counts of manslaughter and might have expected a 20-year prison sentence. That’s what another 16-year-old drink driver, Eric Miller, received when he was up before the same judge a decade earlier – and he had a much lower blood alcohol level and had killed one victim not four.

But as a result of a judgment that has shocked America, Couch will not serve a day in prison. Instead he was given 10 years’ probation, during which time he can’t drink or drive, and was ordered to attend a £275,000-a-year rehab centre in California at his family’s expense, for an unspecified time.

When we arrived the first thing he did was jump in the pool with his clothes on, rip his shirt off then start downing a big bottle of vodka. He was really knocking it back. He must have drunk about six or seven shots in one go

Why? Because, according to a psychologist who testified in his defence, the teenager was a victim of “affluenza”. In other words he was so rich he didn’t know any better and couldn’t understand that his actions would have consequences. That the judge seemed to agree with this view has outraged his victims and caused a national furore across the United States.

“What is the likelihood if this was an African-American inner-city kid that grew up in a violent neighbourhood to a single mother who is addicted to crack and he was caught two or three times… what is the likelihood that the judge would excuse his behaviour and let him off because of how he was raised?” asks distinguished psychologist Professor Suniya Luthar.

Ethan’s father Fred Couch is a businessman who owns a sheet metal works with an annual turnover of £9million and around 30 staff. After a difficult divorce from Ethan’s mother Tonya, he reportedly gave his son the use of a mansion in the suburb of Burleson where he lived alone and ran wild.

A teenager invited there three nights before the fatal crash reported: “Ethan lived in this big place with a long winding driveway that went all the way round to his back yard, which had a large pool in it. When we arrived the first thing he did was jump in the pool with his clothes on, rip his shirt off then start downing a big bottle of vodka. He was really knocking it back. He must have drunk about six or seven shots in one go.

“That set the tone and from then on he was just boasting and trying to impress us about how much he drank and how much he partied. He also boasted about selling drugs and getting big amounts of marijuana delivered to his house. He kept saying that he lived in the place alone and could do whatever he wanted. At first I didn’t believe him but when we went inside there were empty liquor bottles everywhere and what looked like joint butts in the ashtrays.”

At the trial psychologist Dr Dick Miller testified that Couch had been brought up in a household so indulgent that boundaries had never been established for his behaviour, giving him “freedoms no young person should have”. He cited his parents’ decision not to punish him after he was found by police in a parked truck with an unconscious, undressed 14-year-old girl a year before the crash. He had also been allowed to drink from the age of 13.

One of his friends testified that Couch said his family “would get him out of anything”. Despite that boast, district judge Jean Boyd’s decision not to impose a custodial sentence – originally made in December and upheld last week after prosecutors asked her to reconsider – has left the victims aghast. “There needs to be some justice here,” said Eric Boyles, who lost his wife and daughter in the carnage. “For 25 weeks I’ve been going through a healing process. And so when the verdict came out, my immediate reaction is: I’m back to week one. We have accomplished nothing here.”

The suggestion that Couch was a victim of his family’s wealth may yet backfire on his parents. They are now facing multi-million-dollar legal claims by the victims and their families. Wendy Davis, Democratic candidate for governor of Texas, has called the sentence a “disgrace” and even Dr Miller says he regrets ever mentioning the word affluenza, which was coined by two Australian academics as the title of a 2005 book about the stress, depression and obesity associated with consumer life.

“I wish I had not used that term,” he says. “Everyone seems to have hooked on to it.”

He is right about that. In California, a member of the state assembly has introduced a bill that would ban trial lawyers from invoking the supposed condition as a defence or in mitigation for sentencing.

“It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that the relatively lenient sentence that this gentleman in Texas received will lead attorneys to see this as something to use in their overall tool box,” he says.

And before you think this is the kind of thing that could happen only in America, a pair of Scottish oil workers got away with community service orders last month after launching a drunken attack on a fellow customer in a bar in Aberdeen. Their defence was that they were suffering the effects of having too much money.

Meanwhile Ethan Couch has said nothing. Having been proved right in his pronouncement that his parents could get him out of anything, why should he need to say sorry?

Grand ol' Dame

Great ol' dame

Between 18 and 20 a woman is like Africa, half discovered, half wild, naturally beautiful with fertile deltas.
Between 21 and 30 a woman is like America, well developed and open to trade especially for someone with cash.
Between 31 and 35 she is like India, very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty.
Between 36 and 40 a woman is like France. Gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit.
Between 41 and 50 she is like Yugoslavia, lost the war - haunted by past mistakes. Massive reconstruction is now necessary.
Between 51 and 60, she is like Russia, very wide and borders are unpatrolled. The frigid climate keeps people away.
Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Mongolia, with a glorious and all conquering past but alas, no future.
After 70, they become Afghanistan. Most everyone knows where it is, but no one wants to go there.

Like a glorious prima donna who stands majestically after a glorious past, refusing to admit the end is nay, she lives day by day reminiscing the bygone days. The days, when she was newest and most exciting thing in town. She was the talk of town. Every guy wanted to lay his eyes on her and wanted a piece of her. Her captivating persona and hue used to be envy of others. That was 20 years ago when she was spanking new and clean. Now what can offered is only the fond memories of the good times with her.

Greens?

Time's up!

That is the story of Pangkor Island Beach Resort. We remember going there 20 years ago. And it was good time to go back to reminisce the good times that we had there. The times of our youth when our life was laid bare for us to mold and to evaluate our journey that we had taken thus far. Things have definitely changed, just like us. Some of the staff who were there during our first visit were still there, albeit aging gracefully with us. These people know us as one member of our entourage had been a frequent visitor there all these years!

The building is slightly run down weathering the frequent beating of nature. The greens of the golf course is hardly green due to the current hot spell and neglect.

The peacock and hornbills which were the mascots and the pull factor of the hotel were still there (of course must a different generation than when the hotel started!). The peacock still walk around the compound showing off his hued spread of feathers. Now, he must be happier than usual in the smartphone era to be pixelized at the rate photos are captured these days. 

The hornbills still fly around to lay claim on the restaurant that is named after their species!

The hotel may be old and tired but it is still exuding its charm and charisma to its visitors, sending them back with more fond memories.

Till next time...

Come June, this old Dame would be put to rest for a 2 year period for refurbishment. During this period, her status is to be elevated from a 4star status to a 6! With all the cosmetic changes, she hopes that the glorious past and fame would rekindled.

After a short weekend retreat, we too returned rejuvenated to face the challenges of the world. At the back of our minds, we remind ourselves that we too have to give a good fight trying to fulfill our obligations on Earth until we are slowly phased out to be replaced by a new set of fighters....

Just a thought!

When our offspring wrong on us, we forgive them. We tell them it is alright, to make mistakes is part of growing up and maturing. When they look into our eyes and lie through their teeth, we say we understand them. When the young ones show disrespect by uttering hurtful words, we swallow our pride and tell ourselves that growing up these days is hard unlike in the good old days. We do all these because we are considered all knowing and have seen it all compared to the young souls that we brought to this world. Their shortcomings, in a way, are our shortcomings. They are in our mould, and we provided the nurturing!

Tony Soprano with yes men!

We do not expect them to sing praises of us or to mention gratitudes of us in every little word that they utter or under every breath. It may suffice to remember who is the boss around here. The steady state, tranquillity, sanity and equilibrium that had taken aeons to reach need to be valued, savoured, appreciated and maintained.

This goes through my devilish mind whenever I am in the company of pious (or holier than thou) people who invoke the Divine in everything they say or do. There must be something wrong in the way we pay our dues (respect) to the Almighty. I do not claim to have all the answers, and neither do I want to ridicule those who find joy and solace in what they are doing.

If we are not behaving like Tony Soprano or Don Corleone, demanding to be surrounded by acts that accentuate of your grandiosity and be surrounded by yeoman who would bend over backwards to please you, I do not think our Maker would want to be treated as such! He would not want to be 'apple polished', put in high heavens, to be sung praises all the time. Too much praising as always is a turn-off and can be nauseating. A spoon of sugar with your coffee is excellent. Put two, it is tolerable, put ten and expect to push it all out of your system!

Are you cajoling the Powers-that-be to somehow alter the course of the universe to suit our self-interest without taking to consideration that every bit of our action and reaction has an equal and opposite reaction? Is it not being selfish? The rainy season is welcomed by the umbrella maker but not by the farmer who intends to harvest his crop. Or are we just following the example set by our leaders and their assistants who find absolute joy in showing allegiance to and hanging around the tails of their superiors with the hope of having a bone thrown at them?

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Burst my bubble!

Dear Thelma,
Sometimes I feel that I am breathless. I can't breath. I feel that I have been forced to do what I do not want to, or rather what the society wants me to do. And I have been shortchanged!
I grew up with lots of dreams and ambitions. I wanted to be somebody, away from these misery and constant tone of melancholia and sad songs that seem to be the background score of our daily life. I wanted to be free. I wanted to escape from the clutches of poverty.
Since young, only X seem to understand me. Coming from a similar background, he could relate to what I felt. Only thing that he is a male and I, a female.
Over time, our feelings changed, from one of empathy and understanding, it metamorphosed into something intimate. Our raging hormones which just spurred from nowhere eventually pushed us to cross the boundaries set by society. Suddenly, there was no barrier, no shame. The boundary guarded and protected all this while was now breached.
Why is it that I feel so guilty? I have not done anything wrong or have I? Something so good cannot be so wrong! Now there are telling me that all my big wonderful mountain high dreams have to take a back burner. The fence of decency had been breached and the law of nature must be respected. Our bond must be formally sanctioned by the forces that be. We cannot just go on happy without public declarations.
That was 3 years ago. Now with 1 infant screaming day and night and another quickening in my body, my dreams seem like a distant planet - visible but unreachable.
As if they had an audience with the Forces of Nature, they restricted my reproductive function. Contraception is 4-lettered word in my in-law's family. I thought I was in a hell hole but now I am in a dragon's den, from frying pen to fire.
Why do they keep bringing me down? They put the fear of God and unheard cryptic scriptures to cow me into submission.
If religion was made to transform human from being a savage to a sage, why is it that there are savagely exerting their authority over me?
In front of eyes my sandcastles came crumbling down.... Just sandcastles in the air that popped like a bubble.

Don't tell me about social justice!

Bandit Queen (Hindi, 1994)

In a world where day to day survival is a Herculean task and is a blessing, the last thing on any one's mind is equality and social justice for all.
This 1994 film about a decoit in the wastelands of Uttar Pradesh. A 11 year old, considered unattractive, dark and from the lower caste of society is married off to a 30-something year old who thinks that he is doing the family by relieving the girl's family of a burden whilst the girl's family thinks that he is God-sent!

Situation is her new found home is not bed of roses. Refusing to conform the norms of the family and community, Phoolan, by nature a fire brand rebel, retaliates with the filthiest of words she is familiar with.  Punishment comes in the form of physical and sexual abuse. That precipitates the series of runaways which eventually earns the honour of being the deathliest leader of a fearless and feared gang in the badlands of the state. Suddenly, she becomes the champion of the oppressed class and the spokesperson who negotiates with the state Governor for the welfare of the oppressed class.
This film depicts the struggles of a village girl what more if she is from the low caste.
All the equality and social justice is only when my stomach is full and you do not have to worry about your next meal. No girl can walk alone in this place demanding gender equality and get away with it. It is the rule of might, survival of the fittest and law of jungle at full throttle here!
This Sekhar Kapoor directed biography boasts of many accolades and Nafrat Fateh Ali Khan's heart stirring music. The debutant, Seema Biswas, gave a sterling performance of this outlaw who was later voting laws in the Lok Sabha. The beauty of democracy...
It is an atypical Indian movie with much of brute foul language and even prolonged frontal nudity. 

When Einstein Met Tagore

I do not pretend to fully understand the discourse that happened between these two pillars of human civilisation, one from the literary wing and the other from a man of science. Read and try to understand, if you can...

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/27/when-einstein-met-tagore/by Maria Popova

Collision and convergence in Truth and Beauty at the intersection of science and spirituality.

On July 14, 1930, Albert Einstein welcomed into his home on the outskirts of Berlin the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. The two proceeded to have one of the most stimulating, intellectually riveting conversations in history, exploring the age-old friction between science and religion. Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore recounts the historic encounter, amidst a broader discussion of the intellectual renaissance that swept India in the early twentieth century, germinating a curious osmosis of Indian traditions and secular Western scientific doctrine.

The following excerpt from one of Einstein and Tagore’s conversations dances between previously examined definitions of science, beauty, consciousness, and philosophy in a masterful meditation on the most fundamental questions of human existence.

EINSTEIN: Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?

TAGORE: Not isolated. The infinite personality of Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the Truth of the Universe is human Truth.

I have taken a scientific fact to explain this — Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them; but matter may seem to be solid. Similarly humanity is composed of individuals, yet they have their interconnection of human relationship, which gives living unity to man’s world. The entire universe is linked up with us in a similar manner, it is a human universe. I have pursued this thought through art, literature and the religious consciousness of man.

EINSTEIN: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe: (1) The world as a unity dependent on humanity. (2) The world as a reality independent of the human factor.

TAGORE: When our universe is in harmony with Man, the eternal, we know it as Truth, we feel it as beauty.

EINSTEIN: This is the purely human conception of the universe.

TAGORE: There can be no other conception. This world is a human world — the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it Truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are through our experiences.

EINSTEIN: This is a realization of the human entity.

TAGORE: Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize it through our emotions and activities. We realized the Supreme Man who has no individual limitations through our limitations. Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals; it is the impersonal human world of Truths. Religion realizes these Truths and links them up with our deeper needs; our individual consciousness of Truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to Truth, and we know this Truth as good through our own harmony with it.

EINSTEIN: Truth, then, or Beauty is not independent of Man?

TAGORE: No.

EINSTEIN: If there would be no human beings any more, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be beautiful.

TAGORE: No.

EINSTEIN: I agree with regard to this conception of Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.

TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through man.

EINSTEIN: I cannot prove that my conception is right, but that is my religion.

TAGORE: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal Mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experiences, through our illumined consciousness — how, otherwise, can we know Truth?

EINSTEIN: I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. Anyway, if there is a reality independent of man, there is also a Truth relative to this reality; and in the same way the negation of the first engenders a negation of the existence of the latter.

TAGORE: Truth, which is one with the Universal Being, must essentially be human, otherwise whatever we individuals realize as true can never be called truth – at least the Truth which is described as scientific and which only can be reached through the process of logic, in other words, by an organ of thoughts which is human. According to Indian Philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute Truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to Science. The nature of Truth which we are discussing is an appearance – that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore is human, and may be called maya or illusion.

EINSTEIN: So according to your conception, which may be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of the individual, but of humanity as a whole.

TAGORE: The species also belongs to a unity, to humanity. Therefore the entire human mind realizes Truth; the Indian or the European mind meet in a common realization.

EINSTEIN: The word species is used in German for all human beings, as a matter of fact, even the apes and the frogs would belong to it.

TAGORE: In science we go through the discipline of eliminating the personal limitations of our individual minds and thus reach that comprehension of Truth which is in the mind of the Universal Man.

EINSTEIN: The problem begins whether Truth is independent of our consciousness.

TAGORE: What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal man.

EINSTEIN: Even in our everyday life we feel compelled to ascribe a reality independent of man to the objects we use. We do this to connect the experiences of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if nobody is in this house, yet that table remains where it is.

TAGORE: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the universal mind. The table which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind of consciousness which I possess.

EINSTEIN: If nobody would be in the house the table would exist all the same — but this is already illegitimate from your point of view — because we cannot explain what it means that the table is there, independently of us.

Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack — no primitive beings even. We attribute to Truth a super-human objectivity; it is indispensable for us, this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind — though we cannot say what it means.

TAGORE: Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and therefore that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught. At the same time it must be admitted that the fact, that the ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate revolving centres of electric force, also belongs to the human mind.

In the apprehension of Truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, in our ethics. In any case, if there be any Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the sequence of things happens not in space but only in time like the sequence of notes in music. For such a mind such conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind possessed by the moth which eats that paper literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for Man’s mind literature has a greater value of Truth than the paper itself. In a similar manner if there be some Truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings.

EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!

TAGORE: My religion is in the reconciliation of the Super-personal Man, the universal human spirit, in my own individual being.