A silent punching bag

Year in year out it is the same story. December would come and like an uninvited guest would gate crash your Christmas party. The intruder would be party, a wet wild kind, to be a ruin to many, leaving its hosts wet and grounded.
It had wrecked property, upset school examination schedules and took lives from time immemorial. It must have happened all over the ages that the house designs in this part of the world involved stilts.

The annual floods this time seem to have hit us a carnage of Titanic proportions. Even medical personnel who normally be at limelight for victims to seek help now find themselves trapped in hospitals. And on top of it all, hospitals traditionally had been built on higher ground!
Rather than finding the root of the problem and thinking of ways to mete the problem with our God given minds, what do we do? Say it is all 'act of God'. Lest we forget, God helps those who help themselves.
We cut, we pilfer, we rape, we mutilate and we flatten Nature and we expect Nature not to retaliate.
Like the holy man who refused to budge from his place of worship when the river threatened to overflow its bank. He sent away a pickup van which came his way. As the tide rose further, he refused a hovercraft. His steadfast rock was the belief that he would be saved by the Almighty.
Now, he was holding on to the tallest pole of his place of worship. A helicopter was swirling around picking up stranded people. "It is okay. I'm good. God will take care of me!" he refused the rope that was hurled from the helicopter at his direction.
Unfortunately, no further aid came his way and he perished.
In the after-life, the holy man managed to secure an audience with the Big Guy. He stated his predicament of sacrificing his whole life for the work of the Divine only to be let down at the last moment through an act perceived as the wrath of God. God replied, "I sent a van, an hovercraft and a helicopter. You just refused to budge from your high chair!"

Coming soon...

Entering a new phase of his life, RRB found himself in the company of solitary confinement dearth of intelligent life form. Solitude trickled his grey cells to trigger some questions about life and its intricacies. Hence began the outpouring of his thoughts into cyberspace for nobody to hear. This is a compilation of some of his thought provoking posts from his blog, Rifle Range Boy (asokan63.blogspot.com). His tangential flight of ideas may not be politically correct or be universally acceptable but what the heck, it is his party and he could cry if he wants to!

FG

2 weddings and 2 exits

Attended 2 wedding dinners over the weekend. 2 of my friends 'lost' their daughters and found 'new' sons. There were similarities in both weddings. Both girls were sent out to Australia to get a wholesome education as the land they grew up failed to provide them with what was available to their parents just a generation ago and of standards were comparable to those of the first world. The new agenda with new priorities only spiralled down something right down the ladder of mediocrity.

Private schools and international syllabi drove both girls to bring home foreign degrees as well as new surnames. Having established themselves in land Down Under, in the prime of their youth, it was only natural that they should find jobs and life partners. 

Now, Malaysia has become a place where they may perform duties of filial piety or to unwind after a challenging year of vocational responsibilities. Maybe, they would escape the depressing cold winters to the chirpy eternal summers of Malaysia during their sabbaticals. Perhaps, one day they may return to show their offspring the origin of their small family tree. In the meantime, our land, like the Philippines, will slowly build a reputation for herself as a supplier of manpower. The only difference is that we would be supplying middle and upper management type of labour force, not the blue collar type. In the interim, the country would be continued to be roamed by runaway maids and foreign conmen trying to escape the clutches the grip of the man in blue for their nefarious mischiefs as they use us a stepping stone for more significant misconduct in the pipeline!

Vintage Christmas Moments

Christmas is said to be a time of love, cheer and human compassion.
These photos may be decades-old, but the stories they tell are not much different than the stories of today.

British and German troops sharing the unofficial ceasefire during WWI in No Man's Land (1914)



The first Norwegian Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, donated to London by the city of Oslo as thanks for England's help during WWII (18 Dec. 1947)



Using old WWII flamethrowers to clear up snow (December, 1947)



A poor woman taking a donated Christmas dinner from the Salvation Army (1910)



A young girl leaving a message for Santa Claus in the Brecknock School for Blind Children (1925)



Rehearsals for the first ever New Year's Eve Time ball drop (1907)



A young German couple welcoming the new year on top of the Berlin Wall with a kiss (1989)

Santa riding an elephant (1925)



John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Mary Hopkins at a Christmas party (1968)

Bostonians out for Christmas shopping (1930)



Unemployed New Yorkers celebrating Christmas during the Great Depression (1938)



Republicans and democrats enjoying a friendly snowball fight (December 14, 1923)



Father Frost on a rocket during the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia (1959)



Brothers reunite after being separated by the Berlin Wall for 2 years. In 1963, residents of West Berlin were allowed a one-day pass into East Berlin to visit relatives.



King George V giving the first Christmas Day address to the people of Britain over the radio (1932)



Queen Elizabeth giving the first televised address (1957)



President Reagan dressed as Santa, hearing his wife, Nancy's requests for Christmas (1983)



President Roosevelt addressing the audience during the White House Christmas Tree Lighting (1941)



Christmas dinner at an interim camp for Americans of German, Japanese and Italian descent during WWII (1943)



A British pilot handing out gifts to children in the Netherlands during its liberation. The Germans stopped providing the locals with food and fuel, causing a famine (1944)



American soldiers decorate a Christmas Tree during the Vietnam War (1967)



English schoolboys going home for Christmas (1926)



A French soldier dressed as Santa delivering his comrades parcels from home (1939)



The first Capitol Christmas Tree (1913)



A young child hugging his father's leg as he holds his wife after returning from the war (1944)



Children in London, celebrating Christmas in a bomb shelter (1940)

A couple from West Berlin, waving to their relatives on the other side of the Berlin Wall (1961)

Injured soldier feeding his buddy Christmas dinner in a Belgian hospital (1944)



Jewish residents of the Westerbrok concentration camp lighting Hannukah candles in hopes of a better time (1942)

The Lincoln Heights "drunk tank", where Police used to keep inebriated people(1952)

Traditionally, people would line up to visit the open day at the White House. The president of the U.S.A. would personally shake the hands of anyone who arrived (1927)

Coming out soon!

Thinking aloud allowed

I think it is more relevant now than ever, the platform to intellectually tease out and argue a certain event as it is unfolds. The human race has evolved and has weathered the atrocities of Mother Nature simply by being able to critically evaluate their shortcomings and dare to make changes.This is the thought that went through my mind as I completed listening to the 12th episode of the season 1 of 'Serial', the podcast that is taking the podphiles the world over by storm.
A 17year old second generation American boy of Pakistan origin, Adnan Syed, is convicted of murder of his schoolmate cum ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, is incarcerated for life in 1999. Almost 20 years later, the producer decide to re-look into the case files and critically analyse whether justice was carried out correctly.

Over a year, the files are scrutinised. The background of the accused is dissected critically. His background, family, recreational activities are all bare open. The idea whether his racial background had any bearing on the outcome of the trial is also mooted.

Syed's character, his double life of being a religious son at the family level, serving religiously at the local madrasah whilst taking weed and pilfering the mosque's coffers exposed through interviews. Syed was interviewed by phone over the limited time allocated to him.

The witnesses were traced (after so many years). Some of the schoolmates who had gone on with their lives just refuse to be interviewed. Some however, decide to open up as the podcast becomes more famous.

They even go as far as to investigate Adnan's defence attorney, whether she sold out to earn more from the appeal.

The evidence is also scrutinised extensively. Listening to the podcast, we learn quite a lot about telecommunication transmission theory.
It is amazing that the show managed to maintain the attention for a whole season and everybody is left wondering whether Syed Adnan had a fair trial.

There are two Gods

PK (Tipsy, Hindi; 2014)
So it looks sightings of UFOs and visitations from alien civilisations corresponds to the affluence of a country. In the 50s, it occurred exclusively in the US. Then it was China and now, India. Put an alien in God's favourite land with the most number of God-men per square feet and a good screenwriter and what do you get? 2 and a half of laughter from a philosophical  comedy of divine proportions.
Followers of this blog would notice that some of the ideas from this movie had come up in our previous posts (here, here and here). But hey, with a ready market worth multi-millions sprawling with talents waiting to hit the jackpot in a world of survival of the fittest, ideas just ooze.
This movie pokes fun at segregation of people according to religious beliefs and the things people do in the name in the name of God.
An alien lands in the deserts of Rajasthan dressed only with a transmitter medallion. His mission is to survey Earth and return to his motherboard space ship. Unfortunately, just a few minutes upon his arrival, his medallion is snatched by a common thief who scoots off at the back of a goods' train.
Left to fend himself in the cruel world on the third rock from the Sun, he learns the cultures and idiosyncrasies as he goes along. He is a fix as he cannot return home as the medallion is the only way to contact his space craft.

Brugge, Belgium.

Along the way, he learns that God can solves all problems. Hence start the parody of man and his subdivisions of belief, all in the name of God, provided you are able to part from your hard earned money.
On the other side of the world in Brugge, Belgium (not Broga in Negri Sembilan), Jaggu's love life is cut short by a misunderstanding of sorts when her boyfriend fails to turn up at the Registrar of Marriages' office. Her love life is met with opposition from her family as the boy is a Pakistani Muslim.
Jaggu's family members are strong follower of a popular Hindu sage who is somehow able to put people under his thumb with his near Truth prediction of events and his flaunting of the alien's medallion to gain credence.
A dejected Jaggu returns to India to work as a TV reporter. Whilst looking around New Delhi for an interesting news to cover, she bumps into a seemingly lunatic character known as PK, the alien. PK, meaning tipsy, is exactly how he behaves, like someone under the influence of alcohol, always acting inappropriately.
What follows is a stomach rolling comedy of the alien trying make sense of religions and cultural beliefs.
A scene that sticks on mind is when PK tries to learn to hold the hand of Hindu widow who seem to be crying (PK has telepathic powers that transmits via the hand). PK is mobbed for doing so and is educated that widows wear white. So the next time he saw a bride in white bridal gown, he expresses his condolences only to be admonished again. She tells him that widows wear black. Next, he approaches 3 women in burqa to pacify them only to have husband walk up to give his discontent.
The climax is when the alien and the sage have a one on one debate on God.
The take home message is - there are two Gods; 1 who created us and the another who was created by us. On the other hand, the concept of God helps man to grasp on something while he continues in the struggle of dealing with bread and butter issues of daily life. Worth the while.