Chocolate Rain

I'm not sure if I should thank my Flickr friend The Rocketeer for showing me this video. Firstly, it's one of those songs that sticks in your head and drives you mad for days. Secondly, despite the fact that they are enunciated with such sincerity, the words are just just as unfathomable as the average REM lyric. Finally, the little guy that sings it is just plain weird! There is no way that voice should be coming out of his small frame.

The vid has certainly been popular on YouTube, spawning spoof versions featuring luminaries as diverse as Darth Vader and McGruff the Crime Dog.

As a wee experiment, I was thinking of going into work today and saying "Chocolate Rain" before every sentence I speak. It would be interesting to see how long it would take before my colleagues (a) called the Police, (b) summoned The Men in White Coats, or (c) beat me senseless just to make me stop.

Maybe I'll give it a miss.

Traditional Dress

While I was in Egypt on one occasion I wore a galabeya, an example of which is shown here as worn by my friend Clive. My reason for showing you Clive rather than me is (a) to maintain my secret identity, and (b) because I looked like a plonker in mine.

You may think it odd that I should wear a traditional Egyptian costume when I have never yet worn a kilt, but I was on holiday and I couldn't get out of it. I have thought about wearing a kilt in the past, but I'm not sure if I've got the legs for it, and there is the question of what one wears under it. I've been to several weddings where there were multiple kilt-wearers, and a few of my relatives have their own kilts.

Kilts, of course, don't look right without the sporran. I'm not sure what Scots of old kept in these, but in modern times they must provide quite a handy place to keep you keys and your mobile phone etc. I abhor bureaucracy, and I was disturbed recently to discover that new legislation may mean that sporran-wearers will in future require a licence for them!

Maybe I'll just stick to the galabeya-----or maybe not!

The Balkan Whitney Houston

Thanks to JumpinJack, my Flickr friend, for pointing me in the direction of this cover version of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" by a nice girl called Nevena Coneva. Apparently, she is quite a good singer. She was maybe just having an "off" day.

This performance is so awful that it's brilliant!

Desperation

Desperation
Originally uploaded by Son of Groucho.

One of the less attractive features of Egypt is the tendency for people to come up to you in public places trying to sell you things. At practically all the ancient sites that we visited there seemed to be a collection of tiny shops between the place where you bought your entry tickets and the bus parking area. This would have been OK if you were simply left with the option of going into the shop. Instead, the shopkeeper would assail you on the way back to the bus and try to sell you a shirt, a guide book, etc. After our visit to the Valley of the Queens one guy seemed to lock onto me like a tourist-seeking missile. Despite my persistent attempts to shoo him away, he was determined to sell me a shirt and the price he was asking dropped precipitously. By the time I got to the bus he was almost offering to pay me to take the item!

The most extreme example we saw (see picture) happened when the cruise boat stopped waiting to get through the lock at Esna on the way to Aswan. Several little boats swarmed around our boat and the people on board repeatedly threw goods (mainly galabeyas) up onto the cruise boat in the hope that someone would throw money, rather than the unwanted galabeya, back.

I suspect many of these folk are pretty poor, and I'm obviously sympathetic, but I really can't imagine they make much money by using these tactics.

An Apology

Sorry I haven't blogged much since returning from holiday. Holidays are wonderful things, but they have two problems associated with them. The first of these is the fact that you have to go back to work after them. The second problem is the fact that the poor buggers that have been snowed under while you have been away often have the audacity to go on holiday themselves when you go back. This unpleasant behaviour often increases the stress levels of vulnerable individuals suffering from post-holiday depression. It's fair to say that I have been pretty busy with "real life" since returning from Egypt.

Another particular problem was the sudden death of my elderly desktop computer shortly after I came home. Although I also have a laptop, all my photoediting software was on the old machine, somewhat interfering with the post-processing of my 400 images from the holiday! Fortunately, after a period in intensive care at the computer hospital, the old boy is back on his feet---in fact I'm typing on him now.

Hopefully, next week will be better!

Luxor Temple

Luxor Temple
Originally uploaded by Son of Groucho.

On our first day in Luxor we also visited the Luxor Temple. We had already seen evidence of the ego of Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great) at Karnak where the picture attached to the last post shows his inscriptions carved deep into the columns to avoid any chance of obliteration by future rulers.

In front of the Great Pylon of Luxor Temple (shown here) there is a single obelisk that used to be one of a pair. Visitors to Paris may have seen the second obelisk from Luxor in the Place de la Concorde.

Three lines of vertical inscription on every face of the remaining obelisk repeat the names and titles of Ramesses II: Mighty Bull; Exalter of Thebes; Favourite of the Two Goddesses, establishing monuments in Luxor for his father Amun, who placed him upon the throne; Golden Horus, seeking excellent things for him who fashioned him; King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Amazingly, but typical of Ramesses, when the second obelisk was lowered in order to be transported to France, the Pharaoh's name was also found inscribed on the bottom!

This guy had an ego that would make Donald Trump look like a shrinking violet.

Karnak

Ramesses Makes His Mark
Originally uploaded by Son of Groucho.

I'm not going to bore you all/ both with every detail of our holiday in Egypt, but there were certain highlights that I thought I should record. The first ancient site that we visited while the boat was still moored in Luxor was the Temple Complex at Karnak. Karnak consists of many temples built over 1,300 years and the site occupies 200 acres! Needless to say, we didn't manage to see everything, but highlights included the huge statue of Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great), and the Great Hypostyle Hall that was built by his father, Seti I and was completed by Ramesses (shown here).

Other things at Karnak included the tallest obelisk in Egypt erected by the only female Egyptian Pharaoh, Hatshepsut, whose mummy was only very recently identified.

We were fortunate to have a fantastic guide for the trip called Amro Mounir, who also lectured at the Cairo Museum. The visit to Karnak was a superb introduction to Egypt and egyptology.

Back in Blighty

Just got home today after a fabulous holiday in Egypt. Still recovering from the shock of going from the 5 star Sheraton Hotel in Soma Bay to the Travelodge at Gatwick Airport. We were so knackered from the journey that the most uncomfortable bed in the known universe didn't seem so bad.

Highlight of our Travelodge visit was the shower that gave you a choice of cold or perishing temperature then refused to shut off afterwards! Wosog thought I was just being useless as usual, but she had no more success with the bloody thing than I did. The maintenance man assured us that replacement of the showers was part of a forthcoming refurbishment program. Call me sceptical if you like...

I still think Travelodges are reasonable value for money and often conveniently located.

I suppose you get (or in this case don't get) what you pay for!

Ricky Gervais' Simpsons Episode

Heading off today for London. Flying to Egypt tomorrow. Can't think what to write about, so here's a clip from the episode of The Simpsons written by Ricky Gervais featuring a song that is truly awful---but in a good way.

Back (all too) soon!

Oh The Irony!

I recently mentioned that Wosog and I were going to Egypt, but I was slightly concerned about the risk of a terrorist attack there. We are due to fly to London tomorrow from Glasgow Airport so we can catch a flight to Luxor from Gatwick the next day. Many of you will already know that on Saturday there was a terrorist attack on the very terminal that we were due to check in at tomorrow. Subsequently, a bomb was found, and destroyed in a controlled explosion, in the car park of the hospital to which a severely burned terrorist from the airport attack had been taken. It seems that Egypt may be a safer place to be than Scotland at present!

I used to work at the hospital mentioned and I can imagine the damage that a bomb exploded by terrorists in the car park might do. Fortunately there were no innocent victims of the outrage at the airport. Personally, I would have great difficulty bringing myself to treat someone who had carried out one of these attacks.

There is no "cause", no grievance so great, that it justifies detonating a bomb next to innocent men, women and children.

If a thing ain't broke...

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front for the last few days, mainly because British Telecom has been doing its best to screw up my internet connection. I have been quite happy with the service that they have provided up till now, but for months they have been badgering me to get something called a BT Home Hub. This is a trendy white box that doesn't just act as a router-modem, it also has an internet phone attached and gives you access to lots of other wonderful "services" (or so they say). I had resisted their approaches because I thought there was a potential for creating problems where none currently existed. Last week I finally gave in and agreed to "upgrade" my system.

The trendy white box with its dinky white internet phone arrived on Thursday. The documentation was comprehensive, but I phoned up to check that I didn't need to uninstall my existing hardware before connecting up my wonderful new hub. I was told by a nice lady that this was not necessary. I unplugged a perfectly functioning old system and plugged in the new system to find that it detected no broadband service at all. Despite, literally, hours on the phone to the helpline, and numerous bizarre manoeuvres the f---ing device is still not working. We even had it sitting between 6 pm last night and 6 am today supposedly updating itself. This involved all of the lights on the front of the thing flashing in an extremely irritating way. At 6.05 am I finally pulled the plug on the annoying little piece of junk, reconnected my low tech old broadband router modem and, fortunately, resumed flawless surfing.

The extremely polite, pathologically cheerful BT technician is due to phone me (from India, I suspect) at 4.30 pm today to see how things have gone.

In my extremely impolite, pathologically morose way, I'll be telling him, in fairly detailed anatomical terms, where he can stuff his BT Home Hub.

The Joys of the British Housing Market

The housing market in the UK is barking mad. I am so glad I am not a first time buyer these days. With talk of pig sties in the Cotswolds selling for ridiculous fees, I thought the worst excesses of the market were restricted to England.

Prices in St Andrews in Scotland have been rising fairly steeply in the last few years, but this article about the sale of public toilets there shows that things are getting distinctly out of hand. The guide price was £50,000, but the "property" actually sold for almost £200,000! It apparently has three doors onto the street and was described by the sellers as "being in need of extensive renovation.".

You don't say....

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing!

I've got a confession to make: I have absolutely no natural rhythm. I can never decide if I don't like dancing because I'm crap at it, or if I'm crap at dancing because I don't like it. At school we had ballroom dancing lessons given by the physical education (PE) department. I used to hate PE, so dancing seemed a slightly more pleasant alternative. I still had horrendous difficulty remembering the steps, and always ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes dancing with the wrong partner.

Nowadays the only dancing I ever seem to be called to do is disco dancing, or at least my version of disco dancing. This consists of frantic shuffling from one foot to another. I do try and do it in time with the music, but sometimes it doesn't seem to work out that way. Occasionally, seemingly at random, I do a little 360 degree twirl to add a bit of variety. At the end of the day, I've got, to coin a phrase, "two left feet".

This is all the more embarrassing when you notice the dancing prowess of the guy in the video who has, you will notice, no left foot.

I'm not that bothered though, and I certainly won't be having an amputation to see if it improves my technique!

Impressive, but mercifully short...

I've posted before about my lack of enthusiasm for the accordion as a musical instrument. However, even I have to admit that this guy is good.

A Minor Disappointment....

Wosog and I are shortly going on holiday to Egypt. My dear wife has been interested in the history of ancient Egypt for many years, and we both look forward to the photographic opportunities it presents. I must confess I do have two concerns about visiting the country: firstly, the unlikely, but distinctly life-threatening, risk of terrorist attack, and secondly the much more likely, but slightly less life-threatening, risk of gastroenteritis. A worryingly large proportion of the people I know who have been to Egypt seem to mention diarrhoea as a feature of their holiday, and I have been given extensive advice on steps to take to avoid "the runs". Anyway, hopefully nobody will decide to shoot at us, and we won't have to spend too much time inspecting the local plumbing system. I suppose if we are stricken, it might be a good way of losing a bit of weight!

The first week of our holiday involves a cruise down the Nile from Luxor to Aswan. The Smart Alec in me was looking forward to being able to say that I had cruised down the longest river in the World (though admittedly not its full length). Imagine my disappointment, therefore, to find that a group of meddlesome geographers in South America claim to have proven recently that the Amazon is, in fact, longer than the Nile? According to these killjoys, the Amazon is 6,800km (4,250 miles) long, while the Nile is a mere 6,695km.

I'm not sure if it's my feeling of minor disappointment that makes me ask the question "Who funds an expedition to provide information as pointless as this?".

My Wordie!

My Wordie!
Originally uploaded by Son of Groucho.

One of my Internet Obsessions is the website Wordie. I've been interested in the English language since I was at primary school, and Wordie, as the name suggests, is a site for word enthusiasts, or possibly more accurately "word collectors". Wordie describes itself as "Like Flickr, but without the photos." Unfortunately for its creator and owner, I don't think it's going to be the money spinner that Flickr turned out to be for its creators, but the site is gaining more users and more words: it had around 1,700 users when I joined and as of today it has 4,336. My collection of words on the site has just passed 2,500.

The idea of Wordie is that you collect words that, presumably, have some significance for you. These might be words that you love, words that you hate, words that you like the sound of, etc., etc. The beauty of the site is that the user makes the rules. Wordie allows you to mark favourite words, and favourite lists from other people's words. You can also comment on words and lists. It has built in links to dictionary sites, and it's a great way of learning new words. I can't help feeling that more could be done to make the site more interactive, but I suspect the lack of financial success of Wordie limits the amount of time the owner can devote to developing it further. Maybe the sponsorship from the makers of Scrabble will come through one of these days!

"What's the point?" some might ask, but I would argue that collecting words on Wordie is more worthwhile than, for example, the online gaming that others spend hours playing.

We're all different and, fortunately, the Web has a place for every foible!

Teenage affluenza

This is a clever video that gently makes its point.

Is That The Time?

Part of my work is being the medical officer for a rehabilitation ward for the elderly. I've been doing the work for around 12 years, and even over that relatively short space of time there has been a noticeable increase in the average age of the patients admitted. Some of these older patients are remarkably fit: in fact a 91 year old patient that I admitted the other day could easily have passed for 71 years. However, many of them are very unfit, significantly demented, and appear to have a very poor quality of life by most people's standards.

This article about the oldest man in the world, a 111 year old Japanese guy, states that he joked that he is sorry to have lived this long. Maybe he was really kidding, but I'm a great believer in the saying "Many a true word spoken in jest". I've certainly met several very elderly frail patients who have calmly expressed the wish that tomorrow would never come.

With improved social conditions, nutrition and medical care in the developed world increasing longevity is not difficult. The trick is producing a life that is not only longer but also worth living.

The End Is Nigh

I've never been in the habit of buying a newspaper on a regular basis. They seem to me rather doom-laden publications that presumably service the insatiable appetite for schadenfreude. I'd far rather get my news from a combination of radio, television and, of course, the Internet. However, it seems from this article that the prophets of doom have been at work again and they are forecasting the collapse of the Internet.

In the olden days, IE in the early 90s, Internet users were quite happy to exchange a few e-mails. Less than 10 years later picture-rich sites and the arrival of the mp3 file led to increased strain on the Net's infrastructure. Fast forward to the era of YouTube with streaming videos, and some are suggesting that collapse of the whole edifice looms.

As you can see from the article, threats to the system include not only increased use and the resultant increased strain on routers and the parts of the network made from old-fashioned copper. We also should be losing sleep over the possibilities of terrorism and natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Jings, and I thought global warming, mortgage interest rates and bird flu were all I had to keep me awake!

It Shouldn't Happen To A Stick Figure

It's amazing the variety of misfortunes that befall the poor little stick figures in this.

It's one of a series if you're interested.

Maybe not....