The Railway Man- a travelogue

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0ByCPoNYEv-8FY2MwNjQ5NTktMzQxOC00YzQxLWI0ZGItMzNhN2FhODJmNGUw&hl=en_US

Cessna to Moscow

http://www.dr.dk/Tema/rust/english/quiz.htm

Red Square: Sheremetyevo-3 Airport
                     
                     - Muscovite Joke

After everyone is seated, Sergeant Regret pokes his head in and bellows, "Have fun, kiddies! In 20 minutes you'll be wishing you was back with me, and my kind, fatherly ways."

 http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/joe3.htm

A day in the life- Optimistic

  Well, in a little over 5 hours plus, it will be 18 years to the day when I was born. Each birthday seems to pass in the blink of an eye, and the next one is here before you know it. I guess tomorrow will be something special, they always say 18 years marks a special date in your life right? Apart from the bonus of being able to buy duty free cigarettes and alcoholic beverages ( which I don't drink, and I don't intend to after trying it out this time last year), I feel melancholic about the entire thing. What does a 18th birthday mean amidst the humdrum existence of daily life, the unhappiness, the late nights, the little upsets and the little joys?

Perhaps it means the ability to share another passing year with family and friends, the knowledge that you have grown just that much taller and just that much wiser- and the quiet ability to take a step back from daily life and engage in a celebration..

 So if I were to look back at this day years later, I would tell myself: Standing at the threshold of my future, a new and ultimately potential-laden experience!

And of course, capture the special mood of this moment worth 17 years and 364 days of life

A student answers the inevitable question:”Why?”

Why do you want to go back? Aren’t you envious that she got the prize even though both of you had the same final grade?


That seems like a simple question. But it is a loaded one. Why would anyone want to do that, given the lost opportunity, broken heart, and futility of losing something you had at the very last moment? When I think, I am weighed down by all of this. How can I say I would feel guilty if I allowed myself to descend to that level? I would hate myself if I were to act in a manner like Commander Daskal in the 1988 film ‘The Beast.’, uncouth and unkind at the misfortunes of his tank crew-members. How can I not come across as some self-righteous, look-at-me jerk?

As I type, the dawn is breaking outside my window and today is Graduation Day. It is the final day of junior college and the final day of a 12 year process that began eons ago when I stepped into primary school for the first day, then went on to where I am now by going to secondary school and then junior college. So today is the last official day when I have to put on a school uniform, head out before the rush hour to catch a bus and assemble in the parade square. It is hard to imagine that 12 years have gone by so fast, since you don’t really notice it when each day seem to be the same as the last, a slog to get through school and back home again. But at the end, you somehow feel that you have grown in age and grown in experience, just like how a veteran returning from a war would feel.

I am not envious, but I am happy that she got the prize. A long time ago, or 2 years ago at the least, I would have been jealous and taken it as an injustice. But now, I am not so sure about that. I’ve learnt that nothing comes for free, and you must work hard to get what you want. When you do, then the reward is truly yours and yours alone. I cannot control what others might think. But for me, it is about the job as a student. The job is to learn and learn the best that I can. It is about experiencing a sense of exhilaration and pride that is unmatched elsewhere in the civilian world. It is about assuming hardships in its own unique little way, hardships that most people would not even consider and doing it with a sharp flourish of the pen and a sense of purpose.

I know that if I have really changed- and I believe I have- then I would have to stop feeling sorry for myself. I would have to do something. How do I tell people that I do not want to look back on my school legacy and see the wreckage of a self-absorbed Facebook culture? How can I say that I often feel alone when I talk about petty concerns with people, and I feel hollow for not doing the best that I can?

The last hues of night have vanished from outside the window now, and I can see the clouds in the blue sky. So I guess it is about shrugging off the disdain that sometimes bubble up when I think of how so few have given so much for so many, and doing something of consequence. It is about standing alongside and being guided by some of the greatest teachers and mentors that I will ever know- individuals to whom words like dedication, sacrifice and duty are said without snickering irony or shame.

Why do you want to go back?
Because I can help. And, in doing so, be helped myself.

Omaha Beach - Today and yesterday

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General Election 2011

We are now wishing Singapore v1.0 to be end of life, and migrate to v2.0. In v2.0 we wish to see new features, more functions that make better sense, runs a little slower but stable, lower cost of ownership with cheaper 'license fee', many happy users and reasonable maintenance cost.

And we wish Singapore v2.0 to be released on 7th May 2011.

Osama Bin Laden is killed

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/bin-laden-dead-u-s-official-says/?hp

Truth and lies lie side by side

Royal Wedding 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53UaRWI1Vh4

The Easter Rising

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnHKB-VthZs&feature=related

95 years since the Easter Rising, 1916-2011

Day in Pictures-18th April

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13117243

The Sniper ( a short story)

The Sniper by Liam O'Flaherty (1897-1984) Word Count: 1619 The long June twilight faded into night. Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon that shone through fleecy clouds, casting a pale light as of approaching dawn over the streets and the dark waters of the Liffey. Around the beleaguered Four Courts the heavy guns roared. Here and there through the city, machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms. Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war. On a rooftop near O'Connell Bridge, a Republican sniper lay watching. Beside him lay his rifle and over his shoulders was slung a pair of field glasses. His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death. He was eating a sandwich hungrily. He had eaten nothing since morning. He had been too excited to eat. He finished the sandwich, and, taking a flask of whiskey from his pocket, he took a short drought. Then he returned the flask to his pocket. He paused for a moment, considering whether he should risk a smoke. It was dangerous. The flash might be seen in the darkness, and there were enemies watching. He decided to take the risk. Placing a cigarette between his lips, he struck a match, inhaled the smoke hurriedly and put out the light. Almost immediately, a bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof. The sniper took another whiff and put out the cigarette. Then he swore softly and crawled away to the left. Cautiously he raised himself and peered over the parapet. There was a flash and a bullet whizzed over his head. He dropped immediately. He had seen the flash. It came from the opposite side of the street. He rolled over the roof to a chimney stack in the rear, and slowly drew himself up behind it, until his eyes were level with the top of the parapet. There was nothing to be seen--just the dim outline of the opposite housetop against the blue sky. His enemy was under cover. Just then an armored car came across the bridge and advanced slowly up the street. It stopped on the opposite side of the street, fifty yards ahead. The sniper could hear the dull panting of the motor. His heart beat faster. It was an enemy car. He wanted to fire, but he knew it was useless. His bullets would never pierce the steel that covered the gray monster. Then round the corner of a side street came an old woman, her head covered by a tattered shawl. She began to talk to the man in the turret of the car. She was pointing to the roof where the sniper lay. An informer. The turret opened. A man's head and shoulders appeared, looking toward the sniper. The sniper raised his rifle and fired. The head fell heavily on the turret wall. The woman darted toward the side street. The sniper fired again. The woman whirled round and fell with a shriek into the gutter. Suddenly from the opposite roof a shot rang out and the sniper dropped his rifle with a curse. The rifle clattered to the roof. The sniper thought the noise would wake the dead. He stooped to pick the rifle up. He couldn't lift it. His forearm was dead. "I'm hit," he muttered. Dropping flat onto the roof, he crawled back to the parapet. With his left hand he felt the injured right forearm. The blood was oozing through the sleeve of his coat. There was no pain--just a deadened sensation, as if the arm had been cut off. Quickly he drew his knife from his pocket, opened it on the breastwork of the parapet, and ripped open the sleeve. There was a small hole where the bullet had entered. On the other side there was no hole. The bullet had lodged in the bone. It must have fractured it. He bent the arm below the wound. the arm bent back easily. He ground his teeth to overcome the pain.

Then taking out his field dressing, he ripped open the packet with his knife. He broke the neck of the iodine bottle and let the bitter fluid drip into the wound. A paroxysm of pain swept through him. He placed the cotton wadding over the wound and wrapped the dressing over it. He tied the ends with his teeth.

Then he lay still against the parapet, and, closing his eyes, he made an effort of will to overcome the pain.

In the street beneath all was still. The armored car had retired speedily over the bridge, with the machine gunner's head hanging lifeless over the turret. The woman's corpse lay still in the gutter.

The sniper lay still for a long time nursing his wounded arm and planning escape. Morning must not find him wounded on the roof. The enemy on the opposite roof coverd his escape. He must kill that enemy and he could not use his rifle. He had only a revolver to do it. Then he thought of a plan.

Taking off his cap, he placed it over the muzzle of his rifle. Then he pushed the rifle slowly upward over the parapet, until the cap was visible from the opposite side of the street. Almost immediately there was a report, and a bullet pierced the center of the cap. The sniper slanted the rifle forward. The cap clipped down into the street. Then catching the rifle in the middle, the sniper dropped his left hand over the roof and let it hang, lifelessly. After a few moments he let the rifle drop to the street. Then he sank to the roof, dragging his hand with him.

Crawling quickly to his feet, he peered up at the corner of the roof. His ruse had succeeded. The other sniper, seeing the cap and rifle fall, thought that he had killed his man. He was now standing before a row of chimney pots, looking across, with his head clearly silhouetted against the western sky.

The Republican sniper smiled and lifted his revolver above the edge of the parapet. The distance was about fifty yards--a hard shot in the dim light, and his right arm was paining him like a thousand devils. He took a steady aim. His hand trembled with eagerness. Pressing his lips together, he took a deep breath through his nostrils and fired. He was almost deafened with the report and his arm shook with the recoil.

Then when the smoke cleared, he peered across and uttered a cry of joy. His enemy had been hit. He was reeling over the parapet in his death agony. He struggled to keep his feet, but he was slowly falling forward as if in a dream. The rifle fell from his grasp, hit the parapet, fell over, bounded off the pole of a barber's shop beneath and then clattered on the pavement.

Then the dying man on the roof crumpled up and fell forward. The body turned over and over in space and hit the ground with a dull thud. Then it lay still.

The sniper looked at his enemy falling and he shuddered. The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse. The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead. Weakened by his wound and the long summer day of fasting and watching on the roof, he revolted from the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy. His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody.

He looked at the smoking revolver in his hand, and with an oath he hurled it to the roof at his feet. The revolver went off with a concussion and the bullet whizzed past the sniper's head. He was frightened back to his senses by the shock. His nerves steadied. The cloud of fear scattered from his mind and he laughed.

Taking the whiskey flask from his pocket, he emptied it a drought. He felt reckless under the influence of the spirit. He decided to leave the roof now and look for his company commander, to report. Everywhere around was quiet. There was not much danger in going through the streets. He picked up his revolver and put it in his pocket. Then he crawled down through the skylight to the house underneath.

When the sniper reached the laneway on the street level, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper whom he had killed. He decided that he was a good shot, whoever he was. He wondered did he know him. Perhaps he had been in his own company before the split in the army. He decided to risk going over to have a look at him. He peered around the corner into O'Connell Street. In the upper part of the street there was heavy firing, but around here all was quiet.

The sniper darted across the street. A machine gun tore up the ground around him with a hail of bullets, but he escaped. He threw himself face downward beside the corpse. The machine gun stopped.

Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face.

Fighter Jets over Benghazi

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12794623

As one surfer wrote in an Arabic talkback early Sunday, “What’s the problem if he’s an Israeli? The video is still funny.” He signed off with the internationally recognized “Hahaha.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GcUutnU2gk

Inch, inch. house, house. home, home, zanga zanga
Forward, forward, Revolution, Revolution
(Repeat)
I got millions on my side not from the inside but from other countries. From here i send a call to all the millions in the desert.. from desert to desert the millions will march and no one will be able to stop them.
Fast, fast
(Repeat)
The bell of work has rang!, the bell to march has rang!, the bell of victory has rang!, no turning back!.
(Repeat)

Mubarak steps down

CAIRO — President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt turned over all power to the military, and left the Egyptian capital for his resort home in Sharm el-Sheik, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced on state television on Friday.
The announcement, delivered during evening prayers in Cairo, set off a frenzy of celebration, with protesters shouting “Egypt is free!”
The Egyptian military issued a communiqué pledging to carry out a variety of constitutional reforms in a statement notable for its commanding tone. The military’s statement alluded to the delegation of power to Mr. Suleiman and it suggested that the military would supervise implementation of the reforms.

Democracy in the Desert- Egypt

February 8, 2011, 6:30 pm

What Not to Bring to Tahrir Square

By STEPHEN FARRELL

CAIRO — It is rare that the most important piece of equipment in your bag is the bag itself, even more rare for that bag to be a black plastic trash sack slung over your shoulder as you walk past pro-government thugs on a bridge over the River Nile. The trash bag’s purpose, of course, is to conceal your large nylon camera bag, which is likely to get you grabbed off the street by the aforementioned thugs.

Sometimes the hardest part of a story is getting there. Sometimes it is getting around. Sometimes it is obstructive intelligence agencies and soldiers. Sometimes it is lawlessness, sometimes overattentive law enforcement. Sometimes it is lack of transport, poor communications, power blackouts, accreditation difficulties or a hostile local population.

“At one checkpoint you will encounter a thug with a nail-studded plank; elsewhere, a member of the professional class twirling a golf club, who smiles and remarks, ‘Interesting times, no?’”

— Stephen Farrell

Though my colleagues and I have worked in far more dangerous places and under far more primitive conditions, I don’t think I’ve ever before covered a story in which all the above-mentioned obstacles were present and taking turns on a daily — sometimes hourly — basis to become the principal barrier to getting the journalist in and the story out.

No matter how many precautions you take, it is mostly about luck. There doesn’t seem to be a blanket prohibition on journalists. Instead, it is very much a case of one area near Tahrir Square being dangerous and another benign. At one checkpoint you will encounter a thug with a nail-studded plank; elsewhere, a member of the professional class twirling a golf club, who smiles and remarks, “Interesting times, no?”

I was hauled out of one taxi by checkpoint vigilantes and handed over to the police. For some of my colleagues, that has been the first step to a beating, or hours in detention. In my case, however, the policeman spent two minutes looking at the passport and press credentials, and waved me on.

Getting hassled or attacked seems to be a case of being the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the closer you get to Tahrir Square, the more likely it is to be all three.

Once inside the square — Liberation Square — you can use whatever equipment you like. Getting it there without being caught is the problem.

So, back to that plastic bag, which, until a few moments ago, was hanging from a railing in the square, dripping something unpleasant.

After the first few days of protests, it was clear that it was risky to be instantly identifiable as a journalist anywhere in Cairo. The state media has been pumping out xenophobic stories about foreign journalists causing all the problems and damaging Egypt’s image. (This in itself will be an interesting dynamic once it becomes clear which has triumphed: the nimble new-media denizens of Tahrir Square or a regime in full control of the official newspapers and television channels, harnessing its power to divide and rule.)

Facing hostile intelligence forces and potentially hostile citizens, I had to lower my profile. Absent a cloak of invisibility, the plastic bag was a decent emergency measure, though hardly practical for long-term use. So I started breaking down my equipment into smaller pieces, to fit into smaller bags that could pass as tourist bags.

Since I started shooting video for The Times in 2007, I have used two cameras: a Sanyo Xacti, when things were really bad in Iraq and it was truly dangerous to be seen out on the streets, and a larger JVC GY-HM100U. I took a JVC to Egypt, with a point-and-shoot Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 in my pocket as an emergency backup.

“I broke down everything in my hotel room and replaced it with something that didn’t do the job as well, but did it much less conspicuously.”

— Stephen Farrell

The JVC is smaller than the big cameras carried by those who know far more about video journalism than I ever will. But The Times’s video experts have identified it as a useful tool because it has an easy workflow, using SD cards and .mov files that can be dragged straight from the card to your hard disk and into Final Cut Pro for instant editing, and you can strip it down to its barrel in seconds. Once the lens hood, shotgun mike and handle are off and stowed away in pockets or small bags, it looks more like a tourist’s camera than a journalist’s.

So it came to pass, just as Q Division said it would. I broke down everything in my hotel room and replaced it with something that didn’t do the job as well, but did it much less conspicuously.

My Times colleague, Rob Harris, put it well. “It is precisely because you have good equipment that you can operate in loud, crowded situations such as Tahrir Square,” he said. “But they are exactly the sort of things that we can’t be seen carrying now.”

Out went the shoe-mounted camera light for nighttime and indoor interviews, and into the bag went small Petzl headlamps with a bit of orange gel stuck onto the lamp to warm up the light. Not great, but it might make the difference between interviewing a person and interviewing a shadow. And tourists carry them.

Out went the shotgun and lavalier microphones, with their ability to isolate a voice in a crowd and get decent audio. It’s often not wise to waste time on the street trying to clip microphones to people’s clothes or having one more battery-powered device that can fail at the most inconvenient time. (On Saturday, I was atop a high building overlooking Tahrir Square when a general on the ground addressed the crowd through a megaphone. With a shotgun mike, I could have picked out every word. With the nondirectional, built-in mike, however, I could barely hear him.)

Out went proper headphones. They’re far too visible. Earbuds are a decent workaround to isolate what the mike is picking up from ambient sound, especially the very, very loud ambient sound of Tahrir Square.

Out went the tripod. It’s an instant giveaway. I was surprised mine even made it through the airport. My workaround is an Octopod. It can be used to fix the JVC to railings, barricades or anything stable to get a decent, steady, long-range shot; to hold the camera more steadily in a crowd, its legs balanced against my legs or chest; and to raise the camera above onlookers’ head levels, following in the formula (O + OAAH + i) x 10,000. [O = onlooker. OAAH = length of outstretched arm above head. i = iPhone.]

Here’s what cannot be shed.

“When cellphone service and the Internet are switched off, the ‘new media’ revolution in Egypt instantly becomes accessible only to the big, old media.”

— Stephen Farrell

Data storage devices like thumb drives, hard disks and SD cards. I try to back up all data immediately and delete it from the cards I carry around with me. Multiple backups can then be kept in different places in case of raids on bureaus, hotels or homes. This is time-consuming and confusing, but gives me more peace of mind.

Three or four phones are still a necessity, in case one gets stolen. Which, of course, happened. Someone liberated my BlackBerry in Liberation Square.

Two satellite phones are in the kit: a handheld Thuraya and a BGAN about the size of a small laptop. In a few minutes, these can go from utterly useless to utterly irreplaceable. (Video files are so large that sending them on a BGAN is like draining Loch Ness through a toothpaste tube, and hugely expensive.)

When the Internet is working in Egypt, the bandwidth is fine and everyone can use Twitter, Facebook and so on to their heart’s content during riots. Indeed, I confidently predict injuries among excitable Twitter users who are so intent on getting the latest development out first that their eyes are cast down to their screens — even as rocks are flying toward their heads.

But when cellphone service and the Internet are switched off, the “new media” revolution in Egypt instantly becomes accessible only to the big, old media who carry satellites with them.

Satellite phones have been an indispensable communication lifeline in a major Middle East capital that deliberately plunged itself back into the pre-digital era to stop the flow of information. Land telephone lines were still up, although unreliable. Without the Internet and digital networks, the flow of data was vastly reduced — which was, of course, the point.

For the moment, governments can still impose such restrictions, although they also hinder businesses, emergency services and people going about their daily, nonprotesting business. Such levels of control will become much less possible for dictators and authoritarian regimes when cellphones or Internet networks have the Thuraya’s capacity to switch from terrestrial communication to satellites, largely bypassing government interference.

Not that governments won’t keep trying to hinder us.

We’re now hearing about a crackdown on the accreditation of journalists trying to get into Tahrir Square. That’s a new one. And so comes another round of this ever-evolving story, as tactics are devised and counter-tactics imposed. This is not over yet.

---

Stephen Farrell is a foreign correspondent for The Times. He joined the Baghdad bureau in 2007, the same year he began shooting video, and has worked in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He runs The Times’s At War blog from the field, and his latest report from Cairo is “A Night in Tahrir Square.”

Do You Know What It feels like-enrique iglesias

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvIMLkfeyE

Kingdom Hearts Main Menu Theme Music

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Ode To Joy

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