The Haka!

To celebrate the Rugby World Cup we honour the haka, the traditional Maori war dance. Tana Umaga is now retired. He also enjoyed a successful acting career, notably as the alien in Predator!!

 

Who Made the World? God made the World?

Warren Zevon

Somehow I managed to forget the anniversary of Warren Zevon's death. He died on the 7th September 2003. If you don't know his music then you are missing out on something very special.

You can sign a petition to have him inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If ABBA can make it so should this unique, beautiful singer songwriter.

This is Please Stay from The Wind which he released just before he died. The lyrics are self explanatory.

Bulgaria: Bulgarians Get Drunk Fast, Die Old

From Novinite.com:

Contrary to popular beliefs, Bulgarians alcohol tolerance is inferior to that of other nations, a study has apparently shown. Most Bulgarians get drunk from small quantities of alcohol, Bulgarian Professor Ivo Kremenski has said, announcing the results of an international study, according to the Klassa daily.

An average Bulgarian gets drunk from a mere 300 grams of hard liquor, Kremenski has stated, while a Russian could easily cope with half a liter.

Typical Bulgarian teenager after a few rakias...

Even though Bulgaria is an established wine producer, its citizens prefer hard liquor to wine, unlike Western Europeans.  According to recently released data, 70% of the 7 million Bulgarians drink regularly, but alcohol is a serious problem for some 30%.

Klassa has also cited a genetic study that shows Bulgarians are predisposed to addictions. Professor Kremenski, however, has pointed out that Bulgarians have "very strong genes", pointing out that there are many people in the country over the age of 100. His statement contradicts the official statistics, according to which the Balkan nations lags behind the rest of Europe in terms of longevity.

I'm in the right country then! Getting drunk is the only thing that gets done fast here......

Nostalgia for the Light

The Atacama Desert in Chile is believed to be one of the driest places in the world. Some of its river beds have not seen water for more than 120,000 years. Because of its high altitude, nearly non-existent cloud cover, dry air, and lack of light pollution and radio interference from the very widely spaced cities, the desert is one of the best places in the world to conduct astronomical observations.

As a result, the world's astronomers flock to the Atacama to gaze out into the universe and to search for evidence and arteficts from the beginning of time. These "archaeologists of time" decompose the stars into their constituent elements one of which is calcium. 

Elsewhere in the desert, other "archaeologists" search among the pebbles and dust for evidence of calcium. They are looking for bones. Or at least fragments of bones. They are the mothers, brothers, sisters and wives of Chile's disappeared. During Pinochet's military dictatorship many thousands of Chileans were abducted and killed and their bodies disposed of in the Atacama. Forty years later their relatives still search the desert for any sign or bone fragment that might give a clue to where their loved ones lie.

Patricio Guzman juxtaposes these two sets of archaeologists in his beautiful documentary, "Nostalgia for the Light". In many ways they both seek answers to the same question. They try to find the true meaning of life. 

There are some very moving scenes in this movie. In one, a lady in her seventies sits in the desert, in tears, and proclaims that she will never stop looking for the remains of her loved one. In the other, a young Chilean astronomer, whose parents were killed by the government when she was only one, clutches her new born baby (this scene is just wonderful). She displays the transcendent wisdom of someone of far greater years as she explains how she has, through her work and observations, come to terms with their murder.

An unmissable movie.

If you buy one book this year.....

The Help is about a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi who becomes interested in the plight of the black ladies' maids that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreaks of working in white families' homes, all just before the Civil Rights revolution. That is the story in a nutshell - but it is so much more than just stories.

This is the best book I have read in years! I can't recommend it enough!