Wednesday, July 13, 2005

This world in which we live....

So the expected one million became 30,000..still fairly impressive and as this picture shows.. Makati was fairly busy. Not too sure how true this is...but one of my colleagues told me that the numbers of these rallys are swelled by the offer of a meal, a drink and some Pesos crossing palms...just to make it more worthwhile...would not want to speculate on the accuracy of that.

In Jordan...another so called 'honour killing'...it's just too awful. The worst thing about this incident (an if memory serves me correctly another similar incident occured earlier this year) was that the girl had gone to the authorities for protection...they handed her back after her father promised he wouldn't harm her....and then it was all over. Poor girl. From the Jordan Times....

"A 55-year-old man turned himself in to the police on Sunday and admitted that he had bludgeoned his teenage daughter to death with a crowbar for reasons of family honour, an official source said......

...Police informed the suspect of the medical test results and on Sunday he signed a guarantee in front of the administrative governor that he would not harm his daughter, added the source.

The suspect then took his daughter shopping for new clothes in the downtown area of Zarqa before visiting the home of one of his siblings, according to one source, who attended the initial questioning of the suspect.

In his confession, the source added, the suspect told investigators that shortly afterwards he struck his daughter repeatedly with the crowbar while she was sitting in one of the rooms and then headed to the nearest police station to confess."


In London, it seems as if the bombs were from suicide bombers.....how does a family cope with knowing that one of their own has killed and injured many people and that from now on their family and friends will always be treated with suspicion and I am sure a certain sense of hatred. The fact that the suicide bombers were British born goes to show that terrorism is not necessarily born from a lack of freedom or a terrible lifestyle...just pure, unadulterated hatred. It will be very tough for the Muslim community to recover from this and I hope there is no backlash as that will just exacerbate an already appalling situation.

Here's a link to a BBC article about how bloggers are recording their experiences and thoughts on the London bombings....the following clip from Weaselbitch just about sums up the British attitude to such events....

Suddenly there was an almighty bang, the train stopped, all the lights went out and the carriage was filled with thick, dark grey smoke. There was stunned silence for a brief moment while everyone took in what was going on. Then some people started to scream. A man near me shouted to everyone to calm down, and surprisingly they did. Then someone said, “The smoke’s getting thicker!” Someone else pointed out that the smoke was worse higher up and suggested we all sit down, and despite being crammed in like sardines we managed it. Then a lady towards the back of the carriage screamed, “Oh my God! It’s getting really hot down here!” There was more screaming and the start of something that could have turned into a stampede, except it’s hard to stampede in a crammed, enclosed space.

Once again, calm-down-guy managed to get everyone to do just that. Silence decended on the carriage apart from people choking and coughing, then someone near me quipped, “Well, at least we got the Olympics!”


Still in defiance We're not afraid, great pictures with great comments.

And thanks to The Standard...we can all see what a baby Panda looks like...creepy! And now I know what my old boss spends his money on!

Am still feeling a little like a fish out of water here...not helped by the fact that I lack communication with the 'outside world'....internet access is hard to come by at work and almost non existant at home, still have no mobile phone number here and for some bizarre reason my HK sim card will not send messages out...can recieve but cannot send...'Houston, we have a problem'....

2 Comments:

Blogger glenzo said...

I had the same problem with being able to receive overseas but couldn't send out. If you either leave a depost of HK1,000 or autopay with a credit card, you cannot receive the oo1 service in order to send sms'es. It is fantastically silly, since you can receive an unlimited number of incoming roaming calls and make unlimited local calls overseas without the deposit. You can still rack up fantastic charges and walk away if you like!

12:59 am  
Blogger Madame Chiang said...

Ridiculous if you ask me...anyway...I will get a Philippine number sometime soon...Inshallah

7:59 am  

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