Who-sane's

By this post I’m not pretending to feel how it’s like to be subjected first-hand to injustice due to a religion or faith. But upon hearing and watching all the news of Park51, (twitter updates) the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, I find myself thankful for the basic human rights I’m enjoying at the moment: the freedom to practice my religion without shame or fear. Something, sadly, our Muslim counterparts in the most “developed” parts of the world are being robbed of.

Park51 Rendition

Patriotism is good, extreme patriotism, or jingoism, is not necessarily a bad thing. But when ideas stretch out to their extreme, and xenophobic supremacist ideologies lead to the utter refusal to rationalize, that is when a situation becomes serious, or even scary. And it all becomes even more absurd, and very hypocritical, when people’s rights are well acknowledged but are taken away from them. Continue reading

I was on a business trip to Japan recently. It doesn’t really warrant a blog post as the whole trip was too short (just four days and hence the title), but here’s a typical Japanese anecdote I brought along.

It was the next day we arrived. We were supposed to leave the hotel at 8:30 in the morning. Maki, our sweet Japanese tour guide lady/PR representative, walks up to me with a big grin on her face, and the following conversation takes place:

Maki: “Who-sane san! Good news!”, she said cheerfully.

Who-sane: “Oh, what is it, Maki san?”

Maki: “The traffic is light today, Who-sane san. We reach our destination earlier. So we don’t have to leave the hotel at 8:30.”

Who-sane: “That’s great! So what time do we leave?!”

Maki: “We leave at 8:33!”

Who-sane: “……..&^#!@**%$… …..!!”

Maki: “Who-sane san?”

Who-sane: “Well, errrr … that’s errrr good news, Maki san! Now we’ll leave at 8:33 instead of 8:30!!”

Maki: “Yessss!!!”

I LOL’d.

Anyway, here are some photos and a video I took in Japan. It was my first attempt at creating/editing a video, so please spare me the giggles

Continue reading

Look at that cute octopus!

Oh wait, it’s a … dolphin!

Although the headline says: “The Octopus Beats Germany!” (of course referring to Paul the Psychic Octopus, who now has a wikipedia entry!), for some reason I can’t fathom, the editor of this Saudi-based newspaper decided to put a picture of this cute dolphin!

I don’t think you’d disagree with me when I say that the editor needs a new pair of optics for this octopus!