Miscellany

Better use this motivation to put a couple of other things into writing as well. This post will be a bit like a news bulletin.

** A couple of months ago I was watching TV and there was this program on, called Worlds Funniest Animals or something like that. In it, they told the story of a swan in America. Apparently, the poor animal has fallen in love with an inanimate swan, which is simply a pedal boat with the shape of a swan. The things is almost 5 times bigger than the animal but because it looks absolutely like a very beautiful swan, he fell in love with it all the same. They show him following the boat everywhere on the lake and the shore. But then the management decides to take the boat away to put in storage. And he first waits by it near the trailer it's put on and then when the trailer pulls away, he starts running after it, crying this awful wail like sound. According to the carers in the park, he stopped eating and cried constantly after the boat swan was taken away.

I don't know if this is a made up or a genuine story but the footage was heart-wrnching. You feel both sorry and amazed at the love of a simple swan. It's even possible to draw a similar line for human romances; especially for a certin kind, the one-sided love. You love this person and him/her starts to grow in your eyes, he/she becomes something mythical. Although, all the while, the person is completely unaware of your affections, it doesn't bother you. Just seeing them, being near them, talking to them makes you happy.

Maybe the swan knew he won't ever be able to get anything back from his most darling love.

** One other thing I saw in the press a while back reads like this: " Faulty satnav system directs drivers to a cliff drop at the village of Crackpot." This is both a hilarious and unsettling piece of news. Hilarious because I'd like to see the face of the £30,000 Lexus driver when his precious car tried to kill him. But this is also unsettling because it just shows how much control of our life we have surrendered into the hands of electronic machines without thinking about the masters of these mechanical slaves and what'd happen if these masters became hostile one day.

** Lastly, a small anecdote. I was on a train to London. There was this skinny,young guy, wearing his trousers in that annoying fashion, looking all business and hip. So this guy gets up and goes to the loo, living his bag on the seat next to his. Then this Spanish/Mexican couple comes up the aisle, looks around, sees the seat empty, takes the bag up, squeezes it into the overhead storage and promptly nestles into the seats without batting an eyelid. They are cooing to each other in Spanish when the 'hip' guy comes back. He looks around first, probably thinking he is in the wrong wagon or that he passed his seat. Anyways at last he realises that his seat has been overtaken. But what does he do? Does he politely informs the couple that they are sitting in his seat? NO. Does he pick his bag and sit onto the empty seat behind, shaking his seat? NO. HE PICKS HIS BAG UP, APOLOGIZING ALL THE TIME TO THE COUPLE AND GOES TO THE OTHER WAGON. How spineless can you be? I was completely amazed by both the shamelessness of the couple but more by the disgusting meekness of the hip guy.

End.