My world this week -1

I havent really blooged for the last week for a number of reasons.
1. Mother and brother here, who are the only people who read my blog apart from little one.
2. Was in London for weekend, no internet access
3. Wednesday applied for Canadian visa which I recieved without having any supporting documents. This story later.
4. Have been busy doing lab work during the day and socialiasing with mother at night.

Interesting things done this week:
1. Watched Lion King the musical at the Lyceum theatre. Got one ticket free and some great seats. I have watched a few musicals and plays at Oxford but have always resisted from buying the expensive seats which often meant that distance + myopia= never being able to see the performers face/emotions. I remember watching Swan Lake which featured this lovely girl as the lead, so I hired a pair of opera glasses to watch her closely but still was never able to distinguish any emotions on her face. For Lion King, mother and I had stall tickets about 10 rows from the stage and it was absolutely fantastic. I could make out actors' make-up, facial expressions and might be able to recgonise their photos.
The musical per se was a disappointment. The production was magnificent and the whole thing was a spectacle. It had the best sets and costumes that I have ever seen. Every performer had a puppet animal attached to him. So, there was this life size figure of the animal whose arms werre attached by strings to the actors, whose head moved when the actor moved his. It was great because for Poomba and Timon the acting included actually moving the animal while acting. very creative. The singing and dance were outstanding and the lady who played Rafiki had a voice to die for....


The acting was ghastly and the direction even worse. No character building, no emotive moments and very poor delivery. I often cat-napped in between songs, once between the "Can you feel the love tonight" song which had this semi-naked couple doing a very erotic dance. Bizarre!!

Ok, enough blabbering. Shall get back to my virus neturalisation assay and leave my visa story for another day.

babies,london and drugs

It has been brought to my notice that it was not three detectives, but investigators. I apologise and blame my pre-senile dementia for this. Further proof of this condition is evidenced by the incident where I chatted with a Rhodie from Africa, another medic for over an hour without remembering her name or country or any details about her. I also remember meeting her three days later after having looked her up and still forgetting her name.

Anyway, the weekend has been exciting with mother and brother reaching london although in the process of making this terrible journey from London to Luton I lost my youth rail card. So, will need to pay another 25GBP to get one made. I hate losing things.... On the other hand, had a great day out with family on Sunday. We toured St.Paul's, Covent garden on a sunday (witnessed a tight rope walker juggling knives and ate some really bad pasta), leicester square, westminister and the national gallery. Some advice about the fantastic Carvagghio exhibition - book in advance!! Very interestingly, we came across a rally in Trafalgar square which was protesting against the ban on marijuana. Hmm....I am not a rabid anti-drug use person, but I sincerely believe that it is wrong for people to extoll the virtues of a any harmful substance. I am therefore in agreement with people who ban alcohol and cigarette advertising.
Interestingly, I would like to find how the UK classifies a drug and why for example chocolate is not classified as a drug.

Also, Imelda delivered a baby boy on Monday morning. Yeah! Finally little Furqon in born! I am now officially "Uncle Saranya". Rachel and Julia spent the whole day and night with her and deserve a big pat on the back, which Halim and I gave them by getting them drunk on wine and chocolate cake. All this was tonight while discussing drug abuse, socialism and capitalism and the slefish nature of man.

Am really looking forward to the cricket match against Keble MCR tomorrow. Hopefully should get a good hit.

I learnt this nice quote from Julia today,"Democracy is the tyranny of the majority"!

Lists

Watching Lagaan yesterday made me decide to write down my top ten Hindi movie list. They are in no order of preference
1. Lagaan
2. Andaz apna apna
3. Padosan
4. Chupke Chupke
5. Dil Chahta Hai
6. Johnny Mera Naam ( this is my dad's second favourite movie)
7. Teesri Manzil
8. Sholay
9. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron
10. Jewel Thief

I also finally recieved my FIRST AMAZON purchase. 6 Roald Dahl books. For those of you who have never been exposed to this master of children fiction, he is the greatest writer (in my opinion) of children fantasy.
He was amazingly gifted swinging between the truly macabre and scary books like Tales of the Unexpected to the fantastic,innocent and truly fantasimal BFG(Big Friendly Giant). Some of his best books are those he wrote for children :
Matilda , James and the Giant peach, Charlie series, Danny the champion of the world.
Matilda has already been made into a movie and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is due to be released this summer starring the gifted Johnny Depp.

I love his work, any man who can think of names like Oompa Loompa, Fleshlumpeater,Bogtrotter,Trunchbull, snozzcumber, frobscottle is very difficult to resist. I also decided to make my list of favourite children books :
1. Noddy
2. Famous five
3. The Three detectives ( Jupiter joe, pete and Bob Andrews)
4. Danny the Champion of the world
5. The illustrated abridged versions of the classics ( I cant remember the publications, but they used to be these books with the illustration on the page facing the text. Used to love reading those in the balcony with some snacks after school and before 5pm play)
6. Now, Phillip Pullman
I cant think of too many others. Might just be me.

Thats enuf, am off to have some dinner at New College, right or left? (see BFG)

Had a hectic day yesterday. Lab in the morning to set up an ICS, then had a tennis match against Nuffield who had a really strong team. I played second singles against this lovely german girl. I usually dont like playing against women for two reasons :
1. you spend more time admiring them than playing
2. when you lose to someone who plays worse then you and looks pretty, you never have the heart to curse them.

Fortunately such a situation did not occur on Thursday and I beat her to win the only match for the team. We had a really good match, she was a really good player and had represented Warwick Uni as an undergrad. In between the match we decided to gossip and chat about auto-immune diseases, pharma companies and vaccine development in the developing world. She had lovely shape on her shots and had obviously trained on clay in Germany, as she never wandered anywhere near the net.

The 9 -3 thrashing we suffered was drowned by some team drinks at the linacre bar. I discovered this great drink, orange juice and lemonade. Its the most refreshing drink after a game of tennis, far better than either drink individually.

This was followed by a screening of Lagaan by OIS. Somehow, I was able to sit through the entire movie and enjoy it as well. Dont ask me how? I must know every scene and line by heart now after watching it at least four times.

Our calm return to my room for a warm cup of coffee was interrupted by one of my fellow students drinking enough to fall down some stairs and crack her cheek bone. Alcohol is usually not good for you when such things happen and it wasnt helped by the fact that she had a bloody nose. Anyway, stabilised her, jaw thrust and head extension and brought all my recent practice of CPR on "the little one" into effect. Fortunately, she regained some consciousness and vomited all her dinner(undigested ham is not a lovely sight for vegetarians on empty stomachs - that is why they pay doctors so much).

Much satisfying and exciting end of day.

malaria and HIV

I am reading this paper about vulnerability to infectious diseases and it reinforces my wonder and puzzlement at the hardiness of humankind. As a doctor, we study volumes and tomes about diseases - pathology books, microbiology books about all the worms, bugs and viruses in the world, medicine - about how all these diseases and ailments actually effect the body, surgery laying claim that the best way to treat a lot of diseases is to cut it out, but, it amazes me that so many people are relatively healthy!!

This is what makes this paper in the Lancet really interesting. It makes the claim that when we allocate scarce resources to dealing with infectious diseases namely "The Unholy Trinity" of Malaria, Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS there has been an imbalance. The imbalance arises from concentrating on biologically vulnerable groups, eg. pregnant women and children between 0-5 years for malaria, adult males for TB and adolescent females, young mothers for HIV/AIDS. This unfortunately doesn't take into account other non-biological vulnerability factors such as nutrition, poverty, stigmatisation, education etc.

For example, if you think about it 1.2 billion people live in poverty. Approx 6 million people(1%) of the world's population die from these three diseases. How many of us would bet against the majority of these 6 million people being from the poor 1.2 billion?

Enough morbid thoughts! Am off to play some more cricket vs Lincoln II. My back has suddenly given way following a stupid fall from my cycle and I think I need to go back to physiotherapy!!

This was the team which lost to Pakistan in the Mini-World cup last year. Anamitra was captain and Samit the best player

This is what I did on Sunday. Played an Indo-Pak cricket match and emulated our national team by losing handily to them. They scored 243 in 30 overs I kept, took a catch and a stumping of a wide. We scored 200 - my contribution a lowly 13. The event was appreciated, with most people hogging on the chicken and paneer BBQ!!

Plans

Amma and li'l brother are coming next Saturday. Mucho excited as plans are being made and I am deciding what we can do together in two weeks.
This is what I am definitely going to do :
1. Take mom to Sheldonian concert
2. Take her to Formal hall
3. Take bro and mom punting
4. Port Meadows and the Trout
5. Watch loads of movies - all the oscar ones and then some more
6. Bath/Stratford?? I dont like getting out of Oxford too much
7. Covent garden on Sunday
8. A musical or classical concert in London
9. Cleo's
10. Chiang Mai
11. cook her some nice pasta and with wine

Of course, all this has to be achieved in 13 days because they arrive in LUTON( why??) after travelling through the new silk route (dubai and Milan) 7 days after leaving Mumbai. They could have reached here faster by ship!!

My friend Joy with whom I spent yesterday discussing a little psychoanalysis and much gossip is going to bombay. Yea! Told her to travel by train, have Bhel Puri on Chowpatty beach, have coconut water on marine drive and take a walk in Fort. I forgot to tell her about fashion street, kulfi at chowpatty, linking road, Bombay hospitals, Colaba woods and the lovely Borivali national park.

Hope she does all these things and more. Bon voyage and hope you have lots of masti.

Am now of to hear a detailed account of how South Indian marriages take place!!

News tidbits

To all pathologists, you are losing your job to a dog. Check this out. A dog has been trained to diagnose bladder cancer by smelling urine. Who gave them funding, is that unfair and cruel to the animal and why did the BMJ publish this?

Liverpool are in the final of the Champions league on the back of a dodgy goal. Jose is an arrogant but amazing manager. He had the guts to say the goal was because of the immense pressure on the linesman by the Anfield Road crowd.

Observer carried a good write-up about our very own Narain Karthikeyan. point being that he has made an impression and hopefully is here to stay.

Finally read some Indian news to hear that some guy raped a woman and then offered to marry her!! I mean who would want to marry their own rapist. Not really very inspiring. There seems to be a spate of high-profile rapes in India presently and trust Samna to back the policeman who raped this young woman on Marine Drive!! When will they stop touting the argument that wearing jeans and tops is not an invitation to sexually abuse someone. To say nothing about our rather weak culture and values which seems to be continuously eroded by all the women wearing jeans, skirts and tops.
I think there are some acts which are morally wrong and cannot be excused or condoned. There can be no excuse or provocation to rape, paedophilia, dowry deaths, eve teasing,ragging. These are voluntary active acts of a show of strength and under no circumstances can I imagine them being reactive or retalitative efforts by someone provoked.

To end on a happier note, India launched their a couple of their own satellites to help mapping and amatuer radio operators.

I am back with a vengeance( Batman Returns??). Have been busy since my 25th b'day recovering from the aftershocks of realising that I have spent 25 years on this planet without killing anyone or being killed.
Have also been busy buying prams, baby goods and Winnie the Pooh!!

Check out the one that I bought. Along with this I also bought the following items :
1. Winnie the Pooh
2. Infant carrier toy
3. this

It was a great experience. I went sort of crazy in the baby shop, could have bought close to everything that was there. There was amazing stuff around except that it finally occured to me why this country has the population of just Maharashtra - BABIES ARE EXPENSIVE. Every nappy pack here costs 12 pounds.

What else have I been upto - moving flatmates, FACsing, jabbing and enjoying the lovely weather. I went for a BBQ party on Bank Holiday weekend and it was gorgeous. I usually love parties with friends where there is good food and more talk than loud annoying music, but this one was infested with married Indian doctors (who highlighted the great Indian gender divide) which meant that I( being the only single person there) was horrifically bored. But, I love meeting my host. She is a lovely person, very warm and fun. It was also good to just get out of Oxford, which I must admit after a period of time begins to feel quite stifling.

Other exciting things happening in Oxford included over 100 people jumping off Magdalen bridge on May Day. I can never understand how drunk you must be to try jumping 30 feet into a stream (the Cherwell) 30 inches deep!! 40 people got injured, 10 seriously injured, 4 broke their legs and 1 was left paralysed. It was brought to my notice by my Scout that this was all done by final year Undergraduates with exams in June, which only leaves me marveling at the power of ethanol!!!

Have made myself a truly eclectic playlist featuring Beethoven,Mozart, Nirvan, Guns and Roses and some Bryan Adams. Love listening to it.