Confucius, he say about Britain

The other day I was reading Vanessa Hansen's beautifully lucid monograph on Chinese history and stumbled upon a very profound quote.

"Lead them by political maneuvers, restrain them with punishments: the people will become cunning and shameless. Lead them by virtue, restrain them with ritual: they will develop a sense of shame and a sense of participation."

Although the latter statement does not touch on the horrors and vices of Victorian Britain, it does succinctly describe the better sides of its spirit. On the other hand, Blair's Broken Britain, enveloped in the tight blanket of industrially produced PR lies and world's most numerous CCTV cameras, uncannily fits the former description.

Amazing, innit: something said in the 7th century BC still holds true.

On racism and reptiles

A lot of qualities that we call human are acquired through upbringing. Empathy, logic, attention span, manners, they all are introduced and nurtured in children. On the other hand, proper upbringing conditions, subdues or entirely wipes out many inborn qualities. But for social control, we would not consider incest, cannibalism or unwarranted aggression undesirable and repulsive.

It is the so-called R-complex, or the most ancient part of our brain, that we have inherited from the reptiles that is responsible for such primitive behaviour. Our conscious mind does not have control over most of its reactions as they need to be instantaneous for the sake of our survival. Take the flight-or-fight instinct. If we had to employ all the trappings of our civilised logical conscious mind to decide whether we should escape danger or not we would not stand much chance in times of danger.

As human society develops many behavioural patterns built in the R-complex become undesirable, even counter-productive. But they do not go away without an effort. For example, rage, originally a defense mechanism, is now treated in anger control therapy. It used to help our primate ancestors assert their status in the group but nowadays we have different ways to do that.

Xenophobia is another example. It used to be necessary to identify and assault an outsider for the sake of group's or individual survival. Anyone who does not look like us is by default an enemy and has to be attacked, according to the R-complex. However, in our more developed society this is by far and large not the case any more. Real danger comes now in different shapes but our atavistic brain keeps reacting the best way it knows how. Here lies the biological premise of racism. The reptile inside of us instinctively rears its ugly head, even though as developed humans we should know better.

Only relatively recently has it become widely accepted that xenophobia, which also includes racism, is undesirable and shameful. Only a rather small percentage or population has managed to overcome this reptilian urge to attack anyone who does not look or behave like us. Old habits die hard. Most success comes where more effort is involved. Without it, we will keep behaving like dinosaurs.

The neocortex, the most sublime part of our brain, should be able to see a fellow human being beyond superficial appearances. But it only develops through the effort of education. Philanthropy, "the love of human", that transcends races, religions and customs, needs to be developed and nurtured until we are truly more humans than reptiles in what we think and do.

Digital cloud plan for city skies

"Digital cloud plan for city skies" read a heading in my BBC Live News Update. Wow, my heart started beating faster, finally London gets an overall free WiFi coverage, the so-called "Cloud". That would be so cool, in the country where broadband cable is still a luxury and download speeds are usually limited by the capacity of Victorian copper wires.

Alas, the article turned out to be about building "120m-tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data" Doh. Like the utterly useless "white elephant" of Millenium Dome was not enough. Perhaps this will be the last belch of the lame-duck Labour Government, still delirious after the boom years of the financial bubble. And who will be stuck with the bill? The taxpayer.

Ban bicycles in London! (Skyride 2009)

After 6 years in Amsterdam, I am positively convinced that bicycles are the superior commuter means of transportation but, let's face it, London is simply not made for bikes. Here they are a serious hazard for unsuspecting pedestrians and a major deterrent for city buses. Mountain bike yobs whizzing down crowded sidewalks or a single leisurely cyclist in the bus lane keeping down a string of full buses -- those are familiar daily sights for every Londoner.

The recent London Skyride - on top of creating a horrid traffic snarl-up in Central London - cost the taxpayer 62 pounds a biker! These days that money can fly you to Spain and back.

The Anglo-Saxon fear of central planning has left London with a random sprinkling of cycle lanes and hardly any bicycle racks. With the worst air quality in Western Europe this city is dangerous for cycling commuters just as well. I really feel sorry for those foreign tourists who get duped into hiring a bike for a pleasure ride in London. Watching them trying to navigate through the relentlessly heavy traffic squeezed into a medieval labyrinth of Victorians streets, theirs must be a nightmarish experience.

You won't find me concurring with the Daily Mail columnists very often, but this time I have to take their side: ban bicycles in London!

The secret of the British stiff upper lip

Now I know the secret of the proverbial British stiff upper lip! Nothing to do with strong will, tenacity or aristocratic composure. It's thanks to awful British dentists!

The other day I saw an ad in a glossy magazine advertising luxury shoe shops to wealthy tourists. The slogan went: "The British have awful teeth, that's why they need beautiful shoes!" What a horrible distinction!

Swine flu vaccine: a profit-generating myth

Following the bird flu and atypical pneumonia, these days the swine flu is the focus of a massive media hoopla. After 300 people died worldwide, it has been proclaimed a pandemic. Give me a break, more people die every year choking on fish bones but I don't see a war on fish waged anywhere.

The real reason for this well-orchestrated hysteria may be in what is peddled as the salvation: the so-called vaccine. Anyone whose ever peeped into a school textbook of anatomy and hygiene would know that there in principle can be NO anti-viral vaccine.

As usual, the USA is the trend-setter for this kind of nonsense: they kicked it off back in the days of the Bush administration when a 7-billion bird flu vaccine contract was awarded to a company owned by Rumsfelld, Dubya's best crony. Now this get-rich-quick scheme has become adopted all around the world, scaring millions in spending on something that accomplishes nothing.

Anglo-Saxon and Continental mentality divide

Anglo-Saxon mentality is about individualism and personal success. As long as I have achieved, nothing else matters, I've deserved it. The wide rich-poor gap typical fro Anglo-Saxon economies testifies to that attitude. The arrogance of the bankers just recently bailed out with public money who have awarded themselves billions in bonuses wouldn't have been tolerated outside the Anglo world.

Collective good and equality are more a consideration in the Continental (Northern) Europe that includes France. Only from there could come rich people demanding to be taxed more to help the country, like it has just happened in Germany.

Random acts of kindness in the City

I don't know whether the countryside has ever been the veritable repository of virtue and good manners or whether only in the good olden days people used to be nice to each other. One thing for sure, city life does not make folks any softer. The stress and frustration of urban rat-race seem to do everybody's heads in.

So much the more fun it is to observe how people react to random acts of kindness. A bit every day - I try to make it a regular practice. A smile, a nice word,a gesture of courtesy.

Many are incredulous. Their immediate reaction is suspicion. I guess they think I want something from them.

Yet many are impervious. The callous around their hearts protects them from hurting and good feelings likewise.

For a few, it does not register at all. Too busy, perhaps. It's alright, receiving gratitude is not the purpose of this exercise.

I am so happy though that there are enough souls out there whose first unconscious reaction to a smile is a smile. There is hope for this weird protein-based species.

TV is a Hitler in your home

Have you ever visited someone, often invited, only to find your host glued to the TV too busy following another portion of Big Brother tribulations to pay attention to you, the guest?

Since when has this become acceptable? I once was at a private dinner party where the hostess fell asleep right at the dining table while watching some shite on TV over our heads. When she came to, she continued as if nothing had happened.

I think it defeats the whole purpose of inviting people over to your place and is also insulting because it shows that whatever crap they put on to have you watch commercials is more fun and important for you than your friends.

The least wanted country of Europe

Moldavia has long been the butt of jokes in the Soviet Union. I've never been there so can't say whether is is justified or not, but it is perhaps tale-telling that election after election, they find it hard to find anyone wishing to become their president. A few years ago it turned out a scandal when no one applied. This time they only have one candidate.

Berlusconi endorses Blair for EU president

News from the League of Crooks. Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is backing TonyBlair for EU presidency. Blair's PR people should have contacted the zany Ceasar in advance because surely in the polite society Berlusconi's support is highly undesirable.

Laptop, man's best friend

If you put your laptop on your belly and start defragmentation, it's just like a cat, warm and purring. Gotta love it!

On the roots of African poverty

I found these two lines from an article about a recent election in Gabon very thought-provoking.

"Gabon is sub-Saharan Africa's fourth biggest oil producer and Africa's second biggest wood exporter, although most of its 1.4 million people live in poverty.

August's election was called after the death of Omar Bongo, one of the world's richest men, who had ruled the nation for four decades."

Now Omar's son will be calling the shots in Gabon. This reminds me of how 400 men who own Russia now keep pumping money out of the country, keeping the majority of its 150 million eking out a barely decent living.

Phantom roadworks on UK highways

So it is not just me who sees sections, patches or whole lanes of roads closed ostensibly for works with nothing being done there. According to a Highways Agency's survey, 55% UK motorists have the same experience.

The National Audit Office says that due to a "lack of management information" accurate figures for the cost of road resurfacing and such could not be gathered. In layman's terms it means that no one knows what exactly is done during roadworks and how much it costs. Although Highways Agency is a public office, road improvement contracts are awarded to private companies. Any comment would be superfluous.

US and UK: credit crunch bailout cost

In her time, Margaret Thatcher reformed the UK economy along the US lines: denationalising, cutting social spending and, most importantly, making the financial sector the most important source of revenue.

The special relationship mentality has finally backfired. The perceived commonality with the Trans-Atlantic Big Brother made Britain forget that it is not in the big boys league any more. Apart from the very obvious difference in economy scale, the US has a vast production base, which, sadly, on its own soil the UK has chosen to let die.

As a result, America has been able to absorb the credit crunch shock with a bailout that amounted to a hefty quarter of its GDP. For the UK, however the price was close to its whole annual GDP.

British Victorian administrative bureaucracy model

I have never seen a more chaotic, overblown and utterly clueless bureaucracy as here in the UK and I have lived in Russia and Thailand. Trying to get anything done each time reminds me of a trip through Alice's Wonderland where I get to meet most grotesque creatures who tell me most senseless things and never fail to send me the wrong direction.

I really wonder how it all has come to this as in Victorian times a few thousands of British bureaucrats were running a global empire efficiently and with a sumptuous profit. In the India Office, a handful of public officers were managing a giant, overwhelmingly diverse state 10 times as big as Britain itself and without the help of any fancy office equipment.

I reckon that the downfall of the British administrative tradition happened during WWII when wartime ministries and state control were blown out of any proportion under the premises of "war needs". That monstrous labyrinthine system still lives on in the form of the British welfare state together with its legacy of a direly faulty management model.

I was surprised to find out that there has been no research of how the British Empire was run in its heyday. That alone would have provided an invaluable lesson to this glorious nation that is suffocating under the burden of its ineffectual government.

Britain and socialism: marriage doomed for disaster

Why socialism is failing in Great Britain?

Socialism is all about regulations. The nation's mentality should be naturally inclined towards bureaucratic excellence. National attitude and ways of organising things will manifest itself multiplied manifold in how the administrative system is put together.

Socialism can succeed only ion countries with the natural knack for planning, mostly Northern Europe and France. In the USSR socialism has grown into an oppressive dictatorship as the country had always been such.

The British with their Anglo-Saxon love of liberty and individual freedom , shun central authority. They were the first nation to curb monarch's rights with the Magna Carta. Good socialism requires a good central planning authority and that would go against the grain in Britain. That is why the welfare state in this country is in such a horrendous shambles.

Circle of chaos: M25 is Britain's most-closed highway

The M25, London's Ring Road is the country's most closed highway. In the first eight moths of 2009 it was closed more than 1700 times amounting to about 5000 hours. Wouldn't it be easier just to shut it altogether and build something more viable next to it?

Archbishop of Canterbury slams hedge fund controls

Last month, in a bid to protect London's miserably failed financial industry, Boris Johnson flew to Brussels to stop the EU from introducing new hedge funds regulations. Hiscauuse has just found itself strong supporters: the Church of England's commissioners who include the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. That comes as little surprise as the "'divine institution"has 4.4 billion pounds invested in hedge funds. Any comment would be superfluous.

give take balance perfect relationship

It is curious to observe how people only expect to get something in a relationship - be it a casual sex fling or something more lasting. Although lasting here is quite an overstatement. It is doomed to come to a quick (or a long and painful) end, if all you hope is to gratify yourself.

The secret to success, as always, lies on the surface. If both partners take care to learn and satify the other party's needs, then it will be a prefect symbiosis. For example, if in sex both partners work hard to give maximum pleasure to it all will be starry sky and fireworks. The opposite of it will end up in masturbation into a live person.

You also get to learn to much from learning about the other, whilst staying focussed just on yourself will get you nowhere.

Run, Tracey, Run!

Tracey Emin, the artist that shot prominence after her drunk appearance on Channel 4 in 1997, said she would quit the UK for France because of the proposed tax hike on high earners.

Emin is behind such profoundly meaningful and innovative pieces as My Bed (an unmade bed decorated with body secretions, used condoms and dirty underwear) and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (a tent appliquéd with the names of all people the artist has been in bed with).

Emin hopes that French government will be more of receptive of her creative talents and we hope they will teach her to make her bed in France.

What is love and when will I find it?

I'm carrying this huge vessel full of love, I want to give it but not to anyone out there but someone special. Sometimes I think even just someone who would let me love him.

Of course I want some back. Sometimes I think this is no good, after all you are supposed to be giving. Wanting love is selfish. I meditate myself back into a balance but that's like a friend of mind said "being hungry and trying to pretend that you are not".

So why can't I never find love? In hindsight, timing seems to be a problem and sometimes bad communication. I learn to be patient and also make sure my messages are very clear and timely.

There are also people who don't know how to love and are not interested to find out. Or people who think love is sex or those who can fake it.

For me love would start from the initial sexual attraction. It's the hook Mother Nature gave us. I'd enjoy it but I know that passion is bound to fade. That's why I'm looking for someone I can share my values and objectives with. When those basics are right, you can build on them. Once the passion's subsided, the relationship can evolve if you got the basics right.

Mutual spiritual growth is probably the goal of any relationship (for me anyway). Also when the core things are right I can overlook a lot of flaw. Nobody is perfect. I can love a person for the good person that they are. I admire principles, purity, integrity. I can give a sound, time-proof, unconditional love - once my conditions are satisfied.

Why Gay Men Never Mature

It is women who make men mature. Women become adults through childbirth, or even earlier through the menarche. For them, there is not escaping adulthood. Mother Nature drags them into that by the scruff of the neck, it's a bloody affair.

In the absence of initiation ceremonies in our society, men stay boys until they die. Their toys become bigger and more expensive - car, career, bank account, gadgets - but very few actually mature without the pressure from women. Or to be more correct, the woman, a wife or a girlfriend who would pressurise her beloved sperm donor into the responsibilities of child-rearing and upkeeping a household.

So what about the men who never experience that benign female influence, gay men? They stay true boys for life, stuck for ever in the Peter Pan Land.You see them prancing in skimpy tanktops and partying until grey hair becomes impossible to dye.

Have you ever tried to make an appointment with a gay man? It is one of the most frustrating affairs in the world. Constantly on the lookout for a better dick they are shit-scared of any kind of commitment be it even a casual date. A slightest perspective of getting laid and they ditch you and stand you up without a second thought.

That is why I would think more than twice before letting a gay couple adopting a kid. I'd make them pass a tough exam to weed out those who only care about accesorising. Unlike lesbians, who I think make bets parents in the world, gay guys are just real men after all, biologically programmed to "aim, shoot and run". Women, on the other hand, are biologically programmed to choose the most powerful mate and make sure that their progeny survives. To accomplish the latter they, by hook or by crook, involve the male.

Of course, we've evolved to be highly complex social animals since our ape phase but the core stays true nonetheless.

Seeing the spiritual connection in a relationship

What is important in a relationship is shared values and principles. They last and passion is just a hook. It serves its purpose and then goes.

Sometimes I think every person I have fallen for was sent into my life for a different reason. Sometimes it seems like the message I am supposed to get is that we should not have a sexual relationship, just spiritual, mutually enriching friendship. Well, that's what I want from a relationship anyway: love and spiritual connection. Love can be sexual at first but it evolves, it can't stay on the passion level for ever.

It's a shame that I never get the chance to get this message through. I have even tried to do it directly, just saying that straight to face. I would say that there's more to what is happening between us than the eye can see or the cock may want. We can enjoy sex and passion for now. But it's not the purpose. We are in for much better things together. Sometimes it falls on deaf ears, sometimes it has only a fleeting effect.

I guess I can see more at the moment than the other party. They come back to me years later saying that now they see I was the real thing but then I'm already in a different place, both geographically and psychologically. Sometimes it feels like a curse but perhaps there is just a lesson.

Life lessons

Lessons in life are sent to us out of Grace. They are like hints to what we need to learn. We may feel hurt, disappointed and even ruined when we don't get what we want but that may be the best thing that happened to us. Most of things like that become clear only in hindsight. However, as I age, I have learnt to see lessons right there. It makes life both easier and enjoyable. You get over pain and loss quicker because you see sense and purpose to it. And on top of that, you emerge a wiser man.

What is faith

Faith is not about blindly believing what you are told. It is more about accepting. Accepting that there are some things that logic cannot explain. I was brought up a scientific atheist. The whole system of education was geared towards rearing generations of people who believed there's no God and could explain very well why. Strangely enough, that very education provided me with systematic thinking that enabled me to arrive at an opposite conclusion.

While I accept that in the realm of science logic is the king, there are other realities where logic just does not work. Logic relies on the human brain, on the thin veneer of the upper layers of the frontal lobes. They are a relatively recent development in the primates. Faith sits deeper and is connected better, it is so much powerful. To explore its full potential you need to learnt to switch off logical thinking, giving to your gut, trust your intuition and listen to your heart.

Vipassana meditation helped me see that my intellect is not me, it is a part of me that thinks thoughts, like the heart pumps blood or the stomach digests food. They all are a vital part of me but they are not me, not my essence.

Britain, away with wheelie bins!

There is something Britain could defo do without: wheelie bins. I figure here they are used after the American fashion but in the US yards are huge and trash cans are never in sight. In the Old World, the space is limited and in London a plastic container stuffed with rotting refuse easily takes up half the space of the front yard. Rows after rows of them are a eyesore on the cityscape.

It would be a good idea to learn from the neighbour across the Channel. In Holland, garbage is left in plastic bags outside just in time to be picked up by the truck. However, increasingly, there are underground storage facilities, where garbage is dumped into air-proof containers, which are later emptied by the garbage truck.

Sex on the first date?

Having sex on the first date is like eating cake before dinner: it ruins the appetite for all the things that are actually good for you.

If your mother and father did not hug you

Interesting how the people who were brought up not knowing love in their non-hugging families, when they grow up, have no idea how to give love and even how to receive it. It scares them because they don't know how to handle it and now amount of love at this stage will change them. Their feelings will always stay shallow and they will seek company of their like.

The right way to pray

Direct the vector of your gratitude towards God into the future.

Maya Plisetskya in Carmen Suite

She is almost inhumanely prefect: with just the right does of vulgarity that Carmen should have and yet so exquisite and passionate.

The Ugly Grimaces of the Latter-day Politics

Politicians are by far best entertainers. They are also most sinister ones.

Gordon Brown, the man who last 12 years spared no time fucking up British economy till it collapsed beyond repair is dashing around saving world's economy. Now what the fuck does he have to tell the world that he should be telling his own country?

It is hard to say whether this beats Tony Blair being a special peace envoy to the Middle East though. I reckon the level of brazen-faced spit-in-the-face kick-in-the crotch gall is about the same in both cases.

Jade Goody's Legacy

Now the extreme poor taste media saga of Jade Goody's televised battle with cancer is over. She is dead, and like The Chaser sings: "Even an asshole turns into a good bloke after death." Her only legacy will be our knowledge that one can make a career based solely on a shameless display of ignorance, bad temper and racism on reality TV. Anyway, rest in peace, Jade!

The Real Law of Attraction

A weird observation: the less you care about people, the more attracted they get to you.

Gorbachev advises a perestroika to the US

America is in urgent need of its own 'perestroika', says Gorbachev. Clearly, he's aiming at fucking up another country big time.

Georgia to Barackia

Now that Barack Obama is the US President, isn't Georgia going to be renamed Barackia?

Ab Fab encounter

Never thought I would do this but here you go: today I spotted Jennifer Saunders driving home from the BBC Centre at White City. It was 5 to 5 PM, I guess she does not care for overtime! I wouldn't if I were her!

BBC and Newspeak

In the foreword to his 1984 Orwell wrote that this was not a criticism of socialism but a warning for British society. A brilliant example of latter-day Newspeak I found on the BBC website:

Taxpayer 'set to control Lloyds'. Then the articles go on how old boys at Lloyds' Banking, a private company, gambled and screwed it up huge time and their Whitehall cronies bailed them out to the tune of 260 billion pounds. Which exactly the opposite if the title, typical Newspeak.

The article goes on. According to BBC political correspondent Carole Walker , many people in Westminster think that "it would be simpler and easier for the government to nationalise the banks, and that in the long-term it would save the taxpayer a lot of money..." Now how on earth is that going to save the taxpayer any money at all?

Hillary's Clitoris

Russia's Foreign Minster Lavrov was presented Hillary's Clitoris button by its proud owner. The Russian text instead of "reset" (perezagruzka) said"overload" (peregruzka). That did not stop both from laughing. After all, touching the clitoris is an enjoyable pastime for everyone!

For Russia, rubbing the button may mean the long expected cancellation of the plans to put American rocket control facilities in Eastern Europe. America in its turn hopes to defuse Iran's nuclear programmes.

Beth Gibbons: The paean of depression

One of my theme songs for the 90s. The creepily brilliant sounds of depression and barely avoidable suicide by Beth Gibbons and Portishead.

Nato woos Russia on Afghanistan

Irony, irony, irony. This life is full of it but it is more fun to see it in major events. Twenty years after the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan Nato wants to involve Russia in its own doomed campaign there.

Why would it, you might ask. After all, it seems quite successful: helping triple Afganistan opium production is no mean feat. Here in London it has reportedly brought the street price of cocaine low enough for everyone to weather out the economy collapse in the best jolly mood.

Ex oriente lux

Who could have ever thought, say 20 years ago that one day all major Western economies would be abating their breath waiting for the news on the Chinese government's next move in the hope of their own economic recovery.

How very ironic: a Communist-led planned economy is yanking capitalism out of its self-created mess.

Voices

Sometimes it seems that all I have left are voices. Voices in my computer. They listen to me, react to what I say, offer their advice. We discuss things, sometimes have arguments. I try make them understand and I guess they think they do but they really don't. I can't help feeling that they have all failed me. VOIP (Internet-based telephony) is great but what's the use of talking now.

It is really my fault they don't have bodies any more. I've kept running from them for years, putting seas and mountains and thousands of miles between us. I was trying to find myself and a perfect place where I would fit but it turns out there is none. All these years I was waiting for the voices to speak to me, speak love I have been looking for but it never came to pass.

But really, the only voice I still have to listen to is hunger. Hunger is my saviour. It's the only force that drives me to get up and do things. Otherwise I would just stay in bed day and night until somebody finds my decomposed corpse. But my hunger takes on very sophisticated forms I have to go through some very convoluted motions to satisfy it. Hunger keeps me alive.

Goodwin pension scandal

I do not get what this Goodwin pension scandal is about. The dude has fucked it up to the tune of 2.4 billion pounds just this year and you want his 16 million back? How will that help now?

How to best enjoy the sauna and steambath

"Dude, my head is killing me!" my Dutch friend Jitte winces in pain. We are at a swimming pool in Amsterdam. Last hour I saw his blurred figure popping in and out of the sauna and steam rooms like Woody Woodpecker. I nip my urge to preach in the bud and just rub his shiatsu points with some Tiger Balm.

See, I was brought up with saunas and steam baths. In Russia it is a natural place to get warm and socialise when it's cold and snowing out there. You grow up with the whole "banya" ritual and you take it seriously. There are ground rules that you obey for a good reason.

1. Take it slow.

The temperature in the sauna is 90 degrees, your blood curdles at 45. Your body goes through a massive shock and goes into an emergency mode. It starts sweating profusely trying to prevent your blood from turning into black pudding. The situation is a bit extreme but it is a calculated risk. This is how we trick our body into sweating out the toxins that normally would just stay trapped inside.

Give your body ample time to come around. Just like working out shocks your muscles to grow later when you eat and rest, sauna heat triggers your body to purge when you lie around sweating afterwards. Running out straight from the sauna to a dinner appointment without cooling down properly is equal to depriving yourself of food after a workout.

2. Drink

As you sweat, you get dehydrated, depleted of liquid. Replenish it generously. Sip, don't gulp: otherwise your kidneys will just evacuate the excess that was meant for your sweat glands.

Drink hot or warm tea, not cold water from the cooler. Cold bacteria and flu virus sit in your throat. When it is weakened by cold water, you catch the nasty illness that will plague you weeks afterwards.

Alcohol dehydrates and toxifies you so it defeats the whole purpose even if it gives you the kick.

3. Keep yourself warm.

Dousing yourself with ice-cold water or diving into a cool pool is fine but stay away from the air-conditioning and drafts at all cost. The are the short cut to flus and colds . Ideally, wrap yourself up in a bathrobe or a thick body-length towel.

In Ancient Rome public baths were a social institution. Romans would go there daily and spend hours scrubbing and bathing. They would enter through the atrium, undress in the apodyterium, warm up in the tepidarium, get hot in the caldarium, even hotter in the sudatorium, then plunge into cold water in the frigidarium. Then they would go in reverse and hang out in the warm tepidarium to ease the transition to the cooler air of apodyterium where they would put their clothes back on. That was a practice tested over centuries.

Unfortunately, most people who install saunas and steambaths in our gyms these days had neither tepidarium nor sudatorium on the council estates where they grew up. So we are forced to bend to their idea of how to enjoy bathing. We are this close to being limited to a weekly sponge rub.

In a certain chain health club in Brixton where I live, the relaxation area consists of a narrow walkway between the shower cubicles where two people can barely pass each other. I had to cool myself down standing for half an hour in the shower, whilst gradually reducing the water temperature.

After our Clean Body Sunday ended up in a severe migraine, Jitte swore to never enter a sauna again. It is a shame so I am going send him this article. I hope he will change his mind!

Hot Air Fails To Lift US Economy

Surprise, surprise: perfectly crafted and inspiringly delivered appeals to "revitalise the economy" and make "America lead the world again" failed to accomplish both. Even worse, the stocks have actually fallen after President Obama's as usual toe-twirlingly amazing speech.

Perhaps, it is time Barack realised that it takes more than Magic Negro chanting to do his job.

Caste in Britain: Shops, Parks and Classes

Britain has a special relationship with the USA. But it has an even more special relationship with India, a love-hate relationship of mutual fascination and irritation. Those two are like two sisters who can't seem to live with each other but equally can't without.

One of the major factors in this bond must be the caste/class system. Despite the claim to the contrary it is alive and well in both countries. In Britain class mentality permeates the very grain of society and manifests itself in a multitude of things, events and phenomena.

I love parks. They are the closest approximation to nature an urbanite can find without driving too far. I love to sit on a bench and gather my thoughts together while watching the sun going down or ducks swimming in the pond. When I moved to London from Amsterdam, I right away went to look for such a place of peace and contemplation.

We all know - first-hand or from books - about London's magnificent parks: Kensington and Kew, Regent and Greenwich. But they all are situated in so called posh areas. My first encounter with a working class park left me bewildered. Straight from Amsterdam, where green spaces are meticulously planned an maintained no matter what neighbourhood they are in, I could not believe Wyck Gardens is actually a park. A rundown area with a football gate half-blocked by a graffiti-plastered concrete wall. Random, I thought. Next park I explored in the neighbourhood, Brockwell Park was just a notch better: a rather large green hill with randomly planted trees and a football gate. It looked unloved and desolate.It seemed the only purpose of its layout was to make sure that there is nowhere to lurk around unnoticed.

I tried to maxmise my chances. I googled for success. My search came up with Ruskin Park: "a large and popular Edwardian park full of heritage features". When arrived I found a huge lawn with two perfectly straight strings of trees (8 in each). So much for vegetation. The heritage features turned out a paddling pool and a gazebo. Yes, and a football gate. I guess like a hotel needs a swimming pool and a beauty parlour to qualify for extra stars, a park in Britain is only park when there is a football gate in it. The only Edwardian feature was the row houses that surrounded the park on all sides making it look like a condominium's patio.

And then it dawned on me. Parks in England are also subject to the class system. I live in Brixton, an ethnic working class neighbourhood. Even Tesco here is so depressing that I refuse to go there. Parks here are made according to the idea that working masses deserve their squalor. Anaemic unhealthy edibles in the poor people's supermarkets are what their customers deserve. The gap between more and less affluent areas in one of world's richest cities can be shocking. Some parts look straight out of documentaries about Third World misery. Council housing has despair and destitution built in from the planning stage.

When you are poor in the UK, you are constantly reminded of your ungainly status. Just like workhouses in Victorian times were made to "scare people out of poverty", proletarian areas in London are designed to look and feel horrible. Poor people are supposed to live in rabbit holes, eat junk, have bad teeth and smell funny, well, because they are poor and deserve it.

Britain escaped Enlightenment-inspired revolutions. It emerged into capitalism and further into post-modern society with the feudal mentality intact. Derelict institutions and antiquated customs are being proudly giving lease of life because the mentality that created them is alive and well.

UK ID card proof of address

I knew that Britain cherishes its traditions but I never knew just how it clings to all things whimsical and dusty. Only on observing it first-hand I come to realise how the exactingly logical and systematic French approach must be alien and even repulsive to British heart.

Anglo-Saxon idea of freedom is often used against proposal to introduce some kind of personal ID system. It is true because Anglo-Saxon rules and laws only designate the limits beyond which you are not supposed to go. On the Continent, the rules are guidlines that you are supposed to follow.

However, in modern state with it culture of fear and increasing control over more and more aspects of private lifes and actions, there is no way to do without some form of personal identification. While most Continental countries started using ID cards, the English just can't stop seeing it beneath their dignity. Instead, just not to forfeit their liberty and not to go the dreaded Continental way you need to bring your electricity or gas bill a a prove of domicile! And that is just for abiout anything for signing up at a GP's office to opening a bank account. Need to see a doctor? Where is your gas bill? Logical? Hardly, but at least we keep our freedom.

Millions and millions of flies like shit

Huge popularity does not warrant worth. Lots of things liked by millions are downright trash. Sometimes realising that makes me feel like such an outsider.

Everybody is raving about Harry Potter. Duh. Nobody seems to notice that it is but lacklustre third-grade hogwash that will be forgotten as soon as the marketing budget had run out. Luckily, English literature has produced such an enormous amount of genius children books that nothing can spoil its reputation.

Or take Lion King, the musical. The only good thing about the show is the costumes and the wacko African lady. The rest would be utterly forgettable if I didn't have to fork out 65 blooming quid for my ticket, thus partially funding Elton John's hair transplant surgery.

Another worldwide craze that seems to affect tens of millions of people, Big Brother. Why would shameful antics of desperate low-lifes attract so much attention and debate?

Or the greatest hack of modern days, Dan Brown. People, can't you see his books for what they are? "Arse gravy of the worst kind" to quote Stephen Fry. I am glad I have him on my side on this one.

Victoria & Albert Museum - the giant cupboard of the British Empire

Victoria & Albert Museum - this is where the revolution in industrial design started. Artefacts and materials from all over the world were gathered here so that young Englishmen (and later English women) could see and learn world's best in shape, colour and composition.

But for me the V&A is more like the giant cupboard of the British Empire. Extremely ornate on the outside and inside it so overabundant, it tires me out quickly.

Geert Wilders denied UK entry

A huge round of applause to the British Government: Dutch hate-monger MP Geert Wilders was denied entry to the UK. Finally he is officially seen as a shameless self-promoter that he is. The shoddily bleached Catholic chauvinist attempted to come for peddling his failed act Fitna at the House of Lords.

Russian Hits: I Will Remember

An 80-s Russian rock ballad by Aleksandr Ivanov and Vladimir Presnyakov.

Russian Hits: The Last Thing That I'll Say

Another tragic Russian song: The Last Thing That I'll Say. The heroine dies later the same day rejected by her love and killed by the man who she rejected.

Russian Hits: I Will Never Forget You

A 1983 hit from Juno And Avos opera about tragic lovers: a Russian sailor and a Spanish noble lady in 18th-century California.

Russian Hits: Ne Otrekayutsya Lyubya

When Loving How Can You Renounce - a song to the lyrics by a tragic poet Veronika Tushnova from the 50s who died of unrequited love.

Russian Hits: Help Me Out

A classic 60s hit from one of the most popular Russian movies ever: The Diamond Hand.

Russian Hits: Fnishing The Circle

A New Year's anthem from 1987 USSR by the biggest stars of the time. Peculiarly enough, the lyrics were written by six (!) people.

Russian Hits: Vladimir Presnyakov - Zurbagan

Vladimir Presnyakov singing his own cover. It's a mid-80s hit Zurbagan named after a imaginary romantic port city from the books by Aleksandr Grin.

Russian Hits: I Want To Be With You

One of my most favourite songs when I was a teenager. The melody is beautiful but the lyrics are simply superb, possibly best modern Russian poetry. It is about someone who can't put up that his lover has tragically died and apparently ends up in a psychiatric ward after many attempts of suicide. Aleksandr Ivanov is singing a cover of Soviet 80's super star group Nautilus Pompilius. The title is I Want To Be With You.

Russian Hits: Alyona Sviridova singing jazz

This is one of my favourite Russian (well, technically, Belorussian) singers, Alyona Sviridova. The song is called I'm The Right One. It is a cover of an early 90s Russian hit. It goes about someone whose object of affection thinks she's out of his league (it's a guy's song originally) but he says that if given a chance he can prove he's the right one for her. Very nicely flowing, beautifully crafted lyrics.

RyanAir cheap ticket scam

I really think they should prosecute airlines like RyanAir for their blatantly misleading advertising.

The 79-pence ticket to Dublin has miraculously become 73.53 pounds as I proceeded with the booking and if I had a check-in luggage that would be 25 quid more. In that case you also pay a check-in charge.

Well, from 79 p to 100 quid and you also get the most cramped and chintzy looking aircraft, no food, no drink and have to walk across the airfield and land up to 100 km away from where I mean to arrive. Well, this is my first time with RyanAir and I'll think twice before I book again.

The Spirit of South Africa: Mphefumlo Wami by Lundi

The other day I was making my ethnic grocery rounds at Brixton Market when I heard this out-of-this-world choir singing in a strange melodic language.

It turned out to be Mphefumlo Wami, a huge hit in South Africa by a young male singer Lundi. Given its ethereal beauty, it is strange that it didn't find its way to YouTube. I don't do this very often, but I simply had to buy the CD.

I figure the language must be Zulu. I wonder if anyone has the lyrics, it such a powerful song to sing to.

Saudi gays: do they need a helping hand?

How very peculiar: 845 Saudi Arabian visitors to this blog, second only to the US visitor number. As I have a way to track it, all of them used the keywords "gay sex" in Google Pictures search. Seems like there's an unsatisfied demand in the market there. Just send me a line, we'll take it from there.

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There actually is a number of ways to boost your sexual drive with food. I have collected some free tips about aphrodisiac food. Please have a read and let me know what you think!

Hundred-Grand-A-Minute Dribble

London Eye fireworks 2009: 1.6 million quid in 15 minutes. If this was a sneak preview of what Boris Johnson is preparing for the Olympics 2012, I would prefer to watch him ejaculate on a giant screen at Wembley instead!