I like my little blue icon pic. It beautifully emphasizes my hair in all it’s lustrous glory
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The view from 4400m at Laurabina Yak
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Homage to Liv
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We copied you obviously… and maybe yours is better? But at least I had the guts to go topless in a Vienamese monastery (in India). Jul, it’s your turn… -
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At breakfast this morning we had peanut butter, strawberry jam, bananas and chapati on offer. Perfect opportunity for an Indian LTJ sandwich washed down with a mug of chai! Most pleasant
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Daniel Jones says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following incident at store in Wales
Tesco has been accused of religious discrimination after the company ordered the founder of a Jedi religion to remove his hood or leave a branch of the supermarket in north Wales.
Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the Star Wars films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following the incident at a Tesco store in Bangor.
The 23-year-old, who founded the International Church of Jediism, which has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules.
But the grocery empire struck back, claiming that the three best known Jedi Knights in the Star Wars movies – Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker – all appeared in public without their hoods. Jones, from Holyhead, who is known by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain.
“It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head,” he said.
“You have a choice of wearing headwear in your home or at work but you have to wear a cover for your head when you are in public.”
He said he’d gone to the store to buy something to eat during his lunch break when staff approached him and ordered him to the checkout where they explained he would have to remove the offending hood or leave the store.
“They said: ‘Take it off’, and I said: ‘No, its part of my religion. It’s part of my religious right.’ I gave them a Jedi church business card.
“They weren’t listening to me and were rude. They had three people around me. It was intimidating.” Jones, who has made an official complaint to Tesco, is considering a boycott of the store and is seeking legal advice.
Tesco said: “He hasn’t been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood.
“If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they’ll miss lots of special offers.”
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One thing I’ve really never wanted to do is white water rafting. I don’t like the idea of falling in a raging river and it’s moderately dangerous.
Being in India is also moderately dangerous.
Therefore, a sensible person would not combine the two dangers and go white water rafting in India. I am a sensible person. And yet…
—————————————————————————————–The day began with Richard, our English traveling companion (Iona was working) and I joining a fleet of jeeps on an hour and a half journey south and west of Leh along the great Indus river. Also in the jeep was a Belgium couple. Dirk taught English and spoke fluently with no accent at all and Marja taught Spanish.
After getting on our helmets and life jackets we received our safety instructions. This came from a local who strutted his stuff and posed to us – his audience, as if he were a Ladakhi gangster rapper. He waved a paddle around, presented us with a bag containing a rope and made strange and exotic sounds. But no-one actually understood anything he said. His words sounded most like a tribal language from a remote part of the Amazon. I told Dirk I’d give him 500 rupees if at the end of the talk he said “Hands up anyone who actually understood any of that”. He just laughed and said that he hadn’t understood any of it. Neither had his wife. Neither had anyone. I guessed we’d have to pick it all up on the boat.
Next the four of us (two English, two Belgium) were put on a boat which had three people on board already. They said that they had been told that it was for 6 maximum. As the seven
of us set sail with our Ladakhi captain we were sent back to pick up another two to add to our crew. But this is India. Nine people in a six man boat is probably pretty conservative. However on this occasion it did cause some problems…The unsettling thing about rafting is that you don’t actually sit in the boat. Rather you purch on the side of the raft and try to wedge your feet under something to stop yourself falling out. Also rather unsettling to me was that in front of me was Christian – a young German who had fallen of his motorbike right in front of our eyes outside our guest house a couple of days before. He had been uninjured but nevertheless had shown himself to be the sort of chap who was not unused to falling off things/ accidents. Behind me was Marja.
The first hour was pretty great. Most of the time the river was fast flowing but smooth and we could admire the sharp jagged mountains rising up front out of the very water around us – all bear rock in purples, pinks, blues, greens and yellows. After periods of calm relaxation we would enter periods of level 3-4 rapids (5 is maximum danger, 6 six is unraftable) where our captain would shout out
“Forward!
Left Forward, right back!
Fast forward!
Fast back!”
Unfortunately he wasn’t very loud and he wasn’t very clear and half the crew (the three Germans) had no idea what he was saying. So I took to repeating him and that seemed to work a bit… A bit… The trouble was that sometimes you need to be able to react very quickly.
As we came through some level 4 rapids the freezing water leapt up all around us, waves crashed into us and at one point we tipped up about 40 degrees, our vessel was rocked and shaken unforgivingly. But we stayed aboard, stayed afloat and were thrilled and excited by it all.
Then we came to the level 5 rapids. As water crashed all around us the captain shouted incoherently, waves jumped up at as from all directions, we lost control. The right hand side of the boat came up above my head. The raft tipped over. We were all in.
As we plunged into the freezing water I grabbed at my glasses and paddle. Richard had fallen on top of me ensuring I stayed under water for some time.
I eventually kicked my way back to the surface only to find that I was some way ahead of the boat and rest of the crew, downstream, being washed uncontrollably and increasingly further away from the others and safety. Christian was even further away and to the right of me. We were now both riding the level 5 rapids alone.
I was thrown left and right, up and down and around, under the water and back to the surface. I wasn’t scared. I was just very concentrated on doing whatever I needed to do to breath. It was a case of grabbing a breath whenever possible, whenever I came to the surface.
After a while the river became fast but smooth and I was floating along with my head above the water. As I came to a right turn in the river I was relatively unconcerned and assumed that I would be taken around the corner. But I wasn’t. I was being taken at speed towards a wall of sharp rock. I kicked as hard as I could to be get away, but it was useless. There was another raft some way away but too far to help.
I decided that the best thing to do was to kick against the rocks, maybe try to almost run along them placing one leg after the other against them. I have strong legs, but maybe not strong enough. I had no idea what would happen. I was just very concentrated on keeping my soft body from being smashed into the sharp hard rock. As I got within three meters I braced myself for a fight…
Suddenly a rope was thrown to me. Behind me, but close enough. As I got to within a meter of the rocks I grabbed hold of the rope. The raft was ahead of me and to the right, the rope was slack. As I got within a foot of the rock the rope tightened. It was pulling me away but across the face of the rock – closer to it. I was pulled across the face of the rock. It would certainly have ripped in to me. I couldn’t have been closer to it without touching it. But I didn’t touch it. I was pretty releaved.
Now I was being pulled down stream by the raft. I was exhausted but had enough energy and strength to pull myself in, one hand over the other. I was still being pushed under water, still having to fight for breath but gradually I pulled myself up to the raft. Two people heaved me into it.
I lay sprawled out on the floor, exhausted, panting hard, shocked. A few minutes later the safety kayak had picked up Christian and he was also bought to us. After some time he stopped gasping for breath but he couldn’t stop shaking and shivering. He said that when he was in the water he thought he was going to die. For my part I hadn’t even thought about it – I was too busy to think. And I wasn’t even that cold. It was a sunny day and I was warming up and my clothes were beginning to dry out.
It turned out that our new boat was being crewed by the family of the British High Commissioner and we had just made their day.
“Hooray! We’re super heroes! We saved two men from drowning!”
They were enjoying it all a bit too much. Then came the news that the Belgium lad Marja was missing.
Dirk had managed to get back in the raft and had helped everyone else back in the raft and everything was OK. Accept that his wife was nowhere to be found. For twenty minutes he sat and worried. Had she also been swept downstream like Christian and Tom? Where else could she be? Was she safe somewhere or in the water somewhere or even under the water somewhere?
Then came the news that she had swam to some rocks and got on another raft and was safe. We were all safe.
Well thank God for that!
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I lost my glasses in the water, have been unable to get a new pair and have been wearing my sun glasses ever since – this looks pretty dumb at night. I also swallowed a considerable amount of the Indus and got a sick (bacterial infection). I got diarrhea and couldn’t eat anything for about 72 hours. For the first few days afterwards when I closed my eyes at night I was back in the water with the wall of rock looming up towards me.
But I’m fine now. I’m 500 miles away and warm and well. I had a bit of a shock but I don’t feel I was in all that much trouble. I was probably close to being injured but probably not that close to being drowned. But I just don’t know. It’s very hard to know. All I do know is that I’m never going white water rafting again! As I said, I’m fine now.
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Had Kashmiri Dum Mutton for dinner last night.
Commonly known as plain rice, creamy buttery sauce and knee of goat. Using a power saw I managed to cleft a smidge of meat from the knee. Iona tried it and had a coughing and choking fit before mumbling “….cartilage…”.
Went elsewhere and had pizza…
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from the guradian this morning….
“Question: How does the post office make sure that 2nd class post arrives a day after 1st class
Answer: On sorting, 2nd class post is sorted into a separate pile. The previous days 2nd class post is added to todays 1st class post and sent out for delivery. Meanwhile todays 2nd class post waits for tomorrows 1st class post before being allowed out of the sorting office.
The cost of this addition sorting is borne by the extra cost we pay for 1st class stamps.”
Sheesh.
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Just starting to think about all the stuff I’ll need when I go to India in a couple of weeks. Passport, tickets and Iona… the rest not so vital I suppose…
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The LOTR's prequel movie
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The Hunt For Gollum (HD version)
Uploaded by HuntForGollum. – Watch feature films and entire TV shows.Sheesh manogals! This is worth a gander….
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Dead
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Jul, have you ever eaten something? You look REALLY thin. I guess that’s what happens if you spend years in a country where everyone is tiny and subsists on 8 bite-sized chunks of rice per day. You should work out your BMI. Mine varies between being a fat thin person and being a thin fat person. Also I have the super power of having a stomach that can actually expand to hold 80 litres. On several occasions I have leant it out to people who have used it as a large rucksack. It has been taken on expeditions to the andes and such places.
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is out
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well that was a lovely way to spend three months but all good things comes to an end. so now i’m in london in a flat full of people and sleeping on the couch in the living room with iona who doesn’t even have her own room here. cosy. and damn public. still i can handle it. i think.
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huh?
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so liv, why does the giblet on the side tell you what videos I’ve been watching on YouTube? Does anyone care… what if I’d been watching transexual videos again. Then everyone would find out about it… no hang on
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nice pic nicky
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Quality photo! SuperDod Plumber Man!
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George Bush - the final verdict
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…And so after 2 hellish terms in office the Bushman triumphantly left office having doubled debt, having invaded two countries rather badly and having left the country and world in an incredibly deep financial crisis. But what will history make of this great “not intellectually curious” man?
From the BBC…
By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News websiteI suppose the underlying question here is whether George W Bush has been one of the worst US presidents.
A British historian of American politics, Professor John Philip Davies of de Montfort University, says: “George Bush’s problem is that he hasn’t had many successes and he has made mistakes.
As far as history’s verdict goes, Mr Bush must now hope that the Truman factor will come into play.
Harry Truman was highly unpopular when he left office in the early 1950s, but most historians now recognise that he was a great president who was dealt a losing hand by history and who played it with skill and style.
When I asked one eminent American historian if he thought there would be a Truman effect for Mr Bush in the future he paused for a moment, then burst out laughing.
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Some pics from Amaravati
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Hope Dodman’s foot and Hannah’s leg gets better nice quickly and painlessly.
Here is the monastery in the snow, one of us driving a monk to the doctor and a reasonable of shot of an albino deer. There is a huge herd of deer around this area (including quite a few white ones) and we have seen up to 70(!) together
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Tooth ache
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Poor Nicky with all the tooth ache gubbins.
IT brought to mind an incident a few years ago when I had a similarly agonising ear infection. Fortunately I had worked out that you take Ibuprofen every four hours and in between codydramol/ cocodamol so that you get a pain relief hit every two hours.
On the down side after a night of very little sleep and much grumbling the next morning Sasha got up and promptly collapsed on the floor and had to be taken to casualty – it seems the lack of sleep had effected her more than me. I had to switch from being the poorly patient to concerned partner in an instant. Fortunately the hospital were kind enough to give me some kind of heroine which helped considerably.
In order to avoid such problems I have decided to date a medical student. From now on if any of us have any health problems or questions (no matter how petty or annoying) we can all call Iona at any time of day or night and she will patiently help us. I have already been diagnosed as having a rare fungus on my belly button and an irrelevant lump on my neck… if anyone has a slight sniffle this winter you know who to call.
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Happy Tom :-)
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This is Iona and these pictures were taken on my birthday. It’s only been a month that we’ve been together but what a thoroughly jolly month it’s been…
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Sir, we salute you.
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I thought we should all give a big Livster.net salute out to Chesley Sullenberger. Partly because when the engines on his plane got massacered by birds he managed to fly the plane into the river Hudson thus saving 150 lives. But most because he is called Captain Chesley Sullenberger. Sir, we pay homage, you are a genius of the highest order. We salute you.
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Flooding
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Indeed it has been fetid weather these last two days; near constant rain and strong winds. I have taken the opportunity to go for three hour walks on both days which have been more than acceptably enjoyable.
Tomorrow however, providing that it is dry, I shall be hanging myself up on the line.
