Dawn

Dawn

Tuesday, August 21, 2012


There's a touch of irony in the fact I'm about to mention the milk of human kindness. For one, I don't like milk. And, for two, I don't think I'm particularly kind. But be that as it may, the recent Olympics seems to have shown us once again that humans can be nice to each other from time to time. But on a particular scale and in a certain time and place. Outside these parameters, the M of H K is somewhat diluted, if not entirely absent.

The next irony is that, although I'm not a Catholic, nor even a Christian, the two occasions on which I've felt bathed with the M of H K were both in the Lourdes shrine in France. And, indeed, during the same ceremony – the nighttime candle-lit procession at the centre of the grotto. It didn't do anything to affect my disinclination to believe in miracles, but I'd defy anyone not to experience a sensation of goodness and charity at this gathering. Trouble is, immediately outside the precincts of the shrine you enter the rather different world of trinket and holy water commerce. There couldn't be a greater contrast.

Talking about location . . . Island living can make people, well, insular, I guess. Rather unaware of what's going on in other places. And equally unaware of how they're seen by others. I suspect peninsulas can suffer/benefit from the same phenomenon. Just a thought.

Query: If you cost and timeline a project and then add an Inefficiency Factor, are you being efficient? I guess so.

The Chinese buffet restaurant down by the train station is called Euphoria. As this has no Chinese (or food) connotations whatsoever, my guess is they wanted to give a European frisson to their name and then stuck a pin in the relevant section of the dictionary.

Finally . . . Interesting to note that, during World War Two, Russian and German forces agreed to a brief armistice so they could fight off hungry wolves. That done, they returned to slaying each other with gay abandon. No M of H K, you see.

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