^^ Just for you In a poor zoo of India , a lion was frustrated as he was offered not more than 1 kg of meat a day. The lion thought its prayers were answered, when one day a Dubai Zoo Manager visited the zoo and requested the zoo management to shift the lion to Dubai Zoo. The lion was so happy and started thinking of a central A/c environment, a goat or two every day. On its first day after arrival, the lion was offered a big bag, sealed very nicely for breakfast. The lion opened it quickly but was shocked to see that it contained few bananas. The lion thought that may be they cared too much for him as they were worried about his stomach as he had recently shifted from India . The next day the same thing happened. On the third day again the same food bag of bananas was delivered. The lion was so furious; it stopped the delivery boy and blasted at him, 'Don't you know I am the lion...king of the Jungle..., what's wrong with your management?, what nonsense is this?, why are you delivering bananas to me?' The delivery boy politely said, 'Sir, I know you are the king of the jungle. .. but... you have been brought here on a monkey's visa !!! '

^^ Now watch the people line up to have a go at Che for posting that picture. It offends our sensibilities they will all shout, not that those others affecting to cry the loudest will be any better. Oh well...

I don't really have the time for the nieces and nephews, as for my own kids; I don't think I have much choice there. They crowd my house and I find myself obliged to teach and educate (purely for selfish reasons) so that they don't grow into troublemakers that would crowd me and destroy my furniture (not to mention my reputation). At any rate, I taught them all how to use a computer and the eldest can already read. I'll just have to set SOL up as my home page and hope this little village raises them for me while I am busy setting the rest of the world to rights.

^^ He's talking about the dreamers that got their degrees in the West and then went back to 'build' Somalia.

^^ Of course. It's a very noble thing to do if you can spare the time.

Wish I was one, Mrs DD. Aaah! Did I ever tell you about my first ever crush? She was a great looking Sir Lankan maid. Aaah, those were the days.

Just pick any random excrement shufflers from the street and give them those two jobs. If they succeed, wahay! Somalia is back. If they fail, they'll at least make some money. To pre-empt your next thread, let me just say I'd choose Angelina Jolie, a thousand books and some snake repellent. But you'll probably have to come back and fetch Angelina after a month or so. I don't think I could tolerate her telling me about her movie career for more than that...

Hay fever on a day like today? I thought hay fever sufferers loved gloomy days like the one we're having today! Ghan, It's been dull. Not that you would have made a difference of course.

Lost boys? You people make it sound like some sort of a crisis! I'll of course concede that there is a problem but I refuse to believe it's a life and death one that requires all this talk about family planning and the like! Some people float and others sink. It's life. Nothing to it. Move on to the next subject and stop giving Marc Smith ideas for his next sensational video.

^^ Go back to your books, young lady. This place has been great in your absence.

^^ Is that not done yet?

Bengal tigers in the desert? And you claim to walk past them EVERY day? Monsieur, with these Rocher, you're really spoiling us.....

Fans of Hugh Laurie. A forward he wrote for a P. G. Wodehouse book. 27 May 1999 Hugh Laurie TO be able to write about P. G. Wodehouse is the sort of honour that comes rarely in any man's life, let alone mine. This is rarity of a rare order. Halley's comet seems like a blasted nuisance in comparison. If you'd knocked on my head 20 years ago and told me that a time would come when I, Hugh Laurie - scraper-through of O-levels, mover of lips (own) while reading, loafer, scrounger, pettifogger and general berk of this parish - would be able to carve my initials in the broad bark of the Master's oak, I'm pretty certain that I would have said "garn", or something like it. I was, in truth, a horrible child. Not much given to things of a bookery nature, I spent a large part of my youth smoking Number Six and cheating in French vocabulary tests. I wore platform boots with a brass skull and crossbones over the ankle, my hair was disgraceful, and I somehow contrived to pull off the gruesome trick of being both fat and thin at the same time. If you had passed me in the street during those pimply years, I am confident that you would, at the very least, have quickened your pace. You think I exaggerate? I do not. Glancing over my school reports from the year 1972, I observe that the words "ghastly" and "desperate" feature strongly, while "no", "not", "never" and "again" also crop up more often than one would expect in a random sample. My history teacher's report actually took the form of a postcard from Vancouver. But this, you will be nauseated to learn, is a tale of redemption. In about my 13th year, it so happened that a copy of Galahad at Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse entered my squalid universe, and things quickly began to change. From the very first sentence of my very first Wodehouse story, life appeared to grow somehow larger. There had always been height, depth, width and time, and in these prosaic dimensions I had hitherto snarled, cursed, and not washed my hair. But now, suddenly, there was Wodehouse, and the discovery seemed to make me gentler every day. By the middle of the fifth chapter I was able to use a knife and fork, and I like to think that I have made reasonable strides since. I spent the following couple of years meandering happily back and forth through Blandings Castle and its environs - learning how often the trains ran, at what times the post was collected, how one could tell if the Empress was off-colour, why the Emsworth Arms was preferable to the Blue Boar - until the time came for me to roll up the map of adolescence and set forth into my first Jeeves novel. It was The Code of the Woosters, and things, as they used to say, would never be the same again. The facts in this case, ladies and gentlemen, are simple. The first thing you should know, and probably the last, too, is that P. G. Wodehouse is still the funniest writer ever to have put words on paper. Fact number two: with the Jeeves stories, Wodehouse created the best of the best. I speak as one whose first love was Blandings, and who later took immense pleasure from Psmith, but Jeeves is the jewel, and anyone who tries to tell you different can be shown the door, the mini-cab, the train station, and Terminal 4 at Heathrow with a clear conscience. The world of Jeeves is complete and integral, every bit as structured, layered, ordered, complex and self-contained as King Lear, and considerably funnier. Now let the pages of the calendar tumble as autumn leaves, until 10 years are understood to have passed. A man came to us - to me and to my comedy partner, Stephen Fry - with a proposition. He asked me if I would like to play Bertram W. Wooster in 23 hours of televised drama, opposite the internationally tall Fry in the role of Jeeves. "Fiddle," one of us said. I forget which. "Sticks," said the other. "Wodehouse on television? It's lunacy. A disaster in kit form. Get a grip, man." The man, a television producer, pressed home his argument with skill and determination. "All right," he said, shrugging on his coat. "I'll ask someone else." "Whoa, hold up," said one of us, shooting a startled look at the other. "Steady," said the other, returning the S. L. with top-spin. There was a pause. "You'll never get a cab in this weather," we said, in unison. And so it was that, a few months later, I found myself slipping into a double-breasted suit in a Prince of Wales check while my colleague made himself at home inside an enormous bowler hat, and the two of us embarked on our separate disciplines. Him for the noiseless opening of decanters, me for the twirling of the whangee. So the great P. G. was making his presence felt in my life once more. And I soon learnt that I still had much to learn. How to smoke plain cigarettes, how to drive a 1927 Aston Martin, how to mix a Martini with five parts water and one part water (for filming purposes only), how to attach a pair of spats in less than a day and a half, and so on. But the thing that really worried us, that had us saying "crikey" for weeks on end, was this business of The Words. Let me give you an example. Bertie is leaving in a huff: " 'Tinkerty tonk,' I said, and I meant it to sting." I ask you: how is one to do justice of even the roughest sort to a line like that? How can any human actor, with his clumsily attached ears, and his irritating voice, and his completely misguided hair, hope to deliver a line as pure as that? It cannot be done. You begin with a diamond on the page, and you end up with a blob of Pritt, The Non-Sticky Sticky Stuff, on the screen. Wodehouse on the page can be taken in the reader's own time; on the screen, the beautiful sentence often seems to whip by, like an attractive member of the opposite sex glimpsed from the back of a cab. You, as the viewer, try desperately to fix the image in your mind - but it is too late, because suddenly you're into a commercial break and someone is telling you how your home may be at risk if you eat the wrong breakast cereal. Naturally, one hopes there were compensations in watching Wodehouse on the screen - pleasant scenery, amusing clothes, a particular actor's eyebrows - but it can never replicate the experience of reading him. If I may go slightly culinary for a moment: a dish of foie gras nestling on a bed of truffles, with a side-order of lobster and caviar may provide you with a wonderful sensation; but no matter how wonderful, you simply don't want to be spoon-fed the stuff by a perfect stranger. You need to hold the spoon, and decide for yourself when to wolf and when to nibble. And so I am back to reading, rather than playing Jeeves. And my Wodehousian redemption is, I hope, complete. Indeed, there is nothing left for me to say, except to wish, as I fold away my penknife and gaze up at the huge oak towering overhead, that my history teacher could see me now. Source ps If you've never read Wodehouse I strongly recommend that you should. Great writer.

Misery loves company, ayaayo. Edit: The guy bleow is stealing all my best lines.

^^ What Indian teachers? You're talking about private schools there, ayaayo. I went to school before the Emaraties started getting stingy and forcing all outsiders to send their kids to private schools. ps I got beat and I'm spoilt? pps Somalia does not have perverts in it. it's 100% Sunni Muslim. Stop spreading rumours. (It's ok Khalaf, don't listen to her).

^^

^^ Do it now if you can. In the future you will be old and cynical.

Originally posted by Northerner: ^^How many scars? Somali schools? You should have attended Saudi Schools! In UAE schools we got to fight back. I vividly remember the first time a teacher beat me. I was five years old and it was my first day in proper school. The previous night, I watched an episode of Dr Who. In it, the good doctor winked at someone. My five year old self was very impressed with this interesting gesture and spent the whole night and part of the following day trying to copy the Dr! I winked at everyone. The next day, in our Arabic class, I winked at my teacher (who was female). She was so offended by the gesture and came over and slapped me! Damn frigid prude getting offended by a wink from a five-year-old child. Of course, I being my daddy's son didn't take it standing. I sat down and cried a little. When no apology or explanation of her mistake was forthcoming, I picked up a book and threw it right at her. The hard end of the book hit her on the chest and must have winded her, for she cried her eyes out and stormed out of the class. She returned five minutes later with the headmistress and the male caretaker of the school. I had clamed down by then and realised the seriousness of my actions. But when she came racing at me and pointing fingers, my former rage returned and I attempted to bite her. The caretaker, who was a giant of a man (back then of course, now I'd wipe the floor with him) picked me up and marched with me kicking and screaming on his shoulders. He deposited me in the headmistress's office and stood guard by the door. The headmistress was a fair lady. She asked for my side of the story, which I quickly, loudly and rather pathetically explained whilst wiping the tears off my face one minute and crying my eyes out the next. She gave me a hug (I can still smell her perfume), some sweets and then told me how wrong it was to hit my teachers. She also asked me to come complain to her if I ever had a problem with any teacher in the future (she soon regretted that offer, I am happy to report). My second fight with a teacher took place when I was fourteen. It was with a Palestinian maths teacher who called me cabid (slave) when he caught me fighting with another student just before the class was about to commence. By then I had gotten used to beatings and hardly ever retaliated, but to be referred to as a slave was not something I could accept. When he called me a slave I naturally responded with the only acceptable answer in such circumstances. YOUR MOTHER! This really got him angry and he slapped me hard on the face. Some foolish urge within me made me start a long rant about how I do not tolerate racist people like him slapping me and getting away with it. Whilst having this rant and making all manner of crazy threats, he was still slapping me and shouting some threats of his own! The pain, the humiliation, the anger and rage were getting too much and I knew I had to do something. I was truly scared as I finally jumped on him and started flailing my arms wildly at him, in the hope that one of my punches might connect. One did! The bully retaliated with punches of his own. He was a fully-grown (fat) man and those punches of his hurt like hell. I grabbed him and bit him on the neck. It must have taken him fifty punches before he could get me off him. We stood eying each other, all bloody and bruised whilst the rest of the class were sat watching us in total shock (and silence). He looked ready to start punching me again. I was ready to bite him again. When he hit me and I tried to get hold of him, he hit me again and again. I suddenly realised that I was beaten and legged it out of the class. Neither my father nor the headmaster was angry with me. In fact, my old man was proud and told me that if he did not think it wrong, he would have gone in and beaten the hell out of that teacher (I think my mother forced him to mention how wrong it was to fight teachers). Ps I took my revenge by putting loads of sand in that teacher's petrol tank. Some other Sudanese kids from my class also smashed his windscreen. Getting beat in school is good for you. It helps you hold life long grudges. Imbecilic prude that does not like winking, bah! :mad:

^^ Afraid I have no photos ready right now. I was not going to comment on this topic to be honest. I was waiting to see if my guru would accept such a tempting invitation. Defeated lot ahoy?

Bunch of nerds...

^^ You really believe this is how things will pan out? I always knew you were an optimist but this is sickening, saaxib.

^^ You already know my opinion of such pointless protest. It is as useful as buying a poster of the man and throwing darts at it. Makes no difference and only helps frustrate you even more every time you miss the target with your dart. If you really want to annoy him and the hospital, you need to put your hands in your pockets and spend a little money on some flowers and roses. Imagine the hassle it will cause if he received fifty thousand bouquets of flowers in one single day! Ps Just so the message is not misunderstood you'll have to make sure you send funeral wreaths and not the uplifting/sympathy type.

^^ It will not be banned unless and until its harms are proven to be true. People are throwing around percentages and figures but as you can see, none washes with the powers that be. For the Somali community, a ban would (in the short term) turn many law-abiding citizens into criminals. In addition, since the ban would not come through the collective effort of all the Somalis in the UK and considering that Khat will still be readily available in Africa and other places, the way Somalis view Khat will not change! Ps Have you noticed how many Somalis travelling from Europe to Somalia (or the other way) have to pass through Dubai? Have you also noticed how many chew in the inbound and outbound journeys but stop when reaching Dubai? Did you know that should one of these people fall ill whilst in Dubai and have to give blood that contains traces of Khat, this person will probably face the prospect of rotting in jail for up to fourteen years! Many do not know this fact. A very large number of those probably tried the thing for the first time (because it's the done thing back home).

My mistake. I forgot who started this topic.

^^ I think that's what he meant by 'back home', saaxib. Pay attention now.