Tourists will always loose a game of chicken with a runner

Running USED to be my sanctuary. It always made me feel better and less angry... then I moved to London. I happen to be very luck to live in one of the most beautiful areas of London- it also happens to be home to the famed tower bridge, golden hide (ship) and the Queen's walk among other things meaning that from 9:45am to 9pm it is packed with tourists. For anyone who happens to be a local in a tourist hot spot you will appreciate. Good people seem to loose all sense of decency when they become a tourist, they walk four abreast down a narrow road, stop mid-walk to gawk at something, fail to walk in a straight line. All of this makes it terribly difficult for a runner. I would normally simply submit and use a treadmill but I am training for a marathon meaning I need to run outside to get the proper training. Furthermore I think it is a bit silly to take a twenty minute tube ride to find a bit of greenery to run in meaning I must run along this tourist packed river walk. It is my neighborhood I can run where I want to! Needless to say constantly having to dodge tourists who started out on one side of the sidewalk only to drift to your side can be a bit annoying. Aside from the constant weaving you have those walking four abreast acting as a road block that you cannot get around. My person fav is the people who have one person posed for a picture on one side of an enormous sidewalk and then the person with the sidewalk all the way on the other (meaning anyone who needs any bit of the sidewalk risks going through their photo). They always seem sooo annoyed when I run right through as if they actually expect me to stop in deference to their hogging of a significant piece of property and jog in place while they get the set up just right and take the picture. Dear tourists- if I stopped for any of your pictures my thirty minute run would take two hours! It is not going to happen. Needless to say putting so much effort into getting from point A to B and back is way more stress than one needs on their run. As a result I have become a cranky lady when I run. This means I will brush against people in an effort to get by, glare, run through photos and on one occasion where a tourist turned around-saw me coming- and continued to amble in my way- swear under my breath. Needless to say tourists you will loose a game of chicken with me when I am running because I want to get my run in and you are in my way- sorry.

In case you were wondering why the direction of the blog changed

Hello,


So I promise to still blog when random weird and whacky things happen to me on my London adventures but lately since I have been spending entirely too much time writing papers and studying to have these crazy experiences I thought I would try something new. Since the end goal of all this schooling is to work for a kick ass human rights organization either making the public aware of violations throughout the world by doing field work and writing reports or spurring the government to action through lobbying- I figured I should start writing about different events in the human rights field once a week. Since I am currently in exam mode they will hopefully get better when I have more time to research and think.

Anyway learn and take it with you!
x

Um excuse me....

So for anyone who has been reading up on the foreign section of the paper as of late you are aware of the recent arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi- for those of you who are not here is the story. This woman has been under house arrest for over a decade, she is the leader of the democratic movement in Myanmar, had won an election (back in1991) which scared the ruling military party in to continual bogus charges against her since in an attempt to create the whole 'out of sight out of mind' for the oppressed in the country. She has been arrested and sent to jail again because... a man tried to break into her house and establish contact with her. A man (who had previously tried to get to her house and give her a bible- save my opinion on Mormons for separate rant) swam across a lake to her house completely uninvited. I am pretty sure this Buddhist older woman in exile really couldn't care about a whack job from the middle of America. So now she is back in jail awaiting trial and conveniently with elections approaching. With the front runner locked up it would be much easier for the Junta to fake legitimize their rule. Not to mention not very Christianly of this man to go and f* any chance at democracy for this oppressed country.

Sadly my issue is that the Obama administration- and the rest of the west - does not seem to care much. It has barely been a year since the cyclone devastated Myanmar, does no one remember the horrors that followed? The ruling Junta not only oppresses their people on a regular basis but in the aftermath of the disaster actually hindered aid delivery from international support and even threatened its own citizens who were trying to help. China has been abysmal at pressuring the country for change (ASEAN embraces the notion of sovereignty far too much). Suu Kyi needs to be cleared of this ridiculous charges in order to stand for future elections or at least lead the democratic charge. The world needs to pressure Myanmar to change because this kind of behavior in the new millennium should not be tolerated .

Oink Oink

I must say this swine flu thing is hilarious, it also shows exactly how crazy the media can be. For starters my biggest beef (not pork), comes from the attributed US death. Several people over here in London have asked me "aren't you concerned now that an American has died", clearly everyone reads the headlines and not the small print at the veeery end of the article. The boy who died in America was flown from Mexico, he was Mexican as far as I understand it (someone claimed he had dual citizenship or something which is why I say as far as I understand it). The point is not a single death has happened in a fully developed country with a sound health care system. In fact I am willing to bet if we did a study on the socio-economic class that each death comes from we would find that most of them were poor, didn't eat well, and had limited access to health care. Some have responded that I am silly and it is perhaps instead the virus has mutated more in Mexico making it more deadly. This could be true expect for two counts against it: one the infections in Mexico have leveled, two there have been no reports of worse cases in the US where enough people have it to the point where I think it is safe to say if it was going to mutate it had the chance. One person says they are not scared right now but what about this fall when it becomes flu season and they are at a higher risk of getting it. By then it is believed that a vaccine will be available for this particular strain- o and the drug tammyflu is proving to work as well.

While I think all this hype is unnecessary there are two major benefits to this outbreak.
1) Maybe viruses in general will stop spreading. Suddenly there is a massive campaign telling people to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough (I thought this was just common sense). I have always washed my hands directly after using public transport simply because uncouth people sneeze on the handrail without regard to anyone else. Perhaps if people start taking these extra steps less germs will spread in general which would be very nice for those of us bound to the cesspool of germs that is the London tube system.

2) While no one is actually getting this "swine" flu from pigs once again the media confuses people and pig consumption is going down at least for the time being. Pigs are smart creatures, the perform as well on computer tasks as monkeys and can be trained just as easily as dogs. They are aware of what is happening- it is for these reasons I do not eat them. I mean if people think it is weird to eat a monkey or dog why do they make exception for the pig?

So if it saves the adorable pigs and makes people sneeze in a tissue and not on me then thank you swine flu for making this world a better place.

pirate correction

So aside from the fact that my decision on how to handle pirates was against my humanitarian nature I have learned some interesting things I did not know before. One silly I know and I bet everyone else knows this but they are only pirates once out of Somali waters- so some closer to shore operations actually dont count. Two a certain ICJ justice put it very clear to us- basically these pirates steal to get the hell out of Somalia. And what does that have to do with things you ask? Well say we capture the pirates -this means a country has to try them (no one seems to be jumping at the chance minus kenya) and say the US does try a pirate- do we then send them to jail in Somalia (clearly no) - so all this capturing them and trying them means is they get their plane ticket to a better country paid for!

So new plan- find a magic way to bring peace and stability to Somalia so people dont have to be pirates!

Rrrrrr?

This blog is about pirates- not the Orlando Bloom hot friendly pirates- or the ones worshiped by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster but the ones in Somalia currently causing problems for basically anyone in the ocean at this rate.

Somalia is a failed state by all definitions offered- there is a "government" but it doesn't really do anything. Initially it kind of made sense to be a pirate, take a few people off a boat get a crap tone of ransom money (an old NY Times article talks about how they live in the nicest houses and drive cars and such). But then they got greedy and really picked up the action- I believe there are currently over 100 people being held hostage by pirates at this point in time. We really should have done something once the traffic picked up- weirdly while terrorists are not covered by International Law (it is slow to adapt) pirates are- from my understanding they are considered stateless people which means anyone who wants to can deal with them. The cruelest but most effective thing to do might have been to send in the Chinese or some other state that isn't that concerned with its human rights record and let them do the patrolling. (Currently France seems to be the one making the large patrolling effort).

The pirates then got really greedy and stupidly decided to attack a ship under an American flag. It did not go well and all they got was the hostage that volunteered himself- the Americans also stupidly lost their hostage without getting their captain back. In the end because Obama kicks ass the Seals went in and the Captain is safe. For some reason this really pissed off pirates who were not even involved with it. On declared that America was the aggressor (why he thinks killing people who were about to kill our guy, who was I dunno... kidnaped, makes us the aggressor is a bit confusing to me).

Now the pirates claim no Americans are safe, if any are on crew they will be shot on the spot. This creates a huge problem for the pirates, they make their money from ransom... if you shoot the person you cant get ransom money. This also shows that the situation is getting really desperate. Come on countries of the world they are pirates in tiny little row boats! One you have to be able to see them coming for a little while, two I am pretty sure Navy weapons guns trump whatever massive guns they have. This is a problem we could easily take care of, we could also label it as self defense, aka we dont shoot at them if they dont shoot at us. That should make some of the human rights people happy.

All in favor of replacing the cranky pirates with orlando bloom types? Rrrrr

My opinion on Bank Holidays...

So being an idiot on Friday I walked into the city (45 min walk) with the hopes of depositing a check, mailing some letters, and getting a few books out of the school library. Of course Friday was Good Friday so really I just got a lot more exercise then I was expecting. It got me thinking back to the Easter a friend and I sat in the car for two hours before our movie because everything else was closed (even KMart- kind of like Asda for you British readers).

I began to think about how bored I get on these holidays (not being a practicing Christian and all) and think of how much worse it is for Jews, Muslims, anyone who doesnt at least have the obligatory dinner with family that even us non-Christians get. Personally I find it a little unfair that Christians get paid days off that do not come out of their holiday leave and other religions in the West do not. I am pretty sure a Muslim would not mind going to work on Good Friday (just saying). So since we no longer live in the Medieval age where the Pope ruled everything and no christians were harassed I have come up with a lovely proposition.

Christians should still be allowed to have their days off on Christmas and Easter I fully support that, however how about letting the non-Christians come into work and instead get their own kind of bank holiday on a day that is suitable for them (like Yom Kippur). Obviously it would be difficult to accommodate some holidays (Ramadan lasts more than two days). But what I want to know is why Jews and Muslims must take personal holiday time in order to observe their holidays and Christians get theirs as a bonus. Not only would this be fair to non Christians but it would mean more things would be open for those of us who dont spend the whole day with family and at church! Really it would just be giving everyone 3 religious days to use when they see fit that do not come out of their other holiday time, for Christians it could be Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter Monday (for some reason Christmas Eve does not cut it as a bank holiday). For Jews it could be the first night of Hanukkah, Purim and Yom Kippur, Muslims could have a portion of Ramadan or their New Years off, Chinese people have their own New Years to celebrate. (Ps I am sorry to those of the other religion if holidays I have listed are spelled wrong or you really require a whole week off or something like that- my religion class failed to drill in the exact details of all the holidays into my head but hey one paid day off is better than no day off!)

Anyway I say we all get behind this it is silly for Christians to be the only ones to get additional Holidays off in the Western world- we are supposed to be progressive in the West! (not to mention it would be really awesome if I could have gone to the library)