Guilty!

I am overcome by guilt when I don't blog. . . as if my blog is a living, breathing entity and I'm neglecting it and depriving it of love and attention by not writing something from time to time, and the nice people from blog services will come and take it away from me. And the guilt follows me around and gnaws at me, so much so that I have to sit down and write any entry about it.

But, unlike my usual complaint that I can't think of anything to write about, I do have an entry all written up in my head this time--about the ever-increasing likelihood that I will trip over my own feet and fall down the stairs at work every morning. (Ever-increasing=multiplying exponentially with each passing day.) I just haven't gotten around to actually typing it. And I am oh-so-tired now. . . and if I don't go to bed (even though it is only 10:06 p.m.), then tomorrow WILL be the day I fall head-first down the stairs. . . and it's a Friday and I have a busy weekend, and I'm planning on wearing my nice white trousers, so we don't want that. But it's on its way . . . both the fall and the entry. . . Trust me!

PS: Who bore witness to "MC Rove" displaying his hidden. . .ahem. . ."talent" for rapping and dancing today? Good thing he doesn't do that for a living. . . yet.

Life changes. . .

Over the past few days, I've been hit by two realizations--1. how much things have changed, and 2. how little things have changed, since I graduated from high school.

What brought about this realization was finding someone I've been out of touch with for a long time. . . someone who was very much like a little sister when I was growing up. When I was a child, I very much wanted a baby sister, so when my family moved next door to hers, I eagerly embraced the role of big sister to her and her sister. I vividly remember, when she was about 7, someone made her cry--I can't remember the reason, or who it was--and she came running to me, threw her arms around me and burst into tears. When I came to the U.S. for college, she was still in middle school. I saw her again a couple of times when I went back to visit, and, while she had grown and matured the way most people do with the passage of time, I could discern no drastic change.

When I found her again--more of a (possibly unwelcome) entry into the fringes of her consciousness than actually getting back in touch--I realized how much she's grown and changed. I now feel very intimidated by this person my "baby sister" has grown into. I suddenly feel old and out of it (not that I was ever really "into" it), frumpy and awkward and old-fashioned compared to this popular, beautiful young woman who seems so sure of herself and is clearly adored by those around her.

And at the same time, I realized how little I've changed. For better or worse, most people who knew me 10-12 years ago will look at me and instantly recognize me as the Ini I was in high school. Sure, circumstances have changed, and I am older (and hopefully wiser), but other than the changes that time has wrought, I am still the same person. . . through college, work, London, grad school, and work again. Even now, my closest friends are those I went to high school with half way across the world.

So, I wonder. . . would I be as shocked at the changes in others if I'd changed more myself?

Houdini to be exhumed after 81 years!

Anyone care to wager that the great stuntsman has skipped out? After all, nothing could contain him when he was alive. . . why should anything be different after death?

Story Highlights• Houdini's great-nephew wants to exhume Houdini's body for testing
• There is suspicion that Houdini may have been poisoned
• There are inconsistencies on death certificate and suspicious circumstances
• Internationally known forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden interested

NEW YORK (AP) -- For all of his death-defying stunts, Harry Houdini could not escape the Grim Reaper. The unparalleled performer, age 52, died on Halloween 1926, taking with him many of his trade secrets. Rumors he was murdered, however, soon took on a life of their own.

Eighty-one years later, Houdini's great-nephew wants to exhume the escape artist's body to determine if he was poisoned by enemies for his efforts to debunk their claims of contact with the dead.

A team of top-level forensic investigators would conduct new tests once Houdini's body was disinterred, a relative told The Associated Press.

"It needs to be looked at," said George Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini's brother, Theodore. "His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now, maybe it's time to take a second look."

The circumstances surrounding Houdini's sudden death were as murky as the rivers from which he emerged unscathed, escaping from chains, locks and wooden boxes. The generally accepted explanation of Houdini's death is that he suffered a ruptured appendix from a punch in the stomach, leading to a fatal case of peritonitis.

But no autopsy was performed, and when the death certificate was filed on November 20, 1926, Houdini's body -- brought by train from Detroit to Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal -- was already buried in Queens.

Within days, a newspaper headline wondered, "Was Houdini Murdered?" A new biography, "The Secret Life of Houdini," raised the issue again and convinced George Hardeen and others that poisoning was a real possibility.

A Friday morning news conference was scheduled for details on the exhumation plans. Prominent New York lawyer Joseph Tacopina is assisting the family in clearing any legal hurdles to the exhumation.

The likeliest murder suspects were a group known as the Spiritualists, which became Houdini's nemesis in his final years. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing what he said were fraudulent seances by the group. The movement's devotees included Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle.

Houdini will 'get his just desserts meted out'
In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman detail a November 1924 letter from Doyle that smacks of Professor Moriarty-style malevolence: Houdini, it said, would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out. ... I think there is a general payday coming soon."

Two years later, Houdini -- by all accounts an extraordinary physical specimen -- was dead before his 53rd birthday. Kalush and Sloman noted that "the Spiritualist underworld's modus operandi in cases like this was often poisoning" -- possibly arsenic.

The biography additionally detailed the injection of "an experimental serum" into Houdini by one of his doctors at Detroit's Grace Hospital.

While Houdini took the Spiritualists' repeated death threats seriously, he traveled without the security trappings now de rigeur for celebrities -- no bodyguard, no entourage, often just his wife Bess.

"If someone were hell-bent on poisoning Houdini," the authors wrote, "it wouldn't have been very difficult."

The team working on the exhumation includes internationally known forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, and Professor James Starrs, a forensic pathologist who has studied the disinterred remains of gunslinger Jesse James and "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo.

Baden, who chaired panels reinvestigating the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., pointed out a pair of oddities in Houdini's death certificate: It noted his appendix was on the left side, rather than the right. And the diagnosis of appendicitis caused by a punch was "very unusual."

Starrs said he was long familiar with the story of Houdini's death, and believed the fatal injury was the result of an accident. Details contained in the Houdini biography convinced him otherwise.

"My eyebrows went up when I read this book," Starrs said. "I thought, `This is really startling, surprising and unsettling, and at bottom, suspicious in nature."'

The exhumation plan received support from a surprising source: Anna Thurlow, the great-granddaughter of "medium" Margery, whose husband Dr. Le Roi Crandon was one of the Spiritualist movement's biggest proponents -- and one of Houdini's most virulent enemies.

During a 1924 seance, Margery "channeled" a "spirit" named Walter who greeted Houdini with a threat: "I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day for the rest of your short life."

The prediction of a short life was all too real, and Thurlow believes there may be a connection.

"With people that delusional, you have to question what they're capable of,"' she said. "If there's any circumstantial evidence that Houdini was poisoned, we have to explore that."

London, the greatest city in the world!

So says The Times. Ok, so it's a British paper. Still. . . I couldn't resist posting this article that sings the praises of my beloved London! When I tell people that I prefer London to New York by a long shot, I often get the oh-you-poor-thing-you-really-aren't-all-there-are-you?-look. And often, I can't really even pinpoint why. It's crowded and noisy and dirty and the Tube is tiny and unairconditioned, and everything grinds to a halt when there's half an inch of snow on the ground, and it's grey and rainy. . . but there's just something about it that reached out and grabbed me the first time I visited the place--and I've been in love ever since. I usually get attached to places because of the people there. . . but if everyone I know and love in London left, I'd still want to live there (even though I'd be very sad and miss them all). It's weird. . . and it's unexplainable. . .but perhaps this article helps a bit.

I've left out some of the parts about why the city's also attracting more business (the biz journo in me resisted, but this is no business blog, so I fought it!). To see the whole thing, click here.

London calling
It’s cool, classy, cosmopolitan — and it should secede from the UK. Business Editor James Harding on why London is the new capital of the world.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine bought a one bedroom flat in Chalcot Square in Primrose Hill, London NW1. He paid £480,000 — just less than one million dollars. As I was living in the States at the time and flabbergasted by the price, he explained: “Chalcot Square is the best place in Primrose Hill, which is the nicest part of London, which is the coolest city on earth.” Location, location, location. “This is the best property on the planet.”

In fact, he was a few miles off. The most prized piece of real estate on God’s green earth has a view of the Serpentine rather than of Joan Bakewell’s living room. The Candy brothers, two upmarket property developers, have started selling flats at Number One Hyde Park for £4,200 a square foot. That means £84 million — $164 million — for a nice, roomy apartment.

Why? Because London is, indeed, the coolest city on earth. The capital of the world. New York, like Paris, has become a mini-break destination, a playground for grown-ups who enjoy the same standard tourist menu: a walk around Central Park; a shopping trip in SoHo; an entertaining, if unsurprising, show on Broadway; and a very large steak.

The world loves a long weekend in New York but, these days, prefers to make its home in London. New York has the nostalgia, London the future. New York defines the metropolitan, London the cosmopolitan.

And the reason for this is that foreigners in New York are, always, just that. The city treats even its long-term residents from abroad as visitors, welcomed on to the cocktail circuit, perhaps even to a share of a house in the Hamptons, but never to the power-broking tables at the Four Seasons. “New York is always American,” says Bill Roedy, the American who has spent the past 15 years in the UK running MTV world-wide. “Like Paris is French, Moscow is Russian, New York is American.”

London, on the other hand, is passport-blind. It does not have the luxury of being the de facto capital of a continental economy. So, it is international: it treats its visitors as citizens, as players.

Consider Chelsea Football Club, owned by a Russian, managed by a Portuguese and made great by a striker from the Ivory Coast. The Yankees may sign up a third baseman from the Dominican Republic or a pitcher from Japan, but the management is born in Brooklyn.

The men who run two of Britain’s largest mobile phone operators — Vodafone and Orange — are US-educated Indians. The world’s biggest mining companies, run by an American woman and two Australian men, have their headquarters in London.

In January, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French presidential candidate, came to London to chase the votes of young advertising executives and derivatives traders who had quit Paris. Last week, the head of the Democratic National Committee’s fundraising efforts came to the British capital, too, eager to tap up American expats willing to contribute to the 2008 campaign.

The mandarins of New York are currently gripped by a bout of Woody Allen-style neurosis, fretting that the city’s stature as the capital of world capitalism is being sapped by London. Last year, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the New York senator Chuck Schumer commissioned McKinsey, the management consultants, to examine why international financial business was drifting away from Manhattan. And it suggests that their paranoia is justified.

* * * * *

Deep inside the Bank of England there is a room where the directors meet around a huge, oval mahogany table. The Courtroom is, frankly, a vulgar neoclassical eyesore — but despite the pretentious opulence and faux history of the place, one thing is authentic: the weathervane.

High on the western wall of the room, this clock-face tells which way the wind is blowing. Historically, an east wind would bring the merchant ships up the Thames and, with them, a surge in business. A west wind would prompt the merchants to set sail and the bankers to rein in credit.

The point is that London has long been sensitive to the trade winds. More than that, it has been adept at exploiting changes in the tide and the climate for its own commercial gain. And in recent years it has swollen thanks to this openness to foreign merchants, who have sailed in because they are fed up with the pernickety, litigious culture in the US, or because the City is a short hop from their homes in Moscow and Bombay, or simply because they like the safety on the streets, the serenity in the parks, the quality of schools for their children and the choice of restaurants.

British cuisine, once a contradiction in terms, has become such a hot ticket that you need to book nearly a month in advance to eat a plate of offal at St John on the weekend.

London has qualities: geography, history, culture and, more than that, a grudging embrace of all comers. Within a short walk from Trellik Tower in West London you can find a coffee, a cheese sandwich and a custard pie from Lisbon that make you feel as though you are in a provincial Portuguese cafe; you can eat a plate of steamed dumplings from the Royal China that would satisfy a discerning Shanghainese; a steaming, home-cooked nabemono at Inaho that could come from the Ginza; not to mention a great Indian at Malabar, a fine Lebanese at Fairuz and all that groovy Asian fusion stuff at E&O in Notting Hill.

A weekend in London is like a world’s greatest hits of city living: an English breakfast at Tom’s on Westbourne Grove, a morning spent browsing vintage Americana on Portobello Road, an afternoon watching the best French footballers at Arsenal, Chekhov at the Royal Court or Puccini at the English National Opera, Irish oysters at Sheekey’s for dinner, then out clubbing with the Russians at Annabel’s or the royals at Boujis (I’m making this up now). The next morning, a Spanish string quartet at the Wigmore Hall, a proper Sunday lunch, then a sleepy stroll past the Renoirs at the National Gallery.

No question, all this takes money. A lot of it. Much more than most Londoners have. But the capital’s claim to global leadership is not, sadly, because it is an example of equality. In terms of equal opportunities and the income gap, London has nothing to crow about. It has an alarmingly high level of unemployment — 8 per cent — and the wealth gap is wide and widening.

It’s hard to say which personality, New Yorker or Londoner, is preferable — the ballsy versus the stoic, the gruff versus the curmudgeonly, the sharp-tongued versus the quick-witted. But the real difference between the two is this: New Yorkers come from the five boroughs; Londoners from the five continents. They are Poles, Pakistanis, Brazilians, Americans, Nigerians and more. There are, it is said, 300 languages spoken in London.

London is absurdly expensive. New Yorkers point out that the cost of living in their city is nearly half what it is here. Yet Charles Alexander, who is in charge of the UK operations of General Electric, America’s biggest company, says of his American colleagues in London: “They don’t want to leave.” They like the life, the schools, the style of the city.

* * * * *

In September 2002, Paul Auster wrote in The New York Times about his city’s relationship with the rest of the country: “Alone among American cities, New York is more than just a place or an agglomeration of people. It is also an idea.” New York is the de facto capital of America and still a beacon to people around the world. But London has become an idea, too, and not as a refuge for huddled masses but as the most desirable address for global elites. For them, the argument between New York and London is done. They are just left quibbling over the preferred postcode: NW1 or SW1, Regent’s Park or Hyde Park.

Japanese lessons--for me and Weds

Ohayo! Hajime mashite! Arigato gozaimasu for stopping by my blog. *

That's right. . . after 18 hours of Japanese classes over two weekends, I am now fluent! Haha. . . if only. I can make perfectly useless statements like Biji-san wa doyobi ni tomodachi to restoran de chiso pizza o ni-mai tabemachita (Mr. Biji ate two small pizzas in a restaurant with his friend on Saturday). . . I am hopeful, though, that the ability to compose such a sentence will be useful--maybe I will write a childrens' book on the Adventures of Biji-san!

And I am in the process of imparting all my Japanese wisdom to Weds, who will be flying off to Tokyo all by his big-boy-self in less than two weeks to join Okia. I am a firm believer in the notion that practice makes perfect-- so all our conversations now are strictly in Japanese. I think he's picking it up quite quickly too--I can tell by his responses that he really does have a knack for languages. His meowing sounds distinctly Japanese.

So am I going to miss my little substitute for human companionship (as Nev has taken to calling him)? Yes. Am I going to forget that he's left and go peeking under my couch and behind my bed when he doesn't answer my call? I'm afraid so. Am I going to be sad when he doesn't come trotting in, meowing seriously and insistently at me when I turn off the shower every morning? Very much so. But let's not go there yet. Let's focus instead on my efforts to making him bi-lingual!

*Hello! How do you do? Thank you very much for stopping by my blog.

Weds at two months old, about a month after Okia, my roommate then, brought him home











Weds a few months ago
















Weds and me! (yes, he does sit and sleep like a human being)

For a drop of water to drink

In August 2004, a young New Yorker was living it large in the Big Apple, as a promoter of top nightclubs and fashion events. But in the midst of his whirlwind of a life, he discovered a feeling of emptiness, a desperate yearning for something more. So Scott Harrison, who had given up on God to enjoy what the world had to offer, decided to make a drastic change, to see what the opposite of his life would look like. He applied for a position aboard the Mercy Ships, a humanitarian organization that operates hospital ships to some of the world's poorest countries. He was (reluctantly) accepted, and set sail for West Africa in the position of the ship's photojournalist.

The transition from his spacious Manhattan loft apartment to the ship's modest quarters was shocking. But when Harrison reached his destination, he found that even the ship was palatial compared with the conditions the people whose lives he was to photograph lived in.

Harrison began documenting what he saw--people who lived in abject material poverty but were infinitely wealthier than he had ever been in faith, heart and spirit. He came across several people with all kinds of unimaginable tumors--benign ones, but of such horrifying sizes and shapes that it was incredible that their fragile human bodies could even support the impossible-looking growths. And even more surprising, these people possessed a quiet peace and simple joy that he had never encountered amidst the abundance and opulence of New York.

Most of the tumors were caused by the dirty, bacteria-infested water that people in these areas had no choice but to drink. Harrison has posted photos and descriptions of his experiences during his travels on Mercy Global (the images on this web site are graphic and often disturbing). He has also created Charity:Water to raise money to fund wells that will provide clean, safe drinking water to these people.

Unfortunately, too many Christians live in complacency, believing that saying "Lord, Lord" is enough to get us into God's kingdom. Or we dismiss the sufferings of people in these countries as being too distant, blame them for their own poverty, or believe we have little time or money to spare for them. Looking at these pictures shows us not just how blessed we are, but also how much is expected of us in caring for those less fortunate than us, physically, spiritually and emotionally.

My church fellowship group has decided to fund one well, which costs about $4,000, and provides water to about 250 people. If you don't have a charity or a cause you're passionate about, I strongly encourage you to look into Charity: Water, and think about supporting this venture. Get a group of friends, your extended family, your work colleagues or your church or fellowship group together to sponsor a well, or go it on your own. Just click on Buy Water for more information on how you can help. Or you can join in my group's effort to raise the money for our well--just email me. Or, if you are not in a position to make a monetary contribution, help spread the word about this effort.

We take so much for granted--including the safe drinking water from our taps that we chug without a second thought. Make a difference in the lives of people who can't afford to take even this most basic of necessities for granted.