The Show Must Go On, Ivan Aaredey, etc...

I'm back after a brief hiatus, if you can call 6 months as brief. Depends on your interpretation of the space-time continuum. Anyway, here I am trying to revive the mind and the body to welcome in the New Year. Year 2009 is the year of the cow in Japan and many other Asian countries. Or the OX. Whoever created it failed to mention the gender. This is based on the Chinese calendar, and I think the Chinese probably go for the ox whereas the Japanese consensus seems to be on the cow.

As a worshipper of cow - meat, that is -, I'm looking forward to enjoying some delicious beef over the next few months while I'm still in Japan. Incidentally, 2008 was the year of the rat. And I didn't go around eating rats, for the simple reason that they are not eaten in Japan. If, for instance, I was in some place with a rat-eating culture, like Vietnam or even the North-eastern parts of India, I would definitely have tried some and my wife would have had apoplectic seizures. Anyway, I don't have to worry about rats for another 12 years (the Chinese calendar is based on a 12-year cycle, each year represented by an animal.)

Lots of historical poop flowed down the various drains during the latter half of last year when I took the break. That is one thing you can't stop: the flow of poop down history's $hit creek. We had the big Olympics in the Middle Kingdom. India won a gold medal in shooting. That was the first time 999.99 million Indians learnt that you can win Olympic medals for shooting (a private study conducted by me showed that only 0.01 million of the 1 billion Indians knew this). Till then they thought shooting was something done by the police, at them, for which the policemen get government bravery awards.

I heard the gold medal winner's dad cribbing that the Indian government didn't help his son. I'm glad the Indian government didn't do anything. And I hope the govt. won't do anything in the future too. They should be helping sports (not cricket) which 999.99 million Indians have heard of, and has a chance of participating in; roadside pooping for example. Not a sport which a millionaire guy can present his son with.

Talking about govt. help to shooting, the govt. can't even give proper guns to its policemen, who still use WWII vintage rifles while the terrorists roam around with AK47s. That was the other big news coming out of India: "the audacity of hopelessness" of the terrorists, as opposed to "the audacity of hope" the Americans invested in Obama.

Anyway, 2008 is done with. On the personal front, my second son was born (one of the reasons I took a break) on Aug. 7, the day before the start of the Beijing Olympics. If he was born a day later it would have been 08-08-08 and maybe, just maybe, I would have named him Olympiakos or something like that. Fortunately that didn't happen (and I'm sure my wife wouldn't have let that happen.)

Before I thought of restarting this brant I checked Google to see if the site still showed up. Well, it did show up, but something else caught my eye. Type "thekkuvadakku" into Google and you'll see a hit for "Pachaloor Sree Bhadrakali temple" and a guy named Ratheesh. J, who claims, among other things, that you can find out more about him by logging on to this site. Wow, that was news to me. I thought "I" administered this site. Now along comes this guy who seems to know something that I don't. Do I know a Ratheesh? I racked my brain but could think of only two guys of that name; one a movie actor and another employed as a driver. Both unlikely candidates.

So, if any of you who read this (I hope there are still a few) happen to know anything about this guy, or if Mr. Ratheesh himself can explain the mystery to me, write to ivanaaredey@gmail.com. You could also write in to give clues or to just say hi! And to Mr. Ratheesh - Just in case I am supposed to know you but for some reasons have forgotten, I apologize. Believe me, it's not easy, being the emperor of Trivandrum, to remember the names of kings of vassal states like Pachaloor.
Anyway, wish y'all a happy 2009.