Swine Flu makes an appearance close to home! my kids have been given a letter by their school today informing us that a case of swine flu has been found at school.
The letter did not give much information but few schools in the area have had similar cases and were closed to pupils, I have been trying to phone the school but they are not answering the phone, when kids were being picked up by their mum, she managed to talk to one of the school governors who said that there are no plans so far to close the school and that they will wait to see if there are more cases.
Today is Friday and I suspect that they will wait until Monday to take a decision on what to do, swine flu cases in the UK have mostly been mild with no serious illness so far, so inshaAllah khair and hope there will be no need for medications for all affected.
Again the ghastly, ridiculous leaders of the middle east blame everyone else but themselves for the unrest in their country!
Leaders of Iran, instead of accepting that they are not wanted by their people, what do they do? they blame America and Britain for the unrest! do not blame yourselves and your dictatorships!
Things never change, I remember as a boy growing up in Libya in the 70s, we used to be forced to go on marches supporting the government, I can still remember the members of the secret service telling us at school that if we do not join the march or if we leave the march and go home that they have cameras and will know and that we would be punished severely, imaging that! boys and girls under the age of 16 threatened with all sorts of horrible acts if they do not support their government! unfortunately it is the same in many Arab and middle east countries and when the people dare to speak up they are branded traitors and terrorists.
I only hope and pray that the people of Iran do not suffer anymore and I wish them the best for what they are doing is heroic and lacking in many middle eastern countries. Allah with you.
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More Middle Eastern Democracy!!
Israeli soldiers humiliating a terrified innocent Palestinian while they laugh
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Today is Father's Day and I wish all dads all over the world a happy and peaceful Father's Day. My lovely kids got me a card and gifts which you can see in the above picture, Allah bless them for they did make me a happy and proud father.
Today is also the longest day of the year, from tomorrow days start to get shorter, that is a depressing thought since it sounds like summer is over!
Weather in London has been quite good recently, lets hope it continues to be nice and warm for a change.
Today with a friend decided to take advantage of the Orange Wednesdays offer that you get if you are with the Orange network, basically the offer entitles you to 2 cinema tickets for the price of one on any Wednesday plus 2 meals at Pizza Express for the price of one if you want! even though I have been with Orange for some years now, I never tried this offer so when my friend suggested it I thought why not! we went to Angel at lunch time straight to Pizza Express, out of the many pizza chains here, I think pizza express is the most acceptable as their pizzas do resemble and taste as pizzas should, unlike other places that just serve you soggy chewy bread covered in tomato sauce and cheese and they call it pizza! of course if you want a real proper pizza then you should go to one of the many Italian Pizzerias all over London that serve pizzas cooked in wood oven as they should be.
After a quick pizza we headed to the cinema, we both wanted to watch the new horror film Drag Me To Hell as we are both horror film fans and the film had some good reviews, it is directed by Sam Raimi who made the Evil Dead films.
The film was one of those movies that make some people jump in their seats with fright while laughing at the same time, I enjoyed it a lot and laughed a lot too but as soon as they said the name of the evil force in the film or the demon, the name was Lamia, it struck a chord in the back of my head, I read sometime ago about a Libyan queen in Greek mythology called Lamia that became a demon or a Libyan Ghoul غولة ليبية , so as soon as I came home I searched the Internet and sure it was the same Lamia, even the film's page on Wikiperdia links to the same Lamia! This made me wonder! what was a Libyan demon doing in the USA?? could it be the warming relationship between Libya & America that made Lamia travel over there? was Libya not good enough for Lamia? what a surprise! :o)
It was a good fun afternoon, it really cheered me up since most of us do have and suffer occasionally from daily life stresses and we need to relax occasionally.
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The other day while walking with my son, he asked me to buy him a drink so we went to a shop and I bought him a can of orange Tango, as we left the shop I noticed that the writing and logo on the can were upside down!! I thought maybe it was a one off, a production mistake that could be worth a lot of money, maybe I could sell it to some weirdo on EBay or something! so we walked back in the shop just to find that all cans of orange Tango were printed upside down, about 100 of them! so all dreams of becoming rich flew away. at least Amir enjoyed the drink and that was priceless :o)
I mentioned before that Amir, my son, is learning about the ancient Egyptians here, so when he had a day off school last week because of the local elections, I thought it would be good to take him to the British Museum, this museum is only British by name but definitely not by contents!, we did not have enough time to tour all of the museum and decided to only visit Ancient Egypt gallery and outside of Egypt you can not find a better collection of Egyptian antiquities than this museum, the amount of Egyptian artifacts here is so massive, some of the statues are so big it makes you wonder how the British brought them to this country, of course this museum has problems with some countries around the world as these countries are saying that their antiquities were stolen and must be returned to their original countries, these include Egyptian, Roman, Greek artifacts and others, including the famous Greek Elgin Marbles, on a visit to this museum many years ago, I saw a miniature statue of Septimus Severus in the Roman gallery, the information said that it was found in Leptis Magna in Libya.
Once an English gentleman told me while he was winking, that the Egyptian antiquities were not stolen but given to the British as a gift by the Egyptian government at the time, then he added that the British were ruling Egypt then and so they gave the gifts to themselves!
I myself am a supporter of any country that is trying hard to get back what belongs to them and do feel uncomfortable when I visit the British museum, saying that, countries have the responsibilities to look after their heritage and need to make sure that they are displayed properly and protected, I visited the Egyptian museum in Cairo some years ago and I really thought it was a disaster waiting to happen, it was over flowing with antiquities, most displayed wrongly and packed next to each other, it was untidy and it seemed all they were interested in was getting as many tourists as possible inside without any thoughts about safety, my daughter was young then and in a pram, we had to leave after about one hour because the crowd was unbearable, we could hardly move inside yet as we left we saw hundreds of tourists standing at the front with more coaches bringing more tourists and at the door they just kept letting everyone in!
Britain has a responsibility to return what does not belong to them legally although this is not going to happen just yet although I must say that the British museum does display everything in a fantastic organised and very safe way.
I am not sure what the state of museums is like in Libya but do hope that they are at least well organised (is that wishful thinking?)
Music Lover sent me a link to an article about the looting of Libya's antiquities by gangs mainly operating from Egypt, the precious antiquities are smuggled to Egypt where they are then sold to the highest bidders in Europe and North America!
Here is a quote from the article:
"Libyan officials will admit off the record that looting has severely damaged the spectacular and extensive Roman ruins spread across their country’s 2,000km-long Mediterranean coastline. But they shy away from direct criticism for fear of incurring their government’s wrath or of offending Egypt, Libya’s neighbour and ally"
This again shows the importance of the Libyan authorities when protecting any Libyan wealth or heritage and allowing Egypt which has exhausted its resources to ruin anything precious that belongs to Libya, I have even mentioned before how Egyptian gangs are illegally collecting the rare Libyan tortoises and smuggling them to Egypt where they are sold as Egyptian tortoises to tourists because this tortoise has become extinct in Egypt.
What can I say except shame on Libya and Egypt for allowing these major crimes to take place while they turn a blind eye!
You can read the full article about the looting of Libya's antiquities Here.
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I was disappointed to read an article on Libya Alyoum about the opening of Chicken Cottage restaurant in Tripoli and the article praising the place and even saying how some Libyan people were sent to London to be trained to prepare the food for this place!
There really is nothing fancy about Chicken Cottage which is owned by some British Muslim, it is a fried chicken chain, one of many that you find all over the UK serving unhealthy greasy bad quality food!
Libya is a very rich country and if it must provide Western food chains then they can afford a much better quality than this, this is fried chicken at its worst and I can describe it in 2 words: Cheap & Nasty.
