images from the "behkyaad" 

lighting up some very dirty bottoms 

verdant  

questions questions questions..tsunami

i don't know if this has been said before (and hence whether it is callous and cynical, or just cliched), but why is the tsunami attracting so much attention?

Okay, I know how bad that sounds, so maybe I should add a qualifier- why is the tsunami attracting so much attention, when other tragedies and disasters didn't?

It's heartwarming to see the outpouring of generosity that has been spilled in assistance of tsunami victims, and it's pretty amazing to see the 3 big commercial networks join together to produce the Australia Unites event & the Rest of the World cricket match. But I just wanna know, what is it about this tragedy that has captivated the attention and air-time of worldwide mass media, when other humanitarian crises went unnoticed/ignored in the past (or even, in the case of Darfur, in the present)?

Is it the spectacularly horrifying images of the giant waves crashing onto the beach?
The number of Europeans who have been affected? (Sweden allegedly had 2500 people in the affected areas)?
The amount of footage available to be played and replayed?
The number of the dead? (800,000 died in Rwanda 1994, 2 million have died during the Sudanese civil war, compared with the 150,000 lost to the tsunami)

of neighbours and ducks

I've lately been speaking to some of neighbours, not on a regular basis, but just when I see them. It's really strange, speaking to these people who have been living in such close proximity, yet I feel as if I'm rudely jutting big nose into their private enclaves whenever I ask them something. I always wonder what kinds of abominations are occurring in the houses surrounding mine

But I find, everytime, that I come away from these surreal conversations thinking how much I would have missed out on had I not stayed.

Just this afternoon, i was talking to a lady next door ('For privacy purposes, she shall henceforth be known as "Mrs. X" '), and she was telling me about her profoundly disabled daughter, who lives in this other-worldlily happy house with a few other people. Then she recounted the time a duck hatched her ducklings in her backyard.

The duck must have flown in from the lake-endowed park near our street and evaluated the corner in the backyard as the ideal spot to pop out some babies.

So one day, the ducklings, about 12 of them, floated on my neighbour's pool like little grey balls of fluff, and my neighbour thought the kids around the area might be interested in seeing a photo of these living fluffballs, so she called the local newspaper. As you do.

The paper's photographer didn't call back the first day, but eventually got in touch with my neighbour on the second day. By then, the new mum and her fur-ball family had already left for greener waters, which the photog was very disappointed to hear.

My neighbour, ever the helpful resident, offered to take down the photographer's name and details so she could alert her to any future duckling-births.

When she asked for the name, I can just feel the photographer's embarrassed reluctance as she replied,

"Siobhan Duck".