Irvingus Anonymus

1989 - David Irving Claims during lectures in Vienna and Leoben that the "gas chambers in Auschwitz never existed".
Feb 2006 - During his trial in Austria, David Irving acknowledges that millions of Jews died in World War II; he no longer disputes the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Feb 2006 - After being sentenced, David Irving has again said he does not believe Hitler presided over a systematic attempt to exterminate Jews in Europe.

So much for scientific speech consistency. . . sadly though, there is no need for consistency in these kind of speeches; All you need is 'air time' - plenty of it, which too many journalists were only too glad to give him these days, as part of the greater freedom of speech debate....

Ellie Wiesel said: "Let us forgive, but let us not forget; because he who forgets the past stands at risk of re-living it"...

The worst version of it is that you don't even need to forget it...The past can be directly re-written...just trust all the Irvings out there to do the job....hey, it's scientific research, freely and independently commented and argued...

laughter, laughter, too much laughter...

In a rare series of wonderful cinematic experiences, I've seen three consecutive great movies: Match Point, The Constant Gardner and Jarhead (Tom, props to you, I was thinking of going to see it, but the post on your blog finally sent me to the cinema). Beyond their excellent artistic achievements, it's been great to sit down in some of the best cinema halls I've ever been into, and truly enjoy the visual and audio experience...well, almost the entire audio experience..

For some reasons, which I'm still investigating on, people here laugh for no apparent reason during movie watching: they laugh if somebody is scratching its nose - even if it's a bleeding nose of a critically injured person, they laugh if a dying person is making a bitterly ironic remark which I think everywhere else puts people to tears, so on and so forth....I admit, I'm not used to hearing people laughing around me in the most dramatic/tragic moments of a movie, and it pisses me off like hell....it just spoils the best moments...

So far, I have two possible explanations for this local phenomenon:

A. Conservative education and society approach to sexual issues makes people uncomfortable when watching scenes with sexually explicit language / content, and laughing is the way of camouflaging this unease...E.g. During Jarhead, every mentioning of the word 'masturbation' led to choirs of overjoyed laughter...the movie content, however, was far from a happy one..

B. Move watching is perceived exclusively as an entertainment event and laughter is considered a KPI of entertainment success here...therefore, Singaporeans having a low tolerance towards failure, they will not allow themselves to fail at being entertained just because it happened that the movie they went to is not a comedy...

I found this cafe where they have a special room with a beamer and DVDs, and can have your private movie watching sessions, for a very reasonable fee...If I can convince them to let me bring my own DVDs, I'm getting a subscription there...

why on earth are random romanian soccer players popular in Singapore?

The standard reactions/responses I used to get anywhere in the world, when telling people that I was from Romania were (in this order of frequency) :

1. "Oh, dracula - does he really exist?";
2. "Oh, Hagi - very good player !";
3. "Oh, Nadia - she was a very nice girl" ;
4. "Was it bad for you during communism? "(smart one..)

Of all these, the only one connected to soccer is number 2, and it's not about romanian soccer in general, but about our best ever player, the only romanian who really made it to the hall of fame of soccer. Otherwise, people don't know much - even in Europe- about romanian soccer and players, quite understandable, given our (lack of) results in the last years.

Now, I cannot find an explanation for the fact that in Singapore, lots of people are familiar with names (and additional information) of average to mediocre romanian players !!! In 80% of the cases when a cab driver asks me where I'm from, I get another expert remark related to the recent evolution of some dude I've hardly heard of.... There is one romanian guy here coaching one professional singaporean team , but don't think he could have spread the word out so easily..

it's sweet, people knowing things about Romania outside of the four typical lines....of course, it turns a bit sour, when I need to clarify that my favourite team is Steaua BUCHAREST, not Steaua BUDAPEST...but, hey, that's an old one, already got used with it..