When buses are theatre with windows

By Julian Sudre

EACH time I step on the bus is to realize that I did not wave my magic wand fast enough to vividly get thrust onto a zone of no-comfort – an intrusion of the other class – or more appropriately my stepping on the bus is an intrusion per se.

The predictable wait without live departure boards deliberately needles the preface of my ride; and the bus rocks up: I jump into a jungle of people to strap hang and look for Jane until Tarzan -- moi – despairs after a session of eye-blinking to find relevance in the irrelevance.

Drip-fed by disquietness, I resolved to turn a breath of malaise into an inconspicuous, very-London bus ride that is, a vehicle of salient reality where the mass-produced “other world” lethargically slouched in its seat turns out to be human.

Buses, and even better, the bendy one from Oxford Circus is personally classified as bestial, rudimentary and chimp-manic. The latter, fittingly adapts to their way of communicating; did I say language?

Mind you, getting on-board, is a bit like winning the World Cup or going to Iraq without being shot down. The wait at the bus stop does not hold a candle to the actual being on the bus. Still, you’ll have to get on-board, one way or another. Don’t ask me how.
Then, can you find a seat, and if so, would you have the courage to have your trousers imbibed in the sweat of the squalid half-conscious reveller that reeks of his own vomit.

Saturday nights are a winner. I expect them with knitting needles, ready to jab my eyes and ears with exasperation. I should be, though counting myself lucky while my bus rides are more exhilarating than a safari in Kenya. I do not have to pay for the plane ticket.

I do not believe that men have grasped their origins, to some extent. To a large extent, going on a safari in East London will prove that the evolution has been minimal thanks to the buses.

Again, the enjoyment out of it, is to comprehend that theatres were made for men and buses were designed for voyeurs of the animal kingdom.

When buses turn into theatres, then ask the driver what it makes of it.

The great divide

By Julian Sudre

AN ASCENT – into the kingdom of my psyche jolted me awake and elevated the burning desire to step into who I was. I was the prisoner of my own self without being able to be at the helm – the chronic, yet tempestuous revolt my own enemy mounted has been placated.

Thrown deliberately into this world before my consciousness opened up, I acted with foul manner and in exchange got the wrong part – I was the actor that nobody wanted; my time was not due and my being employed for the right job was unconceivable at that.

I felt like I was projected into the most challenging part of the theatre kingdom, but this time, it was no drama -- but life.
I was not the one who wrote the script; I did not set the location; I even did not choose the language. I had the option to play along and comprehend, grasp the substance of the game and score like a well-rounded, mature player would have done. All right, I scored in my own camp, the rain then came lashing down and the next chance to be back on the field was protracted.

My life has turned into a play, or more precisely, my cue was to enact the core of wisdom, the silky material that weaves itself round our reactions and actions only becomes real when we turn our thinking to it. Because all is the creation of our own imagination. The figment that sparks the eternal reality has blended both worlds and I hang right in between. The more I resist, the more I get absorbed into materialist visions of a world that was thrown at me.

Bang goes the resistance. I slip into the subservient mode, call my dogs off. Goodbye the personal riots. No, I am not a loser; to all purposes and intents, I have re-interpreted the meaning of philosophy and feel its offshoots growing straight trough my conceptions.

For all the alluring figures that I can’t get hold of, they are only the manifestation of my subconscious.
Only if I knew the subconscious had an influencing power to shape my own destiny. Then I would be looking through the mirror to reflect their own reality.

Excuse me, do you know who I am?

By julian Sudre

Whoosh – we have entered an esoteric topic with a soupcon of philosophical flavours and a mixture of question marks.
Until now, I have felt hamstrung, hog-tied and nearly fell by the wayside when it comes to doing my calculus as people have seen me through the matter-of-fact prism of life that divulges rationales which cannot be trifled with.

Ideologically, I should consider my line of reasoning sane, merely because my own consciousness lucidly expresses a state of being that I would but regard as plainly non-argumentative. If mind and consciousness are discordant, that is, clashing with the reality of state of things, it could foment a discontinuance of acceptability of one’s own world and drive one non compos mentis.

Proving the state we are in would pertain to methodological scepticism -- the philosophical school of thought that critically examines whether knowledge and perceptions are true and whether one can ever have true knowledge, whereas thinking is the essence of the only thing that cannot be doubted.
As Descartes said: cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am.”

I should be on sound ground if I become cognizant of the fact that my ideas strictly speaking, of who I am and how people identify me and conjecture therefore a valid interpretation according to the data they were given.
Mathematically, they have analysed me by way of their own senses and perception. By using one’s judgment and other intelligence such as birthplace, age and religion and sex, they fall into a conclusion that is deemed to be true, without question.
Whereby truth is subjective, relative, and absolute does not have a rigorous definition as a concept.

Therefore “being” would engender a natural process of analytically deciphering from birth the actual rationale of the self by discarding the sophistic element as illogical. The reason why we accept that two plus two equals four is a mathematical deduction of figures, in other words life has been based around the simplest formula that governs and orchestrates our logics and enlivens our database.
We admit to call a spade a spade because simplicity is the base for arcane equations and we suffocate soon if we lack the base that maintains an intellectual equilibrium.
But sometimes, freak storms surface that were not part of the equation and the very few work out that two plus two equals five.
The latter would contradict society, clash with the essence of credibility but nevertheless they come up with food for thought.

This is why I am encumbered with my own database, not the one, I believe to be cogent but the one people out of simplicity, have slapped on me.

To blog or not to blog

By Julian Sudre


ARE you the one that squeaked into the game of publishing by some contradictory, perhaps well-oiled means of escaping the editor’s eye and smugly turned around and said you loved the internet?

Films were made for the television and later on for the cinema. There, came a new way to broadcast movies with high-calibre actors that would not do television, simply.
Rapidly a flurry of small-change productions along with its b-list wannabes
would come droning around television shows in the hope to be the next big screen star.
The latter, in particular sparked off the fantasy – more often that not, these days – to get you in the limelight, or to catapult you into the nine days wonder, sometimes.

The internet has generated a myriad of windows of opportunities that could relate to the television these days -- an attempt to touch slightly, if not illusory stardom – by getting everyone on board, regardless of their talents.

So if is television rubbish, so is the internet with their half-baked scribblers that claim to have to say something of great import. Because the Human Rights Act 1998 which came into force on 2 October 2000, for the first time gave citizens specific legal rights, including the right to freedom of expression.
So please, don’t put the blame on bloggers as tabloid journalists are not any better. The only difference is one gets paid to supply gushy-mushy pap, when the other one strives to get a voice in a dog-eat-dog society.
Now, comes the crunch. Why a stamp from university projects your work into publication when you could as well blog it and laugh all the way to the bank? This is a double-edge dilemma. Journalists graduates have to go through loops to get their first publication, to finally get recognised for the work they have been putting in, and the long hours, while they were researching.
Bloggers break down barriers, use the Human Rights Act 1998 and cut to the chase by splashing out their piece, but they’ll get a smaller readership due to the fact they can’t target the bull’s eye -- that is the nationals.
But small doors open to bigger doors. In essence, it is important to try them all, even though most of them are locked. Everyone should stand a fair chance to try but few are selected for their work to be published for the major media outlets. Nonetheless, if they are, they are not necessarily worth their weight in gold.

When it comes to blogging, it is only of interest if the writer is a journalist with some ethics or a blogger who wants to become a journalist with some ethics.

Metaphoric lines

By Julian Sudre

THE only accolade, I could refer to, as the solace of intangible truth to betterment – if not, the sine qua non -- when wine pours out of the crack of heaven -- Clashy, ritualistic, and spiritual: a cataclysm of mental thrusts that erupt like frustrated geysers seem to be about to reconfigure the surface of my perception.

I ask, if not confoundedly, the help of the Beyond to ramp the anxiety down. Lost amidst the foliage of uncontrollable torpor, and agitation, I pray for the serene future.
Stupefied and discombobulated by such irregular fits, I marvel with incandescence at the angst and indelible panic that I have generated.

But thoughts project a material reinforcement in an abstract world. Perhaps this is where the mistake is; by applying such a distracting veneer to our own projections, we create or exacerbate the sharpness of incongruous metaphors.

May the Hand Of God wipe it away and bless us with the spontaneity of an angel.

Err, God, What time is it?

By Julian Sudre

Once upon a time, only birds could fly and telekinesis could shift objects on its own volition, and music was at its best when it comes in the way of vinyl.
A change of mood or a revolutionary idea swept it all away and now peanut butter addicts order Skippy on-line at ungodly hours and download music like Billy-o.

So why have our standards of living been enhanced by new technologies in such a rapid period? Is it the eagerness to get more peanut butter sandwiches without actually going to the store or suddenly our generation has got smarter than the previous ones?

We recently had hurricane devastating the southern part of the US, earthquakes wreaking havoc in Pakistan and a tornado in Australia. With due respect, let me omit the shark and crocodile increase which has made a dent in our safety, if any.
That poor girl was jogging by the canals in Florida and next thing she knows, well, she does not know anymore.

Crocodile experts voiced concern at a noticeable rise in attacks; hurricane pundits reckon tornadoes are on the up and up.
Scientists are firing on all cylinders so as to come up with new ways of averting our own demises.
Bottom line – I don’t think we can have our own cake and eat it. A bit like watching a movie and wolfing down some popcorn, which will result in more obesity.

This is where new technology comes in, but at a price. It has spawned a physical laziness, par excellence and triggered off our logical sense: why use them all, when one does it all.
It only takes one hit to short-circuit a system; the same applies to the human brain.
To top it off, we are proud of it.

Porto, Portugal

By Julian Sudre

AN EARLY landing and minutes later the plane disgorged its passengers on to the runway and out we were yomping as happy as clams with our carry-on bags in the balmy Portuguese heat ready to tackle our adventure.
We found a beautiful hotel perched over a serpentine cobbled-street with the most exhilarating vista over the Atlantic Ocean in the suburb of Porto.
Portugal profusely offered itself in the most ravishing way.

Ten in the morning, the sun was blasting and our shirts were off. We opted to hoof it to El Centro that was approximately a mile or two away from where we stayed. We walked alongside the River Douro from its mouth until we reached destination.
The blue water was scintillating in the morning heat and was alive with an abundance of fish that were squirming close to the rocks.

On our way into town, we grabbed a cool beer before jumping onto those old wooden-panelled tram from the bygone days. A car happened to be parked in the tracks’ way, and our jovial ride promptly came to a halt till the owner’s car backed his vehicle off the tracks. We were the only two passengers on the tram, and such amusing anecdote just added to the charm.

The old town basked in the glorious heat; its people talked expressively and musically; the sumptuous river was ornate with some grandiose and graceful bridges that arched dramatically over the Douro; and gondola-like boats were gliding on it.

Portugal’s second largest city was punctuated with granite church towers, orange-tiles houses and dotted with world famous port distilleries.

Not that a change of scenery made us crave for a beverage, as I would have thought this was inappropriate a time to pop in for a visit in the middle of the blistering afternoon heat but more fittingly a refuge to appease our soul from heat exhaustion – or dehydration. Where ever else could you taste port wine if not in Porto?
Meandering our way into blissful port degustation, we entered the entrails of wine making and its secrets and signed off with more tasting back at the tasting room.

Reeking of port and spinning gleefully out of the distillery, we enjoyed a quick rest overlooking the town and made tracks for home by hopping on a cab back to the hotel.
The trenchant sun eased off as we lizardly lounged by the hotel pool on the roof terrace. A quick dip and were ready to paint the town red. We zipped back into town for dinner and lo and behold, we ended up wining and dining in the worse way. Authenticity was not at its best, unfortunately.

As the night draws on, the tiredness started to wash over us, we headed back to the hotel for a nightcap and collapsed brutally later on into a deep, serene sleep.

Oh gorgeous morning! We stoked up on breakfast downstairs, aplenty with cereals, fruits, bacon, scrambled eggs and toasts and up we were on the roof terrace soaking up the sun by the pool.

We scoured every nook and cranny of the town, cabbed here and there, rambled up and down, tootled along narrow streets and wound up at Anita Café.
Intriguingly enough, the entrance door was fitted with coloured plastic flaps that hung loosely down so as to protect the roaming eye into deviant territory.
We popped our heads in to catch sight of a constricted, seedy, and dingy mirrored wall-to-wall watering hole where two ladies stood staring at us.

Unreassuringly, we ordered two beers to sooth our nerves. Silence could have been cut with a knife. The establishment contained six wooden tables lined up against the wall, and there we sipped on our beer with a $2000 worth suspense hanging over us.
Bluntly, I broke the high-voltage silence by inquiring about potential ice-melting actions but slummy sexiness was not on and I contrived to turn the embarrassment into a light-hearted conversation in a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed manner.

Once I obtained the low down from those girls, we scooted off to the boats and embarked on one of the most pleasant rides along the Douro for a good hour as the sun was beating down.
It was scolding hot and the sun cream was in order. Just as well that two English ladies were slathering themselves with cream on the boat and we wangled a big dollop off them and comfortably cruised sun-protected.

Knocked out by the sun, we passed out on our hotel bed for the best of four hours. Recharged and slightly running late on our evening schedule, we wound up in a restaurant close to eleven at night, where this time the nosh was finger-licking and the wine moreish.
We were fired up and ready to giddy-up to some local hot spots. Minutes later, we were walking through the doors of heaven, when my eyes, to my surprise, popped open with delight as the club contained slew of girls.
Surrounded by an ocean of females, waves of them were coming to accost us in a tarty way, which we thought was quite amusing.
The tension was cranked up, our senses enlightened, and desire was flowing through our veins.
One girl approached me and offered me to stay with her the whole night – deal -- I was to wait for her until she finished work.
I was out for the count and I was to wait until four in the morning. My friend and I decided to come up for air and knock back some espresso so as to keep alert.
My buddy wanted to call it quits but I managed to coax him into staying on and trying his luck. When we got back to the club to pick up the girl, my friend got cajoled by the hottest brazilian girl. Sure enough, off we went our own way in separate taxi with our girl.

A wild, sleepless night was consumed and the sun was up.
Porto had flashed its excess, its folly and above all its natural beauty through a prism of evanescence.

What made me become a vegetarian?

By Julian Sudre


The other day my mind stopped in its tracks – those days when you think it is your cue, the signal that makes you proceed accordingly – and in a split second, as if I had the answer, wham bang, an express delivery from the beyond whacked me like a flash of consciousness.
I have never put Veggies on a pedestal, or regarded them, as the supreme paradigm of it all, neither thrown them into the do-my-fair-bit-to protect-the-animal-kingdom department, for some reason.
My sister and my mother are no-meat eaters, and I have felt a little like I can’t see the forest for the trees, sort of. So why is a volt-face in order today?

An ultimatum was delivered and my stomach raised the alarm – the 28-year-old cycle that processes with delectation those condiments made of lamb or delectable Christmas turkeys – is to become a thing of the past.
The barbecues that proffer mouth-watering foodstuff on a summer day will never be floating in the back of my mind with the reminiscence of a joyful youth that had epicurean tastes

If I were to vacillate between good and evil, I would contemplate the evil but savour the good. Not to mix with vegetables that equate to good and meat to evil but more in the sense of appreciating the truth in each element, that is the distinction between contributing toward an immaculate resolution that understand the effects of each one.
I am no vegan, and when I say vegetarian I only leave the meat out but relish on fish.

Okay then, the UK vegetarian society does not consider fish eaters to be vegetarians, so all that waffle about me is claptrap?
First and foremost, it is important to consider the following distinction between making an effort to cherry-pick your food, thereby, to avoid animal cruelty and chicken farming, which the latter generates a friction on the environment and the over-sharpened idea that the poor fish if eaten, will suffer agitation, pain and finally death. If it comes to that, please prior to being a no-fish eater, think twice about the way you deal with human beings.
A quick look at the Genesis 1:29, when God created people and said to them: “ See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit, they shall be yours for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is breath of life, I give all the green plants for food.”
That said, Jesus was not a vegetarian and after the Great Flood, God said that every creature that lives shall be yours to eat.

Being a vegetarian is a very personal choice but as our societies mass produce more often than not unnatural products on our supermarket shelves and we have a tendency to skip the essentials vegetables for a burger with fries. It is a particular philosophy that revolves round a healthier lifestyle. Buddhism, also believes in vegetarianism.
Perhaps, it is high time to put the Veggie hat on and learn how to eat again, that is, to say goodbye to the garbage food and enjoy plain and simple sustenance.

As for the fish, I am of the opinion that it remains a delicacy. I’ll have it sautéed please.