Shame and horror

When I found Estonia on the front page of BBC news, I was surprised; when I read the news, I was shocked. I checked with our Estonian news site Delfi, and I was horrified.

Mad, angry, vandalising crowds are taking over my town - breaking windows, overturning cars, looting shops and even burning smaller houses. I always thought of Estonians as highly civilised and reasonable people.

In the end of the 1980s, still under the strict Soviet regime, we proclaimed our will of independence by singing and joining our hands to form a long human chain through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 15 years ago, we faced Soviet tanks rolling into our capital with dignity.

Now, we have all we had been fighting for - our country, our freedom, liberal democracy and booming economy. But we must have lost something along the way, because today, Tallinn is witnessing chaos it has not seen since World War II, and morale it had not experienced in the darkest middle ages. The Bronze Soldier monument, which has triggered these awful events, might be a question of principle for some, but for me it is still a mere debate on modern history.

Today, I wonder - are we still humans?

On Malaysian reality TV

If you ever thought that my husband Vishen was straightforward... you were damn right! Check him out starring on Malaysian reality TV.

MindValley guys were asked to judge a contestant in a reality TV show Nestcafe KickStart. This was a round 3 of an Apprentice-like Malaysian show - now, guess if the kid got through to round 4.

Умом Россию не понять - the mind cannot understand Russia

I stumbled upon an extract from this book in a random magazine carelessly left by one of my flat-mates on a kitchen table. I started reading to entertain myself during a solitary breakfast. The breakfast was long finished, I reached the last line, and I was impatient to read more. The little I have seen of the last book by the brilliant Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya "A Russian Diary", so ironically murdered by the system she was exposing, is now stuck in my mind. The few paragraphs I got to read intrigued and disturbed me, they left me feeling sad and unsatisfied.

I've found a few reviews of this book on the internet, and each of them has added to my impatience to get the book.

BBC Radio 4: Book of the week - April 9-13, 2007
"Anna Politkovskaya’s last book A Russian Diary is a devastating account of life as it is lived in contemporary Russia. Her mounting horror at the chaos and corruption she sees around her is captured in the diary entries which are shocking, wry and full of despair that nobody seems to acknowledge what’s happening."

The Guardian's book of the week: Chronicle of a death foretold - April 7, 2007
"But the Chechen fighter who is driving her instead starts to bare his soul, and she realises she will not die because he wants the world to hear his story. "I understood that, but sat there crying from fear and loathing. 'Don't cry,' the fighter from Zakan-Yurt finally said to me. 'You are strong.'"

InTheNews book review: A Russian Diary by Anna Politkovskaya - March 29, 2007
"A Russian Diary, even without the grace of hindsight, is a singularly heartbreaking experience."
"And the further you read into the book, despite the thought's revulsion, Politkovskaya's death becomes painfully more inevitable..."

Although I see most of the world politics in somewhat academic light, meticulously separating facts from sentiments, I've come to a conclusion that the politics of Russia can be only viewed with a healthy dose of conspiracy. But setting aside the efforts to be objective, I have to admit that I do care about what is going on in Russia. It is not because Russia is our biggest and the least predictable neighbour - it is because I was born in that country, I grew up in that environment and I was educated in that system. I would have expected to understand Russia, but I don't...

Hairy wee coo

I found this guy in the middle of Estonia. Imagine my surprise - a bit of Scotland near my home!

I suspect this is also the first photo from my mobile phone to land on the internet.
PS. I was actually planning to write about my first day at work, but ended up with this. My work, btw., is not very much related to cows - it is on arms trade, civil wars and development in Africa.

Everyday philosophy

I was Skyping and catching up with Mike today when he called me existentialist. I guess I should thank him. “Existentialism” certainly sounds better than any of those medical terms we use on each other in times of hyper-moodiness. It sounds a bit academic and nihilistically cool.

Actually, I should blame my philosophical bouts on walking around Oxford – the perfect university town. Isn’t it inevitable to slide into wondering about the meaning of existence while looking at all those gorgeous courts and chapels of the Oxford University colleges? I can’t help thinking of how it would feel to be a student here, comparing Oxford to my experiences in Edinburgh, wondering what I am doing here… You get my train of thought.