Tandava This picture was painted by my friend SK Singh who is artist who lives and works in the beautiful lake city of Udaipur in Northern India. He also runs a delightful hotel which has sensational views of the lake and of the famous Lake Palace. Soo Ling and I first met SK through a friend back in 1995 and we stayed with him while we were in Udaipur. I remember spending many wonderful evenings chatting with him about practically everything under the sun, my only regret was not staying much much longer than we did (only a week). Since then we have kept in touch by phone and letters and more recently by email. One day soon we hope to return to Udaipur, this time with the kids in tow. SK writes:

I am quite thrilled to know that you liked one of my paintings. It is "Tandava" Or the dance of Lord Shiva in the form of a Goddess. I did think I had managed to get the atmosphere of a Temple at night.

More artwork by SK in future posts. Any way, that's it from me for this year. Season's greetings one and all, have a good one and thanks for stopping by. Posting will resume in early 2003.  ¶ 3:24 pm

  Pravda makes it funny As a helpful service for its ever-growing English language readership, Russian tabloid and former Soviet state propaganda organ Pravda provides a list of amusing and whacky articles on its Fun Reports page. But as noted before, for my money nothing beats the front page when it comes to providing real amusement value for the masses.

Celebrating the Stalin Birthday Though, today, no passion is seen in the Stalinists eyes, especially in communists. Did they stop loving the leader? No, they probably started to understand in another way what the phenomenon it was – comrade Stalin. As it became clear, in some aspects of the country ruling, Vladmir Putin uses conceptual buildups of Stalin (not that one of his leadership, but of the governing), so Stalinists started to die out as a kind. Today, Russia is filled up with dead bodies, I mean politically dead. Atlantes still alive - They live in their underwater cities and sometimes frighten people. Everybody knows about UFOs. And what about UUOs? I mean, Unknown Underwater Objects? The Paseidon kingdom sometimes surprises sailors with fluorescent heads, devil circles and other miracles. Explorer Fedor Gard recorded evidence of sailors who had seen a strange phenomenon: “June 18, 1845, the vessel Viktoria crew saw in Mediterranean Sea three dazzling disks emerging. The disks seemed to be five times bigger than the Moon, and they were linked with each other with some thin fluorescent pivots.”

Also em Portugues!  ¶ 9:54 am