Tuesday 27 February 2007

The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!

"Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another ........The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!"
- Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa May 1994



Ok, So I finally finished reading "A long walk to freedom" last weekend. So I've got to write about it. But I have a feeling that it's going to be reeeaallly long. I'll try my best to keep it as short as possible but seriously how can you possibly summarize a very eventful 70+ years of history in a few paragraphs??


So with that said here goes.......


Rolihlahla (Literarily meaning "pulling the branch of a tree", Essentially meaning "troublemaker") was born to a tribal chief in a remote village (Qunu) in South Africa. He grew up running around with the village boys, and attending to goats and pigs. He was given the name "Nelson" by his school teacher.

At the age of nine after the death of his father, he was taken in by the Regent of the area.
His school years were relatively calm and he fared well at education. Shortly afterwards the suggestion of marriage by the Regent made him and the Regent's own son, flee the town and arrive in Johannesburg.

Here he found some clerical work in a law firm, and completed his BA at the same time. Next he went on to study law at the University where he was the only black in the class. Despite the harrassment from his colleagues and the continuous discouragement from his lecturer (who used to tell him that blacks are not capable in studying subjects as law, and that he should go back to the farm), Mandela kept on his work.


Mandela teamed up with Oliver Tambo to start a law firm which provided legal services to blacks at a low cost. Oliver Tambo later went on to become one of the major pillars of the African National Organization (ANC) and was the president (in exile) of the organization while Mandela was in prison.

The situation in Black South Africa after 1948 was very grim. The minority white government (Dutch/ Afrikaners) was controlling the majority black africans. "Arpetheid" was taking form, first the "Petty Arpetheid" and next "Grand Arpetheid" brought in legislation that made discrimination "Legal ". The blacks had no voting power, and were not recognised as citizens of their own country. They were given ~ 13% of the land to live and to make a living out of. Blacks were not allowed in white cities. This displaced many people and Mandela's law office also had to be vacated. There were separate buses, public toilets, hospitals, beach areas etc for blacks. The education reforms brought limited the level of education a black person was entitled to. A boycott carried out by the ANC resulted in thousands of Children with no education at all.

Mandela joined the ANC and was actively working for the organization, gradually learning and making his way up. During this time, most of the leaders of the organization were banned from time to time, essentially confining them into living in a single city for years at a time, and preventing them from attending any meetings or even speaking to two people at a time. This was a strategy the Government took to curb the rising political movement against them.


The ANC's policy was non-violence, which followed along the path of Mahatma Gandhi, but unlike with the British this method didn't seem to be working with the Afrikaners, for they replied to peaceful, unarmed protests with violence and killings. Mandela's opinion of non-violence was that it was only a strategy, which wasn't going to work in this situation. Much as he didn't want to take up arms, he couldn't deny the fact that people were getting restless and soon a civil war could break out. The military wing of the ANC was Mandela's idea, which was first opposed by the others of the ANC, but later agreed upon.


During this time the ANC was banned, making any member of the organization a criminal overnight. Most leaders of the ANC went underground, and some fled the country. Mandela was in and out of prison before he was sentenced to life in prison for 'attempting to overthrow the government".


He spent most of his prison sentence in Robben Island in a cell which was so small that when he slept lengthwise on the stone floor, his head touched one wall, and the feet the other wall. The treatment of prisoners were brutal and gruesome. They were not given proper blankets, clothes or food, and was expected to do hard labour, despite being political prisoners. They were only allowed one letter from family every 6 months. But Mandela and his friends kept the fight going, demanding their rights to food and proper clothing and fighting every inch of the way. He kept his legal skills sharp by preparing legal cases for those prisoners who sought them, and reading books that were allowed in the prison. During later years he applied to study for a LLB degree at the University of London by remote correspondence. It was during this time that this book was mostly written, in secrecy of course, once a part of it was discovered by prison authorities and were burned, luckily a short-hand version of the book was already smuggled out of the jail to Oliver Tambo through a lawyer.

It's simply amazing how, despite all the hardships and mistreatments, these few extraordinary people kept up their spirit, determination and even their sense of humor, for in his book Mandela recalls many humorous incidents and tricks they played while in prison.

Mandela kept writing to the government and initiating negotiations and trying to correspond with the outside on the arpetheid issue.
Finally, the tide turned and the international pressure and the internal chaos in the country pushed the Afrikaners government to reconsider arpetheid. With F.W De Klerk assuming work as the new president, in 1989 arpetheid was lifted, and political prisoners including Mandela was released.

It was another 4 years before the first democratic election was held in South Africa.


And the rest is history.............

Friday 23 February 2007

Sounds like Greek?!

The common phrase "sounds like Greek" is usually used when something doesn't make any sense or when something is totally incomprehensible. Ironically a lot of words and parts of words we use in day to day life has been derived from actual Greek And most of which we do understand! Considering the fact that studies and knowledge in the western world had its origins in the Greek civilization, almost all fields of studies stem from Greek words, including the technical terms used within that subject area.

Philosophy: (philosophía), compounded from (phílos: friend, or lover) and (sophía: wisdom)
Biology: (Βìο) meaning life and (logia) meaning the study of
Anthtropology: (Anthro) meaning man or person + the study of
Archeology: (Arche) ancient, foundation + study of
Mathematics : (máthēma), which means learning, study, science
Physics:
(phúsis) nature and knowledge of nature
Astronomy: (astron) stars and (nomos) law
History: (historía) meaning a learning or knowing by inquiry,
Zoology: (Zoon) animal + study of
Optic : appearance or look
Thus anything associated with Optic is something to do with eye/vision

So if you put two and two together you will understand how "Pilanthropy", "Opthalmology", "Optimeterist", "Architecture" came about


A few more examples

Geo: meaning earth
Geography, geology, geo-based

Democracy: demos, "people," and kratos, "rule"

Micro: small
micro meter, microscope

Mono: single
monotony, monomer, monogamous

Tele: far
tele-vision, tele-scope

And the list goes on.......

Friday 16 February 2007

Customer confusion !?@?

I've been searching for some polymer materials for my project and for that purpose I was looking up companies that supply these kind of materials. It's not very easy as this is a very specialized area.

A word of information, I've been looking for photorefractive polymers, now these polymers are used for many purposes including holographic recording, which is what I want them for.

I found this company (Say X co.) upon the recommendation of a legendary researcher in polymer science (very nice fellow and the only person who was considerate enough to reply to my email).

I mailed this company assuming that they are the experts, asking if they've got holographic material with such and such properties. I got a blunt reply of " can't see what kind of products you want to know. We don't have product concerning real-time holographic materials"

hmm...... so I thought of approaching it another way, I used the specific chemical names of the materials and mailed them back asking if they supply that. Next I got "We don't supply holographic material, Sorry I can't assist you any further on that".
o....k...... I wasn't sure whether to give it up or not, because I knew they do research in polymer materials, and that academic person couldn't have been wrong...

I checked out their website but it was simply a mess, too many products and too many technical stuff. So I thought of giving it one last try,

This time I said, I just want to clarify the fact that they do research on photorefractive polymers and don't they sell them to the industry?, next comes the reply "yeah we do sell photorefractive polymers, but not holographic material" !??!!!%@#&!^#!

Obviously, the contact person has no idea for what their products are used for!!!

Well, at least the trouble was worth it, I now have a company which sells what I need, But I don't know how easy it's going to be to deal with them.





Tuesday 13 February 2007

The Da Vinci Code

I have read "The Da Vinci Code" several months back, and I have to say it's one of the most capturing books I've come across. I finished the book over the weekend, and I didn't do anything else those two days, sometimes I lost track of time and went on reading till late at night. It was that intriguing, and with all those mind boggling puzzles and riddles and codes, u find yourself trying to work them out right through to the end. And Dan Brown had taken good care to keep the reader on the edge of the seat at all times. Regardless of the 'fact Vs fiction' debate, the story is very well written such that it fits into the story of history like a missing piece of a puzzle which falls exactly into place!

However, I only got to watch the film last Sunday, it's more or less the same story, with minor adjustments here and there. The thing is that the book which takes at least two days to finish, was squeezed into a film which was about 2 and half hours. And it was simply a roller coaster ride.

I didn't find much difficulty in following the story since I already knew what's happening, but I'm sure for a person who hasn't read the book, it is too much. Too much information in too short time.

I got a book yesterday from the library on "The truth and fiction behind the Da Vinci code" didn't start reading it yet.



Sunday 4 February 2007

The Last King of Scotland

We went to see the film "The last king of Scotland" yesterday. The name can be pretty misleading since Scotland is not really the country in question in the film. In fact the country in question is thousands of miles away in another continent, Uganda.

Yep, we are talking about the troubled times of Uganda in the 70s where Idi Amin, the famous dictator was the president of the country. The association with Scotland I'm not entirely sure although in fact, Amin did call himself the king of Scotland, one of the many titles he bestowed upon himself.

Uganda gained independence from the British empire in 1962 and Milton Obote was the first prime minister. Even though Obote was supportive towards Amin, he was no saint either. Obote declared himself president and sent the existing president in to exile in Britain, and promoted Amin to become prime minister. Despite the support of Obote, Amin carried out a military coup in 1971 and seized power.

The film starts at this point, when a young Scottish doctor "Nicholas Garrigan" comes to Uganda in search of adventure and making a difference in a community which could do with some. The character is fictional, and it's through this character, that we, the veiwers get close to the real character Idi Amin.

Amin is drawn in by the young and adventurous character of Nicholas and soon makes him his personal physio. The young doctor is very much blind to the real happenings that take place in the political life of Amin, and later as he gradually begins to mature and understand the brutality that lies beneath the charming and funny outward appearance of Amin, it's too late.

The film depicts the brutality and inhumane character of Amin during whose time as president in Uganda, much violence and killing was carried out. The death toll is not known accurately, it is estimated that around 500,000 Ugandans including other ethnicities like Indians were killed by him. (estimates according to Amnesty International)

Even though there are allegations and popular beliefs that he was a cannibal, I couldn't find any hard and fast facts proving it. However, in the film also a couple of times, the subject is brought up in a vague fashion.

The film is pretty good but I wouldn't rate it as one of the best I've seen, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the actors or the story. It's just that I was keen in seeing the life story of Amin, but the film is not about that, it's just a window on his life as president. But at the end of the film even that brief story leaves u shaken.