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IN THIS ISSUE

• Betty Brightwell tells about an unnerving encounter in India
• Kate Brookfield sends information about an Indian photographer
• Jack Peaker forwards another parody of The Night before Christmas
• Gerrit de Leuuw explains the current financial situation
• Anita Henderson forwards a tale about the afterlife
• Bruce Galway is guilty of sending another blonde joke
• Rafiki sends a story from Cape Breton
• Anita, Tom Kyle, and Jay suggest interesting sites

Betty Brightwell tells the story of

A COBRA, A MONGOOSE, AND US IN MUMBAI

On our way beck to Canada from a two-year posting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, my husband and I toured India. In Bombay (now Mumbai) I wanted to see a famous old sailing ship somewhere on the waterfront, so off we went and eventually found it.

We also found a snake charmer on the dock who soon gathered a small crowd around him, including us. With his flute he enticed a huge cobra out of a basket and we watched it rise several feet high, its tongue flicking in and out of its venomous jaws. It seemed to gyrate to the rhythm of the flute.

Suddenly a mongoose was released from another basket and it promptly leapt at the cobra, grabbed it just below the cobra´s mouth, shook it about and killed it.

The conjurer was shouting at us, demanding that we pay a hundred rupees for his dead cobra. I looked around the crowd and realized that we were the only tourists there.

We were thoroughly confused. The last thing we had expected to see was a mongoose massacre a cobra, and now this old guy in a turban and a long beard was demanding that we pay for the spectacle.

Mercifully, out of the crowd emerged a stranger. He said to us, "You´d better get out of here before there´s a riot."

So we left and to this day I wonder what was really going on there. Just another con? Perhaps, though, we should have given the conjurer a hundred rupees. We could afford it, and after all, he had lost his trained snake. Well, now it´s thirty years too late, I´m sorry to say. And I´ll bet you anything the stranger who told us to vamoose out of there was really a policeman.

Kate Brookfield commented on the absence of people in the .pps file of photos of India which I sent you last week. She subsequently wrote:

INDIAN PHOTOGRAPHER AMIT PASRICHA

BBC World News is interviewing an Indian photographer who has just had a new coffee book of Indian photographs published. The photos look very similar to that set you sent recently.

Funnily enough, the interviewer asked him why there were no people! (Great minds again!)

The photographer, Amit Pasricha, responded that people can be distracting and he was trying to produce more images as in ancient art works. (I forget the word he used for it). Some form that is usually black and white, I think, as he went on to say that he likes colour and it is much harder to work in than black and white.

I did a Google search on him and found this information:

Amit started taking pictures at the age of eight. He graduated from St. Stephen´s College and studied at the Maine Photographic Workshops in America, working with leading National Geographic photographers, including Mary Ellen Mark and David Allard. He has taught photography at Summer Camp in Georgia, U.S.A. and Discovery Camps in the Himalayas.

He works with NGOs like Child Relief & You, the Aga Khan Foundation, Brooke Hospital for Animals, and UNICEF. He has done extensive documentation for National Literacy Mission all over India.

He has held many solo exhibitions and done many coffee table books. His panoramic pictures are breath-taking and his photos have appeared in many travel magazines.

Amit lives and works in Delhi.

ED. NOTE: We do not know if this is the same photographer whose shots were in the .pps file, but for more information on Amit Pasricha, see

(http://www.galleryartanddesign.com/artDirectory.asp?artId=41

Jack Peaker wonders if this scene is familiar to you:

´TWAS THE NIGHT OF THANKSGIVING

´Twas the night of Thanksgiving, but I just couldn´t sleep.
I tried counting backwards; I tried counting sheep.
The leftovers beckoned - the dark meat and white,
But I fought the temptation with all of my might.

Tossing and turning with anticipation,
The thought of a snack became infatuation.
So I raced to the kitchen, flung open the door,
And gazed in the fridge, full of goodies galore.

I gobbled up turkey and buttered potatoes,
Pickles and carrots, beans and tomatoes.
I felt myself swelling so plump and so round,
´Til all of a sudden, I rose off the ground.

I crashed through the ceiling, floating into the sky,
With a mouthful of pudding and a handful of pie.
But I managed to yell as I soared past the trees ...
Happy eating to all - pass the cranberries, please!

Gerrit de Leeuw sends this story to help us in

UNDERSTANDING THE CURRENT WORLD FINANCIAL SITUATION

Once upon a time in a village in India, a man announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10, but as the supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts. The man then announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate increased to $25, and the supply of monkeys became so small that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch one.

The man then announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now act as buyer on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when he returns from the city, you can sell them back to him for $50."

The villagers squeezed together their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man or his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere! Welcome to Wall Street!

Anita Henderson forwards this reassuring story about

THE AFTERLIFE

A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and inform the other of the afterlife. Their biggest fear was that there was no afterlife.

After a long life, the husband was the first to go, and true to his word, he made contact.

"Mary! Mary! Are you there?"

"Is that you, Fred?"

"Yes. I´ve come back, like we agreed."

"What´s it like?"

"Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex; I have breakfast, then off to the golf course; I have sex; I bathe in the sun; and then I have sex. I have lunch, another romp around the golf course, then sex pretty much all afternoon. After supper, golf course again. Then have sex until late at night. The next day it starts all over again."

"Oh, Fred, you surely must be in heaven."

"Not exactly. I´m a rabbit in Saskatchewan."

Another blonde joke, this time from Bruce Galway:

LEAVING WORK

Three girls all worked in the same office with the same female boss. Each day, they noticed that the boss left work early.

One day the girls decided that when the boss left, they would leave right behind her. After all, she never called or came back to work, so how would she know they went home early?

The brunette was thrilled to be home early. She did a little gardening, spent playtime with her son, and went to bed early.

The redhead was elated to be able to get in a quick workout at the spa before meeting a dinner-date.

The blonde was happy to get home early and surprise her husband, but when she got to her bedroom, she heard muffled noise inside. Slowly and quietly she cracked open the door, and was mortified to see her husband in bed with her boss! Gently she closed the door and crept out of her house.

The next day at their coffee break, the brunette and redhead planned to leave early again, and they asked the blonde if she was going to go with them.

"No way," the blonde exclaimed. "I almost got caught yesterday."

Rafiki sends this

CAPE BRETON STORY

A man from New York was on vacation hiking through the highlands of Cape Breton.

He came upon the nicest and tiniest cabin he had ever seen in his life. Intrigued, he went up and knocked on the door. "Anybody home?" he asked.

"Yep, I´m here," came a kid´s voice through the door.

"Is your father there?" asked the New York tourist.

"Pa? Nope, he left before Ma came in," said the kid.

"Well, is your mother there?" persisted the tourist.

"Ma? Nope, she left just before I got here," said the kid.

"But," protested the Yankee, "are you never together as a family? I´d like to meet your family."

"Sure, anytime, but not here," said the kid through the door. "This is the outhouse."

WEBSITES

Anita Henderson recommends this site: http://www.findingjoymovie.com/

Jay thought you might be interested in Jay Leno´s collection of antique cars; I thought the 2008 three-wheeled motorcycle was more in line with today´s needs in vehicles. Have a look at this site, http://arunaurl.com/2k28, or go to Jay´s webpage at http:// members.shaw.ca/vjsansum/for the video.

Tom Kyle sends this link to anyone interested in the beginnings of the personal computer. He writes:In the 80s, I had a my first computer - a Tandy CoCo2. At that time there was a TV show, "Computer Chronicles", which I watched every Saturday morning.

Their web page, http://web.archive.org/, has stored millions of web pages going back to the start of the internet, even "The Oldguy" [Tom´s webpage], and I recently found a video of one of the Computer Chronicles shows (1995) which should interest you. If you do watch the show (only 28 minutes), and think of shutting down early - do yourself a favour, and watch the last 12 minutes....

Go to: http://www.archive.org/details/GaryKild

You may also read this newsletter online at http://nw-seniors.org/stories.html

"The best index to a person´s character is how he treats people who can´t do him any good, and how he treats people who can´t fight back." - Abigail Van Buren