Cheers!

“In the name of the new year…”

“I don’t do new year resolutions”

We have closed the year but we will be there in a couple of hours. The last person in this room, please dim the lights. And while at it, please check your egos at the door. We are jumping into 2016 fresh! There are things we wish to leave behind while we pack our loaded bags as we walk majestically to the new year with a spring in our steps. There are however, other important things we'd like to carry forward so that while we open a new leaf, we shall find a balance brought forward. Let's take stock. Grab your calculator, pencil and a spreadsheet. 

Please be sure not to tag your annoying fragrance that assaults out nostrils and reminds us of someone we’d rather forget. There are scents that remind us of certain memories. Of girls who offer you the tips of their cool fingers in greeting. Those girls should just stay with their sorry greetings. We wish them bad things because they are bad people. They will soon be trailed by a certified hyena. One who has been inducted in the Team Mafisi Hall of Fame. And he will break her heart so bad that the entire male species will be labeled ‘dogs’. She might try coming back after being wolfed and swindled by those men whose tongues are faster than their hired cars.

For the record, my blog is a girl. A pretty little miss thing. Our relationship is nothing but praiseworthy. Once in six months I whip up gourmets (blog posts) for her like never before. But mostly I don’t cook. She on a diet, this girl. It surprises me how a whopping 365 days go with only 4 blog posts. She is not surprised. She likes it that way. To avoid world conflict in the name of heated arguments, I comply. We thrive in silence. We communicate by observing our personal spaces. We flourish in tranquility. And we like our crowd kept to the minimum. We practically feel drained when in a large crowd of people. That is why we were hardest hit after 2013. We were already living in a gated community (to avoid too many people) before the fad hit the property market with a bang. We keep good company. This girl of mine occasionally brushes against my arm like a hungry kitten.

What a beautiful year it was. Too captivating and enthralling and fascinating and engrossing and captivating that I couldn’t keep up with its magnificence. Oh! There was something else I couldn’t keep up with. The Kardashians. Of course. I’m secretly jealous of their business model, those Kardashians. How do they make so much money doing nothing? I want a luxury yacht like theirs.

When life is doing you too good you can’t ignore the flow. You must get involved and cherish the moments. Sometimes hold them close to heart. To listen to the racing heartbeat. Sometimes you will set the moments free. Then you will run after them and capture them in photos. You will resist the temptation of flooding your little victories online for the world. Just because they are your moments. 

And then this lady who sits across taps my shoulder and goes like, “Hey, I haven’t told you!” Let me lean back and be told stuff. Not before I raise a glass to toast to my avid readers. Until next year, cheers!

Bleached Business

Every time I spot a printed copy of the Business Daily on newspaper stands, I remember high school. I remember a tattered chemistry book. You wonder what Business Daily got to do with chemistry? Hold that thought. Take a reminiscence journey with me.

Do you remember your ex’s phone number by heart no matter how hard you wish you couldn’t? Bad things stick around like super glue. When computer scientists and neurosurgeons marry, they will discover a special part of the brain, about 10GB of non-volatile memory that stores useless stuff.

I remember cold metallic stools that sucked the warmth out of us in chemistry labs. Those cold stools used to have sharp right angles at all four corners. You know how that hurts your behind? If you sat carelessly the edges would rip off your shorts. Yes, we used to wear shorts. In moody July weather, we suffered. I’m at a loss to explain how girls who wear short dresses manage to sit on cold metallic chairs unperturbed.  Now if you wore a short short (notice what I’ve done there?) your thigh would be rudely massaged by 10 degrees of cold metal. Tingly sensation.  The one good thing you got out of that stool is alertness. When the teacher taught polymers, you understood polymers. You never dozed off.

I’m not done with the stools. Most of them had stands that were unequal. Never balanced when you sat.  You seesawed throughout double lessons. Occasionally adjusting to make sure the aorta pumps to the feet. If it ever does that. That is if you were unlucky to grab a proper wooden stool.

Anyway, the Business Daily. Why is it printed on some sort of brown paper? Contrast with the Daily Nation. Those are the questions I ask my chemistry.

Then I remember sexy words like ‘bleaching agent’, ‘oxidation’, ‘chlorine and its compounds’ , ‘soap less detergents’, ’gas laws’, ‘alkenes’, ‘electrolysis of brine’, ‘Avogadro’ and ‘moles’. Not all words were sexy though. The mole concept was such a turn off! Especially the molar gas volumes. It marked the beginning of flunking miserably. Forty percent became the new eighty percent.

If you hit a 41% you were badass. A Saudi prince of sorts. The emperor of Ethiopia. Haile Selassie himself.  The Mexican drug lord. Guzman.  You were Walter White (from Breaking Bad) and Jesse Pinkman combined. When you talked we listened. The earth rotated around your desk. You and your moles. You were the shit.

I suppose the only group that fell in love with chem and carried the relationship past the school gate were the shisha lovers. I imagine they used to look at the volumetric flask (or is it the round-bottomed flask) with such lustful eyes. There is something peculiar about love and how people manage to hide it or rather deny it a chance. Those chaps were not necessarily excited by the idea of a chemistry practical. What with wafting poisonous gases. They secretly admired the burette. From a distance. Titration experts those ones! They calculated molar gas volumes with their eyes. By just staring at the pot. Then there was the fume chamber. Call it shisha lounge.

Chemistry and I had an on-off kind of relationship. I never got madly in love. I wonder what I’m missing from not inhaling perfumed shisha smoke. 

Who is fooling who...

Let’s talk about two things. Teachers’ strike, and about that expose NTV aired last night trending under the hash tag #ServeAndSuffer. 

Of teachers strike.

A friend of mine is convinced that teachers should not get a penny more on their pay slips because apparently, they have not shown the cause for such increase. While this argument is premised on good faith and sounds ethical, it is fallacious in form and substance. No one would want the current impasse to last a day longer but truth be told, there’s no better time to demand for what is rightfully theirs than today.  The government needs to sit back and cut excess pilferage and wastage of resources because that’s what they are mandated for.  Tie the noose on those plundering the economy under your noses.

It is embarrassing to look at what those noble professionals make in a month vis a vis our most hardworking legislators and commissioners in public offices who are very quick to convince the masses how ‘broke’ the government is and how we have to finance mega development projects-as a matter of priority- if only to transform our loving nation into a newly industrializing, middle-income country providing a high quality life to all its citizens. Have you checked how ‘under paid’ the Salaries and Remuneration Commissioners are? Care to know how much they bag per month? What about the perks that go with the job. There are barely surviving because the love they have for this country cannot be fathomed.  How can teachers ask to be paid while our County budgets can only afford carcinogenic wheelbarrows?  The normal wheel barrows don’t cut it anymore. Where can we get all that money to buy ordinary wheelbarrows? We must be a considerate nation that does not ask for money at a time when Facebook accounts for our beloved governors have to be ‘opened’ right from Silicon Valley.

Problem is that we have a bunch of leaders who are not in touch with reality. The purchasing power of money is ever dynamic. You do not need to have stepped in any economics class to know that there will always be persistent increase in general price levels and the subsequent fall in the purchasing power of money. Even the most stable nations in the world have to deal with inflation at some level which is almost impossible to eliminate. Now, back to teachers. If say a P1 teacher used to earn X amount of money as her gross income a decade ago, it implies therefore that now she should be earning X+n, where n is the relative component of inflation added to cushion the subject. That increase does not in any way constitute to a pay increase.

Teachers, don’t buy that tired line that “there is no money!”  

Are the leaders aware of what the hell development means? The process of making the world more humane. How many people work in hospitals they can’t afford to get sick in? How many people work in schools they can’t afford to get educated in? How many people work in entertainment joints they can’t afford to party in?

Of police spokesman

Ever heard someone talk and felt an intense urge to clap their face with a chair? That sensation hit me last night as I listened to Larry Madowo interviewing the police spokesman. I didn’t know whether to be mad or sad, or both.

That guy has the worst job description. Probably there is a line that goes like; ’the ideal candidate must have the ability to shut off practical reason from time to time in order to maintain the image of the police force.’

On the fringes of Boni Forest, brave Kenyan officers fight to protect us despite great odds. The shocking bit was during question time. I was waiting for the usual PR but the man in question could not hide the fury and agitation he got from officers who are supposed to be so patriotic as to survive without food and water. Nothing seemed to work. What with the broken down police vehicle? Faulty communication equipment. The tired typewriter working way past the manufacturers had intended.    

The spokesman kept repeating how we are not a developed country.  Couldn’t help but draw parallels with operation red wings which was conceived by the U.S. Marine corps and utilized special operations forces units and assets. It is true that we cannot compare to that but surely we can do better logistically than what was aired last night.  

Owino (police spokesman) beat Pastor Ng’ang’a by answering questions that were not asked. Actually, Owino ran the show. He asked more questions than he answered.

Sample this:

Larry: Did you see that typewriter?

Owino: Do they have power?  

Those gallant soldiers earn 600 bob hardship allowance. 20K salary. There isn’t a better description of disgrace.

The problem lies with us, the citizenry. Why? Because come 2017, we will elect the same guys back to office by 6am. Who is the fool?

You tell me.

Steal the glory

You’re having a lazy Saturday morning as you lay in bed thinking about how much more sleep you need to reclaim out of a hectic week that has left you battered to the core. As is the norm,you reach for your phone across the bed only to be hit by a string of notifications. You skim through and get that annoying forward from when Kenya became a British protectorate. You start to mull over it. You realize it is a trend burning like bush fire. If you do not nip it in the bud, you will become a victim of all the forwards doing rounds. Again, you do not want to appear as a mean, repelling and unappreciative being.

That tired message that has been passed from host to host, peer to peer, through all Kenya domains, passing from one East Africa core router to another, to yonder lands and back via undersea fibre, hitting China and bouncing off North America’s West Coast, year after year. A joke perhaps squeezed off all the juice. Chemists would call it amorphous. No form. No water. A tired ass meme that you saw on twitter the first few days you joined. That Facebook story that Mark Zuckerberg must have read when the app had less than a 100 users back in 2004. That Instagram picture from last elections. How do you deal with it? Do you ignore? Do you reply? And if you choose to reply, do you sugarcoat it for friendship’s sake? Stick around for ‘Introduction to Neanderthal Media Content 101’. If you feign excitement when you’re staring at a meme you have seen 10 times in 2 weeks, be assured that you might be reserving space in the hottest spot in hell. Why can’t you just be honest? You’re worried that you will break the sender’s heart? Please break it. Stop the vicious cycle to save a soul.

Depending with the season, you might choose to react different though. During Christmas or Easter, you might get a forward from 2012 that was redone in 2013 and is still alive and kicking. And you can be sure it will outlive the ambitious LAPSSET project. In the spirit of baby Jesus or the risen Messiah respectively, you just have to be nice and argue in the lines of, “After all, it’s the thought that counts!” Some circumstances necessitate recycling. That is an exception.  

What if it is ordinary time? In the middle of June. Someone hits you up with a looong text which you are familiar with. You curse under your breath. Here we go again! Then you reply so smoothly as if it was the first time you’re seeing the message. My friend, that ain’t right. I wish phones could capture our facial expressions when we receive messages. Those WhatApp blue ticks should be accompanied by that smirk!

You ever receive that old meme from a friend, or a close relative or someone you really respect and end up replying with a smiley :-) but deep down you can’t wait to free up your phone’s internal memory. Please, next time count the bytes, do the math, raise a claim form to be refunded.

In these good times of information technology, it happens quite a lot. Too much data available resulting to analysis paralysis or too many beaten up jokes. The most annoying are the religious one’s that come with punishment at the end if you fail to resend. Story for another day.

I will not name names. I will not give fictions characters either. If you find a behavior that resonates to you, you’re most welcome to ring me and probably we can diarize our meeting to discuss further. Do not sue me for defamation as I don’t intend to injure your reputation in the estimation of right thinking members of society. I hear defamation is pretty expensive and the way my bank account is set up, I might not afford to pay the damages.

The world has space for everyone nevertheless. There are people who enjoy those messages I love to hate. Depending on someone’s personality, something can remain relevant and funny over and over again. We’re wired very differently. I know of someone who can watch a movie over and over and over again. Each time getting cracked up afresh. How now??? You ask. I think such people are lucky to have their critical boring ratios (I don’t know what that is, don’t ask) default setting set up waaay to near infinity.    

I for instance can’t repeat a movie. Anything predictable is a no go zone. Unless it is a high school set book and the English teacher is breathing down my neck! Funny thing is that even after reading I-don’t-know-how-many-times, the probability of missing that dondoo is still high. If you get bored easily, you can either negotiate to have your critical boring ratio increased, which is impossible, or be a ‘bad’ person to save yourself of any avoidable Neanderthal media content.  

And, if you’re human enough you don’t want to burst another human’s bubble. You don’t want to steal their thunder. You don’t want to steal their glory. You let them shine. But sometimes we got to be honest. We got to burst their bubble. We got to steal their thunder. We got to steal their glory. Enough said!

THROWING IN MY TWO CENTS

Guess who’s back. The blogger. Can’t believe the last time I was on these streets was during the world cup. How embarrassing. WhatsApp blue ticks were unheard of. I think further upgrades will be so mean as to tell that someone read your message, frowned, screenshot it and posted it to her girls group and that kind of thing. Mark Zuckerberg, stop! Last seen timestamp had caused enough damage already. *sips coffee*. Then Njoki Chege and her articles. But don’t I like the tone she picks! Fantastic. The men she’s supposed to be dating are tall boys with blue Subaru Imprezzas who drink cheap liquor. Hahahaha…Comical articles. Story for another day though. Then Kim Kardashian’s greasy ass keeps coming down my timeline. Oh! No. Martin Luther King did not die for this. We are living in interesting times. The latest and most annoying incident is on everyone’s lips. It has been picked by international media. Yes, it’s that serious. I got it from Al Jazeera English version. You should have seen the comments, such as “Africa and their primitive energy.” And why exactly do they think that the Africa continent is a state? Anyway, let’s talk harassment. 

 

It happens on a daily basis. I have experienced two separate incidents in the recent past. One involving a pick pocketer who could not resist my three-week-old phone. His planned back fired so badly that he resulted to using force. He chucked a dagger to which I obliged. Then chokoras and extortion. I was actually thinking of investing in pepper spray because apparently the chokoras along Landhies Lane have made it their life’s mission to extort money from me. Just last month I was being given choices. To either chuck 500 bob or be smeared with human waste. You should have seen me bargaining as if he was selling me a commodity. Nkt! That is small-scale harassment. And it breeds to large-scale proportions and extends to what we have seen. 

I have been smoked out of my hibernation hole by the hash tag #MyDressMyChoice. We cannot say that! Before you draw daggers (Sandra Sudi, relax. Don’t crucify me yet), allow me to immediately stress that I do not support barbaric, uncouth, primitive, uncivilized and evil acts like stripping women. Catch my drift? The spirit of the hash tag is in good taste. Very sensible but unfortunately some ladies are getting it all wrong. I’ll demonstrate the gross misrepresentation of facts, in a few.

Let’s go the philosophy way, shall we? Intrinsically evil acts are judged solely from their object independently of the intention that inspires them or the circumstances that surround them. So, whether the Embassava (hope I got that spelling correct, autocorrect has no suggestion) touts were intending to ‘teach a moral lesson’ is not the question. Stripping is evil. 

Confession 101.  I am a member of the Facebook page called ‘Kilimani Mums Nairobi’. Crazy, right? I did happen to do my industrial attachment in that area code so I am not so lost after all. I am there to read the troubles and/or achievements of those mums. Most of them are professionals with reputable careers. The admin better not be reading this post. I don’t want my membership to be revoked. That group is a good sample to do research because it is representative enough. I’m assuming a 95% confidence interval and of course a 5% degree of error. Why? Because I have read most of the tweets with the said hash tag. Including the tweef between Esther Passaris and Robert Alai.

Now, to my point. Let’s start by understanding some concepts that will give my argument and premises the traction it deserves. Freedom. Choices. Truth. Liberalism. Relativism. If we all agree on the basic definitions of the 5 words, my case is closed. I’m not lecturing. Let’s just be clear that truth is not relative. It is one. Ontological. Existing beyond ourselves. It originates from reality. When your mind conforms to reality, now that is what you call the truth. Not the other way round. Below is a comment from the Facebook page by some mama.

“Why can’t we learn to accept diversity? We are different. Period! What is the measure people are using to tell us to dress decently? What is decency anyway? We are supposed to dress to impress and not to accommodate the views of perverts…period.” After reading that comment I thought…mmhh… how inaccurate and fallacious. 

The comment suggests that decency is relative. What is the measure of decency? Remember the concepts I introduced up there? Decency is not relative. From Instagram, the taste of the hash tag is very bitter and to be quite frank, misses the point. Terming men perverts. Why have some women shifted the debate from an incident of violation of the first and most basic human right of dignity to demonizing men as perpetrators of heinous crimes against women? So now the touts are representing all men? What a vague generalization. 

If #MyDressMyChoice campaign is to bear fruits, it has to clearly demonstrate that absolute freedom bring about liberalism. Everyone thus can do whatever they want. Wrong! Human beings are endowed with reason and conscience which clearly shows the distinction between good and evil. Then some people bring the argument that oooh… Turkana women..And I say, we need to purify the spontaneous moral knowledge and correct the errors therein. Just because you can expose your thighs doesn’t mean you should.

I think the main focus would be men and women uniting to eradicate demeaning behaviour and to spearhead effective recognition and observance of rights and freedoms of others simply because all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. This is where political common good comes in. Try walking along Ngara or near that matatu stage and you will have your arms grabbed by hawkers, touts and whatnot. They do it because there is no law against it.

Let’s start by having some airtight legislation. Right now if the assaulted lady is to get justice, the police will tell her to file a formal complaint and the court will require evidence. What more evidence does the lady need? Is the video not evidence enough? Do she need to lodge a formal complaint for an obvious gross violation? The law is an ass! I hope the culprits will be brought to book and that justice shall be served. You saw how Kanyari’s case was ignored like a wet weave? 

Hope you all feel the conviction of a burning sincerity, of that fire in the belly which will better our society and produce the unity of purpose. My two cents ladies and gentlemen.

OLE OLA EDITION

It’s a cold Thursday afternoon. I’m sitting on 6^th floor in a heavily glassed skyscraper office building. I occasionally rotate the comfortable swivel chair to get a commanding view of the Yaya Center twin towers. At the back of my mind, I’m disturbed by a promise I haven’t fulfilled. This article you are reading. I’ve been planning to type it from the time Baba was in Dubai. Before some medicine student was proclaimed a diva (I thought medicine was among those hard courses where life revolves around the library, shower and bed, but apparently, I was wrong. M.B Ch.B students are now divas). I noted the techno phone (beats logic) the campus diva was using with a lot of concern. It’s the kind whose ringtone sounds like 10 sufurias clanking down a staircase. I expected the latest of Samsung or the latest of HTC or the latest of iPhone or for a worst case scenario, the latest of Nokia. I had planned to write the article before Vera removed her tint, spend a preposterously huge amount of paper on weave. I hear she is now giving back to the society. Whichever ‘back’ that is. Let me get to the mixed ideas I have for this particular post now that I have about an hour to kill, a blog, a keyboard and an active internet connection.

I will take you through a short journey of my personal encounter with internship. Follow me. In a single file, please.

If there is something that can be frustrating, call it job search. Why? Firstly, recruiters have expectations the size of Mount Kenya. From brightermonday to jobrapido to career point et cetera et cetera, the job requirements that are posted are waaaay too ambitious. Unrealistic. The moment you subscribe to any of the job sites, they spam your inbox with requirements that are out of this world. You are left disturbed and confused and confused and disturbed. Some students opt for tarmacking only to meet unfriendly security guards (who act as human resource managers). It is indeed a depressing experience to get through such guards. Did I mention the grueling interviews? Thank God I did not go through such. Life is a mystery of sorts. Allow me to skip the boring details and dive right to the best things in life. Entertainment.

WORLD CUP

People are still on the Jubilee Cord dialogue nusu-mkate bs.. dude get a grip.. It’s the World Cup month. Some things we left in 2013 like Temple Run. We are about to start eating, breathing and sleeping football. I’m about do 1,000 tweets between now and end of the tournament. Any single detail that will excite me will earn a tweet! Prepare to get pissed off if you follow me. I’m considering opening an Instagram account (I have this ideology that taking offensive amounts of selfies and posting them online is a girl thing, which explains my resistance to have an instagram account). Why I’m reconsidering that thought is because I’d like to immortalize Messi as he worms through tiny creases between defenders. I’d like to immortalize Christiano Ronaldo as he makes those diagonal runs shredding the defense with lethal finishes. Apart from immortalizing players on instagram, there are things that I’m looking forward to. I want to see beautiful women showing off their skills in cheering squads twerking to loud Samba music while wearing short skirts and Brazilian-flag-themed tops. 

I have already toured the streets of Brazil (albeit on Google street view) and gathered some interesting facts about the country. Firstly, I admire the fact that Brazil is run by a woman president, Dilma Rousseff.

On to the facts: Brazil has won the World Cup 5 times (more than any other country!)

It is the fifth largest country in the world, has the second highest number of airports in the world, official language is Portuguese, has 60% of the rainforests that make up the Amazon rain forests, it has the second highest Christian population in the world, and last but not least, has the best coffee in the world.  

I’m spoilt for choice on which team to support. My best players are scattered across various national teams. My choices are Brazil, Spain, France and (all African teams -obviously) in that order.

In between the World Cup, we will be treated to the most amazing show of the year. Black Entertainment Television awards, hosted by Christopher Julius Rock III a.k.a Chris Rock. With star performances from Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, Drake, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Lil Wayne, Trey Songz and Lionel Richie, it is a night to look forward to. Lupita Nyong’o has been nominated in the ‘best actress’ category against Angela Bassett, Gabrielle Union, Kerry Washington and Oprah Winfrey. Lupita without a doubt is in the big league, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mary Jane and Olivia Pope.

This is the month guys!

The Birds In Our Lives

Time really does fly. I keep telling myself that I’ll publish an article on my blog every week. I had planned to post an article just after Valentine’s Day but my hands were too full to spare an hour to type something about love. But love is for the birds, isn’t it? Scientists estimate that people fall in love seven times before they get married. Question is, do people still want to get married? Generally, I could say the moral fabric of the society is not as it used to be back in the last 5 decades. Was there friend-zoning in 1950s? Well, I think it was still there, under a different name or no name at all. I’ve heard there is a newer version of friend-zoning called relationship-zoning where you think that “oh, we are just friends” only to be told, “Too bad…, we are already dating…” How weird is that? Here’s some free advice to guys who make it out of the friend zone: Cry (like a man!) and give that Lupita speech. And to those brothers already trapped in complicated relationships, your dreams are still valid. Enough about love, for today.

All of us have only so much energy. There are also too many competing agendas. You see, sometimes you have bigger fish to fry. In the process of dealing with the tilapia first so that you come back to deal with the omena later, you get caught up with angry birds, or flappy bird. 

Whoever programmed flappy bird had a motive of showing very clearly how frustration gets real. The concept revolves around tapping yet an average user will lose 200 times in a row. 

I’m wondering how children born in the days of ‘apps’ for games will ever experience the real games that we played while growing up. Where you actually go out, play, sometimes bend a few rules while playing hide and seek, get in trouble, get some good spanking and learn from it such that next time, you either don’t hide on top of a mango tree, or if you are the daring kind, you learn to cover your tracks. What stories will these kinds have for their grandchildren? Picture this scenario: “Kids, when we were growing up, there used to be this game called candy crush saga. So one day, I got some coins, loaded my android phone with 25MB of data, immersed myself in the google play store and downloaded this game. The aim was to switch and match your way through more than 400 levels in this delicious and addictive puzzle adventure... (Kids start yawning…)”. Boring. Remember at that time, android will be so old a technology that kids will not be able to identify themselves with such archaic technology.

Talking about technology, there are some not-so-good habits I have observed. Is it just me or have you guys observed a certain breed of people who have headphones plugged in their ears. All the time. What do they listen to? They have annoying cousins who will not hesitate to borrow a USB cable to charge their phones. Mostly, it is a problem that affects android phone users. Is it that their phones drain charge so quickly, which obviously puts the blame squarely on the manufacturers, or is it a bad habit. I chose to go with bad habit. I will address this issue comprehensively on a future post.

As I conclude, I’d like to apologize to my avid readers for not posting articles. My absence from the blogosphere has been unintentional, unforeseeable and regrettable. I’m still trying to come to terms with the manner in which February and March came and slipped away unnoticed. Those two months pulled a ‘Malaysian plane’ kind of scenario. Disappeared in thin air without a trace.

These are bad times for our country in terms of internal security threats. To those who subscribe to the school of optimism, bad times can also be called challenging times. About the NZE that exploded outside the Pangani police station, it is unfortunate and  I mourn the loss of the two gallant officers who died in their line of duty.

May I end with an optimistic note? “How many days to the world cup?”