"THERE
GOES THE SUN .... My first trip to Bulgaria in 2010"
Day 1
Summer has
finally arrived in our part of Spain and definitely not before time! The
question on everyone´s lips is .... what happened to Spring?
We just
leap-frogged from the cold of Winter into the heat of Summer and now I am on my
way to Bulgaria and waving goodbye to the sun for a while.
If you´ve ever
experienced turbulence while flying, you´ll understand what I am about to say
... if not, feel free to skip it!
I never
thought about it before but absolutely the worst place to be attacked by sudden
turbulence is ..... the bathroom!! It doesn´t matter what it is you´re trying to
do in one of those confined spaces, turbulence makes it much more ....
interesting!
Today, I have
all of Business Class on this Bulgaria Air flight to myself and I must say it is
nice. Time to eat, sleep, write and no screaming rug rats! Oh ... Joy!
I´ll be in
Bulgaria for a week with my dear friend George and his dear friends, making
music, making videos, having meetings and planning my next trip for the ¨July
Morning¨ concert on June 30th/July 1st.
Our enemy
appears to be the weather which is not forecast to be very good over the next 7
days but, as we have been graphically reminded recently, nature is in control
.... we are very definitely not!
George and I
are intrepid souls though and we both love The God of Nature so we´ll just roll
with it all, accept what we get and adjust as necessary.
May I digress?
Too late, I already did!
Why is the
Arab world so persistent (not to mention dumb) in its attempts to drive a wedge
between Israel and the US?
It´s about 24
hours since the Israeli army intercepted a convoy of ships that were (illegally)
trying to run the (legal) blockade of waters near Ghaza.
Heavily (and
highly publicly) disguised as a humanitarian mission, this charade had been
planned from start to finish and the (mainly western) media played right into
it´s hands.
Israel´s
reaction to this invasion was exactly as it had been in the past, only this time
they were not expecting armed terrorists to be on the ships, firing at them,
beating them with iron bars and even throwing them off the ship (attempted
murder).
But it was the
terrorists who had planned this entire thing, even to the point of shooting
their (obviously biassed) live video to the world through Facebook (where most
are faceless) and Twitter (which is almost entirely populated by twits). And
this happened within seconds of the Israelis landing on the deck of the boat
.... of course it was all planned .... planned to make Israel look bad.
The
accompanying reactive quotes cannot have come from people with brains so I´ll
ignore them, except to say that the idiots should have waited until they saw the
other side of this because now they really do look as stupid as they sounded!
There´s always
at least one fact more .....
I just read an
interesting article by Ben Macintyre in The London Times, June 1st edition. It
was another article on the subjects of fame and success, looked at this time
from a different angle, using two extremely diverse people as its subject
source, Harper Lee and Susan Boyle.
I am not going
to quote the whole article but this part did get my attention ....
¨Part of the
Faustian pact demands that privacy be surrendered in return for fame and success
must be repeated endlessly, until failure comes along¨.
I am going to
be speaking to students at the University of Alicante on this and other aspects
of fame and fortune next month and I think I will quote Mr. Macintyre .... if I
can get it right in Spanish that is!
George,
Marieta and Toni met me at the airport in Sofia and so did national TV. Happily
they kept it brief and professional and we were soon on the way to the hotel.
After a
little dinner and some ¨catch-up¨ time I was headed for bed. I am looking
forward to the next week....
