Wednesday 27 October 2004

Singing in the Rain

Am wet from the drizzle and high from listening to Greg, Declan and Chris cavort and caper about on our way back from the city. It was Chris's 20th, so we did the customary dinner and outing thing, and they did the usual get a little bit tipsy thing. And then they wanted karaoke, so that's how we ended up at some decidedly seedy little bar called the Charlatans while Chris and Greg and Declan sang their little hearts out and Lauren and I watched from the sidelines. And admittedly, laughed.

Declan got really into it, and that was funny. He sings well, and he does the whole emotional audience 'I'm-an-entertainer-and-I'm-entertaining' thing very well. Very camp, but everyone enjoys it. Greg gets really into it as well, and Chris, despite his usual retiring self, was equally as enthusiastic, despite possibly being less loud compared to the other two.

By the time we got out, it was drizzling and the trams had stopped. We walked back to college, and then the guys decided to walk on the tram lines, which are in the middle of the road. It was quite the Sgt. Pepper scene. Five individuals linking hands and walking (well, one of us was merrily skipping) down the tram lines. And singing on top of our lungs. Well, the boys were anyway. What a strange sight we must have made.

On another note, I just had to share what I learnt in a lecture yesterday. We had a lecture on AIDS and HIV (which incidentally, was an awesome lecture, I was moved to tears), and the lecturer was stressing about how it was a devastating disease and a growing epidemic throughout the world. And because it was a medical lecture, he did the whole social implications that come with the physiological breakdown of the body thing.

What I found interesting, and frankly, unexpected, was when he presented a slide that showed the proportion of AIDS and HIV in the world. It wasn't so much the countries that had AIDS, but the countries that didn't. Countries like Iran, and Iraq, and Egypt, and Indonesia. The rates of HIV were practically non-existent. And then the lecturer said, it was because of Islam.

Apparently, the practice of circumcision acts as a protective factor to being infected by the HIV virus. For the scientifically inclined, the foreskin of the penis has receptors that are the only mode of entry for this virus. Through circumcision, where the foreskin is removed, this eliminates the mode of entry for the virus by sexual transmission. How cool is that? Yet another mystery of the Quran explained.

No comments:

Post a Comment