Sonkajärvi

We had to catch a 1.30am bus to Stansted which arrived at 5am. Since our flight was at 9am, we slept on the floor of Stansted for about two hours before getting up and checking in. With barely any sleep, I was stumbling and incoherent all the way to Helsinki and then on to Kuopio, where the head of the organising committee for the Wife-Carrying World Championship came and picked us up from the airport. No, we're not VIPs- he was just in the area and volunteered to do it. That typifies the spirit here. Everyone is so friendly and welcoming and anxious that we're having a good time. Sonkajärvi is an hour north of Kuopio and is a small village with only 2,500 inhabitants, of which 500 have volunteered to help out for the biggest day in their calender!

Some random observations:

- Everyone is incredbily blonde here. Man, women, children- everyone is blonde haired and blue-eyed. It's incredible!

- This place looks like an IKEA catalogue. Everything is designed in a very similar aesthetic: wood, elegant, curved and clean lines, very classy.

- The air is extremely fresh and the area is remarkably clean.

- People who take part in wife-carrying seem to keep coming back. We've met or heard of competitors who keep coming back over and over again. Today we met Julia, from Ireland, who is here for the 4th time. She brings along a different strong man each time, but this year she's got no one to carry her and is trying to find a local to do so. Since she's 120 kg, that may prove difficult.

- Mmmm, pickled herring. Smoked reindeer. Blood soup. Delicious.

- Sonkajärvi is a very small town but there's competition. There are two supermarkets (opposite the street from one another), two banks (ditto) and two restaurants (ditto yet again).

- The water hazard in the Wife-Carrying course is a lot deeper this year- two metres instead of one. Word has it that it's meant to slow down the Estonians, since they have won every year since 1998. The last Finnish couple to win was in 1997. What I'm hoping is since I have swimming skills, the deeper water hazard will help me catch the couples who are faster on land...

- We'll be racing against a number of couples from Finland and Estonia, as well as the USA, UK, Germany, France, Australia and New Zealand.

Excerpts from How To Be A Master At Wife-Carrying:

Outfit

It is preferable to wear clothes which won’t be stripped off in full speed running and which are easy to hold on to. The carrier’s belt is the only equipment allowed to help in keeping one’s grasp. Some other tools known to be beneficial are a bunch of birch switches, swimming glasses and swimming slippers.

Eroticism

You can sense the excitement in the air during the wife carrying competition. The core of the race is made of a woman, a man and their relationship. The wife carrying and eroticism have a lot in common. Intuitive understanding of the signals sent by the partner and becoming one with the partner are essential in both of them – sometimes also whipping.

Eukonkanto

The sport of Wife-Carrying has roots in Finland, supposedly reminiscent of a past in which men courted women by running to their village, picking them up, and carrying them off. Today, it is celebrated with the World Wife-Carrying Championships in Sonkajärvi, Finland. You can explore their website (it's in English) to learn more about this terrifically fun sport.

Xin Hui and I are proud to be representing Singapore in the 14th World Wife-Carrying Championships on 1 July 2006. Check back here for more news, and wish us luck!

Graduate Dinner, 12 June 1886

Thanks to my friend Jason McAllister, who sent this to me, writing, "Amazing how all it takes is a simple edit to your pic and it could have been from any time in the last two hundred years. ;-)"

First They Came...

It's very easy to be an anonymous face in the crowd at a large rally or demonstration in support of a greater cause or principle. It's another thing to step forward and put yourself and the people you care about on the line because of what you believe.

Oxford- and other medical research institutions in the UK- have been the target of terrorists who are campaigning against animal testing. While there are many reasonable, law-abiding people who are animal rights campaigners, the terrorists make it extremely hard for any proper debate to take place. Their tactics have included death threats, lies, grave-robbing (the owners of a company which raised lab animals had their gradmother's body exhumated and stolen), and closest to home, the Hertford College boathouse was burnt down. They have threatened that anyone connected with the University of Oxford is not safe as long as Oxford continues the use animals in its experiments.

I've yet to hear a compelling argument against animal testing. I believe animal testing saves lives. I know the UK has the most stringent rules in the world concerning the conduct of tests. I realise that almost every medicine I use has had some component of animal testing. I don't like it, but I believe it's necessary.

Today E- put forward a motion for our MCR to support PRO-TEST, a group which is leading the campaign to support animal testing, and to support animal testing in UK in general. We had an impassioned debate about it. I think there was a lot of fear about being targeted by animal rights protesters as a result of this resolution, but as E pointed out, they targeted us anyway by burning our boathouse down, without even knowing who we are. There was also debate about whether it was right to pass a resolution that individual members of the MCR disagreed with, but the MCR does that all the time, and the motion had been publicised three days before the meeting, so there was plenty of notice for anyone who objected to come to the meeting to speak and vote.

When it came time to vote, I put my hand up and voted with the majority to pass the resolution. I don't deny that I am worried for my safety and my friends' safety, but we cannot let ourselves be intimidated by terrorists who seek to undermine our way of life. If they think they can hijack the debate, impose their own agenda, and ignore democracy and the rule of law, then we have to stand up and show them that they are wrong. It would have been easy to keep my hand down- and I don't blame anyone who did, they have their own, valid reasons- but I felt it was important to stand up for the principle that I believe in.

Still, at the back of my mind I'm a little worried. But I had to make a choice. I could stand up for what I believe to be right and moral. Or I could keep my head down and avoid the issue. I made my choice. I will have to live with the consequences.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
- Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)

X-Men 3

What a load of rubbish. There goes £5.80 and two hours of my life wasted.