Live Health and LIVE EARTH

My apologies for such a long absence. It has been an interesting time, where I've taken the opportunity to explore the hidden depths of hospitals and experience some of the most interesting observational procedures. Nothing life-threatening, just a few probes and scopes and scans just to figure out how my erratic transplanted kidney is faring.

To all intents and purposes it has shut down for good, but its still physically stable, so not at risk from infection, which is a relief, because that scenario would have led to more medical fun and games. After several visits along the long white corridors, I was finally introduced to the CT Scan machine - a wonderfully futuristic device that section by section, recorded a 3D image of my internal structures. Quite fascinating really, apart from the slight discomfort of having to be injected with some kind of fluorescent red dye.

Anyway all this probing has revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and that's good to know - so I am back to work on various projects and functioning as per normal.

I've given the blog a bit of a spring-cleaning, and although its not completely ready yet, and yes indeed it may seem a bit childish - I thought it would be nice to inject a bit of colour into the scheme of things. Let's see how long it takes for Charith to get bored with this look...

Anyway, in terms of all things green and environmentally friendly, I tuned into LIVE EARTH last week, and dutifully wore green over the weekend to show my support. I then watched as much of the concerts as I could, and then waited for global impact to take place like the proverbial shockwaves from an earthquake. Of course those ever expanding ripples of awareness never really took shape. I am old enough to remember the Live Aid concerts and the Amnesty International concerts before that, and the incredible impact they had on audiences across the world - it wasn't just the music, but it was the messages that the musicians were actively conveying on stage that really hit home.

Live Earth seemed far more of a passive affair from what I experienced - most performers just did their sets and left the stage without so much as a word of green advice to their adoring audiences. A wasted opportunity.

And then of course there was the strange paradox of an event celebrating environmental-friendliness, while over 100 popstars jetted around the world, using vast amounts of power to light up their shows and pump up their amplifiers. Of course a true green, carbon-neutral, eco-friendly music concert would have been the popstars performing unplugged to small intimate audiences in pubs and clubs across the world, without any spectacular lightshows and no big sound systems.

But would that make good TV? Of course not.

And anyway, an eco-friendly music extravaganza is sorely lacking if Bono and U2 are not involved. Did anyone else notice their strange absence? This should have been right up their moral alleyway...

Linkin Park were good though