February 12, 2007
Mauritius used to be known as the land of shooting stars. But, I am afraid it can’t aspire to that title anymore! With all those lights of civilization thrown towards the sky, it’s becoming harder to catch sight of a star, let alone a shooting one!
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a bright street lamp. But perhaps, it should throw more light downwards where people are, and not towards the sky where the little green men are! What about using lanterns that throw light downwards instead of those lamps which throw too much light upwards?
Centuries ago, astronomers looking at the sky saw bulls, scorpions and fishes. Nowadays they see white dwarfs, quasars and black holes. But the night sky does not belong to scientists alone. It is also the birthright of dreamers, poets, lovers and singers. Is there any Mauritian who has never heard of Tino Rossi’s “Tant qu’il y aura des étoiles!”
November 22, 2006
The party
When they invited us to that party I was very surprised. These people had always given us the cold shoulder. For years they had remained aloof in their luxurious villa, having their own private parties, and dancing the night away on the great veranda. We were next door neighbours and from my window I often saw the guests arrive in their BMWs, Mercedes and Volvos.
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November 22, 2006
Battle in the Arctic sea
Prologue: In 1943 Russia was at war with Germany. To help Russia in her struggle, Britain was furnishing her with war material, transported by ships over the Arctic Ocean. My uncle served on a cruiser that accompanied one of those ship convoys. This is his story.
As so often happens with the greatest adventure in one’s life, it started by accident. At that time, in November 1943, I was working at the Admiralty in London. My job title was : wireless operator, but I had very little to do with transmitting messages – either by radio or morse. Most of the time I was in the War room, assigned to just pinning coloured pins on charts to show the movement of ship convoys over the Atlantic.
One day, my chief called me to his office.
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November 22, 2006
The missing 800 million
I had finished eating my dholl-puree and was crumpling the wrapping paper to throw it into the bin when I noticed some printed characters. I smoothed back the paper and looked closer. Right at the bottom, in the left hand corner, was the following : IP 132.55.49.84. Now, to most people this might mean nothing, but to any computer programmer the symbols “IP” followed by a string of numbers are highly meaningful. IP means ‘Internet Protocol’ and the numbers indicate the unique address of a computer on the Internet.
I looked at the dholl-puree seller and shook my head in disapproval. Instead of spotless white paper, that guy was using computer stationery for wrapping his dholl-purees! “Must have picked it outside some office,” I thought, and I had a good mind to tell him that he should be more mindful of his clients’ health.
But my irritation soon gave way to curiosity. That string of numbers kept floating in front of my eyes and I was burning to know what computer they were referring to. Apart from the IP address of Harper & Dayle (the company where I was working), I knew of no other IP address. And it was this IP address, precisely, that I was using from home to access my mail from the office computer. (I was using a File Transfer Program, or FTP, for this purpose.)
As soon as I arrived home, I switched on my computer, logged on to the Internet and clicked on the FTP icon. I got the usual log in prompt that asked for an IP address, and with my eyes glued on the dholl-puree wrapper, I carefully entered the string of nine numbers and pressed ‘Enter’.
Immediately, the following message appeared on the screen: “You are now logged on to the Republic Mercantile Bank” and just beneath was another message: “Please enter Username”.
