Oneupmanship

Do you know how I have been feeling in the past few days? Feeling rather light-headed. Not confused but only light-headed. Too many things happening around me. Strange thoughts moving in my head. Thinking, observing, thinking, looking, thinking..... So much so that I've to put my irreverent take on the world affairs down on paper.

First, about the royal wedding in London. As we know, the official invitations were sent from Buckingham Palace quite a while ago. While the invitations went out to countries that had a sitting monarchy, all other heads of state were ignored. And that included the heaviest head of all, the president of the United States. Barack Obama did not receive any invitation. So he stayed behind in Washington, presumably to sulk away the missed opportunity.

On the day of the wedding, a huge crowd of about 500,000 people - an equivalent number, if I may say, to the hippies that attended the original Woodstock festival in 1969 - surged through the streets and parks of London to have their peak at all the pomp and pageantry. All these cheering and whooping were brought into our living rooms courtesy of the live satellite broadcast. Nobody could have missed that, especially the Heavy Head in Washington.

How can, the Heavy Head might have said to himself. How can we be upstaged by this nation of shopkeepers? I can't be sitting here twiddling my thumbs all day long; I cannot be upstaged by the Pommies. I must find a way to show the world that we, the Amercan people, can celebrate just as wildly.

So he decided to take a chance. Since his spooks and intelligence people have more or less determined with some 60 to 80 percent probability that his favourite enemy was in town, why not send in a crack team of well-wishers to greet him? In an operation that lasted no longer than a typical TV episode without the commercials, Obama's Navy SEAL Team Six landed in a Pakistani town with an unlikely name of Abbottabad (named not after Abbott and Costello, but after an obscure James Abbott who was an army major in the 19th century) and took out Osama bin Laden. Nothing personal, of course, get it?

Naturally, the United States erupted with joy. They whooped with joy. They ran around with joy. They climbed flagpoles with joy. They climbed trees with joy. They waved their flags with joy. They marched to the White House with joy. In short, they enjoyed with joy. :-P

You think only the British pommies can enjoy, meh? Aiyah, the American people can also thump their chests with pride too, you know.

Amidst all the joy, glee and fun on both sides of the Atlantic, nobody knew who could shout better or louder. Practically a stalemate. Probably not good for this good humoured rivalry to continue indefinitely between Big Brother and Small Brother. Got other bigger fish to fry around the world actually. So how to resolve this issue of "my events are bigger than your events, my celebrations are wilder than your celebrations"? No problem, send in the troops! Uh, sorry, I mean an old soldier in the guise of Prince Charles. Hey, he did serve in the British Navy and Air Force, you know.

So Charles flew to Washington to have a friendly chit-chat with Obama. Something like soothing his feathers after the wedding snub. I think enough is enough, we've both had our fun, let's drop all this display of oneupmanship thingy, he proposed. And Obama, having already gotten in the Last Word, agreed. End of story and hence, the end of my irreverent contribution to world affairs too. See you!