Strange Hobbies

[RAMESH]

train surfing
Train surfing is a dangerous (and usually illegal) thrill-seeking activity which involves riders clinging or "surfing (http://www.answers.com/topic/surfing)" to the outside of a moving train (http://www.answers.com/topic/train-5), sometimes jumping off either before the train goes too fast or after it has slowed down again. Practitioners are usually young people (under 25). Potential accidents (http://www.answers.com/topic/accident) include collisions (http://www.answers.com/topic/collision) with poles and viaducts (http://www.answers.com/topic/viaduct)/tunnels (http://www.answers.com/topic/tunnel), electrocution (http://www.answers.com/topic/electric-shock) from an electrified overhead wire (http://www.answers.com/topic/overhead-lines) or third rail (http://www.answers.com/topic/third-rail), injury when falling/jumping off, getting run over by the train itself, and getting crushed between the train and a station platform (http://www.answers.com/topic/railway-platform).
The practice is a serious issue in South Africa (http://www.answers.com/topic/south-africa), where many young people have been killed or seriously injured. It is also on the increase in the United Kingdom (http://www.answers.com/topic/united-kingdom). While there are no official numbers, the London Underground (http://www.answers.com/topic/london-underground) is now running an advertising campaign against "tube surfing". The advertisements now at most underground stations show a female figure with one arm and the caption "she was lucky" next to it. The medias of Denmark (http://www.answers.com/topic/denmark) have also recently shown a slight interest in the phenomenon. During the second half of 2005 and first of 2006, there has been several inputs both in newspapers and (especially regional) TV-news about the dangerous hobby. The channel TV2 even aired a short 8-minute documentary (exact date May 15th, 2006) about train surfing, interviewing the traffic chief of the Danish Railways (DSB (http://www.answers.com/topic/danske-statsbaner) for short) Erik Christensen, a hospital doctor in plastic surgery (http://www.answers.com/topic/plastic-surgery) and two anonymous train surfers. The links for them are below.
The 'sport' was made popular in the 1980s in Germany (http://www.answers.com/topic/germany). There it was called "S-Bahn Surfing". Slowly the former trainsurfing culture changed got integrated in the German graffiti (http://www.answers.com/topic/graffiti) culture. And the phenomenon was long forgotten until the millennium. But in 2005 it was rediscovered by a gang from Frankfurt (http://www.answers.com/topic/frankfurt), Germany. The leader of the crew--who called himself "The Trainrider"--famously surfed the InterCityExpress (http://www.answers.com/topic/intercityexpress), the fastest train in Germany. He died a year later from an incurable form of leukemia (http://www.answers.com/topic/leukemia) according to a home-made video showing his ride but there is some controversy if this is true or not.

[RAMESH]

Competitors are in training for the first Extreme Ironing World Championships, which will be held in Munich later this year. Events will include ironing while standing on a mountainside and ironing while on or under water.
http://www.natives.co.uk/news/2002/0502/images/iron.jpg
"HAVE FUN, LOOK TIDY"
What kind of sport is Extreme Ironing? The organisers explain...
"Extreme Ironing is a sport which combines the danger and the spirit of an extreme sport with boring housework you have to do. By Extreme Ironing the sportsman gets a great fitness and he is always looking smart.
Extreme Ironing calls on you to take your iron and your board to extreme places to iron your clothes there. That can happen on a mountain, in a forrest, in lakes, rivers, etc, on crowded public places or wherever you like. There is no limit.
Extreme Ironing... is also dangerous. So you have to handle your iron very carefully and at the beginning it is a good advise to do Extreme Ironing at not too dangerous places. Just practise on not too steep slopes or in your backgarden. Do never ever Extreme Ironing on your own if you are not a professional. Otherwise you ask for danger. There are some protections for your arms and so on. Please use it."
The object of extreme ironing, which was apparently invented in Britain, is "to take ironing to the edge by demonstrating a spectacular or creative ironing style, whilst taking the creases out of your clothes".

[RAMESH]

Insect Fights

Structure
People who want to have these kinds of fights will normally hoard many different type of insects for the battles. Some of the most popular bugs are the Stag Beetle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_Beetle), the Cricket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_%28insect%29) and the Goliath Beetle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_Beetle), as their sheer size and jumping ability make them formidable opponents. They are trained by their owners to become stronger and more aggressive. The training involves pulling stones or lead weights tied to the bug's back or running around an obstacle course to help with their ability to think.[citation needed] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources) Surprisingly enough, the insects are fed as if they were real boxers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxers), being given fresh steaks and eggs. After the training is complete, the owners will take them to the designated fighting arena and the bugs are forced to fight each other.

[edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Insect_fighting&action=edit&section=2)] Object

The fight can take place on a log stump or a circle drawn in the dirt, anywhere that is a small ring. The ways to win these "battles" are by either one insect pushing the other out of the ring, one of them running out of the ring in fear (which happens very rarely), or one of them dying while fighting

[RAMESH]

The Choking Game
Devi Sankaree Govender (Carte Blanche presenter): “Bennie is referring to a frightening new game children are playing in South Africa. A game where pre-teens and teens are becoming addicted to suffocation roulette, where they choke themselves, depriving their brains of oxygen.”

This frightening fixation is known as The Choking Game, and has taken the lives of hundreds of children around the world in the last few years.

[RAMESH]

Gangster Killing
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Ebrahim Moosa was in the back room with his children when his house exploded on July 13, 1998. Luckily for Moosa and his family, the pipe bomb was in the front hall, and no one was hurt. But Moosa knew who was to blame — People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, a Muslim vigilante group that targeted him for speaking out against them. Although Moosa was at the time the head of Islamic studies at the University of Cape Town and had just received the prestigious Ford Foundation Grant, he knew that they would come after him again. So he left his job and his home and fled with his family to the United States less than a month after the bombing.

PAGAD and its alleged escapades have captured the headlines in South Africa many times in the four years since its inception. Its members describe PAGAD as a social organization working to rid South Africa of crime; police and other observers see it as a vigilante group that now terrorizes the neighborhoods it once set out to rescue. The only consensus South Africans can reach about PAGAD is that it started out as a good idea. To understand why it began and how it evolved, one must first turn to the Cape Town neighborhoods where it began.
A small child stands on a corner, twirling a homemade toy: a piece of string with a rock tied to the end. Behind him, houses huddle close together, their foundations sliding along the sandy ground. The windowless home in front of which he is standing belongs to a known drug dealer, clearly identifiable by the brick surrounding wall and black security gates. In Mitchell's Plain, this crowded neighborhood in the Cape Flats, jobs and schools are scarce, drugs and guns plentiful.
Each church elicits memories of a gangster funeral, each street the memorial of some innocent caught in the crossfire. This is the landscape of the Cape Flats, the troubled flatlands outside the beautiful sea and slope of Cape Town. The Cape Flats are the home of the coloured or mixed-race class, the social misfits of Apartheid. Either products of black and white unions or descendants of light-skinned African tribes like the Khosa, they were light enough to avoid designation as black Africans. But this didn't make their lives easy — coloured people lived a precarious existence, caught between the two extremes of white and black. They are still caught, trapped in the cycle of poverty and despair unrelieved by the end of Apartheid six years ago. In the Cape Flats, the average family size is nine, and more than 2/3 of these families live in poverty. They are counted lucky to have electricity and running water. In a place like Mitchell's Plain which offers its 1.5 million residents no schools, a single movie theater and two shopping centers, there is little to do but sit around, have a drink, trade some gossip, smoke some crack, and rob your neighbor. Gang violence was an inevitability, and the end of Apartheid only worsened the situation. When South Africa transitioned from a police state to a fledgling democracy, these gangs took advantage of the less visible police to openly peddle drugs and extort "protection fees" from innocent citizens.


"It's very easy to be drawn into a gang," said Captain Desmond Laing of the Mitchell's Plain police. "The problem is people are very poor, and drug addiction is very high. If you don't have money, and a gangster comes to you and says 'Here's some money. I'll pay your water and electric and food and by exchange, I'll leave packets for you,' you're going to do it. They store their firearms and drugs at innocent people's houses. Everybody wants Levi's jeans."
And the attraction of gang life is more than the siren song of Levi's and FUBU jeans. For a society heavily influenced by American rap culture, it's cool to be in a gang. The heroes of the Cape Flats gangsters are evident in the omnipresent graffiti: gang names like Ugly Americans, Young Americans and Sisco Yakkies decorate any available space. On the sides of one Mitchell's Plain apartment building are two huge murals of American rap icons Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur, smirking down upon these sorry stomping grounds.
Although there may be a known drug dealer on virtually each corner of the Cape Flats, there is also a mosque. Along with being predominantly poor and coloured, the residents of Cape Flats are also 80 percent Muslim. To them, the drugs and alcohol peddled by local gangsters were particularly offensive since Islam forbids the use of intoxicants. Frustration with local gangs and the inability of police to stop them led many of these Muslims to gather in the local Gatesville Mosque in 1996 and spontaneously create what was later named PAGAD, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs. At first, the community response was overwhelmingly positive.

[RAMESH]

does no one else know of some strange shit the people do for fun?

[Alesco]

I used to jump on trains when a was a kid Ramesh.

We. As kids, Used to jump off the bridge in to water of course when we was young and nieve. Damn, that was tha good old days, Before heroin and Crack came in to our lives. Thats life though, Aint it

Jumpin off the bridge was mad fun

[RAMESH]

where are you from alesco?
for the record i never did crazy shit like train surfing my hobbies as a kid revolved around women,weed,alcohol & fighting as a man i have given up on all of that except the weed