Summer School... Reductio ad Absurdum- Part 1

William Schabas asks a class of 43 weary eyes, So… class what do you think Japan can bring to the ICC (International Criminal Court)…. deafening silence... I can hear a pen drop at the back of the class... someone even yawns… its loud…and then my hand shoots up…(What was wrong with me??)…42 pairs of red, hung over eyes turn to me… maybe I was the smart one… all those sperms and maybe, just maybe I was the fastest…
Sushi????.... even the great William Schabas laughed… Welcome to the Summer School of 2006…
Now really… can you think of a better way of spending your anyways almost over and ruined summer? Well you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out... you just attend a summer school somewhere in the ebbs of Europe surrounded by a bunch of equally wasted legal brains( or maybe the lack of them)( Especially when you don’t have to pay a penny from your non existent penniless pocket)

Well...Summer School is all about…. Hmm... lemme think… booze… more booze… a book launch… some more booze… group lunches where you talk about the crisis in Kosovo and Saddam Hussain like they are your areas of expertise and last but not the least shit loads of more booze.

Sunday morning after a night of debauchery there I was at my first day of summer school hung over from hell… trying to make sense of what Judge Sharon Williams( dressed in a bright green tee resembling a turtle) had to say about the jurisprudential fallacies of the ICTY( International Criminal tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) and really not like I cared a rats arse if someone drafted a statute full of bull shit …not on a Sunday morning for crying out loud

But its reality check time and I was in summer school and I wasn’t here to get all worked up... I was here to sit back and get wasted…. (The only thing I am officially good at now)… and it could be William Schabas or Sharon Williams or even Michael Scharf... no one mattered... it was just the booze… buckets full of to say the least.. Even your coffee at 11 am is spiked… you are served wine along with lunch... and how can they expect all those helpless brilliant individuals (me inclusive) to ever be able to do justice to a class after all that alcohol.

Evenings are spent at a book launch, William Schabas just came out with his new book and you get a signed copy of 700 pages of hard core legal jargon… (You are just happy you saved 98 euros) and obviously you are forced to drink a few more glasses of wine… and maybe they named the course wrong, and in most likelihood ill end up being a wine and beer connoisseur by the end of the summer. (Something any mother would be proud off... don’t you think??)
Now what do you think happens when you unleash a bunch of 43 legal experts on an unsuspecting European city? You probably think wow… maybe they will come up with ideas of how to save the world, rescue Saddam Hussein, indict Blair, or even end the tyranny of Bush…. Naaa… you got it wrong there mate... instead, what you find your self is the same bunch guzzling down pints after pints of Guinness at the nearest pub later that evening..
Suddenly you have a contest going… (the pub owners are ecstatic… (why can’t they have more summer schools)…)…
It’s a knock out contest…the winner ends up finishing 37 pints of Guinness and has to be carried back to his room…and is never seen for another class… (just some of the hazards of summer school).
Brilliant someone even brought a guitar along …so there we were... (now 39.).. (the winner had to be escorted back by 3 people)... sitting at the city centre singing pearl jam covers,( with the author of this blog leading the way..) and trust me when I say this.. there is no better way of inflicting a curfew in a city... half way through ‘Jeremy’... the city centre was empty (not if you include the 39)…
Its 3 am and we are walking back to the village ( Just a European way of terming a bunch of halls put together… surely they have never been to an Indian village…) and no one wants to sleep… but shit.. we got class in 5 hours… … and summer school just kicked in….

To be Contd…..