MANI VS PAUL

Mani, the Singaporean parakeet and a celebrity in Singapore's Little India, predicted a victory for the Netherlands in the 2010 FIFA finals. Paul the Octopus, forecasted a Spanish victory. In my last blog, I had mentioned that should the soothsayer octopus's prediction come true,he will go up in my estimation. Surely, he now has gone up several notches with a clean record of correct forecasts. I hope that German fans will now cool down and not threaten the poor Paul with dire consequences. After all sometimes truth is bitter.

But South African President Jacob Zuma laughed away at the octopus's prediction and said that in South Africa they listen to the scattered bones of dead animals. Witch doctors do that to foretell the future. Obviously, he wished to remain neutral and did not want to provoke either side. What he said was interesting. That opens up a Pandora's box.

Watch out human soothsayers. There is hot competition. At this rate,you may run out of business.

THE MIGHTY OCTOPUS-PAUL

I hadn't thought much of octopuses till the recent 2010 FIFA World Cup football matches started. They are innocuous invertebrates to me. Yes,in a way they are special. They have eight legs, three hearts and they are supposed to be very intelligent and sadly both sexes have very short life span.

But suddenly like the inanimate Vuvuzela, Paul the octopus has shot into the limelight. Thanks to its accurate predictions on the match results involving Germany, Paul,the octopus, has become the most loved and hatred invertebrate of those who have won or lost their matches. So far all the psychic mussel eater's six predictions have come true. Cent percent as they say. Paul's total track record is awesome. 11 out of 12. It is higher than the 'flipping coin' probability. Something that will put our astrologers to shame.

The Argentinians are seething with anger when it predicted their loss to Germany and recently Germany's unexpected defeat to Spain has left the Germans shell-shocked and boiling with rage. Some want to kill it, some want to fry its brains in hot oil. Some want it to be fried in garlic butter or barbecued or turned into a seafood salad. Will the sensational fortune-teller and global superstar forecast the correct World Cup winner?

Its psychic powers will surely be put into severe test as world-wide expectaions on its forecasting abilities have gone up beyond imagination. Paul has also become every bookie's envy.If Paul predicts the World Cup winner correctly, in my esteem surely he would go up many notches. Because, here is one field where the octopus has outsmarted us human beings.

The two year-old cephalopod was born in England and lives in Oberhaussen in Germany. It chooses a mussel from a glass tank marked with the opposing country's flags. Before the Germany-Spain clash,it ignored the tank with the colour of the German flag and it chose the Spanish flag.The number of anti-'oktopus' songs is increasing day by day in Germany.Paul has achieved an amazing 2.6million hiits on Google so far and he is one of the "Top Ten" trends in Twitter. The famous mollusk has to better watch out. For the first time, he will be predicting the result of a non-German match.He will have to swim away fast to the FIFA winner's shores and seek asylum before the death threats materialise and the famous German knives are out.