There is a fanatastic sneak preview comic in a drastically cool bag with a badge for person with the best caption for the picture below:
Winner announced soon! Er...
There is a fanatastic sneak preview comic in a drastically cool bag with a badge for person with the best caption for the picture below:
I have recently been taken into a swirl by online shopping, even though I am a tech-worker and therefore possibly savvy enough to be doing online shopping since 2001 but well, to be fair I didn't have much money then.
I am sure all this is all old school for thou art internet-savvy people but here are my latest hits anyway:
1. Quidco - It's a cash co-operative and you get cashback for almost everything including Waterstone's (with free delivery!), John Lewis, lastminute.com, eurostar..the list is endless. And if you switch your electricity provider you ever get £25 for using moneysupermarket. The only downside is when you make a purchase and then later realize that it's on quidco - you feel that you have been cheated, surely the cashback works on giving the advertising money to the consumers?
2. Anyway, the next one I have really started liking though haven't bought anything from is kaboodle
Where else would you find things such as
Hand Soaps
My grandfather, 103, passed away today. We had been expecting this since January - he had not been eating properly for about a couple of months now. Winters in India have been colder this year and therefore tougher for him.
Last time I visted India, he had started crying on seeing me. That memory is strong in my head.
I know he had a good innings but I feel terribly sad. He was my last grandparent and to me, he is where I know our family to start.
It's sadder still to understand how my Dad must feel.
I want to visit India, but he has already been cremated. I am also scared of facing the ceremonies which are going to be sorrowful. It's easier to stay here and immerse yourself in the quotidian day.
For I know that whenever I visit home now, I won't be seeing my grand Dad first thing when I get there and wait for him to recognise me. Feel my face and wait for a smile to appear on his face a few moments later.
And while his life was celebratory, this is sad.
is banana, in case you wanted to know.
There are several reasons for this:
1. I hate how mushy they are - you don't really enjoy biting into a banana unless they are green and then when they are green, they taste too bitter.
2. I also feel utterly dismayed at how they have a few seeds and that reminds me of how they are farmed asexually.
3. Let alone the fact that there is no rush of juices when you bite into a banana, they also leave your mouth really dry.
4. Finally, for all of their disadvantages listed in points 1 - 3 above, I am surprised at how hard they are to keep - they get injured easily, you have to eat them at just the right time, keep them in a banana guard etc etc.
It's insane. Banana is officially my least favourite fruit.
Defiant as I may sound since I am an immigrant and living in somebody else's country means living by their rules, but moves such as these from the Government are downright pitiful attempts at preserving the country's culture.
London is cosmopolitan, there are different people from all over the world which is what makes it so culturally and socially live. And I suppose, at some point in our lives, we all get cross at some new immigrant who tries to get on the train before people have got off or somebody who won't understand the language.
But being an immigrant, I know those are hard times and one learns them as they go along. I don't know enough to comment on London's culture now to say about 20 years ago but I have a feeling that the rude behaviour associated with Londoners is not down to increase in culturally different people as it is with a bigger population (which might be down to immigration).
But despite everything, in a manner similar to teaching values, settling into British Culture cannot be forced upon with the introduction of Migrant's Advice Packs.
In some ways, the ID cards, the Migrants' Advice Pack are humiliating.
Whilst the freedom of speech the single most important thing that makes Britain with its terribly grey weather more attractive than the Sunny skies of India with rigorous measures as these, I feel that perhaps living in this country would mean being subject to constant mortification of my thoughts, actions and being.
That everytime somebody talked about immigration and its effects, I would feel guilty for ruining their standard of life in a selfish move to improve my own standard of living.
That if I made a mistake while walking down a street of London now, somebody could just turn back at me and say: "Didn't you read your Migrants' Advice Pack?" I even foresee a point based system like driving licences for immigrants where if they accumulate too many points they will be deported on the grounds of being unable to integrate in the British Society.
And this is really what would prompt me to pack my bags and go back to my country - and perhaps, that's their whole point...
A latest research conducted by Olivia Joules & Co has conclusively proved that individuals who work from home more than 2 days a weeks are likely to perform better in mentally challenging and high competitive Channel 4 programme - Countdown.
So what exactly causes such a dramatic improvement in one of the most cognitive abilities, we asked one of survey respondents "I set an alarm for 15.16 everyday which gives me just enough to make a nice cuppa tea and get pen and paper ready for the programme to begin"
We have also known that many companies have approached Olivia Joules & Co to discuss these results to improve productivity amongst knowledge workers. This might even lead to a petition at the Downing Street as workers demand more time to work from home.
Forget game rooms in the offices, its the a cup of 'cha' and countdown which are the latest in human resources textbooks.
Human Over Population is a delicate subject.
We are a highly reproductive and adaptable race. We rabbit even more than the rabbits do.
Millions of people around the world live in abject poverty, children die of malnutrition and malaria, women sufffer from poor sanitation facilities and die during child birth, even men have little to look forward to.
And we are aware of this, me and you.
We would even dig into our pockets for £2 a week required to help these people.
Developmental economics theories postulate that better allocation of resources, educating our populations, adopting urban lifestyles are to be our best attempts at eliminating poverty from the world.
But perhaps, one of the best way to address these issues is legalization of Gay Rights around the world. Liberalisation of Gay Rights is not only important from a human rights point of view but also from a purely economic perspective too.
So, at the next Climate Change convention, perhaps Gordon Brown and his allies should discuss addition of this to the treaty.
It's the only way forward.
Since I have been feeling ugly recently, I have taken to extreme measures of not talking to anybody directly.
Whilst e-mail is my preferred method of communication, I am also online on three different instant messengers for work related issues in case somebody needs my valuable assistance.
I am almost sheepishly staring at my screen so I dont have to show my full frontal view of a spotty chin to anybody who walks past my desk.
To an extent, I have also been trying to overhear any noise in the tea/coffee area before stepping in and surreptitiously going to the toilets to see if my hair too greasy and my skin too bad.
In the extreme circumstances when I really have to go to speak to somebody about work then I have a scarf around my chin - where the greatest concentration of my spots is to be found.
And while I find that all this works, I am also beginning to find out why Librarians, Geeks and others of the socially awkward job situations are so - mostly because people are spotty. That's probably why you never find a socially awkward beautician for example....
Given the frequency of Airline Crashes recently, I am beginning to feel that it is in fact a conspiracy of the Environmentalists/Governments/Train Companies to enstill a fear in people's mind so they don't fly - that way our emissions from air travel don't increase so much.
Perhaps, what we thought was an abstract in Gordon Brown's approach in tackling climate change is not abstract at all?
What do you think? Have the number of crashes scared you from flying, yet?
Hindustan Times, India's National Daily has yet again shown where it wants to be in shaping of Modern India - in a direction which leads westwards.
I am not a fascist or even a luddite. I give my humble consent to adoption of policies, practises from societies and cultures when they may infact be unavailable in our own society or be more efficient than already existing systems.
But our very own Hindustan Times has blind foldedly taken to comparing everything that does exist in India and comparing it to the west. Repeatedly you'd find news in Indian papers such as Yoga is applauded in the west, Western Scientists say that Ayurveda is good for your skin, oh ho ho, Jesus visited India and oh, lookey! even Newton got inspiration from us! Aren't we cool?
To me, India's biggest newspaper comes across as a 15-year old who is seeking validation at every step of the way whilst pretending that he has got his own opinions but in fact, he is nearly always shooting off somebody else's shoulder.
Media shapes a society. And conversely, a society consumes media. That's to say if the whole world wants to learn about Amy Winehouse's antics, Evening Standard would oblige, as would Guardian if only in the G2 section.
So there is a consumer demand for knowing our standing in the west. May be several people can't visit the west to make their own decision and perhaps in fact, they don't even want to research themselves to find out. But it's the fundamental belief in all things western are good is what Nestle's advertisement of Breast Milk Substitutes work so good that it works so well.
And instead of questioning and possibly even disproving these to our society's benefit, the Indian Media has taken the easier way to consumerism which is rife in every part of the country.
Just to site a few examples, only recently they were talking about Indian Rupees in Millions, Billions and Trillions! I don't exactly understand why because we have an equivalent of lacs (10 to the 5), crores (10 to the 7), arabs (10 to 9) and kharabs (10 to the 11). Do they fail to understand that this is in fact disadvantaging our own people by losing the basis of all human communication and even civilization - language. Is that infact their whole point?
One may argue that since they are Indian Newspapers written in English, it shoudn't be so surprising to learn their market consists of people who are infact eager to learn English. But we all know, that when vernacular press came into India it was started in English as there wasn't a common language that bound the 18 states of the country and not because they wanted to disadvantage the poor which is what the aim of these newspapers seems to be.
It's not just this example, the yearly awards for High Achieving Non-Resident Indians is another malarkey - out of the six contenders for this year's awards three of them have given up their Indian citizenship. Wouldn't it be wise to think again that these people left India a long time ago with the intention of never coming back.
Why honour them instead of somebody who is using UN money to teach people in Chennai slums? Or how about the efforts being made by some Individuals, volunteers who have gone out of their way to bring life back to people who wouldn't have dreamt it otherwise.
Is applauding an NRI another evidence to their badly formed theory that everything western is good?
One can never be sure if they even have an ulterior motive but they are not going the way they had started 60 years ago when Mahatma Gandhi heralded their first copy. So shame be upon them!
There, rant over.