Ramblings
Infoporn! Are you an addict?
Do you subscribe to RSS feeds? How many? Do you religiously seek new headlines from Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, Metafilter, Tailrank or Slashdot. And of course there is a whole list of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. Then I’m afraid to say, you, my friend are an info junkie. Yes it’s not as drastic as substance abuse but it’s still pretty bad. You need that fix daily, sometimes even more than once a day. You bite your nails feverishly as you click on that refresh button or check your feed, to see what’s going to be next on the front page of Digg. Have we all become sick? Are we not just addicts of Infoporn!
The early internet era or should I say Web1.0, was abound with information but it was more of the classic style ala professional journalists going online. Now thanks to blogging, we have increased that exponentially. Technorati claims there are about 55million blogs! Talk about information overload. Not only that, we are now connected in this virtual world, completely and constantly. I know it’s ironic but by blogging about this, I too am feeding the Infoporn.
We have become slaves of our own user generated mindless dribble. Wow, look its Web2.0! Everyone can write about something or upload a video and then have a discussion about it. Yay! I say turn it off, log off, when was the last time you struck up a conversation with a stranger and laid your heavily opinionated biased rant on that person? That’s exactly what we are doing when we are blogging. Of course it’s not forced upon somebody. Do I have a point to all this!? Yes! Stop reading this and just stop, stop doing whatever you are doing and take a moment. Take a moment for introspection. Just shut out all the noise and listen to the rhythm of your breathing. Before you go back to your world filled with Infoporn, take a moment or two.
You can thank me later for this oasis of peace in the desert of information.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Wine pairings
Ok so I’m not really a wine connoisseur but I do love wine and can tell the good from the bad. I might be a bit of a wine snob. But that’s all because I refuse to accept nothing but the best or closer to that side of the spectrum. Now the problem most people have is that they don’t know which wine goes with what food. Not to fret because the Kendall Jackson website has a quick pairing guide. You can also download it as a PDF.
My personal recommendation some Kosta Browne Pinot Noir (2004) with goat cheese and prosciutto. mmm… yummy
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Who left this hole in the ground? Keith Olbermann on 9/11
Found this excellent post on Crooks and Liars.
You can watch his video
Windows Media Video OR QuickTime Viideo
To read the entire transcript, click on the link below.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Even coffee cups can teach you a thing or two about life
My dear friend Lidia forwarded this sentimental email to me that contains a life lesson. So I thought I’d share it with the world. Thanks Lid!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to
visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into
complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the
professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and
an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain
looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves
to the coffee.When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If
you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving
behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want
only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and
stress.Be assured that the cup itself, adds no quality to the coffee in most
cases, just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.
What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously
went for the best cups… and then began eyeing each other’s cups. Now
consider this:Life is the coffee, and the jobs, money and position in society are
the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type
of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we
live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy
the coffee God has provided us.“God brews the coffee, not the cups……….enjoy the coffee”
Cool off this summer with a “Strawberry-Watermelon Juice with Aloe Vera”
Found this great recipe for a thirst quencher on Flickr:
- Puree the ripe strawberries and fresh sweet watermelons
- Add enough sugar syrup to sweeten it up.
- Scoop a generous portion (depending on how much you like) of sweetened tapioca pearls or fruit jelly or aloe jelly into the empty glass before pouring in your juice. Enjoy.
TIPS:
Halve the strawberries and send them in the freezer for a bit to make them strawberry ice cubes. Puree the watermelon juice and add the frozen fresh berries, and get a thicker drink, that’s not watered down, with the occasional small bit of frozen strawberry. It’s super refreshing and tasty!
[to make it even more refereshing add a bit of Rum]
Snakes on a Babe!?
OK, so how low will they go trying to promote this damn movie?? Pretty low, pretty low. Since they’ve made it, why not play it! Here you go… Snakes on a Babe game.
Monsoons..
Monsoon is basically a wind pattern that arises in the Arabian Sea and Indian ocean and brings with it water laden clouds. It starts at the end of May and ends by the first week of October and so it’s termed as the Monsoon season. Having lived in Miami I am used to heavy rains. But I am not used to going days on end without seeing the sun. Here is a recount of the effect an overcast has on your mood after having to go a week without seeing the sun.
Day 1: Ahh… the rains, it reminds of when I was a kid and we used to take pleasure of splashing around in the rain water. Making paper boats and floating them in the puddles was every kids favorite past-time. Of course this long before Nintendo or even Atari.
Day 2: Reminds me of how the media romanticizes the rains. They paint a picture of two lovers cuddling each other and watching the rain while sipping on hot tea and eating samosas (Indian empanada).
Day 3: A little rain didn’t hurt anyone. Besides, the rain nurtures the plants and trees and makes our surrounding plush green. So what if the streets are flooded, the condition of the roads are getting worse and traffic is impossible. At least, someone benefits from all this, the kids get a day off from school.
Day 4: OK, I need to get out of the house a little, so I watch the news. The weathermen here are clueless and don’t know jack about wind patterns and predictive modelling. The use of poor quality material make the streets easily prone to holes even with a little rain. You cannot drive 2 feet without lunging into a pothole. I feel like im driving on a dirt road in some village.
Day 5: When the fuck will this rain stop!?!
Day 6: The closest thing to a sun you’ve seen in days is a 100watt light bulb. This is when you start praying to the rain gods to have mercy.
Day 7: The sun is playing peek-a-boo with the clouds and it still keeps raining. You start giving up hope and succumb to the majestic power of nature. Rain, rain, more rain. Just keep it coming won’t you. Why not just fill up the entire city like a giant bowl and let’s see who sinks or swims.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Happy Birthday (to me)…. Reinvented!
OK, another year gone and another notch added to my belt of life. So I ponder why we have made so much progress and yet we still have the same old tired Happy Birthday song. So here’s my attempt at changing that.
It’s your Birthday!
It’s your Birthday!
Hey you.. It’s your Birthday
For us, it’s just another day
But for you more than we can say
Coz you’re older,
Older and it shows
We’re glad its you and not us.. yeah it blows
Chorus
It’s your Birthday!
It’s your Birthday!
Hey you.. It’s your Birthday
(and then point at the person and end it with a “you bitch, you slut, you whore”)
Yay! now go on and do your part and spread the word. For the musically inclined please add some good melody to it. I am open to suggestions to improving the above lyrics.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )How NOT to ask a girl out….
OK, so imagine you’re a girl (if you already are then skip that) and you go out to a friends party. As at any party, there are a variety of people, at different levels of sobriety. Or should I say levels of inebriation. You meet a guy and have a chat with him and that’s that. The next day you check your email and voila! You get an email from the same drunk guy. It all depends on what your level of attraction was to this bloke. In any case, being single it’s always flattering to be asked out unexpectedly.
But this English guy took it a bit too far. He met this girl at a party and he really like her. So he got her email address from the party invite and wrote an email. This is where it get it’s interesting.
He started of by saying, “It was wonderful to meet you on Saturday, and I wonder if you would consider meeting me for coffee sometime; maybe at the Tate Modern? OK. This is where my common sense is telling me to stop? keep it simple and positive Joe.”
And as I was reading, I kept saying STOP Joe STOP. But NOO… Joe didn’t quit. He goes on to say “Your smile is the freshest of my special memories. Regardless of whether we see each other again, I will use it as I do my other special memories. I will call on it when I am disheartened or low.”
Umm… Joe? How many tequila shots did you do? But wait, it get’s better.
“If you are half as intelligent and aware as I believe you to be, I am sure that you will find what I have written, in the very least, sweet. If I am twice as lucky as I would dare to hope, you will find this note charming and agree to contact me and arrange a date.”
Now you are questioning her intelligence! A word of advice to you wannabe Romeos, NEVER and I say NEVER write an email when you are drunk. Specially not to someone that is a potential date. And, yes I tell this from personal experience too.
So what does this girl do? Like any other girl, she shares it with her sister. And her sister shares it with her office, who shares it with the rest of the world. Ah… the power of the Internet.
If you want to read the entire original email please click here.
After reading it, you be the judge. Leave your comments. Creepy or Sweet?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Eye Yoga – Day 1
So as previously mentioned I joined this “Eye Yoga” class and as promised here is my long overdue update. So I walk in this place, the first thing they do is give me an eye checkup. Very logical move. I am nearsighted. So the power of my eyes turns out to be -5.00 on left eye and -4.50 on my right eye. Yes, my eyes are quite weak that’s why I could never fulfill my dreams of becoming a pilot.
Anyway, back to Yoga. So they start teaching me a series of exercises. Most people that think of yoga, picture contortion. So did I. So I thought they were going to make me stand on my head, arch my legs and make me read a book. Lucky me, nothing of that sort. They then handed me a pouch full of goodies. Contents of the pouch: a ball, a cup, eye drops, accupressure thingie, some charts, a booklet and a pirate’s eye patch (arrrgh).
They taugh me 20 somewhat exercises so I am not going to bore with them. However, the two main exercises were reading of fine print and playing with a ball (get your mind out of the gutter). I said ball not balls. The playing with the ball improves hand to eye coordination. The patch helps isolate each eye so you can exerercise it one at a time. When I was reading this booklet that had only fine print, I realised that this was no yoga. All his exercises were based on the theories of a Mr W.H.Bates. Who has written a book called “Better eyesight without glasses.”
The irony is that I read this book years back and was too lazy to practise those exercises. And here I am actually paying someone to teach what I could have got out of a book! Sucker!! And you should see the amount of parents that bring their children to this place. So this so called “doctor” lounges around while his “assistants” (all of the women) are the ones teaching these exercises and taking care of the students. Hmm…. nice little scam, sorry I mean operation. Need to some how check his credentials and see if he really went to optometry school.
To be continued…
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