cities are the future

london
I have been reading edward glaeser's triumph of the city, and suddenly, i see essays on the city everywhere. especially in this website i found recently, thebrowser.com 


glaeser's book is the best of the lot, i think. 
there he says cities will have to reinvent themselves from what in the past was successful but is not useful anymore. They started off as hubs of communication or trade etc, but nowadays with swift modes of transport, and the internet, it is not so crucial now. 


I discovered that a lot of his successful cities seem to have reinvented themselves as hubs of financial centres... selling and buying financial instruments. Certainly new york and london seem to have done that.


london position may help it thrive as a financial centre, as it strides between the two time zones of new york and america and china and far east. as well as being in the same time zone as europe. So it gets to be the conduit between all of them. 


What i find interesting is glaeser's idea that in future, it is greener to live in cities than in the countryside. because of car use, and much more to heat single large dwellings than the many tiny flats that city dwellers have to live in. 


in my experience also, cities are warmer than the countryside. and public transport is so good that there is no need to drive. so i tend to agree with him. but it means that the city of the future will have many tall buildings, and people will live vertically. 


i think that will happen. look at that v expensive high rise in knightsbridge. 1 hyde park. flats there costs more than £100 million. it used to be the price one pays for a single large house in its large grounds but the rich are willing to pay that much money for a flat. That more than anything tells me that high rise living is the future in cities. no more will it be associated with the poor. 


they are literally gated communities in the urban environment. 
Wait a bit, all of you who live in new york, hongkong, singapore, who are now shouting out, high rise flats have been around for ages. but i will remind u that high rise in cities with limited land is one thing, but in a place like london where there is lots of land to spread out, it shows the start of a trend. 
You might caution that high rise by itself may not be enough, just look at dubai where there are so many high rise there is a glut. dubai thinks that if u build it, the world will come. but without a free country the world wont come. restrictions in a islamic country with dress, alcohol and sexual behaviour draconian laws will not attract the world. 


Rather interesting to see the future happening in london and we are seeing the beginning of it now. all the world will follow london i have no doubt. it will be a good thing if successful cities rejuvenate their centres, and attract people to live in the city centre instead. 


in the past we have new york, famous for its skyscrappers but no one else have followed to the same extent. people realise new york has limited land, being an island and no one emulated it by building upwards as it has done. 
Even then, new york is restricting any more high buildings because of the success of jane jacobs in fighting against anymore high rises being built, who believed that human communities thrive in low rise buildings like the greenwich village area. glaeser says she is wrong, because we can see in hongkong, which is very built up, u still get very vibrant street life. 


In the past we see everywhere the trend of the cities of the world, to spread out,not up, if there is land. 


but i think glaeser may be right in saying the rich will make cities build up in future. this is because more of us will want to flock to the city as the jobs are there.  


I like london because it is not built up and i can see blue sky above me, practically everywhere in london. even the most built up areas in the city of london is not overshadowed by tall buildings. I think happiness is being able to see blue sky...but if building up is the future, will i live to see london like new york? i will have to replace my blue sky with something else. 


Perhaps air quality will be so bad that we will all be glad to live in a tall building with its controlled air. 
Even london has bad air quality. that is something that surprised me because we dont have factories here sprouting noxious fumes and yet it seems our nitrate particulates is high. It seems it is all from vehicle traffic. 
I look at the blue sky outside, and the clear air, and i cannot believe that our air over london is polluted. something is skewed. i breathe air here and i think it is not polluted. yet we have these studies saying we have high air pollutants... who is right?? my own observation, or some boffin saying i am wrong??
(It seems both of us is right. it is only high pollution in certain busy roads , like the marylebone road. and even then it only just tips over the arbitrary limit imposed by the EU. )
Added. 9.4.12 read here 
For most of the month high pressure systems caused air to slowly re-circulate over the UK and near continent. Without rain to wash it out, particle air pollution gradually built up as the air slowly passed over cities and industrial areas, causing all the UK to experience particle pollution problems.


why these nitrate particulates are bad i have no idea but it seems it is. it has something to do with asthma sufferers, because from what i can gather, they say it caused asthmatics to die. perhaps they would have died anyway, and nothing to do with the particulates.  and we are barking up the wrong tree. it wont be the first time we have got it wrong. 


btw, what about the ozone level, there was a scare about that in the past,  but we never hear of it anymore. what happen to that one. i wonder!
Added. 2.4.12 it seems it is an artificial limit cooked up by the EU, and in some roads in london it just tip into the limit . and so to avoid paying the fine, the mayor has some kind of water spray to bind these particulates and bring them down to earth. well, that is what will happen when u start imposing an arbitrary target. people will try to get round it. i dont know what fining will serve if it impoverish the community.london will be fined 300million Euros.  it might be better to pay the community for low readings, rather than penalise them for high. but of course that would be v expensive and lead to expenditure instead of a revenue generating fine. 
it seems those living near roads with high traffic volumes,( 10,000 vehicles a day) have a increased chance of asthma. i would have thought the solution is to reduce the vehicle traffic along those roads and so bring in congestion charges or timed charges according to peak times will answer the pollution. but that is too simple a solution, i suppose. 
along the vauxhall bridge road, near me, it is the only route across london from north to south that is not subjected to the congestion charge so it gets really busy, and what with victoria undergoing a big renovation, the roads around there are being dugged up and there is a huge traffic jam there. i bet u the pollution must be high. 


added. 30.3.12 here is a comparison of how much tube fares  cost  for the various zones for 2012.


zones 1-2 £1168 a year
zones 1-3 £1368 a year
zones 1-4 £ 1672 a year
zones 1-5 £1992 a year. 
and see this link for the projected cost to  2016
projected costs may not occur, because the tube costs rises with inflation, and we dont really know what inflation will be over those years. 
seems to me it is better to live near the centre or where u work, and walk to work or cycle there, or get a motorbike if u live far away. 


Added. 6.4.12 this article about detroit, shows that some cities will fail. detroit's problem is debt, mortgage foreclosures, so that people who were forced out of their homes left the city entirely and its population decreased to 700,000 now. 
other factors are due to its reliance on one employer, the car industry. It is now taken over by the state.
i see the trend will be that successfull cities get bigger and bigger so that they merge to produce megacities and people get concentrated in these megacities. 

clocks go forward 1 hr today,avatar

london

It's that time of year again.Clocks go forward today. 
What is different this time is that i had no warning. usually the day before the tv would be saying look out for it and warn us of the clock change.


So it was a surprise when i saw the time in my laptop to see what i thought was 7.30am was really 8.30am and i thought simon's little travelling clock which i keep on top of the tv is having a weak battery and it needs changing.


Its not a good alarm clock as it makes a loud ticking sound. Good for the living room to let me know the time. I used to use the clock on my old video recorder to tell the time; but now i switch everything off when i am not using it so that is not on nowadays. Recently, I switched the leads  around and found that the clock which comes on when i switch the recorder on now do not come on automatically. 




Come the digital change in april, (they said it will change in 4th april and again on 19april, dont understand why it takes two different days).
Not long now before my recorder and tv will not be able to take the digital broadcast. 
I am not going to do anything about it till it actually happens.


Most probably, simon will get a setup box he has lying around in his mother's house and we shall use it. I hope so, as i dont intend to waste any money on anything more sophisticated.And i hope the video recorder will still record and be able to show the films. 


Now and then, i see a tv program that i want to tape, usually one that comes on at about 2am or so. but then, i dont actually see it even if i tape it, or it is so boring, i stop the tape; so it is not much point really. 


Nowadays very few films interest me. 
I see from the tv program that avatar will be showing today... sunday. 
well it was made in 2009 and here is its premier on tv , in 2012. so finally i shall see it to figure out why it was so popular. And immediately following it is the new titanic series by julien fellowes, the chap who wrote downton abbey. 
such a glut of programs about the titanic.it is its 100th anniversary of its sinking and the final 4th episode will fall on the day it sank 100 yrs ago. 


Added. 9.27pm. So i finally saw avatar, the movie. Granted i did not see it in 3D and it is on my small screen tv at home. but i can see why people enthused about it. the photography and graphics are really something and for those who see it wide screen and 3D it must be fantastic. 
without the graphics it would be a ordinary film, as the story line is simple and the characters a one dimensional. but of course one do not expect anything else, after all, the emphasis was to present a visual feast. nothing is left to the imagination. 


i wonder now whether we have a generation of film goers who expect everything to be spelt out and laid out and they never had to use their imagination. 


because that is what the modern film makers are doing these days. Ah well, I am of the old school who like books because i am free to imagine it. 


now , the titanic soap opera is showing on the other channel, but i am not watching it, instead i am watching a program about satellites and how they are built. I am tired of doom and gloom sinking of ships. it is just too saddening to watch. And i am tired of the human interactions that are being acted out. I am suffering from period drama fatigue, and specifically titanic drama fatigue.

naked lifestyle in sf

london
I opened my email to find this post sent to me via a gay naturist site in hongkong that i belong to in yahoo group. 
it is produced by colt studio which is a porn site. 
but it shows what is perfectly possible to do in san francisco. u can walk about naked in broad daylight in SF doing all the things like get a haircut, buy and eat a snack in a cafe, etc without anyone turning a hair.


I think this film has been taken some time ago, because the guy was sitting without a towel. a law was passed recently which makes it illegal to sit naked without a towel. 

any naturist would consider it a polite thing to do. sit on a towel, i mean. 


it is just great that in SF we can go about naked and no one bats an eyelid. 


Wish other places are so enlightened. 


here is the link Not safe for work. haha. and dont click on it if u dont like to see a naked man.

using satnav or using your own navigating skills

london
I was walking along the buckingham palace road, between the victoria station and the coach station and there was  a stretch of road with police tapes across it and police blocking the road. i found a coach bus blocking the road. it must have broken down. it is one of those coaches that carry people regularly to other towns from london. 
there was a pile of cars and coaches and buses staking back to the coach station and i was thinking maybe the police should block the road near the coach station, rather than funnel them all to the junction just before the obstruction, where there was only one route out for all the lanes of traffic converging there. 


ah well, i was thinking, if those fxxking souls wants it so be it. i think anyone in their right mind would avoid the area like the plague, as u know that it will be always busy. 


There were not many private cars there, so it was only commercial traffic so i suppose their routes are fixed and they cannot go elsewhere. 


now what has that got to do with satnav and navigating by map?
Well, i was thinking people's soul do dictate how they go about it. 
people who use satnav gets directed to the main roads and into one traffic jam after another. this was what happened when i was doing the sunday charity food run last sunday.


My driver, who was a mixed race woman, chinese-malaysian father and french mother set the sat nav, and we were following it and the route was what i would have chosen until we reached a busy junction when i know the route it chosed will lead us to a busy high street and huge delays. 


so i told her to override it and i shall direct. 
and we avoided it and took a short cut and no traffic. 


then further along the journey we again hit a jam, and i was able to direct her away... 
and we hit another further on.
finally we finished the run, and were on the way back and i let her follow the sat nav. 
well we were caught in a traffic jam. 
it was a route that i had thought of going, but never tried it, because the other route i know have always been traffic free. 


so this experience at least made me realise that that route is not worth going next time. 


but i was left thinking well, isn't it rather like what some people's life is like. They blindly follow and end up in all kinds of situations that make their life difficult, whilst others avoid it all. 


Navigate your own way , using the information that is available, and chart your own route. dont follow others , nor their advise. 


This applies to health advise too, i would say take it all with a large dose of scepticism. 


recently i read that red meat is bad for you. shortens your life, it seems. but today i read that women who dont eat red meat are prone to depression. 


I bought a brisket of beef, from tesco,a few days ago, reduced from £7 to £3.50 and i made a curry out of it using my slo cooker. it is really very lean. John, who was visiting me from usa said he could not resist and ate some. though he cut out the fat, (it really was not that much fat) and was about to throw it away, but i asked is he going to eat it, and when he said no, i said i shall have it.


That is the best tasting of the meat, but trust the westerner to throw that away.  meat with a mix of fat and lean is way more delicious than all lean.


 he had given up on red meat, he said because it made him ill, but he was fine with my curry. 


there is real pleasure in eating meat and i think it foolish to deprive yourself of this pleasure. the thing to remember of course is not to be a glutton about it. if u eat it all the time and glut yourself with it, without eating it slowly and tasting it, u will lose all pleasure in it and just shovel the food in, without tasting even. 


He said in usa beef is cheap, but mutton or lamb is really expensive. today i saw shoulder of lamb800mg reduced from about £7 to £3.80. hmm, i was quite tempted to buy it for john, but decided not to as he is going off to brighton for 2days tomorrow. 






and aspirin a day protects against cancer ... and this is the funny thing, it also says if u do have cancer it stops it spreading. 


so what is it to be, if it protects against cancer, how come u get it? or is it one of those drugs that if it cannot stop u from getting cancer, it will have a second line of defence in stopping it spreading. 
ha, i dont believe it. Though i bet you others will be rushing off to buy aspirin and eating it religously. 


i dont believe drug studies that say it can prevent disease. it is a study where the results can be interpreted in favourable or unfavourable ways. 


anyway, we all have to die of something, so just enjoy whatever it is , and let the soul decide how it will go. 

rumours and facts

london
bbc article about it
We all know of hearing somewhere someone saying such a firm is using forced labour , or poisoning its cheap labour in china, whilst selling its products expensively in the west.
Apple was one of those mentioned as doing it




. i remember vaguely hearing someone in a comment saying this about apple, and that we should boycott them. 
Well today i found a retraction by this radio show in usa saying they have found some lies in their broadcast about apple. 
here is the transcript of the radio show 

link to the follow up investigation of the facts.

Mike Daisey:  I think I was terrified that if I untied these things, that the work, 
that I know is really good, and tells a story, that does these really great things for 
making people care, that it would come apart in a way where, where it would ruin 
everything.


It seems the one-man show it was based on by a chap called mike daisey, was not true reporting but was made for entertainment and so was not necessarily accurate due to poetic license.
(It is one of the things i dont like about writers. in novels or plays or films, they all make things very dramatic and heart wringing all to make a drama out of things. that is one of the writer's tricks that i dislike when i read these kinds of novels or plays or films.)
but because people get caught up in the drama, no one realised it, everyone thought it was true.


That is how rumours and falsehoods start and once started it is difficult to prove it otherwise. people tend to think there is no smoke without fire. 


i wonder if apple will sue the radio show, or the joker mike daisey. so far apple has kept quiet. 


maybe it will be happy at the retraction and the huge climb down and humble pie that everyone involved have to eat. 
Link to mike's statement. i think he believes the ends justify the means.
ira glass' statement.


Today was the sale of the new ipad and from all accounts it will be phenomenally successful. There were even stories of people queueing up and selling their place in the queue for £300. and people coming out of the store with 2 ipads and selling them to waiting indians (this it seems is happening in london) who intend to make a profit reselling them in countries where they are not on sale yet. 


it puzzles me why they do it, seeing it is not a rare item, just a matter of time before everyone who wants one can buy it. but i guess rich people like to be the first in their country to show it off. 


john, my friend who is on a visit to uk from usa has got the ipad2 which he bought in dec2011;its his upgrade from the ipad1.he said he did not mind that the new ipad is coming out now. he is delighted with his ipad.he said after all the add ons and what not, his cost him about £900 and i had a look at it. it is the first time i seen one. my first thought was that the screen is so small. haha. 


it is a nifty thing if u are travelling as it is so small and compact, but its small screen puts me right off. but that is solely my bad, as they say, because no apple fan seems bothered by the small screen. i think it will appeal to those with good eyesight. john have good eyesight, even though he is 64yrs old.


I am really puzzled why size of the screen is not an issue. to me it is as i dont wish to see films in such a small screen, or have to keep scrolling up and down to read anything in that small screen. i dont know about you but such small screens make me feel cramped and claustrophobic... i daresay it is because my eyesight is failing and i like big words. haha. maybe that is why there is so much praise for the clarity and sharpness of the new ipad images, they make words stand out and easier to read, i think.
all that technology just to produce clear words, when with a 15" laptop, it is all there. 


the key board comes up as a  screen and is very sensitive and quite difficult to type if u wish to type using touch type. there is no 'feel' so u have to look at the screen to make sure u have typed it. or u will be repeating the letter. 


they say the new ipad have very good clarity and picture. john's 'old' ipad2  is quite good allready, but i guess once u can compare side by side, the difference in the picture will become obvious. 


it is pricey, £399. though funnily enough it costs the same as the old ipad2 when it was first sold only 1yr ago even though this new one got a better screen. I hear that the ipad2 is now being sold for less. but if john's experience is true, the add ons etc will double the cost or more. it is not much use without the add ons.
and going online will incur costs as well, with roaming charges etc. 


even if the old ipad2 is £100 less it is still expensive in my book. when u can get a netbook for £200. 


as far as i am concerned none of these tablets will replace the personal computer. and none of it tempts me to buy them. maybe 10yrs from now i shall be proved wrong.and i too shall be shouting their praises. who knows? haha. it wont be the first time i have been proved wrong as i am really very old fashioned . i like books for eg, even though i gather books will become obsolete in future. 


Added.27.3.12 i was watching a tv program-- the last of the series about china;triumph and turmoil, and it featured lenovo, and it showed their tablet inserted into a laptop. its very new no release date. u can take the 10"tablet size screen out of the laptop and use it as a stand alone tablet.   i thought wow, that is what i like... but i keep thinking the screen is too small, and then realising that if the screen were bigger it will be just like a 15"laptop so it defeats the purpose. i have come to realise there are two completely opposite desires here and they cancel each other. Also, if all i want is easy touchtyping, why not just attach a standalone keyboard onto any 10"tablet . 
I like my present screen size in this laptop i am using now. 13"x8.5" , diagonal 15". if they can make a tablet of this size i would go for it. or maybe not. only if it is cheap haha and that is not likely. 
and if they allow me to attach a normal keyboard into it to use for writing that would overcome the typing problem and no need for the lenovo solution of a tablet cum laptop.  
it is the size ... 
I found out whilst searching google, they now have the lenovo yoga tablet cum laptop,  released mid 2012. it is not the same thing. it has a normal size, and have all the touch controls of a tablet. under $1200
it might well answer my desires for a large screen size and easy to carry around. then i realise that i dont really want to carry it around much. i have been using my laptop at home, all this time and have really no need to carry it about. so i dont think i m the customer they are targetting. haha.


Ah well, it is all rather fun to dream, but i know that sometimes to dream about it is nicer than the reality. i think i wont find it that great if one is invented. 

london
II went out tonight to forage at the supermarket and on the way i saw venus and jupiter in the sky, like what they have been talking about on tv. they appear to be close but of course  they are not. 


There is not much to see, just two bright unblinking lights low in the night sky. I saw this some nights ago but did not realise they were planets. 
it made me wonder what it will be like if we ever have space travel and can go there for a holiday. i mused that the moons might be the better bet to base a space station on, and for tourists to stay so they can have a grand stand view of the jupiter surface and rings of saturn, etc. would n't it be wonderful to live in those times where u can sight see the solar system. 


i got some bargains tonight, packs of sainsbury sausages for 20p reduced from £1.99. Last week i bought quite a lot of them for 40p ,and now they are reduced to 20p,so i missed out even more of a bargain then. (i suppose 40p each is still a good price from £1.99)anyway i bought some more of them now as they are so cheap. 


i think no one is buying sausages at their full price now since there was all that report about red meat and processed meats leading to increased risk of dying early. maybe people realise they are overpriced at £1.99 for a 8sausagepack
but this spike article   , titled 'red meat is bad for you?, burger off '
 gives a good critique of the whole thing. 
i must suppose all that scare stories against red meat and processed foods must have put people off the sausages, as there were huge numbers of it for reduced sale tonight. 
here is an article called lets hear it for processed foods' which is quite an eye opener. 
i got a roast pork joint reduced £6 to £1.49 which is a better bargain than the two small packs of stuffed pork belly 500mg for £1, whcih i bought two of.
you lose some and u gain some. haha. 
There have not been that many bargains lately, or someone is swiping them before i came, and it is a matter of luck if u happen to get there just when they are reducing it, or there is a glut like now.


I have been reading this article in the FT , entitled ' Syria's stockholm syndrome and its sectarian war' about a woman, Rhonda Roumani, who had a  close family friend who also came from syria but now lives in texas, usa who have emailed her to defriend her because she is shia and they are sunni. She was accused of not writing to express her opposition to the regime, and so this good friend of hers, who lives in Texas, (so must have migrated there) is telling her he is cutting her off. 
She said when she lived in syria as a journalist in 2004-7 there were lots of people support the regime, and not only one sect. people she says, prefer stability, and believed that the son, Bashar,who is the present leader, is better than his father. 
Now all is turmoil, and degenerating into a sunni -shia conflict. 


it seems to me that those who have migrated away from syria and live outside it wants a regime change, no matter what, whereas maybe those who are actually in syria may prefer to keep the old regime simply for stability. rather than the chaos now which benefits no one except those who are intent on regime change for its own ends. 
but for this woman, it has become a family conflict dividing family and friends.


after all, justlook at egypt. all that angst and conflict and what do they have now/ a totally dysfunctional state. i suppose to a freedom fighter it is all good. though maybe if u listen to another view, they are terrorists intent on changing the stable society to anarchy. What is a patriot and what is a terrorist? i wonder?


The goldman Sach resignation letter by one of their own is a very damning accusation against the organisation. I remember reading of how they duped the german bankers of one small bank to buy up bad subprime mortgages, to get it off their books knowing it is bad , but offering it to the germans, who continued till the end to believe they are good top class risk free investments. i read this in a book by michael lewis, boomerang, which was such a relevation. I thought how come no one criticise goldman Sach for their part in this.
also we all know Goldman sach helped cook the books for Greece so that they can show good results and be allowed membership into the EU. why no one condemns Goldman Sach? if they really have the clients welfare at heart they would not have done it as it would have been unethical.
now we have this guy who in his resignation letter accuse them of a culture of putting their clients last, and to make money for themselves. 
 I have always been wary of financial advisers, and it seems i have reason to be. 
I think if any of their clients continue to use this unscrupulous bunch of people u have to question the morals of those clients too... won't you?


Added 16.3.12 i read some more articles in the FT giving the other side of the picture. Quotes from the clients of Goldman sach, made without attribution to preserve their anonymity, and many of them said they prefer to employ Goldman sach as they are so ruthless and good at their job that they rather have them on their side rather than on the other side. 


just goes to show to us onlookers who dont appreciate what is going on within the culture of traders and takeovers, that lots of money to be made and  that trumps everything. also many of them dont bother with the morals of the situation, if u have knowledge and expertise that can outgun the opposition and allow u to win, that is all that matters. 


so i think the clients will continue to use goldman sachs. 
There is another piece of news there about corruption in india. one letter writer wrote in the letters page saying he actually saw ticket sellers not wanting to give receipt until someone offerred to pay   to get a receipt and he was quoted 1000rupees. 
and he said with this kind of rampant corruption by the employees  is depriving the state of income. he said if the employer is paying so low pay, that the worker have to rely on bribes to make ends meet. but it deprives the state of income. 


another writer wrote in reply saying it is more complicated than that. the workers have paid bribes to get the jobs or be transferred to areas where the money from bribes are bigger... and so they are paying off their investments. 


You can see there are layers of meanings the deeper u dig. one simple act of bribery can explain and involve so much more reasons and subtle influences. 


there was another article i read a writer wrote in about his father who worked for the indian civil service during the time of the british rule, and he said there was no corruption because they were paid so well, it makes no sense to take bribes no matter how much, it wont compensate the loss of their job , earnings, and pensions. 

america changes to summer time this weekend

london

It goes to show how arbitrary time can be, when different countries shift their dates at different dates for changing to summer time, and winter time.


I was browsing the new york times and saw a box reminding people there that the clocks move forward 1hr this sunday. we in uk and europe shift ours on the last sunday of march 25th And uk moves to GMT on the last sunday of october.28th 


In 2005, Congress expanded daylight savings time, by shifting its start to the second Sunday in March and its end to the first Sunday in November.

Actually if u shift it too early, u get very dark mornings. It does not seem to bother the americans maybe because their country dont extend that far north as scotland does. As it is, even in england, our last sunday in march can make the dawn come later, and i can notice the dark morning even as far south as brighton, when i happen to visit a friend there and the clocks changed. 

Written on 10.3.12 10.50pm. Posted on a scheduled post.

Added 9.14am 11.3.12 . i had wanted it posted at 7.49am, but i must have made a mistake because i see it is scheduled to post at 19.49. ah well. 
sunrise today is 6.22am (and if we had gone to summer time , it would be 7.22am instead.) likewise sunset today is 5.58pm. and it would set at 6.58 pm if we had changed clock today. 
it would make for darker mornings for those going to work. there is a downside to having summertime come too early. it might be better to keep it to last sunday in march and just extend the other end to mid nov. 


I myself dont really care when it ends or starts, but it does remind me that we humans can manipulate time to our wishes.
Added. this is a nice way to contain eggs so that they dont spread all over the pan. use onion rings to contain them. very clever.


can also use red or green peppers, though they have to be big ones.

FT

london
Now that i am reading the FT (financial times newspaper) in the gym, it being the only newspaper available, i find it is a very good read. 


Today i read the problem with the rib foot in the A380 , which is affecting all the aircraft. So Etihard being the first to get it is now the first to be affected. 
MAS and SIA might rethink about replacing all their fleets with it. Dont put all your eggs in one basket. haha. 


Then there is a report about how US gas is getting cheaper, so cheap that it is making a company who had betted on it increasing in price by buying some gas company or other in better days now regretting their buy. 
people in USA might shift to gas heating as its future is likely to be cheap.
though in another newspaper, i read at the library, there was a report that UK will have expensive gas in future as our gas reserves are depleting and we are reliant on liquefied gas, and that is going to increase in price as china and the east is buying so much of it so that there will be a shortage with the middle east selling to them instead of to us. 


I was wondering maybe UK can buy liquefied gas from the excess shale gas from USA seeing it is getting cheaper. it will pay the americans to convert some of that spare gas to Liquefied gas and sell it to us and so keep their prices up. 
(with markets, it is just as bad to have cheap gas as to have expensive gas)


With all the bonanza from cheap gas from shale, i think the future gas prices must fall. and it might be possible to make electricity out of gas and make electricity prices fall too. but we have to reckon with the UK govt carbon obsession, which makes us subsidise for wind farms and so it is possible we wont get the benefits . 


Read in another newspaper about the divorce by two gay men, and one being richer , objects to the split of his fortune. what with the marriage hooha now going on, i think this might be a warning to us gay about following in the heterosexual route of getting hitch and making it all legalistic. 


i personally think we are foolish to go down that route of marriage, (if u must, then have  civil partnership  which is good enough though both will cause headaches when u divorce.)


The thing about being gay is we get rid of all that straight nonsense about who gets what and who irons the shirt, and who gets to work fulltime, and who is the wife, and who is the husband. who is cheating on who etc. i thought we should be glad to be rid of it, instead of wanting to join that club. 


Straights have to join that club of marriage, no choice as they might have children and u dont want them to be bastards and more importantly lose out on claiming a share of your money... they get to have children and a whole lot of trouble that children brings.


We gays dont have that,for which we should rejoice;  but as usual with people, when someone says u cannot have it, there will always be some who  will want to have it. 


Well, all we can say who are opposed to the whole idea of marriage is be careful what u wish for, for surely u will get it, and much good it will do u. 
Start fighting over the plates and houses and stuff and go to court over it. 


Added. 24.3.12 here is a really good article about why gay marriage is bad by spiked.

airasiaX stops flying to london from 31mar2012

london
What a surprise, i was exchanging emails with someone from malaysia and he mentioned that airasiaX is not flying to london. 


well, i got an email from airasia talking about their services and there it said they are having a premium airasiaX line specially for airasiaX customers. So if they have that line, why all this talk of it ending flights to london
(turns out theyhave that line to handle all the complaints of customers who have booked on the now defunct flights to those places that they are closing down.)


anyway they have a 'ask airasia' link in that email, and there i saw a link saying Airasia withdraws service to mumbai,delhi,  paris and london .


So it is true. how awful.(By that i mean awful in a gossipy sort of way haha) just today i saw an advert by MAS telling us about its A380 planes. they will be competing with SIA and with all this extra capacity, how do they expect to fill them?


perhaps they will find business people coming over. today i read that malaysian sovereign fund had bought office buildings in london.
Added. 9.2.12 saw a ft article about cracks in the rib foot of the A380 which has to be replaced and Etihard whose whole fleet is A380s have to take the planes out of commission and losing money and threatening to sue. the L    shaped structure called a rib foot (funny name that) connects the outside metal skin to the internal structure and the cracks are in 25 of these all situated between the engines out of 4000 rib foots in the whole plane. 
(its funny that i first called them toe ribs, haha. i had to look up the article in the FT, which i took back home with me to find the actual name.) it seems it is a lighter grade of aluminium used to make the rib feet. 




I have been reading a book by john nicholson, the meat fix. Quite a fascinating account of his journey from being a vegan for 26yrs, to a full member of the meat eating fraternity... and telling us how his health improved no end. 


during the process i learnt from him that horsechestnut pills help his piles reduce .


that soya is bad for you. and that it is in everything that is processed. to think i know of soya only as the soya drink and tofu, that we get in malaysia. who would have guessed it has grown into such a big industry. 


that cholesterol in your food is not related to how much cholesterol u get in your blood. 


that polyunsaturates are not that healthy and thus vegetable oil is not so healthy either. 


butter is good for you.


carbohydrates are bad for you.


i think in the end, it boils down to get a balanced diet, remove processed foods from diet,  and dont eat so much.haha.


Added. 11.29pm. simon came back from his 2wk holiday in phuket. 
hmm, i forgot when he is supposed to be back. 
he enjoyed his stay, even though he managed to lose a third of his money. well, i suppose it is better than losing all of it last year when he went there. haha. 
this time he split the money into 3. 


sigh, his soul wants it, even though he tells me his soul does not want it. haha. he said he thinks he lost it when he was buying duty free. he said he distinctly remember putting the roll of money into the side pocket of his bag, but he thinks maybe he missed the pocket entirely. Well, if that is not what his soul wants, i dont know what is. 
no one i know will miss the pocket while thinking he had put in inside. 
of course, if his soul really do not want him to lose the money, he will take out only that amount of money he needs rather than flash a big roll of money for all to see . I told him to do it next time. but who knows what his soul wants ... that soul of his rather likes to make his life difficult. 


At first when i first read of it in an email he sent me, i felt unsettled wondering how he will cope and whether he will get into hardship from it. there was not much i can do, so i decided it serves no one any good to worry about it. so i put it out of my mind and forget about it. haha. it takes some skill to forget these things and i would really advise everyone to learn how to do it. it saves u a lot of unneccessary worry for nothing. 
because as he told me, he did fine even without the money that was lost. 


he managed to meet a thai woman about 40yrs old who works as a barmaid who attached herself to him, even though he told her he had no money to pay her. And she introduced him to her friends. 
that was how he got into company of germans who invited him to their parties, one chap had a birthday party and treated everyone to food at his place, and later to drinks at a bar. 


and in other times, they all pooled their money and bought large jugs of alcohol. 


the thai woman has an arrangement with an elderly english guy of 80 who retired there and who rented a flat with 2bedrooms which he let her and her sister stay free provided they pay for utilities, and keep the place clean and run errands for him.


Rather a good arrangement for all concerned. i think. 


anyway, simon was able to have money left over at the end of the holidays. so that just goes to show u can have a good time without spending lots of money. 


simon says he noticed the price of  the rental for a guy sexworker has gone up from about 1000 bahts to 2000-3000 bahts now. pricey isn't it?
not that simon used them. haha. he could not afford them anyway. but u can get it for free, as he did haha. if u hang around the beach at 4am. 
he said this was the price for the free lancers not attached to the brothels. You will pay more for those in the bars to take them out. 


though he said after a few days , he said he was not too bothered about the sex. 


it was hot duringhis stay so much so that he welcomed the short bursts of heavy rain that cooled the air. 


Hearing him , made me glad i am not there. haha. it sounds very nice, and all that, but i know it is not for me. i will be bored i think spending 2wks there. 


There was a english guy retired there, he lives in a rented house for  5000 bahts a month, about £100 . so cheap , but it was outskirts of patong area and full of mosquitos, simon said. he was bitten badly by them and still have itchy bites now on his legs. Still, as a retirement place thailand seems v reasonably priced. 


though i am not too sure about the mosquitos. it reminds me why i am so glad to be here in london. haha.




no wonder so many go there to retire. they get a one yr retirement visa which have to be paid for of course, but saves them having to fly out every time to get an ordinary visitor's visa renewed. in the past they could just cross the land border to get it done, but not anymore.
Added. 11.3.12 i forgot to mention that simon told me the old retired guy actually had his pension stopped because they thought he was dead. so he had to go to the british embassy in thailand with his identification to sign and confirm that he is still alive. haha.
it looked like that is the ploy by home office to make sure there are no unauthorised people getting the pension of dead relatives who have moved overseas. Or to stop payment of the pension to bank accounts overseas where the recipient have long ago died. Legit claimants can confirm they are still alive but if no one confirms, it means payment pension to long dead accounts can be stopped.


Added 9.2.12 got an email from a friend who had gone to live in thailand when he retired. he said he is getting a bit fed up of the bureaucracy to get his visa extended. So u see, when u put yourself into a situation to escape from conditions at home in uk, u get into another set of situations. 
When you do things and change, make sure what u are changing into is really what u want, so all these niggling things can be tolerated because what u really want more than compensates for it.  


I think he is getting problems with the bureaucracy because he had not learnt the art of bribing the right people to smooth his way. he do not know how to listen to what people are saying to detect whether they are fishing for a bribe or not. 


Added. 12.3.12 my friend john who had just got back from his 2month holiday to s.e asia told me that he overstayed in thailand . he was given a 30day visa on entry but forgot and left after 34 days ,so for the extra 4days he overstayed they fined him £40. hmm, malaysia will give him 3months . strange that the thais are not so generous with the length of the visa. maybe a way to make more money out of the visitors to their country? though if i remember right, the visas used to be free ... must ask john my friend who was there if he had to pay for his visa. simon did not mention it, and neither did john.  maybe they still are free, and it is just the thais wanting...  what? 
simon will tell you that it is the Russians who are spoiling it all for everyone. 
when he was in phuket, he heard the german friends of his saying that prices have gone up because the russians just dont care what they pay.
simon said they told him the russians would shove 2000 bahts at the waiter who brings them their orders, even though the drinks would come to 500bahts. 
with such generosity, it is no wonder all the businesses up the prices .