Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing

Or.

Alternatively, this morning's text message:

SA, it is a really windy day today. Make sure you walk carefully. You know what happened in Boston.

Dove: Try The 7 Day Test

I think not.

I am little disconcerted.

Really? Using Dove on one side of my face and ordinary soap on the other and waiting see the difference for myself in just 7 days?

What is the world coming to?

There Is Such A Thing As Too Much Salad

Indeed.

At dinner, the usual small salad bowls were missing last night. Of course, as luck would have it, Dan was next in line. He reached across to the giant size bowls and piled it up high with everything - beetroot, mint leaves, tuna and beans with olives, lettuce, sweet corn, cucumber and tomato - in sight.

Seeing this, Denise surreptitiously nudged her junior behind the counter and whispered, "Pssst... We have a problem. Get the smaller bowls! The kids are going wiiild with the salad."

Question

Seriously.
Singha beer or underboob?

Dancing In Cambodia (Haven't Yet Been To Burma) - 2

Dancing In Cambodia (Haven't Yet Been To Burma) - 1

You Are No Longer Five

You can tell things have changed when your age-appropriate present is no longer this:



But this:



AND you're being asked to get a job.

The Common Trip on Riff Cafe

Music analysts,

You might enjoy The Common Trip.

Floatingly,
SA

The Hunter

I'm amused.

My best tricks? Yes, I do employ them. Sincere and bold? Mostly. Dramatic guestures and being chased down the street? Huh? Maybe I should start looking back.

And I took the test twice just be sure.

How To Wear A Brassiere

I would let the photograph speak for itself but please allow me to draw your attention to Step 4: 'If the flesh around your bust are exposed under your arms, tuck the excess into the cups.'

Tuck the excess? Shouldn't you just get the next size? Or think of losing some weight? You don't tuck the excess; you get something that accomodates the excess, I would think. Especially when Step 3 tells you that it should all fit nice and snug.

As regards Step 2 and 5, I am not sure you really need to lean backwards and forwards to get the damn thing on. And wearing a bra in general isn't that complicated. But maybe that's just me.

And they wonder why most women in the world wear the wrong bra size.

The Inconvenience Of Street Food

There is something wonderous about being sleep deprived and disoriented, walking through Frankfurt airport, searching for Gate B25. Doors miraculously open, leading you into empty elevators the size of small palace with marble flooring and no buttons to press. Handel's Giulio Cesare lingers in the air while trains magically appear and zip you across to far flung terminals. But most importantly, when you're sitting in the airport lounge, all sophisticated, sipping red wine and eating cheese and crackers with a goodlooking investment banker, you suddenly think distractedly - Mmm.. golgappas would be nice!

Some People Are Better Left Snubbed

What the title says.

Alfonzo

Alfonzo is back in my life, guys. True, I'm not six and skipping around my garden aimlessly in a cotton frock but at this stage in my life, I might as well be. Without sounding dramatic, he always was the still point of my moving world as a child and now as I have to stand in line to get a visa to go home for the winter, I realise I need him around, that's all.

In other news, this was slipped under my door the other night:

"Hot horny housewife is all very well but will she take you to Paris for 3 nights all inclusive for only £99? http://www.ishevents.org.uk"

I'll ignore what this might lead you to think of me, but Alfonzo and I went online to check out what this was about. (Now is when you do the same. Go on, don't be shy. There isn't anyone around. Click here. I know you want to.) And we (re)discovered a fascinating and somewhat depressing fact about human nature - Sex sells like nothing else. But you've got to hand it to these guys - brilliant gimmick!

I have a brother. He is doing his phd in another cold cold city which makes London seem tropical. Last weekend a friend of his came into town to do a part of her research on trade unions and we met up over a late Sunday lunch. Inevitably the topic of conversation moved to the recent death of a classmate of theirs.

"Well, this is how I look at it. You've got to have some survival technique if you're doing our phd programme. Most kids do some drugs. Your brother has his girlfriend and I've got my supplements." And with one swig of water, she downed seven pills of different shapes and sizes.

I considered for a moment what my survival technique is. I'm still not sure but for the time being, I have Alfonzo.

Orange

Why has orange become such an unexceptional flavour?

Devious Delectable Dinners

True to what is drilled into my head every day in class (and outside, come to think of it), even food is turning out to be conniving and predatory. It watches you and decides who you are. Then it melts in your mouth while ensuring a perfect atmosphere conspires against you.

In restaurants such as these, the food has a uncanny way of making its way to your table and deciding just how eclectic a spread you deserve. And naturally, there is also a suitably devious mind picking the lotus and lily stir fry over the asparagus and Exo fish for you.

You are seated in the lounge section because luckily the reservation was made exactly a week ago at twelve noon, during the only half an hour window one gets to make them. Because of this, you are now the most gorgeous girl in the world. An angular beam of light falls from above, highlighting your cheekbones, detracting from your slightly bulbous nose. Your diamonds glisten as you throw your lovely head back in laughter. Soft Keith Jarrett swirls the atmosphere around. The stressed waitress obeys like clockwork the rules of this great universe and everything works its way smoothly to the orchid tea at the end when the lights are dimmed further for the arrival of the bill.

And then you fumble giddily for your bag, smile a sweet thank you and walk up two flights of stairs to go back to that cold, cold world that is the city you live in.

But at least you were gifted a delicate box of fine Belgian praline chocolates that will last longer than those two blissful hours.

What's your Sexy?

A classmate of mine likes one of our professors - a rather brusque, highly opionated and mostly angry woman of forty plus, who teaches culture studies. Her chain smoking tendency is a factor, he says. It also appears that middle aged professors who talk of eating breakfast with their children score high on the Sexy Scale with the girls. Dark jeans add to such appeal. There too is a consensus about dark rimmed glasses and how they intensify the academic image.

Imperfections are big as well. Absentmined pauses are intriguing. Nervour tics are inspiring. Sexy is varied, let me just say.

The fact is that Academic Sexy is different from Regular Sexy. What is acceptable (even encouraging) about the former is intolerable about the latter. Because not specialising in some obscure field of material science disqualifies you from having distasteful quirks and a receding hairline. I myself can willingly endure otherwise ugly V-neck sweaters and an obsessively numerical worldview.

However, the crisis as some of us later discussed, is exposure. How much is enough? Full time professor? Personal tutor? Or simply a guest lecturer? (who you can stalk later perhaps?)

The question is - What's your Sexy?

Ah..

You know the lecture is going to be perfect when the professor begins by asking you what Gandhi said about Western civilisation.

"Sound like a good idea."

Home

This is not The Creature's time in the sun, metaphorically speaking. Wealth and health are fine. But where is the love?, I know she is asking. Her heart is in fragments strewn across the world. I am one.

"Come back and make me whole again." she begs.

Remote Control

What could have possibly prompted anyone to do this?

"2) TV Remote - This has also gone missing. I appeal to whoever has the TV remote to please return it to the large TV room within the next 24 hours (again without prejudice). If this does not happen, when cable TV arrives on Friday, I will have to chain the remote to the wall. This is an obvious inconvenience and rather a sad state of affairs, but if necessary I will ensure it is impossible to take the remote. "

(Excerpt from my Hall Committee's email this morning.)

Strange Cars In Strange Cities

It isn't everyday that you meet an old college friend in a strange city and he says you, "I was just coming down Blackfriars and Batman and Robin asked me whether I'd seen the Batmobile anywhere. So I pointed across the river and they said thank you and walked on... Ok, now how about that overdue coffee?"