What's wrong with this advert?

Something about this advert has upset some right-wing US bloggers; so much so that Dunkin Donuts has been forced to drop the advert.

The woman in the picture is US celebrity chef and she has been accused of "mainstreaming violence" and supporting terrorists. Can you guess what it is??

It's her scarf!! Arrrggghhh!!! It's just a scarf! Apparently, because it looks like a traditional Arab keffiyeh; she must be supporting muslim extremists. Because, you know, keffiyeh = terrorist.

The crazy thing is, Dunkin Donuts gave in to these ridiculous people. Truly, I despair.

Queuing with the other weirdos.

So, we were in town on Friday night and the Harry Potter fans were queuing up outside bookstores. The book was released at midnight - and frankly I can't understand the queuing. Why queue for hours? It's not as if the bookshops are going to run out of books! There is an unlimited supply! Just turn up at midnight, if you are that desperate.

Anyway, we wandered around Charing Cross road where the biggest queue was in the Borders. Mainly because it was actually open and people could sit inside the store instead of on the pavement outside. By this time it was 11:20 and the people camped out in a long snake around the bookshelves were starting to get excited. How amusing, I thought. I would never do this. Besides, I am so over Harry Potter.

When suddenly, Mr K-E says .... lets go to Foyles. They have a much shorter queue.

Me : Uh, why are we queuing? I thought the plan was to laugh at the people who were queuing. (thinking *oh God, I hope no one from work sees me queuing up with these weirdos*)

Foyles and Borders are on opposite sides of Charing Cross Road, but Foyles didn't open their doors till 11:30. Unbelievably, Borders staff came round to the Foyles queue and tried to get us to go to Borders instead, saying you can sit inside, have a coffee etc. When Mr K-E pointed out that there were about 800 people queuing inside Borders, the guy said optimistically, "but we've got more tills...".

Then while we were waiting inside Foyles, at about 11:45, two teenage kids with a loudhailer came in and announced ATTENTION SHOPPERS! XXXX KILLS XXXX ON PAGE 405! XXXX, XXX AND XXXX DIE IN THE END!

The crowds inside boo-ed and hissed at them and they retreated when a security guard approached. I thought it was really amusing. Not sure if they actually knew or were just making it up (there has been a leak due to cock-up in America) but Mr K-E was a bit upset.

Awww never mind, honey.



We still managed to get the book at seven minutes past twelve, which Mr K-E thought was impressive considering we had only queued for half an hour.

Weekend

I need to praise Mr K-E on my blog because he has been so good and hardworking. Today I met a friend for lunch and went shopping while he painted our living room; walls and ceiling. Yes, I was meant for a life of leisure :)

What I did this weekend:

Swear at the organisers of the Tour de France. All my buses were messed up because Trafalgar Square was blocked-off for the race start. I mean, it's not the Tour de England, is it? Hummpphh.

Went to the gym.

Cooked a roast chicken dinner. Mmmm.

Met N for dim sum lunch at New World. Had a wander down Charing Cross Road and up to Covent Garden. I bought another pair of shoes *hangs head in shame* this time from Russell and Bromley. Right, this is it. The retail ban is firmly back in place. No more buying shoes. Heard that? No more.

The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

Good but a bit too much like being back at university and trying to get my head around hard ideas. Slightly too educational to be enjoyable.

I got this book because I read Freakonomics about two years ago and I thought it was soooo good. (By the way, if you haven't read Freakonomics, you should! It's really interesting and thought-provoking. Plus, it's dead easy to read.)

Anyway, back to The Undercover Economist. The ideas in the book are certainly very intriguing. Tim Harford explains complex ideas clearly and uses really good examples to illustrate his point.

When I read about price-targeting, which is practised by big companies (he uses coffee companies as an example) - it made me smile because it's also practised by fake handbag/watch sellers all over Asia.

In summary - if you are "seller", you want to sell as many items as possible while still making a profit. The last thing you want to do is to turn away any potential buyers. Afterall, a profit is a profit, right? But how can you maximise the profit from your buyers?

What you really need is a magic sign that senses how much people are willing to pay.

For example -
for people who have lots of money and are willing to pay £2.50 for a coffee - Price £2.50
for people who have less money and only want to spend £1.00 for a coffee- Price £1.00

But these magic signs don't exist, so how can you get people to pay different prices for essentially the same product?

Well, as Tim Harford explains, companies cunningly make products slightly different so that "price-insensitive" consumers will tend to spend more money.

For example

Cappuccino - £1.00
Cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles - £1.20
Hot chocolate - £1.30
Mocha - £1.45

In reality, the actual cost of the product in the cup is the same or only varies slightly. The main costs to the coffee company are rent, staff costs, advertising etc. However, by providing an option for customers to spend more money, they make more money. At the same time, they are not "turning away" the customers who are more stingy and only want to spend £1.00.

Back to the fake handbag/watch sellers in KL or Beijing - they practise the same thing! In general, the customer sets the price - as long as the vendor makes a profit, they will sell. No vendor will ever sell at a loss, no matter what kind of story he tells you.

When my in-laws went to China, they didn't like the idea of bargaining at all. They always felt that they were being ripped off.

I said to them - yes, but surely, when you see something you like, you must have some idea of what you want to pay for it? Whether it is £5 or £500, you know yourself how much you prepared to pay. It's just a question of whether the seller will do the deal. Or else you could argue that Marks and Spencer are ripping you off too. Who is to say whether that flowery blouse is worth £50 or £5?

My in-laws are still not convinced. They like a fixed price!

Anyway, he describes other ideas like this in the book so if you found that interesting, you will probably enjoy this book. If there are any proper economists out there who have read this book, I would love to hear your opinion of it. As for me, it took me ages to read because often after a hard day at work I couldn't face more "facts" and "explanations". Back to light reading!

Hooray! No more stinky clothes....

Yes! It's July 1st, which means that from today onwards there is no smoking allowed in all enclosed public spaces i.e. pubs, clubs, restaurants, cafes, bars, shops, warehouses, taxis...anywhere where people work.

No smoking in company cars or vans either! And you have to display a "no smoking" sign in your car if it is a company car because it is deemed office property.

Hooray! I just hate coming home from a night out with my clothes reeking of cigarette smoke. The worst thing is, you don't notice when you get home because you've been surrounded by it all night and you might be a bit drunk. Then the next morning, you try to put on your coat and it just stinks. Even your underwear stinks of smoke. Isn't that gross?

Friday Off Work

It is Mr K-E's birthday tomorrow so we had a day off work today. We slept in, and so missed all the big news about the defused bomb on Haymarket.

My Mum rang while we were just getting up and having showers etc, so we heard about it from her. Well, you can't let this stuff affect your life really. So we didn't change our plans and went into town as we had planned.




Before we left, we had breakfast at home. I've only discovered how yummy grapefruit is very recently.














Mr K-E made us ham and cheese croissants.










In town we had lunch at Wagamama, before hitting the shops. Yes, the sales are on, woohoo! Todays star buys were :







A cute little coat from Zara. This was actually full price but I thought it was sooo cute. The big lapels! The buttons!
















Yep. More shoes. From Zara (me) and Shellys (Mr K-E)

Sponsor you? @&£% OFF!

I have never understood the concept of "sponsoring" someone to do something for charity.

You know what I mean : it works like this. Someone in the office is running a marathon/climbing a mountain/doing a parachute jump etc. They come round with a form for you to pledge money towards a charity and you try to pledge an amount that doesn't look too stingy.

What a complete waste of time and (my) money.

Someone in my office ran in the New York marathon last year. He came round with a form collecting money for a cancer charity.

Now, I support charities. I admire people who volunteer and give up their time and energy for charities.

But does it make sense for this guy to fly to New York and run a marathon, then ask me for money for the charity? Why doesn't he save the £300 plane ticket, £300 hotel charges, running kit etc etc, stay home that day and give the money he has saved to the charity? To make things worse, this guy loves running; frankly, it's a holiday for him!

Aarrgghhh, I wish I had the guts to tell him where to go. Of course, I just pledged £5 instead.

First of all, if they genuinely want to raise money for charity, then I am sure there are a hundred more efficient ways of doing it than running a marathon. If they got a second job stacking shelves in Sainburys instead of "training" for their marathon, they could give all that money away and wouldn't have to bother me!

What I hate the most are the schemes where charities pay for parachute jumps, trekking holidays etc as long as you raise a certain amount of money. For example - raise £360 to do a parachute jump for Breast Cancer charity. The charity only gets £140 and the rest pays for the jump. What. A. Con.

Losing faith in humanity

You know, sometimes I wonder why people are so greedy. I admit that I'm as guilty as the next person. I would love to have heaps of money to spend, to fly everywhere first class and spend the rest of my life in 6-star hotels. There are lots of things that I want - 5 carat diamond rings, heated Olympic size swimming pools in my back yard, the ability to buy whole Dior collections with one sweep of my well-manicured hand ....

I think in life, we all make compromises in order to pay the bills and to provide security for loved ones. Most people don't love their jobs, we just grit our teeth and get on with it.

But there are things that I wouldn't do though. For example, I don't think I would intentionally hurt anyone or cheat them of their life savings.

Sometimes when I read about stuff like the baby-formula scandal in China, it makes me think; how low can people go to make money? Summary: In 2004, fake baby milk formula with no nutritional value was manufactured and sold by some truly unscrupulous people. Babies who were fed this formula suffered from terrible malnutrition and many died. To make things worse, the local authorites were slow to react, which makes me think that there was corruption and dirty money at the highest levels. How awful is that?

Today there was a feature on the Radio 4 about counterfeit anti-malarial drugs which are being produced in South East Asia. So be careful if you are travelling and purchase anti-malarial drugs locally. These drugs which don't contain any of the active ingredient, artesunate, are also being exported to other parts of the world, Africa in particular.

It gets worse. As people become more aware of this, the counterfeiters have started to add a small amount of artesunate to the fakes so that it shows up in tests and fools the labs. This means that there is a risk that the malaria parasites will develop a resistance to artesunate.

I was also dismayed to read about counterfeit anti-cancer drugs which have surfaced in the UK. These suppliers have really sold their soul for cash. Selling brick dust coated in paint as life-saving medicine. Bastards.

Bad news for vegetarians...

Bad news for strict vegetarians - Mars, Milky Way, Bounty, Snickers, Twix, Maltesers now all contain rennet, which is made from the stomach lining of young cows. The Vegetarian Society is very disappointed.

(And it's not great news for observant Muslims, Hindus, Jews or Buddhists, is it?)

It's kind of weird, I think. I mean, all this time they haven't been using animal products and now they switch to using animal products? Isn't that a step backwards? I've always thought it was cheaper to use artificial/plant-based ingredients rather than actual animal products.

Oh well, at least they are honest.

I guess it's how strict you want to be. I was surprised when a vegetarian friend said he avoided beer unless it was vegetarian beer.

And today, I read that the vegetarian society also says that most vegetarians "avoid honey". Do they really?

Apparently cochineal (dye made from dead bugs) is also to be avoided. I'm finding it hard to feel sympathetic towards dead bugs myself.

Bye Bye Tony

The hot news today is that Tony Blair has announced that he will resign on June 27th.

As one of the newspapers put it; the worst kept secret in Britain was confirmed today.

So who will be the next Prime Minister? I bet Gordon Brown is packed and ready. Suitcase all ready, he just can't wait to move in.

Breakfast with the CEO and other Storage Mishaps

Today I had breakfast with the CEO. Actually, me and 12 other people sat around the boardroom table and mostly listened to his views.

It was a kind of "meet your leader" event and well, not that exciting really. The best thing is that the UK Operations Director picked me to represent our company. Hey, little ole me :)

As for the CEO, he had a horrible habit of referring to himself as "one" i.e. One went to Europe to search for more acquisitions / when One feels that the time is right for expansion...not appealing. You get the impression that he's used to people just sitting around in awe of him. Still, you have to give the man credit.

I managed to eat an almond croissant and a granola berry yoghurt, which is the most important thing. I never let nerves keep me from my food, hahaha.

On another note, more bad news for self-storage fans. Some terrorist wannabees have been convicted today and they were using self-storage containers to store their loot i.e. 600kg of fertiliser for making bombs.

600kg of fertiliser - enough for a few football pitches - bought by a urbanista with rap music blaring out from his car stereo......hmm why do you think the supplier was suspicious?

And they hired a big self-storage container to store it - much bigger than they required. That in itself is bizarre, as everyone knows, you have to rent the smallest container you can get away with and fill to the brim with junk-filled cardboard boxes.

Sex for the Single Brunei Girl

These two guys - Jack and LSM - have inspired me to blog about sex.

In particular, I'm talking to the young women out there who are still finding their way, (hopefully) enjoying their youth and trying to make sense of modern relationships.

I presume that you are going to have sex anyway. Of course the only foolproof way to avoid pregnancy is no sex. If you are having sex, there is always a risk but you can make it a much much smaller risk by using contraception.

I'm not going to even address the issues of morality or religion, because you probably get that all day long. And does it really help?

So, girlfriend, if you are going to fool around:

• First and foremost, love yourself. By that I mean - think of yourself first. Just because he wants to shag you, doesn't mean he loves you. Do you want to have sex? Or do you want to make him happy?

• Don't have sex without a condom. Don't. Really don't. The consequences far far outweigh the pleasure and you can catch all sorts of nasty diseases.
  

• Remember that the guy is labelled a "rascal" while the girl is labelled the bitch-slut-whore-going-to-hell. It's just not worth it. Imagine how you will face your family and horrible relatives. Think of all the things that you want to do with your life...do you really want to have a baby now? Think about money. How will you cope? Do you really want to end up marrying someone under these circumstances?

• To be absolutely frank - do not let him put his penis into your vagina or even near your vagina without a condom. Don't believe him if he says he will pull out. What, stop when the pleasure is at its peak? Yeah right. Even if he says he can do it, the penis produces lubrication before ejaculation that can contain sperm. So you can get pregnant even if he doesn't come in you.

• Condoms work. Do not believe anyone who tells you that condoms don't work. Men say that because they don't want to wear them. Religious youth leaders say that because they think that they can scare you out of sex by lying to you. OK, stats show that there is a 3% risk and sometimes they split - but if you are going to have sex (and you are not on the Pill), condoms are your best friend.

• If things get really desperate, tell him to take care of himself i.e. have a wank. Hey, guys do it all the time. And don't forget that you can take care of yourself too.

• There's lots of stuff on the internet, but this is a good place to start.

I'm an old married woman now, but I remember being a teenager very well. I specifically remember what manipulative bastards (some) men can be even at that age. So here are a few additional comments

• You are not cheap if you have had sex with your boyfriend and you subsequently break-up. You had sex with him for whatever reason - it doesn't matter now, and it does not determine how you conduct yourself in future relationships.

• On that theme, just because you have had sex with someone - it doesn't mean that you have to stick with him if he turns into an asshole. It's not easy to walk away when you have invested so much into a relationship, but be strong. Believe in yourself.

• If your new boyfriend says - You had sex with him, but you won't have sex with me, that means you don't love me, don't let this influence you. At best - he feels insecure, in which case reassure him. At worst, he is using you. If someone puts a lot of pressure on you, tell him to get lost.

Crabby Monday

Oh, oh, oh, another day another blog.

Today is the day that

• a crazy guy went on the rampage in Virginia, killing 33 people. It is the worst campus shooting in US history. I hope that I don't read this entry in a year's time and find that this number has been surpassed by yet another disturbed man with a gun.

• someone said that chocolate is better than kissing. Well, surely it depends on the chocolate and the kissing. I mean, there's kissing and there's kissing.

• I ate lots of these little crabs from Aji Ichiban. Now I feel sick. Damn it, will I ever learn to stop before the nausea begins?

My brother-in-law travels a lot and every time he is in HongKong he gets me and my sister lots of snacks. Mr K-E says they look horrible (like the facehuggers from the Alien movies) and smell even worse than they look.

There is the slightest resemblance I suppose.

Future Queen of England?

There was an article in the Observer yesterday about Kate Middleton, Prince William's girlfriend and probably a future Queen of England. She's only 25, but by God, does she dress like she's 55.

(Picture is from here)

I know she has to appear respectable and all that, but talk about lamb dressed as mutton. The article quotes a fashion editor who says that "she has the biggest collection of Longchamp I've ever seen".

Really? I thought Longchamp was a really boring stuffy brand. But maybe... it's going to be the next Mulberry.... This could be my chance to be chic before everyone else!

So I had look at the Longchamp website. Hmmm. Not good. Even my mother wouldn't be seen carrying these handbags.

(Sorry, I couldn't get any pictures but have a look for yourself. They cost around £400 each apparently.)

I prefer Prince Harry's girlfriend Chelsy Davy, or Chav-sy Davy as some people call her. She's pretty trashy but at least she's interesting to look at.

(Picture is from here)

Saddam Hussein is dead.

I have just seen on the news that Saddam Hussein has been hanged in Iraq. The BBC showed the scenes leading up to the execution, including the noose being put around his neck. The whole report fills me with sadness. Although there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a complete bastard while he was in power, killing and torturing scores of people, is this really the best solution?

In the words of the Vatican spokesman, Frederico Lombardi:

"A capital punishment is always tragic news, a reason for sadness, even if it deals with a person who was guilty of grave crimes...

"The killing of the guilty party is not the way to reconstruct justice and reconcile society. On the contrary, there is a risk that it will feed a spirit of vendetta and sow new violence.

"In these dark times for the Iraqi people, one can only hope that all responsible parties truly make every effort so that glimmers of reconciliation and peace can be found in such a dramatic situation."

I don't think I can say it any better than that.

Every day we see and hear reports of how the Iraqi people are suffering. I must admit that I don't understand all the religious and political complexities of the Middle East, but I hope that things get better in the new year. And not just for this part of the world, but for Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia....

(I guess the conspiracy lovers will have to come up with a whole new raft of theories - Saddam living in LA with Elvis etc.)