Everyone seems to be sharing everything with everyone else these days – is nothing private anymore? Is it even possible to do/be/share anything furtively with all the prying ears and eyes of social networking and big brothers around us. And yet, there is still so much pleasure to be derived from being one of just a few …
You know you’re in London’s Soho when…
…you can eat and drink your way very happily through the 12 days until Christmas! London’s Soho district is pretty unique with its intensity of people from all walks of life, its density of interesting places, its propensity for arousing curiosity. Sometimes it feels a bit like being in a walled city with all its …
“Let the store come to the people”
It is now possible to shop by smartphone whilst you’re waiting for your train home – at least, it is so far if you’re in South Korea or in Prague in the Czech Republic, as read on www.springwise.com. In some underground stations, bilboards have been turned into virtual supermarkets with pictures of products on shelves …
“palindrome” II II II II II
du jour, yes, du minute even, eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven, a minute of a day that can be read the same forwards and backwards, and unlikely to happen to any of us again in our lifetimes. And for us it’s one day that we don’t need to feel bothered by the persistence of a …
“Generación ni-ni”
They’re young, they’ve left school or nearly have, and they really should be either studying or working, but they’re not doing either, “ni trabajan ni estudian”. What good would studying achieve anyway? Who’s going to give them a job afterwards? Who’s going to give them a job at all “con la crisis” (in the economic …
German men: if tomorrow you were given the day off, and €1,000 to spend as you liked…
We continue our Wishful Thinking series by asking some young men in Hamburg, Germany how they would spend a day off and 1,000 euros. Whilst many of the answers were quite similar to those of their British and Spanish contemporaries, with geographical variations of course, we also saw two more marked extremes, of great spontaneity …
You know you’re in Gothenberg when…
…you hear “Göteborg”, pronounced “yö-te-boh-ry”, or even “goatyboiyg”, but not GoTTENBERG as you may be forgiven for saying yourself. …you may just happen upon a grass labyrinth in a major town square – a metaphor for the situation currently prevailing in Egypt where after the revolution there is promise but instability. The Swedes take human rights …
money money money
Everyone seems to be talking about money right now, not enough of it, others with heaps of it, whole nations needing so much more of it, taxpayers handing over too much or not of it, banks mis-using it, consumers wanting more and more of it, blood money, easy money, money money money. We (almost) all …
“stay safe”
These are troubled times, and we Brits enjoy nothing better than making each other feel cared about and looked out for in times of need. Stiff upper lip and united we shall stand. Sort of. Enter ‘Stay safe’ into the repertoire of sign-offs for emails and other written communication in 2011. In the USA, since …
Rising levels of obesity: is it what you eat or how you eat?
As we indulged our way through barbecues, picnics and ice creams this summer (whatever the weather), we felt it appropriate – if a little cathartic – to consider the ever more worrying worldwide health problem of obesity. Much can be attributed to increasingly unhealthy diets (all year round) with an emphasis on American-style junk food …