A few years back I was enjoying some time in the summer on the shores of Black Sea, or the Mediterranean resorts, without even considering about any other expenses but my pocket money. The reason was simple – flight tickets were priced reasonably and were actually letting us arrange holidays and be treated as tourists in EUROPE and not as if we are going to travel to another planet. Promises by airline companies were kept and people were happy. Now, this all seems to have changed. Despite the fact that companies have expanded in all businesses including the provision of opportunities to buy cosmetics or clothes in their planes, or arrange a holiday with another rival company through their retail routes, these companies continue to increase prices of tickets and aim for even higher profits – greed that we suffer from.

Nowadays, flight tickets have increased. Companies defend themselves stating that the increase is caused by the oil prices, by the complicated laws being issued every year and by the increasing tax legislation. Nevertheless, some of the destinations are priced double and triple the promised prices – something completely out of any excuses. Travelling by plane is once again becoming an expensive and difficult endeavour for people willing to have a good holiday and the more we are willing to visit different countries and enjoy the privileges of the European Union, the less chances we have due to the enormous expenses we will incur. So a final judgement for the airline companies – promises made were not kept and once again the lack of regulation in the sector is harming the consumers. Welcome to Europe – the land of consumer ’welfare’.

Being married is a good thing, usually. If the person that one is getting married to is somebody known, it further adds to the fun of a married life.

But the question asked by many young girls, is what the right age for marriage is? Is there infact any such thing as the right age? Well, honestly I don’t know. I can only speak from experience and advice that marriage is right, which year of life, well it is still a mystery for many; and especially for us the fairer sex.

Once out of college and professional study groups, into the real world of work life, a woman realizes that all is not as beautiful and pleasant as is made out to be. Not to say that men don’t experience that kind of myth breaking episodes. But for us women, our beliefs into some things are so grave and engrained that we take a lot before allowing our myth’s to break and almost another lifetime before they actually dissolve and fade away.

Anyway, one of the things that almost every woman experiences is a failed relationship before she hits the age of 30. Again, not to say that men don’t experience a bad relationship but they often don’t perceive it as one. One of the worst to survive, at least it feels like it when faced with it, is a relationship gone sour when it was declared open and accepted as being next to marriage.

How does one survive that and does one decide to just go ahead and get married to the next best thing? I don’t think there is ever a woman living the urban life, who hasn’t asked this question to herself soon after a broken relationship. But what the oldies folks have left behind as advice for us is not all wrong and out dated. Being on the rebound and falling for the next best ‘thing’ is one of the worst ways of getting off grief.

Even if one is of the marriageable age variety, as many put it, which is usually between 24 to 27, it is not necessary that one falls for a guy almost immediately after a break up. Waiting up for the right mental state after a break up is quite important before making a lifetime’s decision.

Therefore to answer the question about what is the right age – my answer is there is nothing called a right age for marriage. Albeit there is something called as the right mental state of marriage. And post break up from an important relationship, is definitely not the right one.

One has heard the clichéd line that God made only one earth and man has divided it into many countries.

In the many continents and countries reside many societies, some really advanced and some absolutely regressive. However all humans, of course I am currently discounting the animals and other living species here.

What is a common thread in these human beings that reside across various borders? There could be many but one that particularly interests me is the treatment of women. While in some religions, women and the fairer sex are raised to being Goddesses the overall treatment experienced by them is no different.

In some places women and the female gender is out right rejected, for e.g. some really regressive farfetched areas in India where the female fetus is still killed. While in some other developed areas this may not be the case, but brutality is dished out in another form.

Big cities are supposed to be more advanced than rural areas because the so called educated class resides in them. However the situation in terms of women safety is no different. Infact in big cities the levels of brutality are much higher than in rural areas.

While in rural areas, mostly in India, the woman is supposed to limit herself to fences of the house, there is slight open mindedness in the urban areas as far a woman’s reach and capabilities is concerned. However no woman is left without every feeling that she is an object of desire of a lecherous man: a desire which could be disgusting and demeaning to her self respect.

But the great part of us women is that we have the mental strength that it takes to dissolve all this pain and ill behavior in our stride and move ahead.

Men may have the physical strength to be able to endure more pain but when it comes to enduring mental pain, women definitely take the cake and sometimes the baker!

Cooking is an art, somebody said. The earlier me, in terms of years on this planet, wouldn’t have bothered much for this kind of a statement. However, as I have added years to my life on this planet, I have realized that this statement hold much weight and is quite true.

I have unfortunately learnt this the hard way. Cooking food is quite a challenge when one has quite not spent a lot of time on it; however, the results that come out are quite a delight.

One of the important tricks to remember while cooking is to be patient. Remember ‘Rome was not made in a day’ ; this adage holds true for cooking and getting the finer tastes of the ingredients to dissolve in the dish prepared. When one thing needs to simmer, let it simmer in peace and without worrying about how long this is going to take for you to get out of the kitchen.

Another vital thing that one needs to factor is to have the ingredients well in advance before setting out with the actual preparation of the food item. Having half of the ingredients and searching out for the other half while cooking, can ruin the speed as well as the flavor of the food.

To keep a tidy kitchen, keep cleaning the work area as and when time permits. Throw out the waste in the garbage as soon as you get the time and keep swiping the kitchen counter as many times as possible. Cleaning thoroughly once the entire process is through is fine, however in between swipes and wipes helps to avoid any wall/counter staining permanently.

The most important thing on which most people choke is the presentation of the food. Presenting food is also as sacred as cooking a good meal. The right sized vessel, the correct color so that the food prepared doesn’t look either too bland or too spicy, garnishing etc. are some things that the chef must watch out for.

Therefore, cooking and the elation of being fed a good meal are not very difficult albeit the chef has her work and heart in the right place!

My friend Tomas is a good guy. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a really good guy. He’s from Hungary somewhere, although he’s never told me exactly where it is he hails from. He works in a sandwich shop in the West End, which seems like a bit of a dubious gig for someone who’s 29 years old. But he has big dreams. Like, outrageously big dreams. One is that he wants to run his own airline. He flew a little bit when he was doing his National Service, although my understanding is that he never quite qualified as a private pilot, and now his big dream is to buy a plane and start an airline.
In fairness, he doesn’t want to start a big airline. It doesn’t need to be British Airways, or even Ryanair. He imagines that he could be an owner-operator, flying his own plane from Newquay out to the Scilly Isles for example. Short hops, not many passengers, personal service. Maybe it’d even become a Courier Service, air freighting people’s packages and other things that need to be got urgently from A to B.
I don’t believe he’s ever quite going to make it. But I hope it does, because Tomas is a dreamer and in this increasingly depressing world it feels like what we really need are dreamers. People who will aspire towards something, and concretely work towards it. Tomas is saving as much of his money as he can. And while he may be more likely to fly a kite than a plane, it’s still a beautiful thing to dream of being airborne.

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Is it just me or is Britain rapidly turning into some kind of ‘police state’? We seem to have an ever-increasing amount of control being forced upon us in so many different ways –

· There are now more CCTV systems in Britain than any other country in Europe. And this means being scrutinised just about anywhere that we go.

· We are being swamped with bureaucracy and red tape (and most of this originates in Brussels) on a daily basis. Sure, a civilised society must have a certain amount of rules, but do we really need this many???

· Being British is supposed to mean having ‘freedom of speech'fitted as standard. However, when you look at the way that protests are handled it makes you wonder how much freedom we really do have…

· Health and Safety regulations (Brussels again!) are becoming so restrictive that we will soon not even be allowed to leave our homes. Isn’t it a little over the top to expect children to don protective equipment before engaging in a ‘dangerous'game of ‘Conkers’?

I am slowly becoming convinced that David Cameron will one day go the whole hog and turn into a cruel and ruthless dictator! Or perhaps he will morph into ‘the Beast'from the Bible’s ‘Book of Revelation’?

You think I sound paranoid? Well, ask yourself this; if you were roaming worldwide , how many countries would make you feel like a social pariah simply for having a cigarette in your mouth? Because smokers are certainly made to feel ‘dirty'in Britain…

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Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things which are rubbish about the UK – overpriced trains, reliably unreliable weather – but try going to a Lithuanian hospital where you have to bribe the doctor if you want decent treatment! Go to Bulgaria where the trains are much slower than the buses because the tracks are so old!

My friends who were working at data quality services and were originally from Latvia, suffered from this attitude and were happy and excited about going to a country where the sun shone for most of the year. This is all very well and good but they soon found out that there are other things which are not so positive. The hot weather makes a dry landscape, for example, the beaches are often stoney. Compare that to Scotland where it may rain a lot but the landscape is green and lush and the beaches are beautiful. Cyprus is also quite sexist, like much of the Mediterranean.

The result of this is that one friend likes it and one does not. People should remember that there are two sides to every coin.

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Recently as I sat in the offices of my insurance company looking about a Personal Injury Trusts compensation, I was engaged in a conversation with an Internet marketer who was telling me about Internet memes. I had never heard the term before so explained to me what it was. I was surprised to find out it is widely used throughout the Internet and especially in the marketing field. Here is a bit of what he shared with me.

A meme is cognitive information which turns to a behavior that most people imitate. It is an idea created in the form of a song, fashion, music or jokes. An internet meme is a piece of a video, picture or other media products which is passed from one person to another through social networks, new sources, blogs, direct e-mail and other internet-based services.

Internet memes are found to be entertaining and humorous nowadays. They are usually done by people imitating a funny, real life event, acting ridiculously with people who are in danger, never ending music remixes, or even simple harmless picture memes made most of the viewers smile.

On the other hand, there are internet memes which focus more on drama and shock-value. Others have deep content, intellectual absurdity and involve public commentary. There are even memes that are more about myths and teaching viewers a lesson. It’s more like someone’s personal experience, or a bundle of cultural viewpoints that is spread to the people like a computer virus.

It was historically known that memes are means of cultural propagation to transmit cultural ideas and social memories. With the advancement of technology, they are now technically known as internet memes. Today they are now commonly spread by young teenagers and post adolescents who have greater playful curiosity about them. Internet memes today are widespread and continue to bring information and humor to many people every day.

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I have been watching today’s 24-hour coverage of the Dale Farm eviction with a mixture of fascination and horror. I had most of the day off as I was teaching a moving and handling train the trainer course this morning and only had a couple of very enthusiastic students. Thanks to their eagerness to get through the material, I was on my sofa holding a mug of tea, munching on some really wonderful cookies and watching the story unfold before 11am!

I can’t help but feel some sympathy for the Travellers (or Gypsies – not sure what the difference is to be honest!) who have made their homes on the land. Not only have they been allowed to build up homes and a community on this site, only to have it unceremoniously removed from them, but the attitudes of their neighbours reminds me a lot of the way my family and others were treated when we first arrived in the UK from Eastern Europe.

All immigrants (and anyone else who is not part of the “normal” population) are always regarded with suspicion; inevitably it is assumed that we’re only here to get our hands on benefits, better housing and free healthcare. If you read The Daily Mail, you probably think that there are no Eastern Europeans even working in the UK – though a trip to any bar in London will soon disavow you of that notion! I work very hard to earn enough money so I can pay my rent and contribute to society. I know many immigrants and refugees who work several jobs a week to ensure they can look after their families without having to turn to the government for help. How many native Brits can say the same thing? I don’t know about the individual circumstances of those living at Dale Farm. Maybe they are all dole scroungers; maybe they are benefits cheats, thieves and criminals. But I would bet a lot of money that most of them are just like me – decent people trying to give themselves and their family a decent home.

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