Malaysia truly Asia

I am again back Malaysia, this time for 4 weeks. I was tired even before getting here, expecting to be exhausted when I get back to frigid Munich. Priya should be here next week, she will go back with me around mid december. Contemplating doing some dental surgery when I am back, not sure as I will probably have to get back to Malaysia in a few weeks after that. My Hong Kong plans are squashed for now, its KL all the way. Apparently signs of a midlife crisis is when you start writing a blog, Rohit (President of my fan club) has started scribbling his thoughts at http://singageek.blogspot.com

To Bio or not?

"Hi girls, Recently I have been thinking a lot about the effect of the food we consume along with all the usual stresses and the environments we live in. This feeling that we are eating wrong seems to have strengthened even more lately after hearing about XXX and XXX. While no correlation can be made... I started slowly with buying only Bio milk a few months ago. Then stretched it to whatever other organic product I saw on the shelf that I needed. Just a couple of days ago, I was shopping for a whole chicken to roast. (Normally I buy all my meat and fish at the turkish store because they are ridiculously cheap and everything seems fresher.) So anyway, back to the chicken. I noticed the bio chicken sitting next to the ordinary chicken and it was 15 bucks instead of 5 bucks. I balked at that and promptly changed dinner plans. Ever since I have been wondering what those extra 10 bucks mean to me. Am I trading in a few dollars now for bigger problems later? Since I seem to have a lot of time in my hands :) I was just browsing around and came across this article and thought I should share it with you. I can't say that I am a convert, but I am leaning a little more to the organic side. As always, comments, opinions, insights are most welcome. http://www.theorganicreport.com/pages/321_the_ecology_of_pizza_part_1.cfm?searchterm=pizza Love, P" Since Priya refuses to take on my request to write a a guest blog, I thought the next best thing would be to plagiarise her emails. FYI - she did buy the chicken and it tasted great!!

Technology, me and you

Ever noticed how distracted we have become nowadays. How many tasks do you start in a day and leave uncompleted only to be restarted a few hours later but randomly dropped again. Do you believe technology has made you and me closer? Is email more powerful a tool than airmail? Quoting an article from the Herald Tribune, it details how a taxi ride from CDG was more an endeavour in multitasking than another opportunity to get a tip from the street about France's underprivileged. The author claims, they spoke to each other, chatted on cellphones, watched a dvd, drove, completed an article and had a few munches and all of this in a span of 20 minutes. A more extreme view is that we are not designed to handle such a scale of mult-tasking. We have taken millions of years to evolve from tree climbing primates to farm-food fed beings . But it has taken us less than a hundred to become technologically driven homo-sapiens living on trans fat and 15 hour work days. In many cases, mine included, we are only about a generation away from having ancestors who were farmers. Worries were simple, no rain or too much rain decided whether there was going to be enough food for the table for the rest of the year. Now I am more concerned how my stock portfolio will be affected by Saddam's trial verdict than whether there will be enough grain in storage to last through the winter. Technology was for our benefit but perhaps it is not contributing to make you happier and consequently makes you less content. Its true computers have made me more efficient but I think as a result I spend more time at work, less time with the family and almost no time with the community. The sociological effects of a networked world actually mean that we know less people around us, want more privacy because we spend all our time working but are one link away from Madonna's new adopted Malawian baby. Jetlag and Carpel tunnel syndrome are my new best friends. Ironically, I peddle technology and perhaps work hard enough to be able to afford my next toy inspite of this rant. I certainly think life would have been less challenging without the added benefits of technology but whom I am to say anything. I am just another rat in a wheel!