Ideal Marriage Proposal

This is how one should propose marriage. 

Newsradio - Video clip

Yes, video clip from a radio program. This is an old American TV show based around a radio station.

I like this particular clip because it's..well, it's comedy, why analyse it, just watch it.

Project Declutter - Confessions of a Shopaholic

Usually, when it's Diwali time my parents force me, against my will, kicking and screaming, to clean my room to get it ready for a whitewash and in the process a willy-nilly re-organisation and decluttering happens.

But even though I wrote that in the present tense that's a thing of the past. Now, I live in the UK, now I live alone, well almost alone if you don't count my housemate. And we don't need to count him for this as he doesn't force me to winter clean or reorganise my room. 

So what then? Why? Why suddenly this interest in de-cluttering? I didn't even know there was such a word, I thought I was inventing it when I typed "Project Declutter" in my MindMap. (Mind Maps, what a great idea, remind me to tell you about this some time!). 

Anyhoo, if I start to track the idea back to its origin we might be spending the night here, so let's just say that the amount of clutter in my room got to a point where it was almost crushing me, forcing me to stay on the bed all the time and carefully pick my way through the clutter when I felt the need to pee and did need to leave the room. 

The reason it took so long to start this project was its sheer size, it's mammothness. Also the intricate relationship that exists between different lots of clutter - if I do move the books where do I put them, I do want to straighten out this drawer but where will all this stuff go...and so on. 

But there were some incentives as well, some things that did inspire me to start this project. I mean other than the expected incentive of being able to walk around in my room without tiptoeing like I am on a guided tour in a minefield. (If it's an unguided tour, I just won't move an inch). 

One such incentive was that I could buy more stuff for this project. You know what, I have been thinking, that even though I may not be (I say may be) as sexy as Isla Fisher I may still be a shopaholic. And if you say that it's a girlie thing to shop, I will yell "sexist" at you. Even though I do like to shop in a store, (my neck turns on its own any time I pass an electronics store), my most favourite is online shopping. Nothing like the rush of typing a keyword in ebay.co.uk search box and getting 17,202 records back. And Amazon.co.uk..oh, I love Amazon!

Well, this in itself reminds me of Isla Fisher in her recent movie Confessions of a Shopaholic. But when I am doing the decluttering I am even more acutely reminded of her and how she does her own decluttering. 

Just yesterday when a friend asked me what I am up to I said, "I am working on decluttering my room and my life." And she said, "Decluttering your life...that sounds ominous!". 

And yet, your room and your life are so intertwined that one cannot be cluttered or decluttered without affecting the other. 

Now that I think back on it, the indicator of the rising amount of clutter in my room was the number of books on my night-table. Usually I keep one or two books there on the edge that I am reading. Recently it started growing into a pile. I was adding to these one or two books because there was no place for me to move the books I had finished. So, before this little tower should start to rival the Eiffel Tower and I get a letter from Paris, I thought I should take action. 

While I was waiting for new bookcases to arrive (they have now and they are lovely, by the way), I just took all the surplus books and lined them up on the window sill. Just casually I ran my eye over the titles and realized something. They were not just books, they were dreams, aspirations, enquiries of a curious mind and the efforts to be a better man. By arranging them in a visible, orderly manner in a bookcase I will have more access to them and more of a reminder to pursue these projects that I lauched into with vigour at a time but then let pass out of mind. So, you see, decluttering, room and life both. 

Since this is a huge project, not the size of Bhakhra Nangal but still big, I can fill several pages with details and thoughts regarding this. But in all fairness to my readers, I should stop here. 

 

As usual, your comments and thoughts are welcome. 

Some funny quotes from Cheers

As mentioned above...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083399/quotes

Trying out glasses...online

What kind of glasses should I get?

Usually it's a big question for anyone once they get the slip from the optician telling them they need glasses?

But the same thing applies when you want to buy sunglasses though the dependency is not that big so the commitment is not the same. It can be though, if you are buying really expensive ones and you are not a prince like me. :D

Today the question came up as my beloved nephew got prescribed glasses. He asked me if there's any web site that can analyse what kind of glasses would look good on his face. (What am I, a magician?). Well, fortunately in this case I was able to deliver.

And then I started playing with a couple of them myself. And then I thought maybe my readers would like to (or need to) use these as well. So, out of the few services I tried, I am posting the couple that I liked. Plus, my photos in different glasses. Do tell me which ones I look best in.

The links are at the bottom, after the photos. Yes, you have to look at the photos, that's the price for the info. :D

The way it works is you upload your photo, then you adjust it so their software can calibrate it then you can try as many frames/glasses as you like.

http://www.visionexpress.com/tryon/

http://www.tescoopticians.com/tryonline.aspx

And this is the pair of sunglasses I actually own. I bought them for my trip to South Africa. Yes, they are Ray-Ban. ;) 

Memories of South Africa

I don't know who to blame, I took so many photos in South Africa and now I can't find a single one of them. 

But let's start from the starting. I have a G1, that's the latest in cellphones, they call it the Google phone, the grandfather of iPhone, iPhone killer, Android phone, and a few more names....but it's supposed to be the Cat's whiskers, the dog's doodads, the works! And it is!

More about that phone some other time, right now I am lamenting the loss of my photos. I had such a hectic schedule in SA that I hardly got time to take out my digital camera. But I had my G1 with a 3.2 megapixel camera and on the long road journeys I snapped quite a few photos...don't worry I wasn't driving. 

But somehow, when I got back I had none of those photos on the SD card. So, now all that I have left from that trip is this one photo that I posted from the phone directly to my Picasa albums (I told you this phone is the space-age thing). 

This photo was taken on the way back from Johannesburg to the O R Tambo airport. The car was rushing on at about 140-160 kmph, but see the clarity of the photo, it's not my magic, it's the G1. 

Hey, I just remembered there were others who were very active with a camera, esp. one chirpy little girl in my team. I can ask them for the photos they took. :-)