RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

Someone has gone and copied one of the most versatile food ingredient - the humble, but absolutely awesome chicken egg. You give them a peek at your design, and *3 days later you see a copycat in the market, mass produced and sold at *98% cheaper than you ever meant it to be. They add melamine and nitrates into milk to kill children. They rocked the Olympics opening ceremony when they had the chance, though. And now, eggs... A few days ago, a housewife brought some eggs to the consumer association after finding something quite amiss with them while cooking, and they were found to be fakes. Now the **whole country is quite worried if they had accidentally consumed the fake eggs (allegedly made of chemicals) without noticing it. I know for a fact that I might probably dismiss the fact that the egg didn't smell like an egg, or had the wrong consistency as just a 'batch problem' if I wasn't aware of the fake eggs story. Who would even think of such a thing as a fake egg? ...

Conversations hardly revolve around airport security, but if they did, and if someone actually wanted to know my thoughts on it a few months ago, I would have vehemently declared that the Liquids, Aerosols and Gels (or LAGs) ban killed the Backpacker's dream. See, airport security hangs on to such a delicate thread that no one in their right mind wants to disrupt that balance and be forever banned from setting their foot in new lands seeking adventure. And because I do not really travel that much (I'll be contradicting this statement pretty soon), I have only a very vague idea on the actual rules and regulations regarding LAGs. They are my travel based nightmares. For that reason wherever I go, ALL toiletries end up in my check in luggage. Occassionally I'd carry an empty water bottle to refill (some airports have water dispensers at the boarding gate area which is awesome) But even then, a few years ago, while I was on my way back from Japan with an empty bottle in my ca...

Around 4 years and 1 month ago, I was handed a heartache on a platter in the form of a laptop. To make matters worse, I actually paid for it. It was the very first laptop/computer I ever bought on my own, and I grudgingly have to admit now that I might have been taken on a small ride (they changed the OS from XP to Vista with only 503 MB of memory) without knowing it until at least a year later A few weeks ago, the laptop suddenly died while I was using it. After fretting for awhile and finally allowing it to 'cool down' it revived and started working again as though nothing had happened. Good news? Maybe. Or maybe not. Then last night, it went berserk again. My sister was using it for something and she complained that the screen showed her that 'a fatal error has occurred'. She also said that before her laptop died late last year, it had behaved in such a way. Inevitably, the heartache on a platter may have reached the end of it's road. Undeniably, the idea of g...