The Smurfs, those funny blue-colored cartoon characters, are being used in an upcoming UNICEF drive to make people aware of the consequences of war. Its set to air in Belgium quite soon. Apparently the ad starts out with Smurfs going about their business in their village, but then a bomb falls and destroys it, and children are hurt and crying.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I were to watch that ad it would change my perception of the Smurfs forever. Even if I watch the normal cartoons after that, injured and bleeding Smurfs would still be in the back of my head and that's just not right. Cartoon characters are like putty... easily changed, as they're just figments of imagination. Its like after you watch someone commit murder (not that I have), that will be the first thing that comes to mind when the person's name comes up.

So I'm all for protecting the innocence of the Smurfs... in any case, UNICEF is just being discriminating... they're stereotyping injured, war-ravaged children as being blue in color.

So Livingston decides to raise bus and tube fares to astronomical levels... but only for people paying cash. And the majority of those are tourists, not residents in London, so I feel its fair that tourists will be ripped off so that us residents can enjoy better tube and bus rides.

So...

Zone 1 tube cash fare will rise from 2 pounds to 3 pounds.
Zone 2-6 tube cash fare will rise from 2.10 to 3 pounds.
Zone 1-6 tube cash fare will rise to 4 pounds.
All bus journeys will rise from 1.20 to 1.50

BUT... if you use the Oyster card, the prices actually get cheaper..

Zone 1 tube cash fare will drop from 1.70 to 1.50
Zone 2-6 tube cash fare will be a flat 1 pound
Bus will be 1 pound during peak times and 80p during others.

So now there is a big incentive to get an oyster card... and to maximize the savings, one should travel via tube within zone 1 or within zones 2-6 more frequently. Oyster bus prices have not dropped.

Some other changes include no 7-day travelcard for zone 1, only for zones 1-4 which will cost a hefty 31.60. That's bad news for tourists, and also for students living in private housing in zone 1 who plan to travel by tube into college. paying 31.60 a week is a ridiculous amount, but I guess if there's no bus they're stuck with paying for the rest of the year.

Why is it that everytime I have to visit some government department or do something related with the government, I automatically budget 200% extra time, and make sure I have all my documents in triplicates and a whole stack of other documents that "might" be needed? And, like a long plane flight, my eyes automatically search around home for a good book or magazine to bring along. Why is it that when I go visit a shop, bank, or some other private institution do I not feel the same urge to do the above?

It saddens me that government departments cannot run efficiently. After all, if you think about it, taxes are like payments we make to an entity to protect us, take care of us, and to make sure our society functions as a whole. The government acts like a business, taking in money, and giving out... services. Except that, in this business, it has no competition, and therefore you don't get what you pay for. It took me 3 hours to go through an appointment to apply for National Insurance number (something like a social security number, for Americans reading). The reason why it was 3 hours and not 15 minutes was a) they were running late, b) my guaranteed appointment via phone failed to materialize as a real appointment at the office, and c) the interviewer was a lazy bum who took his time to get the forms, fill them in, and engage in idle chit-chat with his co-workers. That place ran like how I do on weekends... 15 minutes of work, 45 minutes of recreation.

No wonder some politicians are waking up and thinking of privatising government services. First, they're trying to sell off the post office. Using accounting tricks, they potrayed the post office as a 500-million-a-year-profit business, when in reality it actually made maybe about 100 million. Second, they're selling off a couple of hospitals to private companies to run, and allowing these companies to cut more staff in already understaffed hospitals. So now that all these public services are being sold off.. the government can now concentrate on what it does best: collecting money.

I found this site on Boing Boing, where this guy went around New York sticking empty speech-bubble stickers on ads, posters, and whatnot inviting the public to fill the the bubble with original comments. Needless to say, this experiment was inviting mischief, and alot of the filled in quotes are pretty funny. Like there's the ad for this mini-series called "Out of Order", and there's a bunch of teenagers floating around in water. One bubble had written in it " Mommy, I don't have to go potty anymore", with another one "hmm.... I'm in a warm spot!". I wonder if this would work in London. Would be a fun way to pass time, although where would I get speech-bubble shaped stickers...

Found this on Yahoo today - Terror Groups 'operating in UK universities'. Why the last part of the headline wwas in quotes... I don't know. Those of you who were around last year might remember the incident of that Imperial student arrested for connections to Al Qaeda. I don't know what happened to him, but I have the impression the government didnt have a strong case.

Anyways, it looks like Imperial College is now clean. The news article mentions that 30 institutions around the country have had extremists groups in them, and listed 3 examples:

Oxford University
Cambridge University
London School of Economics

Hmm... where have I seen this list before... oh yes, it appears to be the same as the list of the top 4 universities ranked by The Times and The Guardian.. only that Imperial College is missing, which should be in 3rd place (or 1st, if I had my way).

So I guess either the news reporter who looked through the list didn't know about Imperial College, wanted to protect Imperial College (alumni of the "school of science, technology, and medicine" working as a journalist? hahaha...), or Imperial College just doesn't have any extremists or terror organisations. That last point is quite believable now that I've been here for a year. Also might be to do with the fact that every student here is basically science-trained, and we prefer to learn how to build nuclear instead of backpack bombs.

In other unrelated news, my joy of signing up for a new contract and getting a new phone was majorly deflated when I was rejected based on my credit check. Now... I was approved for a contract with 3 last year... so why won't they approve me this year? I've paid my bills, have a stash of cash in the bank, and have no debt... what could have gone wrong? Maybe they found out that I wasn't the ideal customer (i.e. doesn't download 100 ringtones or wallpapers a week or make random video calls). So I decided to request a copy of my credit report from a credit reporting agency.. perhaps they have some of my details wrong.

 It has barely barely been two weeks since this blog had its first heartbeat, and already it has been quoted by a news site, Independent Sources, for its blog entry on the iBook.  The following parody that I came up with was quoted:

 

Although Idependent Sources isn't as big as CNN or BBC, its still the right step in the right direction, and it tells me that there are people out there who are reading what I write, which is a big relief for anyone who is writing a blog. I'm sure all of you blog owners out there are wondering if people actually read your blogs, and now I can say I have crossed over the line to the other side.

 

For those of you using MSN Spaces like I am, there's a quicker way to check if your blog is being read than by waiting for it to be quoted by others. When you are logged in and at your blog page, click on settings on the right, and then click on statistics on the toolbar that pops up on the left. The Statistics page keeps a running count on how many times your blog was opened, and which entries/photos/lists were viewed. It also shows referring addresses, which tell you if the visitor had clicked on a link from another site to get to yours (which is how I found out about my blog quote in Independent Sources).

 

Curiously, Independent Sources quoted my post on the iBook as being "snarky", and although I did not know what it meant at the time, I looked it up on Dictionary.com, and it meant Irritable or short-tempered; irascible. Now, that's not a very nice thing for them to say about my post, which reflects on me. But upon re-reading it, perhaps I did come through as a little irritated or critical of the whole event. Snarky as I am, I'm also feeling a bit hungry for breakfast, so here I will leave you readers hanging, but be sure to check back regularly for new blog entries.

 

Horgan explained that alkali eye injuries occur when an alkaline substance -- such as detergent or lime in plaster or cement -- comes in contact with the eye, damaging the stem cells at the edge of the cornea.

"This is significant in that these stem cells provide new cells to line the surface of the cornea - i.e., 'epithelial' cells - and a healthy corneal epithelium is essential for corneal clarity and normal vision," he said