It happens to me again and again. I get hurt and confused every time I meet grabby people. I even start thinking: “may be I should be like them…?” “Is it because I am a woman that that behaviour doesn’t come natural to me?” But no, it’s not. It is because it runs counter to [...]
I am no great fan of Damien Hirst’s diamond skull… But the British artist said something interesting in an interview the other day. Asked about his definition of success, Hirst replied that if you were to put a painting at the entrance of a pub only to find it gone the next day, that would [...]
I don’t believe this video is only about the power of words. It is more about the feelings we attach to words. Watch it and you will see… The woman who rewrote the sign stepped into the mind of people passing by and was able to imagine what they would feel by reading it. In [...]
I ate lunch with my 104-year-old grandma on Christmas day. I do this every year but it was only last night, while listening to Adam Gopnik on Charlie Rose, that I realised why I do it… Gopnik writes for The New Yorker and is the author of The Table Comes First. He believes that we use [...]
I finally gave in and bought myself a Mac last weekend. First time ever. My friend Ben and I braved the Christmas crowds on Regent Street and set out on a pilgrimage to the Apple Store. When I get my mind set on something, I can decide pretty quickly. I just go into a shop, [...]
Verbal abuse on public transport entered a new dimension this morning thanks to social media. A YouTube video of a woman on a London tram holding a child and shouting racist abuse went viral today. I watched in horror a scene that I might have very well experienced myself. I was kicked on a tram [...]
It’s that time of the year…. And I don’t mean my seasonal cold. I live in London and every year in early November, I am surrounded by people wearing red plastic poppies on lapels, sweaters, handbags… The first time I came across a Remembrance poppy, I was in Prague meeting a friend who is a British [...]
I am terrible at crossword puzzles and I have never really tried Sudoku. But this doesn’t worry me any more. I read today that “people who speak more than one language do not exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease until they have twice as much brain damage as unilingual people”. Physicians encourage older people to take [...]
Did you notice that, when the weather is sunny, it takes your heart longer to break? I had always wanted to travel to Mostar. I guess it is because of the bridge and what it stands for. I stood under the bridge last Saturday by the river Neretva. Its water was as blue as the [...]
Once a journalist, always a journalist. So I should probably be upset about the recent news. Narrative Science, a start-up in the US, has invented a computer that writes decent copy. As you can see from an extract published by The New York Times. The software processes figures like sports stats, financial reports, sales, etc. [...]
