[kissing] how good are you

I didn't say it - they did:

Your Kissing Technique Is: Perfect

Your kissing technique is amazing - and you know it. You have the confidence to make the first move. And you always seem to know what kissing style is going to work best. Sometimes you're passionate, sometimes you're a tease. And you're always amazing!

Are you a good kisser?

Now, where's Ellee, WCL, Bel, Liz, Heather, Margaritas, Beachgirl and my other blogfriends?

[peace oil] small start, great hope

Jeremy Jacobs refers us to Peace Oil, which I posted on earlier in December but I’m glad that he reminds us of it again and a more appropriate Christmas post would be hard to find:

Peace Oil is produced in Israel by Jews, Arabs, Druze and Bedouin working together. Grown in the foothills of the Carmel Mountains, the olives are pressed within hours of picking, to produce this prize winning extra virgin olive oil.

An initiative of registered UK charity The Charities Advisory Trust, Peace Oil encourages co-operation between communities. By helping to market their produce it hopes to bring economic prosperity to such enterprises, encouraging others to follow their example.

Profits from Peace Oil are used to support peace and reconciliation work in the Middle East.

www.peaceoil.org

Peace Oil
Radius Works
Back Lane
London
NW3 1HL
0207 435 6500

[Interesting to me that this is set in the Carmel Mountains because my fourth book is set there, the hero and wife living in among the Druze for the most part. It is fair to say that the Carmel Mountain area and the north, as distinct from Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, seem to be better able to get on than their neighbours. Still, it’s a great start and any start is a hope.]

[recipe] for disaster, that is

Ingredients

1] An ambitious, aspiring, upwardly mobile couple on bog standard salaries;
2] A shopaholic who knows the price of everything;
3] A society which has been weaned off cash-in-hand and onto credit;
4] Cynical setting [by the financial sector] of the unit cost of goods higher than the unit hourly value of labour;
5] Households in hock with the house, car, refrigerator, television and everything on finance.

Method

Stir the mixture, serve up a la divorce court and voila – this is what you have:

One in four workers in the UK has a second job to help pay off debts or keep up with the everyday cost of living, according to a survey. More than half of those questioned worked for an extra 10 hours a week on top of their regular jobs, friendly society Liverpool Victoria reported.

Paying off debts, saving for a holiday and paying household bills were the main reasons for holding down two jobs. The study investigated the work patterns of 1,000 adults across the UK.

Workers in the south-west of England were the most likely to have a second job, followed by those in Scotland and the English East Midlands, Liverpool Victoria said. By contrast, workers in the east of England were the least likely to have two jobs. In total, more than one in six of those questioned said they worked at least 21 hours a week on top of their regular occupation.

"With an estimated savings gap in the UK of at least £27bn, it is concerning that so many Britons work extra hours in a second job, yet still don't save anything for the future," said Nigel Snell, Liverpool Victoria's head of external affairs.

[Once again, sorry but this came out before my blogging days and therefore I have no link. It’s entitled Workers Turning to Second Jobs and is from BBC News from Monday, February 20th, 2006]

Update and hat tip to Martin. Article URL:

[downwardly mobile] clever move for professionals

A prestige job gets the girl

When the Thunderdragon came out with his post on shelf-stacking, it caused much mirth:

Thus, over Christmas, the busiest time of the year in supermarkets, I shall be spending most of my time stacking shelves for not enough money.

Shelf stacking really is a horrible job. It is boring, uninteresting and monotonous. You could probably train an ape to do it... though I doubt most people would be willing to buy their fruit and veg from them... Something I have never understood is how some people can be willing to spend their entire working lives stacking shelves in a supermarket.

I say:

Not so fast. I am in a job where brain fatigue is the greatest danger. My consultancy work has me preparing 10 to 30 minutes for each hour face to face and as the preparation needs to be done during ‘non-working hours’ and as it is intensive and as it clashes with Blogging, which is also intensive, the result is burnout. So the idea of doing a shift, driving a train, say, clocking on and clocking off and not having to think the whole time, well – it looks to have its merits.

To do shift work stacking shelves doesn’t seem too bad then, saving one’s brain for the other working hours. We’re talking sanity and lifestyle here and it seems I’m not alone:

Bankers, teachers and chemists are leaving their professions to become train drivers, research has found. Flexible hours and a salary which can top £35,000 a year were among the main attractions, drivers union Aslef said. A life in the cab traditionally drew applications only from those already working on the railway.

More here …

[japan] twins are 30th panda birth

Time to acknowledge the source of some of my best material – The Age. Does that make me one of the ‘ragtag bloggers hanging on to the MSM’s coat-tails’? Perhaps but still, the news is good.

A panda has given birth to twins at a zoo in Japan, raising the number of artificially-bred pandas born this year to a record 30 in a mini-baby boom, a Chinese news agency reported. The panda Meimei gave birth yesterday at Adventure World in Wakayama, Japan, the Xinhua News Agency said.

The number of surviving panda cubs born this year is the highest to date, Xinhua said, citing Zhang Zhihe, an expert at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China's south-west. "The record number of cubs in this year shows the captive breeding of giant pandas has entered a golden age," Zhang said.

Seventeen of the surviving cubs were born at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre and nine at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, both in the south-western province of Sichuan, according to Xinhua. One panda was born in the south-western Chinese city of Chongqing and another at the Atlanta Zoo in the United States, it said.

The panda is one of the world's rarest animals, with about 1,590 living in the wild in China, mostly in Sichuan and the western province of Shaanxi. Another 180 have been bred in captivity.

So there. I have two questions: 1] Wonder why we love Pandas, Dolphins and Whales so much? 2] Do they include both twins as one birth, as in the heading?

[bethlehem] first hamas christmas in ruins

This is the first Christmas that Hamas has hosted in Bethlehem and things are not looking good in the town where Jesus was born 2,000 years ago. "This is the saddest Christmas. As you see, Manger Square is empty," said Mayor Victor Batarseh, a Roman Catholic mayor who was elected last year with support from Hamas.

In the days leading up to Christmas, only a trickle of tourists visited the holy sites, half the shops were closed, and decorations were sparse. The foreign aid that once poured into Bethlehem has dried up, a victim of the international aid boycott imposed on the Palestinian Authority in March when the Hamas-led government took control of Gaza and the West Bank.

"I am pleased that Hamas is helping to make Christmas," [a Hamas official] said. "It is our duty to help with the decorations and congratulate our Christian brothers on their holiday. Muslims consider Jesus as one of the prophets, and we also celebrate his birth, but not as a major holiday."

Yet by Saturday, the promised money from the government had still not arrived. A municipal official said that even if it came, it would likely not be spent on Christmas lights. "We will pay the salaries -- that's more important," he said, on condition of anonymity.

After six years of the intifada and Israeli military incursions, the tourists have disappeared, and Bethlehem's economy is in ruins. The town of 30,000 is now almost encircled by Israel's separation barrier, which has strangled Bethlehem's livelihood, cutting off the town from Jerusalem and deterring all but the most determined visitors. Israel says it built the barrier to deter cross-border attacks, but Batarseh said it has transformed Bethlehem into "a big prison whose keys are in the hands of the occupier."

Only about 100,000 tourists have visited Bethlehem in 2006, compared to nearly 2 million annually before the intifada. Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of a local Christian TV station, has documented more than 90 incidents of anti-Christian violence carried out in the Bethlehem area in recent years and 140 cases in which Christian land has been taken over by what he describes as "Islamic mafia gangs."

Among the few pilgrims in town just before Christmas was Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who led a delegation of British church leaders to Bethlehem as a sign of solidarity. The clerics prayed in the Church of the Nativity along with Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Syrian bishops.

[christmas eve] best to forget the world news

Enough to make you weep. This is the news I just don’t want to run posts on, on this Christmas Eve:

Iran vows to accelerate uranium work
Israel discusses prisoner release
Ethiopia launches attack on Somalia
Three US soldiers killed in Baghdad blast
N.Korea says not afraid of war after nuclear impasse
Christmas mishap: Schwarzenegger breaks leg
Shoppers let loose 11th-hour energy
U2 Singer Bono Granted Knighthood By British Queen

But here’s one which is most encouraging, especially for L’Ombre de l”Olivier:

Olive oil may hinder cancer process

[blogpower] christmas day special radio 5 live

This is not strictly a nourishing obscurity matter and yet I felt this Blogpower issue should be brought to your attention.

I’ve just listened to the Tin Drummer with the BBC’s Chris Vallance and I thought, quite frankly, he was fantastic.

We blog to each other and never know how the other one would sound but surely you’d have to agree the Tin Drummer has one of the best radio voices imaginable.

I myself am deeply honoured to have been mentioned [a little too much I feel] and now I’m going back and am going to listen to it all over again. Well done, sir and you’ve done Blogpower a world of good!!

Don’t forget to download Tin Drummer’s Christmas Day special below. I’m currently exploring how to get the graphic onsite. Thanks Thunderdragon for the hosting and the work.

http://www.roedinofpern.co.uk/blog/thetindrummer-unsungblogs-hosted_by_%20thethunderdragon.mp3

or Chris Vallance's own BBC copy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/podsandblogs/

2006/12/the_best_unsung_blogs

On another matter, fellow Blogpowerers, when the Christmas rush is over, after you’re back at your computer, could you possibly respond, as Cityunslicker has responded and compose a short summation of 10 other bloggers of your choice? It’s a bit like a Christmas present for them.

Meanwhile, to all of you, from whatever persuasion, this Christmas holiday, may only good things come to pass for you, as you would wish it on others. I hope December 25th will be a day of peace for you and for your family.

[blogfocus saturday] lean, mean christmas edition

The theme for the early part this post is, of course, Christmas but one or two other themes have also forced their way into the Blogfocus in the latter stages. Let’s kick off the Christmas theme with a real Mystery Blogger, if ever there was one, whom I’ll call Tony Sharp and his authoritative blog has a cautionary message for all:

1 If people refuse to get the message that drinking and driving increases the likelihood of having an accident then the punishment for those caught needs to be significantly tougher. There is no excuse for anyone driving after drinking. But safety cameras are of little help in catching drink-drivers because they only record speeding motorists. They are ineffective in identifying drunk drivers, those who are driving dangerously and those who are driving unroadworthy or untaxed vehicles.

2 The peerless Man from Croydon ponders the different culture of gift giving in the commercial HQ of the world:

Apparently 80% of our friends on the other side of the Pond would rather have the equivalent of a book token - a gift card - than a normal present for Christmas. Details here. I cannot find any details as to research method, so I'm taking this with a pinch of salt. Pretty miserable nevertheless.

3 From over that side of the pond, Matt has somehow stumbled upon a strange thing concerning the end of the year:

It's amazing the similarities between this time right now and last year. For instance, last year I was at home. I am at home this year. I hadn't done anything of note by this time last year. The same is true of this year. Last year, being my first year at college, was supposed to be that "great" beginning of time. It wasn't, as you all know. This year is better but I still find some things lacking.

Eleven more bloggers here plus the Mystery Blogger …

[stress] take the test

James Higham - Your Stress Level is: 51%

You are somewhat prone to stress, especially when life gets hard. When things are good, you resist stressing over little problems. But when things are difficult, you tend to freak out and find it hard to calm down.

How Stressed Are You?

Thanks Colin Campbell at Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe.