Month: February 2007

Good news, annoying news

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Good news: the Home Office cashed the visa fee cheque, so that means that the application is being worked on.

Annoying news: Remember NetBunch, the band of fuckwits that was hosting my website last November when nothing was working? The incompetent asswipes that would not answer my faxes and emails? Well, they happily went ahead and renewed my contract with them and charged me 90$USD for the privilege of being given shit service and generally ignored. Nice of 'em, yes? I contacted Natwest to have that charge cancelled on my credit card and sent them a nice flaming email for their trouble.

Bastards.

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One step closer to becoming a Brit :)

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Katy is slowly corrupting me to the ways of the Brits. I've now completely given up coffee. When I drink a cuppa, it's decaf. I've started drinking tea-with-milk and I've been converted to the wonderfulness that is loose leaf tea. I have a tea caddy on my desk at work. How sad am I?

In other news, my visa application is finally on its merry way to the Home Office and hopefully should clear all the hurdles by mid-to-end March. Once I have that visa, I can apply for an indefinite leave to remain visa in 2 years, and full citizenship 2 years after that.

God save the Queen, baby :)

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Drop off your unwanted baby here

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BBC NEWS
Cradles plan for unwanted girls
The Indian government is planning to set up a network of cradles around the country where parents can leave unwanted baby girls.

The minister for women and child development, Renuka Chowdhury, told BBC News the cradles would be “everywhere”. It is the latest initiative to try to wipe out the practice of female foeticide and female infanticide.

A girl child is often viewed as inferior to a boy. A bride's dowry can also cripple a family financially. Research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.

Research published last year estimating that the number of female abortions was as high as 500,000 a year was disputed by the Indian Medical Association.

“We will have cradles strategically placed all over the place so that people who don't want their babies can leave them there,” Ms Chowdhury told the BBC News website. The cradles could be in places as diverse as the local tax collector's office, or where local councils meet. Ms Chowdhury said parents would be able to leave their babies secretly. The important thing was to save their lives.

She said she assumed that most of the babies left under the “cradle scheme” would be girls. “They will be collected and put into homes,” she said. “There are plenty of existing homes and we will be adding some more also.”

In 1994, India banned the use of technology to determine the sex of unborn children and the termination of pregnancies on the basis of gender. However, campaigners say many clinics still offer a seemingly legitimate facade for a multi-billion pound racket and that gender determination is a highly profitable business.

Experts say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors. It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm. In a separate development, police in the central state of Madhya Pradesh say they have recovered some 390 bones of babies or foetuses from the grounds of a Christian missionary hospital in the town of Ratlam after a tip off.

“The question of female foeticide and infanticide is part of our investigation, as is illegal abortions,” Superintendent of Police Satish Saxena said, Reuters news agency reports.

Last November a Japanese hospital announced plans to set up a “baby hatch” allowing mothers to anonymously drop off their newborns so they could be put up for adoption. The drop-off at Jikei Hospital in southern Japan will consist of a small window in an outside wall, which opens on to an incubator bed, officials say. Once a baby has been placed inside, an alarm bell will alert staff.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/6373043.stm

I guess the plan is better than the alternative, but still, this saddens/angers me.

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Almost there, but not close enough

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Katy and I went to see a house for sale in Hinxton last night. It used to be the servant quarters of a big manor house. It had a lovely enclosed garden, beautiful hardwood floors, exposed beams everywhere, a live flame gas fireplace, hand-build maple kitchen. All in all, it was decorated to a beautiful standard and the only thing that stopped us from making an offer on the spot was that it wouldn't have been liveable.

The kitchen, though beautiful, was too small. There wouldn't have been room for the dishwasher nor the fridge we just bought. The stairwell to get upstairs would have killed us at one point. There was an oak beam at eye level that I would have brained myself on a few dozen times and the stairs were narrow and uneven. The upstairs was as lovely as the rest of the house, but if the bathroom door was open, you couldn't get in or out of the guest bedroom.

So yeah. Disappointing. It was beautiful, but it wouldn't have been practical.

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Not the bestest of weekends, but it ended well.

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Katy and I drove up to Manchester this past Friday to go visit Anna and Rho, who were (finally) getting hitched. Google says it's a bit less than 200 miles, which should take about 4.5 hours. That is, of course, when it's not snowing and raining cats and dogs. The drive up north was fine until we hit the M56 coming into Manchester. Because of road works, poor visibility and truly appalling lack of signage, we completely missed our exit and ended up on the M60. Not too much of a problem, because we had directions on how to get to the hotel from the M60 ring road, so all good.

We were at junction 5. Our hotel was at junction 23. We just needed to drive a bit more and we'd get there eventually, right? That's what we thought, until we mysteriously ended up on the M62 headed for God know's where. We stopped at some services to get some tea and directions and finally got back on the motorway and get to our destination. The hotel was in sight!! But then we took a wrong turn and ended up halfway to Anna's before we found the way to the sodding hotel parking lot. Katy was drived-out by that time, so we took a cab to Anna and Rho's.

We had a bit of a chat/rant while I cooked some curry*, ate some and went back to our hotel for some sleep. We took the bus into town the next morning and had a bit of a pootle in the city center before meeting up with everybody in a pub before the registry office ceremony. The ceremony itself was nice and simple and quiet and cute, then everybody cabbed it back to Anna and Rho's house for a post-wedding party. I'd brought some food over the night before so that I'd have something allergy-friendly to eat for the party but, due to crossed wires, most of it god used to make sandwiches. Luckily, I was able to find lots of goodies here and there, so it worked out in the end.

I have to say, I'm getting old. I don't like large crowds where everybody has to shout to get heard over the music and everybody is trying their best to drink everything in sight. Give me a quiet dinner with a nice bottle of wine anytime. Like I said, I'm old and I'm proud of it. Now get off my lawn!!! We still had a nice time talking to people in small gatherings, so that was good. Saw Rita and Tim, which we hadn't seen since the wedding.

One thing I have to ask members of the sisterhood who read my blog. What the hell is the deal with lesbians and big leather bracelets and short, spiky haircuts???

Driving back home was an altogether completely different experience. It was nice and sunny on the way home and, just as we were nearing the M6/M1/A14 junction, we decided to surprise Katy's parents and drop in unexpectedly for dinner, causing a mild panic but it all turned out nicely. That was a fun way to end the weekend and we made our way home to Cambs to face the beasties and get ready for another week.

* We'd planned on inviting Anna and Rho to dinner on Friday night, but they had company coming and would be ordering up from a curry house. I proposed to cook dinner for them and had bought enough supplies to feed 8 people. However, because it took too long to get to Manchester, they had to order in anyway so the mountain of curry I made – though highly acclaimed – was relegated to tupperware in the fridge :(

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England is a nation of pussies

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It's snowing today, and the whole country is going fucking mad. Half the people at work didn't show up today. Hundreds of schools are shut. Stansted is closed, and so was Gatwick for a while (but has subsequently reopened). All BA domestic flights are grounded. Rail travel is chaotic because of speed restrictions (what is an inch of snow going to do to a train???). People are urged to not drive unless they really have to; and then bring food, water, a blanket, a torch and a shovel if they go out. Last time it snowed, gridlock on the motorways was so bad people had to sleep in their cars.

This is not an arctic blizzard people, this barely qualifies as a flurry. If you look closely at the pictures, you'll see that there's still grass showing through the snow. Visibility is fine. There's no wind, no sleet, no ice. And using an umbrella in a mild flurry? priceless.

Pussies.

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God bless America, the land of the free to be stupid.

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Idea Would Require Couples to Have Kids

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced a ballot measure that would require heterosexual couples to have a child within three years or have their marriages annulled.

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance acknowledged on its Web site that the initiative was “absurd” but hoped the idea prompts “discussion about the many misguided assumptions” underlying a state Supreme Court ruling that upheld a ban on same-sex marriage.

The measure would require couples to prove they can have children to get a marriage license. Couples who do not have children within three years could have their marriages annulled.

All other marriages would be defined as “unrecognized,” making those couples ineligible for marriage benefits.

The paperwork for the measure was submitted last month. Supporters must gather at least 224,800 signatures by July 6 to put it on the November ballot.

The group said the proposal was aimed at “social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation.”

Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage and Children, said opponents of same-sex marriage want only to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

“Some of those unions produce children and some of them don't,” she said.

Ok, so even they admit the concept is idiotic, but they still want to go through the motions. That's just… <head goes boom>.

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