Cold and Itchy

I choose this picture because I am currently cold. And itchy. This basket of knitted stuff doesn't look too itchy, but I have memories of itchy woollen things. I understand the cold - something is wrong with the heating I think (luckily my room is warm, yay!) but I don't understand the itchy. It's pretty bad actually, I have all those weird marks on my face that appear when I scratch. I look like I've been in battle with a mad cat. A battle I lost. If I am still itching after my afternoon of work, I will start to research this disease I read about in The Metro, the font of all knowledge.

What else? Well I have been wishing that apple jam and pear jam existed in the UK. And more banana yogurts, yum yum. I also wish that people who make yogurt pots would get rid of all the unnecessary corners and edges that just serve to trap yogurt. I think the best pot design so far is the Muller one, minimum space to waste yogurt in, plus what a generous helping!

In other news, I had lots of crazy nightmares last night, some loosely connected to a programme about the really really awful and scary genocide in Congo and Rwanda, some do to with "all my crops failing" (hmmm, what crops?!) and the last one to do with a Disney trip to a theme park where we all went on a rollercoaster (a real one, not a psycho-babble one) and drank a bottle of some mystery clear alcohol as we went round. When we got off everyone said they hated it, but I loved it, and actually thought it was a bit tame and we could do better, but everyone else wanted to go home.

We have a party to go to tonight, how exciting, but first I must finish my "editing and improving". If you are still looking for things to read, check out SB's blog, some good stuff on there.

PS I have changed my posting identity, mainly to do with paranoia that I will be identified on here. Explanations on my new identity at some point.

Dinner in Islington

So it is fairly obvious I have given up doing anything education related this week. Instead I have been drinking my money away, good stuff.

Yesterday night Bertie came down for a bit of a jolly. We started off in a nice little pub near Chancery Lane, where we discussed the pros and cons of the "great race race". He is the first one to think it would be ok to have a race on facebook similar to the girls vs boys, except along the lines of racial origin i.e. blacks vs whites. I know it would be controversial, but fun(!) all the same.

Please note, I'm not into stirring up racial hatred or anything, just curious as to why girls vs boys is acceptable whilst blacks vs whites probably wouldn't be. I'm probably being thick, I know it would cause trouble, but why?

Anyway we moved on to the Knight's Templar, a Wetherspoon's better known to me as the Scholarship.
I tend to drag people there kicking and screaming, until they see the wonderful ship style lavatories and the pear cider, and then they're converted. Here Ish (and Suze, briefly) joined us. We then moved on to Ish's house where we met Chi, Clare and Nas, and Berts cooked us all carbonara. By this time I was pleasantly merry and a good time was had indeed.

(As an aside, I told Ish about gimmealift.com and she thought it was a great idea. Also, I bought a Big Issue on Weds and the lead article was about social entrepreneurship, so am gonna see if there's any real advice in there about what to do next).

The real point to this post though is how different all my friends are from each other. I sometimes honestly wonder what would happen if I put them all in a room together. Some of them are in fact so different from others that I'm sure they wouldn't even speak. Actually, that's pretty harsh, they probably would talk, but run out of things to say rapidly. But why are they so different? And to which group do I really belong?

Gimmealift.com

This is my other commuter idea. I am actually quite serious about this idea thus I am writing in black.

It came to me the other day when I was on my way to the gym. I drove past the bus stop at the end of my road and remembered how I used to wait there to get the bus to the station. Everyone waiting at that bus stop either wants to go to the station or to the town centre. Whenever I was waiting there I'd see car after car go by, and used to be fully convinced that over half of them would pass the station, and that at least one of them would think it'd be worth giving me a lift there if I paid them the bus fare (the journey from my bus stop to the station is about 5 mins, but takes over 15 minutes to walk). Anyway, this time I was the one in the car driving by, and I started contemplating whether anyone waiting at any of the bus stops I'd pass on the way was going anywhere along my route, and what it would take for me to give them a lift.

Later that day when I was having lunch with Ladun and debating the congestion charge, Ladun told me that outside of London most public transport is pretty rubbish and everyone drives everywhere. This again got me thinking about how many cars there were on the road, and how many people were going the same way as other people, and I started wondering whether it'd be possible to co-ordinate all these potential passengers and drivers, and what it would take to get a lift somewhere. To cut a looooong story short, I came up with gimmealift.com. I haven't actually got this website or anything yet - as always, I'm trapped in the idea phase. In fact, I haven't even pinned the idea properly down yet.

What I have done is a little bit of research. I typed in "organised hitch-hiking" into Google since I guess this is effectively what I'm proposing. It turns out that this is a long established practice in Germany, known as the Mitfahrzentrale (roughly translated as "the agency for shared rides"). True, this is over longer distances and booked more in advance, but it's kinda the same principle. People who want a ride somewhere give their request to one of the Mitfahrzentrale (there are quite a few agencies over there), who then match them up with one of the drivers who have said they are doing that journey. The agency takes a commission for setting up the match, the passenger gets a ride at a cheaper price than public transport, and the driver gets paid by the passenger for the lift (it's usually a certain number of euros per km, or the passenger splits the fuel cost or something like that). Similar schemes run in Belgium and across Europe too, some of which are for free (in that the agency doesn't take a cut, just matches up people).

The next commuter solution out there that I really loved is slugging. I think this only exists in America, and only this formally in Washington DC. Basically it's short-notice short-distance ride-sharing whereby drivers that want to drive in the faster "carpool" lanes pick up strangers (aka "slugs") so that they have enough people in their car to get into the carpool lane. This has become such a phenomenon that there are actual slug-lines where people queue to get their free lifts from strangers! Both parties win since the passenger gets his free ride and the driver gets his passenger so he can go in the faster carpool lane rather than sit in the traffic. Seriously, read through the link, its an amazing idea, I wish we could implement something similar here.

I guess what I'm thinking about is something in between slugging and the mitfahrzentrale. I'm trying to think of a way so that all the waiting commuters can get to their destinations just a little bit faster, while we make more efficient use of the cars that are out there. I guess I'm also thinking about more long distance journeys e.g. say if A needed a lift from London to Oxford on Monday and B was driving up then anyway, and A offered some money towards the fuel, would it be in B's interests to take A along?

My issues at the moment are: What are the actual logistics of a scheme like this (i.e. if it was going to be a spontaneous picking someone up at a bus stop type thing, how could the driver and passenger actually co-ordinate with each other)? Where's the incentive for people? What about safety? Could we make it more organised e.g. formal daily ride sharing by schools or companies?

I know it's a pretty vague idea at the moment, but I think it has business potential, and is good for the environment, and kinda socially enterprising too.

So, ideas/feedback? Could something like this work? And yes, we can change the name :)

Commuter Cupid

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you've had a good one.

Strolling around London, I noted that it was indeed full of love. Very nice. I received the obligatory sweets and note from my folks, and a comedy message from a mate to "a beautiful sweaty Asian"...mmm romantic, heehee.

Decided to focus my entrepreneurial energies on love. Came up with The Love Train. Essentially speed-dating on the Tube, set-up in the style of those random silent flash mob discos (which, despite continually getting told about, I'm yet to attend, although they sound wicked. As an aside, that funkypancake blog is ace!) So, for example, the message would be spread that the last carriage of the eastbound Central line train on departing from Ealing Broadway at 17:57 on Tuesday would be a Love Train, where single commuters could congregate and ease their lonely hearts. Think about it, commuters spend aaages on the trains each day, and there are actually quite a lot of quite fit people on it, so why not spread a little love? It would also be particularly funny for the random tourists that get on that carriage and are subsequently approached by genuine Love Train passengers, heehee. Jade went one step further and told me I could hire a whole Circle line train and have dates going on all carriages for a whole evening, with people just popping on and off as they saw fit. I like the idea of being a Commuter Cupid.

Had lunch with Ladun, who's on her way to America/St Lucia for the next three months. Was lovely to see her; she's one of the few people who can persistently and consistently challenge me intellectually, which I like. I look forward to her changing the world one day. The restaurant we went to made me cross. The bill was £47.20, which included a £5.25 service charge! How ridiculous, considering the place was practically empty and the food/service wasn't great. Boo! The place is called Carthage - don't go there! On the plus side, along with numerous debates about all kinds of political issues, I told her about my other idea of the day to do with transport, which she quite liked. I like it too, but will save it for tomorrow in case it's a dry day on the ideas front. If you need an idea fix, check this out.

Mouchey Peas, why are you rambling on about herons and stalks? More fictional pets?

And finally, the crude joke, which I expect you to try and drop into polite conversation as soon as possible:

How do you know if your sister's on her period?
Your dad's cock tastes funny.

Eeeeewwww. Heehee.

Ramblings

It's Tuesday of half-term at 17:16. I am very tired. I blame the builders for banging all the time. I am not convinced they are even making anything. Humph.

I also blame the "plague" I currently kinda have. It must be from the school kids. More humph.

Anyway, enough grumbling and on to the rambling. Yesterday I spent a day as a housewife, doing such wonderful things as spend aaages in the sauna (without the weird lady, thankfully), do the shopping, have coffee, bake a cake, and play the piano. I decided that being a lady of leisure is really rather appealing and so spontaneously revised my life plan. It turned out it was good time to think about my life plan since when I was dropping my Mum off at her fitness class we had a lovely chat about how I really should start thinking about settling down. Hmmm. I'm not convinced my parents realise I am a cheeky little monkey trapped inside an Oxford graduate, who will not mature enough to "settle down" for a long time.

I had dinner with Ish and Clare last night and we slipped into an impromptu brainstorming session, as we are often prone to do. Even way back in the first year we were all plotting away on how to make our millions, certain we are meant to be entrepreneurs. This part of me hasn't really been dormant, but it's been reawakened recently. They are both convinced the future is India (and not China as commonly thought) so we spent lots of time thinking of serious, and not-so-serious, ideas to hit the jackpot. I told them about my "commuter blind date" idea; they thought it was a bit stalkerish, and there's obviously loads of reasons why it wouldn't work, but I do kinda like it. I think my mind is stuck on matchmaking. Anyway, we didn't really get anywhere, but it was great to think about that kinda stuff again, and so obviously I spontaneously changed my life plan again. I guess I shouldn't really call it a plan...more of a strategy.

So today I came up with two more ideas:

1. Compatibility advice for couples based on astrology - Asian families do this anyway, in that they check out the compatibility of birth charts when they are looking for potential engagements for their son/daughter. This fits the matchmaking bill.
2. A life-choice simulator - some really really complicated computer program type thing that would calculate all the outcomes for your life depending on the choices you made. Obviously this is completely impossible since you can never predict everything and there are far too many factors, but it'd be nice to see in advance what will happen because of your choices. Thinking about this now, it has significant connections with time-travelling devices. So might have to scrap that one.

You may be wondering what happened to the medicine plan...well, now I'm not entirely convinced it's for me, and I guess you have to be certain before you go into something like that. Also my littlest brother has jumped on this bandwagon too, and I refuse for all three of us to be doctors!

Right, that is the end of the rambling today...ooh except I heard a really crude funny joke yesterday. I probably shouldn't write it on here, but if you wanna hear it, let me know.

PS Continuing on the theme of junk with the Disney girls, check out FreeCycle. There're groups for each of the London boroughs and all over the world too. What a great idea! Mouche, I may have to give away your PoS...