Something you will discover about India is that there is a huge patriotic streak that runs through every citizen, but it only surfaces when they feel threatened, or as I believe, insecure about something – I have sat through frequent rants about how India is so much more enlightened and a better country than the West will ever be, usually after having made a statement like “India has poor...

I’ve been accused on more than a few occasions (well, OK, on every blog post I make that mentions India) of over generalizing (yes, weirdly, my English has be Americanized since being in India and I now spell stuff with zee’s insteaded of esses) with my sweeping statements about the country, population and culture. To some extent this is very true, but if I noted the exceptions to my generalizations...

Given the utter lack of things to do in Chennai (ie. the pub) on Sunday evenings, Chennai, as a whole, converges en-masse to a place known as Marina beach. I often forget that Chennai is a coastal city but it’s just a short 10 minute train ride to get to the beach. Marina beach is the place to go, it’s like Blackpool but not as bad. Families play with their kids, newly weds and secret couples...

I asked my friend a question the other day, I don’t think they got why I was asking it though. The question I asked was: At what point is a country sufficiently developed enough that the people are able to pursue a career in a field that actually interests them instead of doing what pays the best. Yes, it was an uncharacteristically deep and loaded question for someone of my shallow nature. But...

Wow, OK, I feel like I haven’t updated this blog in a while so let’s start off the new year by talking about last year. Backwards I know. Christmas was the first time I’d spent it away from my family. Every year since the age of 18 I’d come back to my parents hometown for the Christmas and New Year period, but after spending two months back in England I was itching to get back...

Part of being a grumpy young man is the ability to find something to annoy you in every conceivable situation. The situation that has been getting on my nerves recently is people’s Neanderthal like behaviour the moment they step on to an aircraft. It first really came to my attention when I took low cost airlines around India (which, if you were to compare them to the no-frills crap we have in...

About a year ago I followed all the other geeks and nerds in this world and bought myself a netbook. I’d seen the hype and exposure they got over on Engadget throughout 2008 and made up my mind that I wanted one Incase you are still not sure what a netbook is, it’s like a mini laptop, reduced keyboard size, very low technical specifications and very, very cheap for what it is. As you...

This is just a bit of a boring post to show some pictures taken with my new Sony camera. It was £142 and I bought it from eBuyer (although they seem to have put the price up since I bought it). The camera is the Sony DSC-W270 and it has a 5x optical zoom, 3200 ISO and an optical anti-blur, which is extremely important for my shaky hands. 1. The Kitchen 2. The kitchen while trying out the anti-blur! 3....

I’ve gained a rather unfortunate reputation amongst friends and family for being a little careless with small electrical items. It’s not entirely unwarranted since I have managed to put two phones in the washing machine (and proving that Nokia’s are infact the best phones money can buy, the N73 survived and still worked) and managed to drop a very expensive camera (although in my...

I’ve just spent several days in the capital of Scotland. I went once before a few years back when I released loads of balloons from Edinburgh castle for Standard Life when they floated on the stock exchange, but never got the chance to look around. I flew up with EasyJet, who in fairness, are better than BMIBaby when it comes to stupid hidden costs. I went up on a Thursday and came back on the...