10 Years of Internet

I remember returning home from work and telling my mother Princess Diana had died. Although stunned by the news, she was even more taken aback by my reading about it on Yahoo before the TV or radio news had even mentioned it.

Ten years later, even my mother pays her bills online and she emails me occasionally from Belgium. Me meeting my fiancé via the internet is no longer an extraordinary story either. Neither is the fact that I get to hear breaking news before it hits even 24 hour news channels.

I wonder sometimes what I'd be doing now, if there hadn't been an internet. What would I spend my time on if not on reading world wide newspapers, googling, chatting with friends and occacionally writing blogs?

Sometimes I imagine myself being very old and telling youngsters "I remember a time when there was no internet." Who knows what kind of cyberspace they will be surfing on.

Skinny: Banned but Favored

“Armani weights in to row over thin models” titled an article - hopefully pun intended – featured on this morning’s Yahoo’s website.

Fashion designer Armani agreed that he had always used models "on the slender side", adding: "This was because the clothes I design and the sort of fabrics I use need to hang correctly on the body", the AFP story reads.

The row over banning the on-the-slender-side models from runways started when Madrid, whose regional government cosponsored the fashion show held there this month, excluded one third of the models who ran shows in 2005 from attending because they were deemed too thin.

Madrid took this action to avoid sending the wrong message to its teenage girls. The organizers said they wanted to "help ensure public opinion does not associate fashion, and fashion shows in particular, with an increase in anorexia, a disease which, along with bulimia, is considered ... as a mental and behavioral problem".

So just how thin is too thin?

In Madrid, a model’s body mass index (BMI) needed to be at least 18.

Measured with 5’9”, the required height for a fashion model, this means she needs to weight at least 122 pounds.

According to the measurements found on auditionagency.com, these 122 pounds are about the fashion business’s maximum. They call for models to be between 108 and 125 pounds.

Will banning skinny fashion models change women’s view on how desirable it is too be thin? Not according to a recent survey conducted by the UK University of Bath.

“This study shows us why using thin models is a successful strategy by advertising companies," said Professor Brett Martin, of the University of Bath’s Marketing Group in its School of Management.

The researchers interviewed 470 female undergraduates. Only 29 percent reacted favorably to models of a larger size while 67 per cent reacted favorably to print advertisements, in this case food products such as up-market salad combinations and gourmet hamburgers. featuring thinner female models.

Those who preferred thinner models tended to believe that weight can be controlled by dieting or exercise. They tended to think the thinner models were more “elegant”, “interesting”, “likeable” and “pleasant”.

Thinner women were more likely to believe weight could be controlled. They also were less likely to have friends who were larger women, and some of them believed that larger women were a little untrustworthy.

With thin women obviously still being the role models, how far will Armani go to make sure that his clothes are hanging on the right kind of bodies?

His online Armani Exchange Fashion Clothing store delivers sizes PO to 14. This is up to plus six the average dress size (2-4) worn by the fashion models on the runways but it still leaves out half of the American women whose average size is 14.

World Trade Center Movie

Seen at Yahoo news at noon on August 10, 2006: "European carriers cancel flights to U.K." It was the title of an AP article describing the effects of the terror attack, involving a plot to blow up airplanes in mid air, the U.K. says it foiled. The advertisement within the article was that of Oliver Stone's new movie "World Trade Center".

I take it advertisements are not assigned to articles so this ironic combination must be the result of a random choice. Somebody really should be checking this stuff, I don't believe this was the effect the WTC movie advertisers were looking for - or yet again, maybe they are.

When I walked out of the movie theater Wednesday night, I looked into the sky above the parking lot where I used to see the World Trade Towers. Jersey City's movie theater at the Newport Center mall, is a mere stone throw away from Manhattan. Until about five years ago, the World Trade Centre towers stuck out high above the mall, their scale giving them a sense of proximity although they were actually situated across the Hudson River on Manhattan ground.

I was wondering about the odds of something on this scale to ever happen again; I didn't have to wait long for the answer (although of course the execution of the plan could have taken a bit, given the alleged terrorists hadn't bought a plain ticket yet).

When entering the theater to see the WTC movie, one is expected to know what happened on 9-11-2001 and if not, lets say you are a visitor from out of space, only the TV news the various characters are watching will fill you in. The plot revolves around two Port Authority policemen and what they - and their families waiting for news from them - went through after being stuck in the towers' rubble. The two policemen were two of the twenty people rescued after the towers fell.

The ex marine who found the two men in the rubble claims a dominant spot at the end of the movie although he has few lines ("someone needs to revenge this" he tells his boss in Connecticut when explaining why he won't come in). Maybe it is the forceful way he said "for those of you who don't realize it, we are a nation at war". In the "two years later" portion of the movie, it is explained how he reenlisted and served in Iraq.

The police men, their fallen buddies and the people who rescued them are about the only ones portrait in this movie. The many that did not make it out of the towers are glanced at briefly when the family of the rescued officer passes by a wall of pictures of missing persons.

About 50 spectators watched the movie at Newport Mall late Wednesday night. While exciting, the comment most heard was "Too much drama." Still, the mostly young men in the theater had clapped at the end of the movie, so Stone must have done something right. I gather it was the fact that the movie concentrates on heroism and actually has some humor in it (the scene with Jesus and the water bottle comes to mind).

But a drama it was. What with the portrayal of two families' ordeal in what became known as the attack on America. If it weren't for the 9-11 theme, this movie might well be deemed a chick flick.

Many New Yorkers and New Jerseyans claim that this movie was made too soon or shouldn't have been made at all. They do not want to be reminded of the terror attack they say. Trying to forget will be hard to do with the alleged UK terror plot constantly in the news. America again is deemed under attack.

"Today our lives have changed," Brian Williams said on NBC's evening news. CNN must have been right Thursday morning when they said: "The rules have changed while you were sleeping." Judging by the reaction of the Americans on TV, giving up carrying water and toothpaste in their hand luggage, or who knows giving up carrying hand luggage at all, is something they are going to do in stride. It's already seen as a heroic deed in the fight of terrorism.

Heat Wave Drives Workers to Air Conditioned Workplace With a Smile

I was happy to come to work today", Fiona, a Curves gym technician in Jersey City, told me Wednesday morning, "I haven't slept well last night, here I have central air conditioning."

She wasn't the only one to tell me that story. In the supermarket, a man, lets call him Jose, was ticketing prices with gusto, "I can not imagine having to work outside now", he said.

Office workers seemed to walk from the PATH station to the office with even more jest of urgency in their stride than usual. Most women were carrying something with sleeves with them, because those air conditioned cubicles can get chilly.

Hamilton Park in Downtown Jersey City was virtually empty that day at noon and the usual hot dog and ice-cream salesmen were nowhere to be found. A lone maintenance worker was trying to catch a break on a bench under a tree. I didn't ask him how it felt to work in the 100 degree heat - not to mention the 114 heat index, because he was holding something with a long wooden stick.

I did what Mayor Bloomberg suggested in his press conference yesterday afternoon: "If you see somebody working outside in this heat, give them a smile."

It might not have helped to ease the pain, but the storm last night, knocking 20 degrees of the thermometer, sure did

Needles

The nurse was wearing a blue shirt with little bears on. This kind of comforted me.

That was until - during the eye exam - she started yelling at another nurse that she was busy enough without having to take on Dr.X's 10 o'clock (that would be me). I was told to go back to room 411.

About 15 minutes later she stormed in there announcing she was going to draw blood.

She stuck a needle in what I told her is my wrong arm.

She looked a bit puzzled. No blood (and that, I am sure, is the main purpose of drawing blood).

"Try my other arm" I told her "In this one I don't even have a pulse."

"You should have told me" she said matter-of-factly (is it really that common to have arm-with-no-pulse- patients or was she not paying attention??).

"I did but...." I stopped talking, considering it was better not to upset the person in possession of the needle. She pulled my sleeve up high and started beating my arm with two fingers. (Still, all I could think of was that the elasticity would give and that later one sleeve would be more baggy than the other.)

"I found one" she muttered, more to herself than to me. Apparently right next to my elbow was the second best spot to stick a needle.

No blood. "This never happens" she said, implying that it was somehow my fault.

"It should work in your hand". Now I started to panic. Had I fallen victim to a nurses betting pool (how many places can I stick a needle in a patient before she runs screaming out the door)?

Ouch this hurts. No blood.

"I'll go get the doctor" she said, already half way out the door.

Dr. X arrived. Five agonizing minutes and five blood samples, coming out of the side of my wrist, later I was dismissed. My hand, my wrist and my elbow where burning (a day later they would be blue and purple).

On my way out I realized she forgot to do the "pee in a cup" thing. For sure I wasn't going to come back after fasting another 12 hours so I asked a nurse what to do.

Nurse a-lot-of-needles-but-no-blood appeared out of nowhere.

"YOU" she shouted while pressing a cup in my hands "THERE" aiming at the nearest bathroom.

It wouldn't surprise me if they'll find some traces of fear in my urine.

Regretfully Yours.

“No excuse me no nothing?” snapped the woman sitting next to me on the PATH train.

I had just taken a seat between her and another curvaceous woman. Not being the thinnest of the pack myself, a needle couldn’t be put between us without anybody getting hurt. For a minute, I thought that my crime had been having the audacity of filling up the seat several other passengers had passed up on (the women’s demeanor had made it clear to think twice before invading the extra space she and her newspaper were taking up); but I soon found out it was a case of cultural indifference on my behalf.

“If you had said excuse me I would have moved” she argued. “I am not taking up more than a seat” I replied; not telling her what I really wanted to say: that back home tired train riders with sore feet do not apologize for taking up an empty seat and besides, riders back home out of courtesy give up the extra space they are using without being asked.

“Why didn’t you say excuse me and have it over with” disagreed my boyfriend who had to listen to my sorry story. “What is up with people here that they expect an “excuse me” for everything? It doesn’t change anything because they are going to do it anyway. “Excuse me can I go by” actually means “You have two seconds before I run you over”. Other people are so polite that it is getting on my nerves” I shot back “The other day I stepped on somebody’s foot and she said sorry. Now how pathetic is that!”

And than came the one thing I could not dispute: “Well you live here now and if “excuse me” is going to get you a seat on the train without getting into an argument you might as well deal with it.”

I probably sulked for a couple of hours over this, thwarted that he wasn’t on my side. After dinner, my sore feet long forgotten, I vowed to do the following: go on a diet and take up the local custom of saying excuse me every time one occupies a seat. Actually, the latter is probably going to be the easiest part; truly, how long can it take to say those two words?

So to do dear lady on the train: “Excuse me”. To make it up to you I will apologize twice next time I put my plump behind next to yours.