apky's Blog on Bloggering

Write Like They Ski in Vancouver

2010-02-16T03:54:00.000-08:00

Ten Tips To Improve Your Writing In 2010

Today it seems like everyone is writing something - emails, blogs, tweets, you name it. Unfortunately, the Internet encourages no thought to go unpublished, and so while the amount of content has increased exponentially, the quality of it has not.As a result, our ability to communicate effectively has been dramatically affected. Never in history has so much been written and so little actually said. Social media certainly hasn't helped. Twitter, for example, deliberately handicaps our ability to communicate well by limiting messages to just 140 characters. Texting is helping create a nation of illiterates who only know how to "write" in a curious shorthand devoid of vowels.

If you write (and these days who doesn't?), here are ten tips that can immediately help you improve your writing so you can communicate with clarity, influence your peers (and hopefully your boss), and reduce your stress when it's time to put words on digital paper:

1. Use simple sentences. Run-on sentences and random thoughts strung together quickly handicap your writing and can create confusion resulting in inaction. Here's an example of two emails saying the same thing: "In response to today's budgetary meeting outlining goals and actionable items relevant to our marketing strategy draft proposal pursuant to management's strategic business program, please review and assess your department's 1Q budgetary requirements going forward and provide me with your bottomline request ASAP today, before COBD."

"I need your first quarter marketing budget by 5pm today."

Which one of these messages do you think will get a faster response?

2. Pay attention to punctuation. Email and texting have helped foster a general disregard for punctuation these days and as a consequence people use it poorly or not at all, which can cause unintended confusion. Don't believe me? Here's the same sentence with two very different meanings: "My partner arrived dead, last to the meeting."

"My partner arrived dead last to the meeting."

Punctuation is your friend. Use it well.

3. Use plain language. Think in terms of "could my mother understand this?" when you sit down to write something. This will work wonders on a business plan, a marketing strategy report, even everyday emails. Purge your writing of the trendy and the corporate and use, as my old journalism professor used to say, a nickel word instead of a twenty-five-center. Those of you who have been in and around the corporate world for any length of time know exactly what I am talking about: fuzzy, convoluted industry weirdspeak like "authoring solutions-based metrics". Avoid confusing industry buzzwords whenever possible. If your writing causes your readers to lunge for a glossary, think hard about a better way to say it. And if you've used words such as "implementation", "impacting", and "facilitate" within the last thirty days I have two words for you: STOP IT.

4. Use an active voice. This simple tip is a great way to quickly punch up your writing. Instead of using the dreary passive voice, use the livelier active voice. Notice the difference in this example:

Passive: The car was driven by me.

Active: I drove the car.

5. Tell the whole story. Everything you write should have a beginning and an end with everything else falling logically in between. It sounds simple, but you'd be amazed at how many people violate this simple rule. We've all received those disjointed emails where it seems as if you're missing a chunk of the message, leaving you saying "huh?" Everything you write should be able to stand alone. Don't take for granted that the reader knows what you're talking about. Start at the beginning and end at the end.

6. Put everything in context. If you're writing a proposal, a report, a white paper, a piece of sales literature, or just a simple request for something, put it in context. Show why it's important, what it means to the reader, what the result will be. Context adds value to what you write.

7. Be conversational. Does your writing often sound stilted or forced? That's probably because you're trying too hard. Relax. Write the way you speak. That doesn't mean be sloppy or slangy, it simply means you should be more concerned with saying it clearly than saying it "properly."

8. Write first, edit later. Don't try to make your writing perfect from the start. If you agonize over every word, you'll never finish. You can always go back later and change things. Get your ideas down first, then go back and edit. You'll be amazed at how much quicker and easier that is, once the actual writing is out of the way. And you may be surprised at how little you change because you weren't second-guessing yourself while you were writing.

9. Proofread. Then proofread again. We all make mistakes. But proofreading gives you a chance to fix them before they see the light of day. Never trust computer spellchecking - it's amazing how many weighs their are two spell things.

10. Reread. Communications travel at the speed of light these days. So many people hit "send" without rereading what they've written. Resist the urge. Go get a cup of coffee, then come back and read what you've just written. A breath of fresh air may give you fresh insight into what you were trying to say. Perhaps the perfect phrase that was eluding you will pop up. Maybe a better, simpler way to present the idea will come to you. A tiny bit of procrastination can be a good thing.

So there you have it. Good writing is like golf - many people claim to be good at it, few really are. But if you use these ten simple tips, you'll be well on your way to clear, concise, and compelling writing.

Jim Schakenbach is a freelance writer and marketing consultant. Visit his website at http://www.bigwordscontent.com.

Akinyi Princess of K'Orinda-Yimbo

2009-06-23T03:57:00.000-07:00

Blueworld Blogger beetge vs Akinyi Princess of K’Orinda-Yimbo

Religion is nothing more than a man-made attempt at establishing a relationship with God but not on God's terms, rather the terms of man. I am a devout Christian, a Pastor and a Prophet, and I can honestly say that I do not have ONE religious hair on my body. (I used to have, but by the Grace of God, I grew up) God started out His dealings with man through a Father and Son (Daughter) relationship. Man messed it up, and God sent His Son to come and fix up that mess. Man, however preferred buildings, rituals, structures, specific days, a rule book, special clothing etc. to the Grace and Relationship idea that God had. Churches today have become clubs with exclusive memberships, rather that the Body of Christ. Let them keep their buildings and clubs, daniibee, you are much better off with your relationship.

This is a blog from the "Evolution. Old-Age Earth. IT'S A HOAX!" group. I see a lot of talk about proving "theories" this way and the other. Let's just rewind and settle down. We all know that since you can't re-create God in a lab, He is not scientifically explained, and thus we find Him by FAITH (our unshakable belief in Him) - this is also true regarding evolution. It is IMPOSSIBLE to re-create evolution in a lab, thus the followers of evolution has just as much FAITH (their unshakable belief in it) in the theory as Christians have in God. The only way to explain either point is by finding evidence of its existence in history. Let's look at an example: I was not here when Jan van Riebeeck colonized the Cape in 1652, but I believe it to be so, because of the EVIDENCE left by him. Now the evidence left by van Riebeeck does not even closely resemble modern day evidence – Today we would leave photographs, home-movies, entries in government databases, (ID, driver’s licenses, voter’s rolls etc.) that could positively prove that we existed - but these things never existed in his day, thus we have to look for another type of evidence. For example: 1) He might have left a diary, some official documents. These may be intact, or in various stages of decay. In the latter instance, the evidence left is not absolute, it is subject to the interpretation of the people that found and studied the evidence. Thus the conclusions are mere conjecture, NOT 100% factual. In terms of scientific jargon, this is called a hypothesis, and when some (not ALL) proof could be added, a THEORY. Only when the theory is 100% proven can it be called FACT. The problem with this kind of evidence is that it is not only diaries (FACTUAL) that are written, but also novels (FICTION). Someone could have been bored and wrote a fictitious diary about a fictitious man named Jan van Riebeeck. In the same way, when we go to a museum and look at a model of a dinosaur, we are NOT looking at a FACTUAL re-creation of the beast, we are looking at how people pieced a skeleton (100% proof) together, and then interpreted the structure (conjecture according to the level of their current knowledge of the subject – which is also subject to change) to add muscle and skin, in order to render a MODEL of what they perceived that specific creature to have looked like. 2) But van Riebeeck could have left another kind of evidence, something that would tell us that he had to have existed in order for the evidence to exist, he also physically had to have existed as well. For instance, he could leave his homestead behind, something that only he created, something that bears his name on the cornerstone, possibly with a date engraved as well. This is something that has been handed down to his descendants thorough the generations, descendents that could possibly even bear his name. This type of evidence is 100% factual. The mere existence of this evidence means that van Riebeeck must have existed as well. Thus, when we test theories of faith, we have to subject them to the same type of test. We cannot use different types of tests to either prove one theory or disprove another. Next: Lets set up a test!

Email Spoofing – When Freedom Fetters

2009-03-13T10:06:00.001-07:00

www.akinyi-princess.de

I just received an email apparently coming from myself! Of course I was curious and opened it – et voila (sorry I don't have the French bits and pieces to spell this correctly) – with the dearest of husbands and four children between us, I was being offered Viagra. Laughing, I crawled down and clicked the sender’s unsubscribe. Whoosh! I landed on a Canadian website selling me even more dozens of different potency pills! You're up, you don't quit, eh.

I’ve deleted everything, but have I really escaped this net, medium fish that I am? I’ve activated my Spam terminator to sweep my PC three times, but am I really safe? After all, it was this same software supposed to see to it that none of these good fellas get to me and my precious files, who failed to notice the spoofing in the first place – and set me up like a sitting duck. And Viagra seems to be a bestseller.

Definition according to Toney Bradley, CISSP-ISSAP: Email spoofing is the act of forging the header information on an email so that it appears to have originated from somewhere other than its true source. The protocol used for email, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), does not have any authentication to verify the source. By changing the header information, someone can make an email appear to come from whomever they choose. Miscreants can even copy the targeted organization's logo and formatting, to give the email an authentic look and feel.

Email spoofing is used by virus authors. By propagating a virus with a spoofed email source, it is more difficult for users who receive the virus to track its source to stop the virus.

Email spoofing is also used by distributors of spam to hide their identity. In March 2009, About.com's daily newsletter was the victim of a high volume of spoofed email from spammers attempting to sell Viagra. Because the email contained About.com's logo and address, some recipients believed it actually originated from About.com.

Well, I hope my terminator did the deed. So I say: stay tuned and beware of the satyr Apky the Upright!

Never Saw A White, Only Pig-Pink

2009-01-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

So our main Man is now at the White House. They're all claiming him. The Irish, complete with a priest, maintained yesterday that Barack Hussein Obama is Irish - his mother's family tree - to the tune of one eighth. One of the arguments was his name - Obama. The Irish made comparisons with O'Reilly and O'Donovan and O'Connor etc etc. I'M sorry, I'm a Kenyan and Luo so I know that the O simply denotes "male" in the name. The female would be "Abama". I'm Akinyi (morning child), and had I been born a boy I'd be Okinyi. The Germans a few months ago claimed that President Obama is 37% German. Curious, that all the pink people label him black. The Germans (like most pink people but USA ones) seem unable to refer to the man as "President Obama". No, he's "Black President Obama". Pigmentation-mania since the classification days of the Age o Enlightenment. Who is clinging to the past here and claiming to be modern and advanced? ZDF (Germany) televison reporters who should know better are the worst here. Why are these people so scared of their own sins against God and the entire creation, but so creative in making it all the sins of the rest of humankind and creation? There are no human "races" because humankind is of a single species. "Race" in the proper sense is or should be applied to that which has been bred such as dogs, cattle or horses. Breeding, clear and simple.

Why is President Obama's pink 50% "Black"?
Did you ever see Powell and Bush Jr next to each other and failed to see which one of them was pinker than the other? Surf the 'Net for colour pix of these two and compare!

Yesterday at the inauguration I almost laughed out loud when that reverend (or was it a pastor?) prayed to God, warning Him to emember that "we are Americans", and proceeding to mention Judgement Day! I could see us all - from worms, fish, butterflies, birds, rats & mice, humankind, you name it - as plaintiffs reciting the horrrors committed againt us all by the pink people. What a day that will be!

A lot of African-Americans were on live interviews yesterday with reporter questions along the lines of: How do you feel about having a black president at last? Engraved in catatonia, the pinks are still firmly of the belief tha they are top of the charts! I wish I'd been in Washington to be interviewed. I'd have replied: How does it feel to be unable to lie through your teeth that pig pink are the only ones with a licence to lead, the only ones with grey matter inside their crania? These reporters should have asked their own pink people: How do you feel about our losing our hegemonic delusions and what can we now do to wind the time back to our halcyon days?

It's time for some human mental wellness, and nearly all of them need it.

Barack Obama & John McCain - Who's the Better Sales Manager?

2008-08-29T03:15:00.000-07:00

A Blogger on BNET wanted to know who the better Sales Manager is – Barack Obama or John McCain. He thinks McCain would be a fine Sales Manager because the man has family connections in the form of a father and a grandfather who were four-star admirals. And also because he is “flush with connections in the beer industry” which means he “has some strings to pull when something needs to get done.”

His second point is that McCain is nowhere near being bright. He “graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Navel Academy, thinks Iraq and Afghanistan share a border, thinks Al Qaeda is a Shiite organization, and doesn’t know how many houses he owns. And that’s fine with me. The last thing I want is a Sales Manager who is smarter than I am and thinks he knows my job better than I do.”

The third point is that McCain “knows when to kiss up.” McCain, in his 2000 campaigned, had an opponent who defeated him by applying racial slurs. But a few years later McCain “was hugging the man who laid the low blows. I want a Sales Manager who doesn’t hold a grudge and will kiss major tuchus (even Marketing tuchus) when it’s for the good of the team.”

Fourth, playing ball is McCain’s turf. Why? “In 1989, the Senate Ethics committee criticized McCain for exercising 'poor judgment' in regard to the Savings and Loan scandal, which ended up costing taxpayers around $125 billion dollars. That sounds like a bad thing, but I want a Sales Manager who’s not afraid to make sure the home team gets paid.”

The fifth point awards him the medal of being utterly ruthless. “He dropped his wheelchair-bound first wife for a hot, young, rich blond who could help his political career. Personally, I think his decision was a bit harsh, but… truth to tell, I want a Sales Manager who’s not afraid to give a non-performer the boot as soon as someone better comes along.”

Barack Obama on the other hand would be a lousy Sales Manager because:

He’s a wordy chap. If you ask him a question in a debate you’re going to “get a long and thoughtful answer. That would be boring during a sales meeting and deadly during a customer call.” The Blogger has “the feeling that making a sales call with Obama might end up being a “death by powerpoint” moment.”

Obama also “thinks in nuances” and clients dislike “complicated solutions to complex problems. They want simple solutions to complex problems. When you pin Obama down on specific issues, you get a complicated answer, free of jingoism. He’s more like an engineer or economist than a sales professional.”

“When he speaks, he speechifies” is Obama’s next unsuitability as a Sales Manager "Obama’s stump speech sounds like it ought to be on a (sic) office poster with a (sic) eagle and a sunset in the background. I don’t want a Sales Manager to inspire me; I want one who’ll get the job done.”

Obama is also “way too charismatic” because: “Getting massive crowds of people excited may be fine on the campaign trail, but I don’t want a Sales Manager who is a hundred times more charismatic than I am. I want the client to see me as the superhero and my Sales Manager as my sidekick, not the other way round.”

Barack Obama doesn’t close soon enough. “The democratic primary season dragged on and on and on. I kept expecting Obama to close the deal, but there was Hillary, popping up her pantsuit, every time he was on the edge of winning. If a Sales Manager comes on a sales call to help me close, I want somebody who can close that deal, and fast.”

The Blogger would rather have McCain than Obama at the sales manager’s desk. While not knowing which one of the two would be the better president, he concludes that George W Bush ”would have made an excellent Sales Manager.”

Corruption In German Officialdom?

2008-08-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

The Nigerian are still world-renowned for their famous 419 - they ripped the entire wealthy world with it. In Germany it seems the Nigerians have succeeded in corrupting racist German officialdom and making them their partners in crime. The following round email came from the NGO and Activist group Refugee Forum:

Protest the Nigeria – German Deportation in Halberstadt. Call for protest against the deportation interviews in Halberstadt. Please help to spread the protest!! >From Thursday morning, 14th August 2008, there will be again interviews bythe Nigerian embassy at the GU-ZAST Halberstadt. There were such interviews before, in Munich in August last year, this year in Halberstadt in January, in Dortmund in February, in Ludwigsburg in March, in Munich in June and in Karlsruhe in July, now again in the ZAST in Halberstadt. Refugees from all over Germany are summoned. The aim is the deportation of every refugee who is identified to be Nigerian. Language features and appearances are the main criteria ... In the past, Africans e.g. from Liberia, Uganda, Togo and Sudan were interviewed and deported to Nigeria by means of these embassy interviews. The officials employed by the Nigerian embassy receive 250 € from the German authorities for every interview and another 250 € for every "travel document" ... Without any advance warning, the police comes to the refugees' places of residence to bring them to the embassy interview, no matter if they got a summons or not. This way, 2500 asylum seekers in Germany are to bedeported. Warn the refugees you know! We will protest against the interviews in Halberstadt simultaneously on 14th August in the morning...Zentrale Anlaufstelle für Asylbewerber (ZAST), Friedrich-Liszt-Straße 1a, 38820 Halberstadt. Let us call attention to these deportation interviews and be there. Moreover, you can write a fax to the Nigerian embassy: fax: +49-(030)21230212! and phone Halberstadt: phone: 03941-6640. Address of the Nigerian embassy in Germany for protest: Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Neue Jakobstr. 4, 10179 Berlin info@nigeriaembassygermany.org

What worries me here is why the embassy of a huge democratic republic has an email that ends with dot(org) and not dot(gov). Anybody with a viable answer?

Cheers
apky

Kenyanpoet - A Kenyan Artistic Space: DARKEST EUROPE & AFRICA’S NIGHTMARE

2008-07-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

Kenyanpoet - A Kenyan Artistic Space: DARKEST EUROPE & AFRICA’S NIGHTMARE

I've read the book - full of the best out of academia. And for the shallow "complainers", Princess Akinyi not only criticises the looting West, and Asia, she is also screaming at all Africans to drop their "collective psychic damage", stop self-hating themselves, get on with affirmative action and "use their brains and hands" to better their lot instead of sitting around waiting for other people's mercy. The Princess is - excuse the pun - calling a spade a spade!

apky's torchbearer

CNN Doing What It's Good At

2008-07-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

The MAIN MAN had a whopping quarter of a million audience riveted by him yesterday at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate – a politically sacred place in the city. And somebody is mad. Very many somebodies actually are stark staring bonkers. Let’s take CNN (unfortunately I don’t have the means to watch Fox in Germany). CNN’s “by-line” was: Obama wins the hearts, but not the minds, of Germans. See it? Or did CNN mean that Germans are chronic dimwits anyway? Afroancestrals are always the Heart People and not the Mind People - most Euroancestrals would have the world believe. Now, when all humankind could be that, be Heart People, I couldn’t think of a better world. Minds are autocratic and should be left well alone to think their thoughts, only checked in their stride when the thoughts are tantamount to destroying nature, humanity very much included. But hearts have that natural (read Godly, for it’s not for nothing that the Christian Faith teaches us that God “made us in His image”) soft spot where they finely pick between good and bad – no grey zones in the human heart, unless warped by our own malfunctioning environment. So Barack Obama won Biiiig in Berlin and (pink) conservative America have their knickers in a gorgeous twist about it. The righteous first shall be the first, says my bible – and don’t you forget that Christianity is Afro-Orient. Euroancestrals have never in history come up with a world religion. Open your eyes people. I said it yesterday – pink people know how to steal a good thing and make it theirs. Otherwise Odin, Thor or Wotan would have been theirs to spread around as gods – whether as Celts, Visigoths or Germanics. So why didn’t they? Because somebody else in Africa and the Orient had a more powerful spirituality with an extremely volatile conviction to toss to the world. Pinkie grabbed it and made it theirs. Like the American continent. Or Australia. Or the technology that sprouted from the Islamic world and was mainly stolen and kept secret by the Vatican. Keep track - that's how it's done.Stay glued, I’ll be back - because we have an exciting week here in Europe. That 50% Luo genius who spoke for over an hour without any written speech to look at, is meeting Sarkozy in Paris next – Sakorzy a lover of a nude-skin kind of woman. Not our Michelle at all. But then, Barack Obama remains the sole spectator of a clad-skin Michelle. A true Luo honourable! Sorry – short by/of about that 5% German and 37% English (what's the opposite of prudery?)!

Barack Obama is German

2008-07-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

click below for fotogallery

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/6328824,f=slimg,image=1.html

Sit tight, this is a knock-offer! Pink people never see a good thing and keep their hands off it. Or, in this regard, off him. The Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is 4.6875% German, the German renowned weekly, Die Zeit, claims in their today’s 24th July 2008) issue. A poll has found out that 72% of Germans wish him to be the next President of the USA. In the capital city of Berlin, Barack Obama had a reception today that tops the one once given to John F Kennedy in the same city. In cafés, bars and pubs the Big Question is: Why don’t we have one such as him? reports Die Zeit.

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/6328824,f=slimg,image=2.html

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/6328824,f=slimg,image=3.html

They’ve dug up his entire Germanness from one Christian Gutknecht, born in 1722 in the town of Bischweiler. At the age of 24 he married one Maria Magdalena Gruenholtz and three years later they migrated to the USA, arriving on 13th September 1749. Christian anglicised his name first to Goodknight – the German word Knecht actually means manservant, farm hand or slave. But the good manservant Christian wanted a nobler surname. He soon took out the “k” altogether and became Goodnight. Maria Magdalena and Christian had a son, Samuel Goodnight (born around 1760 in Pennsylvania). Samuel married Magdalena Berkheimer (born 1764), and they had a daughter Catherine Goodnight born in 1794 in Pennsylvania. Catherine married Jacob Dunham, born in 1795 in Virginia. Their son Jacob Mackey Dunham (*1824, Virginia) married Louise Eliza Stroup (*1837, Ohio). Louise and Jacob Mackey had a son, Jacob William Dunham (1863 in Indiana), who married Mary Ann Kearney (*1869 in Indiana). Jacob William and Mary Ann begat Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham in Kansas in 1894. Ralph Waldo entered holy matrimony with Ruth Lucille Armour (*1900 in Illinois) and the marriage produced another son in 1918 in Kansas named Stanley Armour Dunham. Stanley married Madelyn Lee Payne who was born in Kansas in 1922. Which led to the birth of Stanley Ann Dunham (*1942 in Kansas) who married Barack Hussein Obama (*1936 in Kenya). This last couple are the parents of Barack Hussein Obama Jr, born in 1961 in Hawaii.

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/6328824,f=slimg,image=4.html

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/6328824,f=slimg,image=5.html

According to the weekly, another German lineage was traced by the genealogist Williams Addams Reitwiesner – http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ - to the German city of Heilbronn in 1616. The genealogist came up with the maths:

Luo 50.0%
English 37.3%
German 4.6875%

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/6328824,f=slimg,image=6.html

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/63288224,f=slimg,image=7.html

Another researcher claims that Obama’s success lies in his embracing German values which he absorbed further in his state of Illinois, an enclave of descendants of German migrants. These “Protestant German values” are: impartiality, environmental consciousness (I’m a Luo and you should have heard me laughing!), transparency, innovation, education and peaceful solution of conflicts.

Wait a minute, who started (and lost) the two Great Wars?

A couple of months ago when H R Clinton was still getting a good run for her money, this same weekly, Die Zeit had another glaring front page headlines with head photos of Obama and Clinton, asking the readership who the next US president would be: FRAU ODER SCHWARZ? At the time Obama was nothing but a pigmentation possibly from Pluto. At least Clinton had a gender. And now, with 72% for Barack Obama? He’s their main man!!

http://magazine.web.de/de/themen/nachrichten/bildergalerien/6328824,f=slimg,image=8.html

The G8 Fantasy Menu

2008-07-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

Here is their menu - the eartheaters. No wonder humankind would need 5 (yes FIVE) Planet Earths if we all consumed as much as the industrialised world does! And if this is what a working lunch is like, I wouldn't mind rolling up my blouse sleeves and spitting on my palms!

The Lunch & Dinner Menu

Working Lunch:
White asparagus and truffle soup
Chaud-froid of Kegani crab
Almond oil foam and tapenade
Supreme of chicken, with stuffed thigh, nuts and orange savoury and beetroot foam
Cheese seletion
Peach compote, ice-cream and raspberry coulis
Coffee and petits fours

Wines:
Chateau Grillet 2005
Chambolle-Musigny 2005

Dinner:
Corn and caviar (sounds awful to me, but then I'm a Gzero)
Smoked salmon and sea urchin
Hot onion tart
Winter lily bulb and summer savoury
Kelp-flavoured beef and asparagus
Diced tuna, avocado and soy sauce jelly, and herbs
Boiled clam, tomato, shiso in jellied clam soup
Water shield and pink conger with soy sauce vinegar
Boiled prawn with tosazu vinegar jelly
Grilled eel and burdock
Fried goby fish with soy sauce and sugar
Hairy crab bisque soup (my throat, my throat!)
Grilled bighand thomyhead fish with pepper sauce
Milk-fed lamb flavoured with herbs and mustard,
and roast lamb with crepes and black truffle (these great wolves!)
Cheese, lavender honey and caramelised nuts
G8 “Fantasy” dessert (the kind that hops on the table in scanties?!!!)
Coffee and candied fruits and vegetables

Wines:
Le Reve Grand Cru Brut/La Seule Gloire Champagne
Sake/Isojman Shuzo Shizuoka
Corton Charlemagne 2005/Louis Latour Bourgogne
Ridoe California Monte Bello 1997

(also check: www.akinyi-princess.com and www.apkysworld.blogspots.com

Lumukanda's blog entry

2008-07-15T04:01:00.000-07:00

Can you taste the hypocrisy?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008Recently at the G8 summit in Japan several things were discussed, but very high on the list was global warming and the food shortage. This story was followed shortly by the menu that these leaders enjoyed. (read below).
Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy here? Why is it that for the elite, the rules never seem to apply? Gordon Brown tells Britain not to waste food because of the worldwide food shortage, he then commences to stuff his face with an 18 course banquet.
People are starving the world over and they're dining on the best cuisine their citizen's money can buy.
I suppose George Orwelle was right when he wrote, that all are equal, but some are more equal than others.
I for one am sick to death of the hypocrisy of world leaders...

Just two days ago, Gordon Brown was urging us all to stop wasting food and combat rising prices and a global shortage of provisions.

But yesterday the Prime Minister and other world leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.

The dinner, and a six-course lunch, at the summit of leading industrialised nations on the island of Hokkaido, included delicacies such as caviar, milkfed lamb, sea urchin and tuna, with champagne and wines flown in from Europe and the U.S.

But the extravagance of the menus drew disapproval from critics who thought it hypocritical to produce such a lavish meal when world food supplies are under threat.

On Sunday, Mr Brown called for prudence and thrift in our kitchens, after a Government report concluded that 4.1million tonnes of food was being wasted by householders.

He suggested we could save up to £8 a week by making our shopping go further. It was vital to reduce 'unnecessary demand' for food, he said.

Last night's dinner menu was created by Katsuhiro Nakamura, the first Japanese chef to win a Michelin star. It was themed: Hokkaido, blessings of the earth and the sea.

But Dominic Nutt, of the charity Save the Children, did not approve.

'It is deeply hypocritical that they should be lavishing course after course on world leaders when there is a food crisis and millions cannot afford a decent meal,' he said.

'If the G8 wants to betray the hopes of a generation of children, it is going the right way about it. The food crisis is an emergency and the G8 must treat it as that.'

In 2005, at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, world leaders promised to increase global aid by £25billion a year by 2010 and raise aid to Africa, the world's poorest continent, by £12.5billion. But the bloc of rich nations is only 14 per cent of the way towards hitting its target.

Britain is meeting its commitments in full, but other countries are understood to be dragging their feet - and there are fears the figures on global aid could be watered down.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi, who face pressure to cut spending at home, are understood to be leading the charge to weaken the Gleneagles proposal.

Tory international development spokesman Andrew Mitchell said: 'The G8 have made a bad start to their summit, with excessive cost and lavish consumption.

'Surely it is not unreasonable for each leader to give a guarantee that they will stand by their solemn pledges of three years ago at Gleneagles to help the world's poor.

'All of us are watching, waiting and listening.'

A World Bank study released last week estimated that up to 105million more people, including 30million in Africa, could drop below the poverty line because of rising food prices.

Yesterday the European Union agreed to channel £800million in unused European farm subsidies to African farmers, as part of its response to the global food crisis.

'The EU really can give a boost to agriculture in developing countries,' Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, told the meeting.

The money will be used to buy seed and fertiliser and fund agriculture projects in Africa.

The meal was served at the Windsor Hotel, on the shores of Lake Toya, where the presidential suite costs £7,000 a night.

Japan has spent a record sum of money and deployed about 20,000 police to seal off the remote lakeside town of Toyako for the three-day talks.