Bangalore, April 21, 2011Here comes summer and it’s time to get some cool ‘shades’. Lifestyle, India’s leading shopping destination synonymous with fashion and gracious living, has launched a special summer offer Lifestyle Sunglasses Carnival by Calvin Klein.Th Nike Factory e offer allows customers to avail up to 40% discount on sunglasses and cool merchandise such as watches, T shirts, sling bags etc absolutely free across leading national international brands such as Calvin Klein, Ray Ban, Fossil, Fendi, Fossil, Guess, Givenchy, Tommy Hilfiger and many more.Choose from a wide range of sunglasses ranging fro Nike Factory m Polaroid, fashion to vintage. Whatever be your style, color or shape of choice, you can find it at Lifest Nike Factory yle which offers a gamut of styles like aviators, tea shades, wayfarer Nike Factory s to bumble bee sunglasses and more. So walk into any Lifestyle store and be pleasantly surprised by the cool and attractive offers on your favourite brand.The offer is valid till May 02, 2011 and is available across all Lifestyle stores in India. In Bangalore Lifestyle stores are located at Adarsh Opus Richmond Victoria Junction; Mantri Square Malleshwaram and Oasis Centre Koramangala. Banyan Netfaqs Pvt Ltd takes no responsibility for and disclaims the information available in form of press releases across our network. All pages of the Website are subject to our terms and conditions and privacy policy. You must not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any material on the Website for any commercial purposes.

News NavbarNews ArchiveThis week newsLast week newsArchiveOr search the news archive for:Lifesaving kit bags for rural GPs11/02/2002

People who suffer heart attacks or other traumas in remote and rural areas will have a be Nike Factory tter chance of survival with the introduction of ‘state of the art’ lifesaving kit bags for eve Nike Factory ry rural GP.

The Sandpiper Trust charity and the British Association of Immediate Care (BASICS) have joined forces to provide not only the equipment, but also training in vital pre hospital emergency care so that patients can be stabilised in the critical ‘golden hour’ after an incident.

The ‘Sandpiper’ bag contains over 30 essential items such as: sophisticated breathing apparatus, a portable oxygen cylinder, surgical splints, neck collars and protective clothing. Convenient and portable to use, it is hoped that it will eventaully become an international standard.

Deputy Health Minister Mary Mulligan said:

“GPs are so often the difference between life and death in remote areas. For people who live far from an ambulance station, GPs are often the first port of call, and provide lifesaving cover day in, day out.

“The quality of treatment in the first ‘golden hour’ after an incident is all important. That makes it all important that we give them the best tools for the job, as well as the specialist training to give them added confidence in these emergency situations.

“There are 630 General Practitioners in Grampian and the Highlands Islands alone. By providing these professionals with a standard set of emergency equipment and the right training, this initiative will help them do their courageous jobs even more effectively than they do at present.”

Under the scheme, the Sandpip Nike Factory er Trust is providing the equipment, while Nike Factory BASICS, funded from the Scottish Executive’s 8 million investment into rural services, is providing accident and emergency training, for up to a thousand doctors and nurses over the next three years.

The Sandpiper Trust is a charity formed in May 2001, as a result of the tragic death of Sandy Dickson, a 14 year old from Doune in Perthshire who tragically drowned in a remote part of Canada on August 12th 2000 whilst visiting his grandparents. The aim of the trust is to provide all rural GPs in Scotland with essential emergency medical equipment.

Training to use the bags is provided by BASICS Scotland, funded by 360,000 over three years from the Scottish Executive’s 8 million Remote and Rural Areas Resource Initiative (RARARI). All of those who have completed the BASICS course will receive a Sandpiper bag.

Yep, this is what I did today. Had a water leak coming in on top of the window, where a shingle was broke. So rather than spend 2 hours repairing it in the rain, I just used two layers of tin metal and overlapped under the next shingle up.

Now, I’m sure you are wondering.

3.) I had nothing better to do today. Yes, I’m sure I could have spent an hour trying to find someone to go do it, and explain what to do, and hope it was done right. But instead I went into town, grabbed some Starbucks, and climbed up on a ladder and “fixed” the problem temporarily. I’ll look for someone to do a more complete fix next week.

So yes, my time is better spent finding deals, finding investors, and other “higher paying jobs.” However, today I was just hanging out at home doing some house work. And sometime’s a landlord needs to do what needs to get done.

Anyways, just thought I’d sha Nike Factory re a quick inside look at the life of a landlord (at least this landlord.) It’s not always glamorous, fun, or exciting. But I’ll make $250 this month on this property so . hey, I’ll take it. But, what the hell is wrong with you.? I keep trying and trying, and you are still buying Waldos and putting lipstic on them.

The email came in informing me of your post. I was not able to respond sooner as I was in the middle of the CashFlow game with Patrisha and a friend. During the game, my handyman came to pick up a check for

DOING THIS KIND OF SHIT FOR ME SO I CAN BE HOME PLAYING GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So what is wrong with you my man? You have a kind and gorgeous wife and you make her sit in the car, in the rain, looking at you climb on the roof, which is anything but graceful or artful. The whole time she wished you’d taken her to ballet instead. thanks for the fun post. But one time I remember early on, I had a contractor come out to basically figure out why my electric baseboard heater wasn working, and I told him what I thought, I ended up being right, and he basically cut a 3×3 hole in wall, luckily on the first try found the junction box where my wires were (with power) connected wires to wires across the room and charged almost $375 clams for this!? Ever since then, I told myself, I will learn this and I can see it has helped me be net more. Thoughts?

Last year the guy doing the tile floor in the kitchen in one of Nike Factory my properties offered to teach me how to do it. So I learned how to tile a floor, which was cool to learn and to say “I did that.” But I didn’t like the mess of mortar on my hands so I left him to finish after a bit.

Then another time I had some gutters at a rental property that needed to be cleaned. I’ve done the gutters on my own house, so I started doing these with the handy person. But the stuff inside was nasty; water and bird poop and leaves all mixed together. It was kind of funny how gross it was, but after a little while the novelty wore off and I left telling him to finish the rest himself as I had somewhere I had to be. However, there are times that I was in the area, and it would be quicker for me to respond to the tenant’s needs and fix it, than to wait on getting the maintenance guy there to fix it. SO I do, but having a maintenance person on call, is CLUTCH!

To many people depend on me buying more properties to spend my time fixing minor things.

With that being said, I 100% believe most people need to know how to fix things. If you don’t, contractors will walk all over you and treat you like the way many of of have heard of the “mechanic taking advantage of the single woman”. That said, when things go wrong, sometimes it has to be done. Am I working on systems to make this no longer happen? Of course. But right now I’m in transition with resident managers and finding someone reliable on short notice is not easy. Managing 70+ properties without a manager and holding a double full time job is . interesting.

That said this experiences just emphasizes that I need to spend more time looking for a good handyman. I’ve been more or less passively looking, but I’ll take more of an active role next week.

Finally, as I’ve said before successful people tend to look down on the act of doing your own manual labor. However, I think it’s important (to point out to the newbies) to recognize that the idea of “not working” (manual labor wise) is a relatively new concept in the human scheme of things, and I firmly believe hard work is good for the soul. In fact, in every other culture for all time, the thing that Nike Factory most of the successful people in today’s world do would be considered terribly lazy and something only for old women to do. How did it become so “cool” today? I blame The 4 Hour Workweek For me, I enjoy the satisfaction of taking care of a problem, and would much rather fix a leak in the rain than spend my afternoon in a smokey casino, watching TV, sleeping, or in any other way being lazy. Work is not a bad thing, despite what many in the real estate community would have you believe.

My first real job was when I was 14 or 15 ( can’t remember now) lol. It was a fruit/plant market across from my subdivision. Rain, storms, sunshine it didn’t matter I was there.

It was under agriculture so you could work unlimited hours and not be under the labor laws. This was about 24 to 25 years ago so I have read things have changed since then on number of hours worked etc. at that age.

Every job I had after that one which is did fo Nike Factory r about 3 to 4 years was cake. We would get large 18 wheeler trucks and didn’t have the fancy motorized hand trucks. Everything from wheat straw, pine straw, bags of gravel, potting soil, pumpkins, watermelons, plants, bags of potatoes and other foods, etc. We had one person in the truck throwing things off a pallet and the other would catch on the ground and stack up. The rare occasion the owner had a forklift we were in heaven.

THAT most traditional of institutions the humble op shop has taken to the online world.

Lifeline Darling Downs and South West Queensland has entered the internet fray with the launch of online shopping for their second hand clothing stores.

Men and women clothing, shoes, bags and accessories are now available from the online shop, which can then Nike Factory be delivered or picked up from the Harristown Distribution C Nike Factory entre.

Retail coordinator Barb Dallinger said the move to the new style of retail had been a learning Nike Factory curve.

“It a new frontier. W Nike Factory e definitely learning,” Mrs Dallinger said.

“Shoes and handbags, at the moment that what we selling, so we going with that.

“We don want to take away from the op shops at all, this is just a bonus. It probably higher end, (compared) to the standard second hand stalls. Read Full Story

Lifebuoy’s latest viral video addresses the issue of diarrhoea related deaths in Indian villages that can be prevented by regular hand washing. The online buzz generated by the film has led its makers to consider launching it on TV soon.

From safeguarding masculine ‘tandurusti’ to promoting social service through ‘Gandhi giri’ and urging pre meal hand washing by serving branded chapattis at the recent Kumbh Mela, HUL’s Lifebuoy has come a long way. In its latest film, the brand addresses the issue of diarrhoea related deaths in Indian villages, numbers for which run into millions.

The film draws viewer attention to Thesgora, a village in Madhya Pradesh that has one of highest rates of diarrhoea. Since many of these deaths can be prevented by the simple act of washing hands with soap, the brand has taken its educational activation programme (that, as per the information given at the end of the video, has already reached 130 million people across the world) to this village.

In the film, noticeably set in rural India, a man walks to his local temple on his hands, as other villagers look on in wonder. He does this to express his gratitude to God because his son turns five, unlike his other children who succumbed to diarrhoea and other such infectious diseases well before reaching this age.

While the film is in sync with Lifebuoy’s plans to rid MP’s Thesgora of diarrhoea, the visual imagery and Tamil soundtrack mentally transport viewers to a rural setting in South India. Amer Jaleel, national creative director, Lowe Lintas Partners (the agency that has made this campaign) tells afaqs! that while the two decisions one regarding which village to adopt and the other regarding where to shoot the film to support the initiative were taken concurrently, they were de linked.

“The creative decision to make the film the way it is right Nike Factory now and t Nike Factory he actual on ground activation were different. So, it’s not th Nike Factory at we’re depicting this particular village (Thesgora) in the film,” he explains.

Jaleel shares that though originally conceptualised as a viral video, plans to release it on TV and in cinemas are very likely. Apparently, while industry insiders and trade professionals are appreciating the film from a craft standpoint, feedback from lay consumers, who’ve caught the film online, leans towards enquiries about the issue being addressed. “People are keen on finding out how they can help contribute towards the cause,” says Jaleel. Given such a response, the agency is keen on widening the net by placing the film on more media platforms.

Speaking about the film, Samir Singh, global vice president, Lifebuoy tells afaqs! that the brand’s goal is to change the hand washing behaviour of a billion people by 2015 and consequently save lives. “Besides the work we have been doing on ground for the last decade, we needed people to support our cause in huge numbers and wanted to tell the world ‘the Lifebuoy story’ in an emotional way,” he says.

Singh reveals that his brief to the agency was to translate a statistic namely, ‘two million children in the world still die every year before the age of five due to preventable infections like diarrhoea and pneumonia’ into something real, personal and powerful.

Directed by Chrome Pictures’ Amit Sharma, the film has been shot at various locations on the outskirts of Madurai and near Hampi. “It was not an easy film to shoot,” Sharma confides. The entire shoot took around four and a half (non consecutive) days to complete and was done with the help of on set translators (since the people in the video only spoke their local dialects) and physiotherapists (for the benefit of the hand walkers in the video).

Interestingly, two people played the part of the protagonist who walks on his hands all through; one whose face is visible to viewers and another, who served as a body double. Interestingly, both are Chennai based non actors. “To make it look real, I deliberately didn’t use a harness to hold the men up; they actually walked on their hands without any artificial support,” shares Chrome’s Sharma.

afaqs! approached a few creative experts who speak Tamil and asked them to share their thoughts on this effort. The soundtrack a lyrical, Tamil prayer like narrative about a father expressing gratitude for his son’s health and seeking blessings for his long life is an undisputed hit.

For national creative director, JWT India, the film is “an intense, life saving and idiot proof piece of communication” that is true to its proposition. “It’s a very real and moving film. The visual landscape of rural South India has been captured in a natural manner,” he says.

Kumar, however, wonders why the supers that elaborate the premise are given in English. And that’s not his only doubt. “Do you need the tourist who speaks only in the national language? Shouldn’t they all be in Tamil, talking to that particular village audience in their own language? Maybe there is a deeper need to bring alive the ‘lifesaver’ proposition of Lifebuoy to benefit the downtrodden and the ignorant Nike Factory in different local languages to achieve the desired response faster,” he thinks aloud.

co founder and creative head, Salt Brand Solutions, says, “The execution is top class. I love the moments built into it, the casting and the whole vibe. It drives the message home beautifully and tugs at the heartstrings. The execution just doesn’t seem like a typical ‘advertising film’ and sits beautifully with the message given at the end.”

According to K S Chakravarthy (Chax), national creative director, , the film is a great example of a brand staying true to its core and “raising its game from merely washing hands to a matter of life and death for every child.”

“The creative execution and track are perfect; you have no idea what’s coming till it hits you squarely between the eyes and this is despite my knowing it’s a Lifebuoy ad,” Chax adds.

In India, states such as Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and the Northeastern states are most affected by diarrhoea, despite attempts by government and non government agencies to bring down the mortality numbers.

Most diarrhoea related deaths in children are due to dehydration the loss of large quantities of water and electrolytes. The treatment mainly focuses on providing oral rehydration salts and zinc.

Prevention of the disease chiefly lies in immunization, safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene programmes, good and healthy nutrition, breast milk and micronutrient supplementation (including Nike Factory vitamin A and zinc).

However, washing hands with soap at key occasions (before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner, after defecation and during bath) during the day has proven to be the most cost effective and scalable solution to prevent the spread of diarrhoea.

In a very recent activity, Hindustan Unilever’s hand wash brand Lifebuoy carried out an activation across the schools of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh to promote this habit among the children before having their mid day meal.

The brand installed a specially crafted rocking horse, made from a combination of wood and metal with a simple screw on mechanism, on to the handles of the hand pumps in schools, making pumping a fun activity for kids. Children moved on the horse, which in turn pumped the water.

The activity was executed by whic Nike Factory h aims to execute it across 1,500 schools of the two states by the end of June. At this point, the activity has been done in 500 600 schools.

The insight was that although most of the schools had hand pumps and soap, kids did not wash their hands as the handle of the pump was heavy and high, making it difficult for them to pump water. As it was the only way to access water in these schools, they chose not to wash hands.

Vipul Salvi, national creative director, Geometry Global India, says, “When we toured the areas, we found that pumps and soaps were available for the children, but they weren’t used. So we decided to connect with the children in a language known to them that of play to convey that washing hands before a meal is necessary. And, schools were the best places because a large number of children could easily be targeted there.”

At lunchtime, when children headed out of classes for their meal, they were taken by surprise at the colourful addition in their school premises. Promoters explained the concept and the proper technique of washing hands with soap with the help of posters at prominent spots in the school to explain the “Jump Pump” game. Apart from this, Lifebuoy soap was also provided to ensure soap availability throughout the activation period.

The pumps were fitted with both, a double Nike Factory and a single horse swing. According to the estimates, the double horse cost Rs 700 800 per installation. The installations were left in the schools after the activity was over.

In rural India, mid day meal schemes are big pullers of students. Salvi further adds that the kids there do not have proper playgrounds. “So this activity was like an add on to their play time, where they could have some fun also,” adds Salvi.

The brand is not looking at a sales driven ROI from this activity and plans to go back to the schools to ascertain the impact in changing behaviour. At the end of the activity, the brand felicitated each school.

The agency has also created a video of the entire activity and produced a song that goes with it, with the lyrics ‘Baj Uthi Tan Tan, Chal diye Ban Than, Taang ke apna basta’, which showcases the daily routine of the children who go to their schools in these areas. The video begins with some facts and figures on diarrhoea deaths and ends with a montage of children playing with the horse and pumping water.

George Koshy, general manager, skin cleansing, HUL, says, “Lifebuoy has a proud history of being a brand that stands for saving lives. It is indeed our mission to ensure that hand washing with soap becomes a habit for children, as a step to reducing diarrheal mortality. The ‘Jump Pump’ activation is an innovative approach, appealing to children in a manner that is fun and enjoyable.”

Lifebuoy has been active in the domain of CSR initiatives. In 2013, it ran the ‘Help a Child Reach 5′ campaign, under which it adopted Thesgora village in Madhya Pradesh that has one of the highest rates of diarrhoea. It has now adopted Bitobe in Indonesia. Both villages have one thing in common very few new born children are able to cross the age of five and die earlier due to diseases.

Two films were released as a part of this Nike Factory campaign. In the first, a man walks on his hands from his home to the village temple in order to show gratification to the lord as his child reaches the fifth birthday. In the other film, a woman, according to village tradition, plants a tree on the birth of her child and takes care of it like her child. While the kid is unable to survive because of diarrhoea, the woman celebrates the fifth birthday of the tree.

During the Mahakumbh Mela celebrations in India in 2013, the brand served chapatis to more than 2.5 million pilgrims with a branded message that reminded people to wash their hands.

Lifebuoy has partnered with organisations and agencies and is working in different countries such as Brazil, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia to prevent the disease.

I have literally lost track of the number of people who said to me that they feel a lot happier because their lawn has gone green. The joy it has brought is noticeable.

Drought breaking rain seems to be a naturally existing form of anti depressant.

OK, the grizzle gutses are already thinking “now I have to mow the bloody lawn in the humidity” but pay no mind to the miserable.

The recent rainfall took my mind time machine spinning back 28 years to my days as an apprentice greenkeeper at Windaroo Country Club when I first learnt why rain makes the lawn go green.

Simply put, it because the atmosphere we breathe contains nitrogen, an essential component in fertiliser.

The rain literall Nike Factory y tumbles through the atmosphere absorbing and retaining part of everything that it comes into contact with.

When I learnt that, I remember thinking that water may absorb and retain part of everything it touches but so do people.

We tumble through our life and become the sum of our experiences.

Ironically, humans are 80 per cent water. Perhaps that where our empathy for a thirsty lawn comes from. We are literally a walking, talking, bag of salty water ourselves. The choice we make along the way is do we become fertile or do we become acid rain? How will we affect the part of the world we fall on?

I had an experience recently that brought this into sharp focus.

A woman got in touch with us at Hot Tomato and said her 38 year old sister in law had a stroke in the middle of moving house. The stroke took part of her memory, her vision and her ability to walk. Her partner had to leave his job and become her full time carer. They had no money and they were in deep schtook.

In a time of economic gloom and doom, within an hour of heari Nike Factory ng about it Gold Coasters had donated $5000 in cash and many thousands of dollars in services.

Tradies had donated things like building a wheelchair ramp, pest control and professional cleaning services.

A truckie who refused to be named turned up at the radio station in tears with a thousand bucks cash in his hand. Thank you, phantom t Nike Factory ruckie, happy trails. May the parking angels always leave three empty spaces in a row for you and your truck, sir.

A father and a daughter on their way to school heard the story, looked at one another, diverted to an ATM and parted with a couple of hundred bucks, while on a different part of the Gold Coast, two little boys made their mum take them to Hot Tomato with their allowances in their hand.

Here was another naturally occurring anti depressant it was raining generosity.

Sometimes the landscape of our lives is like your lawn.

It can change overnight. For good or for bad.
Nike Factory
Then it can change back just as quickly so try not to get stuck in a moment.

So next time you feel a little funny, a bit off, anxious or like it all a bit much, take a look at your lawn. Then remember that after the rain the grass will get quickly greener on your side of the fence. That the most important opinion I had this week.

Highland Park native Anne Narter no longer freaks out when she sees a handbag she designed draped over a teen walking down the street.

The 1999 Highland Park High Nike Factory School grad has been designing handbags professionally for nearly 10 years, with the last two under her own label, OMG Handbags. Her fashion forward bags, targeted to the teen market, are carried by 28 national retailers, and can be found in her hometown at Charming Charlie’s and Francesca’s Collections boutiques.

Narter’s company has grown so big and so fast that she now maintains a staff of three employees in her Chicago design studio and six in her Los Angeles showroom; she recently began hiring a staff for a New York showroom to open this summer.

“It’s so rewarding to wake up every day excited to go to work,” she said last week. “I love designing handbags. Growing this company for my future and knowing how I made all this happen is the best feeling in the world.”

Throughout Narter’s rise in the fashion industry, Highland Park has remained an integral part of her story.

Starting in high school, continuing through college at Columbia in Chicago and overlapping the start of her career, Narter has worked at Ravinia Barbecue and Grill on Roger Williams Avenue.

It started as a job for a little spending money when she was 14 years old. But the Ravinia neighborhood barbecue joint grew to become Narter’s second family and the eventual launching point for OMG Handbags.

Whether it was bouncing ideas off of customers, finding investors or getting help with business logistics, Narter never found a reason to leave the restaurant.

“They guided me every step of the way,” Narter said of her Ravinia Barbecue colleagues and customers. “These were almost strange Nike Factory rs at th Nike Factory e time, and they helped me with warehousing, freight issues, everything. I’ve had so many people believe in me and support me through this whole process.”

On Sunday night, 16 1/2 years after her first day, Narter worked her last shift behind the bar. She recently decided to focus all her time and attention on OMG Handbags.

“My handbag business is what I set out to do,” she explained. “That was my big goal, and the restaurant was really just the foundation for everything.

“If you want something in life you have to really go for it and sometimes that might mean taking a risk or leaving your comfort zone,” Narter added. “But I truly believe that if you put all your energy into your goals, you can achieve the world. That is my motto and my personality.”

The fast paced handbag design industry requires that kind of passion, and Narter has made her name by staying ahead of trends. Reaching the 14 to 21 year olds, she said, demands constant attention.

“Everything I design is fun, fashion forward,” Narter explained. “You have to be on top of the latest and greatest to make your product stand out. Teens are on top of trends as much as the high end designers so I have to stay up with their pace.”

She designs the bags in her Chicago studio, and they are manufactured overseas. The bags feature a lot of color neon is fashionable this year Nike Factory and special treatments like studs and fringes. Everything is priced under $50, with wallets and smaller bags between $10 and $25.

The early days of Taina Uitto’s life without plastic weren’t easy.

“The first time I went shopping at the grocery store it was really hard,” she recalled. “I came out with an apple, only because I didn’t want to come out with nothing. Even that had a plastic sticker on it.”

Now, three years in to her selfimposed year without plastic, there is no going back. “I just feel so much better without the weight of all that waste and all the toxins that plastic leaches into our water and our fo Nike Factory od and even the chemicals in the soaps and cosmetics,” said Uitto, a marine conservationist.

Some of her solutions are a little unappetizing: “Choose a toothbrush with natural bristles and a biodegradable handle. Mine is boar bristles and bone (the wet pig taste goes away in time).”

But many others are easy personal fixes to address the mounting global plastic pollution crisis.

Nike Factory
Uitto began her quest while she was working with Sea Choice, the David Suzuki Foundation’s sustainable seafood certification program. She viewed a presentation by the research and advocacy group 5 Gyres on the massive plastic garbage patches that have accumulated in the world’s oceans. “That really shocked me,” she said. “It literally broke my heart.”

The Great Pacific garbage patch is a collection of plastic debris spread over an area between Japan and California, essentially a confetti of degrading plastic bits concentrated by the ocean’s natural currents. It is one of five such pollution gyres in the world’s oceans.

A recent analysis from the University of Oregon also notes that the ocean floor near populated areas is covered with sunken plastics. “Even though I didn’t do anything about it for a long time it stuck in my mind,” she reca Nike Factory lled. “At that point I didn’t own a tiffin, never brought a cup to the coffee shop I was just having a normal life.”

But images of water samples full of decaying material and albatrosses with their stomachs bulging with garbage seemed to be everywhere for Uitto. The nauseating sight of seaborne junk and dead birds gnawed at her mind until one day, she snapped.

On Jan. 1, 2010, Uitto purged the plastics from her kitchen and bathroom. “I wanted to start with a clean slate and force myself to come up with alternatives and, second, I wanted to get rid of the toxic things that live in plastic, like personal care products and cleaning products.”

Uitto started with a single Rubbermaid bin to collect the bottles, brushes, containers

and other products, but filled it after clearing out just one drawer. “I was determined, but not prepared,” she admitted.

By the time she was done, her front room was waist deep in food packaging, personal care products, g Nike Factory arbage bags and various gadgets, tubs and containers. “It was pretty intense,” she said. “I challenged six other families to quit plastic as well and they all said the same thing: They weren’t aware of how much plastic they had and they had all felt like they were already eco consumers.”

Matthew Stewart and his girlfriend Sarah Milton took the challenge and filled six boxes when they purged their home.

“It was a drastic change in lifestyle,” said Stewart. “Where we used to go to the store and buy things like almond milk, we just started making them ourselves. We spent a lot of time in the kitchen together, it was really kind of romantic.”

Uitto has chronicled her journey and those of her families in a still unfinished documentary film and in her blog, Plastic Manners.

“People always say they don’t use that much plastic, but until you collect it even for a week and pull all the plastic from your kitchen, you don’t know,” she said. “It’s a shocking exercise.”

Uitto’s kitchen and bathroom shelves look cleaner and far more spacious after the purge, or “sophisticated,” as she put it. “It feels a lot less cluttered and the things I bought to replace them look and feel a lot nicer.”

Many of the cosmetics, cleansers and shampoos she seldom used and really doesn’t miss.”I was one of those women that felt naked without mascara. But I had to stop wearing makeup,” she said. “The benefit of that is that I can rub my eyes whenever I want.”

“I had to simplify my personal care routine . a lot,” she explained. “Finding a deodorant was hard, but now I have my little collection of things that work for me. I have five things instead of 500 things in the bathroom.”

The lowest hanging fruit on the plastic tree is the plastic shopping bag, according to Uitto. They are easily replaced with relatively benign cloth bags. “I haven’t missed shopping bags since Day 1,” she said. “Now when I touch a plastic bag if someone leaves one at my house it’s a weird object and I think it smells bad.”

Slightly more challenging and insidious are produce bags. Watching people load their cloth shopping bags with a dozen plastic produce bags is an especially tragic irony to Uitto. Ditto for plastic bags in the bulk aisle.

“How does it help to stuff your cloth bags full of plastic?” she said, laughing.

She subverts the established order of grocery shopping by using paper bags supplied for mushrooms to bag all her produce and dry bulk items, or she brings her own paper bags, dried and reused for as long as possible. Of course.

Uitto and her boyfriend Nino Kinmont are living plastic free, but it is very much a life on the fringes of society. As though to prove the point, they are building a cabin on Denman Island with the intention of living “off the grid.”

A plastic free life is an extreme challenge. Tensions may arise between couples and family members when certain products are forbidden.

Most beer cans and bottle caps are lined with plastic, requiring a trip to the local nano brewery for a refillable, plastic free growler of beer. A handful of strong specialty beers are sealed with cork and wire, if that’s your cup of tea.

I was a little disappointed to discover that, five months after the release of Android 4.0 which all the cool kids call Ice Cream Sandwich the Galaxy Note still ships with Android 2.3. Samsung hasn’t released an Ice Cream Sandwich update for the device, either. The UI animations aren’t always perfectly smooth, the widgets aren’t terribly nice to look at, and call me crazy, but I swear the OS feels slow even on relatively powerful devices like the Note.To its credit, Android does certain things iOS can’t do. Home screen widgets allow you to quickly enable and disable Wi Fi or Bluetooth, maneuvers that require a trip into the Settings app on the iPhone. Voice dictation has been a standard feature for a long time no Nike Factory w, whereas Apple still doesn’t offer that functionality on devices older than the iPhone 4S and iPad 3. The Facebook integration (which syncs information from your Facebook friends list to your address book) is very handy, as well.I suppose Android is more of a geek’s platform in many respects. Google exposes considerably more configuration options and information about the system than Apple does, and users are given free rein to replace default apps if they so choose. The Google Play store also seems like less of a walled garden than the iTunes App Store. Or, at least, app rejections don’t make headlines quite so often.It’s just too bad that the Note doesn’t run Ice Cream Sandwich yet. According to the guys at SammyHub, who found a post on Samsung’s Norwegian Facebook page, ICS isn’t coming to the Note until next quarter.On a big honkin’ phone like the Galaxy Note, the web browser almost beckons you. There’s something delightful about touching your way through the web on any device with responsive input, and a large display makes it all the better.As you’d expect, the Galaxy Note requires a lot less zooming and panning than smaller phones. In fact, in landscape mode, you can almost get away with not zooming at all when reading TR. Sadly, most sites identify the Galaxy Note as a regular Android phone, redirecting the user to a stripped down, mobile version designed for much smaller screens. While some sites provide a link that switches to the full fat flavor, not all are that accommodating, which can become a little annoying. Ice Cream Sandwich puts a “request desktop site” option right in the browser, but it still can’t be configured to request the desktop versions of web sites by default.Panning and zooming in the Note’s Gingerbread browser is very smooth overall. For some reason, however, I noticed a lot of checkerboarding when tracking around graphics heavy pages. The effect can be a bit disconcerting, especially since the checkerboard pattern doesn’t always go away until you’ve taken your finger off the screen. My first thought was to blame a video memory limitation (this thing is, after all, driving a 1280×800 display), but we’re talking about a phone that can run snazzy looking 3D games at the native resolution. So, I don’t know.Speaking of games.One would expect any graphics heavy application to be beautiful on such a large display, and the Galaxy Note doesn’t disappoint there. 3D games like ShadowGun (pictured above) and Blood and Glory look gorgeous. They run well, although the experience falls short of seamless fluidity in both cases. Less demanding 3D titles, like Heliodroid 3D, are definitely smoother. In all cases, though, the big screen delivers more than just delicious eye candy: it gives you more room to position your fingers without covering up the image or touching the wrong controls by accident.Sadly, not all titles natively support the Note’s 1280×800 display resolution. Some games are going to look blurry because of the scaling required, and there’s nothing you can do about it.On the video front, the Galaxy Note has a YouTube app, and the Note also happily plays most non streaming video formats like WMV, DivX/XviD, and H.264 via the included Videos app. I got pretty much the same experience with the standard def XviD, 720p MP4, and “high quality” YouTube videos I tried: smooth but not 100% fluid playback, with occasional dropped frames that didn’t compromise audio/video synchronization. Although playback seemed slightly more fluid on my iPhone, the picture quality was a lot better on the Note. That display’s contrast ratio and color reproduction really are something to behold.The giganto display makes the Galaxy Note compelling as an e book reader maybe not as your primary reading device, but certainly a good Kindle or Nook substitute for public transport and waiting rooms. Google sells books through its own Play store, and there’s an Android version of Amazon’s Kindle app that works rather well. I’ve used the Kindle app on my iPhone, bu Nike Factory t the cramped screen and the small number of words per line can get to be a little uncomfortable. The Galaxy Note doesn’t suffer from the same problem, and reading is surprisingly comfortable. The fact that Samsung gives you a quick rotatio Nike Factory n lock shortcut in the notification slide down area is definitely a plus.Now, there is a substantial downside to the large display.If you’ve ever texted or Googled or Yelped on the go, chances are you did so with just one hand: fingers clasped around your phone, thumb hitting all the necessary buttons and keys. Your other hand might have been occupied carrying a shopping bag or keeping you steady Nike Factory in the bus or subway. Good luck replicating that with the Galaxy Note. The thing is just too friggin’ big for one handed typing, at least with my medium sized hands. Unless you have lumberjack mitts, typing comfortably without losing your grip on the phone is going to require the use of both hands or of the voice dictation facility, but that might get awkward in public.Speaking of awkwardness, there’s a definite and very palpable dignity cost to making a call in public:Yeah. Using this thing gave me flashbacks of the big phone guy from old Trigger Happy TV episodes.Don’t get me wrong call quality on the Galaxy Note is fine, and the earpiece speaker is plenty loud. It gets much louder than the one on my iPhone at the maximum setting, actually. But this device feels sort of unwieldy when I hold it up to my face, and the sheer size of it is pretty much guaranteed to attract stares. If you’re happy to flaunt your geek cred in front of everybody (or have long given up any sense of self respect), then that won’t bother you. Anyone else may want to invest in a quality Bluetooth headset.