Ikea in Coventry

As a long time fan of Ikea, I was really excited when I heard that they were going to open a store here in Coventry. This store on Queen Victoria Road, is the first one to be built in a City centre shopping area. Work started on the site on 15 May last year and is scheduled to open later this year.

The building will be seven storeys high, three of which will be for parking and another three for stores (with a store space of 24,000 square meters).

Ikea's decision to open a store is a boon for Coventry which has seen an exodus of businesses and public services leaving the city in the past few years. The new store is expected to create around 1000 new jobs here.

Right now, they already have a small store open at 2 Croft Road, CV1 3AZ.

Would definitely love to work with them. Since they are recruiting, I thought it would be a good idea to send in an application too. Unfortunately, have been rejected twice.

Guess I will have to send in an application again.

Fruits of my labour

These strawberries are the first fruits from my garden.

Of course, there will be people who feel that gardening is all a waste of time and some people might argue that you can get a big pack of big juicy strawberries for only a pound in the local grocer.

However, the feeling that you get when you sink your teeth in something that you grew yourself - is Priceless.

Related link: Strawberry on Wikipedia

Our house smells like a cafe

I mean that in a nice way.

A few days back, my wife's friend Roby gave her a present - a coffee making set along with some coffee. So now, no more Nescafe from now on. In fact, no more instant coffee of any kind.

As my wife says, "this is real coffee". It was really interesting to watch her make the coffee - the Italian way. I say real, because the Italians invented expresso.

Where previously, we just had to add coffee power to hot water and add milk and sugar, now it is an elaborate ritual of packing the coffee power in, adding the water and then heating it up in that espresso machine.

The boiling water is pushed up through finely ground coffee by pressure, thus extracting its full flavour. She then creates some frothy milk in what else, the Frother.

The frothy milk is first poured into the cup followed by the concentrated coffee.

There you have it - delicious espresso cappuccino.

Of course, we are amateurs. I know some coffee fanatics even buy a thermometer and grind their own beans. We are not there as yet.

Tags: coffee espresso

Why do you buy designer sunglasses

My friend Nick collects sunglasses. He has so many that they fill up two drawers, arranged neatly in rows. These are not just any sunglass but designer brands. We once watched the first Matrix movie together and liked what he saw. So off we went to grab a wrap around Ray-Ban like the one that Neo wore in the movie. I was laughing at him but I too had a similar experience when I first watched Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as an ace pilot. Went and bought myself a replica aviator. I thought I looked cool.

And you thought that sunglasses were merely to protect your eyes from the harmful UV rays. Was wondering whether movies and celebs influence our decision to buy sunglasses?

Just sometime back, I was at this optical shop and these two girls were excited about one particular sunglass. It looked like something from the 60s - big with white rims and I thought it was really ugly. Could help but over hear the girls. They were going, "it just looks like Paris Hilton's" or something like that. I guess big glasses with white rims are back in fashion. I can see a lot of people wearing them.

Whatever your reason, if you are looking for latest designer sunglasses, check out the 2007-08 Designer Sunglasses Collections at Optics Place. The website carrries the most affordable prices on a range of designer brands including Gucci, Prada, Versace, RayBan and much more. You don't have to go to different stores to compare and find the sunglass of your liking.

Besides sunglasses, the site also has a good selection of eyeglass frames, contact lenses, safety glasses and accessories. As someone who wear glasses, I was more interested in the information on eye health and the vision correction options. I found a lot of them to be very useful.

Harry Potter theme park

Even though the story is going to end soon, the magic is going to live on.

Artist's impression of Hogwarts

According to news reports, Warner Bros. will create a theme park called "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" within Universal Orlando Resorts.

The theme park will even have a Hogwarts castle.

I am not really sure about the opening date. Some reports say 2009 while others say 2010.

Read the full report below:

Tags: harry potter orlando theme park warner bros

Garden update June 07

Early in February this year, I wrote about 'getting the gardening itch'. It's been sometime since then and a few guys have been asking me about my progress.

Well, it's not that bad but could have been better. A serious obstacle has been the slug infestation. I finally went along with my sister's advice (initially recommended by my landlord) - the beer trap. I bought a 4 pack of the cheapest beer in the market, which happens to be Tesco's value bitter. I then put disposable plastic containers in my vegetable patches, with the top level with the surface. These were then filled up with beer in the evening. In the morning, I would find that they were overflowing with dead slugs. I have pictures but they were too disgusting to put up.

Anyway, I now have the following plants growing in my garden:

1. Strawberries
2. Mint
3. Potatoes
4. Tomatoes
5. Lavender
6. Rosemary
7. 1 rose plant (the rest died)
8. a few marigold plants.

I have also planted carrots and chilies but they are yet to germinate.

The lawn is coming up well too. Our landlord gave me two boxes of hard wearing grass seed and I sowed them just before the rains. They are a bit patchy now but I am sure it will slowly grow over the bare patches in the future.

Take a look at how far our garden has come:

When we first moved in

In April 2007

Now

Got the idea for this post from Skeet's blog.

An experiment in blogging for money

Just wanted to create some buzz about Lugnut22.com, blogger Lars Krumme's part-time endeavor. According to Lars, the blog titled "Make Money Online", was started in January this year as "an experiment in blogging for money".

Some of my blogger friends who have been blogging for nearly a year and more, have been complaining that they hardly make any money. I guess, they could learn a thing or two from Lars who earned $153.33 in April followed by a total of $168.04 in May. he actually made about $60 after subtracting the costs. That's quite impressive.