Blog@GraceJunction

Australia, they say, is a whole new world packed into one continent, packed into one country. Unarguably, it is one of the most picturesque land masses on the planet with a variety unparalleled. If you are in Australia you can bush walk in the deserts, ski in the Alps, stroll on the Gold Coasts, bungee Jump in the gorges, snorkel in the barrier reef, or simple keep gasping at the amazing sights all around. (more…)

The government has floated three town planning schemes for an area called Bopal in Ahmedabad but has not been able to implement any of these as Bopal has witnessed haphazard and unplanned construction activities for the last two decades. The layout and the utilization of the spaces in this area is so bad that the government is wary to start anything. The government wishes that it had shown foresight before approving plans for the area. A regret, that will remain unattended for decades. (more…)

It was sad to read the story of Chitra Parmar in the morning today. Depressed over a failed love affair, this 20-year-old student of National Institute of Fashion Design, committed suicide by hanging herself from the ceiling fan on Sunday evening. In the suicide note she said she was taking the step because she could not get over the fact she had been jilted by her lover Hiren Patel. She also named three more people as responsible for their break-up. Finally she apologised to her parents in the suicide note. (more…)

Pressure was the most talked about issue in Anju Musafir’s workshop on parenting that ended last week. The amount of pressure that kids go through to perform in class, deal with fights and prejudices in class, teacher’s negative comments, peer pressure, course and tuition pressure et cetera are only mounting by the year. Parents are also not helping them in lessening this pressure, on the contrary they are only adding up to it by allowing no play or music or movie! (more…)

Finally Vodafone seems to have found the nemesis for the ‘Pug”. Hutch, the ex-name of Vodafone, was known for its pug, a dog that followed its owner everywhere, conveying the ‘where ever you go, our network follows’ punchline. The pug was such a hit that Hutch couldn’t keep the pug out of any of its strategies and ads! I mean literally, whatever Hutch did, the pug followed! The pug tried to enter the Vodafone camp after Hutch was bought by Vodafone. However, Ogilvy & Mather finally seem to have come to the rescue with a new mascot(s), thus paving the way for the last and final departure of the good old pug ‘Chika’. (more…)

Reading one of the newspaper articles which was titled ‘The sound of one cheek slapping’ which dealt with the concept of doing good for every evil act emphasized the need for such behavior in our society today. It started by saying that there are two versions of dealing with a wrongful act in the Bible, one in the Old Testament (Era before Christ) and the New Testament (Christ and beyond). It said that ‘the Bible explicitly endorses the ancient Babylonic code of Hammurabi when it sanctions the vengeance based ‘an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth’ prescription as a form of social justice’ in the Old Testament. (more…)

The author of the famous book “Purpose Driven Life”, Rick Warren was asked by President Elect Barack Obama to deliver the invocation at his inauguration ceremony. This apparently harmless choice got boiled over into a political debate and controversy. Some were opposing it because of Warren’s Evangelical allegiance but most decrying it because of Warren’s stand against Homosexuals and Gay Marriages. The topic occupied so much print space that the interest in the invocation threatened to supercede the interest in the inauguration itself!

It’s amazing how the society has transformed in the last few years. From hush-hush discussions to become a voice of reckoning on national and international issues, homosexuality has come a long way. The fight of the homosexuals doesn’t end with the subject of their right to marriage. They are fighting for parenting rights too! It’s such a big debate that the proponents of the Gay movement say, “The last decade has seen a sharp rise among gay people planning and forming families through adoption, foster care, donor insemination, and other reproductive technologies so much so that the current period might be remembered in history as a lesbian and gay ‘baby boom.’” (more…)