Grocery Shopping

Our family has been struggling with our monthly grocery spending bill. It is so easy to get carried away. The worst situation is when you have the time to shop, and don't have that much on your list. That's bad! What really worked for us is to only go to the store twice a week, and to have an extensive list of things to buy whether it is based on a thorough inventory or a pre-planned weekly menu. Using these simple methods dropped our grocery bill by 30% or so, and that's not even talking about where we are doing our shopping. I am so proud of us.

Punishment Revisited

I have been hearing over and over again just how full the prisons are becoming. As if this is not bad enough, through various parts of the world, there are behaviors that culturally support imprisonment. Phrases indicating that you are not a real man until you have been jailed at least once, and celebrating someone's return from jail are only a few examples. But wouldn't this sort of behavior defy the concept upon which jails were built in the first place?

What is the history behind jail? I don't know, but I would guess that it was intended to be the adult form of "time out". You make a mistake, and you get locked up to think about it so you won't do it again. Then isolation wasn't enough, so various ways of humiliation, strenuous work, torture, and post-jail obstacles were created to give jailing a more powerful stand. Even that didn't work.

Jail now is so diluted as a form of discipline that people take pride in being jailed. So what is the purpose? And why exactly are all these people qualifying for prison time? Is this a problem in legal systems? Is it time to update our laws and reconsider imprisonment as a punishment tool? And what would you do instead? What is an effective method of punishment these days?

Sexting. What??

S e x t i n g. This is when teens use their phones to send naked pictures of themselves to their friends. This is also child pornography. The question is, who should be accused?
Well, let's see:
1. The kids? Well, if you were the teen, and you are sending a picture of yourself to your boyfriend/girlfriend of the week, is this pornography? not in their eyes. Then, let's say the good times are over and you broke up, then he/she sends that picture to his/her friends. Now it is all over the internet, it may be used as harrassment, and he/she gets cought for this and voila..it is on his/her record for 10 years, and they are listed as sex offenders. If this scenario happens when you were 14, at 24 he/she can't find a job because they have sex offender on their record. WHAT????? So kids (13.14.15...) are sex offenders already when they send this picture of themselves to friends who have already seen them naked two billion times before? From a legal stand point, yes.

2. The parents? Parents need to know where the kids are, so they buy them a cell phone. Kids end up sexting their friends and their friends send these pictures to EVERY contact on their phone. This list includes adults, and so adults and parents get pictures of some naked kid on their cell phone. Now they are involved in child pornography. OR, your child is too lazy to go upstairs and find their phone, so they use your phone to sext their friends and they respond. All of a sudden you are a pedophile. WHAT???? So you are minding your own business and your phone receives (or sends) pictures of naked kids, and now you are in the middle of this mess? From a legal stand point, there is no way to prove that you didn't do it on purpose, right? so, yes.

Hmmmmm, this is getting very tricky. If someone wants to do harm to someone else's reputation, it doesn't take very much at all until this legal mess is sorted out. Legal courts, you've got quite a bit of ironing to do.

I have a couple of questions. With all that's happening in the world now, and it doesn't seem to be stopping or slowing down anytime soon:
1. What did our parents really protect us from growing up, by comparison?
2. How could we protect our children from this mess that just keeps piling up?

What Do You Mean, NO?

If ICC finds someone criminal of ....., and order his arrest like in the case of the Sudanese leader, then he says "no" basically saying that they have no authority over him and thus refuses the arrest warrant.
...
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hmmmmmm...
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...
Well, now what?

The World of Money

Everyone is working, at least in part, to make money. Some use this money to provide bare necessities for their families, and some as a way to boost self confidence, but at the end of the day, people work to make money.

For all these hours worked, and stress of waking up early in the morning, going through traffic, work politics, and the turmoil of any given work day, spending money on transportation, networking, and dressing in a certain way, what do workers do with the remaining money? Save it? Great idea, but how?

Perhaps it has to do with not growing up in this country, and so the concept of credit was a little far fetched for me. it took me years to figure it out on my own. I tried taking the finance-world tour several times actually, but it has always been too complicated for me. There are so many options that should help people save/invest their hard earned money that it just gets tiring and overwhelming to a simple-minded mortal like myself.

I still work hard, and I still want my money well taken care of. I just want my options to be clear and easy to understand. Is this too much to ask for? So far, yes.

Saving should be easy, right? A piggy bank or a used jar, fill it up with unused money and tataaaaa. oh, no, but you can save money before tax or after tax. And, of course, if i keep it in the bank, I am paid interest. Good, so bank it is. Oh, wait, but if you invest it, you get more money out of it, so investing must be it. Here i am, with money in my hand, ready to invest. Now what? Well, there are way too many options down that road. Result, I back up and stop at the bank savings option. Oh, but still, if I lock some money up in a "CD", then I can make even more money. On and on this tour goes and at the end of the day, I am cross-eyed, my money is all over the place and don't quite have a good grip of my accomplishment with this saving project.

I can't help but ask though, Should saving/investing really be that complicated and inefficient? People work hard, they earn money, they try to save for a rainy day, but they can't find a clean cut layout of their options to do so. Is this part of why there are some who tried to do the right thing and ended up on the street? If they "knew" better, would they have been on the street today? Maybe, but maybe not. And for those of us who are learning a lesson from this economic situation, what can we do to keep our head above water for the next recession?

Go Saudi Women!

Saudi women are starting to ask for some rights. Way to go!

First: they are asking for the right to work, and they are getting it, slowly but surely. On the radio, one woman was wishing for a salesWOMAN at the lingerie deptartment of stores.

Needless to say, she is not very comfortable buying lingerie from a man. Most women end up buying lingerie that doesn't fit them because they are too uncomfortable trying it at the store, so they just buy it. Because it is underwear, they don't feel comfortable returning it either if it doesn't fit. Of course, the alternative is to travel abroad and get whatever it is that they need...for now.

If there is a woman to help ease this uncomfortable situation, that woman on the radio was saying, it would make everyone's life a little happier. I can assure you that the man is not all that comfortable either, given the rules of the country. How could you possibly sell underwear to a woman without looking at her? and that's just the beginning of the list.

I think that women and men still can not legally work in the same place. But I am also sure that they can afford a mall just for women, and I could see it working really well too. As a matter of fact, I am surprised that it doesn't exist yet.

Second: They are asking for the right to drive. Aaaaaaaaaa! Now that could be tricky. But I can't wait to see how it all falls into place.

I wonder, though, as Saudi women gain their independence at home, how will that affect their lives at home and abroad?

Links:
Saudi Women Want To Work
Saudi Women Want To Drive