Features

NEW YORK – Loaded down with huge plastic bags in decrepit shopping carts, they criss-cross New York night and day, scavenging trash bins for cans and bottles.

This invisible army is made up of young and old, men and women, jobless people, the homeless, immigrants who speak little English — all with the same goal: recycle their finds to make a few bucks.

In this city of millionaires, there must be about 7,000 people living at the other end of the spectrum, says Ana Martinez de Luco, co-founder of Sure We Can, a centre in Brooklyn where these so-called “canners” come to sort through their stuff and sell it.

For each can or plastic or glass bottle, they get five US cents. 

If they sort really carefully and separate the stuff by brand, they can get six or 6.5 cents under a New York state law called the Bottle Bill, first passed in 1982 and then amended in 2009.

From Times Square to Wall Street, from Central Park to the subsidised housing blocs of Queens, there are more and more of these scavengers. 

They get up early before the garbage trucks make their rounds and they often go to bed late.

The ingenuity is stunning and sad: Elderly Chinese women hang huge bags of cans or bottles from either end of a long stick that they carry on their shoulders; a 45-year-old homeless man from Nigeria pushing his stuff around in a shopping cart that holds his life’s possessions; a young Latino mother using a baby stroller as her can and bottle transport.

They trade it all in at machines at supermarkets or at one of about 20 recycling centres, but there is a limit of 250 units ($12.50) a day.

A few years ago, it would be mainly homeless or poor people doing this. But in recent years, the ranks of the invisible army have changed as the economic crisis of 2008 has left its mark.

At Sure We Can, some 60 per cent of the people bringing in recyclable material are elderly. 

Most are immigrants. 

“They have been professors, in the military — they had have good businesses, some people have master’s degrees,” said Martinez de Luco. 

But one day their lives derailed.
Carlos, 27, a former chef in a Jamaican restaurant, tells how he started canning after the place closed down. But he insists he is not homeless. 

Some use the money to send a bit to their families back home. Others supplement a meager retirement pension. Older immigrants who came to be with their children just try to get by. 

A matter of survival 

Anita Tirado, a frail 74-year-old Puerto Rican woman, explains that she has no right to Medicaid, the US healthcare programme for the poor. 

So every morning, sometimes as early as 4:00am, she rummages through trash bags, even on the sidewalk of her own street. Then she goes to take care of her three-year-old granddaughter.

Tirado says she makes between 20 to 30 dollars a week, sometimes as much as 40 bucks.

It is exhausting and dangerous work. A few years ago, Tirado was beaten up while making her rounds.

After that, her children pleaded with her to stop, but she kept it up.

She says the beating took place early in the morning, and now she has learned to stay close to home. 

“Now I just cross the street,” she said.

Many people have no choice but to sift through garbage.

Sylvernus is from Nigeria. He was a security guard but got laid off after the September 11 attacks. He says canning has been a way to survive for the past five years but still dreams of getting a real job.

“This is hell,” he said. 

I really want to get out of this situation.”

“People think it is easy to do this work,” he said. “I have to push this heavy wagon and walk around to get cans just to stay alive.”

Canners may recycle as much as 70 per cent of the bottles and cans of New York, according to a recent study. 

But it is no way to make a living, even doing it full-time.

A couple in their 40s who work seven days a week say they make between 300 and 350 dollars a week, a pittance in the Big Apple.

The math gets challenging. The take from 70 cans buys a small cappuccino. A sandwich is worth 100 cans. A pair of modest shoes? 800. 

And for the record, rent on a two bedroom apartment — or $6,000 a month — would be 120,000 cans and bottles.

“It could be a real job, if the expenses of the rent or the food were not so big in New York,” said Martinez de Luco.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is getting ready to hitch the iPhone to cars in a mobile marriage of convenience.

The ambitious project, called CarPlay, implants some of the iPhone’s main applications in automobiles so drivers can control them with voice commands, a touch on the steering wheel or a swipe on a display screen in the dashboard.

It’s expected to be available this summer when Pioneer Electronics plans to release a software update for five car radios designed to work with the iPhone. Alpine Electronics also is working on CarPlay-compatible radios for cars already on the road. Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Ferrari are among those expected to start selling car models with built-in CarPlay services this year.

Google Inc. is working with car makers to do something similar with smartphones running its Android operating system, but Apple Inc. appears to be further along in efforts to make it easier and safer to text, e-mail, get directions, select music and, yes, even make calls while driving.

I recently checked out a test version of CarPlay in a van equipped with a Pioneer radio designed to work with the iPhone.

The demonstration through the streets of San Francisco convinced me that Apple is on the right track. The CarPlay system is bound to appeal to iPhone fans who spend a lot of time behind the wheel. 

It makes less sense for iPhone owners who, like me, spend more of their time walking and riding public transportation instead of driving.

If you want CarPlay, you will need an iPhone 5, 5s or 5c. An iPad won’t work. The phones also must be running Apple’s latest software, iOS 7.1. Free upgrades are available for older phones.
If you already have one of Pioneer’s five compatible radios, a free firmware update is all you’ll need.

Otherwise, CarPlay’s biggest drawback is the cost. If you want it in a car you already own, compatible radios from Pioneer sell for $700 to $1,400. After factoring in other required parts and labour, figure on spending $900 to $1,000 just to get Pioneer’s least-expensive CarPlay system in your vehicle. That’s more than the price of a new iPhone, but cheaper than buying a new car with CarPlay built in.

Pioneer’s top-of-the-line CarPlay radio features a 7-inch (17.78cm) screen that shows the iPhone apps for calls, contacts, music, maps and messaging when the device is plugged in with a cable.

Other mobile music apps, including Spotify, Beats Music and iHeartRadio, are supposed to be eventually available on CarPlay, too. 

Facebook, YouTube and other apps that show a lot of photos and video won’t be available for safety and legal reasons.

The key to CarPlay’s success may hinge on Siri, the iPhone’s digital personal assistant. Apple has been striving to make Siri smarter and more versatile, an endeavour that CarPlay figures to put to the test.

Siri serves as CarPlay’s central nervous system, doing everything from taking e-mail dictation, reading incoming text messages out load, and scrolling through the system for song requests or different genres of music. Summoning Siri can be done by touching a button on the steering wheel or CarPlay’s display screen.

While CarPlay also responds to touch, the system is at its best when Siri is doing most of the work. I got only a half-hour demo of CarPlay, too little time to determine whether Siri will be up to the job.

Within minutes of getting in the car, Siri couldn’t retrieve the correct address for a requested restaurant in San Francisco. Instead, CarPlay listed several other places with the same name, so Siri apparently at least heard the request correctly.

The omission of the requested restaurant may have reflected shortcomings in Apple’s database of local businesses.

PARIS – They fit in a pocket, have batteries that last all week and are almost indestructible: Old-school Nokias, Ericssons and Motorolas are making a comeback as consumers tired of fragile and overly wired smartphones go retro.

Forget apps, video calls and smiley faces, handsets like the Nokia 3310 or the Motorola StarTec 130 allows just basic text messaging and phone calls.

But demand for them is growing and some of these second-hand models are fetching prices as high as 1,000 euros a piece.

“Some people don’t blink at the prices, we have models at more than 1,000 euros. The high prices are due to the difficulty in finding those models, which were limited editions in their time,” said Djassem Haddad, who started the site vintagemobile.fr in 2009.

Haddad had been eyeing a niche market, but since last year, sales have taken off, he said.

Over the past two to three years, he has sold some 10,000 handsets, “with a real acceleration from the beginning of 2013”.

“The ageing population is looking for simpler phones, while other consumers want a second cheap phone,” he said.

Among the top-sellers on the website is the Nokia 8210, with a tiny monochrome screen and plastic buttons, at 59.99 euros.

Ironically, the trend is just starting as the telecommunications industry consigns such handsets to the recycling bins, hailing smartphones as the way ahead.

Finnish giant Nokia, which was undisputedly the biggest mobile phone company before the advent of Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy, offloaded its handset division to Microsoft this year after failing to catch the smartphone wave.

But it was probably also the supposedly irreversible switch towards smartphone that has given the old school phone an unexpected boost.

‘Back to basics’

For Damien Douani, an expert on new technologies at FaDa agency, it is simply trendy now to be using the retro phone.

There is “a great sensation of finding an object that we knew during another era — a little like paying for vintage sneakers that we couldn’t afford when we were teenagers”, Douani told AFP.

There is also “a logic of counter-culture in reaction to the over-connectedness of today’s society, with disconnection being the current trend”.

“That includes the need to return to what is essential and a basic telephone that is used only for making phone calls and sending SMSs,” he added.

It is also about “being different. Today, everyone has a smartphone that looks just like another, while ten years ago, brands were much more creative”.

It is a mostly high-end clientele that is shopping at French online shop Lekki, which sells “a range of vintage, revamped mobile phones”.

“Too many online social networks and an excess of e-mail and applications, have made us slaves to technology in our everyday life.

But Lekki provides a solution, allowing a return to basic features and entertainments,” it said on its website.

A Motorola StarTac 130 — a model launched in 1998 — and repainted bright orange was recently offered for 180 euros, while an Ericsson A2628 with gold coloured keys for 80 euros.

“We have two types of profiles: the 25 to 35 year-olds attracted by the retro and offbeat side of a telephone that is a little different, and those who are nostalgic for the phone that they used when they were younger,” said Maxime Chanson, who founded Lekki in 2010.

“Some use it to complement their smartphone, but others are going for the vintage, tired of the technology race between the phone makers.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Google next month will start cranking out prototypes of a 3-D tablet designed to give users immersive experiences that could include virtual reality, according to US media reports.

The tablet will have a 7-inch (17.78cm) display and an array of sophisticated cameras, sensors and software, the Wall Street Journal said in a story citing unnamed sources.

Google on Friday said they had nothing to announce.
The tablet was reported to be part of a Project Tango worked on by a special team at the California-based technology firm.

The project was said to involve giving advanced mapping and virtual reality capabilities to mobile devices powered by Google’s free Android software.

Nearly 42 per cent of people in the United States used tablets at least once a month last year and that figure was expected to top 46 per cent this year, according to industry tracker eMarketer. 

Last week US global market research agency Millward Brown said that search engine Google has overtaken rival technology titan Apple as the world’s top brand in terms of value. 

Google’s brand value shot up 40 per cent in a year to $158.84 billion (115 billion euros), Millward Brown said in its 2014 100 Top BrandZ report.

“Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships,” said Benoit Tranzer, the head of Millward Brown France.

Google Glass is Internet-linked eyewear for which the firm has joined hands with Luxottica, a frame giant behind Ray-Ban and other high-end brands, to sell the new product in the United States.

NEW YORK – Wastewater from cities and hospitals releases some antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the environment, according to a new French study. 

And although wastewater treatment plants cut the number of bacteria overall, the treatment process boosts the proportion of bacteria resistant to some antibiotics, the research found.

The study focused on E. coli, a type of bacteria that commonly inhabits the intestines of many healthy animals, including humans, although certain strains can cause food poisoning. 

Drug resistance among many types of bacteria, including E. coli, is a growing problem. Previously unaffected bacteria can pick up resistance genes from other bacteria that carry them, and resistance can also spread through food crops irrigated with affected water. 

“These multi-drug resistant bacteria are now the most frequently isolated ones in French hospitals, and in many countries,” said Xavier Bertrand, an author of the study and a microbiologist at Universite de Franche-Comte in Besancon, France.

Because E. coli commonly lives in the human digestive tract, the organism finds its way into wastewater, for example, when waste is flushed down the toilet. 

“The extent to which the discharge of (antibiotic-resistant E. coli) into the environment contributes to its global spread remains uncertain,” Bertrand wrote in an e-mail to Reuters Health. 

For the study, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Bertrand and his team collected and analysed samples from 11 sites in the Besancon wastewater network. Two of the sites contained wastewater from university hospitals. Some of the other wastewater came from the city, while a fraction was from rainwater. No water in the study had been used in livestock farming. The samples were collected each week for 10 weeks. 

The researchers found that all samples contained E. coli, and 96 per cent contained antibiotic-resistant strains. The average number of individual E. coli bacteria found in the city wastewater was more than twice that in the hospital wastewater. 

After wastewater had been treated to make it suitable for release back into the environment, the number of antibiotic-resistant E. coli dropped by 94 per cent. But the proportion of resistant bacteria doubled during treatment: initially, 0.3 per cent of E. coli carried a gene for resistance, whereas 0.6 per cent did after treatment.

Although some towns, such as Wichita Falls, Texas, have turned to recycling wastewater due to an ongoing drought, experts said the new results likely don’t mean much for people drinking water from American faucets. 

That’s because water in the US undergoes myriad processes with the aim of eliminating bacteria and other contaminants. Furthermore, the US has stringent limits for bacteria in treated wastewater, said John Scott Meschke, a microbiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“We have a very good multi-barrier approach (to water purification and disinfection) in the US,” Meschke told Reuters Health. 

Each wastewater treatment plant must meet specific standards, including for the number of bacteria and the amount of oxygen the water contains. Water cannot contain any E. coli in order to qualify as drinkable. 

Still, the importance of wastewater as a source of antibiotic resistance remains to be seen.

“The immediate concern is the risk of bacteria carrying these genes within recreational water, such as lakes and rivers,” not drinking water, Meschke said.

Infections in humans caused by resistant bacteria are more difficult and complicated to treat than infections caused by non-resistant bacteria. 

The US drinking water supply, Meschke said, is disinfected, so bacteria in tap water “is not something to worry about”.

Some tools are like weapons: You can’t let inexperienced people handle them. Yet, they can be very useful.

Synchronising data is often seen as a panacea. This is at least how those who design software applications present it. They want you to make use of the automatic synchronisation feature for your contacts list, your files, between various devices, smartphones and computers, between data you store in the cloud and data you keep on your local hard disk or smartphone.

Per se, it is a great thing, definitely, that is when it is well understood and under control, especially when the cloud is the go-between. The simplest case would be the following: Your files are stored in the cloud (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive). You are also running two laptop computers, one at home and one at your workplace. Whenever you add or change a file in one of the three locations, synchronisation takes care of updating the same file in the other two locations. This is great for it lets you see the same file from any of the many locations while at the same time providing a security backup set, since all files are available in three copies.

Why is the concept less than perfect? Why should you be careful?

The process relies on the availability of the web and on the speed of your connection. If, after having changed a file at home, you go to the office, turn on your computer and try to open and work on this very file without waiting for the update to be done, you’d simply be working on an older version without even knowing it! Worse — once done working on this old, “wrong” version, the synchronisation process will overwrite the very first one you worked on at home, thus wasting some of your data for good and forever. The truth is that synchronisation doesn’t always work as you expect it, though in theory it should.

Google, especially gmail, Samsung and countless networks propose to synchronise all your data — mainly your contacts list (guess why) — across networks and computers, telling you it’s a great way to have it backed up and available everywhere. In reality, and unless you know exactly what you’re doing and give time to the networks to refresh the files, you may end up with either redundant information, or worse, with data loss.

I’m living happily with one of the cloud’s drive services. This is only because I developed some good working habits after having first experienced the pain of seeing old versions of my files overwrite and destroy new versions. The primary precaution I now always exert consists, whenever I turn on a computer, to wait till synchronisation with my data in the cloud is done on this very computer. This sounds plain and simple but it is not always the case, for there isn’t necessarily an apparent indication on your screen that the operation has been done or was successful.

This is particularly true if your Internet connection is down. You may start your computer, launch an application and a document to work on, without first noticing that you have no Internet at all and that you are actually working on the non-updated version of the document, that is the one previously stored on your local hard disk.

But again, data and files synchronisation across the cloud is a fantastic tool when handled properly and with care. In many cases it has saved the life of those who lost all the information on their smartphone because of an incident and were able toretrieve it all afterwards precisely because it had been synchronised (i.e. copied, backed up) in the cloud before the incident.

Moreover, if your data is synchronised between more than two devices and you happen to experience file loss on two of them because of a synchronisation error or mishap, you can always go to the third device for example, start it offline (i.e. with Internet off), and retrieve the lost file(s) from there before it has the chance to connect to the Internet and do the synchronisation you donít want to do. Et voilà. 

Data synchronisation? Yes, by all means. But do it right and carefully.

NEW YORK – Babies of overweight and obese mothers are more likely to have oxygen-deprivation problems at birth, according to a new study.

The heavier a woman is, the greater the risks to her newborn, researchers found.

Maternal obesity is associated with a number of complications during pregnancy and delivery, but the underlying mechanism is not fully understood, said Dr Marie Blomberg of Linkoping University in Sweden. She was not involved in the new study.

To learn more, researchers analysed data from a medical register of all live singleton, term births between 1992 and 2010 in Sweden, which included more than 1.7 million babies. 

The register had information on women’s height and weight early in pregnancy, as well as babies’ medical problems and so-called Apgar scores.

The Apgar score assesses vitality using measures of heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, skin colour and activity on a scale from zero to 10. There can be many reasons for a low Apgar score, but the most common reason is lack of oxygen, lead author Dr Martina Persson told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Persson worked on the study at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

Less than one in 1,000 babies had an Apgar score between zero and 3 at five minutes after birth, and even fewer had that low a score at 10 minutes after birth.

Compared to babies of normal-weight mothers, babies with overweight mothers were 32 per cent more likely to have an Apgar score that low at 10 minutes.

Babies of obese mothers were 57 per cent more likely to have a low Apgar score, and those of severely obese mothers were 80 per cent more likely.

A newborn’s risk of seizures also increased with maternal weight. For instance, babies of severely obese mothers were twice as likely to have a seizure as those of mothers with a healthy weight. 

The increased risks were similar for meconium aspiration, which happens when the baby releases stool in the womb and inhales the stool-tainted amniotic fluid.

“Meconium release is a sign of foetal stress,” Persson said. “Meconium aspiration may give severe breathing problems in the newborn and is associated with birth asphyxia and low Apgar scores.”

“Meconium aspiration and seizures could be serious in the immediate newborn period although still the majority of these children will be healthy,” Blomberg told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Researchers don’t know why these risks, which all relate to lack of oxygen, go up for babies of overweight and obese women, Persson said.

Obesity in pregnant women has been associated with metabolic changes and inflammation, which could affect the placenta and foetal environment in a way that leads to low oxygen levels and more foetal growth, she noted. 

Also, larger babies, often born to larger mothers, may be more likely to experience trauma during delivery, which could result in lack of oxygen, she said.

“One must bear in mind that even though these conditions are potentially very dangerous for the baby, the absolute risks for the studied outcomes are low,” Persson said.

Even with the most obese mothers, the risk of infants having a low Apgar score at five minutes was still only 0.24 per cent, or less than three babies out of every 1,000.

In addition to encouraging prospective mothers to strive for a healthy weight, doctors can closely monitor babies during labour and delivery, which likely reduces the risk of lack of oxygen at birth, she said.

“Enjoy your pregnancy!” Persson said. “Try to eat healthy and be physically active. Seek support from your midwife in order to change bad eating habits and try not to gain too much weight during pregnancy.”

PARIS – US search engine Google has overtaken rival technology titan Apple as the world’s top brand in terms of value, global market research agency Millward Brown said Wednesday.

Google’s brand value shot up 40 per cent in a year to $158.84 billion (115 billion euros), Millward Brown said in its 2014 100 Top BrandZ report.

“Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships,” said Benoit Tranzer, the head of Millward Brown France.

Google Glass is Internet-linked eyewear for which the firm has joined hands with Luxottica, a frame giant behind Ray-Ban and other high-end brands, to sell the new product in the United States.

“All these activities send a very strong signal to consumers about the essence of Google,” Tranzer said.

Apple, which dominated the top position for three straight years, saw its brand value fall by 20 per cent to $147.88 billion.

The top 10 of the 100 slots were dominated by US firms. IBM was in third place at $107.54 billion, a fall of 4 per cent, followed by Microsoft at $90.19 billion — a 29 per cent rise.

Fast food chain McDonald’s ranked next at $85.71 billion, followed by Coca Cola ($80.68 billion), it said.

China led in the insurance sector with Ping An valued at $12.4 billion and China Life ($12 billion).

French luxury goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton ranked 30th overall but was the top luxury brand with a value of more than $25 billion.

Brand value is calculated on the basis of the firms’ financial performance and their standing among consumers.

NEW YORK – Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled a new Surface Pro tablet designed as a powerful all-purpose computer fit to replace a laptop.

Surface Pro 3 was touted as slimmer, bigger and more powerful than its predecessor and crafted for a world in which people want to work as well as play on tablets.

“We want products and technologies that enable people to dream and get stuff done,” Microsoft chief Satya Nadella said at a press event in New York.

Pro 3 has a high-resolution screen that is 12 inches (30.5 centimetres) measured diagonally, weighs approximately 28 ounces (800 grammes) and is slightly more than a third of an inch (0.9 centimetres) deep.

The tablet has the Surface trademark keyboard cover, but modified to let users tilt it as they wish and more securely anchor the device while being used, say, in a person’s lap.

It also comes with a “pen” that can be used to remotely activate Pro 3 with clicks or to write on it as though it were a notepad.

“We are super proud of Surface Pro 3,” Microsoft corporate vice president Panos Panay said while introducing the tablet at the event.

“I am sure that this is the tablet that can replace the laptop.”

 Available mid-year

Surface Pro 3 will be available for pre-order beginning Wednesday with a starting price of $799.

A version of Microsoft’s latest champion in the tablet war, powered by an Intel Core i5 chip, will hit the market in North American on June 20.

Additional models, including a top-end Pro 3 with an Intel Core i7 chip, will be available in the US and 26 other countries including France, China, Australia and Germany by the end of August, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft is being innovative and counterintuitive with the Pro 3, touting a large-screen tablet while rivals boast smaller, pocket-sized devices, according to Gartner analyst Mike Silver.

Much care and thought went into technical features of the Pro 3, and a challenge for Microsoft is to get that message to mainstream consumers who aren’t geeks.

“There is a lot of elegance in the device, but they have to prove they can communicate that,” Silver said at the unveiling event.

“If everything works as good as it looks, you are getting pretty close to a device that can replace a notebook computer for a high percentage of people.”

 Leave laptops behind 

Pro 3 has the potential to strike chords with people who want to leave their laptops behind and just carry a tablet when they are on the move, according to the analyst.

Panay cited research indicating that more than 95 per cent of laptop owners also have tablet computers. But Microsoft has barely made a dent in a tablet market dominated by Apple’s iPad and others using Google Android. Gartner surveyed showed the Microsoft operating system had just 2 per cent of the global market in 2013.

Nadella stressed that Microsoft, which built its software empire working with partners who make computing hardware, wants to pioneer a merging of laptops and tablets and not to compete with device manufacturers.

“We clearly are not interested in building refrigerators or toasters; we are not building hardware for hardware’s sake,” Nadella said.

“The motivation is to create new categories; we want to build productivity experiences.”

Microsoft in March released Office software tailored for iPads, and it soared to the top of the charts at Apple’s online App Store.

While Office applications for iPad are free, subscriptions to Microsoft’s online Office 365 service are needed to be able to create or edit documents, spreadsheets or presentations.

More than a billion people use Office, according to the Redmond, Washington-based technology titan.

The Pro 3 signals that Microsoft has decided to play into its strengths in business software and avoid going head-to-head with bargain-priced tablets powered by Google’s free Android software, according to analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates.

I’ve been mulling over a do, or not do choice, since morning today. You know, the, should I or should I not, types. I would describe it like a feeling I get when I’m at the crossroads, where one path is a-well travelled and weather beaten one, while the other is tantalisingly unknown. 

Let me tell you what I would have done a few years back. In my spirited youth I would have unhesitatingly trod the unfamiliar grounds, without even slowing my stride. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” idiom fitted me to a T. My inherent curiosity about everything and everybody coupled with an optimistic belief in the goodness of humanity held me in good stead. 

In innumerable instances, I had walked up to people in high offices and confronted them. In case a confrontation was necessary, that is. Similarly I spoke to common and ordinary people without a prepared script, and got startlingly candid responses from them. There were no fences that could deter me, nor any closed doors that punctured my enthusiasm. I pretty much did what my gut instinct guided me to do and was always rewarded with a myriad of rich experiences. 

But that was then. Motherhood and advancing maturity has brought on a certain uncertainty in me. Making snap decisions, which was a norm earlier, became increasingly difficult now. The moment I decided on one thing, especially for my child, the other option seemed better. I had begun to weigh the pros and cons, several times over. 

And so when the pain in my neck did not recede after swallowing several painkillers and applying layers upon layers of the infamous Tiger balm, I looked around for alternative treatment. The cervical collar seemed like a good option. It not only helped to keep the neck immobilised but also held the head up high. My stiff neck was destroying my posture and this could maybe improve it. Further, it could possibly add a few more inches to my diminutive frame which I was convinced, had reduced when I hung my head to one side. 

However, with the new indecisiveness that had kicked into me lately, I could not come to any sort of conclusion. I understood that it was silly to cling to vanity in such a situation but even with other things remaining the same, the mighty collar was just so aesthetically unpleasing. There was no way to hide it or even cleverly conceal it. All I needed was a leash attached to it and I would resemble a cranky and eccentric domesticated cat. At least I did not have whiskers, and that was the only saving grace. 

Maybe I should try it on, said the voice in my head. Before I could change my mind I jumped into the car and drove myself to the nearest pharmacy. For some reason the person behind the counter spoke to me in a clipped British accent. 

“Good weather, what?” he greeted me.

“Yes, fantastic,” I nodded.

“How can I help you dear lady?” he drawled.

“I have a stiff neck,” I complained.

“Better than a stiff upper-lip,” he said with deadpan expression. 

“Will the cervical collar give me relief?” I asked.

“Yes of course,” he nodded.

“But it will look like an eyesore,” I complained.

“You can always stitch pearls into it,” he suggested.

“Or diamonds?” I bluffed.

“Every woman’s best friend,” he twinkled.

“I wish,” I sighed, buying the collar.