Foreign Perspectives

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One of the ironies of the explosion of the various money making schemes available on the Internet in recent years is that it’s come at a time when it’s become virtually impossible to get the ideal type of bank account for these activities namely an American one.

However, recently there’s been a slow but growing number of alternative banks starting to fill in the gaps that the 9/11 security crackdown forced normal American banks to create. Thus far these have been quite limited in capability but that’s starting to change.

For example, Gem writes about one upcoming innovation from Payoneer which is basically creating a virtual bank account linked to the prepaid debit card that they issue on behalf of a number of organisations. It’s currently in the “coming soon” category but will permit you to quote a real bank account number to the likes of paypal thereby making it possible to convert your virtual money into the real kind by way of their debit card.

I suspect that there’ll be more such innovations coming over the next year as already paypal themselves are rolling out a similar, albeit more limited, scheme in some countries.

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It seems like aeons ago when we were all routinely pampered with blankets, pillows, endless food & drink, socks, little “do not disturb” signs, toothbrushes, combs and even flight bags. Actually, you needed the flight bag to carry off all the goodies that you were given in those days. That was in economy too… in first class you’d have needed porters to take everything with you!

Everything is different now of course in the age of the discount airline. The food & drink only turns up if you pay for it, the flight bag has long since been consigned to history and they’ve even cut into the basics such as blankets and pillows which often aren’t even adequately stocked on planes never mind being at least the little bit overstocked as they were yesteryear.

Funnily enough it’s actually the summer season when travelers end up feeling cold or even freezing. That’s the season when everyone’s heading off to the beaches and leaving home when it’s fairly warm too so they’re traveling in their summer attire of t-shirts, shorts, skirts and light clothing generally.

What do you do about it though? Well, you could cart on a blanket and pillow but, frankly, you’d look like a complete plonker doing so and besides you’ve got to factor the weight into your greatly reduced luggage allowance. It’s also two carryon items which may not be allowed but anyway, do you really want to juggle two more things on your vacation? However, finally a company has sat down and thought this one through and come up with the Cabin Cuddler which gives you the advantages of the best of the sleeping bag type cum blanket things and pillow that you used to get and all in a sensible sized little bag that you can carry on easily.

Except that it’s better because you can use it at the gate which is where we seem to be stuck longer and longer each year. I’d have killed for one of these that time I was stuck in Athens at some totally ridiculous time of the morning not so long ago which taught me that even in the height of summer, airports in the hottest of countries are seriously cold early in the morning.

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One of the interesting effects of the perceived downhill slide of the schooling system in America is that there has been a massive upsurgence in interest in home schooling which hasn’t, yet, been reflected in the UK.

That’s meant that there has been a growth in the support network available to anyone contemplating home schooling and the range of sites offering handholding and practical assistance is surprisingly large as a glance at the learning at home site will quickly show. Pick any one of the resources that are listed and you’ll find a surprising depth to them. Home schooling isn’t the unplanned activity that perhaps you might expect and complete curricula are available with weekly schedules of activities for you to follow.

I suspect that if more people knew that such programmes were available then it would be a much more widely taken up activity generally. I for one wouldn’t really have contemplated it on the basis that I would have felt sure that I’d just have dithered about and ended the year with nothing done yet with a weekly programme such as some of these sites provide, you have the necessary markers to ensure that you keep more or less on track.

What seems less common in America is the continuation of that home schooling into home university. That’s where we have the advantage in the form of the Open University which had perhaps the ultimate triumph of home schooling in its prospectus for 2007: a young girl who’d just completed her degree at 17, a time when most people would have another year to go before even starting a degree. Now that really says something about home schooling!

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