One of my favourite comic books is Asterix in Switzerland, in which all the Swiss characters have neat ginger moustaches and wander about with cleaning implements, dusting off everything including the people they're talking to.

Switzerland remixed

Business Standard

For celebrated culinary adventurer Anthony Bourdain, food is the fastest and easiest way into a new, unfamiliar place and culture.

'I don`t know what strange means'

&nbsp;As a slowdown looms, Indians remain optimistic, albeit cautiously so. 
&nbsp;It's the best of times, it's the worst of times.

Hope in the time of recession

&nbsp;Consumer confidence is at its lowest both in India and the world. 
&nbsp;Harry S Truman, the 33rd President of the United States, once said it was a recession when your neighbour lost his job, a depression when you lost yours.

Confidence under fire

Forty-six per cent of global consumers put their spare cash in savings, up 4 percentage points in the last six months.

A time to save

&nbsp;Sixty-nine per cent of Indians cite inflation as their biggest concern. For the Chinese, too, it's the biggest worry.

Cost concerns

The total value of the wallets market in urban India for youth is estimated at Rs 555 crore a year.

KIT: The market for leather look-alike wallets*

    This company was the first to experiment with a female model as a brand ambassador for its campaign in an Islamic nation. &quot;The Jazz Girl&quot; concept which it introduced became something of a trend for other brands to follow. Name the company and the product.

The Strategist Quiz #052

When Gmail first debuted, the most coveted thing you could have was a Gmail invite.

The exclusives

Alex Davis's home is a designer space, but not in the glossy, frozen kind of way that most people expect of good design.

Beautiful living, by design

Back from a successful solo show in Rome, Nikhil Bhandari is raring to take on Indian art lovers with his abstract prints.

Beyond photography

He may have been born into a filmi family with Aamir Khan for an uncle, but debutant actor Imran Khan is incredibly grounded.

`I am not quite hero material`

Will BMW's Gina concept force designers to re-think the way cars are designed? 
Car manufacturers are crying.

Back to school

I plan to buy a small car (comfortable for four people, and sometimes even five) and am looking at the Hyundai Getz Prime 1.5 D/1.3 petrol and the Chevrolet U-VA.

Space odyssey

&nbsp;Indian classrooms are now opening up to the world. 
&nbsp;When Jessica Pealchen, a class eight student at Lotus Valley International School in Noida, returns after her summer break next week, she will be telling teachers and classmates of a holiday spent differently from Indian schoolchildren.

Gurukul

Mass media confessionals like Oprah are so wildly successful not only because you get to listen to thrilling stories about how someone was made to have sex with the family python and flog their kidneys on EBay to fund the smack habit of their domestic jailers, but because you suddenly discover that your own childhood of being made to have sex with the family python and flog your kidneys on EBay to fund the smack habit of your domestic jailers, wasn't so singularly freakish.

A million little pieces

Apurva Purohit grew up with radio and the CEO of Radio City notes with satisfaction, says Abhilasha Ojha, that radio has not lost its relevance yet.

Tuned in to the waves

&nbsp;Indian home-owners are increasingly looking to jazz up plain walls. Aabhas Sharma scouts the market for interesting options.

Fill in the blanks... on the  walls

&nbsp;The agony of investors is likely to continue well into the middle of July. It is not certain how the monsoon precipitation will fare this month, but we are likely to see a dearth of buyers in the markets.

More pain in store for equities

The Uighurs are China's Turkic Muslims in a volatile region where unrest sits on a keg of cultural alienation.

In China`s wild, wild west

Those of you who've seen Al Gore's film would have understood the devastating impact global warming is likely to have on our environment.

An inconvenient truth

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