Why I don't buy Fairtrade

I know I'm going to get a few rants from people for this post, but I don't really care. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the principles behind Fairtrade... but I can't help thinking that there is a HUGE flaw in the majority of the products that I've sampled - which is simply that they just taste like crap. I've no idea why someone would expect me to pay more money for lower quality products (in terms of taste that is). However, I do realise that taste is a very personal thing and so I'm willing to admit that perhaps I'm in the minority here.

The end result though is that I steer clear of most Fairtrade products now - I just can't be bothered with the hassle of throwing half of each product in the bin. Not to mention the cost and wastefulness that's incurred by doing so!

How old is my brain?

Last week I splashed out a little and bought myself a Nintendo DS Lite. As always, once I had made the decision to buy one, I was impatient to get my hands on it... and ended up going from shop to shop to try and find somewhere that had a non-pink version in stock. No such luck though - I ended up having to order from Amazon to get my iPod-inspired white DS Lite.

My first games on the DS are Super Mario Brothers and Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training (a.k.a. "How old is you brain?"). The Mario Bros game was bought because, as a poor and deprived young lad I never owned any of the early nintendo consoles and so had NEVER played any of the Mario Brother's games. Time to rectify that me thinks!

The Brain Training game was bought in error. I meant to get Brain Academy - but being the stubborn git I am (and also because I'm lazy), I've decided to keep the Brain Training game rather than take it back and admit my error. So now I'm training my brain - with the aim of getting the 'perfect' brain age of 20. I'm not too sure on it's accuracy though....

I've been using it for four days in a row now. On day 1, I got a brain age of 42. Oh dear. I didn't check my age on day 2 - but did do the exercises. On day 3 my brain age was 27 - so only a year or so out! Today, my brain age is 20. Does that mean I now have the perfect brain? Or does it mean that I've sussed out the training exercises to the point that I can get a good score most of the time? I'm not too sure... I'll stick with it for a while - if only for the soduko games...

Oh - and if anyone is thinking of buying this brain trainer - one thing I would say is that the damn game CONSTANTLY tries to advertise whenever you use the 'quick' options as opposed to the daily training. I'm not sure why - obviously I've already bought it!