Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member

Members

Mahdiya Patel
20/F/Johannesburg    The teenager that grew up too fast . أنا أحبك ~
Priya Patel
Texas    I am a simple, loving, caring person. Poetry has always been a part of my past... tucked away in some far away recess. I'm ready …
Cochin    Just about started writing. Like most things in my life...this has come late for me... In love with Devi, The Woman. Mostly its our love …

Poems

Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
Priti Patel's quote on EU migration - whatever it was...
list of common surnames: cropper, cross, crouch,
dabney, dalton, daniels, eads, easton, eccleston,
fairclough, farnham, fay, gardner, garey, garfield,
haight, hanes, hailey, ibbott, irvin, isaacson,
jack, jackson, jacobs, kay, keen, kelsey,
lacey, lacy, lamar, macey, mann, marchand,
neal, nelson, neville... sure pati japati patel -
i'll be an albino in Gujarat
if your play the sitar in a sari;
but your name sounds a bit migrant
revealing, what a weird 'back of the bus'
you seem to stand on -
you want the Mongolians resurrected?
i swear we were being ousted in line
of what Queen Sheba said to Solomon:
'olive skinned throughout the geography
and the unwelcome green men on
sponged-knickers creaming for an ******
a french dessert...'
yes pretty prior, you found home on a
continent when half of the european nations
didn't practice colonial antics -
i guess it's easier to pick on them.
but with a Patel surname you sound british
already, the great experiment worked
the anaesthetic of former colonialism
numbed via recreational Ketamine use
really numbed the skull and jaw mandibles -
i hate, i hate being conscripted into
post-colonial affairs of "why it all failed"
what a waste of the urban hubs of
Manchester or Liverpool -
where once artistic expression thrived -
i hate these post-colonial societies,
it's as if they were castrated en masse,
and they're wondering why no one has a permanent
suntan in scandinavia - maybe the raw herring diet -
cinnamon up your ***, magician's trick with
space between fudge of digestion, disappearing trick
but then the cough that blinds you sweetly -
i guess post-colonial nationalism wanted to
listen to non-colonial nationalism -
a former migrant like pretty plated smell
olive skinned exploited inversion of angers
but dunked a footstep into a trip-up
with non-colonial nations -
a bit like the greek bail-out - pretty patel
is a name least likely associated with migration;
you teasing the beast out?
judy smith Jul 2016
The 9.6 million followers who tune in to watch Miranda Kerr having her hair done on Instagram — for this is how models spend most of their time — were treated to a rather more interesting sight last Thursday: a black and white photograph of a whacking great diamond ring.

Across it was the caption “Marry me!” and a twee animation of the tech mogul Evan Spiegel on bended knee. Underneath Kerr had typed “I said yes!!!” and an explosion of heart emojis.

A spokesman for Spiegel, founder of the Snapchat mobile app, who is 26 to Kerr’s 33 and worth $US 2.1 billion to her $US 42.5 million , revealed “they are very happy”.

At first, the marriage seems an unlikely combination: a man so bright he founded Snapchat while still at Stanford University, becoming one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires by 22, and a Victoria’s Secret model who was previously married to the Pirates of the Caribbean star Orlando Bloom (she allegedly had a fling with pop brat Justin Bieber, leading Bloom to punch Beebs in a posh Ibiza restaurant).

Perhaps the union indicates that there is more to Kerr than we thought. More likely, it reveals something about Spiegel — and the way the social status of “geeks” has changed.

Since Steve Jobs made computers cool and Millennials started living online, nerds are king. Even coding is **** enough for the model Karlie Kloss, singer will.i.am and actor Ashton Kutcher to learn it. Silicon Valley has become the new Hollywood, as moguls and social media barons take over from film stars and sportsmen not just on rich lists, but as alpha men.

Being a co-founder of a company is this decade’s equivalent to being a rock star or a chef. And, if their attractiveness to models and actresses proves anything, then being a Twag — tech wife or girlfriend — is a “thing”. Sources tell me Twags are also known as “founder-hounders” because they like to date the creators of start-up companies.

Actress Talulah Riley was an early adopter. She started dating the PayPal founder Elon Musk in 2008. Riley, then fresh from starring in the St Trinian’s film, met Musk in London’s Whisky Mist nightclub after he had delivered a lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society. I interviewed her shortly afterwards and she told me they had spent the evening talking about “quantum physics”. A month later they were engaged. Their on-again-off-again marriage lasted six years before she filed for divorce again in March. Currently Musk, worth an estimated $US 12.7 billion and focused on Tesla cars, is said to be “spending a lot of time” with Johnny Depp’s estranged wife, Amber Heard.

Model Lily Cole dated the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2013. Later she had a son with Kwame Ferreira, founder of the digital innovation agency Kwamecorp. Actress Emma Watson is going out with William Knight, an “adventurer” who has an incredibly boringly sounding job as a senior manager at Medallia, a software company. Allison Williams, Marnie in the HBO television show Girls, is married to Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of College Humor website.

Could it be that these women are onto something? Dating a bro certainly has its appeal. They are innovative: how else would they invent apps that deliver cheese toasties or match singles based on their haircuts? They are risk-takers who must be charismatic enough to inspire investors and attract crowd-funding. They may not be gym-fit, but they are mathletes who can do your tax bill. They are animal lovers: every start-up is dog friendly. And they are fun: who would not want to date somebody with a ball pool in their office?

There is a saying about dating in Silicon Valley: the odds are good but the goods are odd. Nerds are notorious for peculiar chat-up lines and normcore clothes. Still, if geeks can be awkward, that is part of their charm. Keira Knightley, complaining that Silicon Valley was all men in hoodies and Crocs, described how one gave her his card, saying she should get in touch if she wanted to see a spaceship.

One Vogue writer recalled a Silicon Valley man messaging her via a dating app, in which he noted: “In 50 per cent of your photos you’re holding an iPhone. It may interest you to find out that I invented the iPhone. More accurately I was an engineer on the original iPhone . . .”

Most promisingly, some guys are astoundingly rich. It is suggested Kerr’s engagement ring is a 2.5-carat diamond worth around dollars 55,000. She has already moved into Spiegel’s dollars 12m LA pad. Between his money and her Victoria’s Secrets bridesmaids, no wonder sources claim they are planning an “extravagant wedding”.

It might rival even the Napster founder Sean Parker’s $US10m performance-art bash. He married songwriter Alexandra Lenas in a canopy among Big Sur’s redwoods decorated to look like an enchanted forest. Some 350 guests wore Tolkienesque costumes created by The Lord of the Rings costume designer Ngila Dickson. They sat on white fur rugs and were given bunnies to pet. Presumably rabbit babysitters were on hand when the disco started.

If such fantasies inspire you to become a Twag, the great news is you do not have to be a supermodel to be in with a chance. Such is the dearth of single women in Silicon Valley that one dating site, Dating Ring, crowdfunded a plane to fly single women to Palo Alto from New York.

Be warned, though: guys are single because they are married to the job.

No wonder most meet their partners at college or work — the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg met his wife, Priscilla Chan, at Harvard.

The Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom met girlfriend Nicole Schuetz at Stanford. Melinda met Bill Gates when, in 1987, they sat next to each other at an Expo trade-fair dinner. “He was funnier than I expected him to be,” she said.

Kerr began dating Spiegel in 2014 after meeting him at a Louis Vuitton dinner in New York. You can bet he was networking. Shortly after Louis Vuitton showcased their cruise collection in a Snapchat story. Last season Snapchat went on to become the biggest new name at NY fashion week.

If you want to meet tech guys, you might catch them at Silicon Valley parties, which is how the Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick met his partner, Gabi Holzwarth, a violinist hired to play. Or they might be schmoozing clients downtown in a swanky Noe Valley club in San Francisco or a boring Union Square hotel in New York. In London you find them around Old Street, aka Silicon Roundabout, in bars, at hackathons, or start-up meet-ups. In the day they are coding at Google Campus or practising their pitching in a co-working space.

Some tech boys date the old-fashioned way: on Tinder. Airbnb founder Brian Chesky met his girlfriend of three years, Elissa Patel, through the app. When I interviewed Instagram co-founder Systrom he admitted that when he had been single he had signed up.

Dating agency Linx — presumably a play on operating system Linux — is dedicated to making Silicon Valley matches. Amy Andersen set it up in 2003 after moving to Palo Alto and being “flabbergasted” by the number of eligible men. She claims her clients are “extremely dynamic and successful individuals’’: tech founders, tech chief executives, financier founding partners of large institutions and “tons of entrepreneurs”.

Andersen says tech guys make “fabulous partners”. Romantic and chivalrous, they write love letters, plan dates, “even proposing on Snapchat!” If you want to marry a tech billionaire, she says, “you need to bring your A game.” Her clients look “for women who are equally, if not more, dynamic and interesting than he is!”

There are drawbacks to dating tech guys. Before Google buys your amore’s business, he will be living on *** Noodles waiting for the next round of funding — and workaholics are dull.

Kerr says Spiegel is “25, but he acts like he’s 50. He’s not out partying. He goes to work in Venice [Beach], he comes home. We don’t go out. We’d rather be at home and have dinner, go to bed early.” Which might suit Kerr, but is not my idea of a fun.

You had also better be prepared to share your life. When Priscilla Chan miscarried three times, Mark Zuckerberg wrote about it on Facebook, while Chesky used a romantic trip with his girlfriend to promote Airbnb - uploading a picture of her in bed, with a note saying “f* hotels”. Besides all of which is the notorious issue of Silicon Valley sexism.

It has a chief exec-bro culture that puts pick-up artist/comedian Dapper Laughs to shame. Ninety per cent of women working in the Valley say they have witnessed sexist behaviour, 60 per cent have experienced unwanted ****** advances at work, two thirds of them from their boss. Whitney Wolfe, a co-founder of Tinder, took Justin Mateen to court for ****** harassment. Her lawsuit against the company alleged that Mateen, her former partner, sent text messages calling her a “*****”.

Spiegel has tech bro form. He apologised after emails from his days at Stanford emerged: missives about stripper poles, getting black-out drunk, shooting lasers at “fat chicks”, and promising to “roll a blunt for whoever sees the most **** tonight (Sunday)”. After one fraternity Hawaiian luau party, he signed off emails “f*
bitchesgetleid”.

No wonder some women are not inspired to become Twags. Especially when you could be a tech billionaire yourself. Would you not rather be Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, than married to the boss?Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
raïsa patel (cbc journalist),
lindsay shepherd and
some self-deprecating humour,
   from some random ******,
as requested...

there's only one
to go place to counter...
grzegorz brzęczyszykiewicz

https://tinyurl.com/jop9ofr (youtube
video, from the film:
   how i started the second world war,
cult classic)...

so here you have...
a clash of orthographies...
we'll leave english
out of it, since...
    it doesn't have an orthography...
you can't exactly call
       i over ι
                    or j over ȷ
         orthography...

it's good to know that i've come
across this video...
  lindsay, as always: looking
in full bloom...

   an article... over...        ï ?
       r'ah-e-s'ah?
  i can give you the phonetic
    transcript if you want...
zuname?
     patel...
       oh... from the geographic
region where H is a surd,
but is included in the spelling?
e.g.?
     ghee: clarified butter...
oh don't worry,
we'll get to the tongue-twisting
phonetic revision...

  it's not "that hard" after all,
some of the syllables exist in english
already...

grzegorz brzęczyszykiewicz

(cracks his fingers)
right:
    g'je-
  ****... the english sometimes
treat G like a surd...
    to get a (g)nome for
one's garden...
  or in cocker's two-bit:
   'arden... namely to ha-harden.

lucky me, being the dumb ******
in these parts...
i've moved beyond
being "offended" by
someone not pronounciating
something correctly...
  i just don't expect it...
      i just giggle...
   and think about what else
i can find, as being, unusual
in this, particular of all
the tongues in history.

   rz is a grapheme -
very much akin to the french:
   je suis!

     i'm not even going to bother
with
                          ę

nope, not going to bother...

cz is akin to the english grapheme
  ch-...
  where there's a Z
   you'd short-circuit and think
of H (except in the case of rz)...

   the same goes for
   sz, which is akin to sh-...

which brings us to the second
tier of orthography concerning
the grapheme     rz...
       ż...
                it's synonymous:
phonetically... but not in meaning...

rzecz: je-eh-ch: thing...
                 (th- is a grapheme,
  off: -eta, one of the greek eF so'unds)

see... we're having such
a fun time in english...
no clear orthography given
no diacritical markers...
a simple playground to
prance around...

    żubr: european bison...
the animal only exists in poland...
and, yeah...
poland is also famous
for the fact that...
the storks (bocian)
   chose poland for the summer...
god knows where
they migrate for the winter...

i could have written
out the full anatomy of the mouth...
notably the question of
   y: which is not why
where i'm from...
                                technically...
you would learn
the sound         ý...
i wrote acute, but it's more:
hollowed out...

   hell... if we're going to be pedantic
about just three graphemes,
i.e.
     raïsa...
     so... r'ah-e-s'ah
      and not:      rye-s'ah?
oh god, so much fun...
        with only a few diacritical
markers...
   i can play phonetic games
with... whenever starts
to be pedantic, over so little
that's in their possession.