Max the Dragon
I've just made a $25 loan to an Azerbaijani cafe owner through Kiva.com
Kiva.com is a site that organises small loans for businesspeople in countries where there aren't many banks. Tural Hasanli owns a coffee shop, so I'm pretty sure that he's going to be able to pay back the money. And the whole reason he needs the loan is to renovate his coffee shop.
The loan is quite small, but with enough small loans he'll have enough money to renovate his shop, pay us back, and make more money. In his photo there isn't a single customer there, but I'm sure it's just that they're all too shy and have gotten out of the frame.
So I hope that anyone with a spare $25 or more laying around ($25 is the minimum loan) thinks of people like Tural Hasanli from Azerbaijan who could probably put it to good use.
Looking through the list of people looking for loans I felt a little bit like one of the people in Dragon's Den! Hence the title of this post. I hope that Dragon's Den isn't too obscure a TV show that no one has heard of it.
A Bad Week
This hasn't been a good week for me with regard to sport.
I watched my teams (New South Wales, the Australian soccer and rugby union teams, and the Canterbury Bulldogs) get beaten (sometimes badly, sometimes in close games), or wronged (in the case of Harry Kewell's cruel red card in the Socceroos' game against Ghana).
NSW were cruelly put to the sword by Queensland, and the Bulldogs lost by only a point against in rugby league.
Australia lost by the same margin in rugby union.
In soccer we were beaten badly by Germany and although we didn't lose against Ghana the red card against our star player Harry meant that no one was celebrating.
It's been a bad week to be playing in a team that I've supported.
Honey Pie
I haven't made a video in AGES! Well, an English student of mine made on a while back and I've been meaning to follow his example for a while. I finally managed one tonight. Hope you like it.