Is this clever? Ingenious? Gross? Strange?

When worn, these anti-pervert stockings made to resemble the legs of a very hairy person, will deter even the most aggressive of suitors.

As described on China’s microblogging platform Sina Weibo, the hairy stocking were described as “Super sexy, summertime anti-pervert full-leg-of-hair stockings,” by @HappyZhangJiang.

Capital Lifestyle Magazine asks: Do you thin hairy stockings will deter perverts?  Would you wear a pair?

British comic Russell Brand told Katy Perry he was divorcing her by text message, the US pop star said in a new magazine interview, adding that she hasn’t heard from him since.

Brand issued a statement in December 2011 announcing that he had filed for divorce 14 months after the pair were wed in India, saying that “I’ll always adore her and I know we’ll remain friends.”

Perry, in an interview in the latest edition of Vogue magazine, which features her as its cover story, tells it differently.

“He’s a very smart man, and I was in love with him when I married him,” she told the magazine, adding: “Let’s just say I haven’t heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011.”

In court documents filed in Los Angeles, the British actor and comedian cited “irreconcilable differences” as a reason for divorce. The couple, married on October 23, 2010, after a whirlwind romance, had no children.

Perry said Brand’s in-your-face humor was “hysterical in some ways. Until he started making jokes about me and he didn’t know I was in the audience, because I had come to surprise him at one of his shows.

She added: “At first when I met him, he wanted an equal, and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they’re like, I can’t handle the equalness.

“He didn’t like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting.

“I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day.

“I let go and I was like: This isn’t because of me; this is beyond me. So I have moved on from that.”

Brand, a former drug addict with a reputation as a womanizer, found fame as a comedian and later as a TV and radio presenter in Britain before starring in hit Hollywood films “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Get Him to the Greek”.

Perry, 27, is best known for hit songs, “Teenage Dream”, “California Gurls” and “I Kissed a Girl”. Her debut album “One of the Boys” garnered two Grammy nominations, and her second record “Teenage Dream” was given six Grammy nods.

“Even I haven’t slept in the Chateau!” Niel Hendriksz, Moët Hennessy Portfolio Ambassador surprisingly commented as I volunteered details of my recent visit to Cognac, France.

Indeed, it was special.  Once in a lifetime special, especially since I slept at the magnificent Château de Bagnolet, built in 1810 on the banks of the Charente, the former Hennessy family home.

And that’s the thing with luxury brands, it’s the unforgettable experiences and their ability to make you feel special that wins your heart and loyalty.  Even in Kenya, far from France where it all started, brands from the LVMH group, which has a portfolio of over 60 luxury brands, knows how to make one feel special.

Ahead of Wednesday’s official launch of Moët & Chandon Nectar Imperial in East Africa, a select few enjoyed an exclusive champagne tasting, in the presence of Niel Hendriksz, at the fittingly chosen venue, Sankara Hotel’s The Champagne Bar, on Tuesday.

Sampling the iconic champagne of Moët & Chandon that was created in 1869, Imperial Brut, and the Nectar, which will be available in Kenya starting today; Hendriksz, in true champagne fashion, elegantly guided us through the technicalities of producing one of the world’s most loved drinks and the uniqueness of the newest entrant in the Kenyan market.

“The Nectar is a Demi-Sec champagne, which has a higher dosage, or more sugar content.  But unlike other champagne houses, instead of just adding sugar, Moët & Chandon creates a different wine all together.”  Hendriksz further explains, “There’s more Pinot Noir and less Chardonnay.”

For the Nectar, the Pinot Noir gives the champagne the body and intensity, whilst the producers only use the sweetest of juices from handpicked grapes for a more rounded fruitiness with subtle tropical fruit notes.

The dosage of the Nectar is boosted by adding small amounts of reserve wine, which annually, Moët & Chandon produces more than 800 different types, and sweet liqueur – ensuring that the resulting champagne maintains an elegant maturity and seductive palate, or as Hendriksz calls it, “a lovely creamy mouthful.”

Happily, Hendriksz shared that his personal favourite champagne was Moët & Chandon’s 2003 Vintage.  The year 2003 was a particular difficult harvest with producers having to pick the grapes earlier than usual, which resulted in slightly sweeter wines and a Vintage that was bolder in flavour – something special.

Moët & Chandon Nectar Imperial is the fastest growing champagne in Nigeria and South Africa, probably because consumers realize that it too, is something special.

Will Kenya see the Nectar Imperial as special? I’ll leave it to your palates.

After Sunday’s live eviction show, in another first for Big Brother Africa: The Chase, seven housemates are on the nomination list.

Kenya’s Annabel, surviving eviction last week, changed her mind on Melvin and Bolt last minute.  However, being nominated again, it seems that the Ethiopian beauty, Betty, and Sierra Leon’s Bolt, have become regulars on the weekly nomination list.

Malawi’s Natasha has always found herself on the evictions list, actually for three consecutive times, resulting in the housemate’s unstoppable flow of tears, whilst the entire Ruby household looked on.

A visitor takes pictures of sculptures by Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow during the opening day of his exhibition at “La citadelle de Besançon” in Besancon, eastern France, on June 15, 2013. Sow, considered one of Africa’s foremost artists, inaugurated a retrospective in Besancon, his last exhibit in his adoptive France.

Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow, considered one of Africa’s foremost artists, inaugurated a retrospective in Besancon on Saturday, his last exhibit in his adoptive France before moving all of his works to a museum he is building in his home country.

The exhibit will include all the sculptures he still owns, including his latest and ongoing series entitled “Great Men” of historical figures from Charles de Gaulle to Nelson Mandela.

The 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon, who was hospitalised on June 8, is depicted in a football goalkeeper’s gear and sculpted using Sow’s trademark technique that mixes clay, rubber and other materials coated in an all-weather substance.

“He extends his hand to keep corrupt African heads of state at bay,” Sow said as he presented the dozens of sculptures that will remain on show for three months in this eastern French city.

Sow, who was born in 1935 in Dakar, said sculptures of Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali and Gandhi would soon join the gallery of men who “helped me not despair of mankind”.

His work first caught the world’s attention in 1999 when his muscular, larger-than-life sculptures of wrestlers were displayed on a Paris bridge facing the Louvre Museum.

Men and their preference for younger female mates may have led to the phenomenon of menopause in women, according to a controversial study by Canadian researchers published this week.

“If women were reproducing all along, and there were no preference against older women, women would be reproducing like men are for their whole lives,” said evolutionary geneticist Rama Singh, a professor at McMaster University.

Singh said the conventional “grandmother theory,” which holds that older women grow infertile so that they can assist the survival of their kin by helping to raise their children’s offspring, did not make sense to him.

Instead of age leading to infertility, Singh theorized that the dwindling pool of male mates for older women — because many older men seek to mate with younger women — led to a lack of reproduction that gave rise to menopause.

“If women were reproducing all along, and there were no preference against older women, women would be reproducing like men are for their whole lives.”

His work, backed up by computer models, suggests that a male mating preference for younger females could have led to the accumulation of genetic mutations that would harm female fertility and bring on menopause.

The study was published on Thursday in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLOS Computational Biology.

But while the assertion raised many eyebrows, not all experts are convinced by Singh, who questioned why menopause appears to be mainly a human phenomenon.

“I cannot agree with the theory put forth,” said Steven Goldstein, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University School of Medicine.

“There are other primates who do experience menopause, although life expectancy after menopause is extremely limited,” said Goldstein, who was not involved in the research.

“The same was true of humans until roughly the 1850s. In 1850 the average age of menopause was 46 and life expectancy was 50, which more closely parallels that of chimpanzees or gorillas.

Rather, a more accurate explanation would be that scientific advances like water purification and antibiotics have led to much longer lives among humans, he said.

“The cessation of reproductive capabilities in higher primates has always come shortly before the life span ends. It is only the advances of modern society that have women living so very long,” he told AFP.

This is no secret —> “Every woman loves and enjoys a man who takes care of himself without having to be told or reminded about it!” Just the fact that you are a man, there are things that you are taking for granted… like not taking care of your skin because that’s a “female thing”. Well, if you want to get to 50 and look 70 while at it, then keep that mentality. But if you want to look younger than you actually are in the future, then you must start now by following the primping imperatives below:

Shampoo your hair- Just washing your hair is not enough and you may also forget that using just soap might not be the best way to go. Most soaps are meant for your body (skin) and not your hair and some soaps are just too strong for your scalp and that’s whyshampoo was invented. Shampooing your hair adds the much needed hair and scalp nutrients that are included in the shampoos and not only will your hair/ scalp look more presentable, it will smell good too.

Things like brushing your teeth everyday after breakfast and before you go to bed should be a no brainer. You will simply be able to escape cavities and gum issues for a very long time.

Floss your teeth – You want to have cavity free teeth, zero gum disease and no need for dentures in the future?…Well then you will be forced to floss your teeth daily. Flossing is very important whether you have teeth related issues already or not. Dental is not expensive and it only takes a few minutes to floss teeth. And did I mention you will have fresh and pleasant breath always?

Wear sunscreen- The sun is good but it can be a bad bad agent what’s with it’s dangerous UVA and UVB  light that aid in causing skin cancer. You don’t have to be at the Coast to invest in some sunscreen, even your dermatologist will advise you to use sunscreen every single day of your life.

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei will launch a new smartphone on Tuesday to better compete with high-end rivals like Apple and Samsung overseas, a company official said.

Huawei will unveil the Ascend P6 in London in one of its major smartphone launches of the year, Huawei spokesman Roland Sladek told AFP.

The move is “significant” because it marks a global launch held outside Huawei’s home base of China and will be a stand-alone event, unlike previous launches at industry trade shows, he said.

The venue for the launch is London’s Roundhouse, Dow Jones Newswires reported, a legendary cultural venue which has previously hosted shows by rock icons such as Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.

“It’s a very well-designed, very appealing phone — one of the thinnest phones in the world,” Sladek said.

“It’s certainly competing with Apple but beyond that it’s really looking for an audience who look for a piece of modern fashion,” he said.

Starting as a provider of telecom network equipment, Huawei has sought to make inroads into mobile devices by selling smartphones under its own brand over the past three years.

The company, founded by a former engineer in the Chinese army, has also found controversy overseas for its traditional line of business.

The US Congress last year warned network equipment supplied by Huawei could be used for spying and called for its exclusion from government contracts and acquisitions.

Huawei has denied those claims and accused the US government of protectionism.

In China’s highly competitive smartphone segment, Huawei held a 10.1 percent share in the first quarter of this year, higher than Apple’s 6.4 percent, according to consultancy Analysys International.

South Korea’s Samsung was the market leader for smartphones in China with 17.3 percent for the period, its data showed.

“The handset products Huawei launched before were relatively low-end and low-priced,” said Wang Jun of Analysys International.

“The launch of this higher quality handset is related to Huawei’s own strategy of product excellence,” he said.

“The value of its brand was not well reflected before, when it used low-priced products to grab market share.”

Although a major vendor in China and some other international markets, Huawei has limited smartphone sales in the United States, where it launched a phone using Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

Huawei has a reputation for secrecy which the company has tried to shed after US claims it was a security threat.

Company founder Ren Zhengfei gave his first media briefing outside China by speaking to journalists in New Zealand in May.

Do you ever get a kind of savoury paranoia when you dine at restaurants with huge menus; ones that make you wish you had an endless appetite?  That exact paranoia strikes me most commonly in Indo-Chinese restaurants.  Overwhelmed with the fear that the menu will try too hard to be authentic Chinese and double as hard to be all-things Indian, and a greater fear that I will fail in ordering the best from the restaurant, in this case Shangrila Restaurant, because there’s simply too many delicious choices.

Shangrila Restaurant is located Diamond Plaza, Nairobi, Kenya.The average meal costs Ksh 1,250. To book, click here. Special thanks to Eat Out Kenya.

As it often happens, I ate brilliantly at Shangrila, a hidden gem in Diamond Plaza in the busy Nairobi neighbourhood of Parklands, beyond the confusing hallways and small stalls, upstairs, in its own serene corner.

A blend of Chinese and Indian, the décor of Shangrila featured traditional Chinese characters on the ceiling and wooden carvings accented the open space throughout, seamlessly combining the two cultures into the mystical and harmonious place that Shangrila is known to be, as described in James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon.

Obviously overwhelmed by choice, our friendly waitress, Yvonne, suggested we try the house specialty, Shangrila Threaded Prawns (Ksh 900), which arrived steaming hot from the deep-fat fryer.  Minced prawn meat, formed into kebab-like shapes, remained juicy under crispy dunes of julienned pastry, which could’ve been mistaken for crunchy noodles.  Happily, the coatings tasted nothing like fried noodles, instead, together with the prawns, its flavours and textures were compelling and deliciously shameless.

There was the Lamb Sizzler (Ksh 850), which arrived sizzling loudly and spitting sauce everywhere until the hot plate cooled down – as it should be.  Quick tip: perhaps those wearing white or silk tops should use their napkins as a shield.  Blanketed with a savoury sauce, bubbling over the juicy lamb, the Lamb Sizzler was also one of our favourites, especially since the lamb was so tender that every morsel of meat nearly melted away in our mouths.

Paired with Vegetable Fried Rice (Ksh 450) and one of the richest Butter Chicken I have ever sampled in Kenya, my raging hunger was no match for what Shangrila’s menu had to offer.

But still, I didn’t eat enough. Not by a long way. There was still the Shangrila Kebab (Ksh 820), where they’ve combined mutton and prawn mince, rolled together by thin pieces of juicy chicken breast. And the Shangrila Special Tawa-e-Murg (Ksh 820). And the hundred or so more dishes on the menu. And… oh, you get the idea. The menu at Shangrila Restaurant remains as unexplored as the Earthy paradise it’s named for.  Guess I’ll just have to go on an expedition.

PHOTOBLOG

Photos continued on next page…

That was me last night. I was slumped over on the couch nibbling on stale carrot sticks wondering why I had really made that decision to be ‘single for a while’. It certainly didn’t feel as liberating as I thought it would in that moment. To make matters worse I was sitting there watching MTV where someone thought it would be funny to play a cruel joke on me and play all of my break-up songs back to back. First up was Maxwell’s ‘Pretty Wings’; a song that makes me cry while I’m smiling. Then they played Rihanna’s ‘Russian Roulette’ and I returned to that dark place of unanswered questions and unrequited love. And finally to top it all off, Chris Brown’s ‘Crawl’ came on and I simply lost it. I could’ve sworn someone was messing with me.

As I sat there staring at the screen wondering if I would ever crawl back to love again, my phone rang. It was a number I had deleted off my phone but I knew it all too well. My ex was calling. He asked whether I wanted to meet up for a drink and somehow in-between my heart pounding a mile-a-minute I agreed to go see him. At that point I didn’t know what to think. I was excited, confused, anxious, and curious; all at the same time. Why would he call me out of the blue when we hadn’t spoken in weeks? Was he just scrolling through his phone and all his other ‘chips’ were busy tonight so he decided to call me out of desperation? Whatever the case, I didn’t really care. I needed to get off that couch.

After spending way too much time trying on outfits I settled on one and headed out to meet my ex at a club. Not much had changed…he was as handsome as ever. I tried to fight off his attempts to hold my hand until I had finished my first drink. By the time I was on my second cocktail all inhibitions went out the window. It was the full teenage make-out in public thing and I was loving it. The conversation was limited to things like ‘Oh, I’ve missed you so much’, ‘I cant seem to get you out of my system’ and other such nonsense.

A few drinks later we were in the car headed back to his place. Things were getting heated and moving very fast. It was like a scene out of one of those movies where clothes are being ripped off and your hair is flying around ever so sexily. It was at this point that I believe the cocktails had gotten the best of me and I proceeded to make an irreparable mistake. Somewhere in the heat of the moment I blurted out that I love him. Those three words brought things to a screeching halt and he whispered out a surprised ‘what?’. Talk about sobering up instantly! “Did I really just say that?”, I mumbled while trying to laugh it off. Somehow that moment managed to pass and we went on to have mediocre sex.