Break Your Duck

A harmless way to vent out those economic woes

Nat — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:08:15 +0000

Now here’s someone who’s not worried about breaking their duck (literally!).

This new business, Sarah’s Smash Shack, based in the USA, allows its patrons to smash plates against its walls to vent their frustrations. What a great idea - Opa !
http://springwise.com/weekly/2008-10-23.htm#smash

Seeing The Bright Side of Darkness

Nat — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:44:23 +0000

The saying goes you never know a good thing until you lose it. Most humans use their eyes more than any other sense to interact with the world. However when you’re blind, you need to rely on all your other senses so much more.

To help us to experience first hand the challenges that the blind must undertake everyday and also to discover the beauty of opening up our eyes (pardon the pun) to our other senses, Lisboa Sensorial in Lisbon, Portugal provides blind tours of Lisbon, led by the blind.

The site : www.cabracega.org/lisboa-sensorial

Info Source : http://springwise.com/weekly/2008-07-30.htm#sensorial

BLIND RESTAURANTS

There are also Blind Restaurants available in some cities across the world where you experience your meal in the darkness and where your waiter/waitress can often be blind as well.

For more information on Blind Restaurants, check out :
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article525187.ece

LANGUAGE CHALLENGE INITIATIVE

Similiarly, I have been involved in international conferences in my student days back at university in Canada. As an interesting awareness building effort, the conference hosts which were based out of a French Canadian province decided to hold the conference in French while providing all non french speaking participants (ie. most everyone!) translation boxes where participants would listen in to a translation of the dialogue/presentations in real time.

This experience was a real eye opener for many participants who never have to go through this experience — English speakers rarely do — and who realised how awkward the process was for non native English speakers at their conferences.

RAISING AWARENESS

Hopefully experiences like these can help us to learn to be more aware of the challenges faced by the blind and other people with disabilities, but also appreciate the bright sides of what they experience through their situation everyday.

Have you heard of other experiences like these which put people in similar situations ?

Making Mushroom Soup Exciting Again

Nat — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:00:02 +0000

First of all, put the cream away.

You don’t need cream for this full twist on a traditional recipe. In fact, you won’t recognise it for being a mushroom soup at all, possibly even after you taste it.

What you end up seeing in front of you is a vegetable potage with what seems like a heavy portion of barley or rice. However, those tastebuds that are paying will discover to their delight the fabulously earthy flavour of fresh mushrooms. With a vegetable stock / tomato soup base the soup is chock full of very finely diced mushrooms (3mm cubes!).

What results is a fabulously unique texture and flavour.

If you live in Sydney, you’re in luck… visit Newtown’s fine cafe & restaurant, Mickey’s (232 King Street) to fully appreciate this new fungi endeavour.

You won’t regret it !

Watch Crocodiles If You Ever Want to Sneak Up on Someone

Nat — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:17:27 +0000

When I was working in The Gambia, I travelled upriver and came to a sacred pond full of crocodiles.

I asked the boys at the pool which of the crocodiles had a placid personality and moreover had had a good breakfast.

They pointed out the crocodile in the attached photo, which I petted. I was concentrating, you will understand, on the croc I was touching and didn’t see the other crocodiles approaching from behind until I later saw the photo.

How Do You Test Drive an Underwater Car?

Nat — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:58:01 +0000

FORGET James Bond. A Swiss company says it has created the world’s first truly submersible car, the sQuba - and it’s a convertible.

Learn more about the underwater car and check out the photo gallery.

The Closest Thing to Flying Like a Bird

Nat — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:06:20 +0000

I am amazed that this flying squirrel suit displayed in the video below actually works. It’s wild !

http://www.biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=4262

You wouldn’t want to be caught out there when the weather changed though - eek !

Now this is certainly one I would say, kids don’t try this at home.

Keep Insomniacs Busy at The World’s Weirdest Hotels

Nat — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:28:30 +0000

After my stay in the great Ice Hotel near Quebec City, Canada which was uncomfortable but nevertheless cool (pun intended of course), I found the below list for some more of the weirdest and most wondrous hotels in the world, with accommodations ranging from tree houses to helicopters.

Top list includes :

Fantasyland Hotel – Edmonton, Alta - 120 rooms are designed with 12 distinct, family-friendly motifs such as “Hollywood,” “Victorian Coach” and “Canadian Rail.”
Jule’s Undersea Lodge – Key Largo, Fla. - located 6.4 metres below the surface of Key Largo’s Emerald Lagoon.
Library Hotel – New York, N.Y. - Featuring 60 rooms stacked with more than 6,000 books featuring rooms themed from “Erotic Literature” and “Economics”.
Wild Canopy Reserve – Masinagudi, India - In the middle of a wildlife reserve, set 15 metres above ground, amid the branches of enormous trees.
The Winvian – Morris, Conn. - 19 uniquely designed exclusive themed cottages featuring strange rooms such as “Secret Society” and “Helicopter”.

Click here for more info

Painting Bubbles Underwater

Nat — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:23:28 +0000

I’ve always loved the idea of capturing in a painting some of the sea scapes I pass when scuba diving.

You can imagine my delight then when I came across these two fascinating painters who grabbed hold of that idea and then took it two steps further, both in very different directions.

Pascal Lecocq paints surreal paintings of underwater and scuba elements completely out of context. It’s a whole new way of looking at scuba diving!

http://www.pascal-lecocq.com/shop.artprint.php

Another famous underwater painter, who travelled for many years with Jacques Cousteau himself, Andre Laban has taken that extra step and actually paints underwater.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Laban_peintre_sous-marin.jpg

Not Your Run-of-the-Mill Educational Museums

Nat — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:10:09 +0000

Everynow and then I find odd museums when I travel such as the museum of marzipan in a little town in Germany and a museum of puppets in Prague.

Still, I think this Lonely Planet journalist has certainly done their homework with a list of absolutely odd museums. I would definitely check out some of these just for the sheer novelty (and of course education) of it all.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,23483,22612750-27977,00.html

The Science Project I Always Wanted to Try

Nat — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:06:24 +0000

In 2006, EepyBird.com started a worldwide YouTube phenomenon with their Menthos + Coca Cola exploding fountain video. This was definitely a “kids DO try this at home project” in my mind.

For anyone who has not yet heard of this ubiquitous phenomenon (aka. does not spend hours upon hours weekly on their home computer surfing the net), the experiment is basically as follows.

1. Place a 2 liter bottle of diet coke (diet is supposed to be most effective) on the ground in a park preferrably.

This is not an experiment to do indoors unless you are in the mood to clean up the house.

2. Create a paper tube that fits the menthos just right, not too loose otherwise the menthos will get stuck on the way down trying to get ahead of each other.

3. Make a hole 1 cm from the bottom of the tube on both side and place a toothpick through it. This will hold the lineup of menthos in place until it is time for their coke bath.

4. Fill the tube with an entire pack of menthos (if you try to be cheap and you cut back to half the pack, the experiment will not work - don’t be cheap !).

5. Place the end of the filled tube (toothpick side) in the mouth of the open coke bottle. You’re almost there now !

6. Pull the toothpick out quickly, leaving the tube in the coke bottle (which will help the fountain effect), and run away quickly so you don’t get wet !

The whole experiment lasts no more than a few seconds, so don’t expect to take the photos of it yourself.

My first attempt with my buddy Des was not so hot. We used a funnel approach instead of a tube so the menthos became jammed and the whole experiment was a wash, pun completely intended.

Going with the straight tube approach next time around was the way to go.

Check out the video or better yet, try it yourself at home.

My Science Project Video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNPXE3MgExM

Or watch the real video from EepyBird.com - I bow down in respect to the masters here :

http://www.eepybird.com/dcm1.html