Olympic torch on top of Mount Everest. Yes, burning.

by Iva Skoch on

Politics aside, this is actually pretty spectacular. Chinese mountaineering team, including a woman from Tibet, took the Olympic flame to the top of the world today, AP reports.

The team used torches designed by rocket scientists to take the flame to the peak of Mount Everest. Fueled by propane, the flame burned brightly in the frigid, windy, oxygen-thin Himalayan air thanks to technology that keeps rocket motors burning in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The flame was carried most of the way in a special metal canister. As the team neared the summit, they used a wand to pass the flame to the torch.

Wow. All this effort just to say “we did it.”

The Mount Everest climbers were struggling for breath in a live television broadcast as five torchbearers each shuffled a few feet before passing on the flame to the next person. The final torchbearer, a Tibetan woman named Cering Wangmo, stood silently on the peak with her torch while other team members unfurled small Chinese and Olympic flags. They then clustered together, cheering “We made it,” and “Beijing welcomes you.”

One would almost think that China and Tibet are best friends. Almost.

Have food allergies, will travel

by Iva Skoch on

Traveling with food allergies must be hard.

Even in many countries in Europe, menus simply don’t list all the ingredients used in meals. My Canadian friend went into an allergic shock in Prague because of his nuts allergy. He figured eating a sandwich would be safe. Of course, they didn’t mention the sandwich had pesto in it. And pesto contains pine nuts…

And that’s Prague, which is now fairly Westernized. Imagine what it must be like to travel in Asia, where not only do they use peanuts a lot more but it is much harder to read the menus and find people who speak English well enough.

This ABC article talks about traveling with allergies. It is about the challenges of a traveler with serious food allergies, who presents a card to the waiter noting his allergies to peanuts and peas, written in the native tongue. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. Some waiters even say that they have “never heard of such allergies.”

I found it really interesting to read, although I don’t have any allergies. How do you deal with food allergies when traveling?

Big in Japan: Japanese worker logs 780,000 porno hits at office

by Matthew Firestone on

The Japanese are anything but prudish, especially when it comes to pornography or AV (adult video). Here in Japan, the AV industry pumps out literally hundreds of new videos each day, featuring pretty much everything that your sick little mind can imagine. I would expand more here on some of the more unusual varieties of Japanese adult entertainment, but for the sake of our sponsors at AOL – and out of respect for my dear mother! – I’ll let you discover them in your own free time.

With that said, if you’re going to scour the web for the latest and greatest in Japanese porno, it’s probably best not do it while you’re in an office cubicle. In fact, that is precisely what happened this week in the city of Kinokawa in southern Japan ,where a council employee was discovered looking at almost 10,000 pages containing explicit content per day! Over a nine month period, it is estimated that the 57-year old man logged more than 780,000 hits on porno websites.

And who says Japanese bureaucracy is efficient – in my opinion, it takes some serious dedication to log in that many hours of porn viewing in one day!

According to sources in the city council, the man was allowed to keep his job in public service, though he was demoted, and his wages were cut by about 20,000 yen ($200) per month. In porno terms, that’s about ten new-issue DVDs, or about a fifteen month online subscription to your favorite fetish site.

Mind you, not that I watch porno, or anything of the sort! (^_^)

The report goes on to describe how the man would turn up for work every day, though failed to maintain the same level of productivity as his fellow co-workers. Apparently, his incessant porno habit peaked last July when he is estimated to have logged 177,000 hits in a singly month!

In the end, the man was only discovered after his computer was infected with a virus, which prompted the IT team to access his web history. Foolish – he should have just deleted his web history like the rest of us!

Mind you, not that I watch or porno, or anything of the sort! (^_^)

As you would imagine, the city council was highly embarrassed by the incident, and was forced to comment on national television as to why it took several months to catch and reprimand the distracted worker. According to one official, employees’ desks were separated from one another, so it was impossible to monitor everyone’s web behaviors.

Of course, this seeming bit of nonsense has to make you wonder. If the guy has a healthy enough sexual appetite to spend all of his working hours searching for porno, he probably needed to, well, relieve himself at some point – perhaps the first clue that the guy had a porno habit should have been the frequent line outside the men’s restroom!

On that note, I think I’ll go back to doing something more productive instead of blogging about porno…

** All images are of the famous Anna Ohura, the half-Japanese, half-French AV sensation who is regarded as having the largest natural breasts (metric I-cup, 100cm) in the Japanese adult film industry **

Top hell-holes on earth

by Jamie Rhein on

April Fool’s Day, 2007, I wrote a post on Linfen, China. Although it was written as a joke, the premise is true. Linfen is a royal mess. Its mighty pollution problem has earned it the number 2 spot on the recent “Hells on Earth” list. The air quality in Linfen is so horrific that there is a perpetual feeling of dusk in this coal dust laden city.

Here’s the rest of the ten places that have a hellish quality. Perhaps you know of others that should have made the cut.

10. Baghdad, Iraq–No surprise here. What, with the war and all, it doesn’t matter if the place has one of the coolest names. According to the article, the city is so dangerous, it’s hard to find people out and about on the streets.

9. Dhaka, Bangladesh–And to think I almost moved here. I had a job interview that I canceled because getting to this place was a hassle. The pollution is problematic. That’s why it’s on the list. Too bad because, everyone I’ve ever met from Bangladesh has been a real gem of a person.

8. Yakutsk, Russia–When I read that this city is the coldest place on earth, that stopped me cold. We’re talking major frostbite. Temperatures can go down to -58 degrees, according to the article. If you’re a kid, it’s a day off from school, so for the younger crowd, this might be heaven.

7. Mogadishu, East Africa (Somalia)–Another one of my favorite city names. I’ve have many students from Somalia–lovely people, and they shake their heads in sorrow over what once was. No one is minding the store in this country that has been wrecked to shambles. The rebels keep running amok. This truly does not sound like a relaxing place to get away. Get away from, sure.

6. Chernobyl, Ukraine–If you want a radiation boost that could do you in, come here. Most of the city was deserted after the nuclear explosion in 1986 and it has not recovered since. There aren’t any prospects for a brighter future either.

5. Oklahoma City, The United States–But the state has such a catchy song, you might be protesting. What’s wrong with Oklahoma City? Weather, that’s what. A Kansas tornado has nothing on Oklahoma City’s. The Ask.Men folks cite 320 mph winds as the fastest. That seems like enough to turn eyelids inside out. Besides that, blizzards are also fierce. I’ve driven through here a couple times on a calm day–always in the summer, and not a gust in sight. Who knew?

4. Pyongyang, North Korea–Gadling blogger, Neil went here and found that hell must have things to like. Sure there’s some hellish, oddball qualities to Pyongyang, but he found it worth the visit. If you can handle the oppression and a tour guide who never lets you wander off on your own, this might feel more like limbo than hell.

3. Bujumbura, Republic of Burundi–If the accounts of people in Burundi feeling the least satisfied than all other people in the world is true, I’d say this is hell indeed. Look at this list for starters. They feel worse than people who live in Linfen? The reason for Burundi’s problems is the corruption.

1. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea–This place does sound like a hell hole. The murder rate, according to Ask.Men is 23 times that of London and gangs and disease–like HIV, run rampant. Swell.

My good friend over at BloggingStocks and WalletPop, Tom Barlow gave me a heads up on this one. Thanks, Tom.

Driving in China: Don’t slow down to enjoy the scenery, you might get fined

by Anna Brones on

Last week China opened the world’s longest sea bridge in order to cut travel time between two ports, Ningbo and Shanghai. But on a bridge that is 22.4 miles long, it’s hard to not slow down to enjoy the impressive scenery; you are crossing over a large body of water after all. Since its opening on May 1, Chinese police have fined over 300 drivers for driving too slow across the bridge or even illegally parking in the emergency lines while taking some scenic photos.

“I just wanted to drive a bit slowly and enjoy the sea breeze. Is that wrong?” an unnamed driver complained.

You would think that with such a bridge — and at $1.7 billion, such a budget — would invest in some sightseeing platforms. Not to worry, those are coming… in two years. For now, if you want any interesting scenic shots, better bring some extra yuan to pay your fine.