Hypertension Hotel

There’s a hotel made of salt down in Bolivia, and it seems like a lot of people have been to see it. Actually, there’s more than one. The one they are now building is very fancy, but the pictures I’ve seen on the adventure-tourist blogs are of a Quonset-hut type place, built of salt bricks. Hard bricks of salt - they have a lot of that down there. It is a whole desert of salt, the Salar de Uyuni it’s called, about 130 miles southwest of the capital, La Paz.

The region was home to a huge lake 40,000 years ago but now it is looks like the North Pole, only with salt instead of snow, obviously. There are cacti and rare hummingbirds that live there, and three species of flamingo come to breed in the salt desert every year. Heaven knows why. I mean, if I were a flamingo (or any kind of wild creature) and I wanted to find somewhere to procreate, a bunch of salt would not put me in the mood for - anything really, except a big glass of iced tea.

This year the Rough Guide series named Salar de Uyuni one of the 25 wonders of the world, and apparently loads of people go there for a little adventure tourism.

The adventure I was wondering about had to do with more - practical matters. I looked on a lot of travel blogs to try and find out what the bathrooms were like in your basic salt hotel. Because I want to know! All I could find out was that the toilets and showers aren’t made of salt blocks because, duh, they’d melt whenever you flushed or had a shower. So I guess they are just regular. But the plumbing - how does that work? Are there pipes? Wouldn’t you have to drill down into the salt desert and - oh, well, never mind, I guess. If I ever get down there I will try to find out.

The beds and chairs and everything else - they’re made of salt, though. And there’s a bar made of salt. That’s good. I would definitely need a few cold drinks after all that salt! Maybe a margarita! (Because of the salt, get it?)

Photo source: This beautiful photo of Salar de Uyuni was taken by Luca Galuzzi in 2006 and is at Wikimedia Commons at -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Piles_of_Salt_Salar_de_Uyuni_Bolivia_Luca_Galuzzi_2006_a.jpg

Sources:
http://news.nationalgeorgraphic.com/news/2007/07/070725-salt-hotel.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/07/30/bolivia.tourism.reut
http://www.virtualtourist.com/trave/South_America/Bolivia/Departamento_de_Potosi/Uyuni-1543515/TravelGuide-Uyuni.html

Never Mind The Sousaphones

It is a truth universally acknowledged in Tacoma, Washington, that a man in possession of a love for classical music must not be a criminal.
They’re banking on it, in fact. The city is planning to blast the greatest hits of Bach, Beethoven and their friends into the Tacoma Mall Transit Center (basically, bus stops) in order to discourage gang activity and drug dealing.

Apparently they also hold pinochle games on dangerous street corners to upset the bad guys and make them go elsewhere. No word on how successful that’s been. But some people think the symphonic smorgasbord is going to (a) make the criminals mad (not a good thing), or (b) make them just go somewhere else you don’t want them, like stores.

Tacoma must have a few old-TV fans in city council, because my theory is that they got this idea from an episode of “The Monkees” called “The Chaperone.” Season One, circa 1966. For those of you who, unlike myself, were not imbibing this show on Saturday mornings in the sixties, I will spare you the convoluted plot. But suffice it to say that there is a large party going on at the Monkees’ pad with attendant groovy music and they suddenly need to get everyone out. They accomplish this very rapidly by playing loud marching-band tunes. Everyone was out of there in less than a minute!

I’m not implying that there was any - gasp! - unsavoury or unlawful stuff going on! Heavens to betsy, no. But these are treacherous times, and Tacoma’s got to hang tough.

However, should the gangs end up with a taste for cantatas, I suggest the city council break out their collection of John Philip Sousa music (which annoyed the groovy college students in Donna Tartt’s wonderful novel The Secret History - I mean, the Sousa fan was the one who ended up getting killed for basically being really annoying). A few rounds of “The Gladiator March” ought to do the trick, don’t you think?

Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bach.jpg

Sources:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20041804
http://monkeestv2.tripod.com/Season1/chaperone.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa

The Baleful Birthday Cake

In Pattaya, Thailand, they are celebrating the Queen of Thailand's birthday with the longest bael fruit cake in the entire world. Not that there are a huge number of bael (also spelled bale) fruit cakes in the world - but at 75 metres, this is the longest one. It was displayed at the Central Festival Center in North Pattaya and will be sold off for charity in one-metre lengths. From the photo it is in a sort of double, squared-off S shape. Sort of like a square snake. Made of cake.

The bael fruit (Aegle marmelos) is also known as bilva, bilwa, bel or belI fruit, or Bengal quince, stone apple, or wood apple. It is indigenous to many countries in southeast Asia and grows in every region of the Philippines. With a tough greyish or yellowish skin, it has many fibrous seeds and a gelatinous, sticky pulp that is often mixed with sugar or honey as it is quite tart.

I wondered why they chose bael fruit to make a cake for the Queen’s birthday so I did a little research on bael fruit. Apparently it is used in religious settings partly because the bael tree is what the Hindu god Shiva liked to sit under. And it is has plenty of Ayurvedic medicinal values, too. In particular it is used to combat intestinal and stomach troubles and - well - is known to be a powerful laxative. An ad for “Bael Fruit Tea” on a Thai herbal-medicine site states that it “relieves flatulence, indigestion and yin-yang imbalances [and is] used in productive cough and chronic intestinal disease in children.”

Vitaherbthai.com waxes positively poetic. The bael fruit juice they sell is “To nourish those element, to reduce the inner-inflammable and stomach set-up.” All that and dessert too - no wonder they made an enormous cake out of this stuff! Modern life is all about the inner-inflammable and the stomach set-up. And it is stressful being a monarch, I would imagine.

In any case, happy birthday and many happy returns! Or something like that.

[With thanks to Rachel C. for the photo source]

Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image;Feige-Schnitt.png

Sources:
http://www.pattayacitynews.net/news_11_08_50.htm
http://phuketherb.velocall.com/pd1021731853.htm
http://www.vitaherbthai.com/products/balefruit.htm
http://www.survivaliq.com/survival/edible-and-medicial-plants-bael-fruit.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bael

The Eight-Legged Archaeologist

A little octopus the size of an orange has the makings of a really good archaeologist. In May it was discovered in a shell trap off the southwest coast of South Korea, holding a plate in front of it. This led human archaeologists to what is considered to be the finest cache of medieval Korean porcelain ever found. It was in a wooden wreck from the 12th century, in a mudflat.

They are expecting to find about 2500 bowls, plates and other artefacts. The porcelain is green and blue-green and sounds lovely. I think they ought to reward that little octopus. Maybe build it a house with some of those blue-green plates.

Photo source: freenaturepictures.com

Sources:
http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6915941.stm
http://thescotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1164782007

Miss Marple and the Case of the Cafe Latte

Seven thousand older women in France were studied over 4 years as they drank loads of coffee (too bad I am not over 65, because being paid to drink French coffee sounds like my dream job! Pass le Sugar Twin, s’il vous plait!) Well, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research found that 30% over the over-65s did better on memory tests and 70% of the women over 80 did better on them. So, basically, coffee-drinking seems to improve memory in older women - not men though. They say it doesn’t work on men, they don’t know why.

Well, I have a few guesses as to why. Too bad the study already came out in Neurology, I could have helped out! You see, I think it’s because men snore more, and women get less sleep because well, sometimes even earplugs don’t help. Plus also women need to remember more little things like what people look like, and what they said - exactly what did they say? Well, and then what happened? I don’t know about you but I tend to get better answers from women. I knew a guy who used to say, when asked what someone looked like, would reply, ‘well, they - had a face.’

So I need to find these things out myself - and to help retain the information, I’ll have a coffee to go, you see.

(OK, so some guys don’t snore! And then there’s Sherlock Holmes and his ilk - however many men make up an ilk. Sometimes guys remember a lot of stuff. Usually what you don’t want them to! Like - well, never mind. But things like making fun of them ONCE twenty years ago, or - something. But I digress…)

The French National Institute folks caution that they are not saying you should go out and down ten cappuccinos a day. They need to study everything some more. (Insert joke here about how their next study will be the effects of caffeine and sugar on neurologists).

But more studies needed or not - it sounds like the coffee thing is good for us women! Yeah, I need some more lattes. Then I can have that second career in my eighties, solving mysteries.

Photo Source: FreeFoto.com

Sources:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=3CFB0625-E7F2-39C42080730BE244&chanID=sa003
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/caffeine-may-pr.html

Lego My Eggo

There used to be a children’s show called ‘Pingu’ which featured the titular, claymation penguin and his family doing stuff at the North Pole (also made of clay, not snow). And I especially remember one in which little Pingu has a nightmare about a giant walrus who lifts up the penguins’ igloo and generally causes shock and awe among the small bird population.

Something akin to this just happened in the seaside resort of Zandvoort in the Netherlands, when a eight-foot-tall Lego man washed up on the beach. He has a huge yellow head, a mysterious smile and an even more mysterious catchphrase on his square blue torso: No Real Than You Are.

So he’s hanging around the drinks stand on the beach now, not saying much. Well, not saying anything, duh, he’s a Lego man. They’re the strong and silent type. I want to ponder what in the world he’s on about with all this ‘No Real Than You Are.’

It might be an English thing. One lady said he came from the direction of England. But I have never heard an English person talk like this.

Sounds a little trippy and sixties-groovy to me, like the title of some psychedelic song. Does it mean he is no more real than we are - no less real? He thinks he’s real, in any case. Real big, yes. Real hard to play with, unless you’re a giant, yes. Real strange, too.

There is a Legoland amusement park in Windsor, Berkshire but it is not on the coast. So did Lego Man escape from Windsor and hitch a ride to the coast? Or is he participating in some strange Iron Lego Man competition involving running to the English coast and swimming to the Netherlands?

Now all he needs is a really, really big bicycle.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070808/od_nm/dutch_lego_odd_dc

Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Glogg

This parrot was not a Norwegian Blue - you remember the Monty Python sketch about the dead parrot. This one was also Scandanavian - a cousin, perhaps? - but very much alive, claws to the ready. As for the guy in this real-life comedy routine, he must have been walking around like Johnny Depp - wearing an eye patch and three-cornered hat and sporting a peg leg. How else to explain the confused parrot in Stockholm, Sweden who came “out of nowhere” (says a police spokesperson) and sat rather hard on the man’s head. So hard, in fact, that the man had to go to the local animal hospital and get a vet to perform a parrotectomy.

I have not been able to find out any of the interesting bits of this startling story. Like, why was the parrot so hard to remove? (Claws in too deep? Just didn’t feel like going anywhere? That’s a parrot with a serious attitude, isn’t it?) And why did the police have to get involved? (Maybe the parrot threatened to sue). Why is no one from the vet’s office talking? How exactly did this removal happen?

Also, no owner has been found. Maybe - maybe there was no owner. I mean, this parrot does not sound like a wimpy pet with an owner. For sure he’s his own bird. Where does a Swedish parrot sit? Anywhere he wants to!

Photo Source: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/wallpaper/king-parrot_image.html

Sources:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/2007/08/07/parrot_refuses_to_leave_mans_head/3166/
http://www.thelocal.se/8112/20070806/