10. Berlin, Germany
9. Krakow, Poland
8. Mumbai, India
7. Beijing, China
6. London, UK
5. Osaka, Japan
4. Dakar, Senegal
3. Chennai, India
2. Tokyo, Japan
1. Hong Kong, China

Getting to your work in these cities has been found to be cheap, reliable and efficient. Although somehow the below picture doesn’t strike me as being very comfortable though…

"People pushers" on Tokyo commuter train

Naturally, this can’t happen without causing the necessary floods - like the one on above’s picture in Malaysia’s rural area. The rain started on Friday early afternoon and didn’t stop until Saturday evening. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their kampung (village).

The rain has stopped momentarily, but many area’s are still in a danger zone. It is uncertain when the villagers will be able to return home.

Today I’ll give you a brief insight into the first one: Buddhism.

The real Buddha is Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Awakened One, who lived around the 2nd century BCE.

Buddhists believe that life doesn’t end with the death of a human being. Depending on how you lived your life, you get either good or bad karma. Judged by the karma, your dynamic energy (= not the soul) comes back to earth in a different form.

1. Naraka beings live in hell
2. Animals lower form of life
3. Preta: inbetween form of existence, e.g. ghosts
4. Human beings: one of the realms of rebirth in which attaining Nirvana is possible.
5. Devas gods, deities, spirits or angels

Various sources put the number of Buddhists in the world between 230 million and 500 million.

Traditional Japanese bento

There is another style of bento. It’s called kyaraben and means the food is decorated to look like people, animals or other items. Anna The Red’s Bento factory shows kyaraben at it’s best!

Also according to Anna, Japanese mums will get up early in the morning just to prepare bento’s for their kids and husbands. Imagine having one of these every day!

When you see her bento’s, Anna hopes that her creations will make you go “ooh, neat”. She has more examples and shows you how to do it on her Flickr page.

She furiously explains that several maids ran away, one stole from her, one maid had schizophrenia and another one never arrived due to family issues.

The thing about maids in Malaysia is that most of them are foreign. They say it is because Malaysia has a shortage of workers, but I suspect the much cheaper costs of Indonesian / Fillipino maids has something to do with it as well.

As hard as it might be for people to find decent maids, I can’t help wondering how hard it must be to actually BE that foreign maid. One Indonesian maid blogged that she would like to work “better hours”, which to her meant 15 (!) hours a day. I’d say the woman has one thing right: something definitely needs to change…

The Bacardi Breezer had the ultimate ‘cool’ image thanks to excellent marketing by Bacardi.

But supermarkets never checked any buyer’s age nor did they ask for identification. And the worry was that (too) young teenagers would be drinking too much.

The same thing is now happening in Malaysia, where a drink called samsu is being marketed with brand cartoon character names like Avatar and Ben 10 or equally youth attracting names such as Young Gun and Father Christmas.

The difference is: this drink can contain up to 51% alcohol… Yikes!

The Star newspaper headed: “Father Christmas turning teens into samsu addicts“, mentioning that the Malaysian governmental bodies is trying to regulate (read: ban) the drinks and/or shops that sell it. It will be interesting to see if they are more successful than their European counterparts.

These Japanese macaques are also known as snow monkeys and were caught on camera in Yamanouchi, a ski resort town in central Japan.

The monkeys are bathing, cleaning each others fur and clearly, clearly savoring the moment… I wonder though: did monkeys copy this from human beings or did human beings copy monkey behaviour?

Chinese man begging for police report

A travel agency had taken his passport, but police officers labeled the issue a “dispute” and said they were unable to help. The man is holding up a sign saying “Begging for report receipt”, which he needed to get his passport.

The interesting thing was not this small incident, but the responses that the story attracted. The original Chinese source for example, was shortly after publication not available anymore. And perhaps to avoid trouble, a lot of commentators wrote police as pol.ice. Is the Chinese web really that heavily censored?

The comments also mentioned cases where Chinese cops refused to do anything for offense victims before and suggested that sometimes only the ‘red envelope’ (=bribe) helps. Nobody knows if the man eventually got his receipt, but many doubted it.

Guess I should take it as a good warning not to get in trouble when I’m in China.

Taiwanese supermodel Lin Chi Ling

It was all over the newspapers when a mysterious woman in Penang, Malaysia managed to get 10 men to fall in love with her, ask her to marry them and bestow her with gifts… Only to leave them behind, utterly bewildered when they discovered the existence of 9 other grooms-to-be.

The 30-year old woman asked each fiancee for a few thousand ringgits, jewellery and a dowry. It is understandable the men didn’t suspect anything: the woman went as far as booking restaurants and wedding venues, meeting future parents-in-law and even sending out invitation cards to all his friends & family.

Of course, it might have helped that she reportedly looked a lot like Taiwanese supermodel Lin Chi Ling…

When she disappeared shortly before the weddings, the 10 men met each other while waiting for her outside her apartment… Ouch!