A mystery to be solved...

Habitants of Lauterbrunnen, a little town in the Swiss alps, have a little mystery to solve: in a period of 3 days, 28 cows 'committed suicide' by jumping from the top of a rocky mountain. As a matter of common health and to avoid contamination of underground water since there are not so many predators in that area, helicopters were used to remove the corpses (even I am covered for this kind of problem with my very expensive and disorganized health insurance).

The corpses found in the bottom of a rocky cliff.

What is the reason of the deaths? Local police and wise people have different theories:

1. they might have got afraid/startled/frightened of something and ran. Like a storm, but cows living in this area are used to it....

2. maybe they were following one another searching for more grass and...

3. maybe they became aware of the next McDonald's sandwich and tried to make a complaining against it.

4. maybe the new cow in the group belonged to that religion that believes in group suicide.


Fun apart, it is difficult to believe that those animals actually committed suicide. Think with me, to commit suicide you have a reason and you have to know that you will stop your life, for this you have to be aware you have a life.

You might mention and what about more evolved animals, like mammals, which are capable of bonding with their owners and even capable of dying after the owner dies due to stop eating. But do they know they are going to die?

There are even cases of dolphins or some rodents that 'kill themselves' in cases of extreme stress. I don't think they want to kill themselves, I think they want to try to scape.

There is the case of lemmings. When their population is reaches an extreme number the mass migration carried out by these animals may lead to accidental deaths but have nothing to do with suicide. The theory is that some go looking for a new place to live and actually drown of exhaustion. The myth of suicide came from a Disney cartoon!

Natural selection favours individuals that leave as many high-quality offspring as possible. A creature that kills itself before it reproduces leaves no descendants, so the genes for this behavior die out with the carrier.

option 5. Maybe this is a case for Mulder and Scully and could become a good screenplay for an episode....

Is it true?

I will try to put some of these comic strips sometimes here. Can I really do that, isn't it ilegal?

They are so good, and most of the people I know would never read this kind of thing because they think it is just for nerds like me and my colleagues (different from nerds/geeks who work with computers all the time?)....Don't think so!!

This one I chose is so true!

The best salary...

... not necessarily means the best life.

THis week UBS (Price and salary, 2009) published as a result of its research that Zürich, Geneva, New York, Dublin and Luxembourg are the cities with the best payments per hour. The first two receive, respectively, 26 fr.10 and 23 fr. 50. On the other hand, New Deli, Manille and Jakarta are on the other extreme with salaries almost 15 times smaller than the above mentioned.

Also, maybe because the salaries are better, citizens of these cities pay 20% more for goods, services and rent when compared to other west European cities. Tokyo represents the place where you pay more to eat, followed by Zurich and then Geneva. Amazing!

Also, the newspaper that published the article made a comparison: how many hours somebody from these cities needs to work to buy an small 8 Gb-iPod Nano? In Zurich someone who earns a middle salary can gift himself with one of this gadget after working 9 hours. In Geneva, one needs 10 hours. In India, one needs 20 days!

So...let's make better usage of our money, like maybe work approximately 432 days to buy a 11 234 sfr watch...

short report...

It's been a lot of time I don't write! Just because I've got just a few time with all the great visits...

Well, in Brazil want it or not we always listen the news that Europeans are not so keen for friendships, that they avoid talking to you in the streets if you need help, they don't talk in the markets to discuss the price of a product. I have no idea where these ideas come from, maybe some not so friendship-keen Brazilian.

After all this time living here and there I realized that people are not that bad. They do listen to you if you need help in the streets, they even brought my sister to the shop she asked directions to here in Geneva!

Another day I was in the supermarket with my Hungarian friend and her 9 month-old baby waiting in the queue to pay. And a lady that looked very European for me was 'amazed' with my friend's baby who almost started eating the cat food. She promptly opened one of the cookies she was buying and asked if she can give one to him. Here in Europe is totally different, you can't touch or play somebody's else baby without asking for permission before, differently from home. The baby loved the idea of the cookie rather than the cat food.

Once my sister who recently had arrived from Brazil was complaining that people don't talk to each other on the streets. I don't really understand what she meant with that because I also don't talk to strangers out of the blue. Then what she was missing happened! She was waiting for the bus to come home when an huge African guy started to talk to her in French. She said sorry sir, I don't speak French. Ad the guy went on in English. He said he thinks she is very beautiful and invited her to go to his country and stay at his mansion and while visiting around. She said sorry sir, I can't I don't have money. He said, African people are polite, if they invite someone, they pay everything, humpf! She said she was sorry again but she has a boyfriend (not true!), but he ended up getting her email address just for them to communicate later in case she changes her mind.
So, since that day on she stopped complaining about the unfriendly europeans! This is how we learn!
Ah, yeah, I forgot to say. He wrote an email to her saying that when she is ready she can come to visit him!

Love at first sight?

What can I say: another film session!

This time the awarded film is Defiance!



This time James Bond left all the luxury and beautiful girls he is used to (thought the one he is with in the film can't be accused of ugly) to save and give home to hundredths of Jewish in a field camp of Belarus during II World War. Also this time Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber here playing Zus Bielski) for sure misses his indestructible abilities from the X-men. Fun appart he does act really well in this film.

Based on a true story, the Bielski brothers (mostly Tuvia and Zus) did save lots of people and fought against the Germans if necessary to keep themselves alive. They managed to live for 3-4 years in the forests through summers and cruel winters by establishing a camp that had school, nursery and hospital. All to avoid being deported to concentration camps or killed in the getos.

A quite long film that show how they tried and did it. Just don't understand why they need to speak sometimes English with Russian accent and sometimes Russian with each other.

IT is really worth watching, camrade!

Film sessions...

Today's film is the not so successful 'I love you, man'.


The story tells about how a friendless guy goes through different adventures to finally find his BFF!

One might think it is really stupid, don't worry, I also thought so, but then if you stop to think about it, many men are exactly like that! Not all of them have or even consider having good friends which FYI are very important to a human being's life.

Watch the trailer here:


So, if you have some time watch it. You gonna laugh some! And the soundtrack is really great!

the fireworks of Fete de GEneve

So
As I said before, the Fetes the Geneve.
Now it is over. Everybody is sad. They take one day to put all in pieces and bring away.
The awaited big day that celebrates the end of this big festival brought with it a 55 minutes fireworks produced by specialists from around the world. This year an Argentinian, Swiss and Chinese were present.

It came up fast and shiny and...

Exploded beautifuly!


The spectacle was fantastic! It passed really fast and the neck was hurting just a bit! What a nice profession! It all started when the lights of the entire shore were turned off at the same time. There were 2 types I had never seen. One that went up leaving a track and exploded like a tree with the track still attached and the other one was like a small little dragons making funny noises after exploded! The colors were amazing and vibrating not to mention the music playing with it, having as a background topic the '1001 nights' tale.

The amount of people was also outstanding simply because Geneva has a population of around 500 000 heads and this was the amount of people that went to watch the event, so one can say it is quite a lot. Lots and lots of foreigners specially neighbors from the honored country: Oman. Their women are so richly dressed and beautiful. Also what a mystery about their clothes!



After (and before too) lots of parties all over the city in small stands of discos and restaurants to mark the last day of this big fete of which the Genevois are so proud.

And you know what, they are right it is all just awesome. Maybe I can even say it is bigger than the reveillon (the worldwide famous New Years party in Rio de Janeiro)!

Geneva by night in the summer...

This is one cute little town when the weather conditions are good!

This year's logo of the Geneva Festival (Fetes de Geneve)

Now with the Fetes de Geneve going on everyday the night life is quite alive and with all sorts of species from everywhere. A stage was mounted and bands with all types of music play every single day of the week, plus several small bars were also place around the stage, a good reason to start the night at 6pm with a happy hour and go on all night....

The stage with a band.

Fun apart, looks like one person from each part of the world is here. It is so cosmopolita!

Lots of games from fun parks were installed along the lake shore (la rade) and lots of kids await for them, plus several restaurants were placed in strategical points. One I would really try is the fondue restaurant, but after we saw it was just a layer of melted chese over a small baguette, we gave up.

Want something to drink? There are several samples of them. From everywhere ranging from water, coke, to lassi and mojitos and caipirinhas. Basic!

That's it. Tomorrow (Aug 8th) the fireworks of the Fetes will take place. Famous specialists from this area will mount their own 'art' which will last for 55 min. This is the longest pirotechnique 'concert' I have ever seen, even more than the reveillon in Rio! And since this year it is sponsored by the Sultanat d'Oman, the fireworks will have as a main topic the '1001 nights'. Sure a great view!

So see you at the 'rade' having fun with my friends or just taking pictures like this one (whose quality is not so good because it was a raw pic originally and its sizewas 34Mb...):

Fireworks of the Swiss national day..

And as I mentioned in the before post, the Swiss National day in Geneva ends with a firework 'show'.

After the festivities in the Parc des Bastions where they had some speech and the kids parade with lanterns, everybody moved to the lake shore (they call it now rade in French) where thousands of people watched the "feu d'artifice". I have to mention that in my opinion most of the ones present were foreigners, it was quite rare to listen to French.

One of the private fireworks behind the hotels...

The Jet d'eau with national colors, beautiful no?

Another event of the night was a Giant Fondue which took place in the Mont Blanc bridge. Prepared from 210 L of wine and 500 Kg of mixed cheese (gruyere and emmental), it was planned for 3,000 people but I heard it was not enough but delicious.

The fireworks spectacle lasted 15-20 min (I heard is is this short because more is to come next week!) and could be seen form any part of the 'rade' and finished with a nice bonfire in the middle of the lake.