►Kumamoto The much publicised baby hatch finally opened in Kumamoto yesterday.
Some housewives are even asking for a husband hatch where they can drop off their recently retired husbands, though the prefectural office have said there are no plans for such a hatch at this stage.

►Bangalore Almost everyone around you (including your own driver) is continuously honking the horn of their vehicles. There are no exceptions to this. This orchestra is played out starting from the ringing of a bell on a bicycle to the deep bellowing honk of a bus and includes melodious horns of cars and the wheezing sounds of an auto-rickshaw horn.

►Bucharest Bucharest is a city where a cosmopolitan, liberal, wealthy and good-natured population goes about its industrious daily business

►Helsinky Finland has more hair saloons that people, yet I can never get an appointment right away. And a special bye bye to those expensive prices - Even with the recent tax breaks on haircuts, my local mall charges me 25 euros ($34 US) for 15-20 minutes work - my local mall back in the states charges me $11 US (8 euros).

►Istambul So, two white girls walk into an Istanbul ghetto, looking for the pork butcher.....
 
►Osaka               
It's a well-known fact that in Osaka there is one bicycle for every cockroach, which means there are lots. Too many, in fact.

►Tripoli This place is a hole

 ►Washington D.C.  Washington D.C.’s artsy too!    
Frankly, I'm a little tired of my friends telling me D.C. lacks soul. It does not. I swear.

 ►There's this guy that parks himself and his fruit crates right in the front of our (huge) office building.

►Turkey kokorec Because all the best food has a long and important process of washing and cleaning, today we bring you kokorec.

 ► My India   travelling beaver

►Black on white  And then I am back. Kinshasa, where the dirt settles under every fingernail and each surface is worn and uneven. Each bump in the road connected by a hole. Each shout paired with a car horn, each street kid’s face pressed against the window of a brand new car. A vacuum so deep, no more pieces will fit insidee. Kate IN CONGO

►CORRUPTIOn special There is usually a special language indicating that a bribe is needed, and an etiquette of the way to transfer the money. In Armenia, sometimes we are told that 'lavoutyoun' (an act of kindness) or 'magharich' (a tip) is needed. In case of the traffic police, the communication is non-verbal. When you are stopped, you know what to do.
Here is an excerpt from the article describing a newbie asking for a bribe in Georgia - obviously, he needed some experience.
 

►Pay more taxes, be happy    Finland, 6th happiest country in the world. U.S. is 23rd.It’s dark and cold in the winter and has some of the highest taxes in Europe. But that doesn’t get in the way of Finns’ overall happiness.

►Fire Fire         

 Between 16:40 and 16:45 on Sunday, December 17, 2006, an unknown arsonist started a blaze in a local cartier of Braşov, Romania.
Within minutes, residents from the block apartments began gathering to assess the danger and organize a hazard containment plan to protect their neighborhood.

►Sea of heartbreak Winston Churchill called the sailors of the Arctic Convoys, on the Barents Sea, ‘the bravest men afloat’.

►Taxi driver  ...when I visited St. Petersburg, there were tons of these private mini-buses scooting around the city. Plenty of public transportation available, little (private?) white vans go where buses and trams don’t go, and anyone with an automobile could be a private taxi.And people had the freedom to flag down cars and pay the drivers to take them places if they were heading in the same direction - that certainly saves on gas

►Baghdad Burning

The Four Ubaidi Brothers

Muahmmed, Ahmed, Ali and Salah are four brothers from a Sunni family, ....

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