forwarded : Facts

1. Chewing gum while cutting onions can help a person prevent himself from crying while chopping onions. Try it next time you chop onions!!!!!!!!!!

2. Until babies are six months old, they can breathe and swallow at the same time. Indeed convenient!

3. Offered a new pen to write with, 97% of all people will write their own name.

4. Male mosquitoes are vegetarians. Only females bite.

5. The average person's field of vision encompasses a 200-degree wide angle.

6. To find out if a watermelon is ripe , knock it, and if it sounds hollow then it is ripe.

7. Canadians can send letters with personalized postage stamps showing their own photos on each stamp.

8. Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.

9. It snowed in the Sahara Desert in February of 1979.

10. Plants watered with warm water grow larger and more quickly than plants watered with cold water.

11. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

12. Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.

13. Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.

14. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

15. Everyone's tongue print is different, like fingerprints.

16. Contrary to popular belief, a swallowed chewing gum doesn't stay in the gut. It will pass through the system and be excreted.

17. At 40 Centigrade a person loses about 14.4 calories per hour by breathing.

18. There is a hotel in Sweden built entirely out of ice; it is rebuilt every year.

19. Cats, camels and giraffes are the only animals in the world that walk rightfoot, right foot, left foot, left foot, rather than right foot,leftfoot

20. Onions help reduce cholesterol if eaten after a fatty meal.

21. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2005 WHEN...........

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. With every commercial on television, you look to see if it has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)

12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

AND NOW U R LAUGHING at yourself.

Valluvar's words

As my daughter started uttering some words and calls me "amma" now , I could feel this kural much better now...

மக்கட்பேறு
குழலினிது யாழினிது என்பர் மக்கள்தம்
மழலைச்சொல் கேளா தவர்

Kural-66
'The pipe is sweet,' 'the lute is sweet,' by them't will be averred,Who music of their infants'
lisping lips have never heard.

"The pipe is sweet, the lute is sweet," say those who have not heard the prattle of their own children.
[Translation by: http://tamils.tamilpower.com/thirukural-domvirtue1.htm]

GUESS WHO is lucky?

Finally, we (Me and “A”) decided to go for a movie (at CineLac, the open air theater, very close to Lake Geneva). We opted for “Guess Who” instead of “Terminal” and booked our tickets online; then I realized that it was “VF (Version French)” where as the movie Terminal was “VO (Version Original-English)”.

Anyways, decided to look at the positive of it - consoled myself saying that it is the best way to learn French. As we were getting closer to the theatre, I can't explain how much my heart longed for a movie in English/at least sub titles in English. Where as, she (A) was confident that the subtitles will only be in German language.

I was trying to cheer me up to watch a movie in French with German subtitles, ha-ha!
I couldn’t believe my ears ;-) when I heard them speak in English(of course in the movie). But the rest of the crowd was annoyed as they were informed that they have wrongly received the VO of the movie instead VF for this movie. The crowd was offered with both German and French sub titles.

The movie was funny enough to make me feel lucky (though I watched this movie in shivering cold near the lake- wasn’t expecting such a cold in summer time).

Fondue – the Swiss Specialty

I and RC had fondue last week in Geneva. Dining table mela addupai vaicchu paal kaichi/samaichhu sapdurra orru feeling errundadhu. Still we liked it.
Fondue History:

Fondue originated in Switzerland as a way of using up hardened cheese. Deriving from the French verb fondre, meaning "to melt," fondue was a classic peasant dish. Accounts vary on how fondue was originally created. Traditional fondue is made with a mixture of Emmenthaler and/or Gruyere cheese and wine, melted in a communal pot. Cherry brandy is added to the melted mixture, which becomes a dip for pieces of stale bread and crusts.

French gastronome Brillat-Savarin mentioned fondue in his 19th century writings, but fondue really hit its heyday in 1956, when chef Konrad Egli of New York's Chalet Swiss Restaurant introduced a fondue method of cooking meat cubes in hot oil. Chocolate fondue followed in 1964.

Puzzle (from the book - ways of thinking)

Three travelers go into a hostel. Each of them pays 10dollars for the accommodation. Later, however, the innkeeper remembers that three persons in a room should pay only 25dollars, so he sends 5 dollars back to them by servant. The servant, however, thinks that this is an unexpected stroke of luck for the travelers anyhow, and it is enough to give only 1 dollar to each of them. So he can slip 2 dollars into his own pocket. Now, each of guests ends up having paid 9 dollars and the servant put 2 into pocket. This amounts to 3X9+2=29 dollars. Where is the thirtieth dollar?