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Year of the Dragon – 龙年

January 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

龙年

龙年

龙年吉祥！

新的一年祝全世界人民好运连连生活美满！

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon!

I hope that this new year will bring good luck to all people in the world.

I don’t speak or write Chinese, so I sincerely hope that the above Chinese text correctly conveys my meaning. If it is wrong in any way then please leave a Comment below – but only in English or French or Dutch or German or Italian or Spanish!

Since the initial posting of this greeting I have received some excellent help and advice about the Chinese language from @gonewind. I must also thank @PalaEksa for facilitating this.
Thank you both so much, and Happy New Year of the Dragon!

Filed Under: People

How to Survive an Earthquake – The Triangle of Life

January 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

Every year there are hundreds, if not thousands of earthquakes but the only ones to make the headlines are those that impact significantly on us humans. 2011 was a bad year for such events – I don’t need to name them as they will all flash into your mind as you read this.

For a while now I’ve been composing a blog post with the provisional title “The Ultimate Seismograph – How to Survive an Earthquake”. It describes an earthquake I was in and the very unique situation that transpired. While putting the finishing touches to it I realised that “How to Survive an Earthquake” demanded a separate blog post of its own, so here it is. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Links, People, Places

Santa Claus – An Engineer’s Perspective

December 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Someone sent me this in an email quite a few years ago. It’s a gem! I don’t know where it originated or who holds the copyright, but with apologies and grateful thanks to the copyright holder … Here it is:

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, [Read more…]

Filed Under: People, Travel, Wildlife & Nature