Category Archives: weird

banda de la maria

07 Tuesday Aug 2007

Posted by in culture, music, sevilla, weird

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So, these guys are playing underneath my balcony right now,
Tuesday night at 10.30 pm…

Quite a nice surprise to come home to after the usual evening walk. I first came across these guys playing in a square near here last November. A fun (and very loud) mix of stuff – kind of a cross between a New Orleans jazz band and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Lots of horns and percussion, singing done through a megaphone. Very theatrical, like street cabaret.

Anyhoo, so much for watching Chinatown tonight . . . 🙂

Here is their website: Banda de la Maria

¿hablas español?

29 Sunday Jul 2007

Posted by in language, media, weird

≈ 6 Comments

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BBC team make US Spanish journey

This Saturday, I am setting off on a two-week long trip across the United States with a simple goal in mind: to only speak Spanish during the journey.
I am not trying to achieve or break any record. I just want to see what it is like to cross the country without uttering a word of English.

Big deal – looking at the map of the route they will be taking it doesn’t seem like much of a challenge in terms of finding people along the way who speak Spanish. Why not try cutting across the country from New York to San Francisco instead?

I’d actually quite like to see a Canadian version of this, showing someone going from Victoria to St John’s only speaking French. f_devil.gif

feline harbinger of death…

26 Thursday Jul 2007

Posted by in animals & pets, life stuff, weird

≈ 9 Comments

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US cat ‘predicts patient deaths’

A US cat with an apparent ability to sense when a nursing home’s residents are about to die is baffling doctors.

Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.

The two-year-old cat has been correct in 25 cases so far and staff now alert the families of residents when he sits down next to their ailing loved one.

The case is the subject of a study in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

First seen over at Mudhook’s … you can also read about a typical day in the life of Oscar the cat on her blog.

I don’t actually find this surprising as my dearly departed Lua , usually the most undemonstrative of cats (quite franky, a total bitch on four paws), always knew if I was sick and would follow me around the house, ‘taking care’ of me … mostly by never letting me out of her sight and purring all over me whenever I sat down or took a nap.

It makes sense that some animals can sense death much better than humans.