Blog Marco

I came across this word while reading some random American business magazine: "Meshuga" (Alternative spelling: Meshugga). I guess this slang is American as it appears on a google search and in my American dictionary but not my trusty old Australian Pocket Oxford. If you don't know what it means, it simply translates to "crazy". An example usage is "This man is meshugga". The roots of the word is that it is Yiddish (meshuge) and originated from Hebrew. I don't know how to pronounce it, but with reference to the pronounciation key, the word should sound like MESHUGE - as is "MESH" as in mesh and "U" as in full and "GE" as in get.

The problem with the internet is that there is so many goodies out there and little titbits of random information... Here's a few quick links for your surfing pleasure:

The Chinese man who bought a MiG fighter on eBay wants a refund.

Have you noticed search results being a little crap as of late? Think about this: Google makes money of the advertising on the search engine. If the user have crap results, what elese are they going to click on?The advertising.

Congratulate Disney for not renewing their contract with McDonalds to promote Maccas products using Disney characters.

According to some reports, the chinese government is raising the price of waribashi (disposable wooden chopsticks) in an effort to protect their forestlands. Every year, throughout the world, billions of these disposable chopsticks are thrown away. The price hike is part of China’s larger plan to totally ban the production of waribashi completely. The waribashi is widely used in Japan, Chinese waribashi is 50-200% cheaper than it’s Japanese counterpart.

According to this news story, Richard Budlong, 56, was dismissed from his job at NCR Australia last year, after 31 years of service for storing pornography at his work computer. The pornographic images had been sent by senior managers so he was not overly concerned that he was breaking IT policy and argued NCR "had a workplace culture which tolerated the distribution of such material". Let this be a warning for all you perves ;P

Read this interesting article about the 10 fastest growing jobs. They include: Network systems and data communications analyst, Physician assistant, Computer software engineer, Network and computer systems administrator, Database administrator, Physical therapist, Medical scientist, Occupational therapist and College instructor.

I remember walking past a Law lecture at my university a few years ago and seeing every student busy typing away at their laptops. Heres an article about students in the US losing their right to use a laptop in the classroom. Notable article quotes: "But as an experiment, the professor permitted laptops this past year to compare the difference in students' performance. His conclusion: Don't allow laptops." .... "A chemistry professor at the University of Oregon, said he was disturbed to find students gambling online while they were purportedly working on an in-class assignment."

Who knew chimps can be deadly? According to this New Scientist article, some escaped chimps in Sierra Leone killed a man and three Americans badly bitten. Here's something interesting that you may want to remember next time you're battling with deadly chmips: "adult chimps are far stronger than people."

A Chinese businessman has bought a MiG-21f plane from a U.S. seller on the online auction Web site eBay for US$24,730 and plans to use it to decorate an empty space at his offices. News articles can be read here, here. The auction page can be viewed here. Auction page for the MiG aircraft describes the item for sale as a [MIG 21: Mach 2.1 Jet Fighter] "MIG 21F-13, 'N' number N1011E, 1124hrs TT airframe, 845hrs TT engine, 224hrs SMOH engine. Converted to US batteries, self start. Cold seat. Original excellent condition.

Dirty Japanese Minds - Are Japanese men just "dirty"? Here's a business Train Cafe where men pay up to board a train to satisfy their fantasy of groping women on a train. Such an enterprise would never be accepted in Australia. Thank God for horny Japanese men to give us this concept... Kineda says:

All is quiet in this tunnel scene above, but make sure you download the video and have a wtach of the video compilation of car crashes in a tunnel. Makes you think twice driving through a tunnel - but one thing is for sure - keeping your distance will surely save lives (and damage). Although there was one crash in the video where a truck crashed through the wall of the tunnel into oncoming traffic. No amount of ditance would prevent that crash - that was just purely a case of bad luck.

I'm sure you've come across it before - street signs (or any public sign in fact) that have a serious message to convey, but instead makes you titter because it was conveyed badly.

Certainly there are heaps of sites online which will direct you to Japanese attempts at English - with hilarious results such as this and this.

However, it's even funnier when there's a English sign in Australia - surely you can't claim poor translation here.

I'm selling two things on eBay that I've just listed a few minutes ago. The first one is this palm tree seed husk that fall off our palm trees every time it bears seeds. I don't know why I'm posting it up for sale, it would probably end up as a $1.09 donation to eBay, or indeed a well invested $1.09 - who knows? Perhaps I'm just bored with nothing else better to do. You can check out the auction
here.

As we reported before there is a phone scam going on in Sydney and Melbourne. I got a missed call this afternoon - rang for exactly one ring and dropped. I knew of this scam and I didn't know the number so I googled the Melbourne landline phone number and I got this site: this and thisthis. Basically the scam is this: "In their scam, people's mobiles are given a missed call. If you are in Melbourne the missed call number would be 8558 1444 and if you are from Sydney the missed call number is 8219 0500.

The next step in the scam is that the person who received the missed call would then call the number and then be greeted by a recording. This recorded message from DC marketing claims that the individual had been "selected to collect an amazing gift with a value of at least $40".

The scam then proceeds to instruct the individual through the recording to call a 1900 number as a cost of at least $3 a minute (more if you stay on longer) from mobiles to get their individual winner's code and also be in the running for up to $10,000."

You may have heard of traders making a killing on the markets or traders getting killed over their financial balances in the stock markets. You may have thought that the stock market was a place to make a fortune. Or you may have thought the markets were too risky. But the fact is more than half of the Australian population have a direct or indirect ownership of shares, either through direct ownership, derivatives or through managed funds and superannuation. And a growing number are share trading with the boom of internet brokerage, infomation accesibility and the boom in financial services and awareness. Share trading may be a dream job for some, having unlimited freedom; no bosses. But trading stocks for a living is not easy.

I previously commented about Nigerian Scams. They aren't new and they still seem to catch a lot of people, even with all the media - newspapers, the Prime Time Current Affairs Programs and talkback radio. Who are these gullible and greedy people? Have they been living under a rock? Don't they hear about the stories of people who have been sucked into these scams? Or are they just too busy working their butt off for money that they have just lost their common sense? Who knows - because I know I'm not one of them. Queensland police are staggered by the amount gullible Aussies losing their investment money to scammers. Police estimate that the scam has earned more than $7 million from Queenslanders alone. According to news reports, professionals such as financail advisers, lawyers and university professors are getting sucked into scam. One person had even put $2.2 million towards the Nigerian scam.

Here's a new employment model that McDonald's is currently trialling in Britian. The concept of job sharing involves the one position where you as the employee is able to share your job and swap shifts without telling your boss. Each employee clocks on into the shift and is paid individually for the hours they worked into their account but it is essentially the one position. If the trial scheme proves successful, McDonald's said that it would expand the family job sharing scheme to include friends and cousins.