Madam Marie Tussaud and Her Famous Wax Museums

 Madam Tussaud Wax Museums is one of the tourist attraction in Europe and other branches in Asia.   A travel must-see place where you come closer to famous celebrities and personalities.

Marie Tussaud (original name :  Marie Grosholtz, December 1, 1761 - April 16, 1850 ) the French-born founder of the famous Wax Museum at Baker Street in London, England  which opened in 1835.  Today, her wax museums had expanded to different locations such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Bangkok, Hollywood, Las Vegas, New York,Washington DC,Shanghai, Wien Hongkong, generating tourists all over the world annualy.  With a vast collection of wax from prominent people from Government, Entertaintment, Sports, Movie characters, and more.

Marie was only a trainee to Dr. Philippe Curtius who owned a wax museum in Paris.  When Dr. Curtius died in 1974, Marie inherited the wax collections and later brought to England.


London Wax Museum
Up close and personal with some of the wax collections at London :  Royal Family, Celebrities such as Michael Jackson, Madonna,Jennifer Lopez, Jimi Hendrix, Sport star David Beckham, an mummy, Obama,Orlando Bloom, Princess Diana, and many more.
Twilight arrived March 2010 at Baker as adoring fans flocked to see their idol.  In a giant wax figure, atleast.  The leading Bollywood actor, Hrithik Roshan, will be the next Indian star to arrive in  Hrithik’s figure Bollywood actors including Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan.
Madame Tussauds is not only a museum but also includes function venues for  Christmas parties, corporate and networking events, dinner dances and awards dinners. 

Opening and Closing of the Museum :  9:30am - 5:30pm every day on Weekends : 9am - 6pm
Marie Tussaud was the founder of the famous Wax Museum at Baker Street in London, England  which opened in 1835.  Today, her wax museums had expanded to different locations such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Bangkok, Hollywood, Las Vegas, New York,Washington DC,Shanghai, Wien Hongkong, generating tourists all over the world annually.  With a vast collection of wax from prominent people from Government, Entertainment, Sports, Movie characters and more.

Official Website of Madam Tussauds Wax Museum

Website Builder Tool: Create a Free Website with Weebly

Weebly is based in San Jose, California founded in 2006.  Aside from the popular Blogspot and Wordpress, Weebly is an alternative website building tool either for business or personal websites.    Without technical knowledge one can create a website because of its friendly user interface and powerful tools. 

Features

Drag and Drop tools.   No technical skills needed with its drag and drop feature. 

Powerful Hosting.  Weebly  boost a reliable and robust hosting infrastructure that are monitored 24/7.

Lay-out themes per category and customization.  Choose   various themes for general,business, personal, dark or light layout and so on.  Replacing the standard header image can easily be replaced by your own image. 

Ease in blogging.  A very convenient tool for bloggers, editor interface is easy to use when creating text, adding photos, and videos.

Multimedia features.  Add your own videos or from YouTube, photo galleries, photo slideshows with effects, and maps.

Create a form.  An easy data builder of your visitiors and let them  interact with you through posting a comment.

Others.  A beginner can easily adapt to the Weebly environment with easy navigation on the entire website. 

Pages can easily be created and link them to other pages

E-commerce features

Automatic mobile sites

Password protected pages

Full HTML/CSS control

Detailed traffic statistics

Available in eight languages

Weebly on social media, follow on Facebook and Twitter to be updated and join  Weebly community.

C-Walk Hip Hop Street Dance

C-Walk or “Crip Walk” is a hip hop street dance  originated in a suburb Compton area in Los Angeles, California in the early 70’s.  Originally a symbolic dance to identify  Crip gang members and its use of  signs for their activities in the early 80’s.

Today, the dance craze is widely known in Europe and other parts of the world as the complex footworks becomes more exciting mostly for teenagers who can still endure the mix steps.

C-WALK EVOLUTION TO CLOWN WALK DANCE
Although both starts with “C” these two are sometimes confused as similar. Clown walk is a variation of moves founded from the Crip Walk like the shuffle and V steps. This is a lot faster and more entertaining. Clown walking had been accepted to hip hop culture without the relations of negative gang history as with the case of Crip Walk.
Clown Walk moves consists of basic V, Shuffle, Heeltoe, Snake heeltoe, xhop and mostly others improvised their unique moves.

C-WALK AND CLOWN WALK STEP VARIATIONS


V Step – Starts with both feet flat on the ground then move in  V position.  Then one foot is going on its toe and other on its heel moving to left-right and vise versa.
The Shuffle Kick - This involves moving the feet backwards and forwards jumping up and down.
The Heel-Toe - Crossing on leg to make a part twist with the toes and heels. This move involves your right foot being directly at 90 degrees behind the left foot to make the partial twist.
The Snake - The dancer must move his front leg left and his right on his heel, shortly being followed by his back leg.

Other advance moves shown are X-Hop, Inverted heeltoe, Snake heeltoe.
Always keep the steps go with the beat of the music.
Tie the shoe lace tight to C-Walk fast.

TOPS SHOES USED BY C-WALK DANCERS (or C-WALKERS)

Nike Cortez first appeared in 1972, the high quality of this shoe makes it the top choice of C-Walkers for its lightness, comfortable, and easy to use features for the moves.
Nike Air Force One makes it to the second spot. It has been with great style, durability, and revolutionary features since introduced 20 years ago.
Adidas another well known for most athletes and dancers is on the third.  Most commonly picked styles are Gazelles, Sambas, Super Stars and Good year.
Converse Hi Top All Stars shoes are also known in the C-Walkers community.

SAMPLE SONGS FOR C-WALK DANCE
C-Walk dance are mostly accompanied by techno rap urban music. Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, young Lil Bow Wow, and other Hip hop rap artists have also performed C-Walk on stage.
Dr. Dre – Keep Ya Heads Ringing
Fantasia Barrino – Truth is
Ludacris - Me and my Crew
Outkast - Ms Jackson
Snoop Dogg - Gin and Juice
Snoop dog – Drop it like it’s hot
Tonedeff -Heads Up
Xzibit – Get your Walk On
2Pac – Loyal to The Game
50 Cent - Just A Little Bit

 

NASA Missions: STEREO and Solar Dynamics Observatory

The ability of predicting these storms and knowing what humanity can do will lessen the effects and the damage of it. To understand the sun and its effects on Earth, NASA continues to conduct missions including Spacecrafts STERO and Solar Dynamic Observatory. The two are positioned to view of 90 percent of the solar surface.

STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) was launched last October 2006 to provide revolutionary view of the Sun-Earth System. They will capture 3D structure of coronal mass ejections and violent eruptions from the sun. It will mostly helps in space weather detection for the coming of the Earth-directed solar ejections.

NASA mission

 image source

The Solar Dynamics Observatory is a more advanced solar spacecraft launched on February 11, 2010 to observe the sun and study the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth. It will take a daily detailed images of the Sun by every 0.75 seconds and will send 1.5 terabytes of data back to Earth (the equivalent of 380 full-length movies).  It will help scientists understand more of Sun’s magnetic field and how it is released into space as solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in solar irradiance.

Related Links :
Nasa Earth Observatory
NASA STEREO Website
More Videos from Solar Dynamics Observatory YouTube Channel

Is the Earth Ready for Bigger Sun Solar Storms?

Last January 27, 2010 NASA STEREO Spacecraft captured a more active sun which can  mean bigger solar storms in the future.  "The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity," said Richard Fisher, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division.

A sun storm is a short and sudden event: It builds up as magnetic fields in the corona of the sun form beautiful plasma arcs, and happen when the magnetic fields "reconnect": The magnetic field lines of two separate magnetic fields join and release a lot of energy, which catapults the hot plasma into space.  But the solar storm triggers a geomagnetic storm in the magnetic field of Earth, that affects power lines and pipelines, and can last for a few hours.

According to NASA report, a small coronal mass ejection (a stream of charged particles from the Sun) shoots out and into space at about a million miles per hour, carrying some magnetic field with it. The top image shows the beginning of the coronal mass ejection, while the lower image shows the solar matter leaving the Sun’s corona.

Sun coronal mass ejection

 image via NASA Earth Observatory

Recent occurences was related to  Sept. 2, 1859 incident, an incredible storm of charged particles sent by the sun slammed into Earth’s atmosphere, overpowered it, and caused havoc on the ground. Telegraph wires, the high-tech stuff of the time, suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful aurora, were seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii.

"What they generated was the perfect space storm," says Bruce Tsurutani, a plasma physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A day before it happened an extraordinary solar flare was witnessed by British astronomer Richard Carrington.

The Effects of Sun Storms to Earth?

A coronal mass ejection can cause problems on Earth. The energetic particles can damage the following :
Communications (mobile phones ) and web (Internet) backend operations rely on electronic information
system. Can you imagine what will happen if these can be hampered by sun storms. With the electrical and electronic power dependency of humans for its daily life, it will become vulnerable to the threats of the Earth .

Affects the travel industry, communications and navigation problems in airplanes.

Disrupt industrial and household electrical supply. A blackout is possible to occur for this incident.

Water and Sewerage. Most of the pumps used for sewerage are powered by electricity.

Technological and electronic power supply. Cable and television networks mostly rely on satellites.

Total loss can cost to 2$ Trillion worth of damage.

Wine Glasses Music

Wine glasses creates music through the rims filled with water, and the player’s fingers rubbed them to create notes. Way back 1741, a glass harp instrument or musical glasses which made of upright wine glasses was created by an Irishman Richard Pockrich, the first virtuoso of the instrument. This has been more popularized in the 18th century mostly in European countries, and up to the present several musicians are into wine glasses music.

Robert Tiso is an Italian glass harp musician with classical repertoire. Classical music lovers will definitely enjoy his glass harp videos.

"Hungarian Dance" No. 5 by Johannes Brahms

“The Swan” from the Carnival of the Animals by Composer Camille Saint Saens.

Other excellent videos of him are "Moonlight Sonata"  by Ludwig van Beethoven, How to Tune a Glass harp.  See more of his videos.

Basic Wine Lingo

Aroma. General term usually positive for the smell of the wine such as fruity,spicy,earthy and so on.

Balanced. Refers to the harmonious balance of a wine’s components such as acidity,sweetness,tannin,alcohol,oat, and so on.

Body. The density of a wine : thin, light, medium, or full-bodied.

Barrel-Fermented.  Wine that is fermented in small barrels instead of  large tanks.

Complex. Describes a wine that is multidimensional in terms of flavor and aroma, etc.
Floral. The aroma of flowers can be found in white wines such as carnation,jasmine,orange blossom rose petals, and for red wines roses,violets etc.

Full-bodied.  A wine with rich, mouth filling texture and weight on the palate.

Oaky. The aroma derived directly from the oak barrel aging and usually described as vanilla-like.

Wine Trivia :  Wine as disinfectant or stain remover.  Mark Daeschel, A microbiologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon discovered  that white wine is an excellent remover of red stains and cleaner of kitchen countertops.  According to Daeschel, white wine acts as a disinfectant and kills salmonella, a common food-borne bacterium, within a few seconds.  So, next time you have a left-over wine, do not throw it straight it into trash but to the kitchen instead.  Watch video for more details.

Food and Wine: White Wine and Red Wine

     White wine

White wine is generally served before the red wine. This is best with fish, shellfish,white meat, poultry, veal and dish with cream sauce.

White wine for dishes made of cream sauce.

Red wine

Red wine for dark meat, chicken, rabbit, tuna and salmon.

Light-bodied wine served before full-bodied.  Light-bodied wine for lighter dish while full-bodied wine for richer dish.

Sparkling wine of Champagne is expensive because it uses the “Methode Champenoise, the classical method of making Champagne which uses the traditional techniques of second fermentation in the bottle and the fermentation process is a hands-on operation.

Drink the same type of wine included in the cooking of a dish.

Make sure to rinse mouth with water before drinking a different wine.

Some of Wine’s Aging Process

White Wine :
Chenin Blanc (1-3years)
Viogner (1-3years)
Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio (1-4years)
Muscadet (1-5 years)
Chardonnay(2-8 years)

Red Wine :
Tempranillo (2-10years)
Barbera (3-10years)
White Merlot (1-3years)
Pinot Noir (2-12years)
Cabernet Sauvignon ((3-15years)

Type of Wine Glasses

Wine glasses varies for the types of wines.  A good wine glass should be clear crystal, and stem should not be too long or short for proper handling.
Examples of wine glasses are : 
Champagne flute
Bordeaux red wine glass
White wine glass
Sherry glass
Port glass

One of the finest maker of glassware is from an Austrian Wine Glass Company, Riedel. See various wine glasses, explore more information on wine colors,  wine serving temperatures and watch video gallery  from their website.

French Composer: Facts about Gabriel Faure

Gabriel Faure (1845 - 1924)

Image via Wikipedia

Gabriel Urbain Fauré was born in Pamiers, France, on 12th May 1845 and died on November 4, 1924 because of pneumonia.

Faure is one of the French composers who also contributed in the Music History.  He was a composer, teacher, pianist, and organist in the Romatic era.

He started his musical studies at the age of nine at Ecole Niedermever music school in Paris where his mentor was the famous French composer Camille Saint-Saens.  They became friends and later founded  the Societé Nationale de Musique for  younger generation of  composers in France. 

He became a professor of composition at  Paris Conservatoire.  Maurice Ravel, another great French  composer became his student and Nadia Boulanger, most influential teacher of musical composition on the 20^th century.  He held a position of a director of the Conservatoire in 1905 – 1920.

He was the main organist at the Churches of Saint Sulpice (1871 – 1874) and  Madeleine (1896 – 1905).

His music influences are composers Chopin, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner. 

His musical style exudes melodic sophistication and harmonic complexity.  He was regarded as the master of French songs and the Brahms of France.

See more of his major works:

Song, Après un reve (After a Dream), 1865

First violin sonata, 1876

Ballade, for piano and orchestra, 1881

Pavane, for orchestra, 1887

Song, Claire de lune (Moonlight), 1887

Orchestral Suite, Shylock, 1889

Orchestral Suite, Pelleas and Melisande, 1892

Song-cycle, La Bonne Chanson (The Good Song), 1893

Dolly suite, for piano duet, 1897

Opera, Pelleas et Melisande, 1898

Requiem Mass, 1900

Opera, Penelope, 1913

Song-cycle, Le Jardin clos (The Enclosed Garden), 1915

Orchestral Suite, Masques et Beramasques, 1919

Song-Cycle, L'Horizon chimerique (The Elusive Horizon)

Faure was married to Marie Fremiet in 1883 with whom he had two sons, but later his marriage failed.  There had been other women in his life which said to be the inspiration of his works. 

French Composer: Facts about Maurice Ravel

 

Image via Wikipedia

Maurice Ravel  (1875 – 1937)

His full name is Joseph-Maurice Ravel.

Ravel was born on March 7, 1875 in  Ciboure, France and died on December 28, 1937,

Paris.

Ravel was considered as one of the outstanding French composer and orchestrator.  He wrote for piano, voice, opera, ballet, chamber ensembles and orchestra.

At the age of 14, he completed his piano studies at Paris Conservatoire, there he became a student of  fellow French composer, Gabriel Faure.  

He considered himself as a classicist where music was  based in  tradional forms and structures while presenting his new harmonies.

Ravel completed writing his piano piece, Jeux d’eau, in 1901.

His best-known music includes Pavane pour une infante defunte – Pavane for a Dead Princess (1899), the String Quartet (1903), Sonatine for piano (1905), and his great ballet Daphnis et Chloe’ (1912) commissioned by impresario Sergey Diaghilev.

Other works :  opera L’Enfant et les sortileges (1925), the suite Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917), the orchestral works La Valse (1920), and Bolero (1928).

He became a professor and director at the American School of Music in Fountainebleau.

He died at the age of 62 after a brain ailment operation which he had been suffering for years.

Telephone Etiquette in Business

With the emerging Internet communication, telephone is still use for everyday business conversations.  Proper manners and telephone etiquette are still expected to be practiced within the office.  Here are some  common telephone etiquette for employees:

• When receiving a call, answer the telephone promptly preferably not more than two rings. 
• Identify yourself or firm in your opening words. 
• Make  a professional welcome greeting, remember that you are a window of the company image so create a good impression on the fist words of the conversation.in between the conversation.  If cannot be avoided, excuse yourself for awhile.
• If the call is not for you, take the initiative to take a message and be sure to get the it accurately from the caller.  Forward the message as soon as the person arrives or write it down on a post-it note.
• When you have to refer the call to someone or to be transferred to other local number, inform the caller properly why you are transferring the call.
• Make the call as brief as accurate as possible. Topics relates to personal matters should not be incorporated with business conversations or ask the caller personal questions especially if you are talking with  a business client.
• Personal calls are discouraged during office hours unless it is an emergency call.

Twitter Power Tools and Applications

Twitter useful tools and applications  to optimize your tweeting experience.

Mozilla Power Twitter is an excellent tool for Twitter users.

Mozilla "Power Twitter" Add-On
Features within your Twitter interface :
View videos YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, Google Maps, song.ly, and all sorts of playable/viewable media
Link expansion
Link translation to page titles
Search scoped to a specific user
Status history peeking on mouseover
Facebook status updates
Custom settings
@mentions of friends on profile pages
Photo uploading
Link shrinking
#dailyquestion Now is the time to level up your tweeting experience.


ManageFlitter This is the easiest tool to manage your followers. Unfollow the people who do not follow you back, and also get rid of people who tweets too much. The site offers a one-click easy to use tool which will take you only a minute to finish the process.

Features :
Unfollow
Those who do not follow you back
Those who are not active within a month
Those that do not tweet often
Those that tweet too often
You have the option to retain those who are verified and popular accounts most likely celebrities, and other personalities. Eventhough they do not follow you, you might still want to follow them for their tweet updates.

How to use :
Open manage twitter site
Connect to your twitter account by choosing "allow" option the site to access and update your data 
The result will appear and choose your preference those you want to unfollow

Twitterholic  Find out who are the most popular twitter users and follow them.

How to Keep Your Food Safe

Preventive ways to ensure  food are safe and  avoid poisoning.  Here are some tips to protect your family from food poisoning:

Wash hands frequently.

1. When shopping, always be aware of the manufacturing date and the expiry dates especially for canned goods and bread food items.


2. Chilled or frozen food such as meat and fish should be quickly brought to home and immediately stored them in the refrigerator to keep its freshness.

3. Make a habit to wash and sanitize hands after going to the toilet or handled pets especially before preparing food.


4. Cook food well as per instruction label. While re-heating food, make sure the food are re-heated well.
5. Always keep your kitchen clean, and food are properly stored on its proper places.
6. Train the children of basic awareness, and preventive ways in ensuring food safety.