Better virgin, if in Virginia...

An American guy I met the other day told me this interesting story:

His sister is an ObGyn (obstetrician-gynecologist). She was offered a job in a hospital in the state of Virginia, for 2 million dollars per year!!! And she turned it down!!!

Why?:

Apparently, recent legislature in the state of Virginia made it so that there is absolutely no state support of any kind, for mothers who have just had babies. As a result, if a mother gives birth to a child with some sort of defect, she is in DEEP trouble. She has to shoulder all sorts of expenses and troubles by herself, especially if she has no private insurance (which is typically unlikely to cover such expenses anyway). So, what do such people resort to? They SUE the obgyn that delivered their baby. Even if they have a totally ridiculous case, they go for it, because it is their only chance to obtain the money required to raise their child. And what's more, due to the jury-based system in the US, they often WIN the cases, because the jury feels sorry for the poor mother and child, even if it does not make sense.

So this has driven most of the obgyns out of the state of Virginia, since these law suits can cost them enormous amounts of money, or even their practitioner's license. And now the Virginians are trying to attract new obgyns from other states, offering them enourmous salaries!

Nice!

Query letters

Came across this blog, which contains movie film scripts that have been rejected:

"Actual, honest to god query letters I've received in Hollywood. Updated frequently. And hey, if one of these is your query, have a sense of humor, will ya? You're gonna need it in this town".

Some are really weird..

Otoacoustic

Στο μετρό σήμερα, τύπος στο κινητό του:
"...εεε, καλά, τότε πρέπει να το κάνουμε τουλάχιστον δύο μέτρα, για να χωράνε τέσσερεις άνθρωποι..."

Τραπέζι; Θάλαμος ασανσέρ; Ομαδικός τάφος;

Ποιός ξέρει;...

Bliss

bliss [noun]: a state of extreme happiness.

or, in my book, putting my little baby monster to sleep to the music of REM's "Everybody hurts".

You should try it, if it applies to you...

Apparently...

Jules Verne

I am ecstatic: Yesterday evening I stumbled upon this site , which contains satellite images of EVERYWHERE! I mean all of the world, cities, mountains, the sea...

According to the "importance" of the location you can zoom in to a different resolution. Over athens you can see your house, and the solar pannel on your roof. Over paris, you can see the people standing in line to enter the Louvre!

I spent all night flying over the world, from Alkatraz to the Himalayas, and from London to Arizona!

In the following images which I grabbed, you can see:

The quad of Imperial college, London, where I used to eat my sandwiches on sunny days.


The glass pyramid and line of people in front of the Louvre


Alkatraz


A glacier in the himalayas


I'm like Jules Verne: I travel everywhere without ever leaving my room!

The old/odd couple...

Have you hear the one about this old old couple who, at the age of 110 years decided to divorce? A journalist interviewing them asked "How come you are divorcing so late in your life, after decades and decades of marriage?". The husband replied "Actually, we had made up our mind years ago, but we decided to wait for our children to die first, so they would't be sad for us..."

Sometimes it's simple...

A gardner came to our house a couple of times, to take care of some plants. He's a young guy, probably from Romania. He's nice and speaks good Greek. He told us that his wife is pregnant.

Isabelle had the idea that when he finishes his work and we pay him, we also give him a small gift for his soon-to-be-born daughter. I thought this is a great idea, so we started talking about what we should get, a toy, or some clothes etc. Since we really don't know this guy, we thought that he might be offended if we give him something "practical" like clothes, as if suggesting that he doesn't look like he can afford it himself (which, by the way, he doesn't)... So we decided on a cuddly bear kind of thing.

Isa went out and got one, after calling me three times to ask if she should choose a giraffe, a bear or a dolphin. Then yesterday she took out her wrapping paper, scisors and cellotape, and wrapped it up nicely. Today he came by to get paid. Isa was all excited. She called me at work to tell me that she is about to give him the gift, and later she called me even more excited to tell me how touched he was, and how he thanked her and kissed her and all that.

I can tell you beyond any doubt that the happiness this gesture has given Isa (and myself), not only exceeds the happiness we gave this guy, but really ranks way up there.

Sometimes life is simple, if you simply want it to be simple. Instead of conjuring up her little plan, Isa could just as easily have spent her time wondering if she could trust this guy alone in our garden, and counting the buckets and pots to see if any will be missing afterwards.

Give yourself the benefit of the doubt!

blog-double

I have this friend (let's call him/her "zak", to protect his/her privacy), who recently became acquainted with the blog-world (not much later than me). Zak was really excited, but just as zak started posting, zak decided that zak was not sure zak wanted people to be able to reach the stuff zak posted. I immediately suggested the remedy: screw the blog stuff, get a piece of paper and write it just for yourself. This was not satisfactory. Zak wants to continue posting, but in such a way that noone will be able to arrive to zak's stuff. Apparently zak is excited by the idea of zak's thoughts floating in cyberworld, and particularly turned on by the idea that someone could accidentally stumble onto zak's writings, without knowing who's they are, and without zak ever knowing that someone read zak's stuff.

I find this very interesting, it's like a schizophrenic behaviour, being at the same time excited by the idea of disclosing your inner thoughts and soul, but insisting on prohibiting others to sample it (except by total chance).

Like that movie, body-double... ("relax, don't do it!...")