Gadling

According to a Durex global survey, Indians are not sexually satisfied -- only 46% of them manage to orgasm. Not quite what you'd expect from the land of Kamasutra and erotic sculptures.

India today is strongly influenced by Western culture, however it is not yet free from its traditional shell, something that gives rise to much hypocrisy. For example: India wanting to ban cheer leaders in a cricket tournament because they are vulgar, but then Bollywood film songs are provocative enough to be classified as erotica.

Sex is still a taboo subject in the country (it's almost synonymous to porn), there is no sex education in schools (culturally immoral?), and anything to do with the word is suppressed. Not being able to enjoy sex stems from inhibitions and ingrained conservative cultural beliefs, all that rise from tradition and severe lack of openness in society.

Or could all this be rubbish and it really has to do with the fact that the "thingis" of Indian men are too small?

Oh well, at least India has scored higher than the Japanese and Chinese who with only 27% and 24% (respectively) managing to reach orgasm, have been pronounced the countries that have the worst sex. Italians, Spaniards and Mexicans have the best sex lives with 66% of them reaching orgasm.

As if traveling to a new country wasn't adventurous enough, a Spain based company called "Viajes Con Imaginación" (Vacations With Imagination) has started offering trips to Egypt where they not only organize your entire itinerary, but they also plan strange things and make them happen to you. For example: robberies, kidnappings, ghosts coming to haunt you at night -- it's all part of the package -- "Indiana Jones Style" they say. Check out their promo video of what you may encounter on your tour. Of course, exactly what will happen is a surprise.

They also offer a 3-day trip to London where under the "Jack the Ripper" theme, you get to be part of a mysterious investigation while you see the city.

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who doesn't find this cool. Why would I want (and pay for!) an actor pretending to be a robber, jump on me and steal my money while I am enjoying the Pyramids? Besides, even if it sounds like fun, it's NOT REAL -- how could you take it seriously!?

I discovered Ten by Ten about 4 years ago in Benetton's "Colors" magazine and ever since I've logged onto it countless times.

The website gives you an hourly update on what's happening in the world through 100 pictures and 100 words, all scouted by a program that scans through RSS feeds from BBC, Reuters and NY Times.

The pictures you see appear in order of importance (left to right, top to bottom). The word corresponding to the image tells you something about the photo; click on the image and you can see the top headlines this hour alongside the picture.

So in a nutshell: the website automatically captures an hourly updated image of the world. Benetton's Fabrica artist -- Jonathan Harris -- who came up with the idea, calls it Internet Art.

What's also cool is that from November 2004 till date, you can get the "image of the world" for any year, any day, and any hour.

It beats all the "day in photos"/ "best of week photo" sections on any news-site. Simple, creative, brilliant.

23-year old Madrileño Pablo Barbadillo Maestre went to the Amazon in south eastern Peru to research for his thesis on the ethnoecology of big reptiles. He disappeared a few weeks ago and yesterday his body was found covered with bites from insects and animals. They identified him from the passport they found on him.

The cause of his death is still unknown but the guess is that he could have been attacked by tribes in the Amazon; however there is no evidence of violence.

This rings home because 1) he was a young student not afraid to travel alone in the wilderness of the Amazon 2) although he is said to be found in a remote area of the jungle, he had been there previously and was familiar with his surroundings. We can assume he was well prepared for the trip.

It could have been anyone. I wonder what he did wrong? I wonder if he could have avoided it? What protection items should he have taken with him that he didn't have already? What lesson can we learn from this?

The minute I read that cheerleaders are being imported to shake their booties at India's IPL tournament, I knew it would cause trouble: blonde and brunette "goris" (white girls) who are not shy of showing lots of skin is what the average Indian man only gets to see in films. Such girls live, only meters away from them, is enough to leave them drooling and dreaming of you know what. I am surprised that this wasn't foreseen by Indian organizers before they spent the money to get them there.

Spectators are passing lewd and insulting comments and politicians are disgusted as they find the bopping boobs and and gyrating bums on the cricket field too vulgar for Indian tolerance standards. Having said that, Bollywood films these days are no less provocative so this uproar is a prime example of India's double standards.

I had to laugh when I read in the BBC this quote by an Indian politician: "This thing is meant for foreigners and not for us. Mothers and daughters watch these matches on television. It does not look nice." It reminded me of the most famous line Indian men say to other men when they are being lecherous: "Don't you have mothers and sisters!?" It works wonders in making Indian men being sleazy to stop.

Anyway, security measures are at maximum for these poor girls who thought that coming to India and dancing in a national event would be all fun and games, meanwhile talks are being held to define the "line of decency" or to ban their appearance.

On second thoughts, I bet this uproar was foreseen: sexy international girls jiggying and thousands of Indians strongly reacting to it is enough to get another round of publicity in the international press -- which is exactly what has happened.

4 luggage handlers at Madrid Barajas Airport have been arrested for smuggling cocaine into Spain by taking advantage of their position and access to luggage that is unloaded off air crafts.

A bag with over 17 kilograms(!) of cocaine was loaded onto the plane from an unspecified destination. The "loaders" then contacted their friends who worked at Barajas with identification details of the bag that had the drug. Once the bag arrived at Barajas, the luggage handlers picked it up and sent it to the person responsible for delivering missing luggage to its owners (who was also part of the scheme) -- this is how they had planned to get it out of the airport. Sounds too easy to be possible, eh?

It seems like this wasn't the first time it has happened, but the first time they've been caught. It is unclear at what stage they got caught, and how.

Spain has a serious cocaine problem: 3% of adults in the country consume cocaine (even more than the US), making Spain the largest consumer in Europe.

Spain is very lax in many aspects: it's rules are not applied stringently, especially at the airports the controls are quite loose, nobody seems to be really bothered. For example: I have American friends living here for years without papers, sin problema. Once, one of them got questioned on her overstay when she re-entered Spain from the US. She told them she had fallen in love, that's why she didn't go back when she should have. Apparently, the officer smiled and let her back into the country! It could have been her lucky day, but I still don't think that's acceptable.

Another example: smoking marijuana in public is illegal here (you can grow and smoke it at home!), yet every one does it -- I don't know anyone who has been caught.

In my opinion, no matter what soup you are in, if you look innocent, behave with the authorities, and are a little smart, you'll probably get away with it in Spain. So it doesn't surprise me that even authorities take advantage of this chilled attitude. I am glad they got caught. Hopefully this will make Barajas re-evaluate their procedures and tighten controls!

Sometimes it's years before we hear of the real vagabonds; I wonder how many we never hear of at all! Henry Lee McGinnis has been walking the world for the last 16 years, Google him and I find nothing other than a one-minute video on BBC.

So far he has walked over 80,000 miles across the US and 66 other countries. He is currently entering South America and will finish around 2010 in Texas, after passing through Central America and Mexico.

According to his website, the former Methodist minister and World War II army sniper, carries a 100-pound rucksack with everything but a kitchen sink, and a six-foot steel-tipped walking staff for protection. When he is not camping out, he looks for local hosts for a bed.

Inspired by reading National Geographic since he was 6, at the tender age of 9, he knew this is what he wanted to do. He believes that most people are searching for answers to the following questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? This walk is an inner and outer pilgrimage for Mcginnis.

At 80, the man is still full of life: he wants to write a book of his journey and learn to play tennis before he is 100!

On the video, he leaves one message [paraphrased]: "When you are retired, don't sit in front of the TV set and gain 20-50 pounds drinking beer and eating sandwiches, go see the world!"

Prime example of the "it's never too late" notion: If he could start his pedestrian world tour dream at 62, we really have no excuse to follow ours!

Talk to anyone from India and if you can't comment on the Twenty20 Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament that just kicked off, odds are that you'll be made redundant for any further communication.

The tournament is the latest craze that has hit the country, and has left people bedazzled with illusion of what will be over 7-weeks of dance, music, and sport "hungama" (madness). This is of no surprise as it involves the two things that practically run the country: Bollywood and cricket.

This is the first time that international cricketers will put aside national loyalties to play in a private tournament wherein the players were selected by a multi-million-dollar auction earlier this year. Over 100 national and international players have been offered bundles of cash to participate in the 44-day, 59-match, 8-city, cricket league in India.

The 8 teams, named after main cities in India, were also bought in an auction by Indian business moguls like Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya, and Bollywood stars like Sharukh Khan and Priti Zinta.

The opening ceremony last Friday in Bangalore was a 45-minute Bollywood-style extravaganza with music, fireworks, light-shows and acrobats flown in from the Washington Redskins cheerleaders group, and attended by 55,000 people. You can watch bits of it here.

Unfortunately, it looks like this event of such hype and hysteria will not be covered by world news agencies because of a brawl over event photo distribution rights.

In India, Bollywood and cricket are as embedded in our culture as chai and squat toilets. You have to understand them to understand us. I have no doubt that this tournament will be a roaring success and I wish I could be in India for some of the matches! Living abroad has its cons. Sigh.

A new website called Delaycast has just gone into beta. As the name suggests, it's a website that forecasts flight delays so that you can optimize your travel time.

Run by analytical professionals with a strong base in statistics, they run historical flight performance details into advance predictive mathematical models to understand flight delay patterns. Like this they predict future flight patterns basis the airport you are flying from and the time of your flight.

So (as I understand) Delaycast will give you the odds of your flight being on time or getting delayed, calculated from historical data. These odds are useful when booking because you can keep in mind the chances of you being delayed, missing connections, and the possibility of unintended stay-overs. Sounds like they use some math version of Probability(?)

The estimates are based on historical data and you can only search delays basis airports (not flights). They project 4-5 months in the future, and of course, since they are estimates, there are chances that their predictions don't hold through. To add to that, understandably, they do not take into account "in the moment" delays that could happen while you are flying: weather delays, or technical difficulties that might occur on the day.

In my mind, the main causes of flight delays are: 1) weather 2) technical difficulties in air 3) late take-off due to technical difficulties 4) not being able to land because of issues at destination airport 5) reputation of airline. Other than the reputation of the airline, none of these factors are taken into consideration at Delaycast.

So, all in all, it's surely a novel concept that provides a service if you take it into account when booking flights. However, everything can change on the actual day of the flight, so how useful is it really?

You know a service is for rich Western tourists when: in a non-English speaking country the name of the service is in English, the website is only in English and prices start at $3,500. Their video-promo has nice imagery but is full of clichés and sounds like a monologue for retards. Welcome to Brazil's first luxury train service: The Great Brazil Express.

The website still lacks information, but we know that its first 7-day tour begins on April 23: from Curitiba (capital of Brazilian state Paraná and largest city in southern Brazil), to Iguazu Falls -- which are apparently vastly larger than the Niagara Falls. The train will travel 40km/hour, has leather couches, televisions, carpets, music and bar, and can take only 22 people at a time -- quite the exclusive ride I guess.

If you have some extra cash and want to treat your grandparents, this would be perfect!

[Via Globorati]