Illegal Cheese, Casu Marzu

Casu Marzu another type of cheese.

We all love excessive cheese on our Pizza and more cheese on our burgers. As there are too many cheeses around, and some of them are too exotic it’s either you never heard of it, or it’s only available on the black market. As there are too many exotic foods available, so there’re types of cheese that included in this class - one of them is Casu Marzu.

Casu Marzu is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese with live insect larvae (maggots) in it. These larvae are the important ingredient that changes the pecorino cheese to casu marzu. Mature pecorino cheeses are leaving outside with part of their rind removed to allow the cheese fly (Piophila casei) to lay their eggs. The cheese will be the place where all the flies larvae growing up by consuming the cheese. The process will take around few months by leaving the cheeses with flies’ eggs on it to the stage where the acid from the maggots’ digestive system breaks down the cheese’s fats. The final result will be soft texture cheese by the time when it’s ready for consumption – and where thousands of larvae are still alive inside it. Yes, it considered unsafe to eat, when the maggots inside it died!

The making process.

Close look of the living maggots inside it.

If you’re brave enough to try casu marzu there are two important things to put in mind. Frist casu marzu full of living maggots in it that can caused some health problems – as you need to make sure no living maggots get into your intestine as they can live inside it. Second it’s considered illegal so you can only get it from the black market! Well, there are too risky to try this exotic cheese.

Anyway casu marzu is not one of the kind! There are many other options of exotic cheeses out there if you looking for compatible type of cheeses. Below are some other options if you want to try all of the similar types;

• Cacie' Punt (formaggio punto) in Molise
• Casgiu merzu in Corsica
• Casu du quagghiu in Calabria
• Gorgonzola co-i grilli in Liguria
• Frmag punt in Apulia
• Furmai nis (formaggio Nisso) in Emilia Romagna
• Marcetto or cace fraceche in Abruzzo
• Salterello in Friuli Venezia Giulia
• bross ch'a marcia in Piemonte
• casu puntu in Salento

Cheese fly (Piophila casei).

If this type of cheeses not suitable for you, just remember it still someone else favourite, and that’s fine. We all love something that others think weird about it. Perhaps we think about taste as how we look on beauty as “beauty in the eyes of the beholder”.

Make an Extra Money by Driving Uber or Grab

Line up taxi waiting for customer.

The world of public transport has changed since the introduction of Uber and then followed by Grab. These two transportation systems that utilized the usage of new technologies making life more easer and opening chances to millions of drivers to make an extra incomes from their investment on their vehicles. The success of the system proofs that the conventional taxi need to be changed.

The introduction of Uber already steer controversial when many taxi drivers protested its usage by damaging the driver’s cars. These incidents occurred in all major cities in the world where Uber is used. Despite of the protest, Grab had been introduced showing the changes is totally inevitable.

For the drivers itself both Uber and Grab bring them new hope to earn extra cash to help them with their monthly bills includes to pay the car loan itself. The chances by the way never come easy when you are not born as driver to commute the busy city traffics. So here we are going to see what make successful Uber and Grab drivers to achieving their dreams – earn more money!

Waiting for customer should be thing in the pass.

Part Time Driver

This is the largest group of drivers both for Uber and Grab, as many tries their best to earn extra money. Drivers who spend few hours a day to drive around and bring strangers to earn extra money. Some of these drivers drive when they think it is right to go out and nothing to do in their daily schedule.

This type of drivers mostly will stop after few months while some of them will keep on continuing for longer period. Most of these drivers already have good daily jobs while some of them looking for extra cash to gain more in order to support the burden of their expenses.

Uber with its research car for driver-less car.

Full Time Driver

Full time driver are more aggressive. While some of them really find it become their daily job, while most of them return to their daily job before they became an Uber or Grab Driver. It is not easy to change the lifestyles – to be a fulltime driver as this will be the main source of income.

The full time driver need to understand that their new life will be mostly on the road with busy traffics and they also need to face different characters of their customers. Being a fulltime drivers mean more time to spend on driving instead of time for themselves (it also become their new dedicated job where they need to manage it by themselves). Without proper time management and good attitude the fulltime driver will never achieves their target and their dreams.

Tips and Tricks

Whether it is for fulltime or just for fun, driving to earn money come with disciplines, motivations, good attitudes and love for the job that you do. Still there are many things to learn in order to successfully achieving the short term and long term goals as everyday will be a new challenging day in life.

Time management – time management is very important to make sure this new commitment not changing what is really important (the daily job itself). While for those who decide to make it as a fulltime job need to speed their time as much how they spend it for their daily job – at least!

Attitudes – good attitudes toward your job. Yes, this is your job that you can control in your hands so be responsible. Shows good driving practices, make sure your car is safe, fasten your own seat belt and remind your customers too, use the phone holder if you need to use the GPS navigation, avoid too loud music, and give attention to your customers.

Motivation – be serious with your daily target whether in the form of how many hours you should drive, or how much money you should make per day. Always remember, every day is different – so do as much you can while you can.

Remember to use the phone holder to assist your driving.

Learn the tricks – use GPS, avoid congestion roads, accidents, new routes and so on with navigating apps. Most of the drivers using it, but make sure to use it effectively. Some drivers go out early to avoid traffic congestions where there’s also less drivers available. Weekend also another good time to get more customers.

Explore and enjoy – enjoy your driving, explore the edges of the city where you never went to. Driving for customer is the only opportunity for you to reach these parts. Most of the time you will discover new places and probably things that you are looking for.

Improve your skills – learn everything that helps. It might sounds funny, but learning will helps you communicate better with your customers. Broad knowledge will allow you to share many things with your customers when you need too. Sometimes it can helps you in different ways as in learning for time management and managing your income.

Uber/Grab or Conventional Taxi

There are many benefits of being Uber/Grab driver, instead of conventional taxi driver. By harnessing the technologies, this mode of transport get more customers compared the regular taxi that hanging around waiting for the customers in specific places.

Uber/Grab allows customers to book their ride with few clicks on their phone together with the payment deducted from their debit or credit cards – and it comes together with their bill sent to their email. These built in features will be an extra cost for conventional taxi driver. Usually Uber/Grab driver will get a new booked before they drop their passenger.

Customers gain more trust to the system with fix prices and no haggling on the price that already fix by the system. There’s no way for driver to add an extra cost for Grab system (as in Uber the price can be changed at the end of the journey).

Using the phone technology to booked for ride.

Download Uber for iPhone

Download Uber for Android

Download Grab for iPhone

Download Grab for Android

How to be Uber driver link

How to be Grab driver link

Fast and easy, get a taxi and drop customer almost anywhere.

Uber/Grab providing new opportunity to every car owner who decide to earn extra cash or those who are willing to do it as their fulltime job. This opportunity however not necessarily applied to every one of us – not all of us born to be a driver – especially when you cannot tolerate with fussy customers. So think it carefully before your decide to do it as your fulltime job. At least we know, there’s always an opportunity for us to earn an extra cash when you need it.

The Largest Hotel In The World, First World Hotel, Pahang, Malaysia

First World Hotel, before the upgrade.

When we talk about something largest in the world, it’s already become something special to looking up to. So with the Largest Hotel in the World, few hotel operators in the world try their best to make sure they don’t lose this title!

First World Hotel and Plaza located in Genting Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia with total of 7,351 rooms, has set the Guinness World Record for the largest hotel in the world (by number of rooms). It’s lost its title to The Venetian in Las Vegas when it’s opened on January 2008. By 2015 it’s regained back the title with the opening of a new block. The hotel has received 35.5 million guests since 2006.

Genting Highlands Resort, is a large complex in the top of the mountains.

First World Hotel is one part for the whole Genting Hinglands Resort areas that consist of hotels, malls, casinos, theme parks, convention centres, and concert hall with many other attractions nearby. Currently the whole Genting Highlands Resort is under upgrading to allow the construction of the world’s first 20th Century Fox World that will be opened in 2018.

There are not many things to do during this upgrading period and Genting Highlands still been visit by tourist from inside and outside of the country.

It is the area where this resort is located that makes people keep on coming. The cooling breeze and the surrounding nature provide relaxing moments during their time staying here. This is totally different from nearby city of Kuala Lumpur with its rushing and busy traffics.

The upgrading of the whole complex will include the transport facilities upgrade with more automation stations for cable car ticket to the check-in for the hotel. Even though the complex’s upgrade is still in progress, it might be wonderful to check in just to know what to expect when its fully completed.

Micro Post: Seahorse

More like a horse than a fish.

Seahorse is a wonderful creature since it resembles a horse while in fact it is a fish. There are 54 species of seahorse most of them found in shallow tropical and temperate water throughout the world. They mainly live in the areas with sea grass beds, estuaries, coral reefs or mangroves. Using its tail, seahorse will bind itself to vegetation to aid it from drift by the currents.

Seahorses’ sizes range from 1.5 to 35.5 cm (0.6 to 14.0 in). Not like any other fish, seahorse is the only species come with neck and tail, but like any other fishes, they have gills to allow them to breath in the water. Seahorse not a good swimmer and spend their whole life in the same small areas, sometimes just few meters cubic areas. They are not suitable for rough current areas and will die if caught in the storm-roiled seas.

Seahorse anatomy.

Hard to identify, seahorse resemble their surrounding.

Tied itself to corals or sea grass.

Previously thought that seahorses mate for life but further observation shows that some species will stay close together for the breeding season, while some species show a higher level of mate fidelity than others. One thing unique about seahorse is the male will get pregnant instead of the female. With the gestation periods will take around two to four weeks in most of species.

Despite of their slow movement, seahorse is voracious eaters and need to continually eating by consuming almost 3,000 or more brine shrimp per day. By sticking themselves to sea grasses or corals with its prehensile tails, they waiting for their prey to get closer and then suck them with its elongated snout.

Beautiful species of seahorse.

Another unique species of seahorse.

Pollution affected the life of this wonderful creature.

They area many other wonderful things about seahorses, because many of them not just be able to change their colours but some of them can make themselves look like their surroundings to avoid their predators and at the same time to increase chances of catching preys. Some of these wonderful species will be highlighted in their own dedicated articles. 

Online Courses from 10 Best Universities in the World 2018

Online courses give you many advantages.

The Times Higher Education recently came out with the World University Rankings 2018 with the list from top 1,000 universities in the world.

The 10 rankings are the most crucial rankings and slightly changes over the years among few well known universities. Some of these universities are specialized in specific areas and all of them are very good in not only for teaching but also researching with better impact to human all over the world.

While not all of us get the chance to be a fulltime student in these remarkable institutions, this is how we can follow their programs through their online courses. These online courses will provide many benefits before we decide to get more details about it or to further go for the full courses.

You can follow your class anytime.

The 10 ranking of Best Universities in the World 2018

1. University of Oxford

University of Oxford have massive full time courses and online courses covering many categories. These online courses classes are kept small in size to maximise interaction between students and the tutor. The Courses offered normally in 5-10 or 20 weeks in duration, while longer courses result in Oxford qualifications at the undergraduate, advanced diploma and postgraduate levels.

Online courses link: here

2. University of Cambridge

There are few courses offered online by University of Cambridge. There are not many online courses provided by this  university at this moment but still it will get you a chance to know how the learning styles provided from it. If you find there is any course that you like, why not give it a try, after all this is among the oldest university founded in 1209 that still survive until today.

Online courses link: here

3. California Institute of Technology

California Institute of Technology also known as Caltech is a world-renowned engineering Institute that currently one of the best. Founded as Throop University in 1891 in Pasadena, California, and renamed the California Institute of Technology in 1920. If you are interested in technology field then Caltech’s courses should be the one you are eyeing for.

Caltech courses might be held through various platforms such as edX, Coursera and also iTunesU

Online courses link: here

3. Stanford University

Stanford University provide their online free online courses through Stanford Online with more than 100 unique online courses or MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). There are many categories offer by this institution that held directly from its own platform. There are many courses available to suit your interest. Follow the link below to know more about the courses available.

Online courses link: here

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

MIT provide free online courses through its MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and available to everyone. Over the years these materials had been used to improve educators’ courses, assist students all around the world for additional resources, and independent learners to expand their knowledge.

The materials provided in OCW covering most of the topics provided at MIT. Some of the courses also provided through different platform such as edX.

Online courses link: here

6. Harvard University

Harvard and MIT created edX as a non-profit online initiative. So you can find most of the courses from Harvard and MIT through edX, while Harvard itself conducting online courses with both free courses and paid online courses.

These courses include all categories from Art & Design, Business & Management, Science & Engineering and all other courses you can find at Harvard. You can either follow these courses directly from Harvard platform or through edX. – trust me, Harvard courses are the best!

Online courses link: here

7. Princeton University

Princeton Online is the Princeton University's initiative in order to provide online education by sharing their course materials with learners from around the world through other online learning platform providers Coursera, edX, Kadenze and NovoEd. Even though its free non-credit courses, its allow millions of educators, students and individual learners to learn more about their interest subjects.

Online courses link: here

8. Imperial College London

The online courses provided not as many other institutions. Sometimes you can also follow courses provided by Imperial College from other online courses provider such as Edx.org. The online courses provided directly from their website in the form of short courses as you can see from the link provided below.

Online courses link: here

9. University of Chicago

University of Chicago offering different types of online courses such as Open Online Courses, Private Online Courses, and Courses for Alumni and Professional Certificates that held in different platforms. These courses can be followed through platforms such as Coursera, Canvas Network, Graham School, Oriental Institute, and AlumniU. Currently online courses provided by University of Chicago not as much as provided by any other institutions above.

Online courses link: here

10. ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

ETH Zurich offers some online courses covering few categories from Architecture, Geomatics Engineering, Biology, Biotechnology, Computer Science, and many others. Some of these courses are also offer in English while some other in German. For more details about online courses provided by ETH Zurich, please follow the link below.

Online courses link: here

10. University of Pennsylvania

Penn Online Learning Initiative is the online learning provided by University of Pennsylvania that getting grower over the years. Until now Penn Online Learning have 135 courses delivered through Coursera and edX with more than 6.4 millions enrolments. You can enrol directly through Penn Online websites or other platforms above.

Online courses link: here

If you are thinking about to learn new things or advancing your own carrier, why not learn it from the best! With more online courses offer from various institutions that you can follow with your own pace, not to mention its safe lots of money and time too.