Did you know this?

In the beginning, I wanted to write a blog about how much time people spend on facebook or any other social/chatting programs. As I was doing some research online, I found some interesting statistics about facebook. I thought it would be a good idea to share those with you.

General Growth

More than 175 million active users
More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
The fastest growing demographic is those 30 years old and older

User Engagement

Average user has 120 friends on the site
More than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
More than 15 million users update their statuses at least once each day
More than 3.5 million users become fans of Pages each day

Applications

More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 5 million videos uploaded each month
More than 24 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month
More than 2 million events created each month
More than 20 million active user groups exist on the site

International Growth

More than 35 translations available on the site, with more than 60 in development
More than 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Platform
More than 660,000 developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
More than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook Platform
140 new applications added per day
More than 95% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform

URL : http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

I was impressed when I saw those statistics. Every body knows that facebook is growing exponentially. How long will it take till it exceeds the total minutes people spend on google or yahoo?

What if...

Friday night, my friends and I were watching Charmed on tv. After a while we started to fantasies how it would be if we would be the 3 girls of Charmed. How we would fight against the cute demons and how we would have magic power. I don't think it would be a good thing if the 3 of us would have magic power. I know us too well and I think we wouldn't use them to kill the demons, but we would use them to flirt with them :) Can you see the comparisson between the Charmed girls and us? Anja, the girl on the right would be Piper, who is in the middle of the Charmed picture. My friend Federica would be Phoebe and I, who's on the left would be Paige.

Where are the quarters when you need them?

Last night, I had the amazing idea to do my laundry. There were 2 reasons why I had that idea. The first one was that I was running out of clothes, didn't do it in like 3 weeks, and the second reason was that I was trying to make up an excuus so I didn't have to study that night. Those ideas are pretty rarely so whenever I have that idea I really want to do my laundry. In order to do that, I need quarters, lots of quarters.

You can already guess what happened to me... I didn't have enough quarters to do everything. Where are those quarters when you need them? I'm a person that hates walking around with all those coins in your wallet, so lately I don't have any cash on me. I pay everything with my smu id or with my bank card. Even the smallest things, which is sometimes embarassing. I don't get why our apartment complex doesn't install a machine that can give us change. That would make my life so much easier.

No more Kellogg cereal for Michael Phelps!

We all heard the news of the greatest Olympian smoking marijuana at a house party in South Carolina. That one picture cost him already a lot of money and reputation, more than people think. He also got 3 months suspension of USA swimming and the cereal company, Kellogg, decided not to renew his contract with the hero. I'm guessing Michael Phelps won't eat any Kellogg cereal anymore :)

We're not talking about some thousands of dollars, we're talking about millions that Phelps won't have because of that contract. I hope that he learned his expensive lesson now. He apologized for his behavior and realizes that he made a stupid decision. What would you think if you just lost a million dollar contract?

January 24, 2009
Knife Attack Kills 3 at Belgian Day Care Center
By STEPHEN CASTLE

DENDERMONDE, Belgium — Two children and an adult were killed and 12 others slashed in a knife attack at a day care center in western Belgium on Friday.
The attack occurred about 20 miles northwest of Brussels, near the town of Dendermonde.
Christian Du Four, a local prosecutor, said at a news conference that a man rode his bicycle to the Fabeltjesland day care center, entered and immediately began slashing adults and children. The two dead children were younger than 3; a woman working in the day care center was also killed.
Theo Janssens, a social worker who arrived about five minutes after the attacks, said: “People were screaming and crying. There was blood everywhere. Babies were crying. People had children in their arms. They were bleeding. One of the children was already dead.”
The assailant then walked out of the center and got on his bicycle. He was apprehended by the police at a nearby supermarket shortly after the 10 a.m. attack, Mr. Du Four said, according to The Associated Press.
Dr. Ignace Demeyer, who was coordinating the medical response to the operation, told reporters that 10 children arrived at area hospitals with serious stab wounds. All required surgery, and all were now in stable condition.
“This was a particularly violent attack. All the kids had multiple stab wounds on their legs, arms and all over their bodies,” he said.
He said two adults also required surgery and were in stable condition. Nine of the 21 children who were at the center at the time of the attack were unharmed, he said.
"People are totally in shock," said Leene Du Bois, a spokeswoman for the regional government of Flanders, The A.P. reported. She said the man suspected of carrying out the attack did not appear to have any connection to the day care center.
Local police did not identify the assailant, nor did they give any biographical information about him beyond his age — between 20 and 25 years old.
One of the day care center’s staff members told Belgian broadcaster RTBF that the attacker’s face had been painted with make-up. Other local media reports said that the man arrested was a local resident of the area with a history of mental illness.
Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/world/europe/24belgium.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=fabeltjesland%20&st=cse

This is an article that was on The New York Times website about 3 weeks ago. The fact that such a small country as Belgium made it on the frontpage of The New York Times, must say something. January 24, 2009 is a day that nobody will forget in Belgium, especially not in Dendermonde, the small city where the crime scene took place. I enclosed the article so that people will understand the situation that didn't hear the news.

This is not the first time that something like this happened in Belgium. The police is still trying to get the motive of the 21 year old man that walked in a day care center and started stabbing around children and adults who work there. So far the police hasn't made any progres because the 21 year old man wasn't related to any of the victimes or day center.

When I read this article, I had to think of the crime in 2006, where a 15 year old boy got stabbed because he didn't want to give his mp3 player to a robber, or the crime in 2007, where a 13 year old boy was the victim of a murder because he didn't have a cigarette for a stranger.


Where is the society going? Where's it going to end?

is it more than just ink?

Tattoos have been a big trend lately. More and more people want to put something on their body permanently. For some people tattoos are art, for others tattoos have a meaning. I've seen many tattoos in my life. There are some that I adore and others that I dislike, but it's not up to me to give my opinion about the tattoos of other people because I don't know why they put it on their bodies, but I'm sure they had a reason for it.

When I was younger, i always disliked tattoos. I said to my parents:" Why would somebody ruin their body by putting permanent ink on it?" Since a few months ago, I changed my mind, I'm even hesitating to get a tattoo myself. I drew everything, it's just a matter of finding the good moment to put it on my body. I have to be 100% confident otherwise I'm not doing it. One of my good friends had a rough period a couple of months before. After that period, she decided to get a tattoo on her body. She got strength out of that tattoo, I saw how she got through that period and that was the moment where I changed my mind about tattoos.

I enclosed the tattoo that I might get soon. I drew this tattoo myself and it has a personal meaning. It's about a period that I'll never forget in my life. That situation made me mentally a lot stronger.

no superbowl without food!

The Super bowl is an important event that is on every body's planner. Nobody wants to miss the game, including me. Yesterday, I experienced my first Super bowl game since I got to the States. I always knew it was a big event but I never realized how many traditions came with it.

My friend asked me to bring some "typical" super bowl food to the party. Of course I had no idea what kind of food I had to bring, so I looked it up on the Internet. I was stunned by the things I saw on my screen...wauw, that was a lot of food!

One of things I found was this sentence : "Whether you tune in for the game, the halftime show, or the commercials, you won't miss one minute of the action if you keep things simple with make-ahead dishes and easy buffets."

When I saw this sentence, I just had to laugh because that's what the food for a Superbowl is about! Little snacks so you won't miss a minute of the game or the commercials.