Now that she'd told me, I couldn't ignore it. I grew up in a hot country where shit attracts flies in hordes. Horrid. I asked Shirley to take over the reception desk while I trudged off to deal with the 'floater'.

It wasn't a big mess. One flush and it was gone. When this shit happens in my office job, everyone gets appalled or disgusted. Some outraged lady will then send a furious email to all the female staff reminding them, nicely, to leave the toilet as they would like to find it. They are too far up their own arses and might benefit from doing voluntary work where the landscape is not so clean, such as at www.retreatanimalrescue.org.uk/

Mr. Ken Fisher who is himself a great fund manager and the son of Mr. Fisher whom Mr. Buffet recommends calls the market a "The Great Humiliator". Whenever you risk predicting the market it does the opposite!

I have research reports from a big broking house (Oh my God, sent urgently from a Blackberry!), view of a CIO who said "the best bull run of our lives is over, Subra", a technical expert's report (on CD) that the market will see a 55% correction from its peak of 21000 - which means sensex will see 9827 (sorry maths or facts one of them is correct), and therefore I do not have a view. One very senior banker has a very pessimistic view on the "land bank" of most real estate companies. And particularly of one company - and he is expecting that to spoil the recovery party, if any.

All these views are pessimistic in the short run (which could be 5 years?). One expert said "it took the market 10 years to cross 4200 the previous peak - from 1992 to 2002" so you may see 21000 in 2018!! Vow! we as human beings love creating a trend where none exists! God save us.

I know only one thing - if your money is being invested for the long run (I am old fashioned I mean about 7-10 years) that money should be in equities. If it is for a shorter period (3-5 years) be in a balanced fund. If you have money for less than 24 months, be in debt instruments like FMP, or short term floater. As simple as that.

Will the market touch 10k before touching 21k? Please consult an astrologer.

Say you are an international company with a setup in Malaysia, and have affiliates and branches overseas. If an engineer wanted to quit, but you persuaded them to join up another affiliate in another country instead, would you consider that as a headcount lost to attrition, or take credit that the engineer is still 'with the company', and not really a loss.

Some items for discussion (let's call the displaced engineer a floater):

• Organisation - headcount = organisation - headcount, the way I understand it. A floater out of sight is out of the organisation's mind.
• Does the floater earn extra income for the original hiring company, ala MLM?
• Now the org. company is short of an engineer earning revenue. Does the mother ship (i.e. headquarters) give it a discount or credit that it has generated a floater?
• Is the floater ever coming back? In some organisations (in Malaysia, I guess ExxonMobil and Shell are two examples), the floaters are meant to come back higher up the management chain, bringing expertise and maturity to their home countries. How does that work for consultants or engineering companies? Oversea companies tend to be older and more established. Would management skills gained elsewhere and applied locally cause companies to be top heavy, to many chiefs, not enough workers?
• Is there any guarantee that the floater will not use the foreign branch as a lauchpad to get a larger renumeration, as they probably now have PR status, or resident status. The floater can quit the overseas company and get more money (I call this a floater with a motor).
• Do you get a lot of expats floating from other affiliates to Malaysia? It doesn't seem very cost efficient to bring them in, unless they have skills that they can transfer (hah, tech transfer is a topic for a later blog).

Maybe we should all be floaters.

But in police parlance, it means something more macabre: a human body that has bobbed to the water’s surface.

And spring is the time when the phenomenon is on full display.

So far in April, the Police Department’s Harbor Unit has fished three bodies from the 150 square miles of water they patrol in the five boroughs of New York. Only four bodies were recovered in the three previous months. Last year, the Harbor Unit officers fished out nine bodies in April, May and June, but three in January, February and March.

According to figures from the city’s medical examiner’s office, 20 of the 31 bodies found floating in New York’s waterways last year emerged in the months from April through August.

“The numbers seem to support that in the springtime we have a higher incidence of recovering floaters,” said Deputy Inspector David T. Driscoll, who has been the unit’s commanding officer for two and a half years.

In the winter, he explained, the cold water temperature slows the decomposition of a body. As the temperature rises in the spring, decomposition speeds up, producing gases that make the body buoyant and bring it to the surface.

The recent warm, sunny weather raised temperatures in local waters to 50 on Saturday and to 54 degrees by Wednesday, he said.

Those who work the waterways around the city — the Coast Guard officers and the fishermen, the ferry operators and recreational boaters — are often the ones who alert police units to the sighting of a body.

When the call comes, the radios of the Harbor Unit crackle and their launches push off to the site.

On Friday, at 12:50 p.m., the body of a man in his 30s, dressed in a black leather jacket and blue jeans, was discovered near the Williamsburg Bridge, Inspector Driscoll said. The remains were taken to Pier 11, and the First Precinct is investigating, he said.

On Saturday, the body of a man in his 30s, clad in a black shirt and blue jeans, surfaced in the Harlem River near 155th Street, the police said. And at 8:15 a.m. on Wednesday, another body — of a man in his 40s — rose up in the East River near Pier 42.

The rite of spring occurs elsewhere, as well.

On Wednesday, the body of a 21-year-old man who had been missing from the Albany area since Christmastime was discovered by a fisherman in the Hudson River around Coxsackie, the authorities said. The body was identified as that of Joshua Szostak, who was last seen on the night of Dec. 23; his cellphone was later found at the Port of Albany. The police are trying to determine how Mr. Szostak wound up in the river.

Officials often hope the bodies will provide answers to some longstanding mysteries.

“There’s people that went missing,” said Ellen S. Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner’s office, which handles the autopsies. “There are a lot of different things.”

Inspector Driscoll said the surfacing of the bodies was affected by “a lot of variables” besides water temperature and body decomposition.

The depth at which a body is submerged plays a part, since deeper water is colder and not so susceptible to sunshine and atmospheric changes. Some areas have quickly changing tides or currents where the water moves faster than in other areas. The configuration of the riverbed or harbor bottom might play a part in how quickly a submerged body becomes dislodged and rises.

The inspector said his officers had special training in bringing the floaters aboard. “We bring them to land, and they are processed from there,” he said.

By AL BAKER

New York Times

HAVE YOU EATEN ENOUGH FIBER? YOUR EBAK WILL TELL YOU SO.

According to dieticians, doctors, medical researchers, nurses, midwives, komadrona, albularyo, hilot etc…etc… but most importantly according to my cousin na nursing student, that fiber is necessary to everyone’s diet because it prevents cancer and helps better digestion and bowel movement. So, therefore, kung ayaw mong magka-kulani cancer at magbakasyon sa CR ng 3 oras dahil sobrang matigas ang ulo at nahihiya ang iyong ebaks na lumabas you have to eat fiber-rich foods.

Pero ang tanong ng sambayanan , paano mo malaman kung have you eaten enough fiber? Well, ang kasagutan ay nasa iyong makapangyarihan at mahiwagang ebak. Yes, my friend, ang sagot ay makikita sa iyong makapangyarihan at mahiwagang ebak, as in tae, ipot, takla, shit, feces, human excrete, stool, dung, manure. Hindi ka ba nagtataka kung bakit makapangyarihan at mahiwaga ang ebak? Makapangyarihan ang ebak kasi para itong hari na kinakakatakutan, kahit sinong matapang ay magdadalawang isip na tapakan ito. At bihira lang ang may lakas ng loob na lapitan at hawakan ito, o di ba bongga, feeling royalty ang dating. Sadyang napaka-hiwaga din ng ebak kasi kahit hindi tayo kumain ng kalabasa, mangga, papaya, carrots ay yellowish parin ang kulay paring magic di ba. It becomes a problem kung hindi sya lumabas at naging problem din kapag madalas ang kanyang paglabas. Tsk..tsk..tsk…magical isn’t it? Mahiwaga talaga.

Well, balik tayo sa isyu about ebak as indicator of fiber-rich body. According to the article from a magazine entitled “Are you sinker or floater?” (taena, akala ko talaga nang una about swimming ang article) your ebak is a real good indicator if your diet is fiber-rich. Kapag mag-deposit ka sa iyong lifetime bank account huwag mo munang i-flush agab, lingunin mo at i-eye-to-eye ang iyong iniwang sama ng loob. If naka-float ito, as in nakalutang sa sabaw ng inodoro that means you have eaten enough fiber. But if it sink, as in nakasisid sa water it means you don’t have enough fiber in your diet. Simple as that. So, next time na magdeposit ka sa iyong banko lumingon ka sa iyong nakaraan, does it float or it sink?

This gross topic was inspired by my special friend (kasi sabi nya special child sya, and I absolutely agree with it) na itago natin sa pangalang Gerel.

A solução

O que aprendi parece ser a solução mais adequada. Primeiro o <div> na posição absoluta vai existir sim, com os ajustes de esquerda e topo que você precisa, mas... ...pra que esse conteúdo se adeque à diferentes resoluções, você vai precisar colocar um novo <div> por fora, mas  dessa vez relativo, assim:

<div style="position:relative;">
  <div style="position:absolute; top:26px; left:460px;">
<img src="aquiomeulfloater.jpg" />
</div>
</div>

Bom, até então a lógica da coisa ta certa né, porém isso resolve seu problema para o Firefox e para o IE7, mas para o IE 6 não. (Aeeee! :P)

Então eu como webmaster do site da SET/RN quase enlouqueci com este selinho aí do topo:

Ele PRECISAVA ficar legal, mas estava fixo exatamente como se eu não tivesse colocado <div> relativo nenhum. Como fazer ele se adaptar à janela, também no IE 6? Mas já está tudo correto! Devo deixar só um <div>? Que raios! Então, descobri! voilá! Mais um par de <div>'s nesta sequencia relative e absolute deve ser colocado! É um comportamento do navegador que não tem muita lógica (típico do IE ne?), então a coisa ficará:

<!--[if IE 6]>
  <div style="position:relative;">
  <div style="position:absolute; top:26px; left:460px;">
  <![endif]--> 

<div style="position:relative; z-index:1">
  <div style="position:absolute; top:seutop; left:seuleft; z-index:1; width:larguradaimagem; height:alturadaimagem;">
<img src="aquiomeulfloater.jpg" />
</div>
</div>

<!--[if IE 6]>
  </div>
  </div>
  <![endif]-->

Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! (aplausos). Que belo de um hack eim tio Bill?!

No this was nothing mysterious like some alien plant, aggressive grass growth or spillage from a Swarfega delivery truck. The entire road was half an inch thick with broken glass beer bottles.

This brings me to the reason for the long weekend off work. Malta has just had it's general election. Big deal you may think and what's so special about that, you may also think. Well the big deal is the way the whole island seemed to get caught up in election fever.

Leading up to the polling day there have been mass meetings, parades, roads blocked with flag waving traffic all blasting their horns in, what I expect is support for their political party. Then on Sunday after the voting was done the results came in. The existing government gets to stay in for another 5 year term. Suddenly the place went crazy. Parties were thrown in the streets, cars and trucks carrying beer swilling revellers were seen driving around the towns and villages. At one point a convertible came along the road where I live with no less than 20 drunken kids crammed into it waving flags and beeping the horn. A DJ was set up in the middle of the road in Spinola along with beer tents and excited bodies. The fun didn't just last 'til the wee hours of Sunday morning but carried on all day Monday hence the reason for the broken bottles, beer cans, boxes and crates littering the streets. It was also the reason for my extra day off and the closure of other businesses and even banks.

In fact Spinola was not the only place. As I continued the journey to work on Tuesday hoping I didn't get multiple punctures it became apparent that the same sort of mayhem had taken place all along the sea front round to Sliema.

Now I'm not criticising or saying its a bad thing. It seems to me that there are three things at play here. 1. The Maltese run high with emotions when it comes to their politics; 2. They give a damn about their politics; and 3. They don't need much of an excuse for a party.

Personally I cannot vote on Malta because I'm Johnny Foreigner here and probably wouldn't vote anyway because I have electile dysfunction and have always tended to be a floater (and I don't mean the little poop bobbing around in the toilet bowl). A lot of my attitude in this respect comes from a background in the UK where hardly anyone bothers to vote because the parties are all the same; as bad and as sleazy as each other. In this regard people in Britain have something to learn from Malta. 1.Get emotionally involved in politics; 2.have a say with the vote; then 3. get rat arsed and legless afterward.