DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
The statue of St Vincent Ferrer. PICTURE: Courtesy of Guinness World Records.
• A statue of Catholic saint, St Vincent Ferrer, in the Philippines has been named the world’s tallest bamboo statue by Guinness World Records. The organisation said the statue, located in a park Bayambang, reached 50.23 metres high to set the new record. Some 22,626 bamboo panels were used in making the statue, which took a year-and-a-half to complete and was made to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the parish where it is located. The statue weighs 60 tons. While we’re talking records, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention a new speed record which was also set recently. Brits Matt Everard and Russell Shearman drove a modified Tuk Tuk – a three wheeled vehicle common in Thailand and other Asian nations – to set a top speed of 119.54 kph to claim the record. You could be forgiven thinking that’s rather slow if you’ve ever been sitting in the back which a driver’s taken you on a death-defying run through Bangkok’s traffic!
• Tough life but someone’s go to do it. London-based HushHush – which describes itself as the “world’s leading luxury marketplace” – is looking for someone to undertake the job of “yacht reviewer”. The “job” involves spending a week on a yacht and creating a detailed report of everything you find. “There are obvious perks to the job; you’ll live, sleep, eat and shower on a yacht for a week, but during that week, we’ll need you to test everything on the yacht,” the company says on its website. “This means every plug socket, door, bed, shower, tap – everything to make sure that the yacht is up to our standards.” The successful applicant will be paid £1,000 for each yacht review, according to the company.
• It’s hard to see but if you look closely at an Australian $50 bill, you’ll find a tiny mistake that left the Reserve Bank of Australia a little red-faced last week. The error was first reported to radio station Triple M by an eagle-eyed listener who spotted that the world “responsibility” was mis-spelled “responsibilty”, not just once but three times. The mistake appears in an excerpt from Edith Cowan’s maiden speech to the Western Australian Parliament which is featured on the note. The RBA said it would correct the typo on the next print run of the banknote. Millions of the banknotes are in circulation.
