Have you seen my shells, darling?

Well, imagine, you are a young and beautiful woman. And you like to bathe in the sun topless to get a lovely goldish tan on the whole body. Except two small parts. Nipples! It is perfectly understandable that you would like to cover them in order to protect yourself from breast cancer and annoying gazes. In Vietnam we’ve seen a really nice way to do that: girls cover their nipples with sea shells. It is convenient as shells are always handy, and looks great.

Cobbles as an anti-slip solution

In Spanish hilly towns people use ordinary cobbles in an unusual way. In order to improve safety they cover their streets by stones placed on their edges, vertically. After that the road surface looks like a grid and helps to make roads a lot less slippery. It is unbelievable – smooth stones can provide a good anti-slip solution.

Even stones can say “thank you”

There are countless ways to express gratitude. Spanish street cafes know how to do it in a simple, but ingenious way.

The staff wrote ‘gracias’ on the small stones to press bills to the cash plates. It looked nice and… led us to leaving more tip. But what is great about the whole situation that everyone is happy.

Genius staircase

This is a great storage solution, and basically there is nothing much to say about it. It is just super. None of us has such a thing because we don’t have staircases in our apartments.

The fox, the duck and the deer

I hate having to memorize figures. When a taxi company tells me that their car is waiting for me, the number plate is as follows: …, my brain just switches off. That is why I was so happy when one famous printer company changed the labels of their ink cartridges from numbers to animal images. Now all you have to remember is the right animal. And it is much easier to remember that you need a fox or a duck, then TZ-9879 or something like that. It feels like I’m in the kindergarten, but I don’t mind.

Finland recycles sand to keep winter roads clean

Winter road maintenance is no easy thing. Every northern country can prove it. For example, Finland is covered with snow, on average, from November to March, and in Lapland the snow stays until June. However, this country knows how to cope with frost and snow, and even blizzards do not often cause serious trouble.

Grit – a mixture of sand and rock salt – helps a lot to keep roads clean. Gritters – also known as sanders or salt trucks – are used to spread grit onto roads. Salt makes ice melt at lower temperature and run off to the edge of the road, and sand helps to increase friction between car tires and the road surface. Though the salt eventually gets washed away, the insoluble sand is collected, recycled and kept for the next winter.

Annual cost of winter road maintenance is about €100 mln, which is definitely a lot. But everybody who drives in Finland in wintertime is grateful to the guys who managed to keep the roads that perfect.

Ocean pack

Ocean pack is a great thing for any trips in, by or around water. Boat trips, rafting, sightseeing in the rain, whatever you can think of. It is made of some clever waterproof material. Several sizes are available, but even a 10-liter option is enough to fit the whole world in it.

The seal is formed by rolling the top over on itself four times and then clipping the top into a circle, one side to the other. You know, there is nothing else! Nothing! This piece of rubber will perfectly protect your precious electronic devices and other stuff.