By Rezwan

Photoblogger Anil Advani took a long time to put together a photo essay Of Karwan Bazar, a “chaotic whole-sale market for poultry, fish, meat and vegetables” in the middle of Dhaka city, the capital of Bangladesh.

By Portnoy Zheng

The Big Old Smoke who lives in UK initiates a funny and tasty campaign “Global Taiwanese Beef Soup Threading[zht]” and invites her blogger/plurker friends both in Taiwan and abroad to share their individual beef soup recipes and post them on blogs.

By Rezwan

Back To Bangladesh posts some mouth watering pictures of the traditional Chawk Bazar Iftar Market in old Dhaka.

By Silvia Viñas

Carla Badillo Coronado posts a set of photos in her blog Mujer en Tierra Firme [es], showing the Afro-Ecuadorian people of Valle del Chota.

By Janine Mendes-Franco

As Haiti struggles in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake, The Livesay Weblog reminds us of the power of kindness.

By Janine Mendes-Franco

The Caribbean Review of Books takes a look at this year's Notting Hill Carnival celebrations.

By Lee Yoo Eun

Twitter has scored again in South Korea with a live weather report during a typhoon that pounded Korean Peninsula today. The typhoon Kompasu battered the country immediately prior to and during rush hour — shattering glass, uprooting trees, tearing down walls and even destroying a stadium. People have tweeted to notify others which routes are not blocked by trees and flying signboards and have (re)tweeted recent updates and uploaded photos of chaotic scenes.

Typhoon Kompasu (compass, in Japanese) was in the  Seoul metropolitan area for only five hours, but it hit hard enough to cause the devastating scenes pictured below. The strongest tropical storm to hit the area in 15 years, has paralyzed metro operations, caused massive power outages, and forced airlines to cancel or divert. As the typhoon reached its maximum strength at around 5 to 6 am local time, tens of thousands of commuters encountered its destructive power on their way to work. These photos were tweeted by citizen journalists to show others what the storm has done around their location and give tips on road conditions.

@demoon84: 종합운동장 펜스도 태풍 앞엔 어쩔 수 없네여 http://twitpic.com/2kclkp

Even the general stadium did not stand a chance against the typhoon.

@demoon 84: 길거리는 아수라장입니다… 태풍 정말 무섭네여

The street is in total pandemonium. The typhoon is truly horrifying.

@runintosky: 맞은편 아파트 창문이랑 난간이 다 떨어졌어요..

The window glass and (balcony) rails have all fallen down from the apartment across.

@tomato 1981 : 홈플러스 간판 떨어졌어요.

The ‘Home Plus' [note: Korean version of Walmart] signboard has fallen down.

@drumboy83: 압구정 갤러리아 앞 상황입니다 참고하세요 http://twipl.net/AklW

This is the current situation in front of Galleria (department store) at Apgujeong, for your reference.

Many shared tips on traffic conditions;

@taiji410: #gangnam_ 은마파출소에서 휘문고올라가는 언덕 우측 가로등이 쓰러져있었는데… 아까 6시30분쯤… 도로 절반을 막아서 중앙선 넘어 올라갔네요~ 흐아~ 지금은치웠을래나… http://yfrog.com/3dn1qjj

#gangnam [note:name of district] A street lamp that stood at the right side of a road connecting the Eun-ma Police station to the Hui-mun high school has been toppled…at around 6: 30 am…It was blocking about the half of the road, I had to cross the center lane (to pass that point)…Has anyone cleared that away by now?

@TheAPLLL: 7호선도 청담대교 건널때 서행하느라 모든 역에서 1분씩 정차하네요…

Line 7 stops for a minute at every station after taking a lot of time in crossing the ChungDam bridge…

@cocmoon: RT @Twit_Korea: 강풍에 아파트 베란다 유리창이 깨지고 있습니다. 신문지에 물을 적셔서 유리창에 붙이면 깨짐이 방지된다네요. -재난대책본부 #태풍_ 곤파스 http://twitpic.com/2kcl4c

The window glass is shattered by the strong wind. To prevent the window from shattering, attach water-soaked newspapers into the window. – Disaster Prevention and Countermeasures Headquarters #Typhoon_Kompasu

With almost all above-ground sections of the city's subway lines out of service, commuters have undergone the worst transportation disaster in years, but Twitter has made it more manageable for some.

By Rezwan

BlogAdda interviews Indian travel blogger Aparna Shekar Roy aka Backpacking Ninja who has backpacked in more than 25 countries.

By Rezwan

Farrukh Zafar visited some flood effected areas in Sindh, Pakistan and posted some pictures depicting the miserable state of the flood refugees in a relief camp.

By Vadim Isakov

LJ user drugoi published pictures [RUS] from the latest rally “Moscow. Access Granted” meant to illustrate accessibility problems that a person in a wheelchair can encounter in the city.

By Vadim Isakov

The hallway of the "famous" hospital in Voronezh. Photo by dorinem.

Many people live their lives without an opportunity to look at everyday things from unusual perspective. Sometimes it takes traveling abroad to better understand what you have or don't have at home. But sometimes it takes a foreigner blogging about her experiences in a hospital to pinpoint the “shocking truth” about your country.

Although “a foreigner” may not be the most accurate description of a blogger dorinem [RUS] who was born in Ukraine and spent there 16 years before moving to Israel where she found a new home in 1993. The young women speaks perfect Russian and knows her way around the former Soviet Union. She recently traveled to Russia to visit her relatives. But sudden bleeding changed her travel plans and she found herself in a hospital in Voronezh [ENG], a city in southwestern Russia.

Dorinem described her adventures in the Russian hospital on LiveJournal.com, the most popular blogging platform in the country. The blog posts became popular within days. Her recollections and quotes ended up on the pages of newspapers and magazines. Discussions that started on her blog grew into nation-wide debates on the quality of health care in Russia. And although everything that dorinem described is nothing new for many citizens of Russia, it took an outraged outsider to make people realize that getting used to something horrible doesn't make it normal.

The woman got sick in Voronezh on Saturday when it turned out to be extremely difficult to find any professional help. Here is how she described her first experience in the hospital:

Пока ждали, я смотрела по сторонам, и глаза мои лезли на лоб. Во-первых, люди, привезенные на «скорой», вылезали из «скорой» и ковыляли в регистрацию на своих двоих (кстати, совсем не маленькое расстояние). Иногда привезенные просто не могли этого сделать, и тогда по всему покою бегали санитары с криками «Нужна каталка!», а им отвечала тетка: «Каталок нет!!!», и так несколько раз по кругу. Те же счастливцы, которым каталка все же досталась, лежали на абсолютно голой незастеленной поверхности, причем раздевали для осмотра их иногда прямо в коридоре или в кабинете при открытой двери, поэтому за время ожидания мне пришлось лицезреть интимные органы нескольких людей, при том, что я совсем не собиралась этого делать. Кроме того, я видела, как везли кого-то на каталке, при этом постоянно нехило так врезаясь в углы, так что съехавшего человека постоянно приходилось поправлять, чтобы он окончательно не упал с каталки. В общем, мне показалось, что я попала в какое-то жуткое чистилище, которое было специально организовано так, чтобы еще живые люди в ужасе убегали из этого места.

While I was waiting [in line - GVO], I looked around and my eyes were wide open in surprise. First of all, people who were brought to the hospital in ambulances crawled out of the ambulances and walked to the reception window by themselves (by the way, not a short distance). Sometimes the sick couldn't walk by themselves and then nurses would run around the hospital yelling “We need a cart!” and a woman would always answer “We don't have carts!” and it would repeat several times. The ones lucky enough to get a cart were lying on uncovered surface [of the cart - GVO] and they were being undressed for examination right in the corridor or in a room with open doors. That is why I saw private parts of several people, although I wasn't planning on doing it, while I waited in line. Aside from that, I saw how a cart with a man was being wheeled and it would always hit corners with force and the man had to be put back in the cart so he wouldn't fall down completely. In general, it seemed that I happened to be in a creepy purgatory that was organized that way so people who were still alive could run away from it with horror.

It took more than an hour for dorinem to get registered at the reception desk (and she was bleeding all this time). The hospital and doctors did not cheer her up. The rooms were dirty, the doctors were unprofessional and rude and the whole atmosphere seemed to work so even a healthy person felt sick while being there. Here is the description of a medical exam:

Там стоял тазик. И в тазике плавали какие-то кровяные сгустки. Извините, но из песни слов не выкинешь. Я в полном ступоре смотрела на это. Потом повернулась к врачу и сказала дрожащим голосом: «Там… Там, в тазике, это…». Она подошла, посмотрела и сказала: «А, ну не обращайте внимания. Просто не садитесь на тазик, а вот тут, повыше». Я настолько обалдела от всего происходящего, что не нашлась, что сказать и все же полезла на кресло.

There was a basin. And there were some blood clots in the basin. I am sorry but that is how it was. I was looking at it in full shock. And then I turned to the doctor and said in a trembling voice: “There… There, in the basin, something…” She came and look at and then said: “Don't pay attention to it. Just don't sit on the basin but a little higher.” I was so shocked I did not know what to say and I crawled on the gynecological chair.”

Not able to determine what was wrong with the woman,  the doctors put dorinem in a hospital room with other people. The hospital did not have hot water and the patients would use plastic bottles to heat the water in the sun. The hospital also did not have towels and toilet paper. Doctors and even nurses were impossible to find during the weekend. Nothing worked and nobody wanted to do anything about it. One had to be lucky to get blood tests done and ultrasound exam was done only one day after.

The description of shocking moments experienced by dorinem in the hospital took seven long blog posts full of depressing pictures (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7).

But dorinem's story has a happy end. She managed to fly back to Israel alive and in a good spirit. Her blog posts now end with a wish to all readers “Don't get sick. Anywhere.”

The blogger dorinem was not the only computer-versed person who ever got sick in a Russian hospital. But she was the one who expressed her outrage in her blog and, provided that those posts were written in Russian, received enormous publicity among other bloggers and, later, with media.

“Israeli citizen on Russian Hospitals: ‘It's Purgatory that People Run From'” [RUS] reads a headline in one of the most popular Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. “Voronezh Authorities Check Information of Israeli Citizen About Violations in Health Care” informs another headline of Russian information agency REGNUM. “Can Voronezh Health Care be Healed?” follows up with an article Komsomolskaya Pravda.

The attention of media and authorities toward that particular hospital and toward the state of health care in Russia was sudden and motivated by the blog post. The example showed the growing influence of the Russian blogosphere when it became common for media - and sometimes for the authorities - to react to the reports written by bloggers.

The story is far from being over. The hospital in question is being investigated and evaluated by different government commissions. But one thing is for sure, as hard as it was for dorinem to be in the Russian hospital, her decision to blog about her experiences made a difference in Voronezh and motivated other people in Russia to look at their lives through the eyes of a foreigner.

By Oiwan Lam

Angry Chinese Blogger explains the recent controversy regarding an exhibition in the Taipei's National Palace Museum on “Tibet: Treasures From the Roof of the World”. The exhibition was hailed as a sign of improving Sino-Taiwanese ties with the accusations that the photos were being used to promote a sanitized version of Sino-Tibetan history

By Sara Moreira

In response to recent statements by a Timorese deputy, who reportedly implied that the statues of naked women at the Timor Leste Pavillion in Shanghai World Expo 2010 are not appropriate, João Paulo Esperança critically wonders [pt] if East Timorese women would be considered deprived of dignity in the past, when they used their bare breasts.

By Vadim Isakov

A blogger from Israel with Russian roots was unfortunate enough to get sick while visiting her relatives in Russia. Her recollections and pictures of a hospital in the city of Voronezh [ENG] provoked heated debates on the state of Russian health care.