INTERVIEW WITH DR. ROBERT REY

Dr. Robert Rey is probably the most famous plastic surgeon in the world. Full of talent and charisma. Through hard work and determination he was able to pursue a highly regarded dream of every little boy in Brazil, to become a plastic surgeon. Dr. Rey managed to achieve a bit more than just that. Read this exclusive interview with Dr Rey where he talks about his beginnings, Beverly Hills Dr 90210 the show, his new shapewear line Instant Shape, and what really matters to him in life:

When did your fascination for plastic surgery begin?
When I lived in Brazil. Brazil is a country that is very hot, thus bodies are frequently exposed. Brazilian plastic surgeons have contributed vastly to the field of aesthetics, so much so they have risen to heroes in Brazil. Brazilian boys aspire to be plastic surgeons. I’ve always had an interest in science and art, plastic surgery is the perfect marriage of the two.
Which procedures are you most known for?
I have developed my own procedures in plastic surgery, namely sensual cosmetic surgery. I specialize in belly’s, buttocks, vaginas, breasts, lips and noses. For example, tummy tuck, breast lifts, breast augmentations, labia plasties, lip augmentations, liposuctions, buttock augmentations, with fat or implants, etc.
How did you get involved in the hit show Dr 90210 on E! Networks?
I got involved with Dr. 90210 because of the drama show Nip/Tuck, which depicts plastic surgeons as playboys and unethical professionals. I wanted to write a show that showed the real nip/tuck. Dr. 90210 sets the record straight, it shows that most of us are not playboys; in fact we are family men and women. We are certainly living in a fantasy world here in Hollywood, for example, Larry King showed up to my daughter’s birthday party but for the most part we’re pretty normal.
What are some of the challenges of starring in a TV reality show?
Constant cameras on your face are quite tiring. However, in time it becomes Stockholm syndrome. You learn to love your captor.
What advice can you give to someone who is considering plastic surgery for the first time?
Do your homework. Choose your plastic surgeon carefully. Call the medical board of your state to make sure the doctor is in good standings. Make sure your health is up to par.
What are some of the keys for achieving natural looking breast augmentation?
Knowing the beautiful normal. Dissect the pocket so that the implants falls in a beautiful tear drop form. Many surgeons leave the implants high and hope they fall down within time, many don’t fall at all.
How was the idea for Dr Rey’s Shapewear line born?
I was introduced to Bruno Schiavi through a mutual friend and we immediately clicked. Since I work millimeters inside the skin and Bruno works millimeters outside the skin it just made sense for us to combine our talents and create a beautiful shapewear collection.
Besides Dr. Rey’s Shapewear, what other projects are you working on at the moment?
A cosmetic cream line and slimming protein shake are my next projects.
What is the most enjoyable part of your job?
Helping the children during my humanitarian missions. Which I do several per year.
What inspires your amazing sense of fashion?
Are you serious? I am Brazilian born! I came from a family of designers. My father was a member of the original mustang team and my brother is a set designer and producer.
What is your philosophy about beauty?
Beauty starts from the inside. If one is ugly inside, there’s no amount of surgery that will make them attractive.
What other passions do you have besides your work?
Spirituality, my family, my wife, my country, humanitarian work, animal rescues and of course martial arts.
                                                                       From www.beautyinterviews.com

LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

It´s difficult to give an exact figure of the number of languages that exist in the world, because it is not always easy to define what a language is. The difference between a language and a dialect is not always clear-cut. It has nothing to do with similarity of vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation. Sometimes, the distinctions are based purely on geographical, political, or religious reasons. It is usually estimated that the number of languages in the world varies between 3,000 and 8,000.

There is a list of the world's languages, called "Ethnologue". There are 6,500 living languages listed. Of these, 6,000 have registered population figures. 52% of the 6,000 languages are spoken by less than 10,000 people, and 28% are spoken by less than 1,000 people. 83% of them are limited to single countries.

The ten largest languages in the world are the first languages for nearly half of the world's population.

Here is a list of the top 10 languages according to Ethnologue:

1. Mandarin Chinese - 885 million speakers
2. Spanish - 332 million speakers
3. English - 322 million speakers
4. Bengali - 189 million speakers
5. Hindi - 182 million speakers
6. Portuguese - 170 million speakers
7. Russian - 170 million speakers
8. Japanese - 125 million speakers
9. German - 98 million speakers
10. Wu (also spoken in China) - 77 million speakers

The figures refer to the number of people who have the language as their first language. If those speakers who have learnt the language as a foreign language were to be included, English might be at the top of the list.
Arabic would be among the 10 most widely spoken languages, if it were to be counted as one language. Ethnologue lists ten variants of spoken Arabic among its top 100. The biggest of these is Egyptian Arabic with 42.5 million speakers. If they were to be counted as one and the same language, Arabic would come out sixth with 175 million speakers, and Wu would drop out of the top ten. 

The branch of linguistics which is called comparative philology, has classified the world's languages into different families. All of the relationships within the families are not yet clear, and therefore the classification must be seen as preliminary.

The languages within a family usually share a common language, from which they developed. However, sometimes languages are considered to be related just because they happen to be geographically close to one another.

                From ling.gu.se                    
         Adapted by Milton França 

A SONG: SECOND LOVE - BY PAIN OF SALVATION

“Second Love” is a ballad from the album Remedy Lane by the Swedish band Pain of Salvation and is one of the best on the disc. People say that Daniel Gildenlow (leader of the band) wrote this song when he was only eleven years old, which is something incredible because this song sounds far too advanced for someone that age. It depicts a lonely night under the stars – the narrator longing for the girl that he loves. In fact, it is an excellent piece of work. Here is the lyrics: 

Day after day
Nothing's changed you're far away
But I need you to know that I can't sleep anymore
By the nights

Night after night
The stars are shining so bright
Though our pain is larger than the universe tonight

I want you to know I can't sleep anymore
By the nights
By the nights

Day after day I want you to say
That you're mine
You are mine

Year after year
Tear after tear
I feel like my heart will break in two
You came like a wind I couldn't defend
You cut my heart so deeply
The scars won't mend

I'll never believe in love anymore
After this
After this
Can never change or rearrange
What we lost
What we lost

Time after time
I am wasting my time
Living in a past where I was strong
But now I am gone
I leave no shadow when I'm alone
I'll stay forever in my dreams where you are near

Want you to know I can't sleep anymore
By the nights
By the nights
Day after day I want you to say
That you're mine
You're mine

And now three videos of the song: the first with subtitles and the others from live shows in Rio and São Paulo at the beginning of June, 2011.

EPICA - SYMPHONIC METAL BAND FROM THE NETHERLANDS

Ever since EPICA emerged on the scene, the band has been caught in a whirlwind of studio recordings, interviews, screaming fans, world wide live performances and the rock 'n roll lifestyle. The loss of both a record company and a drummer in 2006 seemed to have stopped the band on their rise to the top. But all is not what it seems. EPICA is back with a mighty new album called 'The Divine Conspiracy', an exiting new chapter in the history of the band.

The Dutch female fronted symphonic metal band EPICA was founded in 2002. Mark Jansen had left After Forever to pursue his own dreams and found that guitar player Ad Sluijter, bass player Yves Huts and keyboard and piano player Coen Janssen shared his vision. Drummer Jeroen Simons and singer Simone Simons completed the band. The band name is derived from an album of Kamelot of whom several band members are big fans and musically EPICA stands out by not only taking influences from the world of rock and (symphonic) metal, but also from film music as composed by the likes of Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer.

Within a few months EPICA had the material to record the stunning debut album 'The Phantom Agony'. The album was released worldwide in 2003 and was followed by a lengthy tour. EPICA's efforts were rewarded in 2004 with an Essent Award (an important Dutch award for talented young bands). While touring continued throughout the year, EPICA recorded and released their second full length album 'Consign To Oblivion' in 2005. The album made it to #12 in the Dutch charts and remained in the Top 100 for 7 weeks. This release also features a guest appearance by Kamelot frontman Roy Khan. With the creative juices flowing, that same year the album 'The Score: An Epic Journey' also saw the light of day. The album consists of the music EPICA wrote for the Dutch movie 'Joyride'. This album is marked by the absence of guitars, drums or even vocals and contains mainly instrumental symphonic songs. After four years of hard work, the band took the time to reflect on the impressive career that took the world by storm. So in 2006 the photo-sound book 'The Road To Paradiso' saw the light of day. It's a detailed description of the band’s history in words and images and contains lots of pictures taken by the band members, professional photographers and even hundreds of fans that contributed their best pictures and words. This book comes together with a unique bonus-cd that features unreleased songs, live material and demo recordings.

The year that started on a high ended in a low when drummer Jeroen Simons decided to quit the band. But it's not in the band's nature to be taken aback. After hundreds of shows in dozens of countries all over the world (including the US, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, most European countries, Israel, Tunisia…) this band had become a well oiled metal machine that is unstoppable. Thanks to the skills of talented God Dethroned drummer Ariën van Weesenbeek EPICA was able to make faster and more complex songs. As with all of their releases, the music on this album was brought to a higher level by the dream team at the Gate Studio: Sascha Paeth, Amanda Somerville and Miro Rodenberg. This new opus is more than 75 minutes long and is EPICA's first concept album. It deals with the theory that, as a test, God created all kinds of different religions and released those upon humanity to see if they would be able to find the true nature of them.
From: www.epica.nl

If you don´t know the band yet, take a look at this:

40 INTERESTING ANIMAL FACTS

. Sharks, like other fish, have their reproductive organs in their chests.
2. Turtles can breathe through their butts.
3. A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
4. Hippo milk is pink.
5. A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
6. Dogs have four toes on their hind feet, and five on their front feet.
7. Honeybees never sleep.
8. If you keep a goldfish in the dark, it will eventually turn white
9. A slug has four noses.
10. Starfish don't have brains.
11. Termites work 24 hours per day and they do not sleep.
12. A cow produces 200 times more gas a day than a person.
13. Vultures fly without flapping their wings.
14. Turtles can live for more than 100 years.
15. Turkeys can reproduce without having sex.
16. The penguin is the only bird that can swim, but cannot fly.
17. The ant can lift things 10 times its own weight.
18. Spiders have transparent blood.
19. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
20. Only male fireflies can fly.
21. Iguanas have two penises!
22. Hyenas regularly eat the feces of other animals!
23. Frogs cannot swallow without blinking.
24. Female canaries cannot sing.
25. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
26. Dragonflies have six legs but cannot walk!
27. Dolphins sleep with one eye open!
28. Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.
29. Cat urine glows under a black light.
30. Butterflies taste with their feet.
31. At birth, a panda bear is smaller than a mouse.
32. At 188 decibels, the whistle of the blue whale is the loudest sound produced by any animal.
33. Ants, like honeybees, don't sleep.
34. Anteaters prefer termites to ants.
35. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
36. An albatross can sleep while it flies.
37. A shrimp's heart is in its head.
38. A moth has no stomach.
39. A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
40. A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.

MORE PHOTOS WITH MISSPELLING AND BROKEN ENGLISH

Brazil's Military Dictatorship: 21 Years of Interrupted Democracy

The period of the military dictatorship in Brazil often referred to as "Brazil's years of lead," which lasted from 1964 to 1985, was a somber time when Brazilian politicians lost their mandates for political reasons, the media was censured and public demonstrations of opposition were repressed violently.
There was also an ugly underground where opponents of the military were tortured and killed.
Professor Octaviano Nogueira, who teaches history and political science at the University of Brasília, says the roughest period of military intervention was between 1964 and the beginning of the 1970s. "The repression was harsh at that time," he says.
Nogueira points out that the problems that led to the 1964 coup actually began in 1961 when a right-wing president, Jânio Quadros, suddenly resigned after only six months in office and was succeeded by a left-wing vice president, João Goulart, who was distrusted by the military.
The distrust was so deep that he only took office after an institutional crisis was averted by a populist movement led by his brother-in-law, Leonel Brizola, the governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
"The truth is that Goulart was a stopgap president. Besides, in reality, he was a big landowner and a conservative politician who found himself in a political party (PTB) with a leftist inheritance from Getúlio Vargas.
"The contradiction made him an inefficient president, under pressure from all sides and unable to implement policy," explains professor Nogueira.
Goulart´s administration faced constant workers´ strikes, fierce opposition in the press and had little support in most of the population.
The Army marched on Rio de Janeiro on March 31, 1964. Goulart and Brizola fled the country and the military ruled for the next 21 years.
Under the second military "president," marshal Artur da Costa e Silva, the regime undertook a radical crackdown on any opposition. So-called "institutional acts," were issued.
The most infamous was Ato Institutional #5 - AI-5, which gave the executive (the general-president) the power to close Congress and legalized the harsh repression of any social movements or public demonstrations contrary to the dictatorship.
By the late 1970s, the fourth general-president, Ernest Geisel, began what came to be known as the "slow and gradual political opening" process.
In 1979, the last of the general-presidents, João Figueiredo, sanctioned the Amnesty Law that restored the political rights of those who opposed the military, but also exempted military agents who arrested, killed and/or tortured during the dictatorship from prosecution.
Right-wing hardliners in the military were not happy with Figueiredo´s administration "opening," or the Amnesty Law. There were bomb attacks on newsstands and the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB). There was also an attempt to explode a bomb at a show in Rio de Janeiro commemorating Labor Day in 1981.
By 1984, even the military was weary of military rule. Massive demonstrations were taking place all over the country in favor of direct elections for president. But Congress refused to bow to the popular will and instead obeyed the military and voted for an indirect election.
Tancredo Neves was elected in an indirect election in 1985, but died of natural causes before taking office. His vice president, José Sarney, served for five years and was succeeded, in 1989, by the first really popularly elected president since 1964, Fernando Collar.
Ironically, Collor was impeached for corruption. He was succeeded by his vice president, Itamar Franco. In 1994, Fernando Henrique was elected and then reelected. In 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva began his two-term presidency.
Professor Nogueira says that with the election of a person like Lula - a worker from a low-income family with little formal education - democracy has really been consolidated in Brazil.

from www.brazzil.com - adapted by Milton França

25 PHOTOS WITH INCORRECT USE OF ENGLISH

These are some photographs where you can notice the use of broken English in most of them. They are from a Chinese website:

From: www.engrish.com

30 INTERESTING COUNTRY FACTS

1. In France, there's a place called Y.
2. In 2002, there were no billionaires in China. In 2011, there are 115 billionaires.
3. Niger (Africa) has the world's highest fertility rate - 7.1 children per mother.
4. Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
5. Almost half the newspapers in the world are published in the United States and Canada!
6. Organized crime is estimated to account for 10% of the United States' national income.
7. Suicide is the leading cause of death among South Koreans in their 20s and 30s.
8. The United States consumes 25% of all the world's energy.
9. Iceland has the most Internet users per capita of any country in the world with over 86 percent of people using the Web, compared with only 69 percent of Americans.
10. Wyoming was the first American state to allow women to vote.
11. Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it's known as Tennessee!
12. Three Mile Island is only 2 1/2 miles long.
13. There is a town called Paradise and a town called Hell in Michigan!
14. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
15. There are 10 towns named Hollywood in the United States.
16. The Zip Code 12345 is assigned to General Electric in Schenectady, New York.
17. The United States has the highest minimum drinking age in the world.
18. The three wealthiest families in the world have more assets than the combined wealth of the forty-eight poorest nations.
19. The state of Florida is bigger than England.
20. The Pacific island of Nauru's economy is almost entirely based on bird droppings.
21. The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado!
22. The Greek National anthem has 158 verses.
23. The city of Las Vegas has the most hotel rooms in the world.
24. The Canary Islands were not named after a bird called canary. They were named after a breed of dogs.
25. Streets in Japan do not have names.
26. Istanbul, in Turkey, is the only city in the world located on two continents: Asia and Europe.
27. In what country will you find the most Universities? India.
28. In Tibet it is considered good manners to stick out your tongue at someone.
29. In India, people are legally allowed to marry a dog.
30. Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.

TESTING YOUR VOCABULARY - ANSWERS

1. bass
2. turnstile
3. blunt
4. parsley and spring onion
5. cribbing
6. fare
7. drumstick
8. cartoon
9. flying saucer
10. scorpio
11. bank statement
12. pedestrian crossing - sash
13. fancy dress
14. bump
15. gemini
16. AC/DC
17. G-string
18. referee
19. Leo
20. lyrics
21. laurel
22. jack
23. sleeve
24. cheapskate
25. literally
26. pisces
27. feel sorry for
28. plan
29. to break down
30. taurus