It is believed that coffee beans were discovered in the thirteenth century by the Ethiopians but the evidence is anecdotal.
Walk down any High Street in the UK and you will have no difficulty finding a shop where coffee is available.

The best coffee is said to come from Indonesia. It is indeed a specialty coffee and a thimble-sized cup will set you back $10 or around $100 per pound.

What is so special about these coffee beans, you might ask.
The answer is this coffee is made from the beans of coffee berries which have been eaten by the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus)  and other related civets, then passed through its digestive tract.
In its stomach, proteolytic enzymes seep into the beans, making shorter peptides and more free amino acids. Passing through a civet's intestines the beans are then defecated, having kept their shape. After gathering, thorough washing, sun drying, light roasting and brewing, these beans yield an aromatic coffee with much less bitterness, widely noted as the most expensive coffee in the world.

Not convinced ?
Take the sniff test.

Now .... anyone for coffee ??

As a medical doctor there are times when certain behavior of your patients really gets under your skin.

One of my two pet hates is patients attending late for their appointments giving flimsy excuses such as "I couldn't find a parking place" or "I was caught in a traffic jam", which may all well be true, but the onus is on them in the first place to allow plenty of time for the journey to be in time for the appointment.

It is no great joy when a patient turns up late for his/her appointment just when you are about to go for a lunch break or just about to finish for the day. And what is more irritating is to find that these patients are on "benefits" and unemployed, which means thay had all the time in the world to be punctual.
Maybe they are not educated enough to be aware of the adage that "punctuality is a virtue".

My second pet hate is female patients coming into the consulting room heavily perfumed. 

No......it is not the sort of smell you encounter when you walk through Boots' perfume section. The smell there is pure perfume and smells nice and refreshing. 

The smell I encounter in the consulting room is stale perfume, perfume mixed with sweat and disgusting body odour.

I feel that there is no need for these "scents". A daily wash and good hygeine are all that is necessary. When are woman going to learn ?

I fondly remember my mother cooking authentic beef curry in Rangoon when I was young. We used to live in a flat on what was then known as Strand Road facing the Rangoon river, and as a child I remember gazing across the Rangoon river toward Dhalla.

Burmese curries although called "curries" do not have curry powder or garam masala as in Indian curries. The main ingredients are meat/poultry, oil, tumeric powder, dried chillies, onion, garlic, ginger and the ubiquitous fish sauce.

The distinctive flavour comes from the dried chillies. Chillie powder is not normally used.
The dried whole chillies are soaked in hot water and when soft pulverized with a granite pestle and mortar together with onion, garlic and ginger.
Most recipies found on the web purporting to be "Burmese curry" have either Chinese or Indian influence and are really not Burmese curries.

The curry goes very well with jasmine rice and "hingar", another clear Burmese soup containing of course the ubiquitous fish sauce again !

Try and cook it and you'll be hooked !!

I regularly read Burma news on irrawaddy.org and it seemed I could not help see some of the photographs on the site. I am not talking about the majority of the photographs, but a few of them, photographs of sullen, moronic-looking Burmese "Generals" staring back at you.

That is, until I discovered this nifty little add-on for Firefox aptly called RIP, or Remove It Permanently. Install the add-on to your Fire Fox and just right click on the photographs you do not want to appear on your computer, select "Remove it permanently" and left click it, and voila the disgusting photograph you do not want to see no longer appears every time you visit that site.
The photograph is of course still on the web site. Just that it no longer appears on your monitor screen.

Firefox:   http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Remove It Permanently:   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/512

All citizens of most democratic countries who reside outside their own countries are usually eligible to vote in any major election of their countries.

But for most Burmese they will not receive any communication from their "government's" embassy regarding the forthcoming sham election later this year.

These diasporas are unofficially regarded as "traitors" by the SPDC (State Prostitution & Dacoit Council) for leaving their motherland, or should I say "fatherland" ?

In all fairness, most Burmese living in the UK are holders of British passports in addition to their Burmese passports, and so technically cannot vote in the sham election, as they were required by SPDC to give up their Burmese citizenships when they naturalized into British citizens, but did not.

Nevertheless a few of them sympathetic and patronizing to the current unelected and unwanted brutal regime will be rewarded with ballot papers for their "good examplary behavior".

Why does the Embassy at Charles Street renew these Burmese passports instead of revoking the citizenhips ? One doesn't need Einstein to fathom out an answer.

Burma has really gone to the dogs.