An $11 million Christmas tree may seem incredible, but the simple fact  that it was put up in the lobby of a 7 star hotel  in United Arab Emirates makes it a little more believable. According to Hans Olbertz, general manager of the Emirates Palace Hotel, this is the world’s most expensive Christmas tree.

But what makes a Christmas tree worth $11 million. Well, it appears its immense value is given by the fact that instead of traditional ornaments, the tree is decorated with very expensive jewelry draping around it’s branches, along with a few gold and silver bows and some lights.

The artificial Christmas tree standing at over 13ft tall had an initial value of only $10,000, but the sum kept rising as gold, pearls, diamonds, sapphires and other precious stones provided by Style Gallery, were being added. There are now 181 jewels decorating the world’s most expensive Christmas tree.

Maybe the idea of an $ 11million Christmas tree wouldn’t seam that out of the ordinary if you knew that the Emirates Palace Hotel is offering a seven days package at the price of “just” $ 1million, which includes a luxurious car and a private plane at the disposal of the guest.

The owners of the luxurious Abu Dhabi hotel are planning to contact the Guinness Book of Records about their creation.

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She’s two months away from her 104th birthday but age isn’t an impediment for Lillian Lowe, the world’s oldest Facebook user.

Lillian Lowe, from Tenby, Pembrokeshire, south Wales, may be a grandmother and great-grandmother at 103, but she is still young-at-heart and her online adventure on Facebook is proof of that. After 104-year-old Ivy Bean died in June, Lillian has become the oldest of over 500 million users of the popular social network.

Her grandson Steve is the one responsible with wetting her up with a Facebook account and he’s also the one who lent her his iPad, but she is planning to replace it with a newer version, seeing that she’s also up to date in terms of  gadgets, as she admits herself “At the moment I use my grandson’s iPad but I am very hopeful to get one of my own, there are some great new models out at the moment.”

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Vienna’s Admiral Cinema has opened its doors to man’s best friend, through a once-a-month “Doggy Day Promotion” that lets dog owners take their pets with them, to the movies.

In order to lure people away from the Lugner City Kino multiplex that opened nearby, the 90-year-old Admiral Cinema decided to become more appealing to dog owners, by allowing them to bring their pets inside the cinema. That may seem a little extreme, but it might just pay off, considering many dog lovers don’t go anywhere without their pampered pooches.

Once a month, dogs get free admission inside the cinema, as well as soft seat blankets, fresh water and tasty treats, including popcorn and mince pies. As far as the actual movie presentation is concerned, the only real difference from a normal movie is that the volume is turned down a bit, as not to hurt animals’ ears. While all the dogs seem interested in the movie, it just takes one of them to bark and they all join in. That’s when the real show starts.

The Ukrainian government has announced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site will be included in a full scale tourist program.

I know it sounds weird, but tourists have been visiting Chernobyl through unofficial tourism programs, for several years. Authorities are just trying to make things official, so they can actually cash out on the interest people have in the famous contaminated zone. Oddly enough, the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency will be in charge of operating tours, and although they guarantee every measure will be taken to insure tourists’ safety, Chernobyl isn’t really as safe as they’ll have you think.

On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 of the local nuclear power station exploded, causing the greatest nuclear disaster in the history of mankind (not counting the ones caused by US nuclear bombs in Japan). A perimeter of 30 miles around the epicenter was closed up to the public, to prevent radioactive contamination, maintained by thousands of technicians, to reduce exposure to radiation. While the catastrophe happened almost a quarter of a century ago, the area around the power station is still very dangerous, especially since the remaining three nuclear reactors have not been shut down, and the shield placed over reactor 4 has been steadily deteriorating, under pressure from within. A new, improved “sarcophagus”, big enough to cover the Statue of Liberty and weighing 20,000 tons, will be ready in 2012.

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Casa Xochiquetzal (The House of the Beautiful Flowers) is a retirement home for prostitutes, established in Mexico City’s  Tepito neighborhood, that got it’s name from the Aztec goddess of love and women.

The center was founded in 2007 by a former prostitute, Carmen Munoz, impressed by the old sex workers she saw sleeping in the streets. And it wasn’t easy at all. It took years of lobbying for her to get the support of the government and local media. Andres Manuel Lopes Obrador, mayor at the time,  gave her a dilapidated 18th century house, which she transformed into what is now home for 23 old prostitutes, with available accommodations for 45 women. They have to fulfill one condition, other than the obvious one, being a former sex worker, and that regards their age – women have to be at least 60 years old. Interestingly enough, even if they aren’t required to, many of the prostitutes choose to continue practicing their job.

In most cases, they have been sold as young girls or even as children and forced into prostitution, thereby no contact with their families has been kept. Although most of them can still work, the money is very little, compared to what younger women earn, and this makes it impossible for them to survive by themselves, so Casa Xochiquetzal comes as somewhat of a blessing.

Although they display a lot of joy and seem to have a lot of fun together, almost every one of the old prostitutes hides a trace of sadness, especially when it comes to their children who barely remember they exist, much less come to visit them at the House of the Beautiful Flowers.

This story is part of a documentary that CNN made for the launch of VICE magazine in Mexico. Bernardo Loyola, producer of this documentary, confesses he found this weird and quite “different”, but nevertheless, he was impressed by the power these women have to continue with their lives, no matter the difficulties. For him, the visit at the House of the Beautiful Flowers was a turning point that totally changed his perception of prostitution.

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Le Truc may have started out as a old school bus, but it’s now one of San Francisco’s most popular gourmet restaurants.

Le Truc is the brainchild of Hugh Schick, a talented chef who wanted to offer his customers a truly unique experience. He managed to convert a 1989 Ford Ward School Bus into an ingenious restaurant on wheels that not only unlike any other restaurants you’ve ever seen, but also serves the finest gourmet meals. It’s now painted all-black, with copper accents, instead of the old yellow, and while it still looks like a bus on the outside, the interior has suffered a complete makeover. The original seating has been altered to accommodate 12 guests, skylights have been added, and the back section has been transformed into a kitchen.

According to San Francisco local media, Le Truc is gaining mad popularity and it’s on its way to becoming one of the city’s busiest restaurants. I guess people are curious to know what it’s like to eat fine foods, on a bus. And to prevent long lines outside the bus, Le Truc has a modern electronic order system that allows people to order from the small kiosk outside, and then simply wait for their meal. They’ll even receive a message on their phone or computer, when the order is ready.

Just so you can get an idea of the foods Hugh Schick and his team cook, on Le Truc here are some of their most popular dishes: grilled Portobello mushrooms and ground chicken meatballs, grilled duck breast with dried cherry, dried pear, and pomegranate molasses, as well various savory sandwiches.

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Noche de Rabanos (Night of the Radishes) takes place every year, on the 23rd of December, in Oaxaca,Spain and is one of the most impressive vegetable festivals around the world.

The radish was brought to the Americas in the 16th century, and back then the vendors used to carve them and use them on their market stalls to attract customers. Although the origins of the festival cannot be traced to an exact period, it is considered that it all began in the year 1897, when the mayor of Oaxaca organized the first radish-art exposition. Everever since that first celebration, every year, this humble vegetable is meticulously carved into animals, warriors, kings, dancers and pretty much any shape you can imagine. The artists sometimes make use of other vegetables, like onion or lettuce to complete their work. There’s also a prize for the most beautiful piece displayed.

The carver’s work begins about three days in advance and on the 23rd of December, the day of the festival, the results of all their hard work is presented to the public. On that same day, especially in the morning, children have the chance to learn this incredible art of radish-carving, or at least some of its secrets.

The celebrations don’t end that day. They continue on Christmas Eve and Christmas  Day with other joyful “fiestas”, parades of floats, fireworks music and dancing.

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I don’t know about you, but for me it is enough seeing the vuvuzela and I can actually hear that horrific sound it makes.

Well, at least I’m not the only one who doesn’t get why this “instrument of torture”, with which even the loudest group of supporters can’t compete, was such a hit during the South African World Cup. And the sound is not only annoying but also bad for your health, as Dr. Katijah Khoza-Shangase, professor of speech pathology and audiology at the Univeristy of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, says, quoted by CBS News: “We are not saying, ‘ban the vuvuzelas.’ The vuvuzela is part of the festivities of the game, it is part of what makes the soccer in this country, but people need to be aware that they need to just wear ear protection.”

In an attempt to transform the vuvuzela into something decorative or useful,after the end of The World Cup, Matt Blitz and some of his co-workers at Leftfield, an advertising firm, put up a blog called Wozela on which people could post their ideas on transforming the leftover vuvuzelas.

Although they started of with a few of their own ideas and were hopping to get just 20 maybe 50 more, they had to make this into a competition as they received 150 submissions in just a few months. There was also a prize of 10,000 Rand, around $1500, for the best idea.

The ideas were ranged from practical to absurd, from vuvuzela light fixtures to vuvuzela educational table or Christmas trees, but the top prize was won by a simple one: vuvuzela earrings, idea belonging to Megan Bernstein from Cape Town. She considers this as a form of redemption “Out of one vuvuzela you can make 10 earrings so there’s quite a return of investment there.”

Matt Blitz affirmed: “We’re trying to change perceptions a little bit. In the way people might have reacted and the amount of positive comments we’ve got I think we have done quite a good thing in busting the negative image of it.”

And the end of the online contest doesn’t mean the end of the vuvuzela make-over ideas. New ones can still be submitted and the initiators of the “Wozela movement” plan to organize exhibitions featuring the submissions first in Cape Town and then Johannesburg.

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True, there are many out there, especially women, who are very into knitting or crocheting but it seems to me that this time passion got a little bit out of control for Olek, real name Agata Oleksiak,a young woman born in Poland, currently living in NYC. It all started as a method of relaxation that soon became a form of art or, as she herself admits, a way of conveying the inseparability of life and art.

“Life and art are inseparable. The movies I watch while crocheting influence my work, and my work dictates the films I select. I crochet everything that enters my space. Sometimes it’s a text message, a medical report, found objects. There is the unraveling, the ephemeral part of my work that never lets me forget about the limited life of the art object and art concept. What do I intend to reveal? You have to pull the end of the yarn and unravel the story behind the crochet.”

Olek’s art may be shocking at first but is a real wake-up call for those willing to admire here work. Bursting with color, most of the times intentionally used “in conflict”, the works of art in which she has put an immense amount of effort and passion convey an image of the world that can only be seen through the eyes of an artist. Her crocheting varies from costumes for film or theater to large pieces meant to give a new image to an abandoned house, a Polish WWII bunker or the windows of the public boat in Istanbul, just to give a few examples.

In 2004 Olek received the Ruth Mellon Award for Sculpture and also won the commercial competition of the Apex Art Gallery but ever since she started,about a decade ago, her work has been admired in galleries all over the world.

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Richard Van Os Keuls has used flattened aluminum soda and beer cans as siding for his plywood house extension, after deciding conventional materials were too expensive.

Van Os Keuls, an architect from Silver Spring, Maryland, first got the idea of incorporating flattened aluminum cans into his trade after seeing a car drive over a discarded soda can. He thought to himself that it would make a pretty decent aluminum shingle, so he began building his own stash of old cans to experiment with, at a later time. That time came around when he finished the plywood extension on his house, and began looking for a cheap material to side it with.

The ingenious architect admits his idea of using aluminum cans has nothing to do with art or the environment, as he was simply looking for a cheap and durable alternative to conventional siding materials. Wearing heavy construction boots, Richard first stomped on the cans and then flattened them even further with a sledgehammer, rounding the corners so people wouldn’t get cut when leaning up against the house. He found that flattening each can was time-consuming, so he started working on several at a time. When they were ready to be placed on the wall, he would place 30-40 cans overlapping each other and secure them with a long aluminum nail.

At first, he wanted to paint over the cans, but as the siding started to take place, the color mosaic looked better and better, and he even made sure that no no two same color cans were put together. He began ordering cheap colorful beer and soda cans from other countries, just because he wanted as many different colors as possible. But he needed a lot more cans than he could buy, if he was to complete the siding, so he tried to collect more from the neighborhood dump. That got him cited twice, and earned him fines for theft of city property and transporting stolen property, so he had to rely on donations from neighbors.

When he finally completed his unique project, Richard Van Os Keuls’ house was covered by around 22,000 flattened aluminum cans. He says they aren’t noisy when it rains, and while aluminum tends to develop a chalky oxidation, the ink on the cans has significantly slowed up the process, so his can-covered home is still a colorful inspiration to architects and designers around the world.

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“Plastic City” is a colorful replica of Shanghai City out of cheap plastic objects bought by artist Bang-Yao Liu, on the streets of China’s bustling city.

While some may see just a bunch of colorful plastic objects, young Bang-Yao Liu went out of his way to create replicas of Shanghai buildings and landmarks. Scouting the streets of Shanghai for cheap plastic objects to use in his unique project, the artist used his experiences around the city as inspiration. Bins, plastic boxes, buckets, crates and other plastic things were used to create the Plastic City.

The 24-year-old Taiwanese artist created Plastic City as a commission piece for Converse, who wanted something that would show people it doesn’t take much to make the ordinary extraordinary.

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While most kids his age spend their day playing with action figures or mashing the buttons on their Xbox, Asher Bradshaw likes to show off his skateboarding talent, at the Venice Skatepark, in Los Angeles.

I’m sure Asher isn’t the only seven-year-old skateboarder out there, you may even see younger ones, but his talent and fearless attitude are really unique. The young prodigy only took up skateboarding in May 2009, but in just a year and a half his become a master with the board. Looking at him in his oversized clothes, with a big helmet on his little head, people first think something along the line of “he’s so cute!” but as soon as he slides down the half-pipe, that attitude quickly changes into something like “damn, he’s rad!”

Most skateboarders train for years to master some of the most difficult moves, but little Asher has done it in just a few months time. He throws himself inside the giant bowls, jumps over up to ten steps, slides over stuff, and does it all fearlessly. And since he’s such a rad skateboarder, on the rare occasions that he does fall, he does it so hard that he spends a few minutes crying in his dad’s arms and quickly gets back to skating.

At just seven years of age, Asher Bradshaw is already a local celebrity and those that have seen him perform on a skateboard say he has a bright future ahead of him. Check out the video below and see for yourself:

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Ha Wenjin, a dog lover from China, has given up her job, sold her house, car and jewelry to take care of over 1,500 dogs and 200 cats.

The middle-aged woman says she started out with just a few dogs that she could tend to in her spare time, but as their number kept growing, she had to give up her career and spend her entire day caring to the dogs’ needs. Before she knew it, she practically had her personal animal shelter, complete with 10 workers who look after the dogs, and 2 more who take care of the cats.

LIFE Magazine first reported on Ha Wenjin‘s amazing animal shelter, in 2006, and the resourceful woman managed to keep the facility outside Nanjing running until now. She had a number of volunteers coming in at least once a week to check on the dogs, and people donated most of the food. But now, the 1,500 dogs and 200 cats have to move to a new home, as Chinese government officials reclaimed the land the shelter is built on, and threaten to close the place down.

Ha Wenjin had to act fast, and find a cheap but large enough space, where her beloved pets could relocate to. She managed to find it in Houyu village, far away enough from human settlements, because she admits 1,500 dogs are not quiet. Now all she has to do is find enough volunteers to help her move the dogs with the help of four buses, and clean the vehicles afterwards. Ha Wenjin definitely has her work cut out for her, but she has no intention of giving up in her fight to save as many stray dogs and cats as she can.

Back in 2006, LIFE Magazine reported it cost around $37,500 a year to take care of the dogs, but now, with more than double the number of animals, you can imagine how tough it is for Ha Wenjin to keep her animal center open, especially with no help from local authorities. Luckily, most of the food comes from donations, but there are many other things that cost a lot of money.

Just to be clear, the animals are not as crowded as the photos show. It’s only like this at feeding time.

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Once just another oil rig used to pollute the ocean, Malaysia’s Seaventures Dive Resort is now one of the most popular diving spots in the Pacific Ocean.

The waters surrounding an oil rig are probably the last place you’d imagine to find such an amazing array of coral reefs, and a diverse marine life, made up of hundreds of species of colorful tropical fish, sea turtles and other marvelous creatures. But this particular oil rig is actually a hotel where divers from around the world book rooms, so they can be close to Sipadan Island, known for its incredibly beautiful underwater scenery.

The oil rig sitting in the Celebes Sea is owned by Suzette Harris, an Singaporean business woman whose father in law bought the metal monster, in 1988. She says in Singapore you can buy a used oil rig, just as easy as you would an old boat. After buying it, he had it towed to Borneo waters and started this unique diving hotel.

While they tried painting it in lively colors, to give it a welcoming look, there’s just so much you can do with an oil rig, and visitors should not expect five-star accommodations. The rooms are tidy but tiny, there’s hardly any closet space and the air smells from the oil powering the generators. The food isn’t exactly gourmet either, but tourists who stay at the oil rig hotel, don’t care much about these details. To them it’s all about being at the heart of the Coral Triangle, an area with a rich marine diversity.

Seaventures Dive Resort may not be as luxurious as I’m sure many other hotels in Malaysia, but it’s unique setting, and the fact that it’s the only oil rig hotel in the world, make it one of the world’s most popular tourist resorts.

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Sung Yeonju is a brilliant young Korean artist who took the art world by storm with her incredible series of dresses made of various foods, entitled Wearable Foods. Born in 1986, in Seoul, South Korea, Sung Yeonju graduated from the Hong Ik University in 2010, and has already made a name for herself by creating various garments out of foods like bread, red cabbage, tomatoes or spring onions.

She is a fine artist who uses photography as her main medium to create her vision. “Wearable Foods” series is the first long term project she started two years ago and it still continues to this day. This series deals with the concept of creating images that interchange the actual reality and the made-up reality on many levels. This body of work is her version of the made-up reality, which destroys the core meaning of clothing, which is the ability to be worn. This series of her work forces viewers to defy the actual meaning, functionality, and the aspects of what clothing signifies in our lives. The essence of clothing and food has been reinterpreted. Each element does not fulfill its own role and yet, each suggests an unconventional and even contradicting role – un-wearable clothing that is made out of the materials that do not last. Yeonju’s spectacular images make you believe and desire her made-up reality. She will be participating in an upcoming Korean Contemporary Art Group Exhibition in Los Angeles. For more information, please visit yeonju.me

I wonder if Sung Yeonju had something to do with Lady Gaga’s famous meat dress. Or maybe that was Dimitri Tsykalov’s work…

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