The race to become the biggest and the best has been going on since the age of the Pyramids of Egypt. In recent years the list had remained fairly constant but with better technology and modern methods of construction, we will see some of the world’s skyscrapers being built more often than ever before.

I am so tempted to talk about each of them but I think I will probably settle down in showing you all the top 5 of them as follows:

1.) Taipei 101 in Taiwan (Taipei 101 will not keep its crown for long as there are many other projects in the planning stages or even near completion. The most talked about is the Burj Dubai projected to be completed and occupied in 2009)

Fantastic fact: The world’s two fastest elevators live here, installed by Toshiba. With top speeds of 1,010 m/min, you can fly up from Level B1 to 89 in 37 seconds.

Less fantastic fact: Something frankly less interesting is that there is a 900-ton tuned mass damper installed on the 87th floor to counter earthquakes and typhoons.

2.) Petronas Towers in Malaysia

To give you an idea of its height Alain Robert, the Gerard Depardieu of the climbing world, attempted to scale the towers without ropes or harnesses. It’s great to see these Malaysian office workers so happy and yet he failed to finish the climb. He also failed in 1997 when he was caught at the 60th floor, 28 short of the 88th storey skyscraper. The police simply opened a window and pulled him back in. Something tells me we might be seeing Alain again as he has tried to climb virtually everything including Taipei 101.

Fantastic fact: Apparently, the shape of the floors is based on an eight-point star, common in Malaysian Islamic patterns and the towers have so many windows that window-washers take a month to clean each tower!

Less fantastic fact: The Towers were featured in the film Entrapment with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery. The backdrop in the film was a shanty town surrounding the building when this is nowhere near the reality. This caused some controversy in Malaysia as it was portrayed as a backwards country.

3.) Sears Tower in Chicago

Fantastic fact: And just in case you need a better view the building has six robotic window-washing machines mounted on the roof.

And yes, in 1999 French Alain “Spiderman” Robert scaled the building’s exterior glass and steel wall all the way to the top…without getting caught.

4.) Jin Mao Building in Shanghai

5.) Empire State Building in New York

BURJ DUBAI STATUS:

In February 2007, it surpassed the Sears Tower as the building with the most floors in the world and earlier this month the tower’s height was 460.1 meters (1,510 feet), with 129 floors.

It is currently the second tallest building in the world excluding antennas and is rising by 2-3 floors per week. It looks like the Burj Dubai will be the tallest building in the world by the end of this year.

The final height is officially being kept a secret - you wouldn’t want to spend years constructing the tallest building for another to ‘pop up’ a couple of metres taller a few months later. However, figures released by a contractor on the project have suggested a height of around 808 metres and 162 floors. Even so, other contractors are estimating over 940 metres (over 3,000 feet). To put it into perspective that is 5 times higher than the Swiss Re building in London.

I went to Solid Shipping Lines with my Toyota Revo last Tuesday to check the status of our cargoes coming from our supplier in Manila. Since our office is in Bangkal, Davao City, my normal route would be the Diversion road. I always like the idea of passing in this road (sometimes even if my appointment is in the downtown area) because it’s less traffic and somehow I get the feeling that I am traveling in the country roads. And it always makes me feel good than driving within the city, which is very exposed to air pollution as the main environmental health hazard of today’s modern city..

Anyway, few meters after I passed by the Matina Pangi crossing, I saw five 10-wheeler trucks very slowly climbing up against each other in this slightly elevated diversion road. For some reason I found it quite impossible to overtake even just one of them at a time. I was not in a hurry at that time so I was just cool and so decided to just go with the flow of the 5 km/hr race.

I didn’t find any reason to complain at that time until I smelled something real bad. This very fouling odor must have entered thru the car’s aircon inlet air or whatever. And then I realized I was following this truck..

I am wondering..Is there any law or sort of “code of practice for the land transport of pigs” here in the Philippines? Anyone?

Michael Jackson is one of the greatest dancers of all time, both in creativity and performance. His moves have mesmerized audiences around the globe, as well as inspired a generation of dancers. One of the most popular move is the Moonwalk which Michael Jackson, although he did not invent it, perfected it and made it his own.

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I am just wondering why I could not connect to the URLs of the Biodiesel, Biomass, and the other Renewable Energy in this site (no offense Marc) but I just didn’t know what went wrong..honestly.

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Michel Gondry solves a Rubiks Cube with his nose in less than a minute.

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Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview 5 job applicants. Some of them just literally gave me headaches. So this morning when I opened my email, I came across this video of a guy doing some rope tricks and it somehow made me smile.

You can check it out.

I have already sent this comment to the DPWH but I want to share this to all of you so you will know something.

TO WHOM THIS MAY CONCERN

The “Blue Book” is your set of standards I believe. Do you have any regular revision(s) of the said book? I suppose you do have and you should because every industry should grow and cope up with the trend of technology.

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Dear reader,

It looks very much as if the year 2007, at least for Filipinos, is still in its infancy. The activities that have taken place and are still going on in the construction industry are only the beginning.

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1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit Sponsors:

• Councilor Peter Laviña
• Join The DigitalFilipino.com Club
• Dimsum Diner
• BisayaBloggers.com
• Davao’s Food Huntress
• NoKiAHOST.COM P5/day webhosting
• Globe Broadband
• ACT for Peace Programme
• Web Design Philippines
• Lane Systems
• Snap Graphic & Sign
• Orange County Real Estate
• Web Developer Philippines
• Eric Clark Su
• Frendz Diner
• Artcom Printing Services
• Cubepixels Design Studio

Whew!! Is it only me who had so much trouble in trying to register in this “1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit”? I can only wish that the process is not that complicated. My advice to the webmaster of this event is to make it very simple..a few clicks of the mouse can never be any better. Because we have to understand that since our main objective is to attract bloggers, neophytes in web page blogging included, we should make the process (or whatever you may call it) user-friendly.

Well anyway, I salute the people behind this summit. See you all on and in the “Summit Party”.