Days of the week

Did you know that the days of the week have the same meaning across all Indo-European languages?

Let's consider English and Hindi - geographically (almost) the most distant members of this family:

Monday: The day of the moon. In Hindi, this is "Somvaar", with "Som" meaning the moon, and "vaar"being day.

Tuesday: This one is not so obvious - named after Tyr, the Norse god of war, who in the Roman panatheon, is Mars(pictured).  In Sanskrit (the predecessor to modern Hindi), Mars is "Mangal", hence "Mangalvaar".

Wednesday: The day of the norse god Woden, better known as the Roman messenger god, Mercury. The Hindi name - "Buddhvaar". ("Buddh" should not be confused with the Gautama Buddha.)

Thursday: Thor's day. Based on Jupiter, king of the Roman gods, and the largest of the planets. In Hindi, this planet is commonly called "Guru" - meaning "large". The name "Brihaspati" is also used - hence "Guruvaar", and the less common "Brihaspativaar".

Friday: For Frige, the Norse goddess of love. Venus to the Romans, and "Shukra" to India. "Shukravaar".

Saturday: No points for guessing this one - Saturn's day. The Hindi equivalent here is "Shanivaar".

Sunday: In Hindi - "Ravivaar". "Ravi" is a another name for the sun.

What's even more interesting, is that not only are the days named after the same planets, but the gods for each planet serve similar roles in both mythologies.

This commonality exists across almost all Indo-European languages. Though, some languages have tweaked a few days to more logical names- e.g. Wednesday becomes Mittwoch("Mid-week") in German, Friday is sexta-feira("sixth-day") in Portuguese.

How to make an orange twist

I searched online for a while how to make a good orange twist garnish for cocktails. The best guide I could find was this article on making a lemon twist. I tried it and it works just as great on an orange. Lessons learned:

• When shaving off the rind, it's alright to leave a little white on the back. My twists were about 2mm thick.
• I kept my twists around 5mm wide. They were strong enough to stay intact without breaking. (I tried 2mm earlier, which didn't work).
• You can get 10-12 twists out of one medium-sized orange.

Foreign domain registration

Foreign domain registration is, in most cases, as easy as registering a .com domain. Most of the big domains  - .co.uk, .in, .gr, etc. - are open for use by anyone. Some such domains may however pose a surcharge for people with no "physical presence" in the Top Level Domain (TLD) country. A few domains are limited to citizens and permanent residents of the TLD country.

It's interesting to note that you can apply for restricted European domains (e.g. .it for Italy), if you're a citizen of any EU country.

Wikipedia has articles on every TLD, with information about specific registration requirements.