Man appears alive at own funeral in Brazil

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20091105/twl-lt-odd-brazil-dead-man-walking-1be00ca.html

RIO DE JANEIRO – A Brazilian bricklayer reportedly killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family by showing up alive at his funeral.

Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a Sunday night car crash in Parana state in southern Brazil, police said.

As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honor the dead.

What family members didn’t know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening Monday morning.

A police spokesman in the town of Santo Antonio da Platina said Goncalves rushed to the funeral to let family members know he was not dead.

“The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing,” said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case. “People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case.”

Sampaio told O Globo that some family members were not sure the body was Goncalves.

“My two uncles and I had doubts about the identification,” she told O Globo. “But an aunt and four of his friends identified the body, so what were we to do? We went ahead with the funeral.”

The police spokesman confirmed there were doubts: “His mom looked at the body in the casket and thought something was strange. She looked and looked and couldn’t believe it was her son,” Sampaio said. “Before long, the walking dead appeared at the funeral. It was a relief.”

The body was correctly identified later Monday, the police spokesman said, and has already been buried in another state. He declined to release the actual victim’s name.

i desire….

…nothing more than a warm comfy bed complete with a comforter filled with down feather and a huge tub of sticky chewy chocolate to make the day a better one……

*prays that the day wun be as bad as ytdy,…arh well, if anything else it could be worse though…*

today’s exam 1…

…and bloody hell everything’s seemed to be in hyper mode for me…

haish exams @ 7…arh well, all the best for me…

McDonald’s worker dies of ‘overwork’

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20091028/tap-japan-labour-company-mcdonalds-d1078a1.html

TOKYO (AFP) – – A store manager with hamburger chain McDonald’s in Japan who died of a brain haemorrhage was a victim of “karoshi” or death by overwork, a regional labour office said Wednesday.

The woman, employed at an outlet in Yokohama near Tokyo and reportedly aged 41, had done more than 80 hours of overtime per month before she collapsed in October 2007 during a training programme at a different store.

She died in hospital three days later, said an official at the Kanagawa Labour Bureau, which oversees the Yokohama region.

“We determined her work caused the illness,” said the official in charge of work-related compensation, a decision that makes her dependent family members eligible to receive a public pension.

“She had early symptoms such as headaches some three weeks before she collapsed, and we presume she already had the illness at that point.”

McDonald’s Co. (Japan) Ltd. declined to comment on the case, with a spokesman saying only that the company had not been contacted by authorities and had not confirmed the decision by itself.

The woman had performed more than 80 hours of overtime a month on average for the six months before she suffered early symptoms, although she had a vacation shortly before she collapsed in October, the official said.

Japan’s welfare and labour ministry investigates whether deaths are caused by excessive work if the victim had performed monthly overtime of 80 hours or more for the preceding six months, or 100 hours for the previous one month.

The number of deaths, usually through strokes or heart attacks, in Japan that are classified as “karoshi” has been hovering at around 150 annually in recent years, according to ministry data.

McDonald’s suffered a blow to its image when a Tokyo court last year ordered it to pay compensation of more than 70,000 dollars to an employee who had performed unpaid overtime for several years.

The plaintiff, who had carried the job title of store manager, had earlier said he sometimes worked more than 100 hours of unpaid overtime in a month.

Japan’s labour laws do not oblige companies to pay overtime to workers in managerial posts. McDonald’s argued their store chiefs have a say in management decisions, but the court rejected that argument

 

woooahhh…dun be the first to do that in ur hometown!

outta SG

going to Penang for the weekend …

 

following the Hubz for dunno what things to be settled…

 

will update pics along the way

 

lovely…the weekend R&R b4 the crunch for the 1st 2 weeks of nov…