My Photo Diary

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Street Name FAIL

I would not want to live in this street :-)

Friday, August 28, 2009

Eton

The leaders of the pack are not Nicholas Nassim Taleb's black swans, but rather ducks :-(

Khotachiwadi is a heritage village in Girgaon, Mumbai, and consists of a set of 28 dainty and colorful villas set in Portuguese style of architecture (there used to be 65 originally, but greedy capitalists bought over half of them to build skyscrapers) .

Monday, August 10, 2009

Trek to Garbet Point, Matheran

Yeah, I got myself a new hairstyle ... finally

(The parting ...

has departed)

(Photo: Shreyan ML)

15 kilometres, and 4.5 hours later ...

Paris, Paris, Combien

The most beautiful avenue in the world

The Avenue de Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world. It is the most expensive strip of real estate in Europe.

In France it is also known as "La plus belle avenue du monde" ('The most beautiful avenue in the world').

In this 'most beautiful avenue worldwide', where a single meal for one person might cost as high as 400 to 500 €, beggars jostle for space amongst uber-rich shoppers, and genuflect all day to meet their monthly expenses of 400 to 500 €.

Les Bleus

Monday, August 03, 2009

Everybody needs good neighbours ...

A few of my neighbours from Amsterdam.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

The Little Prince

Did the vandals in Glasgow (The City of Sculptures) copy this idea from us ?

(See Petr's Photo in front of the Tokyo Tower in the blog post "The Journey of the Five Travellers")

Hold your hands up high Jack

Once some captors took some passengers in a vehicle hostage. Now as we all know, Jack is a very common name in the English language. The captors shouted: "Hold your hands up high Jack" (using Jack as a placeholder for a man's name). A newspaper reporting this incident referred to them as "The highJackers". The name stuck, and was later shortened from 'highjacker' to 'hijacker', and the act itself became known as 'hijack'.

When I was in school, a friend (who now conducts quizzes at the national level) told me this convincing piece of logic.

Gullible as I was, and as specious the explanation was, I took it to be true. Until about 2 minutes ago, when I decided to verify the veracity of the fact on the internet. Apparently this is wrong.

The correct order of evolution is:

Jack -> Jacker -> Highway Jacker -> High jacker -> Hijack.

Jack = device for holding a vehicle up for repair.

Jacker = holdup man who uses a jack to hold a vehicle up (for repair or otherwise)

Highway Jacker (= = A bootelgger who holds a vehicle in transit on the highway

Thursday, July 23, 2009

World Press Photo Exhibition

The World Press Photo organizes the world's largest and most prestigious press photography exhibition (http://www.worldpressphoto.org/)

The travelling exhibition is organized in 45 countries and visited by over 2 million people annually. The office of WPP is based in Amsterdam and the exhibition starts in Amsterdam every year at the Oude Kerk (The Old Church).

The Oude Kerk is the oldest church in Amsterdam and the original form was built in the 13th and 14th centuries. You can notice that the floor of the church is actually a series of tombstones - some of which are very articulately designed.

Some people find it amusing that this pious old church is surrounded immediately by the notorious red neon lighted windows of Amsterdam's world famous red light district on all sides.