I always find it quite insulting when the United States flag gets used as an icon for ‘English’. Technically it shouldn’t even be the British flag, but really the English flag. But you don’t often see that do you?
And considering there are more Portuguese speakers in Brazil than Portugal, why not show the Brazil flag for Portuguese (if you’re being consistent with the use of the US flag).
Or… just don’t use flags to illustrate language. Ever.
This post is just for Google really: introducing Shaun van Oorde-Grainger‘s spanking new website, Delusions of Grainger. Get it? He’s not just a pretty face.
Looking for hotels tonight on Radisson Hotels website and I quite literally got stuck. Trying to select a date range, the pop up date picker conveniently hides behind the big flashy Flash banner like some shy child cowering behind a parent’s leg.
Manually entering dates is also frustrating as some part of the Javascript intermittently clears the field when changing focus between the fields. Initially I honestly couldn’t get a date in. I’ve since tried again and it worked (barely). Just as well there’s a fairly obvious Reservations link in the top bar.
By the way, anyone know of any good hotels in Calgary?
Kurt Vonnegut is off to the big Breakfast of Champions in the sky.
With only a few days before the World Cup kick off, and less than a week before Australia plays Japan, last night we went shirt hunting. We have a slim chance of getting tickets for the Australia Croatia game, but chances are we’re going to be sitting in central Stuttgart with thousands of other not-so-lucky Australian and Croatian fans watching the game on a giant screen, drinking a few Löwenbräus and eating some wurst.
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Yesterday I fulfilled one of my greatest desires: to see Whaam! in the flesh.
Whaam!, Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 (from Wikipedia)There’s a few reasons I’ve wanted to see this painting for so long. One of them is that of all modern art, this is the first one I can really remember while growing up. The fact that it was reproduced inside a toilet at my high school probably reinforced this. The toilets next to the drama room were all decorated with student recreations of art classics, yet this is the only one I remember.
Apart from the quintessential pop art palette Lichtenstein used, the inherent motion of the diptych is quite amazing: I can’t think of any other art work gets close. The distorted perspective of the fighter really adds to this. And yet there’s the political message hidden in there as well, as Lichtenstein created this based on a page from the 60s comic book
Another reason I think I became so intent on seeing this painting is that when I first visited the Tate Modern in 2000 I was shocked to discover this iconic
Looking at the most viewed photos in my Flickr account, I discovered something disturbing — the top photo is one I took on the Mekong in Laos entitled “What’s a boat trip down the Mekong without some naked kids?”. Going through any waterways in South East Asia you see many families washing themselves in various stages of nakedness — it’s part of the cultural experience. I posted this photo to illustrate this, yet I’m in two minds now about keeping the title (or the photo in general) due to the obvious fact that people are finding this based on the search string ‘naked kids’. It’s not wildly popular (82 views since February 2006 to now), but nonetheless it’s a worry.
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That’s right. As of Friday the 3rd of February, 2006, our new home is West London. The holiday is over; from Singapore to Munich we had a ball through eight countries. Now it’s time to find a job!
I was very slack updating this site along the way; Angela was handling the journal writing more than adequately for both of us (rather spectacularly, actually). However, I did managed to upload a fair few photos to Flickr along the way (with surprising ease in even backwaters of South East Asia) – I’ll upload plenty more when I get the chance.
Well so far Ho Chi Minh City is nothing like what I had expected. All the guidebooks and websites make you think it’s a pickpocket’s paradise where you are having everything snatched off your face by scooter-riding thieves and you’re being ripped off left right and centre. The traffic is pretty heavy and its quite noisy, but it’s nowhere near the levels of Bangkok. Crossing the road is fun: just walk. Don’t look. The scooters will move for you, and if you move for them, then you just mess with the whole crazy system.
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We’ve been in Singapore for two nights now, and we’re absolutely stuffed. Our family friends, Diana and Phillip have been incredibly generous in ensuring we sample as much of the local cuisine as possible. Curries, noodles, roti, satay, durians, mangos, snake fruit, dried ginger… oh my. But the food here has been incredible. Anyway, I’m busy uploading photos, check some out here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joffley/sets/1461945/. More to come!
