Finding hotspots

There are more and more wifi hotspots around the world. It’s getting easier and easier to connect wherever you are.
Look at these two students I spotted one night on my way through Aix en Provence. I’m guessing someone inside that building has got a wireless router on! Look at the way the light of their [...]

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What makes life unbearable?

I read a short article in the Glasgow Herald yesterday about a London based financier, Kirk Stephenson, Chief Operating Officer of a private equity company called Olivant. Originally a New Zealander, he had a senior position in his company. He was a wealthy man who had a £3.6M Chelsea home, a home in the West [...]

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I am because you are

One of greatest joys of blogging is how it facilitates the discovery, and creation, of connections. My daughter, Amy, who writes the wonderful lessordinary, has developed a whole online network of friends through her blog. She’s a great networker and deliberately creates her blog to make and develop connections with others. Let me tell you [...]

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What we see

I took this photo of a man standing painting the landscape. He had two or three completed canvases at his feet. All his paintings were watercolours and all were realistic representations of his surroundings as he saw them. This was on a sunday afternoon in the busy port area of Cassis but he was completely [...]

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Birds and the bell tower

Looked up and saw this as I walked down the Rue Esperiat in Aix en Provence.
It looks like a giant bird cage but all the birds are on the outside and only the bell is inside the cage.

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The sunflower seller

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Fascination

When I was in Tokyo last week there were Autumn Festivals going on. I saw one in the Akihabara district. There were lots of tables set up in the street and up on the first floor of the UDX building, selling freshly cooked seasonal foods and there were many stalls of games for children – [...]

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City of reflections

When you’re in a city where a lot of the buildings are covered in reflective glass, what you see can be quite disorientating. I spotted this iMac ad, then thought, hang on, that’s the wrong way round! Then I realised I was looking at a glass clad building.
Then I looked across at this one and [...]

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Tokyo sunset from Ikebukuro

Look carefully and you’ll see quite a number of buildings which are reflecting the setting sun. In fact they make a kind of red thread or trail right across Tokyo and up to the sunset. (If you can’t make that out, click on the photo to go to the flickr page where it’s stored and [...]

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Ikebukuro subway station market

In the subway station at Ikebukuro, Tokyo, market stalls come and go, flourishing for a day, then gone again. This one at the foot of the escalator was selling clothes. It seemed out of place there to me, but probably seems perfectly normal to the local commuters.
Notice the interesting English phrase indicating the huge discounts [...]

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