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Posted on December 10 2008 by Jag @ 10:40 am
Waiting around in the DARK, WET and COLD – waiting for the 79 to turn up. I guess I should be grateful for the quality thinking time that I get to myself. But I can dream about being elsewhere. If you stare at the approaching 79 bus in the picture below hard enough I’m sure we can elevate ourselves into the same plane of thought …. Wishing I were somewhere else
(Taken with my cameraphone whilst waiting for a Route 79 bus home at Alperton, West London.)
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Posted on November 16 2008 by Jag @ 5:59 pm
A collection of some of my favourite images from over the last few months. Click on the green button below. Music is a dance number called Galang, by MIA (Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam) – A sometimes-controversial West London-born, Sri Lankan artist. (You can watch the video of this track at YouTube if you click here.)
Photo slide-show: Click on green button to load, and to step through pics.
(All pictures taken in London – and with my cameraphone of course.)
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Posted on October 30 2008 by Jag @ 11:35 am
Returned from a weekend away in the outer Western suburbs of London earlier this week. Although Vancouver is a very pleasant place, and Los Angeles International Airport is a humdrum of a place to connect, neither accept Oystercards yet. For my return bus journey I like to get an “F” seat, as most flights on final approach into Heathrow approach from the East, and if you’re lucky to have a cloud-free sky, you’ll get a great view of the Docklands, The City and West End as the plane tracks the river westwards. Unfortunately for me this time I could only get an “A” seat, which means a great view of South London’s .. er .. suburbs and … er … Croydon. And it was cloudy. But, my luck was in when as my plane undertook some manoeuvre that involved descending by heading South-Eastwards over the city first, and there it was as we popped out from just under a cloud:
A rare Eastward view over the City of London.
(Taken with my cameraphone aboard a 777 coming in to London Heathrow.) You can clearly see St.Paul’s Cathedral, The Barbican, Tower 42, Swiss Re, Tower Bridge, and more. Fascinating. You can explore the original-size view of this pic here. And there is another shot I took a moment later where Docklands comes into distant view.
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Posted on October 19 2008 by Jag @ 8:15 pm
The rapidly darkening evenings tells us that it’s that time of year again. For all those celebrating a little light, hope and optimism: a very happy Diwali!
Happy Diwali 2008 from London’s Trafalgar Square.
(Pictures taken with my cameraphone at the Mayor of London’s “Diwali in the Square” event.) In these forever uncertain times, wishing peace, good health and good karma to all those who click-through to here from wherever you come from.
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Posted on October 7 2008 by Jag @ 8:01 pm
I love that word, it’s so descriptive. Almost onomatopoeic.
Rammed.
(Taken with my cameraphone at Liverpool Street tube station Eastbound platform.) Yet more waiting. Central Line Westbound at Liverpool Street. Although I am told that in Mumbai it could it be worse. A part of me finds that hard to believe. I waited for three trains to pass before I managed to (only just) squeeze on. Silly me; should’ve known that most of the East End heading west would not necessarily get off at Liverpool Street during the morning rush hour. A face full of hair-gel later I was at my destination in the City. It would’ve been faster to walk it, but something willed me to persist in the quest to squeeze in, get on, and get there.
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Posted on September 29 2008 by Jag @ 4:45 pm
I find myself doing it a lot lately.
Waiting for a train.
(Taken with my cameraphone.) Whilst waiting for a southbound Metropolitan Line train at Wembley Park, I find myself wondering how much time in our lives we spend waiting. For something. Or something to happen.
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Posted on September 17 2008 by Jag @ 8:16 pm
London has been blighted with free newspapers in the last few years. At first it was Metro, a free morning newspaper that is left in huge piles at the entrance to most tube stations and often found in smaller piles for you to help yourself to in the bulky-luggage spaces on-board London’s buses. And then, a few years later (a couple of years ago), the Metro was joined by another couple of free-sheets called The London Lite and The London Paper, which are normally distributed by (seemingly) foriegn-student hander-outers standing outside Central London tube stations and busy thoroughfares. And so, with a glut of free newspapers being distributed and handed-out to commuting Londoners, there is little excuse for not having something to read on the way to work and on the way home. However, in my humble opinion, these free-sheets are slightly irritating. They carry “disposable” news, and they are disposed of indiscriminately all over the transport systems, causing unsightly mess and feeding the public’s brains with sensation, doom and celebrity-gossip. And therefore very little in terms of literary or journalistic value. Still, the majority of the travelling public seem to love’em so one can’t be too critical I suppose. Anyway, one thing that I’ve noticed is the intensity of competition between London Lite and London Paper in the evenings: as I said, they employ “hander-outers” who have an extremely assertive manner of handing out the free papers to passers by on the streets outside train/tube stations and “high-human-traffic” pavements. Not only do they thrust these papers in your way as you walk by, hoping you’ll take one, but they also seem to cause major human congestion as they occupy considerable space standing there with arms outstretched. But you can’t help but admire their persistence in doing so; often chanting in weird-accented fashion, the name of the paper. The other day I noticed one of the hander-outers undertaking some kind of strange “slapping” ritual whilst handing out his papers: A quirky, free paper hander-outer in Central London.
(Taken with my cameraphone outside Tottenham Court Road tube station near Centre Point.)
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Posted on August 31 2008 by Jag @ 8:29 pm
Just about an hour by train southbound from London’s King’s Cross St Pancras station you will find an outer suburb of London called Lille, which happens to fall within French jurisdiction. One of the best things about this town, actually: THE BEST thing about this town is an art gallery called The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, which houses the most important collection of fine art in France after the The Louvre in Paris. Personally, I like the Palais des Beaux Arts far more than Louvre, because a) it’s do-able in one afternoon, and b) the building and galleries are full of magnificent sights to behold. It’s exactly what you expect an art gallery to be like: vast spaces, wondrous paintings and sculptures, and most important of all; a sense of solitude that is the very antithesis of the tourist-packed Louvre. No being shuffled fast and furiously past paintings of the great masters here; you can hang around as long as you like and contemplate at some amazing works by Delacroix, David, Goya, Rodin, Van Dyck, Reubens etc. But bestest of all is a particular painting that warrants a pilgrimage on its own …
Le Parlement de Londres by Claude Monet
(Taken with my cameraphone at Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille.) From a distance of a few metres, the object in the painting is recognisable to us Londoners in pin-sharp instantaneousness. But from a few centimetres away it looks like a hodge-podge mess of oil-paint randomness. That’s the wonder of impressionism. That’s Claude Monet. And that’s what makes Lille a “must visit” place. (In the picture above you can see some French art students reproducing this painting. On the afternoon of my visit, at no other painting in the entire gallery was anyone else doing this.)
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Posted on August 17 2008 by Jag @ 2:36 pm
Haven’t put up a recipe for ages. So how about chicken in a slightly different style. Not Indian style per se, but can be put together in any kitchen equipped and stocked for Indian cooking. It makes a great change and focusses on the wonderful combination of chickpeas and chicken. This combo is popular in the Mediterranean regions of Europe and North Africa, where the chickpeas are used liberally in meaty stews as well as salads. Contrast this with the use of chickpeas in South Asian and Indian cuisines, where chickpeas are used as a “centrepiece” rather than an ingredient – e.g. in chole bhatura or channa masala etc. Anyway, this recipe is a Moroccan style one, so plenty of use of chillie, turmeric, cumin and coriander, but with a really fresh Mediterranean edge through the use of olives, lemon, parsley and chickpeas.
Moroccan style chicken bake with salad
(Pictures taken with my cameraphone) Click here to learn how to prepare this tasty dish. Best eaten al fresco in your back garden whilst a semblance of summer remains.
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Posted on August 5 2008 by Jag @ 1:58 pm
You know how you go to “Web 2.0” presentations in really swanky Covent Garden venues where “cool” people talk to their Powerpoint slides about endless mashup opportunities that arise from the wisdom of crowds and the power of the web as a platform for market disruptions and exciting user-experiences etc. etc. etc. ? Well, there’s always one slide they always throw up; one that such a presentation would not be complete without: the Word Cloud. So I was staring at a blank Powerpoint slide thinking I’d like to make a Word Cloud slide too. Click on the image below to see it build up: A Word Cloud generated from this blog’s web-feed.
(Video of Wordle Creation taken with my cameraphone of course.) Thanks to Paul Golding who showed me the way to this rather neat app.
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Posted on July 20 2008 by Jag @ 9:48 pm
There was a problem last weekend with the Oystercard system on the London transport network. Aparrently, around 65,000 people who attempted to use their cards during the system outage, had to have their Oystercards replaced with new ones. I’m really glad that I wasn’t one of those, ‘cos my Oystercard is one of the originals.
I’d be gutted if I had to have my Oystercard forcibly replaced.
(Taken with my cameraphone on the Southbound Jubilee Line platform at Kingsbury Station.) You can tell I’ve got one of the original cards (circa 2003) because the London Transport roundel is coloured red on my Oystercard. They’re coloured white nowadays you see …
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Posted on July 13 2008 by Jag @ 5:54 pm
It’s amazing how enduring to the consciousness an entirely fictional character like Sherlock Holmes can be. According to Wikipedia:
So when you’re waiting for the train doors to close after you’ve just boarded the Bakerloo Line tube at Baker Street you just can’t but help wonder at how they’ve managed to ingrain Sherlock Holmes into our consciousness here forever.
Image of Sherlock Holmes on the wall at Baker Street tube station
(Taken with my cameraphone on the Northbound Bakerloo Line platform.) It’s elementary when the dear elements of such images are themselves made up of miniature Sherlock-shaped sillhouette elements. (Apols.)
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Posted on July 9 2008 by Jag @ 10:44 pm
It’s been AGES since I last posted about Slough. Which for those who don’t know has been the most exciting town in the UK for quite some time now. Unfortunately I only work here, so I only really get to experience the place properly during the occasional lunch break etc. And so, on a lunch-break yesterday I took a walk into the town centre from my office on a mission to buy a cheap telephone “splitter” from the local “pound shop”. But whilst I was out I realised how bright and sunny it was. In total contrast to the few hours earlier when miserable dark clouds unleashed heavy rains on the place.
Slough Town Centre during a break in the weather.
(A kind of surreal picture taken with my cameraphone.) There is something very weird about this photo. It looks like a computer-generated image from a scene in computer simulator game or something similar …
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Posted on June 29 2008 by Jag @ 10:36 am
Halfway into 2008. Where did June go? I had to look back through the month in my Flickr photostream to try to work that out. Click on the green button below for a slideshow of my favourite images of June from the few that I have.
As usual, all pictures were taken with my cameraphone; at the 2 megapixel setting. Musical accompaniment is “Maar Sutiya” from a 2005 “Bollywood” film called Deewane Huye Paagal.
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Posted on June 10 2008 by Jag @ 8:25 pm
The Euro 2008 football match between Netherlands and Italy last night was class. I have to say I was quite amazed by the Dutch team’s comprehensive defeat of Italy, and even more amazed by the style and flair of their achievement against the current world champions. Well, at least there are many other things that the Italians are world class at, even if their football might not be of late; and this is one of them:
Mozarella with tomato and basil. The colours and taste of Italy.
(Taken with my cameraphone just before indulging in this taste sensation.) Easy to prepare: Marks & Spencer are carrying imported Mozarella di Bufala Campana in a small hand-separated ball for around two quid (4 bucks). Slice it up into 8 rounds, and do the same with a large, chunky “beefsteak” tomato. Drizzle the tomato slices in extra-virgin, organic olive oil and freshly ground black pepper. Lay out the tomato slices on a serving plate and arrange the mozarella slices on top. Garnish with large, well-formed, leaves of a bunch of fresh basil and serve as an appetiser to the next football match.
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