Bill Murray's Blog, page 133
January 17, 2014
Friday Photo Quiz #191
Last week’s quiz was tough, so maybe this one’s a little easier. These photos are from this country’s first (top) and second cities. Clue: Neither one is the country’s capital. Can you guess the country?
Click through for the answer. And a good weekend to all from CS&W and EarthPhotos.com.
And the answer is ………………….…….. it’s Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. The capital, of course, is Canberra.
There are hundreds more photos in the Australia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
And take all the CS&W photo quizzes.
January 15, 2014
Wednesday HDRs: Saigon
We’re back in the studio with access to all of our photo processing goodies. Please enjoy a few first offerings from Saigon. Click ‘em to make ‘em bigger. There are hundreds more photos in the Vietnam Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
January 14, 2014
Is Japan Testing China’s ADIZ, or Not?
China declared its “Air Defense Identification Zone” on November 23rd and four days later the “Japanese government on Tuesday told its domestic airlines to stop providing flight information to China, which has mandated that planes give details when flying through the new ADIZ it unilaterally declared.” In other words, Japan declined to recognize the ADIZ.
Who knows what’s being said for political consumption and what’s actual policy? So I’ve been interested to see how this plays out every day in practice, and the other day we had occasion to flirt with the line on a Japan Airlines flight between Tokyo Narita and Saigon Tan Son Nhat airports. It’s not completely easy to tell, but it looks like we skirted well outside the Chinese line when you compare the top map from the Japan Defense Ministry, and a photo of the flight map from the plane.
Which is interesting when you note that the Great Circle Mapper, which shows the shortest path between two points, indicates we should have plowed right through the ADIZ, straight over Taiwan.
January 13, 2014
Royal Flight
“Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard,” the captain says.
Protocol, apparently, seats Her Royal Highness in seat 1A. I am seated in 2A, so here is the story of my flight behind a member of the Royal Bhutanese House of Wangchuk.
We’re on a flight via Druk Air, the Bhutanese national airline, from Bangkok through Bagdogra, India, to Paro, Bhutan’s gateway airport. The check-in clerk asks if we’d prefer row one or two. She checks her screen and says whoops, I’ll need to put you in row two because row one is reserved for the royal family.
The royal family apparently gets to stay in a more exclusive airport lounge than we do, because when we arrive at the plane (via bus, about eight miles out on the tarmac) Her Royal Highness (HRH) and her escort are already seated. Her Royal Hair is jet black, held up in a gauzy clip, and from my seat directly behind her I see that it takes a while for her to get comfortable. She fiddles with the royal blue (what else?) pillow, resting it behind Her Royal Neck then putting it on her armrest and just resting Her Royal Head on the back of the seat. In the process of making this adjustment I see that Her Royal Fingers bear a number of rings.
HRP (Her Royal Perfume) is overbearing, I fear. I can’t be 100% sure it’s hers but she’s in 1A, her escort in 1B is male, then there’s Mirja and me in 2A & B and there’s a little boy behind me in row 3, there’s a guy across the aisle in 1D and nobody in 2D. I’m afraid she’s the prime suspect. HRP is cloying, sweet and heavy.
HRE (Her Royal Escort) may or may not be much younger than me, hard to tell, but I can report that he prefers today’s Bangkok Post and Nation to yesterday’s Kuensel, the Bhutan paper. Maybe he’s already read yesterday’s Keunsel. I can also report that HRE doesn’t have any facial hair, wears a dazzling diamond ring on his right hand and a high thread count blue and white pin-striped short sleeved shirt. He also has a fine silver watch. It appears he has declined breakfast service. He’s gone to sleep, courteously not reclining his seat back into Mirja’s lap.
HRH has chosen tomato juice and will join us in the breakfast service. She has ordered coffee, served with cream. It looks like HRE will skip breakfast, as he continues to nap. The two flight attendants, young women both, keep stealing glances at 1A & B from behind the curtain in the galley and as they roll the carts up and down the aisle.
In Bhutanese culture it is customary to cover the mouth and say meshu meshu, demurring once or twice before accepting when offered food. It appears to be protocol, or at least respectful, to cover ones mouth when addressing HRH, too. The crew does so while serving the food and does a little kowtow.
HRH goes vegetarian this morning so I decide to eat like a queen and have the same: We start with standard plastic-wrapped assorted fruit on a banana leaf, coffee & cream, a wrapped Matterhorn Suisse cheese, bread from a basket with a pat of “Allowrie” butter. The main dish HRH and I enjoy is a fiery hot tofu, fungus, rice and Chinese cabbage. She gets extra chilli sauce from a silver cup, we get it in a tiny plastic pre-dispensed tub. The service concludes with four Imperial brand “Rosy” crackers, panna cotta and two chocolates.
After the food service HRH dives into the duty free magazine, first and not surprisingly stopping in the perfume section, then checking out the sunglasses. HRE continues sleeping as we fly up over Burmese ridges, or Bangladeshi, I don’t know, all of them barren of human development.
This Airbus A 319 must be old. The seat back pockets snap on and off. Not a modern look. One side of the seat back pocket behind HRH and in front of me just hangs there, unsnapped.
Coffee and tea are served in Drukair china and the napkins are linen, with the Drukair logo.
HRH buys a duty free bottle of Lancome perfume and a Bulgari perfume suspected to be Omnia Amethyste EDT from the Burgari Women Collection, and pays in cash in crisp, new Thai Baht. HRE has to wake up for all this reaching across, which is complicated by the crew having to fold their hands over their mouths while bagging up and delivering the goods.
During this period we learn HRH has a deep, raspy, smoker’s voice. In all the commotion HRE makes for the air vent above his head and apparently thinks he might have a go at some duty free himself, opening up the magazine. Finally he declines but now that he’s awake, he elects to have breakfast, making straight for the panna cotta. As time goes on HRE presents as an engaged and expressive fellow in a tight mustache.
Alas, and after all this, I learn that HRH is not a queen, or queen mother (or, in the case of Bhutan, where four sisters were married to the previous king, a queen mother’s sister). I inquire up in the galley.
Is HRH a wife of the fourth king?
No, the cabin crew tell me, she’s an Auntie of the 4th king.
(The reigning, fifth king, is Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. His father, the fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated in favor of his son in 2006.)
Auntie has a big black handbag with two gold handles and tons of rings on her fingers. HRE still sleeps as after the breakfast service HRH’s little standard issue airline pillow falls between her armrest and the wall and onto my camera bag. Unsure of the protocol surrounding Royal Pillows, I decide I’d better not shove it back up there, so I keep the royal pillow next to my own.
After a time HRH starts rooting around looking for it so I gingerly offer it up and get a smile, nod and Royal Thank You.
I’ve done all I can here. My day is done.
January 11, 2014
Sochi Olympics Watch #21
It’s game time. The iron fist has closed around Sochi.
In an effort to “place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity,” – one of the principles of Olympism – “(a)n army of 30,000 is deployed. A further 40,000 police and internal security troops lie in reserve. Missile launchers and tracking devices are commissioned. Air and naval units stand ready. On Tuesday this entire force was put on ‘combat alert’ for a month.”, writes the Guardian.
Since 2009 Common Sense and Whiskey’s Sochi Olympics Watch has been pointing out that Sochi and Grozny, ground zero in the vicious Chechen wars, are scarcely 250 miles apart. From March 2009:
“Today’s International Herald Tribune carries the following story: Chechen leader imposes strict Islamic code. Business Week/Spiegel points out that there have been six bomb attacks in Sochi proper over the past year, and four people have died.
The last Russian games were the American-boycotted 1980 Moscow summer Olympics. Perhaps the IOC decided that after 34 years, it was Russia’s turn again. We’ll see how it turns out, but the Olympic Committee’s wisdom at picking the Russian Caucasus looks a little dicey from here.”
With 34 deaths in Volgagrad associated with the Sochi games a month before they begin, I’d say the best the Olympic Committee can hope for from Vladimir Putin’s vanity project is relief, if it ends with no further violence.
(Whatever befalls these games, Putin picks up a little something.)
Big Sports just thinks funny. Stand by for World Cup Watch, Qatar 2022.
January 10, 2014
Friday Photo Quiz #190
This is a trick quiz. Here are six photos that don’t look like most people’s impression of this country. Can you figure out what country it is?
Click through for the answer. And a good weekend to all from CS&W and EarthPhotos.com.
And the answer is ………………….…….. it’s Russia.
The top photo is from the Buryatian Autonomous Republic, Siberia. Photo two is the Angara River at Irkutsk. The third shows the Trans-Siberian Railroad as it skirts Lake Baikal near Listvyanka. Photos four and five are from the Buddhist monastery in Ivolginsk, and the prayer flags and welcoming party on horseback are outside the village of Hargana. All of the last three are from Buryatia, Siberia.
See more photos in the Russia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
And take all the CS&W photo quizzes.
January 8, 2014
Two Days of This
Got caught in the evil transportation maw in Chicago en route between Tokyo and home. We’ve been looking at this – and nothing but this – from our O’Hare airport hotel room for two days now and eating reubens and pizzas from the not very extensive sports bar menu.
On the move home today. No special kudos to American Airlines, where for two days the kind telephone reservations auto-attendant has been telling us, “wait time is more than two hours.”
January 5, 2014
Dalliance with Royalty
“Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard,” captain Sen Gupta said. Clearly, this was to be a special flight.
Protocol, it appears, places Her Royal Highness in seat 1A.
Fate and a business class fare put me in seat 2A and so I shall share the story of my flight behind a member of the Royal Bhutanese House of Wangchuk. But not before we fly home from Saigon, a transit through Toyko that begins in a few hours.
For now, may I present you with the Royal Hair Clasp, as seen from 2A.
January 3, 2014
Back from the Mekong Delta
We’re back in Saigon with a ton of raw photo material. We traveled down to Cai Be and walked the market there (bigger than you’d think for a little town), then boarded a ship to sail overnight to Can Tho, then visited the floating market there the next morning. Here are a few slung-from-my-laptop snapshots from Cai Be and on the water:
January 1, 2014
Goodbye Gangtok
Two last photos from Gangtok. The city center and one I guess you’d call ‘busted.’
Back in Saigon overnight after a jostling, bone rattling ride back down from Sikkim to Bagdogra airport, gateway from upper eastern India to the rest of the world. I’ll write about the provincial Indian airport experience after reflecting for a time, appreciating that discretion is the better part of valor.
Maybe Saigon doesn’t offer welcome calm after every place, but it does after the ride down from the Indian Himalayas. Everybody was turned out here on New Year’s Eve riding their Vespas up and down the Le Loi, the whole city lit up, festive, excited for the midnight fireworks.
Tomorrow they’re coming to get us early. We’ll spend the day and night on a boat, just the two of us, a pilot, cook and English speaker, poking around the Mekong delta. I’m hopeful we’ll come back with some good photos.
