Bill Murray's Blog, page 41
March 21, 2019
Quotes: Bewildering Self-Harm
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Today in the Brexit saga,
“Kent is going full steam ahead with its contingency plans to prevent gridlock on its roads in the event of congestion in Dover or Calais.
Concrete barriers have already been erected on the main port artery in Kent, with a section of the London-bound M20 between junction 8 and junction 9 now operating as a 50mph contraflow for normal traffic. Work on signage will be completed over the weekend.
The coastbound section will be closed off to all but lorry traffic from next week to allow Highways England to carry out a dry run to cope with possible chaos after 11pm on 29 March.”
Also,
“Manston airport near Ramsgate is in the final stages of preparation for use as a lorry park for up to 6,000 heavy goods vehicles in the event of gridlock.
Councillors will also hear from adult social care and health officers who have plans to minimise the risk of disruption to admissions of patients to hospitals, residential care homes and the supply of fuel, medication, cleaning and sanitation products.
Schools have also been issued with Brexit guidelines warning them to think twice before closing down in the event that staff cannot make it through the gridlock.”
From UK’s emergency plans for no-deal Brexit begin to be put into action in The Guardian.
•••••
Michael Hirsh writes elsewhere today that
“Britain’s humiliation has been a powerful lesson for even the most virulent populists and nationalists within the EU, rendering the idea of full exit all but unthinkable, a new political third rail.”
That may be wishful thinking, for also today, across the channel and just up the road, comes news that Far-right Forum for Democracy wins most seats in Dutch provincial elections.
Interesting times.
Quotes: Where Have We Gone Wrong?
“For a limited time, Papa John’s members get free cheese sticks with any purchase of twelve dollars or more.”
– Television commercial
Photo a Day, Vietnam, Day 5
Sa Pa is a border town in Lào Cai province northwest of Hanoi on the Chinese frontier. The far eastern edge of the Himalayas reaches here. Views to Vietnam’s highest mountain, Fan Si Pan (3143 meters), are often obscured by cloud. Sa Pa is the center of a busy trekking industry and home to a number of ethnic minorities.
We’re counting down the days until a new three+ month round the world trip, first stop, Saigon. A photo a day from Vietnam meanwhile. I’ll gather all these photos day by day here, on Earthphotos.com.
March 20, 2019
Photo a Day, Vietnam, Day 4
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After a journey of 4000+ kilometers from the Himalayas, spreading out south of Ho Chi Minh City, the Mekong River splits into multiple branches. “The Vietnamese refer to it as Cuu Long, meaning ‘nine dragons’.”
We’re counting down the days until a new three+ month round the world trip, first stop, Saigon. A photo a day from Vietnam meanwhile. I’ll gather all these photos day by day here, on Earthphotos.com.
March 18, 2019
Photo a Day, Vietnam, Day 3
Saturday night traffic, Ho Chi Minh City. Don’t try this at home.
We’re counting down the days until a new three+ month round the world trip, first stop, Saigon. A photo a day from Vietnam meanwhile. I’ll gather all these photos day by day here, on Earthphotos.com.
Saunas on wheels1 / Saunas sobre ruedas1 / Saunas sur roues1 / Saunas com rodas1
Saunas on wheels in Finland, via Sartenada’s blog.
Travels in Finland and abroad by Sartenada
In English:
Holy smoke – Gathering of mobile Saunas. Part1.
Can You imagine that there exist Saunas on wheels? Can You imagine that they meet every summer? I guess that nobody. Since 2005 in Teuva there has been organized mobile Sauna gathering. In 2016 they were cancelled. When You see my photos, You might say in Your mind that ‘they are crazy those Finns’. Imagination has been free when planning and building mobile Saunas. Delightful is that the idea had spread abroad, which was touchable, because there were also Saunas, from Poland, Italy and Germany. My post is in two parts.
Many Saunas were warmed up, because smoke was coming from chimneys and afternoon there were possibility to have a Sauna in them.
Teuva – where? Nearby the western coast in south Ostrobothnia. Distance from Helsinki is 381 km / 267 mi and from Oulu 404 km / 251 mi…
View original post 1,365 more words
March 17, 2019
Photo a Day, Vietnam, Day 2
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These cute kids must be teenagers by now. From a trip several years ago up to the hill tribes along the Vietnam/China border to Sa Pa.
We’re counting down the days until a new three+ month round the world trip, first stop, Saigon. A photo a day from Vietnam meanwhile.
March 16, 2019
Road Trip Photo a Day
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Our countdown is on now toward a three month+ round the world trip starting in mid-April. I’ll be traveling with my wife, the fearless Finn Mirja Murray. She and I will set out next month bound first for Saigon, ATL-IAD-BJS-Saigon. We’ve rented an apartment for three weeks:
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It’s just off Le Loi and just above the Ben Thanh Market. We are coming from the ethnic food-constrained southern Appalachians and looking forward to eating well. Destinations beyond Saigon are up in the air for now. While we’re in Vietnam we hope to get up to Hue for a look at the work my friend Chuck Searcy is doing with Project RENEW. Chuck says, “A visit there brings into sharp focus the continuing legacies of the war that we’re trying to mitigate, unexploded bombs and mines (UXO) and Agent Orange / dioxin.”
Our ultimate mission is to make it to Finland by the time it’s summer there, sometime in June. We have a mökki, a cottage by the lake there. We’ll have to work out the route between Southeast Asia and Northern Europe. Just now I’m keen on flying HAN-IST-Tbilisi and enjoying some fine Georgian hospitality while we wait another few weeks for Finland to warm up, but that is subject to, even likely to change. Any other suggestions?
Meanwhile, from now to then, we’ll try to post a photo a day from previous trips to Vietnam on Twitter, where I am @BMurrayWriter, please follow, and all the photos we post will propagate day by day on Earthphotos.com, too, at this URL: https://www.earthphotos.com/Other/Around-the-World-Slowly-2019/.
This is a wide open, open ended trip. Please help us by lending your expertise. Do weigh in. Or, if you’re local in any of our destinations, please allow me to buy you a beer.
March 15, 2019
Weekend Reading
A few links to quality weekend reading about places you’re probably not:
– On the outside looking in: A US American in Vietnam, from the Vietnamese newspaper VnExpress.
– The last king of Xinjiang by Paul French.
– Two articles about the new conflict between Uganda and Rwanda that’s not getting any better.
– ‘A Partial Freedom’: What Latvia Found in the KGB Archives.
– Armenia: Can post-revolution Yerevan get to grips with its informal architecture epidemic? With lots of photos.
– A Jordanian wildlife safari: The Refuge in the Desert.
– And finally, watch them make pizzas all day with this live webcam from a pizzeria in Bratislava.
See you next week.
March 14, 2019
Quotes: Speeches of the Elite
John Lanchester from his new book, The Wall:
“I fell for a moment into a reverie, a kind of guided dream, in which I imagined baby members of the elite being born from chrysalises, already wearing their shiny suits, their ties pre-knotted, their first clichés already on their lips, being wiped down of cocoon matter and pushed toward a podium, ready to make their first big speech, spout their first platitude, lose their virginity at lying. They’d be made to do that before they were given any food or drink or comfort, just to make sure it was the thingthey knew first and best, the think that came most naturally.”
