The handful of people who follow this LJ know that I don't normally do videos. But this one was so staggering that I felt the urge to link: a time-lapse video of the city of Singapore, taken over a period of three years starting in 2013 ( Read more... )

In which life continues to imitate art ( Read more... )

1 Melbourne in spring is lovely. Tasmania in spring is like Middle-earth. The hobbity bit is Battery Point in Hobart, spilling over with roses and rosemary. The top of Mt Wellington looks remarkably like the more blasted bits of Eregion and the Trollshaws, complete with giant dolomitic rocks that definitely look as if they wake and stroll about ( Read more... )

Both ways, outgoing and returning. The first one was a whole 24 hours, since there was only one flight a day to that place. The second one resulted in a 21-hour journey home, that should have been at least 10 hours shorter. I drank the champagne they offered me on board, which I do not normally do, out of sheer nervous irritation ( Read more... )

A couple of other things that came up in my recent ping-ponging around Europe:

1 Iberia makes one pay for refreshment. On a three hour flight from Vienna to Madrid. They are the flag carrier. Austrian Airlines on a one-hour flight at least gave me a cup of tea and a biscuit. Tsk ( Read more... )

I was in Europe for a fortnight on a business trip, and came across a lot of things that brought Middle-earth to mind ( Read more... )

Just back from a short visit to Lalibela World Heritage Site in Ethiopia, which inspired a number of pre-existing thoughts about the Elvish city of Tirion in Valinor to coalesce into a post. Lalibela, like Addis Ababa, is in the Ethiopian Highlands, and has an altitude of 2600-2800m. Together with its almost equatorial altitude, this gives it an ( Read more... )