A trip away to Indonesia might seem to offer a wealth of photo opportunities, but it’s a work trip — and the more that I do this kind of thing the more I realise that universities look much the same the world over. A Monday morning class, a decent turnout — but no one ever breaks the golden rule: Thou Shalt Not Sit In The Front Row.
Today, Monday and Tuesday are going to be the work days on this trip — today, to get ready for the other two. I needed a rest after the journey, anyway. Little to see, therefore: it was either the inside of a restaurant, or the pleasant balcony outside my room where I spent the afternoon hacking away on the laptop. There is, of course, more to see of Indonesia than this, but you’ll have to bear with me.
Why the monochrome? As is often the case — to hide coloured blotches caused by lens flare. It works, too. In the original. most of the top right quadrant is stained red.
After 22 hours of travelling via three tin pipes of varying quality (Manchester – Doha, Doha – Jakarta, Jakarta – Semarang) and then a car ride, I could finally crash in my accommodation for the next few days. This being the mostly very pleasant Kayu Arum hotel in Salatiga, which is in the centre of Java, and which you’ll be seeing more of. Its lush grounds, festooned with palms and shady spots, made me feel instantly at home. Or perhaps it was the red telephone box, which stands there for no immediately obvious reason. Put it this way, there isn’t a telephone in it.
I’m off on another one of my work trips, and from this post it must be fairly obvious where — indeed, I post this from Jakarta airport on Saturday afternoon local time, although my journey isn’t over yet. (Saturday’s post might end up being from my stopover in Doha, anyway.) I thought I would post this shot because of the pleasingly large numbers on the banknotes: there are 1.3 million rupiah here. Not that that means I will be living it up — the cup of tea I have just bought cost me 23,000.
This squirrel and I were both out for a lunch break on campus today. He (or she) was busy gathering materials for the winter — I was trying to avoid work as much as possible. (But only for that 20 minutes.)
The original Blade Runner movie was set in 2019 and in Manchester’s case is currently coming to look more and more like architectural prophecy. And those quasi-human replicants that infiltrate society and create havoc? We call them “Tories”.
My latest post in the occasional series, “random items strangely abandoned by the roadside”. There have been a number of shoes in this series, a pair of spectacles once. But kitchen utensils? That’s a new one. There must be a story behind this. Not just that a perfectly servicable wok was dumped, but dumped in this specific place. Someone, somewhere, knows why.
I worked on Sunday so I could walk today, Monday. I’m no idiot. There were reasons for this.
The picture is taken in the valley of Yewdale, north of Coniston in the Lake District. The fell in the background is Wetherlam. And an appearance for the moon, too — hiding away among a couple of similar little fluffy clouds, which is as aggressive as the sky got all day.
Having stayed at the in-laws’ over the weekend, it was announced that I was being taken out for dinner this Sunday night — and the justification being that they hadn’t had the chance to be taken out for my 50th birthday back at the end of August. Seeing as a rather long time had elapsed between then and today we decided that, like the Queen, I should have a real birtday and then an ‘Official Birthday’ — weeks later in the year (Queen Elizabeth II has her real birthday on April 21st and then an Official thing in June some time). Forgive my presumption, but I got a cake and everything, here pictured with sparkler flaiming, so I’m happy to embrace a second such day each year. On November 17th perhaps — let’s see if I remember it 🙂
Saturday, a day to chill out, and get out, and try to see the world at its best — or at least, certain localised bits of it. Arnside is a place that I have frequently admired from passing trains: they trundle over the estuary of the River Kent on a bridge that is behind me as I took this shot. Not long after this the tide came in with astonishing speed, you can literally see it moving up the sands; no wonder Morecambe Bay is so dangerous in that respect.
Being 42 