« February 2009 | Main | April 2009 »
Welcome to the Museum of Drinking Water, Taipei, Taiwan.
Just remember, no photographing or filming in the museum unless authorized, because buster, "A violator who has incutted damage to the building, any facility, or collection dhall be responsible for compensation or even chatged."
Don't make us chatge you.
(Photo from the Museum of Drinking Water website.)
If they can count on you for just $6880.95 per day (doubtless excluding extras), Safari Air invites you on "the world's first" 21 day "Around the World Grand East Africa Safari" by private jet. The promotional material calls it an adventure of a lifetime. Other than that trivial little detail about the price, only two problems:
1. Odds are, if you're spending $144,500 per person, you've already been around the world, or wherever else you've wanted to go.
2. Never call anything an adventure of a lifetime.
Oh, and not to worry you insulated, pampered little doll, you. Safari Air assures you about your own little private jet charter flying you all the way around the world: It's green. Safari Air says.
In which we share one man's experiences with Ariana Afghan
Airlines, a.k.a. ‘ScaryAnna’ by its frequent flyers. Among his observations: "To be honest it’s all a bit
‘inshallah’, a sort (of) Muslim ‘whatever’ only with god in it."
The familiar Incredible India series is reintroduced as part of a campaign inaugurated this month at ITB Berlin, a travel trade show, "to win back international visitors who have stayed away since the terror attacks in Mumbai last November...."
Music could be vaguely based around Panjabi MC's Mundian To Bach Ke. Web site is IncredibleIndia.org.
The jungle is no place to have flying trouble, as we've recently learned from the book Out of Captivity, a story of hostage taking in Colombia.
Lately Brazil and the U.S. have been at odds over a well chronicled (1, 2, 3) mid-air collision over the Brazilian Amazon in 2006. The U.S. has blamed Brazilian air traffic control, Brazil blames the U.S. crew on one of the planes.
As those recriminations continue, perhaps it's not the best time to see this headline: American airline "Arrow Cargo DC-10 sheds large engine parts over Manaus," Brazil.
Emergency crews responded to a neighborhood of Manaus called Terra Nova, "where parts of the engine had damaged 12 houses and a number of cars," according to Photos.aero.
The 550 pound part in question is seen in this picture credited to PD/EPA/Arlesson Sicsu.
No one on the ground was injured.
(Jungle photo from EarthPhotos.com.)
... that popped up over the weekend:
- Perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about stewardess uniforms.
- Tim Leffel links to A Wave of Great Travel Writing.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2671ac24-9f93-4568-812b-ad508ac475e9)
These are icebergs on Disko Bay on Greenland's west coast. It's today's contribution from the Top Fifty Prints collection at EarthPhotos.com. Get top-notch professional 8x12 Glossy & Matte prints of any of the Top Fifty Prints for just $11.50 at EarthPhotos.com.
Read our short story, Chillin' in Greenland. See also the Landscapes Gallery and the Greenland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
In the 1990’s, when the eastern periphery of Europe was raw, Austrian Airlines was sort of the Unofficial Western Airline to Struggling Locations. You could fly airlines like Moldovan or Tarom or Balkan, or let Austrian fly you to Chisinau, Odessa, Timosoara, Tirane or Sarajevo.
This photo is from one of those Eastern European countries. Take a stab at which one. The answer is after the jump.
A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.
(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)
Stories about translation between Mandarin and Cantonese and English can be pretty funny. Tim Johnson has one about Chinese bottled water in his China Rises blog.
We came upon the sign on the right in the photo above in Beijing in 1995. Don't really know what it's about, but you have to accept its wisdom.
It's in the China Gallery and the Signs Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
"The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity." - Fundamental Principle #2 in the Olympic Charter.
It's time to start a new CS&W feature about all the harmony and human dignity going on near the site of the 2014 winter games, Sochi, on the Russian Black Sea (previous discussion here and here). Today's edition starts with this from the New York Times:
Blast in Ingushetia Kills 5 Police Officers
Now take a look at this map (which comes from Maplandia):
Surkhakhi, near the blast site, is marked with the arrow. Nicely positioned between Grozny, Chechnya and Beslan, home of the 2004 school hostage tragedy, Surkhakhi is roughly 260 air miles from Sochi, which is on the Black Sea coast, left.
Under 150 miles to the east of Surkhaki, RFERL reports At Least Nine Die In Armed Clashes In Daghestan. The Russian border with Georgia is scarcely 60 miles to Surkhaki's south, and across that border, RFERL reports Georgian Opposition Party Says Members Arrested.
And speaking of Georgia, RFERL also says Russia To Defend Abkhazia, South Ossetia Borders as part of the fallout from last summer's war. The distance up the coast from Abkhazia to Sochi? Oh, maybe ten miles.
Nice little post script: When the world's athletes arrive, including the U.K.'s, the mayor there to greet them just might be "Andrei Lugovoi, a Duma deputy with the Liberal
Democratic Party of Russia who is wanted in Britain for the murder of
former security officer Aleksandr Litvinenko."
Gee, better get your tickets early.
Yesterday's post about ferry travel, in which we talked about the Hurtigruten ferries up and down the Norwegian coast, makes today's photo a natural. This is the harbor at Bergen, Norway. It's today's contribution from the Top Fifty Prints collection at EarthPhotos.com. Get top-notch professional 8x12 Glossy & Matte prints of any of the Top Fifty Prints for just $11.50 at EarthPhotos.com.
See also the Cities Gallery and the Norway Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
Border areas, parts of the earth in which one peoples' population blends with another, intrigue me. So I'm also a fan of ferries, because unlike cruises, which replace the ethnic and gritty with anodyne sameness, ferries are working ships full of lives in progress and people on the move.
As I've written on CS&W, we’ve steamed around old Communism’s borders, on an
Italian ferry, the M/V Expresso Grecia, from Durres, Albania to Trieste
back in 1993 when the Durres port was a frightening, decrepit place. We've sailed between Islam and Christianity on the route between Tangier and Spain.
We
entered the former east bloc from the top at Tallin, Estonia, on the
Tallink ferry from Stockholm, and from its underbelly, sailing across
the Black Sea from Istanbul to Odessa on a packed Ukrainian passenger
ferry, the M/V Yuzhnaya Palmyra.
I've been holding back this post for a while now, trying to decide how to present the work of photographic artist "JR."
Better to just encourage you to go and see for yourself, especially the remarkable Women project photos from the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
This photo is a screen grab from JR's site 28 millimeters. (Thanks to Ben Curtis.)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c70bde4d-5a87-4204-87be-c55c82d3b242)
... seek to avoid involvement with 1. guys doing drug interdiction, 2. politicians, for these are the people that you meet lots of in the new book, Out of Captivity, Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle. Authors Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes & Keith Stansell did the time in the title as prisoners of FARC rebels in the Colombian jungle, and notwithstanding the subject matter, as ghost written by Gary Brozek, the book moves along at a breezy, almost chatty clip.
It takes 169 pages to get to the star of the show, but there she finally is, French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt. Let's just say the authors of Out of Captivity aren't as thrilled with her as French President Nicholas Sarkozy was at the time.
This is the central square in a city that shares a valley with the capital of the country. Can you name the country, and
for extra credit, the city?
The answer is after the jump.
A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.
(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)
There's an email working its way around the internet showing the crash pictured here. The accompanying text is pejorative, casting blame on an Eithad flight crew, and apparently wrong. The accident happened in November 2007 during pre-delivery testing in Toulouse, France. Airliners.net had the story at the time.
It appears the aircraft was a couple weeks from delivery to the Abu Dhabi-based carrier. At the time GulfNews wrote, "Etihad says Toulouse crash will not slow route growth."
The photo here is from the email and, though we always credit the photographer, this one is unattributed.
An entirely different view of the Airbus, a terrific panorama of the A380's flight deck, is posted here, at Gillesvidal.com.
Common Sense and Whiskey is the companion to EarthPhotos.com, where you can see and buy professional photo prints from 105 countries and territories around the world, and the blog for Common Sense and Whiskey - the book. It's Intelligent discussion about the world out there.
The Photos:
