Last for a While! Busy, so sorry!

Any question about July finally bringing us good weather has been answered. Storm on Sunday night and it's been on-and-off storms ever since. Here, let me show you:

This very minute in HK!

Not happy, Jan!

In the meantime, yes, I've been very remiss about this blog of late. Had a very dear friend visiting from Oz, and then a writing job which has to be finished before I go to China this Friday, and then, when I get back from China, we've got a two week visit by another dear friend and his girlfriend, and then we leave with them to go traveling.

I think the upshot will be that I'm going to have very little time for blogging in the next six-to-eight weeks. Apologies. I will try to drop by to update if it's possible, but I suspect it won't happen and so think you'll have to wait for quite a while to find out what we've been up to recently.

In the meantime, here are several intriguing, funny or ironic photographs that may keep you busy checking them out.


Here is a rubbish bin in Thailand someone made by cutting up and turning inside-out several old car tyres. Don't you love it! I thought it was one of the most inspirational things I'd seen in years and, in the name of planet-saving, I think we should all be doing this:

Made by an unsung
Thai genius!

The poster for "Charlotte's Web" in Khmer.

Love that clash of
familiar and strange!

And speaking of a clash between familiar and strange, here's St Francis of Assissi as visualised by the Chinese:

St Francis of Macau!

This photo below is one of an ancient Buddha statute that has been swallowed by a strangler fig which people from China travel thousands of miles to see:

Strangle-fig Buddha

Thailand

And another photograph of a strangler-fig doing what strangler-figs do:

Strangler-fig toll gate
Cambodia

And here is a photograph of Thais playing the slot machines:

Thai slots

And if you don't see what's strange about this, here's a close-up of one of those machines:

Buddha Kharma slots

And here's a perfectly wonderful photograph that I took for Rayna regarding what NOT to do with your reproductions of the terra cotta warriors:

Why you don't donate statues
to Primary Schools!

However, I must confess that I just love it. And I just love what these guys in Singapore have done with their row of terra-cotta warriors:

Hey, you don't want these
dudes catching cold.

Rayna, I can just visualise a row like this down one side of your road, all the way from the last gate right down to the homestead.

However, it's the photograph below that's a biggie; a photograph that is sooo intriguing it needs a lot of exposure, particularly in Ireland. It was sent to me by Carol who lives in Spain. See, several of us have being wondering where the Milesian Irish came from originally - since we are all turn out to be of Milesian Irish descent - which means, according to family legends, we descended from a fellow called Milesius who came from Spain, and who was himself descended from a chap called Gal Glas - Glasgow is named after him - from an island in the Black Sea (which is also where, in Greek mythology, Jason found the golden fleece, and also met his so-creepy but decidedly intriguing first wife Medea) ...

... so Carol, living out there in back-of-beyond Spain, was rather startled when she saw her neighbourhood preparing for a cultural celebration. Turns out that her very nice neighbours call themselves Galatians - not, however, the Galatians in the Bible, just ones who claim to be descended from a guy called Gal - and she found it so decidedly redolent, especially in conjunction with those specifically Galatian musical instruments, she took this photograph to send around for purposes of discussion:

Carol's photo of the Galatians

next-door tuning up their bagpipes!

What do you think? I'd be most interested to hear! And wouldn't it be wonderfully intriguing if it turns out that Carol, moving from Fiji to the farthest ends of the earth, actually ended up in among her own ancestral people!

Don't you just love it when stuff like that happens?