HX Report
Irishman in the Middle East
Weekly Photo Challenge – Security
Posted on April 12, 2017
MB is playing catch-up with last weeks photo challenge!
There is security in numbers, it is said. This applies to camels as much as humans, a fact proven by numerous studies throughout the Middle East. There is, for example, no known incident of a male lion attacking a large pack of camels. True!
The below photo, demonstrates the typical herd shape adopted by a camel pack. The roadsign on the left warns the public that a pack of camels is likely to cross at any time. True!
Weekly Photo Challenge – Security
Posted on April 6, 2017
MB read in the dim and distant past, or heard it from some sage or other, that street performers help lower street crime in the areas in which they operate. MB guesses that street criminals just get chilled out when the hear the music, smoke a joint or a fag (Irish slang for ‘cigarette’), and just go with the normal flow, rather than engaging in their more usual dastardly criminal activity flow, like stealing MB’s camera and such like.
MB just looked up the statistics for ‘street buskers help to lower street crime’, and guess what? Google never even heard of the theory, nay, never even heard of the absolute fact. Prompted by that particular piece of ineptitude, MB just looked up the google share price and was not surprised to see that it’s down 3.16 points on the day. No wonder, MB is now thinking, if the googlers (people employed by google) don’t even know that street musicians help to reduce crime, then they don’t know diddly squat.
So get your s**t together googlers. Feed your knowledge from MB’s HX blog, and stop the share price rot.
MB is just now running off to do a search on Bing and Yahoo and see what they throw up. They can’t be as bad as google, surely.
MB came across this guy, playing a tune on board a ferry that was crossing the Bosphorus Straits, on 11 April 2014. How do you know the exact date MB? Just because MB does lads. For sure, MB didn’t find it out on google. And MB can safely report, that there wasn’t a single crime during that 15-minute crossing!
I’m lovin’ it!
Posted on December 23, 2015
The uneventful KLM/Air France flight from Doha suddenly sprang to life on the descent to Schipol airport. The calm of the rarified air up top was replaced by the far more exciting blowy stuff down below. Five & half hours of the proverbial ‘perfect flight’ was replaced in seconds by a flight utterly different. The plane bobbled and wobbled at a fearsome rate as the runway approached. As if the plane was floating on very choppy seas. A child by the window squawked a scary squawk as the lights below appeared and disappeared with the sideways ‘up and down’ of the air ship. Mommy-of-child did her brave frightened best to cope with the fears of daughter and self. It’ll be all right a stór, she said; but in Dutch, vomit bag in hand.
MB is homeward bound.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Rule Of Thirds
Posted on February 20, 2015
This week’s challenge is the photographic concept – the rule of thirds.
One of the most popular tourist attractions in Istanbul is the Topkapi Palace, which lies in the old town next to the Hagia Sophia Museum & Blue Mosque. The palace was home to the Sultans and their harem of females for three hundred years in the days of the Ottoman Empire, until Sultan Abdülmecid in 1853 decided to move to the nearby Dolmabache Palace.
MB visited Topkapi Palace in early November 2014. The palace lies on the bank of the Bosphorus Sea Straits and the views from the palace grounds are spectacular.
Caught this shot of one of the soldiers on duty, with the Bosphorus blurred in the background:
PS – Ignore the tree!
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