Photo Essay: Trip to Birmingham

Had to nip over to Birmingham to do a lecture and stuff so took some pics from my new iPhone. Which I love, its just brilliant :) 


 
I love being at Euston, used to come down here so frequently while i was studying at Manchester, happy hunting days…Here’s the departures lounge at the train station. 

nice train.

leaving Euston

wastelands of London…

There’s your Harlequin Centre in Watford.

Approaching Watford Junction. As you can see, I am busy preparing the damn presentation which I completely forgot…

Here’s the Coventry station.

Nice advert, get cloud 9 on the ground.

a car factory lot, thousands of cars on the lot, waiting to be sold…

here’s Birmingham…

Here’s the entrance to the university.
 
Waiting for my host to come collect me at the reception.
 
That’s the Aston Business School building.

Here’s my old friend from Manchester (we studied together), Professor Pawan Budhwar, a brilliant chap, his new book was released on People Management in India. Pretty nifty cover, eh? And take a look at his cv, the man is brilliant, even though he works in HR. It just winds me up, but there you go.

The bunch of speakers at the seminar. I am sure you can make out my ugly mug on the right. The lady in the middle is the Counsel General of India in Birmingham.

Nice trip, will be going up there every year now, I guess.

Photo Essay of a Chapel of Ease: St. Peter's Church

While haring off to do a meeting at Diageo, I found myself 5 minutes early. And just as I turned off Oxford Street into Vere Street, my eyes fell on this roman looking church on the right

Very blocky, no? But this put me in mind of the buildings which you would see in the forum in Rome.

 

See the artist’s impression, its sort of the same form of building, with the front pillars and elevation. Anyway, this church was previously called as Marylebone Chapel, and was constructed in 1724 by James Gibbs. Mind you, it is no longer a functioning church and now the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity lives there.

 

James Gibbs, as it happens, was one of the big chaps in the architecture area in the UK, and was trained in Rome. See the connection?

Now the clock was very puzzling at first sight. I simply could not figure out what on earth was on the dial. So just took a photograph and then zoomed in later on. As it so happens, the dial numbers are given in Roman Numerals with some very heavy gilt lettering. No wonder one could not make out what it was showing. What also confused me was the fact that the two clock faces were showing different times, the one on the right shows 11:27 while on the left shows 11:57. Curious, the actual time was 7:50 AM. Must have stopped or something.

Here’s the notice board. Not very sure what this was supposed to stand for. Better one who sounds the trumpet than one hundred prepared to blow the whistle. What does that mean? Its website was down so I could not investigate further.

Here’s the blurb on the wall.

A notice board which talks about the history. Interesting concept of a Chapel of Ease.

Despite it being a chapel of ease, you can see the stone steps very heavily worn down due to the foot traffic of the parishioners of the past 300 odd years. Just imagine how many feet would have crossed the threshold, the desire to be one with God, to pray to Jesus and St. Peter, to beg for mercy or just to soothe one’s soul. Makes one think, no?

The railing was curious, I have never seen a railing with spikes pointing both ways in a curved fashion. But definitely look old enough to be some kind of historical artefact. But the blocky walls were a bit disappointing. 

 

That’s the rear end of the building. Again, a strange juxtaposition of windows and doors, a central big large stained glass window with two white stone fronted and prominent lintel doors on each side.

 

The stained glass windows in the wall are supposed to be quite good. Here are some examples. I was not able to get inside the church because of lack of time, but here are two examples:

Well, now was running out of time so turned around to head into the Diageo Building and just burst out laughing at the incongruous sight of a Carlsberg Truck being in front of the Diageo building. 

 

I worked for some time in this building, it has the most amazing work environment ever, can you imagine sitting around in an office surrounded with bottles of beer, vodka, stout, liqueurs and the like? Very difficult to work, I tell you, but despite the fact that it is perhaps the biggest drinks firm in the world, its not Carlsberg, which is perhaps the best beer in the world. Now that’s a Chapel of Ease :)

' target=_blank>' target=_blank>Slideshow

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The Moon and the Light

I have moved from my old Sony Ericsson 850i which had a 5 mega pixel camera (which then went to Kannu, and then it got stolen from him at the school…, it was a jinxed one anyway) to an iPhone. I love my iPhone but it isn't what I would call as a great camera, sufficient for small photographs in good light, so whenever I manage to get a good picture, its good news, lol.

Here’s the first one, was running to catch the train when I noticed the moon. Very early morning photograph, so the light wasn't good at all. Can you imagine the moon being that bright that you can notice it despite it being way into sunrise time? Quite interesting :)

Technorati Tags: London

Sunset over London

One of the advantages of being so up high on the tower is that you get to see some spectacular sunrises and sunsets. Yesterday it was like that. Was extremely stressed out and tired, but despite that, the light from the windows was amazing, it just blew me away and tried to take a photograph.

It was indeed spectacular, the colour gradations and the like. Click on the image to get to a higher resolution photograph. It looks quite interesting.

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These Window Washers are nuts

I came out of the Canary Wharf Tube station, at the usually indecent time of 6:45 AM.

For  some reason, looked up to notice what looked like a toothpick poking out on top of the building.

I tried to zoom in but was perhaps asking for too much from my dinky little phone camera. And then it became clear, its a window washer unit which has swung out from its normal resting place. Presumably one is being used to wash and clean the windows. This totally freaked me out.

Can you imagine being so high up on the air and cleaning the windows? Gives you the heeby jeebies.

There’s another one in the distance, I am sure it would be very difficult to clean these sky scrapers, but strangely enough, the windows are pretty clean, not dust streaked or anything. Mind you, given that London is generally drenched with rain most of the time and the weather outside is cloudy and grey, not much chance of watching the windows, is there?

here’s another building, I wondered how one would clean the corners, must be tough to navigate the rounded corners, no?

 

In the far building on the right, the still under construction KPMG building, one can see another window washer unit arm.

There is the main canary wharf tower. Its window washer unit was also poking out, but I suppose its hidden behind the twigs.

Here is another shot, but it got blurred, but still, if you have lots of faith, you can just about make out a blurred image of the window washer unit right at the top right of the picture.

Here’s the HSBC building. I work at one of the top floors.

And here’s the chaps actually cleaning the damn windows, 39 floors up. Scary or what? Can you see the chap just outside the window? with his left arm raised? The chaps just look so blasé about it all.

So what can you do? A half baked idea here. I quote:

This concept could only be applied to glass-faced buildings. Arrange a delivery system for copious amounts of water to be run down the glass panels of the structure on a regular basis (or more/less often, depending on the relative dustiness of the environment). This would wash grime and dust that has accumulated on the windows since the last purge. When the water reaches bottom, it would be collected in attractive water features, ready to be pumped to the top of the building when needed next.

Obvious practical jokes to be played on buildings fitted with this system would revolve around putting detergent into the water supply (thus guaranteeing a hilarious display of bubbles around the base of the skyscraper).

While there has been a film about the window cleaners, I am not sure how much fun it would be up there, with the howling wind, risk of accident and dangers inherent in this role. I suspect we will keep on needing these brave men and their squeegees to keep our windows clean.

Slideshow

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Meeting Diya’s Teacher for the first 2009 PTA

I completely forgot about the fact that we had to go see the teacher today. Anyway, after getting duly scolded by the girls, got dressed very quickly, looking like a hobo, unshaved, hair all over the place, dry skin, totally in another planet, went off to the school.

I was a bit nervous about her. Last time she was given a good report, but you know how it is, worried stiff and nervous. I wasn't ever this nervous with Kannu, he was pretty much top of the heap, nice chap, very proud of him. So all his PTA meetings went off with a bang, no problems. But every time I go off to Diya’s school, I am nervous. I think I am getting old. 

She is getting to be quite a whiz kid with computers, she even tells me what to do and what not. She is using an old laptop of ours, am going to get her a new one, perhaps one of the netbooks on her birthday.

This is a picture she made on a computer. This is supposed to be Humpty Dumpty. She wrote the caption below:

I went to the I.C.T. SWee (suite) and me med (made) a Humpty Dumpty pichar (picture).

Pretty good joined up writing, eh? cursive no less :)

The caption on the left says

4 flowers groaing (growing) in the compost

the caption on the right says

2 flowers and three gals (girls) mac (make) 5

This is an outline of her foot and she has made a smiley face out of it :)

She had to fill out an Injury and Sickness Form, just as a joke. Can you see how she has written for treatment? Its supposed to be medicine, but she wrote it as “Medsin”

Welcome to having a left handed child. Can you see how she writes the number 2, 3 and 7? its bloody amazing how the human brain works. Also, she writes at the bottom:

He Broc (broke) in to (two)

She had to make a rocket and she writes “Box shaiper" (shaper). Dont ask.., lol.

at crismis (Christmas) I sar (saw) sum (some) presints (presents) under my chrismis tree.

Here’s Diya and her family. I am supposed to be on the right, then mum, then Diya and Kannu on the far left.

Here’s Daddy checking out her work..The chairs are absolutely tiny… but strong, they took my weight with hardly any whining.

her hook where she hangs her bags and coats.

the current arts wall



And here’s the library, she gets a book every day and she reads it religiously. She absolutely loves reading, but her teacher complained that she does not eat her fruit or meals fast enough. Typical. But she is supposed to be a whizz in mathematics, so she is getting extra tuition to stretch her skills. Same with her ICT bits as well. And here I was thinking she will go into medicine or surgery and be a doctor. Drats, seems like I am heading for two geek cost centres at home..

Full slide show here.

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