nickromney.com » Travel

Notre Dame

nickromney — Fri, 14 May 2004 05:09:09 +0000

When I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, I took a couple of tourist pictures – Notre Dame and the Champs Elysees.

Here’s one that I thought worked out rather well:

It does help that the building itself is amazing!

US Visit

nickromney — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 21:59:20 +0000

This article in Wired covers the changes in entry restrictions to the US from September 30 2004. This stops short of the biometric passports originally tabled as required from October, but will still require visitors from “visa waiver” countries (Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) to have fingerprints and photographs taken.

Interestingly, Brazil has reciprocated by requiring all American visitors to undergo the same requirements on entering Brazil. Given the ballyhoo over Immigration in the UK at the moment, it looks like our borders will be widened, not tightened in the coming weeks.

In a related article on the US demanding passenger details, Wired covers the recent European Parliament vote (229 to 202) which determined that

it was illegal for the United States to force European airlines to provide data on arriving passengers and threatened to go to court to block an agreement that calls for the information sharing.

Interesting times.

Review of “Playing the Moldovans at Tennis”

nickromney — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 00:52:06 +0000

A couple of years ago, a friend with whom I worked recommended “Round Ireland with a Fridge” by Tony Hawks, which I read soon after, and enjoyed very much. This was the story of Tony Hawks hitchhiking round the circumference of Ireland with a kitchen appliance in order to win a bet. Seemingly the competitive streak runs strong in Tony Hawks, and in “Playing the Moldovans at Tennis”, fellow comedian Arthur Smith wagers that he can’t a) play, and b) beat the entire Moldovan football team at tennis.

Hawks’s travelogue is largely witty and sometimes poignant (particularly his increasing awareness of the things he had previously taken for granted, such as heating and lighting on demand), but I disagree with The Times that the book is “extremely funny”. I’ve read “extremely funny” books, and would probably number “Round Ireland with a Fridge” amongst them, but not this one. There were some genuinely comedic moments, particularly in the culture-clash with Iulian the translator, but if it hadn’t been for the relationship he strikes up with his host family, the book would have been reduced to mocking Eastern Europe because it’s not London.

His description of checking into an hotel in Moldova, and its state of décor was strangely reminiscent of when Richard, Andrew and I checked into one in neighbouring Romania. They didn’t seem at all troubled by our request for a room with three single beds (which surprisingly they had), but if we’d asked for a bathroom painted a colour other than Tartrazine orange, they would have struggled.

Annoyingly for a book costing �7.99, (or �6.39 on amazon), proof-reading seems to be sorely neglected in the second half of the manuscript. Some of Hawks’s most amusing observations are on his difficulties on communicating with the Moldovans, and the peculiarities of the Romanian language course he purchased (which had space for various circus-related jobs, but not for basic medical ailments). Often he resorts to French in order to communicate at all, so it was annoying to see typographical errors in English, and language errors in French (jeus rather than jeux for football matches).

Still, I was willing to forgive a few problematic pages for a book which has helped me locate Moldova (and Transnistria) on a map, and also bring back memories of a week’s holiday in Romania in 1998.

Accessible UK rail information

nickromney — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:04:15 +0000

Matthew Somerville has delivered a great service to the rail-using population of the UK: An accessible re-write of the train information, which

doesn’t require JavaScript all over the place, it doesn’t use cookies, it doesn’t have an iframe for latest news, it doesn’t have “Please Wait” pages, it uses much cleaner HTML, sessions don’t “time out” when you just wanted to enter a new query… in other words, it’s generally miles better and doesn’t contravene the DDA.

There are two elements to this: Railway timetable and Live departure boards

Thanks Matthew. (Original link posted by Dunstan)