Chris Saul's Blog

Thursday June 19, 2008

Some Pakistan snaps

Not the best quality - the best my mobile phone could manage during my last two trips.

The edge of the 'Red Mosque' - now no longer red. This was the scene of some major troubles earlier this year. The building next to one of our customer's datacentres was torched and the datacentre itself went down when power was cut to the area. The datacentre's been moved...

Eagles, or at leat that's what I think they were, circle the roof of the partner's offices. They fly right up to the building and you get to see them up close.

Kabul number plate, Russian made, now living in Islamabad. How old? 40 years? 20 years? It was built in 2002...

This makes me think of rows of young children having pedicures and sipping on wheatgrass juice. Spotted in Karachi airport.

Coals to Newcastle

Spotted in Spinneys.

Next up, ice to be exported from Dubai to Alaska in exchange for camels.

Snapped selection

A selection of mobile phone snaps...

His critics speak. Spotted in the rubbish disposal area of our building.

Spotted in Romania, a vending machine for chips. Doubtless very popular with drunks around 2am onwards. But is it as fun having a fight around one of these, as opposed to in the chip shop itself?

Chav bed. Spotted in Dubai.

Mac love in begins

Thanks to everyone who chipped in with tips on how to get to grips with my Mac.

I'm now starting to enjoy using it, although I still miss one button for page up and down and a proper delete key! Decent suspend and resume, as well as ease of use when in cramped conditions with the laptop on my knee are particularly welcome.

NeoOffice is working fine and I'm getting used to some of the hot keys. The heat issue doesn't seem to be much of an issue any more, even in Islamabad airport, where the AC was really struggling. Or maybe I was just boling hot myself anyway.

There are a couple of small things to work out, which I'm sure I'll manage by asking Mr Google (Google Desktop not indexing Thunderbird mails for example).

I'm sure the transition would have been easier if I hadn't been travelling that week and stuck with generally poor internet connections. It was still pretty painful though - Apple should really include a printed sheet with some common 'switching' tips.

Let's see how things progress. I'm particularly interested to see if it's as reliable as my old Tosh over the long term.

So far I have resisted the temptation to clean the thing down with wet wipes or encapsulate it in soft furnishings, like other colleagues whose names I will not mention.

Classic war symbols - the AK47 and...

...the Toyota Land Cruiser pickup?

See the picture at the top of this BBC article.