Posts by "Peter Claridge"

Geek

There Are 3D Artists And Then There’s Fredo

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Forget stupid 3D TV’s and 3D films, these 3D pencil drawings pretty much jump out at you and sure beat anything Sony or LG can come up with not to mention they beat the pants off even my best stick man sketches. The guy is only 20 years old but it looks like he’s got himself a nice online income already by selling his prints on Deviant Art.

Artist's amazing 3D images | The Sun |News

Artist’s amazing 3D images | The Sun |Newshttp://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3800012/Artists-amazing-3D-images.htmlA YOUNG artist is making a huge impression on the art world with his 3D drawings. The incredible pictures by Chilean etcher Fredo were drawn using only pencil and paper and seem…
Funny

Astrology Will Solve All Your Problems

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Many people, both in India and around the world, have a very big interest in astrology and some go as far as dictating their lives based on the arbitrary and entirely predictable movement of the stars and planets. While in the west many people will read their horoscope out of passing curiosity, in India I think they go a step further where marriages are often arranged based on the outcome of the horoscopes, so if the bride and groom to be don’t have a favourable horoscope then the whole shebang is canceled, and some special events are arranged on days when the horoscope is favourable – the most recent example I have is a friend who was due to be married on the 16th of April but then they discovered that it wasn’t the best day according to the astrologist so they postponed it by a month.

Anyway, the funny spam text of the day comes from a professional astrologist who says…

Unstable Relations? Financial Loss or Obstacles in Your Career? To seek the solution to all of your problems contact our expert astrologer. Simply call 5XXX5 at just Rs 10 / min [about 15 pence], enter your full name and date of birth and you will be given a personalized horoscope to guide you through your difficulties.

So if an automated personal horoscope doesn’t sort you out, I don’t know what will! Alternatively, Madame TeaKay will provide you with a free personal horoscope if you ask nicely!

India Uncategorized

No Photoshop, Just Pollution

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This was the sunset over Chennai on Sunday evening, taken from my balcony. There was no post-production work done on this photo, it was just snapped with a simple compact digital camera. According to scientists, the reds, oranges and purples are caused by light being scattered by particles in the upper atmosphere, the more particles the more it gets scattered and the ‘blue’ lightwave is lost, leaving the reds and oranges. If there is a lot of pollution like aerosols and all the other crap that us humans produce we’re rewarded with some pretty spectacular sunsets. I’m willing to hear a more accurate and scientific answer though, (Tom, I’m looking at you here!).

India

Stupidity Or Talented

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Some sections of society here in India seem to have a rather cavalier attitude towards life, bordering on a reckless disregard for their own lives. More often than not it tends to be young men from the poorer communities, but I’ve also seen young men on motorbikes weaving dangerously through traffic, skipping stop signs, playing chicken with buses and trucks – the list goes on.

Whether it’s misplaced bravery or a complete lack of imagination of the consequences of their actions I don’t know. I guess parallels could be drawn with some adrenaline sports like bungie jumping or skydiving, but at least there is an element of safety with these sports although maybe there is no excuse for the absurdity of tombstoning which involves throwing oneself off a very high cliff in to water which could be deep or could have rocks below the surface, let’s just jump on in and find out, eh?!

Anyway, in the same vein of the asininity of tombstoning, a video has recently surfaced in India which shows a bunch of young lads performing death defying stunts on a commuter train in Mumbai in what has been referred to as free style train surfing. Rather alarmingly, while the media here along with the vast majority of people who watch it condemn the stupidity of youths, there is a minority that actually praise and comment how talented and skillful you must be to perform such stunts…

this guy deserve AWARD!!! we all every stunt is risky but riding on wall with urs legs with matching urs walk speed with train speed was simply OUTSTANDING THANKS for sharing video link god bless you stuntboy 🙂 james bond sucks urs d**k!!!

These guys are very daring, pick them up, give trainning, give them job in police or defence. We must utilize such talent and use them for our country

I’ve never seen anyone doing anything as insane as the train surfing stunt below, but I have seen school kids who stand on the station platform and run alongside the train and jump on at the last minute, or who do a similar thing with the buses and hang precariously on to the sides just feet from certain death if they fall. And to think my mother used to get worried when I climbed trees when I was a kid!

In actual fact, one American blog has a whole different angle on the video: India is the new king of viral videos.

India

The Hindu Gods

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Took this snap in T-Nagar (an area within Chennai, just like Clapham is an area within London) on Friday evening. T-Nagar is actually quite commercial and there are several 4 and 5 star business hotels close by, but like so much of Chennai the residents who have lived here for generations, when T-Nagar was a small village outside the city, fiercely retain their tradition and culture. In this case the entire street was closed off and decked out with lights, light sculptures, a huge stage and devotional music blasting out the PA speakers. My poor friend has her apartment right in the middle of all of this!

India

Girl On Wire

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When you never went to school or have got no place to call home, you’ve got to make money anyway you can and in India one of the ways families make money is by putting their daughter up on a tightrope and asking her to balance precariously 2 metres above ground with only the concrete below to cushion her impact should she fall.

One of the travelling tightrope families stopped outside my apartment in July 2011, they set up their show by knocking two bloody great big nails in to the road (there are so many potholes any way, two more don’t matter) and then securing a rope to them. As you will see, it’s quite the attraction with everyone stopping to watch for a few minutes before the mother goes around with a dish to collect some money. By my calculations they collect Rs 100 – 150 (about $2.25 – $2.50) each time.

Is it exploitative for the young girl? I don’t know, probably, but she almost certainly doesn’t go to school or get any kind of education and her parents probably can’t get jobs but you’ve still got to survive right? And it certainly beats begging at the traffic lights!

India

A Ramadan Feast

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On 31st August it was Ramadan (or Ramzan as it’s referred to here in India) when Muslims celebrate the ending of the month of fasting. Normally it’s not an an event of note for me except that this time I was lucky enough to be invited in to the home of a Muslim family and eat with them.

The traditional Muslim food is mutton biryani and they cook it by the bucket load. I was advised to wear special stretchy pants before I came because I was expected to eat a LOT and yeah, they weren’t kidding. The food was served on a banana leaf because that was traditionally used for serving food (in actual fact the entire banana tree is used for some purpose or another, not just for the fruit it produces) and it sure beats paper plates in terms of the environment.

On the banana leaf in the picture below there is mutton biryani, chicken 65 (so called because it’s supposedly 65 days old), brinjal and raita. The absence of cutlery means one thing: you eat with your hands. In actual fact there was cutlery available but the family thought it would be far more hilarious to watch this foreigner try and use his hands to eat rice, something which I not only failed miserably at but also completely failed to keep any ounce of dignity while trying to do it.

Not content with the huge amounts of food that had been placed on my plate, I was given a massive bag which contained enough food to feed the entire Indian army for a month and was affectionately referred to as a “midnight snack” incase I got hungry later! I’ve taken a quick photo of all the food given to me for the ‘snack’, but actually better served me as lunch and dinner the following day. And the day after. And the day after that.

In the photo below we have a whole load of yummy stuff. Starting from the top left and working clockwise we have a dessert called gulab jamum, which is definitely not made from cottage cheese (sorry readers, a little inside joke there), then there are two boiled eggs in a tangy paste, then some more fried chicken 65, then another dessert which I don’t remember the name of, then 45kg of mutton biryani, then another dessert called payasam and finally a bowl of raita. Oh, and you’ll probably recognize the Cadbury’s chocolate bars so no need to explain them!

Wow, so much food and so much hospitality. You’ve never known true hospitality until you’ve visited an Indian family home. In this case I was taken in and made to feel like part of the family, fed until I could eat no more and then given even more food to take back with me. I lost two kilos in August from going to the gym consistently, looks like I’ll need to do it all again in September to shed the 2kg I put on from all this food!

Thanks to my adopted Indian family for taking care of me on Ramadan, making me feel so welcome and making sure I wouldn’t go hungry for a week!

Finance

$100 House (Sort Of)

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Check this out, for $100 you could have the plans to a tiny wooden house which includes a kitchen, bathroom, sofa, dining table and bedroom all squeezed in to a 65 sq ft home – that’s small enough to fit in to your back garden and rent out! When you factor in the building costs and materials it’s about $16,000 (about £10,000), so yeah, I think we’ve sorted out our housing crisis if everyone moves in to wooden sheds. Still, I think I’ve just found my Dad’s Christmas present, I’m sure my mum always wanted another home at the end of the garden!

The £61 build-it-yourself house plan - Yahoo! UK & Ireland Finance

The £61 build-it-yourself house plan – Yahoo! UK & Ireland Financehttp://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/The-61-build-house-plan-yahoofinanceuk-197431321.htmlThe smallest house on offer from Tumbleweed is just 65 square feet in size, but manages to cram in a living room with a couch and a built-in desk.