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Guim Valls Teruel, a 33-year-old man from Barcelona, is to cycle halfway around the world on an electric bicycle. He told The Telegraph that he wants to “spread the message of this incredible invention to all corners of the world”. Or is because he’s jobless and needs a cheap way to get home?
Either, way, it’s a great story, and a brilliant way to travel. Twenty-million (yep, count ‘em) electric-bike-riding Chinese can’t be wrong. We need more of that stuff here.
These photos, taken by Old Town Resident and orginally posted at www.skyscrapercity.com and www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com (thanks!) are just two of a whole crop currently doing the rounds of the web, show lightning strikes hitting the Burj Dubai a couple of nights ago as an unprecedented storm lashes Dubai.
The Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building, will, of course, be the world’s tallest lightning conductor any time a storm hits. I hope Babu Sassi, the crane operator who has been atop the building for some time, is riding this one out on the ground.
My mate Callan writes from the city: “It’s been one hell of a storm – very unusual for here. Been going on for five days. Never had such high rainfall for this time of year since records began here – which is probably only like a few years ago (haha). Been lovely!
“We went to Coldplay concert Saturday in the middle of it – got totally drenched. Awesome concert with lighting bolts overhead! They are way better live than you’d imagine – not all sombre stuff.”
That was one of the great lines from the classic film Withnail & I, when Withnail, red-eyed and boozed to the point of staggery, approaches Jake, the flint-eyed poacher, and asks him about the purloined pheasants he has stashed about his person.
In recent weeks, one might have asked similar questions about any South African Airways 747 flying into Heathrow, except SAA no longer uses 747s on the London route. Read More…
London is a city made for cycling. There are few hills of any consequence, there are cycle paths everywhere and, thanks to the congestion charge on visiting motorists, which helped reduce traffic clogging the heart of the capital, it’s a little bit safer these days to get around on a bicycle. Read More…
The San used to look up at the night sky and say that the stars were holes in the roof of the world. The rain – when it came – they believed was water leaking through those same holes. Read More…
Sicilian police have closed beaches on Sicily’s south coast and warned residents to stay indoors after a pack of feral dogs mauled a tourist and killed a child in the town of Marina di Modica, The Times reports from London. Read More…
I took a Lenovo Ideapad netbook on my recent travels to London, in the hopes that this sexy little beast would be the answer to my needs for a small, light and well-specced machine which would allow me to blog and file stories and photos while on the run. Read More…
There was a time in Britain when you drank in pubs and ate in restaurants. Pub food, for the most part, meant a halfway decent pie and chips and maybe some gravy, or fish ‘n chips, if you were lucky. Or pork scratchings. Read More…
Some, no, many Londoners hate it. The British press is quick to stick their knives when they can. It’s hot. It’s crowded. The trains burrow like moles under the earth, wheel flanges shrieking against the rails on tight curves. It stinks. The air is fetid. Or cold. Or damp.
And it works. Try and catch public transport across Johannesburg to see just how bad it could be. Read More…
It is great to be back in the Sunny Republic. Really. But it was marvellous to spend time tramping around London and the Lake District, for there are many excellent things about that country that thrill me every time I’m there.
So here’s a list of five things that make Britain great, chosen purely subjectively, quite possibly at random, and in no particular order of greatness. Read More…
