Category Archives: Travel

Watching the English

… is the title of a book by a British anthropologist I read last summer before visiting the UK. The author, Kate Fox, takes a close look at her fellow countrymen, and to this foreigner at least, her observations were both interesting and amusing.

Of course, queuing is a particularly English habit which I’ve often observed. The English do it everywhere and consequently get cross if someone tries to jump a queue. What I have never seen, though, is what they do if someone actually jumps a queue, but MeFi user garius explains it in this comment, which I urge you to read:

“If you ever want to see British queuing at its best, go to Victoria Station in London during the rush hour… “

Hilarious!

The rest of the thread about queueing is worth a read if you are interested in queueing habits around the world.

Around the world

You know this website that lets you check all the states and countries you’ve visited and shows them on a map? Well, Douwe Osinga has improved the interface since I’ve last been there, and I’ve visited another country and a few more states, so here are my updated maps as of August 2008.


visited 16 states (7.11%)

Not very surprisingly, I’ve mostly been to European countries. But I’ve also visited two countries in Africa as well as the US and Canada in Northern America.

In the US, I’ve mostly been to the Western states. (New York and Kentucky may not really count because I only changed planes there and therefore just saw the airport.)


visited 13 states (26%)

Create your own visited map of The World or of The United States!

Vacation

As two of my few remaining loyal readers guessed (1, 2, 3), André and I went to the Northwestern part of the US and the Southwestern part of Canada, namely Oregon, Washington, Montana, Alberta and British Columbia. More specifically, we spent time in the Canadien Rocky Mountains (to which Glacier National Park in the US belongs, at least geologically) and on the coast, including Vancouver Island.

I’m going to post about our trip some more in the future, but today I want to show you someone else’s photo: Sea Anemone Eating Crab in Washington State. This was today’s photo of the day at National Geographic, and it reminded me of the anemones we saw on the coast in Olympic National Park. I was tempted to stick my finger in one of the anemones just to see how they would react, but now I’m glad I didn’t. ;-)

For comparison, here is an anemone which André photographed on Second Beach in Olympic National Park on July 24th, 2008. Click for the bigger version.