Coins Not Accepted Here

I absolutely love these English red phone boxes. They’re very iconic and I’ve always had this strange fascination with them. When I went to England in November 2007, it didn’t matter how many red (or black) phone boxes I saw, each time I saw one I let out a squeal of excitement. I can’t remember how I started this mild obsession with English phone boxes, or why they hold such a strange captivation for me. But nevertheless, they do.

What I don’t understand about this particular phone box, though, is how coins are not accepted. If a phone box doesn’t accept coins, what does it take for payment? Bills? Plastic? Checks? Poker chips? I thought all public pay phones accepted coins universally??

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Grow Up and Blow Away

When I was in Ocean Park in Hong Kong (the same park that featured the corn pandas), I snapped this picture when on the cable car going from one side of the park to the other. I have no idea how this picture managed to turn out as artsy as it did, but I absolutely love it. I love the darkness of the hot air balloon and the setting and the relative lightness of the sky – I just think it’s beautiful¹. Oh, and brownie points for those who get the title reference of this entry.

In other news, I’m back from my hiatus! I didn’t really get up to anything exciting in the month or so I’ve been away, but I’ll touch upon what I did accomplish/experience in tomorrow’s entry.

1. I probably should be able to analyze this photo using the correct terminology seeing as one of my classes is about photography, but I haven’t read the required textbook readings for that class yet. Oops. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Intercourse

I picked up this brochure at a hotel I stayed in while I was busy road-tripping it up. The brochure is an advertisement for the illustrious town of Intercourse, located in the heart of Amish Country in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. As immature as it was, my brother and I spent a good five minutes laughing ourselves silly at the name!

But seriously, not only is the name incredibly suggestive (even though the acquisition of the name “Intercourse” has no actual sexual connotation in this context) but the picture of the happy, affectionate couple on the front cover doesn’t exactly prevent people from jumping to conclusions about what goes on in that town!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

It’s no secret that I love to travel. I have a map in my house where I’ve used pins to mark which cities/countries I’ve been to¹, and I love the Where I’ve Been application on Facebook.

I came across the Visited Countries website, which works pretty much the same way the Where I’ve Been Facebook application does. You mark which countries you’ve been to in the world, and then it color-codes the world map according to which places you’ve visited. Then it generates the coding for the map, and you can always update your map as long as you have a saved copy of the code!

This is my map:

visited 12 states (5.33%)

Apparently I’ve visited 5.33% of the world (Where I’ve Been has me listed as visiting 4%). That means I have 94.67% of the world left to explore!

1. The pins are color coded to represent whether my family has lived or visited there, and then there are different colors for each member of my family. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

In May’s Every Hour on the Hour post, one of my photos was of me filling out an association meme on my LiveJournal. The way the association meme works is that I would ask members of my LJ friends list for five terms/phrases they would associate with me, and then I would have to elaborate on those five things. There were forty terms in total for me to elaborate on (some terms were repeated, though), and here are five of the words that my friends associated with me.

• The MTR
  Chosen by: Melody
  The MTR is Hong Kong’s mass transit railway (hence MTR ). I think it’s the best in the world. It’s fast, efficient, safe, modern, and doesn’t smell like pee (unlike the El in Chicago, ugh). It’s a great way of traveling in Hong Kong as EVERYWHERE is connected to the MTR. They’re also adding new lines to the MTR, and when I found that out I got so excited I Googled for more info and saw the new maps of where the new lines will go as well as what color they’ll be. I’m an MTR nerd

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Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.