We live in north London. Most people don’t know the nearest station (Woodside Park), although they do recognize the next stations south of us (Finchley). Our area code is N12, and we are located in the London borough of Barnet. As I noted a few posts ago, Barnet happens to have its own football team, [...]
Monthly Archive for April, 2009
Istanbul Video: Evening prayers
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 18th, 2009
I took a short video clip while the evening prayer song was played from speakers throughout the night Istanbul sky. Get the Flash Player to see this content. var params = { ‘allowfullscreen’: ‘true’, ‘allowscriptaccess’: ‘always’, ‘wmode’: ‘transparent’ }; var attributes = { ‘id’: ‘video2′, ‘name’: ‘video2′}; var flashvars = { }; swfobject.embedSWF(“http://blue-eyed-samurai.com/wp-content/plugins/flash-video-player/mediaplayer/player.swf”, “video2″, “”, [...]
Istanbul, Day Two (continued)
Posted in Travel on Apr 16th, 2009
We actually ended up buying quite a few things during our afternoon at the Grand Bazaar – but you’ll have to wait for a couple more posts before we put up pictures of our collection <g>. Overall, we did pretty well with our haggling, basically aiming for 3/5ths or so of any initial quote. With [...]
Istanbul, Day Two
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized on Apr 12th, 2009
We learned one new fact about life in Istanbul very very early on our second day here. Very early, as in 6:30am early – muslims need to pray five times a day: dawn, mid-day, mid-afternoon, sun-set, and evening. And it turns out the sunrise and sunset times are recognized by the prayers being broadcast throughout [...]
Istanbul, day one
Posted in Travel on Apr 11th, 2009
We have arrived safely in Istanbul this afternoon; we’re spending our Easter holiday here. We took easyJet – the MBH wasn’t so sure about this; her view was that no airline should have ‘easy’ in its name, but the flight was uneventful. Couple of interesting points: first, easyJet is very clearly copying the Southwest [...]
Football, part 2
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 8th, 2009
OK, so we’ve gradually narrowed down our choices for a football team to follow. Actually, we’re following the lead of most of my co-workers who follow two teams: one local, and one team that actually wins once and a while <g>. Name: Barnet. Nickname: The Bees. Barnet Bees. BBs. Get it? Winner? Um, no. Towards the bottom [...]
What do you call someone that has to take the Series 7? Lucky. Lucky, at least, compared to the poor, sorry sap that has to take the S7 twice. Yep, I had to take the Series 7 today, five years after taking it the first time when I was with Nomura. Passed it then, but it turns out [...]