Clik here to view.
Home is where the snow is.
In the end, my round-the-world tour turned out to be reasonably zig-ah-zig-ah: Moscow – Dublin – Abu Dhabi – Canberra & Sydney – Singapore – Austin (via NYC and Dulles) – Riyadh – Tokyo/Osaka/Tokyo...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hawaii Hi-Five-0.
Aloha folks! I’m currently cooling off after a visit to the Big Island of the Hawaiian archipelago. What an amazing place – tipping the emotions over the edge with its mixture of perfect weather,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brainteasers – August 26, 2014.
In July, KL turned 17! The occasion was marked in typical fanfare style, and gave us the chance to see in the last full year of our adolescence – by playing to our hearts’ content. There were many high...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tel Aviving the time.
My fall season globetrotting continues from country to country, city to city… What’s nice about it this year is that the weather just about everywhere is real good. My autumn coat hasn’t left the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How much per minute? The Spanish parking pricing conundrum.
Still in Spain, after Barca, we headed over to the city of Seville. We needed to park up the motor for a few hours, so drove to the parking lot in the airport. And that’s when we saw it: Absurdity with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Guatem-ooh-la-la volcanism.
Turns out the Ring of Fire affects Guatemala too. But then that country classic affects many, and always will :). But no, it’s the seismic-lithospheric-tectonic Ring of Fire that ensures Guatemala is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Unexpected and extremely inexplicable sightings.
What are the chances of Hell ever freezing over, or, in the meantime, a cat surviving a short stay there? That’s right, slim at best. Now, I would have thought there’d be similarly slim chances of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My new Top-20: Cities.
Hi folks! Following on from the prelude, herewith, my recently formed list of what are to me the world’s Top-20 cities. In this post I’ll briefly describe and present pics of my Top-20 most interesting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Buddha and the ocean.
If you enter ‘Buddha and’ into Google, guess which five suggestions Google finishes the sentence with…: Buddha and bonsai Buddha and ahsok Buddha and cats Buddha and mara story Buddha and the quantum...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Christmas dinner… in a museum.
Eeeh, modern art museums. Gotta love it. Not that I’m a mega-fan of modern kunst; it’s not as if I plan visits to progressive museums specially. But when I do happen by one in this or that metropolis...
View ArticleThree questions for physicists.
I did a fair bit of walking in Tanzania on our Kilimanjaro expedition – a whole week’s worth, in fact. That meant I had plenty of time – besides chatting to my companions – to ponder, contemplate and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
S. America to S.E. Asia Air-Route Question.
Getting from Cancun in Mexico to Sanya in China, will never be one of the simplest routes – even given the most favorable of weather conditions. All the same, it will never be one of the longest....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Welcome to Greenland!
By some quirk of fate I often fly across the North Atlantic. Europe-America-Europe; sometimes Asia-America-Europe; sometimes other, more exotic combinations. Example: sometimes I get to fly over...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Greenland, pt. 2 – Airports.
Kangerlussuaq. Probably the strangest international airport in the world. First off, try pronouncing it properly. Hardly slips off the tongue now does it? I had trouble with it too. Next there’s its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inter-NYET!
Ready? Rant begins – NOW!… After the Chinese Rail Non-Fail the day before, I could not berliiieeeeeeeve the total fail in a Chinese airport the next day. And not just any old Chinese airport, but the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Three Gorgeous Gorges of Energy.
Let’s continue the electricity theme… Actually, more specifically, in this post it’s a hydroelectric theme; more specifically about a hydroelectric power station; more specifically – the largest...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dammed if You Do, Dammed if You Don’t.
Yichang is a relatively small provincial city (a ‘prefecture-level city’) in the Hubei province with a population of just over four million, but it’s several times larger than London! It’s famous...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Vatican: A Pope’s-Eye View.
Rome. Without a doubt – one of the most… significant cities in the world; 100% must-see. I’ve been to the city many times, toured the different parts of the center on foot several times, prodded,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Happy New Year from Central Moscow!
Happy New Year folks, and hope you all had great holidays! You won’t believe this… but this post is about… RED SQUARE! // Incidentally, the square I consider to be the most beautiful spot in Europe! I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017: Prime Numbers, Factorials, Primorials, Derangements: It’s Complicated.
As many will already know, the number 2017 is a prime number; that is, it can be divided without a remainder only by itself and 1. Must say, the theory of prime numbers is a wholly interesting one and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017: Leonardo, Fibonacci and Fermat Numbers: It’s Not So Complicated.
In my previous post we had a math competition. Let me remind you of the task: Using +, -, x, ÷ and (), make the row of numbers from 10 to 1 equal 2017. That was an easy task, which got more...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Chinese gastronomic enigma.
Many of you may have noticed that I rarely write about food. Photos of food or meals on Instagram are not my strong suit :) However, it would be wrong to say I’m indifferent to food. Absolutely not!...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Digital 2018 – pt. 1.
Boys and girls! December’s here again already. Over the next few weeks there’ll be the usual Christmassy-New-Year good vibes, then there’ll be the presents, fireworks, champagne, mistletoe, more...
View ArticleDigital 2018 – pt. 2
Hi folks! Quite a bit of motivation is needed to solve interesting brainteasers. Thankfully I’ve never had any trouble mustering motivation. But more about that in a bit… First up, as per the requests...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The mystery of the Aldabra giant tortoise.
I first set eyes on these incredible creatures last year in 2017. Just a year later and I was back for more, and since then I haven’t been able to stop wondering: where did they come from and how did...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Japan quakes. Japan shrugs.
Not long after leaving Japan, I read in the Russian press that there’d just been an earthquake there causing several deaths and a ‘transportation collapse’! Oh my Geiger, I thought, and quickly looked...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mathematical fanatical: How to turn ‘1’ into ‘2019’?!
Hi folks! 2019. Is it two thousand nineteen, or twenty nineteen? How does it sound to you? “It’s just a number – the number of the year,” you say? Hmm. I think your saying that might mean poetry or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mathematical fanatical 2019 – the answers.
Hi folks! In yesterday’s post, you’ll recall how I gave you, dear readers mathematicians, a mathematical brainteaser: how to get ‘2019’ using the four main arithmetic operations [+, -, ×, ÷], plus...
View Article
