Boxing Day on the Isle of Man mainly means one thing. No, not shopping sprees or finally sending the in-laws on their way home, but the annual game of Cammag at St John’s!
Turnout was quite decent again and the game ended 4:0 for the South.
Below are a few pics and a video from the day.
Some more images from Bavaria, this time from the town of Mittenwald.
Mittenwald is located approx. 16 kilometers to the south-east of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Valley of the River Isar, on the northern foothills of the Alps.
The picturesque town is probably best known for the manufacture of violins, violas and cellos.
Just a few more pics from Bavaria, this time from the lovely city of Munich.
Typically my luck, snow arrived the day I left so all I got a day earlier was a rainy christmas market to walk through.
It’s still an extremely nice city and a visit is highly recommended, not only for the christmas market.
Below are a few images from a little town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Located in southern Bavaria, Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a mountain resort town and also happens to be where I lived for many years before moving to the Isle of Man.
Reason enough then to point a camera at some of the parts of the town I used to call ‘home’.
Today saw the annual Santa Dash take place, with no less than 126 Santas running around the streets of Douglas.
Below are a few shots and a short video from the event.
The Dash was won by Kevin Loundes, ahead of Ryan Fairclough in second and Alan Corlett in third place.
A few more pictures from Hong Kong, this time as Anaglyph 3D Images.
Grab your Red/Cyan old fashioned 3D glasses and experience ‘Asia’s World City’ in three dimensions – most pics in the gallery below can also be found as 2D versions in the gallery posted earlier.
Back on the rainy, cold and somehow not really exciting Isle of Man at the moment, so enough time to look through some pics and finally update the site with them.
All of these were taken in Hong Kong a few weeks ago and are a mixture of the main touristy things like the Star Ferry, Avenue of Stars, The Peak, as well as some random shots from around town.
Some more images from Manila, now that I’ve found some time to go through them.
There’s loads more to come and these aren’t in any particular order – there’s stuff from Makati (where I’m currently staying), Manila skyline shots from Antipolo and more.
Something that caught my eye here in Manila: the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) has just introduced dedicated motorcycle lanes on two of the busiest roads in Metro Manila, an idea that seems quite sensible looking at the utterly mad traffic that can be observed here every day. I wouldn’t be surprised if the local highway code simply consisted of one sentence: “Do what you want, that shall be the whole of the law”. Cars, bikes, trucks, Jeepneys, cycles and whatever else can fit on a road take part in a display of organised chaos here every day, with no gap too small and no light too red as not to go for it. Somehow, it all does kind of work and you get used to it surprisingly quickly – just forget anything and everything you ever learned about polite and curteous driving and simply go with the flow…
Anyway, about those motorbike lanes: went out for a drive the other day to have a look at them and some pics are in the attached gallery. Those are from the motorbike lane on Macapagal Avenue in Pasay (Metro Manila is made up of numerous cities, such as Makati, Pasay, etc, all of which together are commonly called Manila – although Manila itself is just another city within Metro Manila). The lanes have blue markings and are hence usually referred to as Blue Lanes. All motorbike riders must use them or risk a 500 Pesos (about £7) fine if caught on any other lane on these roads. Cars are not allowed on them at all unless turning off the road.
Some people have welcomed the introduction of dedicated bike lanes, while others are arguing that it’s just another excuse to collect more fines – in the end, anything that makes traffic even a little bit safer here can only be a good thing, though. A press release about it can be found here with a further news article, which also mentions that police are hoping the bike lanes will make tracking “riding in tandem” killers easier, to be found here. Just in case you are wondering what “riding in tandem” killers are: it’s pretty much what it sounds like – two guys on a motorbike, one riding, one shooting. It’s a big problem here, with over 1700 shootings of this type in 2011 already and the numbers seem to be rising.
You may have noticed that things were a bit quiet around here recently – that’s mainly because I was busy with other things and didn’t have much time for photos. To really make a change to the kind of stuff normally found on these pages, I’m also currently living in Manila, so expect less IOM and more mega big city. Sadly, my stay here means I’ll be missing the Manx Grand Prix but hopefully I can make up for it with other things – we’ll see…
