As Usual,

Monday was a quiet day for us,

in the afternoon Mark called round for a tea and a chat, after we had said our farewells for some reason one of my rear teeth started a dull painful thud, which got worse as the evening wore on, so a trip to the dentist tomorrow, after our evening meal, which for myself was a bit painful, it was feet up for October Sky, a true life feel good movie, set in Coalwood, West Virginia, in the 1950s all the boys in the town grow up to be coal miners and Homer Hickam has no reason to think he'll be any different, too small to earn a football scholarship, Homer has no way out of his predetermined life -- until the soviet satellite Sputnik flies over the October sky and changes events for ever, a nice feel good movie that actually in some places really happened, 

we followed that with a disaster movie, Geostorm, the special effects were mind blowingly good, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, all so realistically done, and the film named after the disaster of a car! what could possibly go wrong? well for the inhabitants of earth pretty much everything, and for those that bought the Geo Storm car a double whammy! but it was made with disaster as in mind and the special effects guys in this movie pulled out all of the stops, to round off the evening a couple from Columbo and we were off to bed.

It Was Last Year,

in October,

that we featured DoodleChaos, with the work "Hall of the Mountain King" DoodleChaos spent a month creating a music video for the piece of music using the app Line Rider, yes, it was all drawn by hand, synchronising the drawings to the music was a painstaking job, and DoodleChaos says he/she never wants to hear the song again, and here is the good news, there is another one form DoodleChaos above, this time, he's got two (and sometimes three) riders on sleds illustrating Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, for some reason strangely satisfying to watch, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

A Brief Look At Europe's Tallest Building,

with a twist,

 it is the Lakhta Centre, situated nine miles from the centre of St Petersburg on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, the 400,000 square metres of the Lakhta Centre complex also includes a 24-metre-tall entrance archway, a separate boomerang-shaped multi-storey building, and a covered car park, two thirds of the office space at the Lakhta Centre will be occupied by Gazprom's new headquarters, the company is the largest supplier of natural gas to Europe and Turkey, the building will employe 8,000 workers on the site, a third of the complex will be given over to public spaces, including a science and education centre, a spherical planetarium, a concert hall, amphitheatre and several squares, 

 British architect Tony Kettle designed the tower during his tenure at RMJM, before handing the project over to Russian architects Gorproject to complete, tapering to a point, the spire has a 90 degree twist from foundation to tip, making it the most extreme twist on a tower after the Shanghai Tower's 120 degree twist,

piles were driven 82 metres deep into the city's soft ground in order to anchor the supertall tower and provide stable foundations, wind speeds at an elevation of 400 metres in St Petersburg can reach 87 miles per an hour, necessitating a specialised structural system to resist the strong winds, its smooth glass facade is formed of 16,500 pieces of curved glass, with a system of automatic shutters and valves to make it energy efficient, energy recuperating elevators, a vacuum waste disposal system and cold accumulators are some of the other technologies employed by the tower to make it more sustainable, a publicly accessible observation deck will be located at the 360-metre point, a planned restaurant will be Europe's highest panoramic restaurant, photographs by Viktor Sukharukov and Slava Korolev, would we like to go there? Well yes for the view and no for the fear of heights!

When I First Looked At These Pictures,

I was reminded of a song,

 'You Need Hands' by Max Bygraves, recorded by him in 1958, but the hands of this bridge seem to suspend a golden pedestrian bridge which recently opened at the Bà Nà Hills mountain resort just outside of the city of Da Nang, Vietnam,

 the two giant hands appear to support the 500-foot bridge, which have been weathered with cracks and moss to give the appearance of age,

 while walking along the attraction visitors can look out over the sweeping mountains at a height of nearly 4,600 feet above sea level, and take in the beauty of the bright purple Lobelia flowers which dot the structure’s perimeter,

 the bridge is part of a $2 billion investment to bring more visitors to the area, and joins a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-themed park and French gardens,

would we like to go there? it is on our ever expanding list of paces to visit!

In Many Films,

I have seen people sign their name with an 'X',

and in one of the versions of the Moby Dick film, one of the characters made a small drawing of a whale, signing on as crew of the Pequod: beneath Ishmael's signature, Queequeg's sign of the whale,

which is the only picture signature I think I have ever seen, until now, a Peruvian man recently got famous as he always signs his name with the childish drawing of a kitten, the man’s signature went viral after a photo of his ID next to an official police document signed by him were posted online by police in the coastal town of Huarmey, 

He along with five other had been arrested on July 18 on charges of gun possession, and after being taken to the local police station and signed into jail, one signature drew the attention of officers on duty. Instead of a name or a simple scribble, 31-year-old Juan Carlos Varillas Bazán had drawn a childish doodle of a kitten, only after checking his ID and seeing that it featured the same drawing as a signature did they realize that they were not being trolled and that that was really the guy’s signature, they thought it was hilarious so they posted the documents on the station’s Facebook page for everyone to see,

 while some Facebook and Twitter users joked that the man couldn’t write, it turns out that the kitty doodle actually has a touching story behind it, the 31-year-old Peruvian told La Republica that when he was 16 he had a kitten that he loved very much, so when he got his first ID card, he decided to honor its memory by signing his name with the now famous doodle,

the man told reporters that the staff at the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status (RENIEC) advised him to choose a more common way of signing himself in order to avoid trouble in the future, but he just stuck with it, He admits that the doodle does make things harder for him whenever he needs to sign an important document, for example, banks always ask to see his ID to make sure the signatures match, and as for the charges, Juan Carlos Varillas Bazán is now preparing to sue the police station in Huarmey for disclosing private information about him without first asking for permission, He also claims that he was detained for no reason, as he was only driving the five men accused of illegal gun possession, the sign of the cat, I had no idea it could be done, but there it is.

Sunday,

so we were out for our roast lunch,

to The George restaurant and bar,

 we have eaten there many times before, it is in Chaiyaphruek 2 Road, if you are going away from Pattaya heading towards Sattahip on the Sukhumvit Road, when you arrive at the Chaiyaphruek traffic lights turn right and the restaurant/pub is about 100 yards along the road on the left hand side, 

the carvery all ready and waiting,

for our starters pumpkin soup for Mr. Tony, above Diana's chicken liver pate, and for myself, Caesar salad,

on to the main course,

I decided on just the roast pork,

carefully carved by George,

a mixture of meats for Diana and Mr.Tony,

'Cheers!',

on to desserts,

we all chose vanilla,

which was nice,

as was my treat to me, a Jamaican coffee,

a normal coffee for Mr. Tony,

Ian popped over to say hello, what a great meal the 3 course buffet is 395 baht each, 

on our way back we passed the Riviera condominium, most condominiums we see being built are just square or oblong blocks towering into the sky,

but this one appears to be all sorts of shapes, it will hopefully be nice to see when it is completed,

Mr. Tony kindle dropped us off on Jomtien Beach Road,

so we made our way back to,

Dongtan Beach,

and continued along the deserted road,

to the beach entrance of our condominium,

where it was feet up for the late afternoon/evenings films, firstly The Keep, a film that is difficult to track down, apparently Michael Mann retreated to television after the commercial and artistic disappointment of The Keep (1983), where he then created the hugely successful cop drama show Miami Vice (1984), for a full rundown of the failure have a look here, but I really enjoyed it, with music by Tangerine Dream the whole film was dark and mysterious, but then I do seem to have strange tastes in films according to a few that know me,

next Blade Runner 2049, what a disappointment, we were both so looking forward to watching it, but I knew it was doomed after the first 10 minutes, which was confirmed just 5 minutes later when Diana turned to me and said, 'it is so slow', and it was, amazingly it received a 8.1 on the IMDB listing, we would have given it a begrudging 4.0, but there it is, the good news was that we finished the evening with a couple from Columbo and with that we were off to bed.

War Brings Out The Best And Worst,

as well as cunning and ingenuity,

to both sides of the conflict, I was reading about different tactics used to even the odds over the weekend, one committed by us, the British, caught my attention, we deliberately gave heroin to the enemy to make a planned attack go rather well, it happened like this, during the Palestinian Campaign of WWI (1917), the British were in their trenches and the Ottomans were in theirs, but there was little movement, the British learned that the opposing Turks had run out of cigarettes, so the intelligence service of the British Army came up with the idea of throwing cigarettes to the Turks, but they would wrap the packs in paper with slogans encouraging the Ottomans to stop fighting, this didn't work; the Turks would throw the slogans away and enjoy the cigarettes, shortly before a raid was scheduled, the British changed tactics a bit, the cigarettes they threw over the top still had slogans on them, but they also had the added benefit of being heavily laced with heroin, by the time the raid started, the British met essentially no opposition, and yes we really did, you can read more about other tactics used in other conflicts here, there is one thing about this story that I however have not been able to confirm, that is after the war all packets of Turkish cigarettes had a warning printed on them, 'Smoking Kills'.

There Are Some Pictures,

all involving heights,

that I hate looking at, as I have a fear of heights, this is one of them, with safety hats and footwear, what could possibly go wrong? picture from here.

We Have Mr. Tony To Thank,

for sending us,

these fun pictures,

of urban art,

 artist Tom Bob,

looks at street furniture that we walk by everyday,

 and transforms them in to witty, 

 characters,

 some of which you can interact with, to make an amusing photograph,

 Tom Bob operates in NYC, but sometimes he unleashes his creativity elsewhere as well, those include Kaohsiung (Taiwan), Dubai (the United Arab Emirates), and other places all over the world,

 so keep a sharp eye out,

you never know when you might be Bobbed!