pixies.

I know you guys keep moaning about my blog posts because I never/rarely use photos/screenshots/images/visual stimuli to make my posts more, erm, pleasing to the eye.

Can I say, before you read on: It's just psychological.

But that's not a good-enough excuse, is it?

So, without further ado, here are some visual stimuli. Absorb...

Just this morning: a snap from the bus stop where I wait for my commute to school. Notice a few things: the Fanta Bottle on the bike, rather than in the bin, and the old van with a mismatched colour scheme (red and dull grey).

Also, read the small label on the rubbish bin (you probably can't in this pix): Don't make our world a bin - just use one! That's a line that you can use if you need to think of a cheesy tagline for an environmental awareness/waste management campaign.

If you're going to drive in London, beware of the parking charges here. The above is a screenshot from my iPhone for some parking charges I had to pay for my bros + parents when they were in London - £17.60 for 4 hours of parking. That's equivalent to about S$10/hour. Oh, did I mention that there's a Congestion Charge for entering Central London on Weekdays? That's £8/weekday, or S$18 A DAY. Suddenly, those ERP charges don't look too expensive, right?

Sunrise view from the apartment my parents rented while they were in London. Albert Embankment.

Squirrel!!! At St. James Park. Quite odd, really. A park in the middle of a pretty urbanised city, and yet it has its own ecosystem, made up of squirrels, ducks, egrets, swans, fish, etc.

Speaking of duck....

It's a duck!

"SAVE THE PLANET". A simple message that you'll see as you exit Hard Rock Café, Hyde Park Corner, London. Supposedly the first Hard Rock Café in the world. The Genesis, if you will, of the global Hard Rock Café phenomenon. And you can see the evidence, too. They've got original instruments and costumes from great music legends like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, etc. Probably one of the must-eat-or-drink-at places if you come to London.

A slightly old pic - my set-up in Jakarta. A 32" Samsung TV as a secondary monitor, hooked up via VGA, and an old hand-me-down Cambridge Soundworks 4.1 set-up that's been simplified into a 2.1 system (due to cable length constrains / health and safety hazard concerns), and my trusty MBP + Seagate Time Machine Drive. Of course, since I'm in the UK, this set-up is not currently in use. Otherwise, I'd be on my bed lying sideways while watching a video podcast on the TV, controlling my Mac using my Apple Remote.

LSE (London School of Economics And Political Science. Not the other LSE, London Stock Exchange, if you try to Google 'LSE'). Where I hope to go to next year. Tough place to get into (vacancy-applicant ratio for the course I want to take was about 1:20 for the 2008 intake). But I'm trusting God that if I can get in, then praise God, but if I can't, then He probably has other plans for me.

So there you go! Pictures!

If you're on Facebook, I told you before: Go to ronfiles.blogspot.com, click on 'postings' in the navigation bar, and scroll away!

[UPDATEDx2: The pix work now. sorry. MobileMe is embed-unfriendly, it seems.]