First video from world's tallest building

Thought this was pretty cool... it's an amateur video taken from the top of the Burj Dubai, which is now the tallest building in the world. Good birds eye view of Dubai too.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/559779-video-burj-dubai---a-view-from-the-top

Royal Ascot

On Saturday, we joined 80,000 other people who were making their way to Royal Ascot - the most famous (or at least most quintessentially British) of all the horse races in the UK. It was quite an afternoon. I've never seen so many hats with color coordinated outfits in my entire life. We arrived around 11am and staked out a spot on one of the benches in the grandstand area. This served us well through the Queen's parade (she was brought in by a horse and carriage with Prince Phillip) and the first race. Also worked through a couple Pimm's and a half bottle of champagne (while I was drinking water, of course). We then braved the crowds for a fish and chips lunch and made our way right up to the white fence that separated the people from the horses for another couple races. All day we were torn between staring at the amazing outfits and actually watching the races. Unfortunately, you can't see a lot of hats in the pictures below (other than ours) but just take our word for it - they were outrageous.

Walking to Ascot from the train station



At the entrance



The outside of the main building




Our bench for most of the afternoon



Ladies in hats



Champagne anyone?



The Queen and Prince Phillip



Enourmous crowd



A day at the races



Up close - ready for the third race

Tiger Eyes

Many of you have witnessed the slightly disturbing, but kind of endearing and usually non-violent cat fights that happen outside of our house from time to time. You may even be familiar with the perpetrators - Tiger Eyes (always the aggressor who's also prone to running into our kitchen when the doors are open) and Fluffy (the pacifist who keeps coming back for more). We had a nice showing on Sunday morning - the low moan/growl from Tiger Eyes and Fluffy just crouched with all hair sticking up ready to move at the slightest advance. They were about two feet apart just staring directly into one another's eyes for a good five minutes. I didn't manage to get that on camera, but did catch this shot of Tiger Eyes as he (we assume he's a boy becuase of the agression) starts to take off after a fleeing Fluffy.

Until next time...

Finally, pictures from Singapore and Lombok

It seems like we've been back forever, but it's really only been a week and a half since our Indonesian adventure. We've given some of you the highlights already, but for a quick recap - we absolutely loved Lombok and really enjoyed Singapore too. Lombok is very remote and undeveloped with dense jungles and lots of bamboo huts and rice fields. The island is actually pretty big (it took us 8 hours to do an island tour one day) and there is lots of crystal clear water nearby, which is perfect for snorkeling. Singapore was just as clean as you'd imagine and chewing gum is actually illegal. The food was great and there were lots of little pockets of different cultures like the Indian neighborhood and Chinatown.

Here are a few pictures and the rest are on Flickr as always!







In traditional festive wear... they were all amazed by how white Ric's skin was!



A traditional village - this is where they store the rice







Kuta beach on the southern tip of the island



Snokeling day on the boat





Chose the fish you want to eat for lunch... on a tiny island called Gili Mino. Basically uninhabited



Singapore - Clark Quay



Arab Street



Little India



View from the roof of our hotel

Tube strike!

Lots of fun things happening in London this morning becuase of the two-day massive tube strike. The problem is that the London government wants to layoff about 100 tube workers and of course the unions won't stand for this (it's not like any other industry has suffered layoffs recently... oh, wait...), so they called a strike. Every single tube line is shut down or running a severely reduced service until Friday morning, except for... you guessed it... The Northern Line!!! Ric unfortunately didn't find out this juicy tid bit in time, so he had a pretty long commute in on the bus (see his email below) but he gave me a heads up just as I was preparing to wait 15 minutes for my bus, which would have taken me an hour, plus a 15 minute walk on the other end. So my ride in was fairly smooth, if not just a little more crowded. Turns out that the Northern Line is run by a different group which is part private and part public workers and is therefore able to avoid things like union strikes. Yet another reason to love the Northern Line, as if we even needed one.

I asked Ric how his ride in this morning was, and here's his pretty funny response:

It was really fun. I sat by the window heater so it got progressively hotter as the bus filled up, and at Euston station a cab hit us so the bus had to stop an everyone had to get off. Had to walk from there. All in all, it took be about 70 minutes. Luckily it was nice outside to walk.