Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Direction of travel


Some trains on the Hong Kong metro have diagrams like this: the remaining stations on your journey light up (in this case, Mong Kok, Prince Edward and Sham Shui Po) and one set of directional arrows ripple round to show you the direction of travel. There is also a light (not in this photo) to tell you which side the doors will open at the next station. Nice one. 

Sunday, April 07, 2013

iPhoto's new goddess recognition feature


iPhoto likes to spot faces, and put a name to them. So I need to tell it this is the Goddess of Mercy from the temple at Repulse Bay, Hong Kong.

Step forward


You see this sign quite a lot in China, but it's nothing to do with the 5 year plan. At least you see it a lot if you are male, because it's found on urinals.

Showing and saying


On our recent visit to China, I kept noticing Chinese characters that seem to depict what they say. I think I'm right in saying that 'entrance' is written using characters that both look like and mean 'person' and 'gate' (literally, 'mouth', I was told).

But apparently it's just coincidence that the first character below looks like a toilet...



Here's the corresponding icon for Exit. Almost a new ideogram in itself.


You know where you are on the Great Wall of China


And some things you can't do in Beijing








More things you can't do in Hong Kong