15 August 2010

Favourite Things - Weeks Six & Seven

The Favourite Things Project at Being Tazim for week six was 'Modes of Transport'.

How easy was this one. Gotta be 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles'. I travel a bit for work, across the city, interstate and intrastate, so I use all these forms of transport. And I love them all.

Other people who use Sydney's City Rail are probably saying, are you crazy!! Probably, but in the 5 years I've been travelling across our beautiful city, I haven't had that many issues with delays. I'm also very lucky to travel across one of the renowned Sydney icons, the Harbour Bridge. Which also means I get to see the harbour and the Sydney Opera House everyday I travel on the trains.

This doesn't look like it was a particularly sunny day on the bridge. This is the approach heading towards North Sydney where my office is. Of course I'm not always there. I'm either somewhere else in the city or state, depends on my schedule.

One view of the historic Central Station. Looks fantastic at night with all the lights shining on the facade.

This is a bit hard to see, but it's inside the old part of the station. We still have steam trains arriving and departing from here. Great fun!

Our new Millennium trains, which didn't quite make it for the Millennium. I think it was another year before they were on the tracks. Below, inside the Millennium train. Rush HourTokyo Rush Hour

The Nazomi, below, we travelled on from Kyoto to Tokyo in about 2 1/2 - 3 hours. While we were waiting for our train, I timed a Nazomi as it left. 15 seconds and the whole 8 carriages were past the end of the platform. Very fast. We got up to 285 kms p/h at one stage.

Me and my new car last year, on the day I picked it up from the dealer. It took me 8 long years to get there, and 4 of those years dreaming of this little beauty. I love driving it whenever I can, so I often take it on trips for work that are up to 4 hours from home. Any further than that and I'll fly.

Below is Kyoto's main railway station. It's like a little city itself. A couple of lovely locals helped us find our way around. A great community service. So polite and they speak excellent English. We did try the tiny bit of Japanese we knew. They seemed to understand. Planes. On them regularly for work and play. In a week I'm heading off to Brisbane for a few days with my eldest son, then on to Mt Isa to visit my youngest. The flight to Mt Isa isn't bad. Better than the quick trips between Sydney/Melbourne or Sydney/Brisbane. With those it takes just as long to taxi in and out on the runway as it does to fly between the cities. Well that's what it feels like.

This is Kansai Airport. Apparently the terminal is about 1 kilometer long. When we got off the plane, we hopped on a monorail that took us from the gate to the actual terminal.


My dream is it do the train ride in the Rocky Mountains one day. I've seen so many pictures of the trains with the glass roofs for viewing the wonderful scenery. Straight after that, I'd like to board a plane to Europe and travel on their fast trains, especially the one under the English Channel.

Week seven's topic is 'Ways to Relax'. A little while ago I wrote about my latest Japan fix. Essentially, it was all about the Japanese themed fiction I've been reading of late. You can read my post about them here.

So...my way to relax, most of the time, is reading. Of late though, I have returned to a lot of non-fiction reading. It's not like me to read more than one book at a time, but these two have got me entralled. The first book is a narrative from Diana Vreeland (1903 - 1989), fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar and Editor-in-Chief of Vogue back in the good old glamour days. A very forthright lady, great reading. Recommended by a young design student I met in Brisbane.

The other one is feeding my addiction to the series 'Mad Men'. It's 'Mad Men Unbuttoned - A romp through 1960's America' by Natasha Vargas-Cooper.

Happy reading!

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