Thai House

I have been going to Thai House for years as it is by far my favourite Thai restaurant in Al Khobar. Recently they have been renovating and you would hardly recognise the old place.

Staff Student Football Match

200906081

Originally uploaded by nick_hardcastle

http://www.dhahranbritish.com/Galeries0809/FootballStaffStudent/index.html

Naharat By Nawal al-Ajmi

Artwork by Nawal al-Ajmi exhibited at Desert Designs, al Khobar

I photographed Saudi artist Nawal Al-AJmi’s exhibition at Desert Designs this week. The gallery is well worth a visit. You can get a taste here.

Ladakh, Chapter 7

Another installment of my Ladakh Journal: Chapter 7

Saturday banking

We had the day off today. No special reason, just one if those days that we scarred around the callender to give people a break. It was great. It meant that I could go to the bank, exchange money, pay in a cheque and send money back to England all in less than 45 minutes. Normally it would be ambitious to expect to achieve so many jobs in anything less than two days in Saudi Arabia. For a start the banks close at 4 pm and we don’t get out of work until 3.30, so strictly speaking going to the bank isn’t very practical at all.

Making soundslides

In the last two days I have been going through my journal and photographs from the trip I made to Ladakh in 2005. I want to complete the SoumdSlides series that I started three years ago.

Going through it now I realize that I wasn’t thinking of telling a story in this way at the time. I don’t have enough photos at certain points if I had been thinking of the story I would have taken them. I was very much thinking in single images.

The other thing tfat strikes me is the brevity of my journal. I was spending quite a while writing everyday but there was so much that I left out. At least now when I read it the details come back. Maybe not all of them but a surprising amount.

I have the day off tomorrow and am going to take the opportunity to go to the bank. Hopefully it should be quiet.

Moving back

I have decided to move my blog back to wordpress as it is easier to host there than keep updating the many files on my own server.

My recent posts have been about Ladakh. I have been looking over my journal from 2005 and producing SoundSlides. I can see lots of room for improvement but, here they are.

http://www.hobnail.com/Ladakh09/Ladakh_Ch5/index.html
http://www.hobnail.com/Ladakh09/Zangskar-Chumik/index.html

Cave dwellings

Cave dwellings, originally uploaded by nick_hardcastle.

Having spent a full ten days living with my computer, it might be good to go back to work. Might … I have learned a great deal about action script, java, Ajax and xml, but in retrospect I think that I would have been better living in a cave in the mountains. If I spend any longer sitting in my chair, I may lose the ability to walk.

I have upgraded my server … and so my website is off-line at the moment.

Ramadan has finished. Was it really only one month?

James Nachtwey

James Nachtwey.

“James Nachtwey is preparing to reveal his photographs, which highlight a shocking
and underreported global crisis. Over the past 18 months, the TED community
have been working with James to gain access to locations he wished to photograph,
and to prepare spectacular plans for unveiling these pictures.”

Drought

Drought, originally uploaded by nick_hardcastle.

This photograph was taken about 12 years ago when I visited Flores (Indonesia) during a drought. The villagers came out to see me because they thought I was a priest. Something to do with the beard and speaking Indonesian.

So … I am on holiday … but in Saudi during Ramadan.

Yesterday I spent so long in my chair that I could hardly walk when I got up to fill my glass. Nothing to do with the home brew either. I did manage a run, just four sweaty miles on the corniche after dark. But for most of the day I was beating myself over the head with a stone. Not literally, of course – for some reason I decide to upgrade my website so that I can host my own WordPress blog and to learn how to use Flash Panorama Player. Neither of these things turned out to be simple.

When I bought the domain www.hobnail.com I purchased it from a reliable company in the UK. A short time later it was taken over by another company with more divisions than I have trousers. One of these divisions registers my domain name, another looks after my server and a third bills me for the privilege.

I spent two hours trying to find MySQL. Strange really, as I wouldn’t have recognised him if we had slept together. I had three and a bit, but needed four and apparently five is the latest and greatest. With little hair remaining, I did find a gracious gentleman who furnished me with a telephone number and salvation. Gratification was delayed however. My host employs Englishmen and they don’t work after five. Sometimes I would far rather deal with Delhi, even if the regional accents are not quite kosher. But then, eating regularly in Bradford, how would you define a British accent?

If that was all Dutch to you, I hope you are blonde, for my first attempts at Action Script were rather sluggish too. Simple, the website said, no experience necessary. Hm. Fascinating though. I didn’t get to bed until four. Good to have some action at last, even if it wasn’t scripted.