Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Signs, Garbage Bins and Incessant Photography

Last summer, I had gone to England with my friends: TPF, Harry, Micky and Marry for a umm..lets call it a holiday for about 5 days and I absolutely loved it. Thank god for the creation of the digital camera because I have the unhealthy habit of taking the weirdest pictures like funny signs or garbage boxes. I have no idea why, but I'm just obsessed with them. My incessant photography did get on everybody's nerves and I have nobody apart from myself and TPF to appreciate these pictures. Since I have a blog, I might as well post them here:

Alright, in the picture below I'm not really sure what this sign means, but it sure is weird and it was just posted on the window of a big music shop. Isn't it cool?

This one's plain funny, I'm not even bothering to explain this:

I would have thought they would have named something bigger like a street, boulevard or a square after such a great and important man but a lane was something I just didn't expect.

I'm obsessed with these, no idea why actually (the weird thing is that they're all from the same town). They're colourful and have messages written on them. Its also very embarrassing to stop on the street and take pictures of garbage bins. People around you keep looking at you as if you were doing something scandalous. So I hope the people reading this post appreciate the effort that it took me to actually take these pictures.

Well, if they actually told us where the ticket office was, instead of telling us where it wasn't, it would have been a bit more useful and then right above this sign they post the next one. The national express people really need to win the prize for making the funniest signs:

Is this some sort of a weird joke that nobody but my pervy mind gets? Seriously, it was a name of a chapel...What was the perv who named this chapel thinking?


The sign on the Trackball machine was hilarious. It sounds as if it was written for me! I should put something like that in front of Quincy (my computer), to remind me to keep my cool when he decides not to work or just be slow for no reason at all.

And then there are signs like these that are supposed to be serious but make me laugh for absolutely no reason at all. I like the idea of the responsible adult doing the accompanying. It definitely wouldn't be me. BTW, I also love the Post Script message about the bees that the sign gives.

The little red writing that you cant read in the picture actually says: 'In Emergency Phone - '. Now when I'm dying of electrocution, I'm definitely going to take my phone out and start reading the number and calling them up and telling them that I'm dying.

Just when you have some hope in the world, you see signs like these randomly put up on a watch shop of all the places and wonder what they actually mean.

Now let me leave you all with a close-up of an albino pigeon, Dorothy, who was kind enough to pose for this beautiful award winning photograph and give me all the rights to this image:

And there is the one of a rainbow, which is not funny at all but just pretty. I love rainbows, you never got to see them in Bombay where I grew up for some reason, so I'm extra fond of them:

This is the last one I promise, it is a photograph of Lyra's bench in the Oxford botanical gardens. Hopefully at least some of you will know what I'm talking about.

PS: I have another amazing pictue of a fossilized band-aid but for some reason I cant upload it onto this post. Anyways its not hard to imagine what a fossilized band-aid looks like. Ah, the things one can find if one just looks carefully around.

14 comments:

ash said...

Some funny signs there, my favourite was the beehive one.
The 'best' sign I ever saw was when walking through a part of a building where they were doing lots of refurbishment. It was a typical yellow warning sign with a large exclamation mark that simply said, "Danger". How helpful.

Anonymous said...

goolies! i've seen plenty of rainbows in bombay! anyway, i nearly died laughing at the idea of you calling them while you were being electrocuted to tell you were dying!

niTin said...

Those were great. You know you could sign up for a flickr account and keep posting your pics there? Thus your restless clicking finger would be more productively engaged.
I found my favorite sign at a church which said
"Three things are to be carried out immediately and without hesitation, good deeds; screaming children; ringing cell phones."

The Poodle's Friend said...

HEY! I took half of those photos, you plagiarising scoundrel!
Well, I guess that's what I get for taking ages to upload pictures onto my computer. Oh well.
At least let me do the fossilized band aid, considering that I was the one who spotted it.
Lovely post as usual. Loved the beehives and flying bees. Cracked me up.
Thank God for Oxbridge open days.

Panacea said...

ash - You do see those ridiculous 'Danger' signs in the weirdest of places.

Cookie, now known as Eris - you have a blog, why dont you log in and comment like normal people? My impending death is quite amusing to you isnt it? I've never seen any rainbows in Bombay and spent 14 years searching for one. I hate you!

Nitin - The only problem with the flickr account is that I live in Italy, there is nothing to click around here because Italians don't believe in signs or garbage bins, as a matter of fact. Loved the church sign you saw btw.

TPF - You're an idiot! We took pictures of the same signs and your battery didnt work half the time. Only the fossilised band-aid belongs to you and I didnt even put that up. Oxbridge totally ruled! Remember the HP game that we played and got on everyone's nerves?

Frankengirl - I think you should ignore the drama queen, all the pictures up there are mine apart from Dorothy, which TPF took on my camera.
Cool, grafitti, I never thought of photographing that before. Frankengirl, I think you have given me an idea here. Btw, on a completely unrelated note, graffiti can be interesting. Edward Albee saw the title Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as graffiti in Boston and used it for his play.

hit-and-miss said...

It's safe to say that you deserve a thousand dollars for this splendid work.

Panacea said...

wolfpox - thanks, and if a whole load of people had the same opinion as you, I'd be rich by now ;) Unfortunately, its just the blogging world who is going to enjoy these pics.

hit-and-miss said...

I wonder if any atheists live on "Jesus Lane"...

Rahul Nagarajan said...

really a great effort from you. I really had nice laugh after a long time. May be your so called wierd habbit is not so wierd

Panacea said...

wolfpox - its not just the streets, most of the colleges in Oxford are named either after saints like St. John's College or something else like Corpus Christi or Trinity College, I'm sure a lot of most atheists dont really care when it comes to choosing their universities.

Rahul -I'm glad you liked them. Its nice to know that there are some people in the world who dont consider me weird ;)

Frankengirl - *sigh* Knowing you, I should have anticipated your fondness for drama queens! :D

Anonymous said...

Wow! You had never showed me the pictures you had taken (and driven us all insane with!).. they're pretty good! Though... you forgot THE picture: the "please keep off the grass" sign with you jumping around on it. He he. Happy days.

I once saw a sign in front of a church (Toronto was it?!), that said: "Thou shalt not park here". Very funny.

The Poodle's Friend said...

You tell her, frankengirl! And Pan, I am *so* not a drama queen. You owe me half of what you make out of this, you know.
Harry - there's signs in toronto? Wow. I didn't know there were any people to read them :P

Panacea said...

Hello Harry, nice to have you back! I still dont get why all you people had a problem with my photography, even though I did stop on every corner to take pictures. Anyways, you and Micky totally stole my thunder on that trip :P
You should stop making Canada references on my blog, people might actually think you are Canadian, which you are not ;) Why is it that its always the churches that have the coolest signs? Its quite funny actually.

TPF - You're totally a drama queen and that's why we all love you! And you owe me shares of your future t-shirt factory...

Anonymous said...

I AM CANADIAN!!!!! The most I will aknowledge to is a faint Italian tinge- no more!
Plus Canada is located on the 'top of the world' for a reason!
And Canada is 5th at the Olympics.