jasonbstanding.com

Inspired by a post at Flashpackers, it occurred to me that having been in Shimla a couple of weeks now I'd kind of developed a tendency to get on with life rather than being a tourist in a new place (although having made that outlandish claim, I suppose I'm still photographing anything and everything that [...]

2 things strike me as overly hopeful about the ambulances here:
1) I sincerely doubt that should you need to get into one that you'd be able to lie in the back - they're essentially Suzuki Carryvans, which like its stablemates the MightyBoy and the Sherpa, seems to have been designed for carting individual cartons of [...]

OK, that's another exam out of the way. 2 down, 6 to go.
Although for some stupid reason I'm considering rushing the last two and tacking on another 9 day course. Maybe I'll wait til I get this exam (shaping up to be trickier) out of the way on Monday or Tuesday and then [...]

The other night we dropped in to Barista for our post-lecture coffee, and there were these two blokes sitting in there chatting away. When we sat down, they said - with great big friendly smiles on their faces - to Rob (Dutch), Ricardo (Colombian) and myself: “You are English, yes ?”. We made [...]

The stuff I posted earlier today - which is dated from a few days back - I actually wrote before, it's just the pace of this course has been so flat out I hadn't had a chance to edit the photos and get all that organised. But as I take a brief break from [...]

On Sunday my learned colleague Rob & I elected to get the hell out of Shimla and see some of the surrounding countryside. To wit, we forked over the hefty sum of 1125 Rupees each (about 12 pounds) and hired ourselves a 4WD, driver and tour guide for the day, and set off to [...]

First week down, so here's some more choice tidbits and photographs…
Our class consists of Rob the Dutch Dude, our instructor Sukhdev, and myself.

There's a big old theatre in town, which was built when this was the Indian Summer Capital when the English ran the place (it gets wayyyyy too hot down in Delhi during the [...]

Exams, buildings and mountain views are all very well, but the thing you're all desperate to know is “What's the beer like ??”. Being the scientifically inquiring type, I set out to test this very concept the other night with my new learned chums, Brett the Aussie and Angus the Irish Bloke. The [...]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I just passed my first ever Microsoft examination, which confers upon me the globally recognised status of Microsoft Certified Professional. But you can call me “Mike”, for short.
So that's one exam down, about another 6 to go.

So the question on everyone's lips is, “What's it like in Shimla, Jason ?”. Well I'll tell, shall I ?
This place is fricken' great - admittedly this is my first time in a non-Westernised country, so a lot of the stuff which seasoned travellers regard as pretty standard is still wiggin' me out to [...]