The Corporation City of London

Three and half minutes of your time to discover where all the money is funnelled. Between the City, Washington and the Vatican they've had the world sewn up for a long time. But that's changing.

The Forbidden City

I've yet to actually venture inside the Forbidden City despite living next door. I'm waiting for a crystal clear day and some swotting up on the history first I keep saying. However earlier this evening I was reading Rachel Clarke's excellent blog which I follow because she is doing grown up stuff on social media metrics as well as gaming and advertising too. Rachel posted about a Canon Eos/Rebel XT competition which is a camera I bought recently, and that I'm having a lot of enjoyment with. Anything that makes me look vaguely proficient is always welcome and this sucka sure takes care of me. Here's a little run round the Forbidden City walls on my lekky bike which I have reason to believe may resemble the Hoffmeister bear on a girly bike when I'm riding it!

Basic Beijing

Until I came out here, I didn't know that Beijing has some ancient celestial and terrestrial alignment going on its layout, which explains its destiny to rule the entire Universe and beyond for practically ever and ever or at least till the water runs out.

But you don't need to know all that because I'm going to give you a run down of basic Beijing layout. First off, that square in the middle is the forbidden city and as you can see the roads are laid out neat running north, south, east, west except for those ring roads which are like motorways carving through the metropolis (much bigger than the A40M for those inside the M25)

Then as we get closer you can the Forbidden city which has a heavier outline because of the moat that surrounds it, and below that is a star on Tiananmen Square. They say it holds a million people if you want to get some scale of the action that kicked off in 1989. Just a wee bit to the left (or West) is an egg shaped structure which is the National Theater for performing arts I took pictures of over here

Just an inch or so north of Tiananmen Square on the pic below is the famous Chairman Mao portrait.

Yes, I've been playing with Google maps this afternoon and I got bored of checking out the military installations and started sniffing around my neighbourhood. I'm going to have a housewarming party called 'Forbidden City/Naughty Nights' and I've got the invitation card semi thought out already....me being in advertising and all that.