Friday, October 21, 2011

Hancock tower

i think i never posted a picture of the hancock tower. i never really tried to picture it, although you can see this building from about everywhere around boston. but actually its nice when the clouds reflect in the glass, and on this picture i think the tower almost looks fake!!
its construction was not without problems; opening of the building was delayed from 1971 to 1976. i read for example that entire window panes came down, weighing 227kg each! whenever the wind reached more than 72km/hr, the surrounding streets had to be closed off. so... during its construction it was decided that all of the 10,344 window panes had to be replaced for safer ones. 
although it is boston's tallest building (and also in entire new england), there is no observation deck anymore; it was closed after 9/11 in 2001. it used to be a popular attraction, but the building's owners say security is the reason for the continued closure. interestingly, a public observation deck was a requirement for the original building permits to gain public benefit from the high tower. however, they have not been able to locate the documentation of this requirement (hahahaha), and thus it remains closed.... making prudential tower the tallest building to visit in boston (ofcourse, i stole all this information from wikipedia). we still have not been up that tower. there is actually a fancy restaurant on top. if you go there, you dont have to pay entrance to the tower, but have to spend a certain amount of money in the restaurant. but as its fancy.... its expensive...

Exotic animal

well.... a seagull is not really an exotic animal, but i have been trying forever to capture one in flight... i think the camera course helped me with finally capturing it! and this one was pretty close for a bit... :) this was on coney island, new york, on my birthday!
i just saw on the news that somewhere in ohio an exotic-animal owner committed suicide. but before he did that, he freed all his wild animals!! some 49 animals were on the loose, including 8 bears, 18 rare bengal tigers and 17 lions. it took the police 24 hours to get all the animals (or rather, to kill them all), so that was quite a scary situation; it was getting dark while many of those animals were still out and about. people were advised to stay indoors and it took them till the next day to get them all. yuk... here i read that the owner had a lot of debt ($68,000 in unpaid taxes), but it does not make sense to my as to why he would free all those animals...