Indian army bagpipe bands' swaying march – help!
Dear reader: can anyone enlighten me?
I am a keen fan of military parades and march pasts. I regularly watch on TV the annual Trooping of the Colour in London and sometimes the very long Independence Day parade at the Red Fort in Delhi.
Recently, I noticed that the Indian army bagpipe bands tend to sway as they march. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fkT6SdD9LQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgW0HnY9crA Bands without bagpipes do not sway.
I tried to check via Google if the Pakistani army bagpipe bands did the same and couldn't find any example. So, my conclusion is that it was not a habit formed during the Raj but developed indigenously after Independence.
So the question: when and why did the Indian army bagpipe bands develop this swaying action?
Chronically low oil prices are disrupting a critical financial lifeline across Asia and depriving economies of much-needed hard currency.
The flow of cash, or remittances, from Asian citizens working in the Gulf soared when the price of oil was high, boosting growth across the board. The billions of dollars in annual inflows paid for necessities such as schooling and health care and helped propel families into the middle class for the first time.
Now that money is disappearing, perhaps permanently, as laborers lose work in oil-driven Mideast countries. That's adding a new threat to growth in some Asian nations and depriving them of currency inflows they need to balance their national accounts and keep their currencies from depreciating too quickly.
A barrel of Nymex crude is now trading at around $41, up from below $30 earlier this year. But prices are a long way from the peak of the boom and aren't expected to return to previous highs soon. In February 2014, a barrel of crude cost more than $100.
Demonstrating the pressures of sustained low prices, thousands of Indian workers protested in Saudi Arabia on Saturday at being left without jobs, pay and food after they were laid off. The Indian government stepped in over the weekend to hand out food to hungry workers.
It's Wimbledon season, which means it's Wimbledon towel season.
The colorful terry-cloth towels used by tennis players on court are the most-prized keepsake from the annual tournament at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in southwest London.
Even the sport's biggest stars are not immune, pocketing around half of the 6,000 towels set aside for their use during the matches, and giving them away to friends and family. The towels are so popular that the tournament employed towel police to prevent thefts until 2012, when they stopped trying to prevent players from stuffing their bags full of towels.
Thousands of tennis fans will scramble to get one of the 100,000 towels made for this year's tournament inside Wimbledon's gates or online. The luckiest ones will be in India.
That's because textile giant Welspun India Ltd. has produced the towels in Gujarat since buying the iconic British towel manufacturer Christy, in 2006.
While most people will be lining up to pay £30 (3,015 rupees) for this year's towel on the sidelines of the hallowed courts, Indian fans can buy one online for 1,295 rupees, or 995 rupees for the women's version.
via Wimbledon's Famous Towels Made, and for Sale, in India – India Real Time – WSJ.
If cities were stores, to find the best deal you'd be advised to shop in Mumbai for Levis and Coca Cola KO -0.15%, go to Rio for a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and stop off in San Francisco to buy an iPhone 6.
The price in dollars of items across world cities. Click the drop-down to change the item.
Looking for a cheap date? A Big Mac, movie, cab, soft drink and couple of beers costs $24.70 in Mumbai – making India's financial capital the least-expensive place in the world to show someone a good time.
Try to do the same in San Francisco or Tokyo and you won't get change from $100 – in fact, you'll need to scrape a few more dollars together to cover the bill.
Need a man's haircut? A short-back-and-sides in New Delhi on average goes for $2.40, a snip of the price elsewhere in the world. A trim in Tokyo costs 15 times more.
The study compiles prices posted on the Internet and from secondary sources, though it doesn't say what they are.
"We have tried our best to use goods and services that are standard across countries or are close substitutes," the authors of "The Random Walk Mapping the World's Prices 2015," wrote.
Such studies, including this one, do not reflect the true cost of living though because they ignore housing rents – often a person's biggest monthly outlay.
Add on the price of accommodation in Mumbai, which can have rents as high as those charged in New York, and the city would suddenly look a lot less easy on the wallet.
via Where's the Cheapest Place to Buy…? Probably India – India Real Time – WSJ.
What does life in an Indian city cost?