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ShareIt's the kind of perfect English town written about by countless authors: a church spire, a market square and a mock Tudor pub on the canal with locals sipping pints of bitter. Except that this is not England, it is Shanghai. Thames Town, a replica of a quaint little British community has been designed for rural Chinese folk who will be moving into here over the next decade or so. But the replica of bucolic England doesn't come cheap. A one bedroom apartment sells at 45,000 pounds (about Rs36 lakhs). British newspapers are calling it "The Great Chinese Fake Away."
In bad odour
The new airline baggage restrictions are hitting the Duty Free sector the hardest. Last minute wine or perfume shopping used to be one of the joys of overseas travel, but now, with anything liquid being banned from hand luggage, passengers will no longer be able to pick up these items except in arrival halls inIndia. Given what the duty-free shops are like here, that is hardly a pleasing prospect. There is another segment that will be affected with these regulations -- performing musicians. Most of them used to carry their sitars, guitars, cellos with them, even occasionally buying an extra ticket. This will no longer be allowed.
Not the same
At any given time, Colaba at night is a world apart, with its own sub-culture, oddball denizens and a freewheeling attitude. No longer. For the past few days, security has been tight and it all came to a head on the eve of independence day when there was heavy 'bandobast'. Cars and taxis were being stopped at every corner, drivers were asked to show their papers and open the car boots. Restaurants and bars wore a deserted look. With the festival season coming up and security becoming more visible,
regulars are wondering if they should be heading elsewhere.
Box office blues
Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, based on rescue operations after 9/11, has not caught the fancy of American audiences the way it was expected to. On the weekend of its opening, it was No. 3 at the box office, behind films like Talladega Nights Step Up. But WTC still collected $19 million for the weekend, far more than another 9/11 film, United 93.
