First pictures from South Africa

Don't ask me why these are so weirdly in size, just clik on one and you'll get to the slideshow.

life is good.

Today I have been to the fantastic botanical garden of Cape town, Kirstenbosch and I FINALLY managed to get to see some animals. After Kirstenbosch I went to Duiker island by boat to see a colony of seals - unfortunately the sea was incredibly rough and even though since Honduras I've become used to boats the crossing was plain scary. None of the other boats went out btw...
In the evening I drank a coffee at a bar overlooking the Waterfront and then I had some very tasty thai curry. Now I'm "home", tomorrow I'll do a day tour to see PENGUINS! and on Monday I'll start an organized tour of the garden route...travelling alone in South Africa is possible and not even difficult but I've been warned so many times now by locals, that i decided to chicken out and opted for the group.
Just hope the people are ok, really DO NOT need 'cool' people overgrown Teenagers,  or... ok, Im fussy :).
I'll see what happens, it's just 6 days anyway.
And afterwards I have to go back do Cape Town, ***. Even though it's a beautiful city I remain a country bumpkin and would much rater sepnd the last days of my holidays (yes - afterwards WORK starts !) in a village or town on the coast. o.k., gotta go, got to pay my hostel bill and do some reading. READING! I'm carrying boooks with me which I bought in Quito, Ecuador last year, haven't got round to reading them at home.
Cheerio, Anne :)

greetings

from the southern side of the world, 10.000 km from home :); had some nice days in Cape town already, been yup table mountain but right now it's cold and rainy and things aren't working out the way i want them to, so I'm grumpy :). But nothing really bad has happened, just feel like i'm wasting time though even today I've done a very interesting township tour. o.k., gotta go, they're closing... hope u r all well.

If all goes well..

...I´ll be going to bed in South Africa tomorrow night.

Looking forward to a new continent, new experiences, work & new people.

been sick all day but getting better - lost one day for preparation :(
becoming nervous
why is there still so much left to do even if one tries to prepare well ?

last-week preparations...

Amongst other things I´ve been checking, reorganizing and stocking up on my travel medications today.

What I´m taking is:

-  antihistamins, because I´ve become terribly susceptible to insect bites in recent years
- two different kinds of pain killers, with anti-inflammatory capacities
- something against cramps (just learned that´s called antispasmodic)
- something against diarrhea
- something against travel sickness- which I don´t usually get, but I do get seasick and I hope I´ll be spending some time on a boat ;)
- never taken a sleeping pill yet but I ALWAYS take earplugs and my mp3 with me :). they work wonders on long flights and bus journeys.
-  a cream with cortisone - against insect bites and sunburn
- a disinfectant cream (which I didn´t get yet ...they gave me a spray, which is stupid to carry, at the pharmacy and I didn´t realize...)
- and an expectorant, because I´m kind of paranoid since I had pneumonia twice already.

I know lots of other stuff is recommended but so far I´ve got along with these quite well on my travels.

In the hope I won´t have to use any of it :).

Oh, and and an insect-repellent  (called "anti-brumm", contains DEET, the only stuff that really works in the tropics) and  a sun-screen with factor 50 :).

10 days to go...

it´s quotation time again...

O.k., these are sensible quotes:

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

Buddha

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.
Thomas Jefferson

But right now I like these MUCH better :):

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
Mark Twain  

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Ambrose Bierce

weekend

The sun is shining, two days off, loooooooooooong "holidays"
in sight - life is good.
There´s just the tiny detail of a couple of weeks with an immense workload and a dentist appointment thrown in for good measure, ahead...but I try to see it as a sporty challenge ;).

Fish - pond - big - small

I need a new pond.
A bigger, or maybe just a better one.
Mine is too small and contains too many bloated small fishes which believe they are big.
The remind me of blowfishes.
I need a needle to deflate them.  
Or dynamite.
Or a new pond.


hubris [ˈhjuːbrɪs], hybris

n

1. pride or arrogance

2. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) (in Greek tragedy) an excess of ambition, pride, etc., ultimately causing the transgressor's ruin

[from Greek]

dog pics

A friend sent me the adress of some fantastic underwater dog pictures:
Underwater dogs
Website of the photographer
The photographer also has a website which appeals to me a lot, it´s about improving the quality of the pictures of pets which need to be rehomed. I used to take pictures of the pets of our local animal shelter...sometimes I which I could still do that, I loved it.  
Thumbs up for this guys pics and his attitude!

doglove - agility

Agility presentation at the birthday party of www.doglove-lingen.de

Luxury

For me Luxury is to have my own, working shower in my own apartment with indefinite amounts of running cold and hot water which I can even drink if I feel like it.

There many more things - e.g. I just came home from a night walk with the dog and felt safe - but the shower is the one thing that I notice everyday with an immeasurable amount of gratefulness.

I wonder if I´d appeciate it as much if I didn´t travel the way I do, denying myself this luxury for a couple of weeks once in a while  and realizing that I´m one of the lucky few....

Got a, new, used car. Will probably never become a clever trader...ah, well you cannot be good at everything.

more pics

Yann, one of the fellow volunteers and a very nice, french guy has sent the address for some pictures from Ecuador. I like them a lot :).

last year this time...

... I started night-shifting as my mum reminded me today, and last years blog entry proofs. Not at all upset that I´ll probably be done with normal times this year :).
Still, one can make good use of overtime sometimes, looking forward to my ten weeks in Africa.
Flight to Cape Town is booked, but I should get a move on planning the rest, accomodation etc..

DUS-CPT

booking a flight is nerve-wrecking

Africa !?

Been planning this winters holiday for quite some time now. Found an exciting research project on striped mice in South Africa. Glad they said I could come. Yesterday my application for leave for incredible 10 weeks (!!!)  has been granted at work and 8 of those I´ll spend working.
Looking for flights at the moment, always a nerve-wrecking activity...
But then I look at Cape Town Sites and want to go right now! Penguins, yay!!!

Got to make it happen :) !


If all works out though, I´ll be quite sad not to be home for christmas, with my family.

Oryctes nasicornis

Digitally "enhanced" (*) - got huge problems with lighting macros. I´ll take part in a workshop next month where I´ll hopefully learn.
* : I use "Photo Impact" so I can´t use the synonyme "photoshopped".
Unfortunately, Photoshop seems to be unaffordable.

This is the first pic I ever submitted to Wikipedia.The german and english articles aren´t very good, the dutch one is much more detailed. In the european wikipedia (till today I din´t know how many different ones there were) there is a very brief article with almost no information but with the sentence "Dim, the beetle from the Disney and Pixar film, A Bug's Life is a European rhinoceros beetle." Aha. How interesting...
Gonna check the polish & spanish wiki now... :)

Oh, and in case you´re worried: I know these beetles are protected, but we found him in a completely artificial environment without any chance of survival, so I´thought it would be o.k. to use him as a model before releasing him in an appropriate spot. He spent some time in a box with lots of soil, where he dug himself in.

Ronja & Rhino beetle

Ronja, a colleagues cat who´s lodging here for two weeks. As with almost any animal and plant, I love the natural coloring best.

Male Rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes nasicornis) another colleague found at work in the soil for one of the planters today. They´re pretty and pretty rare.

“Why do you go away?

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

I love Terry Pratchetts books.

spent a nice and sunny day in the Moormuseum, where I watched dragonflies and admired the vegetation

Mini-Emsflower

as soon as I got there the sun was gone :(

Bananarama

Got my first photo as a canvas today and like it :).
With 90 x 60 it´s a bit small, but was expensive enough...
I wanted a motif I wouldn´t get tired of too quickly, which was simple & meant something to me. And it had to be green, my favorite color.
So I chose a close-up of a banana leaf because I love the red-green contrast and I came along bananas on so many of my travels.
In Thailand I ate rice from banana leafs, in Ecuador I sat at the lagoon and fed bananas to the fish, in Costa Rica I discovered that fried bananas (platanos) could become my favorite dish ever... This photo was taken in Honduras.

"Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises." -- Pedro Calderon de la Barca

"He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals." -- Oscar Wilde

Foxcubs

There is a fox den close to home and yesterday night I was lucky to watch all 4 cubs playing on the road right in front :).

3 days off...

1 day work...
2 days off...

Could get used to that! :)

belated weekend...

...3 days off!
And the wetter is getting worse, don´t mind the temperatures, but I would have loved sunshine for photography :(.

Rainald Grebe (Ich liebe das Brandenburg Lied) )war im Urlaub auf La Gomera und erzählt über das Rettungszentrum für Echsen (ich war 3 x da und immer war es zu...) :
Video bei youtube
"...die haben dort eine Echsenstation errichtet, damit die Tiere sich wieder vermehren um die dann wieder auszusetzen. Ne, was man halt als Deutscher im Ausland so macht ".
Ich hab mich weggeschmissen ;). "Nein ich will aussterben. Ich bleib hier einfach liegen...Bitte nicht mehr füttern... Ich weiß ich bin der letzte meiner Art, aber es war so schön ruhig vorher".

Home

5:30 on the way to work this morning. Shot from my car window, waiting for the traffic light (they´re rebuilding the bridge over the Ems) to turn green. And you ask me why I like living here? :)

confused

I´ve been listening to an audiobook for hours yesterday and cannot remember if it was in german or english. Is that a good or a bad sign? I can remember what it was about etc. just not the language...

Confuzzled was the word i was looking for ;)

clash

Heiko and Sally, our neighbours´ free-ranging bernese mountain dog, just before impact ;).

Moppel, a friends cat which has been visiting for a few days