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.