Bear with me while I'm trying to manoeuvring through the life in a country that most people from outside know as the home of chocolate, cheese with big holes, accurate watches and a quirky language. And in case you haven't noticed: Cuckoo-Clocks are German!
Finally I got myself a macro lens. And of course I had to try it out immediately. So what better to do than taking the camera to the shop and then leaving for the zoo's giant Masoala building?
At first I was a bit worried since I always struggle keeping the camera still. And with a macro lens of that focal length (105mm) and that aperture (f/2.8) you get a depth of field of only one or two millimeters at miminum distance. See the berry, that's only about 5mm big:
After having taken the usual pics of the cameleon and the turtles, I thought it was about time to see something new. It didn't take me long to find a couple of crested couas, and one was kind enough to pose for my camera:
And then something very unusual happened: Normally the lemurs in the masoala building hide in the trees or climb up and down the roof, so you don't really get near them. But today an aloatra gentle lemur appeared upfront of my camera and climbed down the tree very slowly, letting me take several pictures. Things don't get much better than this!!!
It truly was a disastrous weekend for Switzerland. Nothing but bad news...
Let’s look at the WEF: Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkish Prime Minister) left the meeting after a rather loud discussion/argument with Israel’s Prime Minister Ehut Olmert on Thursday evening, and shouted at the audience that he’d never return do Davos anymore. The WEF ended on Sunday evening, with more new questions than old questions answered.
Sports: Men’s Ski-Downhill and Woman’s Super-G on Saturday were cancelled due to fog. Of course no-one wants the athletes to race downhill at speeds of 100+ when you can’t even see the front tips of your own skies. Unfortunately these two races are the only ones of the weekend where Swiss athletes would have had a chance. In the Slaloms the Swiss didn’t even win a flowerpot...
Australia: Roger Federer lost the final of the Australia Open against his all-time rival Rafael Nadal and broke down in tears. Not that tears are a bad thing! I like athletes who show emotions! But Roger’s emotions just showed what the country felt overall after this weekend.
So is there really no good news at all? No.
Uhm, wait a minute! The Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl on Sunday! And their Quarterback, Big Ben Roethlisberger, is Swiss! Well, at least he has a Swiss name... Telling from reactions of dozens of journalists all over the country (Switzerland, not the US) you could think the guy really is Swiss. The facts are slightly different: Ben’s great-great-grandfather Karl left Unterfrittenbach in the bernese Emmental (that’s where the cheese with the big wholes comes from) in 1873 for the US. It was the time of the industrial revolution, when unemployment was very high in Switzerland and the government gave everyone CHF 100.—who decided to leave the country for good.
When the Steelers won the Super Bowl the last time in 2005 (where didn’t really matter), Ben was invited to visit the small village of his ancestor in the Emmental – before that he probably couldn’t even point out that tiny little cheese-and-chocolate-country on the map...
To cut a long thing short: The Swiss feel so bad after this disastrous weekend, that we have to be proud of a Football Superstar with Swiss roots, who’s even more American than President Barack Obama...
140 km/h (93 mph) is one hell of a speed. In Switzerland you're only allowed to drive 120 on the highway. In Kitzbuhel in Austria the ski-professionals are racing up to 143 km/h on their skis. Kitzbuhel is the steepest downhill-ski-slope in the world, the fastest, and definitely one of the most difficult and dangerous. At that speed if things go wrong, they really go wrong. As Swiss skier Daniel Albrecht found out on Friday morning:
Listen to the commentary from the two Austrian journalists - you don't have to be fluent in German /Austrian to understand how shocked they were by the crash. At the moment Daniel's in hospital in intensive care, kept in coma to prevent stress causing brain damage. As far as the doctors can say he'll survive, but they don't know about permanent injuries now. May he get well soon! Just two days later the main race was held, won by another Swiss, Didier Defago, who just won the Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen a week earlier.
Between Xmas and New Year I converted all my 400+ CD's to MP3 for my iPod. Working as a salesman in a CD-store back in the early 90's I happen to have some collector's items which I came across again now. I'd like to show you some of them.
Warning: If you're a musician with a discriminating ear, then DON'T watch the second video in this post as it might be ototoxic for you!!!!!
Note the questionmarks in the title. What I'm going to show you gives you a completely different look at singers.
If you're a regular reader of my blog you will remember the post about the English salesman who sang an aria in a talent show. Here comes the opposite: Florence Foster Jenkins was an American 'singer' who started her career in 1912 and died in 1944. All her relatives and friends advised her not to sing. But when her father died and she inherited several million dollars, she funded her singing career. Her concert were very rare, normally once a year she would sing at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York. Only one month before her death she sang at Carnegie Hall in New York. The audience was always chosen by herself in personal interviews, so it wasn't easy to get a ticket. The concerts were always sold out, and people left with tears in their eyes - tears of laughter, where as FFJ thought it was tears of emotion. Once a critic stated that she 'didn't let herself get terrorize by the intention of the composers'.
To give you a reference what I'm talking about, here's 'Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen' from Mozart's Magic Flute, sung by Diana Damrau, a German opera-singer. The aria itself is a real tester. It's one of the most difficult pieces to sing in classical music:
And here, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the one and only Florence Foster Jenkins with her version of the same aria. Note her complete lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, and overall singing ability:
Although it got freezing cold on New Years Eve - the streets were basically ice-rinks - I went up the hill in our village to see the bonfire. Lighting the fire up
The formula is this: You have bicycle races for six nights, each from eight in the evening till two in the morning. The main races are being held by 12 teams with 2 riders each, so you see the teams in about 6 different races each night. The main races are:
L'Américaine / Madison: All teams are on the circuit, one rider each races, the other one rides on ‘standby’. Each ten laps there is a sprint, the whole race lasts 125 laps. Teams change riders on their own discretion. Speeds up to about 60 km/h.
Derny: Racing behind a pacemaker. Each rider had a pacemaker on a small motorbike (the Derny), and has to tell him how fast he’s able to go. 75 laps, one rider change, and extremely enthralling duels. Speeds up to 80 km/h. The catch is: The bigger (and fatter) the pacemaker is, the easier is the job for the rider.
