Eeeeeek!

I bought banana-chips today.. and here goes part of one of my theeth!
Awwww... I can stand pain - except that from my teeth!



The plain thought of the noise here makes me nearly fade... ok, but shudder, I get goose-bumps!
It feels like half the tooth is missing - which certainly is not true.
Awwww... uhhh... ohhh... NOOOH!

OK - there are things worse than that.
There are also things better than that!!! Like still being here in Ingo´s place! I try to see the good side in life. 15 minutes of pure pain and freaking out - I can do that, can I?

Oh, btw - you want to see how my "firefighter" makes a BBQ fire?

And makes ME taking a pic of it all? I am the most afraid of fire!

London to Sydney

Miles Hilton-Barber flies from London to Sydney in a Microlight! He is blind! And he wants to raise money for research. You can read about it here.

May Day, May Day

No, I don´t call for help! :-)
Tomorrow is May Day, a public holiday, yay!

Like most people, I took today off, too.
Ingo has to work but promised to come home as soon as he can.

What did we do so far? Having BBQs, due to the great weather!
I´m in Ingo´s place. He doesn´t have Photoshop and I can´t work properly with his "Photo Studio" - a veeeeery old program that cuts my pics when rotating.

But here are some pics nonetheless:



That Esky is from 1995, from K-Mart. The bag is from the fresh food people from the Kingsway Shopping centre in Perth last December.

While Hann made me homesick for Perth with pics and desciptions of a ride around the swan river, I can only "shoot back" with a ... guess it´s a duck? A white one, right here at Ingo´s place:

Your first love

We went to donate blood - it was my 20th time and Ingo´s curse hold on - since Novemeber 2006 Ingo tries to donate the 35th time - operations, holidays, sickness or simply being in my town kept him away from it - as also this time. Well, he tries!
The pic says "You can buy your first love in the toy shop - but no blood".

"Day off"

My brother called me in the morning and asked if we could meet after his appointments with the doctors in my town. For sure we can.
So I left work just after lunch, hopped in the car and got into a "snow storm"!
Dandelion clocks were floating around like crazy! It was beautiful!

My brother was already waiting for me and after a cup of coffee we took the bikes (Ingo, thanks for borrowing yours all the time ;-)...) and went to our first stop - the botanical gardens.
I will put some pics to flickr tomorrow.

Here is already one of a huge blossom - see my dear brother as a comparison!:



Just huge!

(And guess who is turning thirty! this year in October! ;-)

Then we went into the city. It was such a summery day! And it´s just April! I loooove summery days!
The first time in years (I don´t like sweets much) I even had an ice cream!
I was the first of us to order and took two sorts of the icy stuff - could I know they are that large???



Both did cost together only 3 euros!
Well. Was ok. I had an ice cream. Sweet. Enough.

And a nice day with my brother :-)

Thermomix TM 31

One of my projects is a B2E-portal with also leisure-stuff. For example our user send in receipes which we build in. For some reason the thing is running!
One of the users asked if we can make a new category. She just bought a Thermomix TM 31 (german) and is looking for special receipes.
So I had a look on that magical food processor:
It can weigh, chop, mix, stir, cut, kibble, grind, powder (?), knead, emulsify AND:
it cooks and nearly cleanses itself.
On the Vorwerk-site I found no price.
On ebay I did - 676,00 €!

I stick to my Ingo41! He completedly cleanses himself. Can chop, mix, stir and cook as well!
And I never needed emulsifying before ;-)

Road closed

They had to close the highway ´cause it suddenly got washed out at a larger piece. Not too funny for „old-fashioned“ people like me who don´t have car navigation! Good thing my customer is that large. I just drove with the mass and got lost only once, hence angry just twice.

The „detour“ to work is quite ok:
4 km less to drive! That makes 8 km every day!
Even better: On my new way to work deer pass is not likeable to happen – one of the things I was always afraid on my regular tour.

Only fretful thing: All the kilometers I could have saved if I had known of this tour earlier!

But better late than never :-)

Likable

We tried to make my phone work with skype - which didn´t work and which did cost us some time. We were late for our grocery-shopping - the town was full!

So we just made it around the block with the car and went to another market by foot.

And Ingo found some - for him - very yummy food for a kind of strange brunch there.

Part of it was potatoes. We wanted to sort some out for our bbq. To this one he said:

"Take it (for the brunch), it´s likeable to me!" Hence it didn´t live long...

And here it is, a "likeable" potatoe, what a smile, he? :-) Potatoe: A blog-reader! ;-)



Now that I introduced you two, maybe you want to read about what Ingo had for brunch and why I didn´t join in.

Arrested

Rodney´s Journey will end in prison this Friday.

I know this and don´t try to prevent that?!

No, I won´t! He does this for an important purpose.

If you are in the area, you can even visit him, just go to the Freo prison (worth a visit, take the free guided tour!). Lets hope there are heaps of people supporting Rodney on Cystic Fibrosis WA.

Change

I went to the bakery. The stuff did cost 1,38 €.
I gave 1,58 €.
The woman behind the counter said she had no 10 cent-pieces and gave me 58 cent back.

Well, thank you!

That is some money!

Friendly local... note @ me: go late when they are nearly about to close and have to sell the last pieces. (the pic is just a yummy example of what I got - I got more for that money)

Wo-hooooo

I´m in!!! What a day!
I took yesterday off to go to the doctor.
Got an sms that on the 19th the phone company will come to put me on. Or in. Or whatever. It said I have to be here between 08:00 am and 04:00 pm and I thought "noooo - a whole day?!"

Drove to work this morning and got a call at 08:30... ummmm. TODAY is the 19th!

I could convince the man to come back at 10:00 and... here I am - online from home!

Thanks to Ingo, who "made" me. We´ll share the costs.

Yay, I´m in!



Oh, and this is the old phone I got from my family´s place:

Knutomania

He´s fine again and here are more pics.

Pic-Knut-Stuff

So I put the - in my eyes - good pics from last weekend to flickr.

Other pics I could not take are these, hence I borrowed them (you can click to enlarge):



Isn´t he still too cute? But you can see he will be a dangerous predator soon.

At the moment poor little Knut is sick, he´s got toothache.

Here are more adorable, sweet, cute pics of the little fella. Ohhh, what a sweetie! You can use the "Weiter"-link at the top to the right to go to the next pic.

And I wonder... He has a very fine nose - and I bet he hears very well. Isn´t he bothered by all the people so close by?

Silly post?

This is the upcoming date when we can say we´re together for 13 years now - is it that long already? I really had to check back!





Geeeez. In all that time we lived in so many places. But hardly together.

First time together: Traveling Australia in '95 for 6 months.

Next time together: Traveling Australia in '99 for 7 months.

Then in 2000 - me looking for a job for a whole year! I got depressive a bit but Ingo did stick to me.

Next time: ? Who knows.

Oh, do shorter holidays count? Nah, not really. But if so it would be 3 weeks in Cuba, Mexico, Isla Margarita, Jamaica, Cuba, Perth. Even shorter holidays, too? Wilhelmshaven, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Koeln!, ... and certainly the weekends. There was only one weekend where we were not together and that was because Ingo was sick and didn´t want to infect me as well.

Help needed

I just found this in Barbara´s blog.
There is a little boy in Canada who is diagnosed leukemia. It´s his 8th birthday on May the 30th and he wants to break a world record then: He wants to receive at least 350 million birthday cards - I´m going to help, will you, too?
He seems to be a very brave boy, just look here at Shane´s Wish.

Call me

But don´t laugh - this thing really works and not only that - the quality is very good because your mouth is directly over the device and not 5 cm away. And you can put it between your ear and shoulder and have the hands both free. Ok, you could take a headset, too. But then...
It looks cool, at least we guess.

You can get it at retrostar.

And, as to be seen - it was a hot weekend! We had a BBQ twice, it was sooooo yummy.
Yesterday evening there was a party in one apartment above us. When someone sneezed, I said Gesundheit! - and he even answered :-)

We went in the botanical gardens, too and I tested with my makro-mode. Today I will overwork the pics and if they´re good, put them to flickr.

Visit me

Come and visit me! Anyone is welcomed - by me and by my pig :-)



When you leave, you can feed the pig - and when it´s full we go to the steak house.



Because it is my piggybank and we finally installed it beside the door.

Yay!

Just right now I took off my pullover-jacket and sit here in a T-SHIRT now!!! :-)

Wow.I think I am not allowed to put that pic in here. The punishment already followed. Some years ago I bought the stuffed donkey from Mc Donald´s who sings that song "You are my Sunshine". And I have it in my ear now. In bad donkey-quality...
But he still is my sunshine :-)

Glasses

Maybe not the right title for this post, maybe "colleagues", "team", "fun" or "pride" would have fit better, but I wasn´t sure. The other day we had a meeting here with my customer and colleagues.

I had new glasses for two days and no one saw it, not even Ingo (over the weekend)!

When I sat down in the meeting-room, one of my customers, who is also my friend, shouted, "you got new glasses!". Everyone looked at me and I said, "yep :-) My brother is an optometrist!"

Everyone "oooh"-ed and I said, holding up my hands where I wear 5 rings on, "and a goldsmith! :-)" - "ohhhh!". Man, was I proud of my little brother!

One colleague said, "ah, THAT´S why you have new glasses all the time" - which simply isn´t true. Four glasses in five years, and two of them are old ones my brother doesn´t like anymore!

That colleague took me to work yesterday again. He had to be there early and it helps him to get out of bed when he knows he has the responsibility to pick me up. 06:20 was said, 06:12 I was there, 06:15 he was there. My friend calls that "sick" but I like being on time ;-) We chatted along and again he said, "you are no woman, are you?" I think he means it as a compliment... Aw, well. It´s all a men´s world! :-)

I did women-stuff yesterday anyhow. I planted flowers, tomatoes and herbs. And could see well with my new glasses (just referring to the title to make it reasonable ;-)...)

The power of the word

This german article finds fault with brunswick scientists publishing their articles in english, not in german. As well as most degree dissertations are written in english here. The "language protectors" even call it impoverishment.

If it was written in german, over 100 million german-speaking people in Europe could read along, they say.

Hello?

They say, even Einstein said in 1948 in Princeton, it´s important that the general public can inform itself about scientific research.
Hmmm. Al right, that man was german. But if he said that in Princeton, I guess he said it in english. And in the here german quote a specific language is not mentioned.

An escape into the english language would circumvent the german language to advance, they go on.

The scientists say, they commune with the world and hence, english the choice is.
I think so, too.
If I blogged in german, I would probably only read german blogs which would mean:

I would miss a lot of cool blogs -
I would not have gone homesick of Perth, would not have gone there for a holiday and would not have met fellow bloggers there.
That was something I wouldn´t want to miss!

The article goes unwillingly funny on that the scientists are aware that they have to tell the people where all the money goes and hence on "TU-Day" they try to make up in german.

TU-Day? :-)
(Technical Univerity, a day they are open for the public)

When you google "Deutsch" and "Wissenschaftssprache" (science-language) you quickly run into forums or rather debates, that started in the 17th century.
When in 1687 the attorney and philosopher Christian Thomasius wanted to hold a speech in german in the university of Leipzig, his colleagues thought it was a scandal.
In the 18th century at the university in Goettingen latin was the language, in Berlin they went to french and Munich, they went to german.

I dunno. This article kind of made me laugh. What do you think?

Maybe sign language is the answer?

Spring... SUMMER!

So yesterday I grabbed my summer clothes from behind my closet, packed all my winter clothes in bags and threw them back behind where my summer clothes just finally emerged.

I hope we get a good summer again this year!

It took me all evening but well. I´m living in a small apartment and this is the way for me at the moment. One day I will have a large closet where both, summer and winter clothes will be stored. But for now I´m glad I don´t have to see the ole winter-stuff anymore! :-)

Technology

I just read in this german article that there is another piece of technology that comes from my town.

The principle of the fuel cell came from here.
Professor Eduard Justi from the TU Braunschweig said, not in America, not in Russia, not in Japan, but here in Braunschweig this principle of actuation was invented by him.
The Volkswagen Touran is now running with it.

Free Hugs

I just found this video at Barbara´s blog.
There is a man walking around with a sign saying "FREE HUGS" and after a tough beginnning, people really go over and hug him.

Touching, somehow. But I´m not sure I would join in. Ingo and my family, ok. But apart from that I´m not much of a hugger.

Would love to beam over to Ingo right now for a hug!

Easter bread

The last five years we´ve been away over Easter and had mo chance to get Easter bread, which I really love to eat.

This year we were at home but again no Easter bread.
I´m not sure what it is, but I really have trouble eating at all. We both just forgot about the bread.
My brother still has a very hard time and I´m the only one whom he talks to openly. I promised not to tell our mother, who is worrying a lot, too. She asked me only once and accepted my answer. But she, too, comes to me with her troubles and I have the feeling this is why I have trouble eating.
I´ll make an appointment with the doctor.

It´s my age, I guess ;-)
When I was younger and I could not eat, for example 'cause they were so slow at the restaurant or I was stuck in traffic, it was no problem, I could compensate.
These days my hands start shaking, and badly! In Havanna I nearly passed out and that was very scary. I don´t want that to happen again.
People were looking at me as if I was stupid or having an attack. When Ingo shouted that I only need to eat people started producing chocolate from their bags. I couldn´t unpack it myself and needed help even with that, it was awful.
I now have glucose with me, since I don´t like chocolate much. On Thursday I ran out of it, went to the shop nearby and asked for it.
The cashier-girl showed me to it and whilst I got the money, she opened the glucose-piece up for me. She said, the same thing just happened last evening to her, too.
A common problem?
Whilst the others have yummy Currywurst right now I try to eat my stupid bread. It´s not loss of appetite I´ve got, I really feel sick just looking at it or smelling it.
When I´m with Ingo, I do better.

Ack. As his grandmother always says, getting old isn´t fun. And it starts already!

Coincidence?

Life is strange sometimes. The other day I went into the city. On the way my trousers got stuck in my bike, I nearly fell and thought, darn, gotta buy clips to tighten the trousers. I don´t even know the name for those things - they were quite common when I was a kid and flare-trousers were quite hip.

By the time I passed the bike-store (a quite expensive one) I had forgotten all about it already.

I made my tour through the city. Got the jeans from the store, bought books, which I hadn´t planned and came finally to the two-buck-store. I thought, well, lets have a look if they have something new. YEP! What did I find? No joking - Clips to tighten your trousers when riding a bicycle!

Actually that´s scary somehow - I never saw those things in a store!

I won´t use them over the long weekend though. I´ll be at Ingos place and have "normal" trousers with me since Ingo somehow doesn´t like flares...



Btw: I needed some help from Leo and strange thing is, "coincidence" doesn´t only mean something happens by chance, as I thought it does, but is also another word for "foreordination" - which fits even better to the clips, that will save me from falling - at least as a consequence of wearing flare-trousers!

Lucky

Due to the cold I had on Friday I forgot my cellphone in the office. It hung on the recharger, visible for everyone. Man I was lucky no one called Timbuktu over the weekend! Since a few weeks I have a contract, so someone could have made real damage to me!

But no, obviously there are only honest people around here! :-)

Will not repeat the experiment again, though...

Day five

And I´m fine again. A little coughing, that´s it. This evening I´ll be back to a glass of cider vinegar with water and honey!