Archipelago Days

Sandhamn

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Olivia with super mummy Maria

Calling all angels

Out this time to recruit bike riders for our social venture in Kenya













- a collaboration with Sustainable Health care Foundation.
We are providing transport in under served rural communities by allowing health workers to use a motorbike to do outreach work, transport patients and also make a living from using the bikes for other transport/taxi services.

for details please see Heaven's Angel project at www.virginunite.com

Communications error...

Rider candidates at Afya Njema with clinic franchisee Judith

Carpenter workshop. A few minutes later abandoned in the heavy rain....almost

Children outside Kisumu

It is reality, yet only one version of it

"Why do I read? To get out of myself." Maurice Nadeau

Why do I travel - to get out of myself and closer to you. Only by realising another context, another reality can we truly meet people from other backgrounds and perhaps even ourselves. We tend to think of ourselves as the norm, don't we? But unless we have met people in their own homes, in their own environment what we know remains theory and facts and it never trickles down to the heart. I take another flight somewhere and yet again I cannot help but think of the insignificance of the individual human being, down there like an ant, she is nothing.
As I meet people, see other horisons I collect a string of small gems, collected with consideration they make up a beautiful necklace....... small streams, small pearls.
Together.

Out to Africa...

Blogger doesn't have the tools to rotate a picture, but Jurias who I met today is so beautiful I have to post his picture anyway. (Anyone out there who saw/read "The white masai"? ;-) )

If the walls here could speak..... how Karen Blixen kicks out her Swedish baron and let the English lover move in instead....






Giraffe hug.

Using Chanel or Dior, babe?

I don't mind hugging you, but please don't try to kiss me!

Gagarin mo(nu)ment

The greatest Yuri of them all and his monument is still standing tall in the suburbs of Moscow. The cheap electronics shop have inherited the other nationalistic monuments in the park for Soviet scientific achievements.

I suspect the devil is still laughing in Moscow

New churches have popped up everywhere in past decade, like the "Christ the Saviour" church. Hurray - now the largest orthodox church in the world.
My friend used to go swimming there. Not in the church of course. The largest swimming pool in Russia was right there, when Stalin did not get the chance to put a colossal monument of himself here it became a pool instead.
In a rare moment in soviet the kids were the winners. Until someone with $400m burning decided it was time to rebuild the church that had been demolished.

Yeltsin dies the day I visit the church. Good, for me. Since already the next day his burial is held here. Mr Putin and the government cannot wait to get rid of the democratic legacy. Many world leaders invited here would put him in the spotlight again, one last time. Not so much to Putin's taste. Quick burial it is.
So many new churches, but how many who believe in anything but in the gold that decorates them?

Singapore Impressions

Subway

Port

Overpass

Bridge

Bridge...again.

The Financial Centre (yes, really)

Love boats

Disclaimer: These images have not been produced under the influence of the infamous cocktail from this city or any any drug....

How to do a wing over (with a hang over)

Possibly I had to prove something to myself, or compensate just ever so little for the fact that I never became a fighter pilot (I hear you laugh, but it was a teenage dream had it not been for my poor vision.... and possibly a few other physical weaknesses) One cannot but admire RAF pilots who push their bodies to the limits for how much pressure it can take and how much stress the brain can tolerate, yet take split second decisions.....


Mike is an ex RAF trainer - and he is my pilot. He is proud to tell me this training plane is one of the most difficult to take off and land, with its tail wheel in the back rather than the common front wheel. I look at the "Chipmonk" (that's the nick name for the aircraft, not the pilot), which has been retired for RAF training since 1999, after 50 years of service. I am pleased for the sake of my closest family that my company has a generous life insurance policy.
I guess I should also feel honoured that he wants to have a totally inexperienced city girl in his fine tailwheel vintage aircraft. But I guess for a few hundred quid...why not.

"So you want to do some aerobatics then?", he asks me as we have come a few hundred metres above the sea-front of Shoreham. I breathe a "yes" into the intercom and think "Lord, I'm ready", and he explains what will follow.


This is not much of a picture - but let me just say its taken during my first 360* spin - the aircraft drops to one side and continue round under to the other side. Shortly after time for the first loop. Mike pulls the stick forward, warns me that I will feel a bit of G-power, and up we go. Small plane, but a surprisingly large force pushing me down in my chair. As we are completely up side down it actually feels smooth again - wow! earth is coming towards me.
Or not, we are back on straight course again. Phew.
I am so happy to be still alive and it's great; I can't help but laugh. Mike interprets a giggling girl in the back as someone who wants more of the fun and he does another spin to the right. At least he is kind enough to a rookie to not spin the plane along it's axis but he puts the nose slightly up. (This is the way to avoid the so called negative G-power, which would mean I would be hanging in my belt, rather than pushed down in the chair by the friendly, positive G-power)

The "chock-to-chock" time lasts some 20 minutes, and then we do a short sightseeing over the area. I appreciate the back-to-normal, as the last spin and handling of the camera has left me slightly nautious.... the champagne last night seemed like a great idea at the time, but now... I'll celebrate with water and a Daim for my blood sugar.






"Are you coming back?", the receptionist asks me. I smile and think that next time I want to spend money fast - I'll go shoe shopping.

How to swing it

The Notting Hill Carnival August 2006

How to approach a cherry tree and a maiko

With a weekend to spare on a business trip in Tokyo I took the shinkansen down to Kyoto. It was mid April and colleagues told me it was probably the last weekend to enjoy the cherry blossoms. All Japanese get that almost tearfull look when they talk about cherry blossoms, they find it so romantic and even go out trea hugging when the first buds open up.
I was not the only one with the same idea. Quite possibly was I the only European person with this idea though. Me and what seemed like a third of Japan's population headed for the Maruyama park in the beautiful Gion district. I walk in through the Yasaka Shrine, which has turned into a market of sweets and food stalls.

It is only 10:30 in the morning and the kids are already setting up a picnic.... not too fussed about not finding any green space left to sit on.


So be it, me and the other 32.5m visitors move on towards the most photographed cherry tree in the world (not that I had it included in my 52 places to see before I die). Am I the only one with a camera??


After 10 minutes I feel as inspired as in a shopping mall and try to escape the crowds. I am amazed at how easy it is; Only a hundred meter up the hill, at another shrine I find myself walking alone up the stairs to the monastery. I pay 2,000 yen to the girl at the gate and walk into the silence. I only hear the gentle sound of chimes in the wind somewhere in the garden and it is truly a place for meditation. This park has so many impressive shrines and pagodas, so the smaller ones attract relatively few visitors.

Admittedly, I am really hoping not just to see the places of worship and the old, emperial architecture in Kyoto but of course also geishas. I immediatly learn that Kyoto's geishas do not wish to be named geishas, as the for the sexual association with this word, but prefer "geiko" (siters) or "maiko" which are the apprentices. In Tokyo I have only seen them in teahouses or exclusive restaurants.
I do not have to walk far to see a group of young maikos (I presume since the maikos are apparently wearing more colourful fabrics, while the geiko usually wear light, plain coloured kimonos) in front of me. All of sudden I wonder how to approach them. Clearly I wish to take pictures, but not insult them.



Later I get a better chance for close-ups. Some maikos are doing a photo shoot and I wait in the background for the moment they have just started ignoring me.







And as for the temples, they are all celebrating that little fat man's birthday today...















No, not you!
I mean Buddha of course...