Flying Roofs.

 
The Illusory Fish, 2001.
 Oleg A. Korolev

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_A._Korolev

I drifted off to sleep yesterday, hearing the continuous steady fall of rain outside, thinking about people coping with Hurricane Irene in America.

Richie and I talked about how hurricanes happen, how and where they occur, how they build up such extreme speeds.

Must be very scary to get caught up in, when I lived in Trinidad, I remember that the island often experienced high winds as well as heavy storms due to hurricanes starting in the Gulf of Mexico.

Our house was on a hill, so I recall seeing roofs flying off houses, and my mother being worried if my father was safe at work.

Sometimes phone lines would be down, and power would be off, but usually we only experienced the slip stream of the hurricane and never luckily the full impact of a hurricane.

Very worrying wondering how the bloggers I know in the USA is doing, I hope every one of them is safe.

Our weather has been awful, no summer in summer time, which is a shame for us, but must been badly for the farmers.

Temperature changes have been affecting us all; in Africa it has resulted in drought and famine.

In America they have been experiencing a lot of extreme weather in the last years, and now they have been sheltering from Hurricane Irene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico

http://www.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=1020&mode=2&in_hi_userid=2&cached=true

http://www.weather.com/newscenter/tropical/

Feel Good Moments.

Suzanne Valadon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Valadon

Looks like it will be another very warm day today, just heard that the BBC Radio 5 team will be going back home early from South Africa, now that England has gone out of the World Cup.

All very sad for the many people in England who supported the England team, hope that the Football Association will use this defeat to learn from it.

Who knows they may even do so this time, Richie thinks that they won't shame but would not be surprising if they refused to see the reality.

England should do what Germany did and rejuvenate their team with promising young players from the under 21 team.

Nice to be distracted by the World Cup from my MS and my situation, woke up this morning with my arms folded tightly together.

Aware immediately that I can not automatically stretch my arms, doing that will take more time and effort.

Have to think about it and then direct my thoughts to my arms and literally say to myself move your arms now.

Have to do this and at the same time try to move my arms enough to get them uncovered form my fleece blanket.

Eventually this works and I can get my arms out from under the thin fleece and hold on to the trapeze and stretch my arms.

It is strange to notice this happening more and more it reminds me of a story that I read in the 70’s in Reader’s Digest.

It was the story of a man suffering from Parkinson’s who said he would have to talk to himself to get any action.

So if he wanted to pick up a cup he would instruct his arm to stretch out and then pick up cup.

The first time nothing happened and he would have to repeat his instructions time and again.

When the arm finally reached out and picked up the cup it might spill the contents and he would start again.

It could often take him ages; sometimes hours to complete a task, what I remember being fascinated by, was him giving verbal instructions at the same time as physically moving

Funny how years later I am doing something similar, this morning I started having bleak thoughts when I woke and felt myself lying in bed like an Egyptian mummy.

Banished the thoughts of being entombed in my body with no gesture or movement possible anymore.

Instead directed my thoughts to moving my arms and succeeded which made me feel better right away.

Glad to confirm that my focus now is to maximise everything that makes me feel good about myself.

Much better use of my time right here and now, than getting stuck in potentially negative thinking based on predictions of the future.

Everyday I re-confirm my desire to live in the moment and enjoy everything that I can enjoy like sitting in the front room yesterday and watching the TV there for the first time since 2008.

It felt good, today I will be looking for more of those feel good moments.






(Cliburn)Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 Mvt III.

This clip is of van Cliburn playing part of the concerto. And this is a bit of history to go with it:

The first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 was an event designed to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority during the Cold War, on the heels of their technological victory with the Sputnik launch in October 1957.

Cliburn's performance at the competition finale of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 earned him a standing ovation lasting eight minutes.

Woken up by a container being unloaded from a truck, it sounded like it was right outside of the house but think it was across the canal at the end of our street.

Sound really carries well over the water, on Sunday felt briefly like a disco here when a boat went by blaring out high energy party music.

Oh dear think my pleasure at the day being cooler is short lived as the temperature creeps up again.

This morning there was a brief few minutes when the sun was shining and immediately the rain came down in an absolute deluge.

Really a huge downpour and it went on for ages made me think that perhaps our summer was over as this often happens here.

It is usually hot here for two weeks tops then the weather breaks and never recovers and that is then usually the end of summer.

In 2000 it happened the day The Netherlands lost the European Cup to the French, not only the football was lost but what had been a gorgeous summer came to a total stop.

The city was very depressed and the worse of it was that I worked for Euronet, an Internet company, and there were quite a lot of French people working there.

They were still celebrating the next day; I was offered croissants and champagne when I got to work.

The Dutch half of the office were on bread and water that day, well that is how it felt anyway.

In recent years the trend for summer to come to an abrupt halt has occurred nearly every year since 2000.

Since 2004 we have never had a good June until this year and summers have been very wet usually leading to an early autumn in August.

One of the consequences of the wet summers has been en explosion in the moth population especially the brown tailed moth, one the covers trees in sticky tents and cause horrible allergic reactions in people.

Seems like this summer has made a comeback, going to ask Richie as soon as he finishes what he is doing to turn the fan on for me.

Marianne will be here in a wee while for our Tuesday visit, she is getting very excited about her trip to South Africa on the 21 July.

She is very much looking forward to it; she will be going on a bus journey around South Africa for 17 days.

On the one hand I think it is also exciting to go so far and see another country but on the other really hate this notion of holidays at the expense of others.

The idea of going to other places and seeing how other people live smacks abit of some sort of colonialism to me.

Countries often do not profit at all from tourists instead the money is made by a multi nationals who own the hotel and holiday companies.

The local people are used as servants and nothing of the money trickles down into the local economy.

That is why Eric Williams decided after Trinidad became independent from England 1962 to develop other industries than the Tourist Industry.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_and_Tobago


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Williams

http://www.asawright.org/">http://www.asawright.org/">http://www.asawright.org/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago



http://www.trinigourmet.com/index.php/trinidadian-food-through-other-cultures-eyes/


He did not want the young people of Trinidad growing up to become servants of holiday makers.

And big international companies like the Hilton could only lease the land for short periods and not own the land outright.

They were very fortunate to have found oil and gas in the waters around the island and in that way could build up other industries and did not have to rely on tourism.

http://www.conway.com/trinidad/9907/index.htm


Seems to have paid off as the island seemed to be doing very well when I visited in 1997.

Something very funny is happening right here, Spike has a favourite toy it is called a Kong, supposed to be indestructible and at 8 Euros we hoped it might be, it has been Spikes darling since he got it a few weeks ago.

Seeing as the pet shop near us was closing on Saturday Richie called in to stock up on dog treats and another Kong for Marleen.

Well Spike was happily playing with his Kong until Marleen got her Kong which was idsentical to his toy and right away his was no longer nice, no longer his favourite.

This was done sensitively by giving them both a toy Spike got his old toy but he discarded it immediately and would not be persuaded otherwise, in fact he started to cry so we gave him the new toy and he was happy.

Just now he accidentally was playing with the older toy and Marleen with the new one until he realised and again he started pushing for the new toy.

Went on and on and he even cried again until he managed to get it off Marleen and then he was very happy to be reunited with his favourite toy.

If I had not seen this for myself I would not have believed it, both toys are identical but it is the new one that Spike has to have.

Weird!

Well summer has not departed but it is cooler so much nicer for me, have been more relaxed today.

Had a great visit from Marianne this afternoon really good we talked about all sorts and find we have a lot in common.

It has been very nice getting to know her since she first came as a volunteer, she heard about being a volunteer and putting something back into the community on local TV and went straight to their website and found me.

That was obviously my lucky day as that was in October 2007 and we have become good friends since then.

Off to the bathroom and then leg exercises with the Motomed and a delicious dinner which I am really looking forward to.

Hope everyone has a good evening.