Showing posts with label randomness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label randomness. Show all posts

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Meet Canada's most recent astronaut!

Have you heard the one about the guy who floated up into Space thanks to a helium balloon? Hard to believe? How 'bout if I told you he was only an inch or so high... believe me now? Here's the proof!



Crazy fun!!! A couple of Canadian teenagers put together a capsule with some cameras on it, a cell phone with GPS (so they could track it on landing) and that little Lego guy with his Canadian flag. They attached it to a helium balloon and then... up, up and AWAAAAAAAY!  97 minutes later, and 27 km up the balloon exploded and the contraption started falling... safely thanks to a parachute they made and were smart enough to include! :o)

I read about this on a Belgian news site, but you can find a complete article here (Canadian news channel).

How cool is that?! :D

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Apathy vs the will to Blog

Have you ever felt so out of touch with your own surroundings that everything feels a bit unreal? Felt like time is moving along at a snail's pace or that you're looking in on your own life from outside a window?

That's kind of how I've been feeling these past couple of weeks. Ever since I got back from New Zealand it's been hard to fit myself back into my old life. Right... old as in 4 months old! Funny how being gone for 4-5 intense months can make coming back to where things are calm and not much is going on (personally or professionally) seem a bit scary, and depressing! How can things be the same when you've done so much??? Argh!!! Anyhow, it's resulted in a sense of apathy that I'm having trouble shaking... like someone hit the "pause" button on me and I'm waiting for something else to come by and knock me into "play" mode. Not good.

Therein lies the excuse for the absentee blogger... I've got blogging ideas popping into my head every now and again, but when I get home I can't be bother to sit down to the computer and develop them! And then when some time has passed I get frustrated with myself for having forgotten what seemed like some damn good ideas at the time. Part of me is hung up by the backlog of posts that are semi-prepared from the trip (for CrisCrossing the Globe) and are there in limbo, waiting for me to finish up with them... Kind of a "deal with the stuff pending before you get into the new", and I end up in a vicious circle where nothing gets done!

So I'm breaking the circle by just starting up with some random blogging again, and I'll slowly release posts on New Zealand over on the other blog, just back-dating them to when they were supposed to be published (I wonder how that will appear in people's readers...). Ditto with the Project 365 photos. I'm not going to dump them all on you in one massive month's-worth chunk, but perhaps 5 at a time. I actually forgot a couple days... damn! Took me a while to remember my cellphone has a camera so I don't need to be carrying around my DSLR just to get a daily photo! I figured it wouldn't be as fun a project once life had gotten back to "normal", and indeed, I quite forgot about it a couple of days! :o( The photos I have taken might not be too interesting because they're frequently last minute "oh my! I haven't taken the 365 photo yet today!". I'm going to have to try and make mundane things seem interesting through the camera lens, should be an interesting challenge! Which isn't to say I'm going to give up on random shots with my cellphone. ;o)

Friday, December 31, 2010

Napping

Here and There and Everywhere is going to be taking a series of naps over the next month!


keep reading!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Japan - New York

Ever wondered how to get from Japan to New York?

Google maps has very detailed instructions!


View Larger Map

Go to Google maps. Write in Japan as point of origin and New York as destination. Then read through until you get to instructions #27 and #38. Report back here. :p

Oh, and by the way: the road has tolls! ;o)

(Another good one is Japan to China. Go to instruction #43, lol!)

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Spotted animal?!

When you look out the window and see a spotted critter in the park...


you wonder if you're still under the influence of the half bottle of Rioja wine you had with dinner the night before!

But when you switch to the zoom lens of your camera (click to enlarge):


It's still weird! A pink polka-dot horse?!?!?! lol!!! :p

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Rambling thoughts...

I went to the Opera last week... they were putting on my favourite, Die Z�uberfl�te:


Mozart's Magic Flute! The Opera has been closed for renovations for over a year now, so they've set up this huge tent to continue with the shows:


It's just as comfy as before, better visibility... but the sound... OUCH! The acoustics are terrible! Sniff!!! It's like the sound barely makes it past the front rows and then just goes flat. Painful. Particularly because I loved the interpretation of the person playing Papageno, and the choreography and set pieces were very original! Must remember for future occasions that Opera must be seen/heard in a place with good acoustics. And a tent ain't it! >:(

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Winter seems to be sneaking up on us at an accelerated rate this year! The trees have all been changing colours faster than last year, and the leaves falling off almost all at once! I just hope the rain and wind will calm down enough for there to be some left this Sunday when I go on another hike in the Ardennes. I'd like to see a bit more Fall foliage before it's over!


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Speaking of hikes, I'm running behind on telling you about those! Next up is the crazy hike where we walked around a dry reservoir, saw a castle, had to take several detours (lengthening our outing by ~5km) and ended up hip-deep in freezing water... And then there's a semi-urban/rural outing from last Saturday... And I'm heading out again this Sunday (unless there's a downpour). Need to select and edit photos (and video from the first mentioned) faster!!!

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I've also noticed I'm waaaaaaaaay behind on Monthly Movies and Monthly Reading! The summer movies weren't really inspiring enough to write about. And although I saw a couple of lovely French movies in September, I shockingly haven't been to the cinema at all in October! As for the readings... I think I'm going to have to change that format to some kind of "Book Reports". I read so much last Spring what with rehab sessions for my ankle it's too many to list, so I'll just mention those I remember/liked best. Plus many of them are series so should be reviewed as a group. Eventually...

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Never get into a fight with a can of tuna fish... you are guaranteed to lose! Those jagged tin edges on the open lid are DANGEROUS!!! Too painful (and bloody) to record at the time, here's the life-threatening injury a week later (blurry 'cause can't seem to get a decent photo using only my left hand!):


One thing's for sure... our fingers are incredibly well irrigated! Damn thing wouldn't stop bleeding! Too wide to go in for stitches. Just kept applying pressure, and for some reason that old childhood scary story / joke about "bloody fingers" kept popping into my head! lol!
I've also noticed that the middle finger is useful for a lot more than a certain rude "gesture"... trying writing on a blackboard with it!!! I've had my students up doing my writing for me this past week... ;o)

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Speaking of fish, Fishy Fridays is making a come back!!! Re-inauguration tomorrow with a special announcement! :o) And then I promise I'll try and maintain my twice a month fishy schedule... We're only a quarter of the way through the Li�ge Aquarium! :s

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And now it's time I got back to work... I have 200+ essays to correct from my various classes, and I know tomorrow's group is going to be clamouring for them. *sigh* Correcting is so tedious!

Monday, November 1, 2010

post-Halloween zombiness!

Boy am I glad November 1st is a holiday!!! I couldn't possibly go teach in this zombie state today! And thankfully I've got tomorrow to recover as well (although some tourism will be involved)! YAY for 4-day weekends!!! :o)

I hope everyone had a good Halloween weekend!


keep reading!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Farewell to Paul, our football-loving octopod.

I don't know if you saw this on the news yesterday... but football-loving-octopus-lovers are in mourning:


I'm not usually into football-related topics outside of the World Cup... but I had so much fun with the Paul stories this summer that I can't help but feeling a bit sad. :o(  Spaniards wanted to adopt him (to save him from ending up on a German bbq after Spain's semi-final victory against the Germans), they even put him on their flag:


And I managed to get my English students interested in a news report when I did a listening exercise based on a YouTube video showing Paul's prediction in favour of Spain! 

He was so much a part of my World Cup fun last summer that I adopted my own little Pol the Octopod at the Mallorca Aquarium. He won't be making football predictions, but he has been named the mascot of my new travelling blog! After all, you'd thing eight legs are better than two for travelling around the world! ;o)


Apparently Paul will be cremated, and the Aquarium in Germany has a "new Paul" ready to take up residence in the tank (octopi are always very popular in aquaria). Even here in Li�ge they've been talking about dipping into the football prediction game since we received our very own octopus from the Antwerp aquarium last month!


Farewell Paul, may you enjoy an endless supply of mussels from here on out!

More info (and videos) on this BBC page.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Randomness...


Random thoughts from today...
  • I remembered today how much I HATE laundromats! And this one (2 blocks from my kot, only good thing about it) is particularly crappy... only 4 working washing machines and 1 working drier. And I had a load of light and dark to do (I've got enough clothes to get me through 2 weeks, and with sheets and towels can complete enough for 2 machines). Talk about wasting time... Thank heavens I've got free time in my class schedule during the day 'cause this place has to be impossible on weekends! :s
  • I am so behind on my blog it's not even funny anymore! Even with free hours here and there in the day, it's hard to sit down and write when I have to prepare classes, or when I'm tired (or recuperating from the extremely nasty cold that hit me last week) and just want to veg out watching a TV show, or catch up with family and friends on Facebook or Skype...
  • When was the last time I talked about movies? Or the books I was reading? I have to bring myself up to speed on those 'cause I've got access to some really good ones here! We've got a great independant movie theatre (I saw a couple of lovely French movies in Sept!) here, all in VOS (no dubbing, YAY!!!), and I've managed to renew my suscription to the local library... Add to that the books friends have been kind enough to loan me, and as you can see:
keep reading!