Coping with someone being far away

My friend Daniel has gone to Australia today for 5 weeks to see his sister, I am here in snowy and cold Austria, and it is indeed a big challenge for me not to think about his surroundings, the sea, hot weather, amazing animals, plants, a completely different world. But on the other hand it says, the decision is left with me, actually I dont have to be sad about this, I could take the plane to Australia tomorrow if this is my decision. So there is no need to be sad about a certain circumstance, it all lies within your possibilities to change your presence if you are not satisfied with it. So I have decided to be happy for Daniel, as he deserves to have a great time, and for my part, I am looking forward to the pictures and stories to be a small part of it.. 

Tony Takitani by Haruki Murakami

Murakami is one of my favourite writers. Last night I saw a movie by him in the cinema, a very special one.
Based on a Haruki Murakami short story, Tony Takitani is a dreamlike and evocative meditation on loneliness. Left to bring himself up by his touring musician father, Tony's solitude lasts well into middle age, when he suddenly falls for and marries the fashion-obsessed Eiko. When she dies in a car accident, however, her roomful of clothes become a mausoleum for his shortlived happiness. Muted and idiosyncratic, Jun Ichikawa's film is nonetheless an exquisite work.
It feels captivatingly like a short story, and very much a Murakami one. The camera flows relentlessly from left to right, changing scene and season, echoing turning pages as Tony's life story plays out. The stately photography in neutral colours, the plaintive piano theme; almost everything about this film is minimalist. Only two actors fill the four main roles; Issei Ogata shines as both Tony and his father, while Rie Miyazawa plays both Eiko and Hisako, the girl that Tony, in his grief, hires to impersonate his wife after her death. There is barely a word of dialogue - the carefully chosen details are delivered instead via a low-key narrator (Hidetoshi Nishijima) whose sentences are occasionally left to the characters to finish.
"CURIOUS RHYTHMS"
Tony Takitani's 75-minute running time is far from packed, and its revelations and satires are subtle sometimes to the point of invisibility. But allow yourself to be absorbed into its curious rhythms and it will move and reward you long after the lights come up. 

Ramsgate South Africa-a beautiful spot

Ramsgate has a quaint village atmosphere and beach front holiday cottages nestling amongst the indigenous coastal bush, which is so typical of this subtropical region. The beaches, lagoons and glorious walks along the sandy shore are enjoyed by visitors that prefer a quieter place. You will also find a modern apartment block here and there, which bear testimony to Ramsgate's increasing development potential and popularity.Restaurants, art galleries, antique shops, ethnic crafts, homemade jams and preserves are all to be found in Ramsgate. The fishing is good - the birdlife fantastic - and the living is easy. Ramsgate is a wonderful part of the world to live in - or visit for a while.During winter, starting in June, more often than not there is a spectacular display of large migrating pilchard and sardine shoals. They appear close to the shore between Port Edward and Umkomaas. They are usually accompanied by many predators, including dolphins, birds, large game-fish and a variety of sharks.Sometimes millions of these small fish are beached by the incoming tides and that is when the "sardine fever" grips the local fisherman and visitors alike, as they scramble to catch a bucketful of sardines. Shad-fishing off the rocks and piers is extremely active during the sardine run and for those who love the taste of ``fresh from the sea", shad has no equal.Nature puts on a wonderful display - with birds diving into the ocean from lofty heights - dolphins wave-jumping and surfing in the translucent waves - and you may enven spot a whale basking off-shore. Generally the safe-bathing nets are lifted to avoid the unnecessary capture of dolphins - but are reinstated the moment the shoals have passed.ActivitiesRiverbend Crocodile Farm Home to more than 200 Nile crocodiles, ranging in size from hatchlings to 50-year old monsters. Ramsgate Lagoon The top spot in the region for boardsailers, and the tidal pool is refreshed every morning at the morning tide. Ski boats are launched from Ski Boat Bay and charters are available at the various information centres. Barn Owl Arts and Crafts centre Offers traditional Zulu dancing on Sundays. Find Accommodation inMargate Location: Margate, KwaZulu Natal


 

The Queen - with Helen Mirren

Last night I watched this movie:Dryly funny and unexpectedly poignant, Stephen Frears' restrained comedy of manners weaves together decorous gossip and a fascinating look beneath the facade of pomp and ritual to capture Britain's royal family — particularly Helen Mirren's vivid Queen Elizabeth II — enmeshed in a crisis they're blithely unaware is unfolding around them. Frears and screenwriter Peter Morgan could have skewered them for their eccentricities — all those fusty, fabulously wealthy aristocrats clomping around their Scottish summer estate in Balmoral in sensible shoes and kilts, more concerned with stag hunting and Welsh corgis than the popular outpouring of grief for "People's Princess" Diana Spencer. But their subtle dissection of the complex relationship between the queen, the living embodiment of the traditional English virtues of restraint, propriety and stoicism, and brash new prime minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), whose populist, media-savvy government represents the exact opposite, produces a much richer result than slashing satire ever could. August, 1997: Blair, who campaigned on a promise to modernize Britain, has barely taken office when news comes from Paris that the former Princess of Wales has died in a car accident. Blair recognizes a media circus in the making, and, with the help of chief spokesman Alastair Campbell (Mark Bazeley), who coins the term "People's Princess," promptly comes down on the right side of it. The queen and her family, cocooned by staffers, blinkered by old-fashioned notions of rigid decorum and prejudiced by their long-standing distaste for celebrity in general and Diana in particular, land themselves squarely on the wrong side. As weeping crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace, lighting candles and laying an ocean of flowers at the gate, the royals remain silent, insisting that Diana's death is a private matter and sniffing among themselves that she wasn't even a member of the family anymore. Days pass, public sentiment becomes increasingly ugly, and it falls to Blair — whose own wife (Helen McCrory) is an outspoken antiroyalist — to delicately steer the queen in the right direction, despite the splenetic harrumphing of her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh (James Cromwell), and the wrongheaded insistence of her own mother (Sylvia Syms) that the British people will rediscover their stiff upper lips if only the queen leads the way. Mirren, who's played her share of queens in the past, is hypnotic, but it's her prickly rapport with the slick, smiling Sheen that makes the movie crackle — not in a vulgar way, mind you, but with such brilliant control that a slightly arched eyebrow speaks louder than a dozen cackling commentators with microphones. --Maitland McDonagh 

Waiting for snow

This year, most of the winter sport ressorts in Austria are still waiting for the snow to arrive. Because of the mild conditions this has not happened yet. These are images of last years snow condition taken in Furx, Vorarlberg..

Ever wondered which celebrity you look like?

There is a great tool which is free, that tells you, with the latest technique of biometrical face analysis, which celebrity looks similar to you, who you are most likely to be compared with..
Here is the link: http://www.myheritage.com.. try it it is fun!
the description:

MyHeritage Face Recognition runs in 3 steps:
The digital photo (or scanned photo print) that you provide, is loaded
Face detection technology is applied to automatically detect human faces in your photo ( * )
Face recognition technology is applied to recognize the faces detected in the previous step
( * )
If faces are missed out in step 2, you can mark them manually using the Marker.
Recognizing faces is done by algorithms that compare the faces in your photo, with all faces previously known to MyHeritage Face Recognition, through photos and meta-data contributed by yourself and other users. So the more photos added to the system, the more powerful it becomes. If people in your photos are not recognized well, it is likely that MyHeritage.com has never encountered them before. By adding these photos to MyHeritage.com and annotating the people in the photo manually, MyHeritage.com will "learn" these faces and will be able to recognize them in future photos, even in different ages of the same person's life.
Note: the algorithms used by MyHeritage Face Recognition are likely to find relatives of people in your photo, due to the genetic-based facial similarities that exist between relatives. You can use this to form connections between people whom you never even knew were related.