It is snowing

Tonight it is snowing lightly.

South African billionaire gives half of his wealth

Unbeleivable! some good news about South Africa, about humans, in the news.
A South African billionaire, the only black South African billionaire, is giving half of his wealth to improve the lives of the poors.

I want to write his name, because this is the name of an amazing person who should not remain anonymous. His name is Patrice Motsepe

A book recommendation

I am probably going to regret this post, but anyway here it is:

I HIGHLY recommend: "Help Me Live: 20 things people with cancer want you to know" by Lori Hope.

If you know somebody with cancer, if you work with people with cancer, even if you think you are good with it you NEED to read that book.

p. 18: "Six word in sequence that NEVER fail ..... "I don't know what to say"."
The emphasis on "NEVER" is mine. I totally recommend that line. In fact I often say that if I was to write a book on the subject it would be very short because it would be "say" "I don't know what to say"!"

There is much more to the book. There truly are 20 things that people with cancer want you to know. I don't agree with every single one of them, but nearly.

Alternatively you could talk to my friends in Joburg because they have been awesome at it, but they are the exception to the rule.

Columbia Valley ice fishing in Invermere

I am in Canada right now. I took a week off doing taxes, paperwork and the various things that brought me back here in January. I drove to the Columbia Valley and I thought I would show you a little bit about ice fishing.

This is a view of Invermere Lake all iced up with a few fishing shacks on it. The entire flat area under the snow is the frozen lake.

This photo requires some explanations: the buoy you see is "floating" at the edge of the lake and got frozen into it. The truck (ute, backie, depending where you are) and the shack are on the ice. The ice is thick enough to drive right across the lake.

this guy must like to skate and clear himself an ice rink.

Here he is inside his fishing shack pointing to the opening in the ice.

If the hole in the ice is only temporary you just use and auger and drill a hole which very quickly freezes over again. This one was totally iced overbut the ice is clear so it looks like it is still open..

 Here you have it a very Canadian winter thing: ice fishing!

Fun with Jellyfish

When I was in Australia, in Brisbane, there was an amazing bloom of blue jellyfish (amazingly enough I cannot find one picture of the actual bloom). Of course as a result there was also a lot of dead jellyfish on the beach.
What more can I say?

 It started with taking pictures of the beached jellyfish to show their amazing colour, shape and general beauty.

 Then I wanted to show their shape a bit better.

I wanted to show their all architecture even better.

 Then I started to want to be more careful of the background so the picture would be nicer.

 And of course it ended up in trying to take picture of jellyfish thrown in the air so they would be free floating in the air. I can tell you that I have quite a few pictures where the jellyfish are not even in the frame. It is not that easy to take picture of things being thrown...but I already knew that from the oranges in the Sahara.

No no this one is not swimming it is in the air.

Two of them.

And one with a seagull. If I had tried I would have never been able to capture both. It just turned out this way.

It was fun!

Kunming China, random pictures - part 3, the left over

in Kunming they have rough Jade stores... a lot of them... Here is a pile of jade as it looks before it is carved.

Just a regular market. I ate lots of fabulous pomelos when I was in Kunming. 

An old street on the edge of the bird market

the bird market in a small park.

Buying a very weird vegetable? fruit?

Kunming China, random pictures - part 2, the parks

Lots of parks in Kunming, the biggest one being Green Park.

the parks get quite busy!

The thing to do for young couples is to wear T-shirts which go together. You may have one of them wear a T-shirt with "LO" and the other one with "VE" of course to make it work they make sure that they stay on the side where they are supposed to be.

Not really a park but a temple

this is not really a park it is an old military college, but the open space makes for a nice park-like feel.

And one of my favourite: there was s pot on the side of Green Park where old men, or not so old men, who go and fly kites. With the mountains in the distance but a significant amount of flat land between them and Kunming, it can get quite windy. those guys would let their kites go VERY far, you could barely see them in the distance.

and of course there is dancing and exercising in the parks

Kunming China, random pictures - part 1, the streets

As usual in China, in Kunming you get a mixture of the old with the new, though the new seems to be winning.

In the distance you can just see a little bit of a mountain.

..The new does seem to be winning.

But an entire area is being preserved, or so it seems, as a tourist destination. When Isay tourits here I mean Chinese tourists.

Watching TV in front of a store.

Kunming, China - Green Park and the visible ethnic minorities

Before Guilin I was in Kunming. I landed in Kunming and took the train to Guilin, and then to Chengdu before flying out of China again.
I really enjoyed Kunming. I originally landed there purely because I was just leaving from South Africa, it was October and I didn't want to go somewhere too cold. Kunming fitted the bill. But it is much more than that.
Kunming is the capital city of the Yunnan Province which is a part of China with over 26 ethnic minority groups. If you go to Green Park in Kunming you can often see people performing their traditional dances, sometimes in their traditional costumes. These people are not performers, they are regular people dancing their dances for the enjoyment of it. Just for this make sure that you do not miss Green PArk if you are in Kunming.

Dancing in the park is very normal in China but Kunming is the only place where I have been in China where you see a lot of dancing from ethnic minorities... Of course not many places in China have so many ethnic minority groups and this is why you do not see them in.

The woman below is not wearing a costume it is just the way she dresses. I wish I knew more about the various minorities and could tell you hers.

After I took these two photos I asked her if I could take her photo and she said "no". I felt bad that I had already taken 2.
It is weird the way Chinese will take your pictures all the time. They will ask you if they can have their picture taken next to you, or just on your own. I don't mind but still I can see her point of view.