Calgary ... not even a rant!!!

I always say that I do not like Calgary and it is true. The worse things about Calgary as far as I am concerned is that it is very unfriendly and that ultimately what people always quote as its best feature "It is near the Rockies" is partially untrue, it is really nearly 2 hours drive from the Rockies. I can really rant about why I do not like Calgary but I'll spare you .. and myself.

But for a change here is what I like about Calgary:
- It has a river with a pathway all along it. In fact last Sunday I was able to walk 15kms on the pathway starting right from my house and it was a very pleasant walk.
- It has a great library system. You can borrow books (obviously), books on CDs, books as MP3, DVDs, music CDs etc. And it has a great collection.

Here is the kind of stuff I was able to borrow from the library last week:
- "Taste of Nepal" a cook book by Jyoti Pathak. Honestly, how often do you see Nepalese cookbooks?
- "50 great curries of India" by Camellia Panjabi. My all time favourite curry cookbook. I found it originally in Heathrow but right now my copy is in storage in South Africa. Every single recipe in this book always works beautifully and every recipe I've tried (and I have done quite a few, though admittedly I take liberties with recipes) taste fabulous
- "660 curries" by Raghavan Iyer another book I have in storage in South Africa.
- Two versions of Latin American Spanish courses (for Chile and Argentina where I am going next)
- "Wolf totem" by Jiang Rong a near autobiography (but a novel) depicting the dying culture of the Mongols and which came highly recommended on a blog I follow.
- "Frost Nixon" a movie which I have seen several times but which I really like
- 2 versions of "King Lear" which I have to admit I had never seen before and turns out to be a bit of a disappointment. Honestly the three daughters, the youngest being the nicest but unrecognized etc etc this was NOT an Shakespeare idea there are dozens of legends on this theme which obviously predate Shakespeare and do it better. What is it about three daughters / three sons, the youngest always being the nicest anyway ... OK don't say it, I know
- "Half Nelson" a GREAT movie. I highly recommend it.
etc etc etc. I am not going to list everything I borrowed.

Things have changed quite a bit in Calgary since I was last here:
- Storefronts for rent are not that unusual
- houses for rent or sale are everywhere
- every second store does NOT have a sign looking for staff
- It seems to me that there is more ethnic diversity (Hurray!) (I found a great little halal butcher shop and was able to buy excellent goat and lamb - excellent lamb in Calgary had seemed impossible especially after Tasmania where the lamb is beautiful)
- food has become much more expensive. I noticed that now grocery store display the price of fruits and vegetable in pounds as opposed to kilograms (which they used to do since we are a metric country!!!) to make the prices seem more reasonable.

The Wallabies and the Pademelons - part 1

I have to split the kangaroos-like-creature photos into two posts otherwise it will be too long so I thought I would first show you what my first impressions of wallabies (remember small kangaroos) and pademelons (very small kangaroos) were. (note: to be accurate I should say they are EITHER kangaroos OR wallabies OR pademelons. Technically they are different species. )

They were in the undergrowth and actually amazingly difficult to see. It doesn't look like it in photos but somehow their colour blends in.

Can you see this one standing on the left of the pant?

It shows a little better in the next picture.

But I could see them at night. That was great because I could then really get close and watch them for a while but as far as pictures are concerned it is not the best.
You can either get red eyed wallabies / pademelons (this one is a pademelon: round body fine face) ....

.. or blurry wallabies / pademelons (again those are pademelons). This photo is without the flash and with a long exposure.

Though sometimes they stand still long enough to get something worthwhile.

And even more typical I would see their back for a moment ....

.... and then they'd be gone!

And then on a lucky day I would get close and they would not run away (obviously this is in a national park - only in national parks!) but they would slowly but surely turn around so that it is was very hard to get a picture of their face.

Do you see what I mean about their colouring and how they seem to blend in?

Something I had totally missed

How embarrassing! Totally by accident today I found out that Kevin Rudd is not the PM of Australia anymore!!
He lost the leadership of the Labor Party and as a result his replacement, Ms Julia Gillard, is now the first female Australian PM (this happened on June 24th).
I know I am relaxing and all this but really I am just back from Australia, I followed the local news when I was there (even though the Super Profit Tax debate could honestly put the best of us to sleep after a while) and still I never even noticed.
I am a little bit disappointed that BBC News World did not make a bigger deal of the event, though of course I mostly look at the Africa section of the news. BBC World News has a great Africa section. Anyway, this time I am sending you to ABC News to have a look at it.

World Cup, Nigeria, blah blah blah blah

Those of you who followed me here from the old blog will be familiar with the rants. Those who are new may find it annoying. Well! too bad, just ignore them.

Unbelievable! Even I have to say something about the World Cup.

First I have to admit that I am a little sad that I am missing it. At first I thought that my timing for leaving South Africa was great since it would mean that would avoid the all traffic nightmare and zillions of tourists during the World Cup but honestly in retrospect I am sorry that I am missing it... at least a little bit sorry.

The team I had picked was Nigeria.

How does one pick a team when one knows nothing about soccer? Hard to tell.

A friend of mine (who is in South Africa) emailed saying that she saw Chile vs Honduras and she supported Honduras because of the two it was the only flag she could find in the shops! Honduras lost to Chile but still she said it was great to watch the match live.

I had picked Nigeria for reasons I do not recall but since I did not follow the Cup at all and had no idea what had happened to them. Now I am in Canada I have easy access to the internet and I found out that they didn't do well. In fact it went as far as the Nigerian president banning the team from international competitions for the next two years. (You realize that when the text shows up in colour like this it is a link, right?)

Is it me, or is it crazy for a president, anywhere, to ban a soccer team from international competitions?

Hasn't he got better things to worry about?

I do think that they have other issues. Every single country on the planet has other issues more pressing than football/soccer.
Arunma Oteh, I would venture a guess, is a Nigerian which may have other things on her mind. Since January Arunma Oteh has been the boss of Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission.

I haven't been following the news so I don't know anything about her, but I tell you, I don't envy her job!!

Here is an extract of the BBC World article I linked you to:

------

- " "Oteh faces severe resistance," said one economist, asking not to be named.

"It's coming from very influential, powerful individuals. It is a patronage-intensive society, and their influence extends well into government."

Just months into the job, Ms Oteh faces a legal action, questioning her qualifications.

"It's laughable," says Ms Oteh, a former vice-president of the African Development Bank with a Harvard MBA" ....etc etc etc
------------

Things are not quite sorted out yet

Expect changes with the lay out, the template etc. I am not quite happy with the way things are right now.

People (like A. and J.L -you know who you are) who receive emails when I post, I hope you don't get an email each time I change something!

Tasmanian devils first

After all I was in Tasmania, so I should really start with Tasmanian devils.
I never saw any in the wild. I heard them once at night (and they do make a fairly scary weird growl). I saw their scat but I had to go to the Tasmanian devil center on the Tasman Peninsula to see them.

Of course at first I saw road signs. I think they do not do the Tasmanian devils justice. They look so much better in "real life".

They have a terribly cute face.

The first photo below shows a Tasmanian devil yawning. I was worried that I would not see one growling, so I took the photo when he was yawning. But in the second photo he is growling.

Tasmanian devils are in bad shape. Not only just like any other creatures on the planet they find their space badly over taken by humans but also they are now victims of a sort of cancer (which gives them facial tumors and is unimaginatively called Devil Facial Tumor Disease or DFTD), just like cervical cancer it is associated with a virus and as a result is contagious. No tasmanian devil on the Tasman peninsula which is only attached to the rest of Tasmania by a very narrow isthmus (called Eaglehawk Neck) has been affected yet.

I will try not to rant and rave about the Tasman Peninsula. I fell in Love with Tasmania but particularly with the Tasman Peninsula and the coastal area just North of it.

Lunar eclipse

If you read this the day I post it ... and I do realize that the odds are low .. there will be a lunar eclipse tomorrow morning wee hours of the morning.

Thanks to A. who posted about it and provided this link.

Kangoroos? No, not really

"Kangaroo" is another thing people think of as soon as you say "Australia". However there is only one type of Kangaroo in Tasmania.
What you see in Tasmania are wallabies and pademelons ...yes, "pademelons"! Apparently they are so little known that even Microsoft Word does not recognize them and think that I am misspelling "watermelons"..... I bet you Word recognizes "unicorns" ... yep it does, Word knows about unicorns, completely mythical creatures, but not about pademelons, typical!!!
Anyway, as far as I can tell wallabies are are small kangaroos, and pademelons are very small kangaroos. I am sure there must be more to it, but as a rule of thumb, if you can be sure that you are looking at an adult and it is very small you are looking at a pademelon.

SORRY NO PHOTOS, FOR SOME REASON I CANNOT LOAD PHOTOS RIGHT NOW.
Let me figure it out.
Later : actually it is a Blogger problem and it seems that this problem has been going on since late March as far as I can tell!!

It has been a long time

Wow! It really has been a long time.

Since that first post I have left work, bought a round-the-world-ticket and spent 3 months in Australia. I am now back in Calgary for a while.
When people think about Australia I think they mostly imagine a large, red, dry, flat continent (or at least I did...and I mostly still do). But I spent practically all my time in Tasmania and Tasmania is nothing like that.

I have to go and choose some pictures, edit them (to make them smaller) and then I'll start posting them here.

Well hello!!

I'm not yet gone to smell the roses yet. I am just in Rosebank (Johannesburg) in the internet cafe.
... no roses here but lots of banks.