Archive for December, 2005
December 21, 2005 at 22:22 · Filed under life
We have returned to Der Schweitz for the Christmas season. I really like Christmas in the Geneva area. Despite it being MEGA cold, very cloudy (we call it “being in the soup”), we have enjoyed the fresh air and the change of scenery. I did manage to get 60mns in today, took a tour down to the plage to prangins, then up around the Prangins air field, up the back road to Dullier, and then back down through the farm roads into Nyon and finally home. I forgot how awesome it is to run in Switz. You can pretty much run an entire hour and only meet a few people on your run!!
Seeing the fam has been great fun, and especially the little squidlettes. They are massive now, and I think I may have the smallest arms out of all the boys!!! They are all huge. Phil is in luvvvvvvvvvv… Tal is so mature and flowering, and Andy has grown into a massive gorilla, actually, no, but he has grown big time.. becoming quite the cheeky boy though!
I hope to post some pictures from our time up here soon, so stay tuned.
Oh! good news. Finally got my Kowa! It is a beautiful camera, and I am looking forward to taking a few shots with it tomorrow. Hopefully, I will get some good shots of my grandparents. That is my hope…
More soon.
Love from us.
December 12, 2005 at 15:59 · Filed under life
Thanks to Jeanne for this great link. Christian music anyone(?)
http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/hurl?f=/wayfm/video/book(hi).wmv&p=mms
(www.whiteboydj.com)
December 4, 2005 at 0:52 · Filed under life
I love National Geographic. I found an amazing LIVE streaming video and audio stream (real player) on their website! It says it will be up until December 8th. Definitely exciting to see Botswana wildlife… live!
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html
Update - the stream will be up until 15 December.
December 3, 2005 at 23:08 · Filed under life
This thing was huge… want one for Christmas, Dave?
December 1, 2005 at 0:39 · Filed under life
Tonight we attended the launch of the African HIV Policy Network’s new campaign called ‘Changing Perspectives’.
I was extremely interested to get back into the ‘HIV-world’ and meet all these people whose passion it is to see change in the attitudes of people and in the services provided by government.
It is all too easy to blame each other, but the keynote speaker for the evening a black broadcaster called Henry Bonsou, really set the tone for the event saying that he felt terribly guilty that he did not push enough for HIV awareness and that really reminded me that change starts at home. I don’t think we learnt anything new in terms of facts, but the people involved in this campaign are just fabulous individuals who are struggling day by day to fight the stigma and discrimination that they face by simply being infected by the HIV virus. I think we’ve all come to the conclusion that the best way of fighting HIV is by discussing it openly, but to do that you really have to address the issue of stigma, and that is a hard one.
Although the facts are tough there was so much laughter! I haven’t laughed that long in forever - an ‘edutainer’ came on stage and had me in tears, I laughed so hard! Cultures are so funny - now that i am learning so much about the black african cultures, I could see some of my girls and their families and mothers in the comic mimicking that our ‘edutainer’ did tonight. Still, making fun of oneself is a very ‘British’ trait - I would guess that may not see comedians in african countries earning their bread by making fun of their own people! I am having trouble not making typos now, i think it’s time to go to bed.
much love, h
PS - (Stu here)
You thought you could get away without some multimedia… didn’t you!!!?
Well, being the guy I am, I recorded some of the best moments, on video for you. (.3GPP no less.. thanks to mon Nokia 6630!)
(For those of you who dont know what .3GPP is, just open the files with Quicktime 6 or higher. It’s all good.)
African Drumming & Dancing (Ujamma Arts Group)
Video 1 (2.8MB)
Video 2 (2.2MB)
Video 3 (1.6MB)
Blak Twang and K9 (South London Hip Hop Aids Activists)
Video 1 (3MB)
Video 2 (1.8MB)
Video 3 (1.3MB)
Video 4 (840KB)
Kwaku (edutrainer)
Video 1 (5.3MB)
Video 2 (2.6MB)
Oh yes…and we can’t forget our most precious Ije (left), who invited us!!! (We love you!)
Nite E Nite!
