gung hai fat choi

Happy Chinese New Year! Sent this to my Malaysian friend and a calendar, today.

Yesterday I renewed my domain and my hosting space, and put them both on auto renew. Its a total of about $60.00 Canadian a year for what I have. I am happy enough with what I have for now.

This afternoon we drove up to Skutz Falls on the Cowichan River in the pouring, cold rain. What an adventure though. None of my snaps are very good. Oh well.

I am beginning the text for our 2002 trip to France. Its coming along okay.

France 2002

I have finished tweaking the photos of our trip to Pont Royal, St.Remy, L'Orange, Carcasonne, Sens, Paris, etc., from 2002. I have 9 pages of 8 photos per page. I wonder if I should make that into 18 pages. I have quite a few interesting notes, but nothing 'official', just my travel logue.

We have had a federal election and have elected 124 Conservatives, 103 Liberals, 51 Bloc Guebecois, 29 New Democrates, and 1 Independant. Doesn't look like this Government will last very long.

We had a scrumptious lunch at Dunlop House, with Jim and Sheila this week.

My new washer, microwave oven and toaster oven all work great. Nice to have new stuff that works.

John Lennon Rolls

The John Lennon 1965 Phantom V Rolls Royce is now owned by the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Bristol Motors stores and maintains the car. It is located at 629 Chatham Street in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

We went to the Museum today where they had this car on display as well as Motorcycles from the 60's. And best of all, Linda McCartney's photography is on display as well. It was worth every bit of the $25.00 per person fee to see this. There was also a film about Linda and her photography in the theatre. A thoroughly enjoyable 4 hours.

France - 2002

The atlantes in Aix en Provence, France. One of my favourite cities.

I have made a good start on tweaking the photos for our trip for 2002, for loading to my web page. There have been quite a few hits on my Danube album from my photo.net posting, but only one person commented. Sigh. Guess they think it stinks, and don't want to say so.

I cleaned the light garden and watered and fed all the house plants today. The little yellow orchid now has 2 buds open.

The earthquake

This is the mill at Campbell River at sunset.

I have started to get the 2002 travel trip to France ready for loading to my page.

I received my copy of the Hasselblad Manual, today. This is going to be very helpful. Now all I need is the time to get into it.

We got our new toaster oven today. Looks a lot better than that old grundy thing.

We had a 3.9 earthquake at 4:30 am on Sunday the 15th, centered near Bamberton, and occuring 45km beneath the surface. The quake was within the Juan de Fuca plate that runs beneath Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria. The plate is very slowly moving towards us at 4 or 5 cm each year and it is being pushed underneath Vancouver Island. As the ocean plate sinks beneath Vancouver Island the rock heats up and the pressure changes. The rock becomes denser and more compact and eventually compresses, triggering earthquakes in a narrow band from Puget Sound through the Strait of Georgia. We have about 300 of these magnitude twos and threes per year. There is more than I will ever need to know about Emergency Preparedness on this site.

Amsterdam to the Black Sea - loaded to my page

This lovely little yellow Phalenopsis is blooming. It has two more buds on that stem, that will open eventually. Tomorrow I must water and feed them all.

I have finished loading my long travel album, to my web site. Can be seen here

We have our new Whirlpool front loading washer on order to be delivered on the 24th. We got it at the Bay. Pat thoroughly researched the choices and we are satisfied that we have a good machine at a decent price. This will be so nice, after months of that clunking, rattling old machine.

Travel - Amsterdam to the Black Sea

Flower Power

I have finished the text and most of the captions for the photos. I will go over it all one more time and check for errors and then it will be ready to load.

This morning I took my stuff to Prism and they will print an 8 X 10 for me of what I showed them that I would like to do. Done professionally for $31.00 plus tax is a good deal. I also saw a dark green frame/with special matt and specail price down there .. I would need a new matting for the frame to make my copy of 'Shaken not stirred' fit. The matt would need to cover approximately 3 inches on each long side and 1.5 inches on each short side. I wonder how that would look... but must check out their frames and mattings again. The girl at Prism said to have a look at Walmart or somewhere to get the frame less expensively, as that special matting would just be a throw away for me. But it is just such a great color, I think, to go with the print.

Pat and I are shopping around for the best deal/best machine on a front loading washing machine. We are slowly getting it narrowed down.

We have had 26 days of rain. 32 days is the record number, set in 1953.

My little yellow Phal. has come into bloom. Lovely little thing. I must try and get a good photo of it, if the sun would ever shine. Maybe I can get a good flash shot of it. I do have to learn how to use flash properly, as well as learn light metering.

Finished Vienna, Budapest

I have finished the text and captions for pictures up to page 64 and Day 17 of our Amsterdam to the Black Sea.

This is what greeted us at the beginning of Day 18, at Kalosca, Hungary. Another very good day.

Page 33, Day 11

This was in the Mechanical Musical Instruments Museum.

I have finished the photos and recoding up to Page 33, Day 11, and the end of our Germany tours. Hopefully, it won't be long now until I can load this album of our trip from Amsterdam to the Black Sea.

The Hasselblad Manual by Ernest Wildi

This is the Cathedral in Cologne - one of my favourite cities. I do not know why it went blue, but I like it. I probably had my white balance setting still set on florescent from the indoor shots. It was pouring rain when we were here.

I have finished recoding the thumbnails for my 2005 Danube travel album. Now have 95 pages to rework and add text. Has to be done in two stages. So, this might take me a few days. And then it should be ready to load to my page.

I am so excited. I have ordered the Hasselblad Manual, Fifth Edition by Ernest Wildi from Amazon.ca. It should arrive approximately January 12th. This is one serious Camera manual. Now, I should have no more excuses for not learning to use this camera. I am just so afraid of breaking something.

Day 24 Sinaia Monastery

I have finished tweaking the photos for the 2005 trip. Now, the album has to be made, fixed and loaded. Shouldn't be long now, until it is on my page.

On day 24 we travelled by bus to Bran where Dracula's castle is the main attraction. On the way we stopped to see this Sinai Monastery. Very ornate. After lunch, as we continued to Bran and the castle a heavy fog/mist fell over the countryside. I have some very foggy, murky photos that are the perfect atmosphere for our journey to Dracula's castle.

Day 25 was a travel home day, with KLM. Was good to get home. It was a fantastic trip. I would recommend it. Getting the timing for the Fall colors of the leaves was just about perfect this year. Maybe just a week earlier would have been a tiny bit better. But that is a small matter. The food, services, information, fellow travellors, everything was just very good. We all caught a cold/flu but that is almost to be expected when travelling in groups like this. I was one of the fortunate ones not to get any of it, this time, while travelling. Pat suffered double for us, I guess.

My old MSN page

When I first had my computer in 2000, and my digital camera was new, I had 30 mb of space on msn to create a page. I get notices in my hotmail every once in a while saying that my garden page is going to expire, if I do not tend it. So today I added this Gentian to the Alpines album of this my very first page. Some of the pictures that are in this old album have been added more recently and will eventually appear in my new web page under Gardening.

Day 22, Constanta, Romania

Constantza is a huge port on the Black Sea. It was a grey and rainy day when we were there, so my photos for this day are terrible. Also for the next two days in Romania, it rained and was quite miserable. Must go back sometime when the weather and light is better. I have these three days to finish, and then I start to revamp the PS album to use my text, etc. Slowly getting to the end of having this album loaded.

Out with the old, in with the new

Two days ago our 23 year old micro wave oven gave its last gasp. Yesterday we brought home the new one. It is much faster. I have managed to figure out how to run it in time to make our scalloped potatoes, ham, asparagus dinner. Cyrs and Shorty were over after dinner and we spent an enjoyable evening. Before we all knew it there were fireworks and loud noises happening. Mid-night had arrived before we were even ready with champagne for toasts.

Today we drove in the Vintage Car Club New Year's day run. We took the Bentley and Steve & Ruby. Was a very nice run. It was good to be inside, as it was a very windy, wild day out there. No pictures of the crashing waves along Dallas Road, as we could not stop in all the traffic, of course. Pat had fixed the light switch problem on the Bentley just in time to go on the run. Clever man that he is!

Tonite we meet Dan & Irene for dinner at the Captain's Table in Sidney. Should be more good fun.