Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

BED TIME STORY (starts here)

Monday, May 10th, 2010

A GOOD STORY THAT TAKES HALF-HOUR

Night 1

Faruno Abalgandon Vextraliensis had three legs. But this was quite normal for people his age on Planet Go-to-Bed.

We can make this story bigger or just a little bit bigger if you eat all your ginger bread teddy bears. There are no teddies and no ginger or not even bred on the Planet Go-to-Bed, but plenty of bears. People there eat bears for desert. Everybody eats everybody there because they are all so hungry and even Faruno could have had up to nine legs by the age of ten, should he had been well fed by his parents. Legs don’t grow easily, you know, not just from the top of your head, like octopus folk grow on Planet Erath. They only grow out of your ears on that lovely planet where not even cows exist.

Now we watch some cartoons before we go to bed and the story will grow overnight by itself. This is going to be a funny story.

Night 2

When we are done with this story, we are actually going to put it onto the Internet but we should put your name and my name there so people know who wrote the story. Maybe my friends Zayne and Kaito will be on the computer that night and they can read it. Can we just get to the story now?

Of course there are no cows on Planet Go-to-Bed because cows need cheese to make milk and milk to make grass from it. On Planet Go-to-Bed there’s plenty of grass already but the grass is only populated by sheep and by many weeds, too. Sheep are generally speaking, friendly on that remote planet but sometimes they sail far away in space ships they call ‘boats’. Faruno Abalgandon Vextraliensis wanted to be the captain of a Space-boat so he made it out of thin paper. All paper on Planet Go-to-Bed is thin, because it is made out of grass. There are no trees. On Planet Earth, most paper is made out of dead trees or trees killed by the humans. We won’t tell Faruno how we make things on Earth, because he won’t like to visit anymore.

Is that all the story? No.  It is not. Maybe Faruno has some friends.

Travel for Real: How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 6

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

I’m leaving Dunedin today.

This is Air New Zealand style! This is arguably the friendliest national carrier you’ll ever fly. My propeller flight is one hour late thus they put me into a jet half an hour early. I’m just about to board the Boeing that takes me back to Christchurch. It may actually take a while, as this aircraft has just landed and passengers are still coming through to the terminal. The weather has been desperately strange during these less than 24 hours in town: 27 Celsius yesterday afternoon and 7 at night, sunny in patches today but very cold Antarctic wind. (…)

dunedin aport

On board now: This plane again is packed, many youngsters, exchange students from Otago University, I guess. And only three little kids all of them crying and all of them seated just behind me. I had taken window seats with my booking, but yesterday a farmer’s wife sat on mine and I surrendered the room with a view. (…) Again I had my Nokia switched off for takeoff. We are flying over the Pacific and all I can see is deep blue water.

over blue pacific

We are announced that the weather in Christchurch is pretty bad: wintry drizzle. This is supposed to be summer. At least in Dunedin I could walk for a couple of hours and I took these photos of houses, churches, the old railway station and the new Chinese Gardens, where I enjoyed a cup of oblong tea.

dnd hses

dnd wd start 6 wth

dnd cth a wd

dnd station

dnd station 2 train

ch gr 1

ch gr 3 wd

ch gr 4 stones

ch gr 2 wlk

ch gr 2 oolong

Now, as we approach Christchurch, we’ve caught up with the clouds. This flight is so short for the 737-300, that it actually climbs to 25,000 feet and it then starts descending straight away. This time all flight attendants are quite nice, but a blonde in particular is very easy to look at (sorry, no picture). I should have booked an aisle seat. The service is minimal: a choice of packed snacks and a glass of mineral water but that’s more than enough for about 35 minutes in the plane. Four our peace of mind, the captain told us not to worry this flight is running late, it’s just a replacement for the one that broke down (because it was replacing one that had broken down?). Then the captain goes on and on about what we can see outside (if you are on the western side you can). Then we land. No sign of drizzle. Just a quick note: today Air New Zealand commemorated 30 years since its only crash involving passengers. This was on Mount Erebus, in Antarctica.

Erebus

Soon I’ll have to carry on with the English girl’s story.

Travel for Real: How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 4

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

(Later in that flight)

No wonder I couldn’t read the secret meaning of her bracelets. Something was terribly wrong! And it wasn’t then, no, then it was just beautiful, the comfort of the guilty feeling when you know for sure you can’t be guilty at all. The wrong part only comes now, as I write: I have just realized that it takes a wee bit of Dali and quite a strong dose of Picasso to make the hand and arm of the English girl in the KLM flight perfectly match the described position with her book, blue jeans, white fingers and the arm rest of my seat.  She was young, all right. Attractive over the limit, all right (in a 22-hour one-stop flight who wouldn’t be?). But contortionist, no way! Russian ballerina, no way! How was she, actually?

Now, as I remember, she was asleep. Or so she seemed.

inflight picture not mockos

She moved slightly as the plane shook from some lateral wind and the light dimmed and most kids cried but only a few mums shushed. Her left leg crossed over my right one, which was a severe violation of my private economy class space but I could see no air marshals or even better looking hostesses, so I chose not to induce any panic on board and I did not complain. The light got dimmer but not fast enough to prevent me from seeing her fragile, almost argyle, agile, ankle. A while.

She was wearing sandals: vandal’s teeth marks, shark’s in her flesh, fresh.  I didn’t like her much. So I didn’t touch. I looked at my watch. There was NO time. Just a chime.  We were stopping soon, in Bangkok, at noon.

——

NOTE: By mistake or just randomly chosen, the airliners featuring in this post and the previous one replace British Airways and its partners, with whom indeed I flew. This is thanks to a charge they applied to my MasterCard for trying to contact over their satellite (?) phone a number on the ground, as I was flying over. It was something like 30 US a minute for NOT getting through. I wrote to British Airways and that letter came back at some expense, too. But never mind, the girl was real. I just picture her in a plane belonging to a company I am more comfortable with.

Internet Fun – Joke of the Day

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

If you travel to Kaikoura, New Zealand, go to Top Ten Holiday Park (which is nice and clean, but unjustifiable expensive), pick cabin #7, relax in the double bed under the bunk and look up:

Mini Grafitti, Kaikoura

Non-Canadians watch out!