There is a place near my home that I like a lot. It is called Hárosi-öböl in Hungarian. 'Háros' is the name of a suburb of Budapest and 'öböl' means bay, which is misleading as it is an oxbow lake of the River Danube, only it is not closed because the lower(downstream) end of it is open so it has a live connection with the river. Anyway, the place is beautiful and has a varied vegetation and wildlife; part of the area (the island within the lake and the peninsula that divides it from the river) is a nature reserve. I usually go fishing to the bay but last Saturday I borrowed a good camera and went there to take some pictures.
This is the island within the bay. It is rumoured that there are some ruins of a medieval monastery on it. The island is home to many wild birds: pheasants, starks, herons, ducks, woodpeckers and lots of other species. The vegetation is also very unique: the native trees that are typical of these flooded areas are totally overgrown with fox grape and sometimes the tree looks as if it wore a veil of grapes.
Something similar to this only much much denser. I took this picture from the 'mainland' where the grapes are not nearly as lush and dense as on the island.
Having approached the water I took about ten pictures of this unlucky moth, hoping to catch the moment when a fish swallows it. The fish were probably watching from below and only attacked the prey when I had stopped clicking like mad.
The duck is swimming home. (that's my impression, anyway) They were grazing in the shallows during the early afternoon and took to the deeper parts towards sundown.
The bushes are home to other animals too. This pup and its mum, who turned up a second later (only to kick over my most important work tool - the beer can), are probably stray dogs and should not have been there at all. But they were really cute.
Just before I left there I noticed this heron standing by the water. It was too far away and a real photographer could have captured it much better but I still like this picture because of its atmosphere and the late afternoon colours. Next time I should rent a boat, maybe.
The last "person" I met in the bay was one of the cats who live there and hang around the anglers in hope of getting a few small fish for dinner (usually not in vain). Whiskers' eyes seem to be saying: "Ok, you can go home now, but if I see you around without the fish bucket again there will be trouble."
Last Friday we went to a local karaoke bar. Although I like singing, it was that first time for me in an actual karaoke place with strangers watching the "performance". What do you do to feel more at ease under this kind of pressure? Reassure yourself that you are the best, repeat positive thinking mantras, take deep breaths? All of these may help but this time I went for the good old traditional confidence-maker: drink everything near you that seems to contain alcohol. It worked for me and the other folks in the place didn't take their courage from yoga breathing either. (or used it simultaneously with the boozing technique, which is cheating, anyway)One of my chosen songs was 'Always look on the bright side of life' from the M.P. film 'Life of Brian'. It went pretty well and it was a relief to find that the whistling is included on the backing track. I even tried to imitate Eric Idle's thick British accent, which surprisingly made me feel more secure. I must have felt that if I sing with an accent the people will overlook my own random variations of the tune. So, here is the song with subtitles in case you wanna have a go at it too. (vocals included)
The monologue at the end isn't included in the video but you can find a complementary script here. If you are not a native speaker of English you may find these language notes useful.
As the night progressed, the shows got stronger and stronger and the place got higher and higher. Is it normal to feel that the songs in the karaoke are getting longer after midnight? That was my feeling - things slowed down a lot but in a good way. In this pleasantly numb state, I somehow received a little surprise: tattoos on both my arms drawn with a ball-point pen. The next day it took quite a bit of watching and scraping to get rid of them. I quite liked the rabbit, actually. If that is what it was meant to be. Does anybody have any ideas about the identity of the secret artist?
The anniversary of the Moon landing prompted some wild advertising events as well. A group of Somerset-based cheesemakers decided to launch a piece of Cheddar to the edge of space by a weather balloon. According to chairman Philip Crawford, the aim of the bizarre mission was to "mark the anniversary of the first moon landing with a giant leap for cheesekind". The balloon, which had taken off from Wiltshire, burst at 30 kilometers above the ground and the "cheese astronaut" floated back to Earth by parachute. The 300 gr piece of Cheddar was found two days later in Buckinghamshire and it was taken to the local police. The cheesemakers consider the safe landfall to be a great success.
The "cheese astronaut before the launch" (from here)
