A new way to look at success

Sometimes you find yourself trying hard but somehow not making much headway. Or you believe that you are making good progress but later realize that you have been going round in circles. Usually it is with jobs but can be in all other arenas of life as well. Others seem to have it a lot easier or perhaps they get along better because they deserve it more? If you have ever felt this way then this video will feel like a balm for the bruises. The speaker, Alain de Botton, encourages us to find the meaning of "success" for ourselves. No big secrets are revealed but I like the very rational yet humane way he gets his point across to the audience. There is also a bit of clever humour in some of his ironic remarks.






Do this simple exercise to practice the vocabulary of the speech.

Watching the night sky from home

A couple of weeks ago I spent half a night awake trying to catch sight of some meteors in the Perseid Meteor Shower. The sky remained cloudy the whole night long so I didn't manage to observe any meteors. It was a nice night though, and I really wouldn't like to sound complaining. However, if you - like me - enjoy guided astronomy tours where clouds don't matter here is a chance to see one. The Hubble Site has a cool feature: Tonight's Sky. It is a short flash video with menu and English subtitles. The pictures are great, the audio is absolutely clear both regarding the content and the pronunciation.(you could even say it is lucid:) Go and watch it if you haven't done it so far. After all, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.

When you have watched the video for September 2009 you will be able to answer the following questions:

- What is the other name of the constellation Sygnus?

- What is Deneb?

- What can you see halfway between the stars Altair and Alberio?

- Which planet dominates the September sky?

- When is the Autumnal Equinox this year? Where does the sun rise on this day?

(You can find short answers to the questions here.)




















Altair

An afternoon at the river

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."