iPhone fun

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Was inspired by a post in Quotidian Hudson’s blog, grabbed my phone and went out on the balcony. I have tried this once before … when the function was just released, but then I forgot about it: the panoramic picture.

True to myself, I had no planning whatsoever — this would turn out better on a cloudy day. No matter how I turned, I got the blazing sunshine straight into the camera-eye.

The first picture is the view we have from our balcony … Saint John’s north end. The second, I went across the street and up on Fort Howe — the historic look-out point. There were strong, gusty winds … I will do this again, for sure, because it was a lot of fun. Please, click on each picture … they will open in a new tab …for full effect. I’ve resized them, in order to minimize download speed.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

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Pattern – the photo subject of this week — is wide. Patterns in nature, man-made patterns or more abstractly … behavioural patterns. The latter would be a little harder to illustrate . In any event, I’ll grab this subject as an opportunity to write something. It’s been a while … not due to lack of will — just haven’t had anything pressing to write about. Today, I thought about C.B. Wentworth, fellow blogger and accomplished writer, who blogs from a coffee shop most of the time. Grabbed my iPad and went to Starbucks. Thought perhaps a change of environment would do the trick, but it didn’t. It was Saturday, and a whole different crowd than the usual, high-tech that usually frequents my Starbucks of choice. Think I’ve written about that before … how quiet it is in there, everyone hooked up to something! Today there were families with children, screaming at the top of their lungs. That didn’t work, so instead I walked in to the adjacent book store and browsed instead.

Now … for patterns — I love patterns in nature … they intrigue and awe me! Not only the zebras, giraffes and cheetahs I see on TV, but also closer to home … the back of a Blue Jay, for example. For this challenge, I chose the Loon. His pattern is terrific, but he keeps eluding me and my camera. The rare times the Loon appears here, it’s in the very center of the lake … way off, regardless of which side you’re on. So here’s the the most decent shot of a Loon I’ve ever got.

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pleasant surprise

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Shortly after I’d got the iPhone last year, I purchased a wallet for it, from Amazon. A really nifty, little thing that more or less could eliminate my regular wallet. I wrote a blog post about it then, because they stated it was made of leather and it wasn’t. Instead, it was sprayed with something that was supposed to smell like leather, which fortunately vanished after a few days. It stunk up the whole apartment!

I’ve used it … it’s alright …but the plastic feeling of it has irked me ever since — when I opened it up in the wintertime, it went all stiff!  I’ve never really stopped looking for the real thing, and found it a couple of weeks ago … also in Amazon. Leather, inside out, a compartment for bills and even little pockets for SIM-cards and the little pin you need to change cards. It was a little pricey, one would think, but exactly what I wanted, so I decided to go for it.

When I arrived at the check-out in Amazon, I got some weird message that it couldn’t be purchased because it would involve customs fees [it was sold from the U.K.] and stuff. This reminded me of some baseball caps we bought from CNN. When they arrived with FedEx, we had to pay $30 EACH in customs fees! They must be the world’s most expensive caps.

Anyway … I really wanted this thing, and there wasn’t any, exactly the same, elsewhere. I checked. So I contacted the seller directly, and asked what the deal was … why it was listed in Amazon when it couldn’t be purchased.

I got the nicest email back you could ever imagine! Something was wrong in their settings, they hadn’t been aware of it, but they had been puzzled why this thing wouldn’t sell in Canada when it sold so good anywhere else. They changed the settings, wrote to me again, and asked if I’d be willing to try to buy it again … in that case I’d get it for half the price!

I did, paid full price, and was refunded half immediately afterwards. Great stuff, huh?! :)

Today, the ‘miracle’ wallet arrived, and I’m very pleased … wonderful, soft leather.

iphone wallet

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

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border between quebec and new brunswick

Change, is this week’s subject in the WP photo challenge. Normally, I’m able to produce a better picture than this, but it has to be here! It was shot through the wind shield, but it sure represents change for me and I remember so well how good I felt when I shot it … like «We Made It!» 

The Canadian flag you see is outside an Irving gas station right at the border between the province of Quebec and New Brunswick. The gas station is in New Brunswick. It feels as if you were going into another country even though you’re still in Canada.

I’d lived with my husband for five years in Quebec after arriving in Canada in 2004. I wasn’t unhappy there in any way, but in hindsight I realise I was perhaps a little isolated as I never overcame the language barrier … i.e. I never learned French. My loss. 

quebec border

going the other way

In the summer of 2008 we decided for various reasons to relocate to Saint John, New Brunswick … it’s my husband’s birth place, for one. Secondly, I’d fallen in love with the city the first time we visited, as I’ve written about many times before. 

Within three months it was all settled, the house was sold in QC, nice apartment waiting in Saint John, so yes … I was very happy when we crossed that border. The big flag on that gas station is very conspicuous and you don’t see too many Canadian flags in Quebec … only on federal buildings and that contributes to the feeling you’re entering a different country. I’ve never been back, and in November it will be five years ago.

Lancaster bomberHere’s a Lancaster bomber they have set up as a memorial on the New Brunswick side of the border, just off the highway, opposite the gas station I mentioned in the beginning.

This aircraft flew eleven successful missions over enemy territory in WWII. 

 

There are places I remember

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Take a line from a song that you love or connect with. Now forget the song, and turn that line into the title or inspiration for your post.

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The title of this post, is the first line of an old Beatles ballad that I love … «In My Life». All the time I was writing up that post about ‘hiraeth‘ the other day, that song was humming in my head.

The place in this photo — that I’ve shamefully ‘snagged’ from Google Streetview — is one of the places I remember. My Mum had an old friend who owned a summer camp there. It’s probably, at least 80 kilometres from where we lived, my mum didn’t have a car, so when I  turned eighteen and got my own car, we went there to visit. This place totally stuck in my mind, and as the years went by … in my imagination it became even prettier than it was in real life — I kept thinking of it as heaven on earth … the cottage included! Even the name of the place was beautiful — Junibosand — the cottage was red, with a white picket fence and an old pump in the garden.

After about twenty years, I went back there for the first time. Perhaps the weather added to it … it was rather miserable … but also my memory had played games with me. It was pretty alright, but not as I remembered it. I may go back there now when I go back in June … just to see how I feel about it now :)

Another place I revisited in 2011 was a town where I lived between the years 1984 and 1987. In hindsight, I don’t know why I wanted to go there because I had no fond memories of the place or the time period … quite the opposite. To walk around the downtown area … looking up at the building where I’d lived, just brought on a kind of sadness. I tried hard to remember something positive about that time but couldn’t come up with anything. I learned a lot, though, and that in itself is a good thing, I guess.

 

 

apartment living has its perks

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Went down to the parking garage with two black, plastic bags of garbage. On the 3rd level the woman, from a far off country, entered the elevator with her walker. She asked what I had in the bags. I told her it was garbage, but I was tempted to say ‘body parts’.

There are either 160 or 130 units in this building, I’ve been told two different numbers. Various sizes, from three-bedroom apartments to bachelor. Either way, that makes for quite a bunch of people. I’d say the majority are senior citizens and the other part would be made up of really young people from Asia. There are people here who have lived in the building since it was new, and I think that was 1967.

There are two elevators, one big laundry room and also a room where you can gather people and socialise … there used to be a piano there – now it’s an electric organ, a fully equipped kitchen and so on. A group of little, old ladies gather there every Tuesday morning.

Throughout the years, I’ve lived in many apartment buildings like this, but I’d say I ‘know’ [and the word 'know' in its loosest meaning] many more people here than I ever did before. The biggest difference is of course that here, people are chatty! I’m normally not, but it’s so nice, so I become chatty too! There’s not one elevator ride without saying at least a few words about the weather.

People also tend to linger in the lobby where the mail room also is. As many of them have lived here for that long, they know one another for real, and sit and chat there. It’s all very nice! Especially to me, who come from a place where you just don’t make eye contact with strangers.

One old chap, I’ve figure out, must suffer from some kind of germs phobia! Before I realised that, I just thought he acted a little odd, because in the elevator he always stood turned away from everybody, with his nose up against the corner. Like a kid in school with a dunce cap. But I’ve noticed now, he always wear latex gloves when he brings his garbage to the chute, and all the pieces fell into place; in the beginning, we offered him a ride from the grocery store several times, but he always, politely declined. Saying something to the extent of ‘that he needed the exercise’ even thigh he was carrying awfully heavy-looking grocery bags, and he’s definitely in his 70s.

titleThe little woman I started out telling you about, sure had her hang-ups too! There are eight washers in the laundry room. One, new at the time, neighbour was very upset one day and asked me what was the matter with her – she’d been so mad at him and really told him off, because he’d taken «her» washing machine. Nowadays I never see her there any more … either because «her» washer has been replaced, or she’s just too old and decrepit to take care of the laundry any more.