In memoriam

I am not blogging for a while as my thoughts are with my friends. My friends in Holland. A family who used to live in Christchurch lost their 19 year old son in such a heart breaking way. Last year we spend some wonderful time with them. My heart goes out to the family . I think about them. Especially today as my son turned 19 years old.
My thoughts go also out to a friend who has cancer and has just lost her brother in law.
Another friend lost her husband
I have no words. I just send them my love.
I hope one day they can find comfort in the following words. For long there will be only grief.

 

Death is Nothing at All

Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away to the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other,

That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.

Speak to me in the easy way

which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed

at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word

that it always was.

Let it be spoken without effect.

Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same that it ever was.

There is absolute unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind

because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.

For an interval.

Somewhere. Very near.

Just around the corner.

All is well.

Henry Scott Holland

A door to the world

Autumn started ! Too dark and rainy to take pictures for Our World Tuesday. I went through my photos and picked a random one, which was a door. I realised I had more doors. Here is a selection and a little verse for each.

 Open the door
to access the new
to find possibilities
changing your view

 Let go of the past
which isn't useful for today
leave it behind closed doors
Go and enter a new way

Open the door to your heart
where you find passion
and learn how to paint
 in the colours of compassion

If your whole world rocks
and all falls apart
one door will still stand strong
the door towards a new start

Always leave the door
wide open to your inner child
make life a celebration
let your imagination run wild

Open up to the beauty
of all that is around
love all the living beings
embrace, day in day out

Gay marriage allowed in NZ

NZ has become the 13th country in the world where gay marriage is legalised. I am from the country which was the first in the world. I am proud of it. I lived in Holland for 37 years and part of my experience of being Dutch is being tolerant.
Thanks to the tolerance and open mindedness of the Dutch Holland flourished in business for centuries.
There is considerable discussion going on if the Dutch are still being tolerant today, but that's a different story.
Being tolerant is not the easiest way of living.
Everyone has their own beliefs, perceptions and values. Being an immigrant I know how difficult it is to experience that what was once your "truth" suddenly isn't true anymore because of different cultural values. It is threatening when other people have other and sometimes opposing beliefs.
Threatening towards who you are and what you belief in. It can rock your beliefs. You don't feel accepted or understood. Don't you feel more one with someone who thinks alike. We  might be afraid of what is different.

However If we don't challenge our beliefs or if we never listen to other ways of thinking or accept other ways of living there would be no room for growth. Did you never get the aha moment when you listened to others and started to see things from a different perspective and were able to adjust your opinion. You might need some courage for that as you have to admit that you made a mistake or you were to quick with stating an opinion. It also might make you feel less in control. Sometimes you realise that there might be more than one truth depending on your perception or depending from which angle you look at things.

Being open minded can also mean respecting that other people have just as much the right to live their lives in their way as you do. It is necessary in creating peace by starting to understand our differences.

You don't have to agree with everything but you could start seeing others who are different with exploring new countries. When you go on holiday to a foreign country you don't think "it's different, therefore I don't like it". No people enjoy the out of the ordinary.

I'll try the best I can to be tolerant of other peoples way of living and believing. Live and let live! I do have limits and that is when other peoples ways and beliefs are harm full to others than I become intolerant.
I don't see gay marriage as harm full at all to others. So congratulations to them for being accepted. This NZ politician doesn't think so either. I love his speech and sense of humor.

Video

A trip to the Amalfi Coast in Italy last year with my than 80 year old mum

 

Thanks to my Blog I started making lots of photos as I didn't want to use copy righted material. I started to love it. I hope this is going to happen too with video. I hardly know anything about it yet. The kids at the computing Club at work love making little movies and I want to be able to help. Last year I uploaded a slide show to my very first You tube where I added music as well. I still have to learn heaps. I didn't have the courage yet to learn anymore so that was it. I plan this year to use video, learn windows movie maker for video editing and audacity for sound editing.
 

I don't know why I procrastinate with this. Probably because it will cost a lot of time to find all the information of how to do all this. Learning these things cost a lot of energy which I am lacking at night and in the weekend. I feel guilty to do this in the weekend as I have to do the washing and the house and other stuff.
I will just do the washing this weekend and close the door; No one is welcome as I would be embarrassed when the house is not done.

That is probably something I got passed on from my parents. When we got visitors than my mum started quickly tidying the whole house and I still do the same and of course apologising when we didn't manage to get it all done. Now let's plan do to 2 hours of learning to start with. Wish me luck.



Cromwell

The roaring Meg, a small power station in the Kawarau Gorge near Cromwell

The Jones fruit stall is like a fruit museum on the edge of Cromwell. Cromwell is a town in Central Otago famous for growing stone fruits.

A delight  these dried fruits. I bought a bag with dried papaya

We didn't have enough time to go the new Central Motor Speedway in Cromwell but on the lake was some speeding going on anyway. Roaring, water slicing speed boat races. 

 We drove over highway 85, a road of 160 km between Alexandra and Palmerston. We drove through a very empty, rugged landscape with rivers and hills. Halfway we went on a side road to the tiny town (pop. around 10)of St Bathans a former mining town. There was one shop in a shed and we had lunch in the historic haunted Vulcan Hotel.

 

people swimming in the blue lake in St bathans

Beautiful colours 

 

The blue lake was formed by gold sluicing or washing away gravel.

Youth by Samuel Ullman

Youth
 Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter
 of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of
 the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions;
 it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

 

 Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over
 timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease.
 This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty.
 Nobody grows old merely by a number of years.
 We grow old by deserting our ideals.

 

 Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm
 wrinkles the soul.  Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the
 heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

 

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's
 heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of
 what's next, and the joy of the game of living.  In the center
 of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long
 as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and
 power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

 

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with
snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown
old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the
waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty

 

Queenstown

Queenstown is a town in the south of the South Island of New Zealand. It has become a popular tourism centre and is famous in the world of thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies. You can do yetboating, skiing, parasailing, bungee jumping and more

The biggest thrill we had was shopping. We bought some rain coats anticipating the winter and because they are cheaper here than in Christchurch. (yep being Dutch, always looking for a good deal)

Queenstown is build around lake Wakatipu with mountains like the remarkables on the background. 

These beautiful people entertained us with some music

This thunderjet takes you up the Kawarau river and makes 360 degrees spins

The shotover jet takes you through this canyon. The jetboat was invented by the New Zealander known as Bill Hamilton. My husband used to live opposite the Hamilton family when he was young.

 

The famous bungee jumping which started in 1988 by AJ Hacket and Henry Van Asch

Our world Tuesday