happy end of a sleigh riding accident

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thanks god the eeg showed that everything is ok now. our youngest daughter suffered from a concussion after a sleigh riding collision on new years eve. today we went for the 2nd eeg as the first one was not to the full contentment of the neurologist, and now there are no signs of an adverse effect on the brain any more.

and again i learnt in what a happy environment we live: fully equipped hospital with motivated, skilled, and not exhausted staff. and then the pictures from the hospital in batticaloa come back to my mind, and the stories i had to learn there: about all the shortages everybody from the cleaners up to the director have to live with, the arbitrariness of government decisions and the discrimination of tamil institutions - i could go on for quite a while. on wednesday i will leave again for sri lanka for a project mission. give god that the fighting will come to and end and there will be peace between all groups of population. it's only that all signs are against this...

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little tiger

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my thanks go to athine. of course you don't know who athine is, so i will tell you. for the current world urban forum in nanjing, the chinese organizers recruited more than 2000 volunteers, mainly students with a major in english. athine is one of them, and she accompagnied our bus from the airport to the hotel. chatting with her, she gave me the advice to go to zonghuamen early in the morning, where i would find locals doing free air exercises. this way i got the chance for this picture of that girl doing her exercises and getting advice for improvement

china is definitely worth many words, a lot of praise, but i also see the restrictions: numerous blogs i can't read, http://blog.andreas-manessinger.info/ to name just one example. why? i don't know, but china is like this...

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making a flower necklace

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i was waiting quite a while for good, warm october weather - we had to have it now, especially as an economic factor for the benefits of the octoberfest and the poor landlords there, who are always on the brink of bankruptcy if there is not a new record in the number of sold hectolitres of beer.

so we had our fine weather and the kids took advantage of it to make flower necklaces of the very last daisies, and i took advantage of this to exercise my venerable 20+ years old 1.7/50mm lens - i am a shallow depth of field freak, i have to admit.

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drinking water for the kindergarden or: victory and defeat

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what a boost for my ego: last monday the 'sueddeutsche zeitung' (1.35 mio readers) has printed the picture above together with a report about the results of munich's activities in eastern sri lanka.

[edit:]regarding the ego: of course the whole project is a gratification per se: being able to dedicate your energy to the improvement of the life circumstances of victims of such a large scale disaster is a value by itself. it's only that i am not always an ideal selfless person-

therefore you will understand my disappointment about the fact that my authorship wasn't mentioned... well, joy and sorrow always take turns.

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chinese spectator at shenshen festival, nuremberg

i get the taste for available light again. fortunately i was seated at a table from which i got support for my elbows. i liked specially her self-forlornness in front of a stage with very active performances.

on a sidenote: supporters for the freedom of tibet were waving banners. the chinese consulate-general wanted to get them removed. but of course this was "Hauptmarkt", not Tiannamen...

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