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Twitter

yeah whatever I joined, call  me  a slave to technology.

https://twitter.com/KetaK

-Keta

Raz the Rapacious Rat Killer

Well I haven't posted anything about my fluffy Razooli cat for a very long time. At 16 years old he's slowed down quite a bit, although you wouldn't know it to look at him. He's still as shiny and puffy as ever!

The other night I fell asleep on the couch. I've been keeping my door to the yard slightly open during the day to allow a nice breeze inside. It was about 11:30 and I groggily headed to lock it up when I encountered Raz making his way inside. Sure enough, right out on the front stoop was two or three big racoons! It's that time of year after all. I grabbed my shoes, banged them together loudly and chased one of the intruders out over the back fence. I was becoming more awake than I wanted to be, heading back into the house when I heard some rustling in a bush .. .  sure enough there was another racoon! I banged my shoe against the post supporting the back deck to flush it out, then sent it down the back of the garden as well.

Locked up the house, Raz wasn't too ruffled. He used to try to take on the racoons (it's HIS yard, after all!) in his younger days, but now he just comes inside. I'm glad for that, I already had to get his back paw sewed up once after a nasty early-morning racoon encounter.

Off to bed. In the wee hours I had to get up to go to the bathroom, Raz was "talking" to me. In a particular meowing that he only does when something is up; usually if he doesn't feel well. I thought he might be needing to cough up a hairball, so went to check on him. He didn't seem to be off in any way, but wouldn't shut up. I glanced around in the dark, saw a lump on the carpet, thought it might be some upchuck. Turned on the light, there was a rat! Still warm. Ick.

Back outside I had to go, to drop it into the garbage. Raz was QUITE pleased with himself! Pretty good for an old guy.

HIs favourite spot, up the back steps.

The Mister, glowing in the evening sunshine.

-Keta

KetaDesign

Freaky Vancouver Weather!

A couple of days ago we were hit with a raging hailstorm . . . no big deal, it happens once in a while. Compared with eastern Canada we've gotten off with some pretty mild weather here on the west coast.

Then yesterday it started snowing! Fantastic enough here at anytime, but at the end of March almost completely unheard of. I went outside for a long walk amongst the biggest, fluffiest, softest snowflakes I have ever seen. They were so light that the slightest gust of wind sent them upward . . . snowing UP, now that I have never seen.

Again today we had another wild hailstorm. This time I had to pull the camera out, I mean, this is some crazy stuff.

My neighbour's tree shows a good contrast to the pelting hail

My walk, encrusted

the back yard

We'll see what tomorrow brings, possibly some more weather-related excitement!

-Keta
KetaDesign

Greetings from Nicosia (Lefkosa)!

Extremely odd to be that this city is gleefully billed as the "Last Divided Capital" by the respective tourist bureaus. It's called the "Green Line" and it is a 30m empty barrier guarded by the UN, seemingly arbitrarily hacked through the near centre of the city. The buildings and streets are abandoned, many in a wreck, with the actual barrier created at the end of the roads by piles of barrels, sometimes sandbags or panelling, and a tiny shed with an army guard.

I first visited the north side, Lefkosa, which is Turkish (widely broadcast throughout the south side as "Now Occupied Nicosia") but did not even stay the whole day. I found it very sad, the poverty. There's poverty in Vancouver too of course, but there I'm not on vacation with money to spend and looking for fun stuff to do! I toured the old city (within the walls, built by a Venetian architect as fortification sometime in the 13th C I think) and took some cool photos. At the time I was on a day trip from Famagusta where I was staying (coastal town).

Upon arriving in Nicosia (same city, except the south side, Greek) I instantly liked it much more. I have been touring the old city (within the walls) here for many days, but didn't take any photos. Often the light wasn't great, but also the truth is that the Turkish side has the more interesting buildings. Perhaps the Greek side was more destroyed during the 300 years of Turkish rule (before the British came, at the pleas of the Greeks, in 1871)?

Anyways today I travelled back into Lefkosa, crossing at the same pedestrian border I first came from the north side through. I was sent by a French film crew doing a news story that I ran into here (it's a long story I'll fill you all in later . . . every time I go to an internet place here it costs me one Euro and I know that doesn't sound like a lot but when you add it to buying water, eating out, some travel and such it's adding up to one empty bank account for Keta!!) to take some surreptitious footage of soldiers in Lefkosa. It is supposed to be without army but they are there . .. I had great good luck and first saw two in one kind of uniform, then saw two others in different uniforms on seperate occasions. All in the space of less than an hour! I had put the little rain jacket on my DV cam so it was slightly hidden, and managed not to get caught filming. They are editing right now . . I sure do hope they use my work! I was quite proud of my success actually.

We're to go out for dinner tonight, the camera operator runs his own independant film company and is booked to do a documentary in Antarctica in December. I want to be on his crew (I'm a wildlife photographer after all) and they were all very impressed with me these past few days. We shall see, wish me luck!

I must go phone my brother, he is hurtling his way from the north coast, Kyrenia, and I just can't understand what the hell he is saying in his email.

Later folks! I'm back in Van on Wednesday . . . it'll probably take me a week to get the photos scanned and write up a proper blog about everything. It's been quite an eventful trip!!

-Keta
www.ketadesign.ca

Down to Basics

I'm going on a well-deserved vacation to visit my (lunatic) brother, living in a caravan by the beach in Cyprus (the Greek side). No TV, phone, text, very little internet or other trappings of my modern life here. Just photography and filming, days spent on the beach (too bad it's winter but oh well) and figuring out where to sneak in for a hot shower once in a while. Sure to be plenty of stories and footage when I get back. Until then my internet presence will stagnate entirely. no heat, no hot water, solar powered electricity only; but all the freedom a person could want

The Manuscript - A Rewrite II

OK I've been writing all day and that's enough for now. I'd like to finish the story of this Bald Eagle Baby and it's experiences fledging tomorrow so I can make a submission to the publisher I chose first thing Monday.

and

skip to

Come back tomorrow to find out what happens to our little Chirp, the baby bald eagle!

The Manuscript - A Rewrite

I've shown my Eagle Book to a few people and gotten some feedback . . . a rewrite was in order.

This is what I had got done this morning. More to come tomorrow!

and

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A Matter of Degree

By what measure do we judge success, or progress, in our lives?

At my 10-year high school reunion (I skipped the 20-year one, a few years ago) a bunch of the more obnoxious kids -those who had been part of the 'ruling' group- were running around asking people if they owned their own home yet. We live in Vancouver, so it's pretty much impossible for normal people to buy an actual house. Some form of endowment, lottery winning, or other great good fortune is needed to procure the average $1 million asking price. Most people end up slinking off to some condo complex in Surrey or Coquitlam, suffering the almost two hour daily commute EACH WAY into town.

One fellow I used to talk casually with through high school was quite angered, "they shouldn't be asking people like that" he said more than once. I was amused that he, like so many others there, were still affected by these childish shenanigans! But that's a story for another day. We had caught up a bit in our conversation so I tried to settle his spirit, "You're doing well! You have a good job you like, you're with someone good, you've done some travelling." I was trying to impress upon him that it's more important what each of us thinks about our own lives, not some arbitrary measure imposed by society. As his eyes watched the disturbers work the room with their -frankly rude- questioning, it became obvious to me that he just COULD NOT let it go. I soon found an excuse to drift away.

What is it about our western society, that we can't find satisfaction in ourselves unless it is witnessed by others? What is the first thing most people do when they get that great new job? They buy a new car, one that establishes them outwardly into their new income category. I have never been able to grasp the appeal of the automobile. I consider it an item of function; it's job is to get us from place to place, preferrably safely and without completely draining our pockets. The concept of a vehicle as status has always escaped me. If you want to show off your income, putting it into something that can be crunched, scratched, bumped or broken by an almost infinite number of possibilities completely out of your control seems foolish in the extreme. It almost negates the supposed intelligence that earned that lovely new raise!

From the car most peoples' flaunting of good fortune escalates as they age and earn more. A nice house is usually next (except in places like Vancouver where it is normal for high income earners to live in tiny apartments as long as they're in the actual city). The common practice of leveraging oneself precisely to the limit of one's means has come to bite the American public in the ass in a huge way. Those nice houses bought back a few years through zero-interest mortgages now stand empty from foreclosure. It's going to take a while to discover the true impact on the US economy, but is acknowledged by all that it won't be pretty.

Wouldn't this be a wonderful opportunity to re-examine our process of valuing ourselves? Wouldn't it be great if, instead of asking the usual BORING question of a new acquaintance, "What do you do?" we asked "How is your spirit today?". Can you find satisfaction in just BEING? Are you comfortable inside your own self?

I have just passed the six-month point of chucking the job and going off to work for myself. I had to force myself to contain my ambition and stick to working a standard eight hour day. It's so easy to get carried away, there's always something more that can be done! Before you know it it's 9:00 at night, you've been staring at the computer for a good 12 hours and there's still more to do. With such a schedule, once you do lie down to sleep it's not really restful to say the least. And what about quality of life? Sure, you make an extra chunk of money by the end of the year but you're crabby, always one step away from a headache, and aging prematurely.

A few weeks ago I landed a lucrative and potentially long-term contract for a web design, with a frightfully tight deadline. I resisted the urge to overwork, instead planning carefully and managing my time in order to meet the deadline without killing myself. A couple of times when I emailed the client at 5:30 to explain what I had achieved and announced that I was now "off for the evening" I sensed a palpable surprise. As if . . . how dare I allow myself a normal human working schedule? Luckily I have worked with this client before and always came through, as I did with this project, so no actual objections were voiced.

But people are so used to the self-employed working 12 hour days! What's the point of leaving the job if you're only going to give yourself an ulcer? It's more important, I think, to be satisfied with yourself. To be able to book off at a reasonable hour, and tell yourself you did good today. Or, if there's a problem you can't solve, to grant yourself an evening's rest knowing you'll probably solve it a lot faster tomorrow if you're fresh than if you don't allow yourself to step away until it's done.

The whole point, after all, is to ENJOY things a little bit. Whether it's at a job or working for yourself, to find something positive in each day that you can take away. And not how much the paycheque is, because that is just a number. And don't tell me you can do a lot of things with that money .. .  some of the happiest people in this world have zero money and don't need any. Their pleasure in life comes from feeling a warm breeze on their faces, or enjoying a pretty sunset.

We're so busy cursing the traffic in our mad dash home to turn on the TV and eat processed food we don't even notice there's a sun glowing up in the sky.

A very, very good day

It may seem silly, and like such a small thing, but I have REALLY missed my eagle friends! For the past two years I was down by their nest site at the Jericho Youth Hostel almost every day, sometimes twice a day, taking pictures of them busily feeding their babies and guarding the nest.

This year the babies died, quite early in the season (June) so they didn't need to stick around the nest.

Lately there have been reports that the rural bald eagles are back from their salmon-feasting. On Friday morning I went down to the nest, didn't see the eagles but was told they had been around.

yesterday -later in the morning- was another bright, sunny day. As I stepped onto the soccer field I saw Papa, up in his tree-top look-out perch, pretty as can be! Soon after I spotted Mama, also enjoying the view in a lower tree on the other side of the nest.

Mama, keeping a stern lookout

Mama, looking fierce as usual

I kind of feel like my reason for being has returned. It drizzled a bit in the pre-dawn hours today, but I saw clearing sky to the east as the sun was coming up.
I'll be taking the camera out again in a few hours, you can bet on that!

Keta's Name in Print

So this week's edition of Madison's Canadian Lumber Reporter has hit the street. Here is my piece, on page 8. If you want to get all the prices in detail, and the rest of the newsletter, you're going to have to pay for it, Sucka!

This morning I went out to see if I could film the eagles at Jericho beach (I'd heard that many of the rural eagles were seen back at their nest this week). I didn't end up seeing them, although I was told they have been around. When I went to the beachfront I saw the tide was out, which surprised me considerably.
I ended up getting about half an hour of footage, which I will put up later today. First I have to edit the almost two hours from Chehalis the other day.

I just installed a 500GB internal drive, so now have more than enough room for all this filming I'm doing.

All in all a rather good, busy day. And it's only 11:50!