365 days later…

To be continued.

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Seb’s Flickr stream / Abi’s Flickr stream

For the last few months I’ve been trying to troubleshoot my sleeping problems. Looking through the archives, it seems I first reported trouble sleeping over a year ago — yikes! — and then a few months ago I alluded to some continuing issues. I think things have been improving, but I’ll be damned if I can attribute that to any one change! I’ve been exercising regularly (cycling for a few miles every day), and of course I’ve travelled quite a lot this year which has given my mind the SPACE it needs. It’s amazing: the moment I leave my room (which is usually only when I travel), my composure completely changes. I don’t think I’m particularly highly-strung at the worst of times, but when I travel I’m positively mellow.

So, anyway, the bedding! First I got a fancy 400-thread Egyptian cotton bed sheet and a nice protector to go under it. That didn’t help much (though it does feel really good to slide up and down against), so I got new pillows and covers. They helped a bit. Then earlier this week my newest (and most expensive, eep!) purchases arrived: a Hungarian goose down duvet, and a 400-thread Egyptian cotton duvet cover. Today I spent a few minutes re-making my bed — and as you can see from the creases, I am yet to lay on it! I’m looking forward to tonight, that’s for sure.

You’re all invited to come and try out my new bedding, incidentally! Come! There’s plenty of space.

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In other news, it looks like I’ll be in San Francisco in the middle of September. Microsoft is flying me out there for a software launch event! From what I can tell, official business will only last for a day, which means I should be able to spend a few days exploring San Francisco. Do any Angelenos want to come up and see me?! I doubt I’ll make it down to LA unless I can squeeze a whole week out of the trip.

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Photography-wise, I’m glad to say that my exhibition of photos from the Faroe Islands went well. I also sold a few photos from Norway! At last!

I updated my Montenegro gallery, so you can now buy those too. The gallery on this site is actually the most complete collection — Flickr is still missing a few, which I will update in the next few days.

I think that’s all for now…!

The young ones & Have I told you lately that I Love You?

Seb: I’ve spent most of this past week in the company of kids. I don’t mean that derogatorily — I mean that I’m at least 10 years older than most of them.

It’s odd, I’ve always got on better with younger and older people — but not so much with my contemporaries. I get on well with kids because they’re incredibly easy to talk to (and because they’re invariably awed and interested by the cool things I’ve done). Older people (especially women) love me, probably because I’m far too mature and wise to be ‘just 26′, while still sporting good skin and bright eyes.

When it comes to people my age, there’s a certain something in the way. I don’t know if it’s peer pressure, competition, sexual tension or what… but it seems a lot harder to just be with people my own age. It’s always been that way. That’s why I hated college. We were all between 16 and 18. I was forced to hang out with the librarian — she was mid-20s (and cute!) — or with the headmaster (really!)

In this photo, they’ve all been jumping into my pool, and, despite my fatherly badgering, most of them were doing it while fully dressed. Crazy kids!

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Abi: This week saw my good friend Nic get married to his partner Nick. Yes, they have the same name. I don’t really believe that any wedding can be described as conventional but this one was more unusual than most. Look a bit closer and you will see a Drag Queen in the background, one of the several that flanked the Groom’s arrival to the reception and one that provided the Cabaret for the evening.

I have to say that this was hands-down one of the best Weddings I have ever been to. The music was brilliant and we must have danced for about six hours straight. My feet are paying for it today though!

I’ve been a bit down on love for a while. I am however, a hopeless romantic and my faith has been restored in it a bit this year. I do believe that finding a suitable life partner happens to the very fortunate and it is very much something I believe in, however unlikely it can seem sometimes. I’ve never seen it as settling down, I don’t believe people should “settle” for each other. You just continue on the path of brilliance with a companion. I always want to be the best I can be, a succcessful partnership in my eyes is a person I can never stop learning from and laughing with.

I captured this intimate moment between the happy couple and I think it sums up the whole event and my thoughts on partnerships perfectly. Great fun.

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Click either photo to see it in smaller, technicolor glory on Flickr

Montenegro dawn & Cheers

Seb: After two weeks I can now speak Montenegrin! Well, if sentences could be made out of modifiers, adjectives and expletives, that is.

Here are a few choice phrases:

Verlo mali jebi… (Very small fuck.)

Veliki, glup, jebi! (Fat, stupid fuck!)

It doens’t really work on paper, but when accompanied with gestures and expressive modulation of volume, it’s surprising what you can do with a vocabulary of just 50 words. The great thing about sentences without nouns (I do know a few, but let’s face it: ‘water’ isn’t very flexible) is that you can shoehorn almost any emotion with the right shake of the head, finger point or enunciation.

Anyway, regarding this immense landscape and these two little islands. The island on the left (St George) houses an ancient monastery (possibly from the 9th century), while the island on the right (Our Lady of the Rocks) is man-made — or rather, built up from a tiny rock in the water. Over the last 600 years, people have sailed out from Perast (on the left) and dumped rocks in the water. They also used sunken boats, or indeed any other detritus that made for good foundations. Finally, they built a church. This man-made island was so famous that important nobles from all around the Adriatic Sea donated oil paintings and gold coins (that are still hoarded inside!)

But why did they build the island? Because some sailors found an image of Our Lady (The Virgin Mary) on the small rock. I don’t know if they found an actual painting of Mary, or whether her visage was somehow engraved on the rock, but… still… it puts the whole ‘Face of Jesus found on piece of toast’ thing into perspective.

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Abi:I tend to do my socialising in huge chunks. I’m the kind of person who will go out every night for a week, then stay in for a month. I’ve not been a regular weekend drinker since University because the whole scene does not really suit me. I’d rather go see a band or a show, or something.

Having said that, this week just happens to be one of those weeks where everything is happening, I’ve been out for five consecutive nights and again last night as part of my friend Nic’s hen/stag celebrations. This baffles me because I am totally and utterly strapped for cash right now and haven’t managed to spend a great deal. I guess one advantage of not going out and partaking of alcohol regularly is that I am a shameless lightweight. After this Gin and Tonic here I was already tipsy.

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Click either photo to see it on Flickr!

I just had my first solid poop in four days! To celebrate, here are a handful of pretty photos from all over Montenegro, the  pint-sized jewel of the Adriatic Sea. For a country with 600,000 citizens and an area of just 5,000 square miles — i.e. one of the smallest countries in the world — there sure is a lot to see and do here.

I’ll post a lot more photos once I’m back in England, on Tuesday. If you want to see more, visit Flickr. You can’t buy these photos just yet, but I’ll fix that when I get home.

Recuperate & Bay of Kotor

Abi: Ah! another 52 Weeks in which Abi and Sebastian are thrown off kilter because one of them is travelling. When I think about this project and all its similarities and contrasts, I am always amazed we managed to keep it going the way we do. Every Sunday, we upload our respective images in readiness for the following day, regardless of where we happen to be. It’s part of my week and it’s pretty weird to think it’s almost over. I think I’ll miss it.

I am not the best at convalescing. It’s not so much that I am unused to downtime, more that even during those periods of rest I am quite often occupied. When events force you back to bed and you are quite unable to stay awake it is pretty frustrating. All you can do is just lie there, re read as many novels as you can and watch crap TV until the whole sorry episode is over.

I’m not even kidding, whilst Seb is away taking spectacular photos I haven’t really ventured much further than this.

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Seb: It’s not hard to see why the Bay of Kotor (it’s a fjord really! or ’submerged river canyon’, apparently) is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The last week has been unrelentingly hot, with temperatures reaching over 40C and humidity stubbornly sitting at around 100%. Even at night it’s about 25C. To say that my stay here has been merely ’sticky’ would be a vast understatement.

Still, where there is tropical heat, there is ultimately a tropical storm — and that’s what you can see here. The rain front is on the right (the dark grey fog by the mountain), and about 30 seconds later the heavens opened and soaked both me and the camera.

But I got the shot!

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Click either photo to see a smaller version on Flickr!

Girl, You’ll be a Woman soon & Growing up

Abi: My Mum died when I was 15. I always think it was a shame because I could really do with asking her a few things about now. I never knew my Mother as an adult, I certainly never thought much about her life before I entered it. The truth is, I always think I am failing a bit at being an adult. I don’t see myself as having achieved half the things I thought I should or would have done by now. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, we should never measure our lives in terms of the choices made by our peers. I don’t even know if I want the same things. Sometimes I feel like I never grew up at all.

I found this photo of my Mother (taken when she must have been around my age) amongst a lot of old stuff. It is one of my favourite pictures of her, possibly because it was taken at a time in her life I can identify with. She had just come out of a major relationship and was (in the process of) falling in love with a handsome man with a camera, (that man later became my father). He took a lot of photos of her around this time, possibly as many people do when they fall in love and this enigmatic image is by far my favourite. I stuck it to my mirror, just to remind myself that it is possible to be more than the person you think you should be by now.

This is a corner of my bedroom, the Pearls are also my Mothers. My Cat Sixx visible there, just underscoring the sad spinster vibe of the whole image!

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Seb: This weekend I attended my old school’s annual fair. Every year less of my school friends turn up. The ones that do turn up are inexorably those with children. Of course, they are now sending their children to the same school! Thus perpetuates the circle of life…

So I play with the kids. Prod them gently on the nose. Offer them a large hand to chew, gnaw or grab, depending on their age. Pull scary faces. That kind of thing.

And then I realise, shit, my friends have children.

I don’t even have a girlfriend and these guys have KIDS! They’ve had kids for YEARS! Every year I go back to school and MORE of my friends have kids!

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that eventually all of my friends will have kids. Everyone will have cute little bambinos but me. 26 isn’t that old to still be without progeny. Plenty of time left…

As long as there are still any women left by the time I feel ready to settle down…

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Click either photo to see it on Flickr, and to experience the COMMENTS.

For the last few weeks of our 52 Weeks project, I will be putting our collaborations both on the project’s dedicated site, and here on the front page of the blog.

I figured lots of you might not have seen the project, or even heard of it, and the year is almost at an end! Ach, time goes by so quickly…

Also, you will notice the side bar change when you’re looking at a 52 Weeks entry. That’s kind of by design, and kind of because I can’t work out how to disable it gracefully…

P.S. I’m flying to Montenegro next week! I should write some more about that.

The Muse & Doublethink

(Click either photo to see it on Flickr)

I’ve been busily working on some changes to this blog! Nothing ground-breaking, just… tweaks.

First, I’ve cut down the sidebar a little. Now it links through to a few of my favourite tags (on religion, on sex and girls, on culture, etc.), and a handful of my favourite blog posts.

Second, you can now buy photos from this blog! I’ve created a gallery with almost every photo in — and on select photos throughout the site, when you click on them, a ‘buy this photo’ button will appear. Click the button, checkout with PayPal and… voilà! An original photo is will soon be yours! (I still need to write a ’shipping details’ page — bear with me on that.) Almost every named photo is for sale, but as usual though, each photo is part of a limited run, so once it’s sold out… that’s it! For ever!

To celebrate this awesome new feature, here are some stunning sunset landscapes that I shot last week. I was actually chasing the new moon that was meant to appear on the 14th, but sadly I didn’t catch it. Damn clouds! The moon was incredibly close to the sun, setting just half an hour after the sun — unusual, I’m told! Still, those same clouds provided a fantastic backdrop for a bulbous, swollen sun. It reminded me of molten glass being blown in the Murano glass factories, in the Venetian Lagoon.

(In chronological order, over a span of about 20 minutes.)

(There’s also a video of the sun’s dying moments, if you like watching the sun set…)

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In other news, I’m also chasing a driving license. I took an official mock theory test online and scored 42 out of 50! I’ve only looked at the Highway Code once, for about an hour, back when I was 18. That was when I took my first theory test — I passed, but it lapses after two years. Lame. Anyway, if I pass my theory test, I could have a driving license by the end of July! Not that I am looking forward to driving around with the current fuel prices — but if I want to drive around during my Great East Asia Tour, a driving license is, well, necessary.

I’m working on a few other things at the moment but they’re not really things I can blog about. Unless you want to hear about my jogging experiences… or how many sit-ups I am now capable of! (About 100!) I’m also burrowing deeper into the AOL behemoth. Before you know it I’ll be one of those wizened Jews that wields the kind of prejudiced justice that only mass media can muster.