Até deu faísca!

Lisboa, linda Lisboa !
I am back for two weeks, working dusk to dawn, but it's great to be here!
Portugal is really a beautiful country, my hearts beats faster just being here. Though I know that it's only for a short time that I will be here, and that it will be long before I will pass through here again, I try not to think about it. I am enjoying every moment of it, and see things as I never saw before.The lamp post in Alameda, near Fonte Luminosa... beautiful geometry, the lamppost adds to the image of the square, even when the sun makes it superfluous.
Windpower is booming business in Portugal, and it fits also well with the culture, I think. And I say this with the utmost respect for the culture that I have learned to love so much: Portuguese are windy people, they go were the wind takes them and make the best of it, not as opportunists, but as realists. There is no changing the wind, just change your goals and decide to go where the wind wants you to be... It makes them extremely inventive, because they have to find solutions for problems nobody ever solved before... This windfarm is next to A8, going north of lisbon, about 20 km south of Óbidos, a medieval town in the contest for next world wonder..
When driving through Lisbon, you drive by history all the time... some don't notice it anymore, but this city has a hard job expanding while keeping it's patrimonium intact.
July 2007

Vanity

Lichtaart, July 2007
Though I be-eth hideous, do I not haveth the right to be vain ?

This is a toad, photographed around our house... these toads are normally very afraid of humans, but this one was obviously more vain then afraid... Crazy as it sounds, he was actually posing, turning around for me, showing his best sides...
really special animal...
But it does make some sense. It's not about being pretty or not, it's all about being what you are. Consciously choosing to be yourself is maybe the biggest freedom you can have. Is it wrong to be happy to be oneself ? Is the peace this choice gives sometimes mistaken for vanity ?