Wilco's blog ^pro

Na een maand of 5 op reis te zijn geweest (project in Engeland, vakanties in America en Turkije) zijn we eindelijk weer eens thuis. En dat is goed! Hopelijk heb ik weer wat meer tijd om echt met fotografie bezig te zijn, en niet alleen maar vakantiekiekjes...of nog erger... werk

Als atheist denk ik al een tijdje na over m'n grafschrift. Een tekst als 'hier rust' vindt ik raar, want als ik dood ben, dan ben ik er niet meer. Rusten is een raar woord daarvoor. Een paar maanden geleden bedacht ik een tekst die me wel aanstond. Het beschrijft de absurdheid van het bestaan, en de ongelooflijke grootsheid van tijd en helal ten opzichte van een menselijk leven: "Nog even, en ik ben langer dood dan levend"

As an atheist I've been pondering a while now about my epitaph. I consider a text like 'here rest' to be weird, because when I die, I'm gone. Resting is a strange word for that. A few months ago I though of a text I like. It describes the absurdity of existence, and the unbelievable grandness of time and the universe compared to a human life: "Soon I'll be longer dead then alive".

White fluffy thing

As a child, I was afraid of dogs...I used to cry whenever a dog would approach me. For that reason, my parents got a poodle. I could grow up with a (small) dog in the family, and they reasoned that it would me over my fear.

Although it helped a lot, I always considered big dogs to be dangerous and approached them with a lot of care. Until we got Nio. When visiting the farm where he was born, two Rhodesian Ridgebacks came barking and running outside. I didn't like that, they were big dogs.

Now we have Nio for two years, and Nga for 8 months. I don't consider them to be big dogs anymore. In fact, I forget they are big and are somewhat surprised when people react on them. It's funny how your view can change by getting used to it...

 

Today, Nio, our oldest Rhodesian Ridgeback had an operation. He had one additional nipple on his chest, which was growing quite fast. That was removed, to avoid future problems. He is really timid now, and stays in his bench for most of the time...

It reminds me of a poodle my parents had when I was young. It was traumatized as a puppy in getting trimmed (haircut). He used to bite the trimmer. At the end, only my Uncle, who also raised him has a puppy was able to do the trimming for a few years. However, at a certain point in time, even that got worse. Once he bit my Uncle once, the only solution was to sedate him. My uncle bought pills, and give the dog one. After an hour, nothing happened yet and the dogs was running around like ever. He got yet another pill. Half an hour later, the dog became groggy and fell asleep. Trimming it was not a problem at all. Then, after two hours of chatting and talking, my uncle wondered when the dog would wake up again. He examined the description that came with the pills. It said: "For small dogs, use half a pill. For big dogs use one". The dog slept for 3 days in a row, and when he had to go outside, we needed to support him while walking. Poor poor dog. He was a great friend of our family for 18 years...

The last couple of years, I've been wanting to read some books, but never found the time. This has changed!

Since September last year, I'm traveling towards a customer for 70 kilometers back & forth. Under normal circumstances, this would take about 45 minutes by car. However, the dutch traffic is quite busy during rush hour, and 70 km of highway can take up 1 to 1,5 hours. Today, on the way back it took me even 2 hours.

This is where audiobook come in. Having loads of idle time in the car, I now listen to audiobooks. It is very relaxing to listen to a voice reading a book. It influences my driving style in a possitive way. With a smile I watch others rush home, switching lanes time and time again to crawl one or two cars ahead of the rest. To overtake them not even a minute later by sticking to the same lane and calmly listening to my book. It's a great way to travel.

The books I've listen to so far are Bill Bryson's 'A brief history of nearly everything', a marvelous overview of discoveries in physics, chemistry, geology and biology. Very entertaining and the unabridged version took me 18 hours. Another book was 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen. A great way of organising your work. On my Mac, an application called OmniFocus converts the ideas of David into a very pleasant to use and supportive application. Give it a try if you can...

After being ill myself (a mild version of the flew) and just following me my wife Carla, now our dogs are ill. Nga is suffering from a bad cough, and Nio is getting it from her. This morning, Nga was pulling the leash as usual, but she started coughing. I though nothing of it, because she was pulling quite hard. In the 3 weeks we have her now, she has grown from 5.5 to 8 kilograms. She's getting stronger fast. Nio will have a hard time, she's bossing him around already now and then, little as she is. She just doesn't know the word 'give up' yet...

In the afternoon, just before I arrived home from my first (and last) working day this week, Nga started coughing really bad. We went to the vet and he diagnosed her before we closed the door: infection of her throat. She got anti-biotics to cure it. To prevent Nio gets it from her, he has medicins as well. All that for a minor 90 euros...

We just confirmed that we are going to add Nga to our family. The owner of Nga was delighted to hear about it. Carla was very happy, as you can see, and so am I...after a few weeks of searching for a puppy, we finally found one that we liked. Carla did most of the search work. She first looked in Holland, but there are very few  bloodlines of Rhodesian Ridgebacks that do not have a common ancester  with Nio, our current RR.

Nga Confirmed

She then tried to look for dogs abroad and saw some very nice ones in Sweden and Finland. However, getting a dog across the border is quite an undertaking, and could take months. Therefore she tried once more in Holland. And she succeeded...meet Nga. She's 5 weeks old on this picture. She stays in the nest until the 8th week, and I'm really looking forward to the moment she joins us.

Nga 3

While visiting her, she fell asleep in my lap. It was sooo cute, I fell in love immediately. And now, just 20 nights of sleep and the moment is there...

Oh dear! We did it. We though of a potentional new name for a 2nd Rhodesian Ridgeback. It's Nga. It fits nice with Nio, but it's different enough to avoid name clashes.

That's probably one of the last steps we needed to start looking around for a nest of RR's. It's very exciting!

For the rest, I'm very busy working at the moment. The few moments I do have available I spend taking pictures and uploading them. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to enjoy everybody else's work at the moment...

 

Music was my first love. And it will be my last. A few lines of a John Miles song that are applicable to so many people. Once you're struck with the music virus you cannot escape. I for instance was struck with the www.cardiacs.com virus many years ago. They are a unknown UK punk-symphonic-rock-art band that lasted for 20-odd years now. Brilliant music that is great on CD, but even better live on stage.

When my father heard he had cancer and he had not very long to live, my wife called me to notify me. The song I had on the CD player in my car at that moment was "Signs" by the Cardiacs. The song is carved in my soul forever.

Nio & the dots

Nio loves running. He's constantly challenging other dogs to run with him. It makes him happy. When he meets a dog that can match his speed and stamina, pictures like this one are easy to make. Just point the camera and shoot as many times as you can.

This dalmation for instance, who is just over 5 months old, was the kind of dog Nio likes. He would go on forever. When Nio stopped, the dalmation would challenge him. When the dalmation stopped, Nio kept on going. They were running with eachother for at least 15 minutes.

Today we went walking with Nio twice. He's really in a great shape and seems to have unlimited energy. First we went to "De Roestelberg" in the Drunensche Duinen. Then, in the evening to the lake near Eindhoven, together Arjan and Michelle and their dogs Shilo and Tyr (Islanding sheppards).

Walking Nio is really great. We (my wife Carla and me) really enjoy seeing him running, he's usually tricking other dogs into running after him and then outruns them easily. During the walks we discuss many things. Today we talked about the thing that keeps us busy for a while now: starting up my own company. It's a scary step, but as things look now it's really going to work out well... from the 1st of September I will become a freelancer. There's plenty of work available and the tarrifs are great. I'm really excited about it...

Taking Nio's pictures today was hard. The light wasn't that great and I had a lot of trouble taking pictures. I usually use manual mode on the camera. In Drunen we encountered a group of doberman owners, they were jointly walking their dogs in the way we walk RR's regularly. There were quite a lot of people with camera's and one of them used a flashlight during daylight. I expect that that's a way to improve the quality of my pictures. However, when trying out to use the flashlight I discovered my batteries were empty. Dough!
 Next time I'll make sure I'm fully charged...

One last thing. A lot of people I enjoyed sharing pictures with moved to Ipernity. I still use Flickr (Holland is not censored) but I don't enjoy it as much as I did. I'm considering moving to Ipernity, but am still hesitating. It means uploading a lot of pics and organising them. That's something I'm not looking forward to. Currenly I'm using flickr to upload all my pics and Ipernity as a place to store the ones I really like. I need some time to decide what works best.

 

Wilco