Thoughts on being held captive

For me, birds are a symbol of freedom.

I don't like to see them caged

or kept in captivity like this one here.

I love watching birds fly,

the graceful movement of their wings,

the way they balance themselves and glide through the air.

Seeing them tied down, unable to fly,

makes my heart break a little.

The same goes for other pets kept in homes

in ways that constrict their ability to move about freely.

Like rabbits in tiny hutches.

Or fish in a glass bowl where they can do little else except go round and round and round again.

I've seen iguanas trapped in waterless fish tanks

with food poured down a chute for it to consume;

hamsters and mice

~mice? why have them as pets, anyway?~

in cages as big as only a shoe box;

a colleague keeps snakes in a glass box.

~shudder: remind me never to go to his house, ever~

Maybe I don't understand it

because I am not a very animal person.

I am fascinated by all weird and wonderful creatures,

but would prefer to admire them from afar

rather than have one constantly around me.

But don't all creatures deserve to have the freedom they are born with?

Don't they deserve to be happy?

***

“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.”
~Thucydides~

I haven't got green fingers...

Planting new seeds today.

Marigold, three varieties of the four o'clock flower,

tomato, spinach, basil, coriander and mint.

Whenever I am sowing new seeds,

I always wish they had the power of Jack's magic beans

so that they would shoot up overnight

and there wouldn't be the endless watering and waiting and watering

and wondering if this time they will actually grow to maturity.

Borrowed Words Today

"Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye."
~Helen Keller~

"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
~Winston Churchill~

"Our ability to achieve happiness and success depends on the strength of our wings."
~Catherine Pulsifer~

Thursday Evening

Thursday evening - one of my favourite times of the week.

The beginning of the weekend.

The pleasant thought of not having to wake up at the crack of dawn tomorrow.

Two days of fun, family focused activities.

(I'm in a happy mood right now and am just going to pretend there is no boring laundry and cleaning to do in between.)

Simple Things

A selection of simple things that made my heart sing TODAY.

*hearing his groggy voice first thing in the morning when I phone to wake him up*
*enjoying a leisurely breakfast of buttery toast and berry-licious smoothie*
*seeing how much Em is enjoying reading the books that I too loved as a child*
*receiving an unexpected gift of appreciation from my colleagues*
*observing a school hall filled with children praying in unison*
*listening to a boy explain why he loves school so much*
*being told by a teacher that she chose the profession because of her ninth grade English teacher (i.e. me!!!)*
*hearing the bicycle bell ring tone that tells me it's him calling*
*being greeted at the door with hugs and cards that say “I love you mamma”*
*sharing laughs with my mother*
*reading poetry with my children*
*sipping a mug of hot tea spiced with cloves, cinnamon and cardamom*
*feeling the relief of enjoying a relaxing work-free evening*

***

If you haven't already played,

won't you join us in playing simple things?

Be sure to let Christina know.

Corner View: Favourite Hangout

Snuggled in between my two bookworms,

reading stories together.

***

Check out other corner views via the lovely Jane.

***

I shall be back in a while to play along with the queen of simple things.

Forgotten

Once beloved.

Now, forgotten.

This teddy bear lies discarded on a roof top.

Tonight

The house is still. All I hear is the faint hum of the air conditioner and the occasional noise of a passing vehicle out on the street.

I am sitting in the children's bedroom, watching them sleep. Em wrapped tightly in her blanket. Hero lying across the bed, on top of his blanket. He's like me that way. While Em sleeps like her father. Buried under the covers, head and all.


Their faces are so angelic as they sleep. So peaceful. It is relaxing to just watch them sleep.


I have reading to do. A presentation to prepare. A pile of laundry to sort. But it can wait. They can all wait.


Tonight, let me savour this moment with my two little angels.

Time Flies

Once upon a time

my baby girl's feet were too small for these.
Today she turns eight

and

at the rate she seems to be growing,

I think I should be able to wear her shoes before long.

Fly Free. Soar High.

"We may run, walk, stumble, drive or fly.

But let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey,

or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way."

~author unknown~

“Hold fast to your dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”
~ Langston Hughes ~

[Last photo by Em.]

Piling Up

Work has been crazy this week

as we try to meet a big deadline.

The paperwork has been piling up on my desk

and I seem to be spending the last few hours of every evening this week

writing, reading, editing.

And so,

I have not been able to come round to yours.

Once I manage to work my way through this pile of reading

I will be visiting you,

my blog lovelies.

Tangles

You know what you want to say.

You know exactly what you want to say.

But somehow your tongue gets all knotted up inside

and the words just won't come out.

Does that happen to you sometimes?

"The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that,

to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe."
~ Remy de Gourmont ~

Red and Blue

Adding colour

to an otherwise
grey day at sea.

***

A HUGE thank you to all of you who follow me (99 people!!!)

and especially those of you who come here

and leave me such sweet, encouraging comments.

You add smiles to my day.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Mosaic Monday: Lillies

Beauty comforts the soul

and eases the pain.

I Need to Learn

I photograph everyday.

Even before I started my photo-a-day project,

I took photos all the time.
Some days it may be just a quick must-have shot.
Other days I can easily take over a hundred photos of the same subject
if I have the time.
I do it because I enjoy it.
But I know very little about cameras and photography.
And I need to learn.

Because I want to take good photos.

First, let's talk cameras.

What kind of camera do you use?

I use a small point and shoot.

While it is handy for taking with me everywhere,

I feel it's limitations,

and am hoping to get a better one soon.
Is there a camera you would recommend?

Next, photo processing.

Until very recently, all my images were SOOC.

I never even considered playing around with the photos

once they had been taken.

But then I realised that doing a little tweaking here and there

could actually help to bring out the best of the image.

I still haven't figured out much

apart from cropping and playing around with the saturation and contrast.

Which programs do you use for this?

And also, tell me about organisation.

I have a hard drive for my photos,

where I save them in monthly folders.

All the photos for that month go in one folder.

But with the amount of photos I usually take

that is becoming problematic

if I want to search for a particular photo from the past

and don't know when it was taken.

How do you organise your photos?

Zephyr Lillies

slender stems

grass-like leaves

delicate

funnel shaped flowers

pretty in pink

Ring of Fire

Sometimes, it's good to be a resident of Male'.

For over four hours today,

starting just after 10am,

people came out to watch the sky.

People with x-rays

and special sunglasses

watched as the moon blocked the view of the sun,

creating crescent and ring shaped shadows everywhere

as the sun changed from a ball of fire

into a crescent and finally to a ring of light in the sky.

We watched this spectacularly long annular eclipse,

fully transfixed,

knowing that noone would see this view

for this long

until December 23, 3043.

Some of us kissed the eclipse goodbye.

Randomness strikes again

The very creative, very talented SuzyQ tagged me with a seven random things meme (and a creative blogger award - thanks SuzyQ!). So here goes:

1. I like to walk. I walk everywhere. Not just when I am here in the Maldives, where you can walk round an entire island in less than an hour, but even when I lived elsewhere, I loved walking.

2. I have a sweet tooth. A very sweet tooth. I crave gooey, creamy, chocolately goodness all the time. When I was pregnant with Em, and living in Auckland, I once walked for an hour in heavy rain and strong winds to an Indian shop to buy some jallebis.

3. Until the beginning of last year, I regularly watched the news on TV (several international and local channels) and read a variety of newspapers (usually online). But then I realised that news programmes usually get me all depressed or worked up, and I figured that I didn't need that additional stress. So I stopped watching the news and stopped reading the papers. If there is something I want to look up or particularly want to be updated on, of course I will watch/read. But the whole no-news thing seems to be working rather well. I have more time to do other things, I stress less, and thanks to people around me who are constantly updated on current events, I hear about all the important bits anyway!

4. I don't like sci-fi movies. I once got talked into going to a sci-fi movie with someone (I forget the name of the movie now) who fell asleep after about 20 minutes and started snoring LOUDLY and could not be woken up. So I simply moved a few seats away, and in fact would have walked out, if only I had a way of getting back home.

5. When I was in a child, I used to often get dizzy. On my very first day at first grade, I remember getting so nervous that I forgot to breathe and passed out. There was often a fainting incident at school assemblies and prize days and other major events.

6. I don't like speaking to people on the phone. I prefer talking face to face. Or to communicate through writing. Texts, emails, letters, notes on little post-its, cards ... anything is better than talking on the phone.

7. My first ever visit to a dentist was when I was 33. I know you are supposed to have regular check ups and all that, but I never did. And when I did go, the dentist found it hard to believe that it was my very first time in a dentist's chair.

So there you go.

Now, the rules of the meme stipulate that I tag seven more creative bloggers and pass on the award. But I am not a girl who plays by the rules. And I cannot choose just seven people.

But if you would like to play along, consider yourself tagged!

Corner Views: Holiday

Last Saturday was the last day of the school holidays
and we spent the day

(no prizes for guessing)

at the beach.

I chased crabs.

Ate sour green mangoes dipped in spicy rihaakuru.

The boys fished.

Size doesn't matter, does it?

Say hello to my parents.

Em practised her swimming and floating.

It was an altogether wonderful end
to the holidays.

Now, I need to shake off the holiday feeling
and focus more fully on work.

Check out other corner views here.

Dreaming Big Dreams

I've never fancied buying a car.
Never.
But a yacht?
Now, that's a totally different subject.
I dream sometimes
~ the sometimes being the beautiful calm-weather days ~
I dream sometimes
of sailing away in a yacht
round all the atolls that make up this archipelago.
Discovering the uniqueness of each ring of islands
then setting sail into the sunset
yet again.

***

I've never considered owning a business.

The b-word

just makes me switch off

and yawn in boredom.

But I dream sometimes

~the sometimes being days I'm frustrated with the education system~

I dream sometimes

of setting up and running my own school.

Teaching children.

Learning from them.

Building people and bright, beautiful futures.

***

I've never wanted to be a doctor.

Never.

It's just never been my thing.

There are far too many in my family anyway.

But I dream sometimes

~the sometimes being every single day for as long as I can remember~

I dream sometimes

of putting pen to paper

or words on the screen

and writing beautiful, unputdownable stories.

Stories of people and places; of love and war.

***

What big dreams do you dream?

Blow

At first, nothing happens.

Then, bubbles start to appear... from the mouth!!!

Finally, we get the hang of it.

By the way - the band-aid on the thumb?
Totally working as a reminder.
He has not once sucked his thumb in the last three weeks :)

And this,

this is our resident bubble making expert.

10 of 365

One of my goals for this year

is to learn how to take good photographs.

So when Julochka announced that she was going to start

a-photo-a-day project,

I thought it was the perfect opportunity

to challenge myself

to take photographs everyday

and post them here.

So I set up my own flickr account

and joined in.

Sure, it is kind of intimidating at times

when I feel like I am just a little girl playing with a toy camera

amid all the cool photographers

with real cameras

who regularly post photos that make my jaw drop

and whisper wow.

But it's also a great learning experience,

seeing the work of others

and getting lots of helpful feedback

from this very supportive pool of blogging photographers.

My photos so far are these:

Day 1: You've seen this before...

the red lizard peeking at me from behind a wall.

Day 2: I am not entirely sure what this is.

I found it in front of a house and assume it is

some kind of rack used for drying fish.

Day 3: A lonely boat at sunset.

Day 4: A twisty orange coloured vine
in the early morning sun.

Day 5: Paper cups on the the plane
on my flight from Gan to Male'.

Day 6: Basil blossoms.

Day 7: a white crab making a quick getaway

Day 8: Close up of a lily.
Does anyone know what these lillies are called?

Day 9: The swings at the playground.

Day 10: A moss covered wall.

Ten days have passed.

Only 355 days to go!