from euphoria to utopia

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That, somewhat cryptic, headline refers to a song and a lake. Last night, the Eurovision Song Contest took place in Baku, Azerbaijan. This ‘competition in music’ has been going on for as long as I can remember. It’s just a fun thing — you can’t compete in music — families get together and watch it, everyone has some opinion on which song/country should win. Over the years it has gotten more complicated and also many new countries. Most years I can’t remember one single song because I’ve felt as if they were all like … ‘chewing gum’, a few I remember … ABBA from 1974 with Waterloo, and two songs will forever stick in my mind for various reasons, I love them both: Wings of Love, with Olsen Brothers [Denmark 2000] and Gente di Mare, with Umberto Tozzi & Raf [Italy 1986].

Now, I could have watched it here on the computer, had I wanted to but I really didn’t care that much. Had checked out Sweden’s contribution (Euphoria, with Loreen), but I didn’t care for it at all. Followed it a little half-heartedly on Twitter, and to my big surprise Sweden won!  I’m usually better than that, picking them, but it has happened before, that I’ve been really wrong. In any event … next year it will take place in Sweden, probably in Stockholm.

Today was a beautiful day and we went to Lake Utopia. When you drive south, towards the American border, there’s a big intersection where you get to Blacks Harbour if you turn left, and Lake Utopia when you go right. We had never been there before, the name sort of tickles your imagination, so we went there. It was nice … it was a lake. Period.

That didn’t take long, so we went on to Blacks Harbour. That’s where the ferry to Grand Manan leaves from, but we’ll do that another day. Going to Grand Manan is at least a full day event, and we’d have to start out earlier.

Next to Blacks Harbour was a cute, little place called Beaver Harbour. They had a lighthouse, I’m a sucker for lighthouses … and I’m not the only one!

wearing a wire

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From yesterday morning, until this morning I wore a so called Holter monitor. It’s a 24hrs ECG … like a tape recorder. My doctor just wanted to rule out atrial fibrillation … I don’t suffer from anything serious — at least it doesn’t feel that way. In any event, when I looked at myself in the mirror, noticing all the cords underneath my T-shirt I thought of Tony Soprano and Pussy :D

During those twenty four hours, I thought I’d go on with my life as usual, so we were out in the glorious weather, took some pictures.

Have you ever kept on taking the same subject, but still didn’t feel that you got it just right?! That’s how I’ve felt about the bridge over the Reversing Falls. Don’t know how many photos I have of the same bridge, but as of yesterday I can say that I’m rather happy with it.

It wasn’t planned — it was just that I decided ‘playing tourist’ in my own town, and climbed up on the observation deck above the Falls. Immediately saw that this was the way I wanted the bridge to be shot!

Took a walk across the bridge — something I’ve only done once before! They’ve put up a monument in memorial of an accident that happened a number of years ago … a gas station blew up on this spot, where this now sits. I don’t know what the thought behind this art work is — in my touristy escapades, I forgot to read the plaque.

Yesterday morning, when we drove up to the hospital, we drove by the copper dome from the old General Hospital. It’s located in a very busy intersection, I’ve shot it once before but wasn’t happy with my shot at all. Now, as we were driving up, I saw that I could get a shot where the Stone Church appeared right in between the pillars of the dome … or so I thought!

So … this morning, as we drove up there to return the Holter, I decided to give it a go. Carefully crossed the streets, and walked down, in the wet, newly mowed, grass to compose my shot. Now … I don’t know how I saw it from the car, but the only part of the Stone Church I got in the frame was the uppermost tips.

The General Hospital was a landmark, opened 1931 and imploded 1995, so I never saw it. There are time capsules underneath the dome.

Now we have the Regional Hospital a bit outside of the city and St. Joseph’s, which was the one I went to today.

Royal Visit

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Prince Charles and his wife Camilla visited Saint John yesterday. This last weekend was a, what they call, long weekend, as yesterday was Victoria Day. The little tug boats in the harbour have been practising a show they were going to put on. Finally, I got an occasion both to see that, and even shoot some pictures of it. It was extremely cool! When all three had the spray up, it looked like big, white angel wings over Saint John Harbour! They also «danced» around … in a coordinated formation. Imgagine … the beauty that came out of these, powerful, little guys that we see every day, huffing and puffing around.

Many streets were closed off, downtown, for this visit. I was reminded of another, royal visit, while we lived in Quebec City. The King and Queen of Sweden came there, which actually meant something to me on a personal level. I’d been away from my homeland for a number of years by then. Just to see the Swedish flag flying on the parliament building gave me goose bumps.

In Quebec City we were very few Swedish people … a  group of perhaps fifteen at the most. They’d formed a group, had get-togethers every now and then. I took part in that for a while, until I realized I had nothing in common with them. All of them had small children — I have, by choice, no kids — and these meetings were all about kids, and attempting to maintain their Swedish language.

Here, in Saint John, I’ve met one more Swede … that’s all.

In any event, for this visit, we all gathered outside Château Frontenac, when the royal couple arrived. Waving Swedish flags and all :)

Now, this particular visit, we didn’t care too much about. The weather was brilliant and we drove south a bit … out of the city. Took the same route as we’ve done so many times before … visited little fishing villages … looked for birds. Strangely enough, no matter how many times I go to these places — there’s always something to enjoy or discover.

The day before, I had a bad day … photo-wise! Saw that there was a Great Egret out in the marsh, just outside town. I’d never managed to get a picture of one — they aren’t a common sight here — I had the long lens already on the camera, so I took off … out in the marsh, with bare legs and little sandals! I was still far away from the bird, but hoped that I could still get some half decent shots. On top of that, there was another, white bird out there … what I later found out was a Snowy Egret! That would have been something, but it was not to be!

I don’t know what went wrong there in this marsh?! All my settings were okay, but everything came out as a big blur with two, white blobs. The camera hadn’t focused on anything at all, which was odd.

Before we took off, we went back there. The birds were still there, but even farther out in the marsh, so … no dice.

This time, I had the tripod with me so I wanted to give a small waterfall a go. It’s in a place called Musquash. When I first came here, I found all those names so intriguing … some, even hard to pronounce, like Manawagonish Road. No problem there anymore.

So much fun to shoot running water with long exposure! That was my first reason for getting a DSLR camera! Even though it looks surreal … water certainly doesn’t look that way in real life, it never ceases to amuse me! :)

Didn’t see any eagles this time, but we did see an Osprey in its nest, up in a hydro tower.

In Dipper Harbour, there are always Barn Swallows, fluttering around .. underneath the wharf, but this time I was lucky enough to see one actually sitting down for a while. Normally they seem to be all stressed out!

We drove back, decided to have supper out, so I had fish & chips in our favourite, little restaurant; AJ’s.

All in all, a glorious day! We had four days of hot weather, now we’re back to rain, fog … and some relief.

That was my weekend …. so how was yours?

All photos are clickable, and will open in a new tab/window, as usual.

 

 

Summer

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As last weeks regular photo challenge from WordPress was … delayed … Ailsa stepped up to the plate and did one [reflections]. That was so much fun and she got a tremendous response so she decided to do another one: Summer … ‘photos that means summer to you‘. The last four years, I’ve had a beef with summer — it’s too hot and too humid for my taste. Everything with moderation.

But…

Summer means colour!

It’s a good year for the Dandelion

We’ve had a more or less snow free winter … everything was greyish brown for the longest time! I could hear the camera crying for colour!

Summer means new life!

Last year’s edition

Summer means ocean!

…and we have plenty of it here in Saint John, NB. We’re right at the north Atlantic sea board, so the ocean is rarely more than a few minutes away. Desolate beaches, where you certainly not need to be elbow-to-elbow with anyone, are numerous!

Summer means cruise ships!

Cruise ship season starts on June 9, so this is from last year.

Just cannot do a summer post from Saint John, without at least one fog shot … we’re the Fog Capital of Canada!

Summer means Fog!

Here, just some nice, fluffy ground fog, that I chose becasue I liked the picture — the regular pea soup we get here, would just have turned out plain white.

I guess all this summer fun outweighs the sleepless nights, spent on the balcony, dreaming of … colder weather!

I was thinking about Swearing…

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Sweden just lost the hockey game against Czech Rep. so I used a few, Swedish profanities. They won’t go on to the finals.

This happened to coincide with a blog post in WordPress Daily Post about swearing. I’ve had all the good reasons to think about that subject, as swearing is so different in different languages. Even if I translate our [Swedish] swear words to English, they don’t have the same power! I just said «Hell!» to Gerry, and he didn’t raise an eyebrow … not «Satan» either.

To once again connect to the hockey theme, there was a player in the Boston Bruins named Satan, and in the beginning I found that funny to see a guy with Satan on his back, sliding along on the ice! This is one of the more serious swear words in my native tongue. ‘Hell’, is really bad too [helvete in Sw.]. Imagine, you English-speakers, if you were to see the name B*st*rd! :lol:

When I came to Canada, eight years ago, I thought I had a reasonably, good command of the English language. That may have been true … up to a point, but I had a lot of stuff to penetrate, and still do. Swearing being one. I knew the words, but not the ‘seriousness’ of them. Another thing that was new to me was the habit on TV to use terms like «the F-word». At first I didn’t know what they meant with those ‘letter-words’. We don’t have that in Sweden — either they say the real word or they don’t. Not the beeping for censored words on TV either.

I now live in North America, so I’ll act accordingly: The F-word has made it big time into the Swedish language [and probably many other, European languages], but it’s being used very lightly and even by little children. It has less ‘power’, compared to our native swear words.

Quebec, where I lived for five years, has its own set of French swear words … a French person from France finds them funny or ancient sounding, I’ve been told (I don’t speak French at all).  They don’t have any power at all to the people in France…

The Devil is frequently used as a swear word in Swedish, and it’s a bad, serious one. Even though many hockey teams in Sweden have taken on English names [Timrå Red Eagles, for example], something corresponding to the New Jersey Devils would never fly … I do think that would be off limits. The actual word for it [djävulen] is often used in an altered form [jäklar], which is much ‘milder’. This is similar to when people here say ‘darn’ instead of damned.

This part, about altering the words, leads me to when I was reading a whole series of novels … a word kept coming back, I didn’t understand it, but it had no importance for the context so it took very long time before I even brought it up with Gerry. I just kept reading these books at night, and the characters kept saying ‘dadgummit’?! It was just a funny-sounding word to me, and I would never, ever have figured out what it was they really meant, had I not asked.