Bollocks to this...

... the fabulous F.  and my own good self are off to South Korea.  Oh frabjous day!

Bollocks to this...

...I am off to Rome, with the fabulous F. Oh frabjous day!

Well, actually we already traipsed all over Rome today... Stupid bigger for droid didn't want to post this yesterday.

Aborted try for the Lac de Fully

The day after our trip to Derborance the girlfriend and I got more ambitious, and decided to try for the Lac Supérieur de Fully, or even the circumnavigation of le Châtelard. But on ascending to our chosen starting point,  L'Erié, we were foiled by the very forces of nature:

Snow-drifts at 1600 metres, blocking the road. We decided to enter the ravine you see in the photo above to the right, and make for Lui d'Août, with a thought of continuing around the mountain if feasible. Here is me trying to find our way on the map

Alas, it was not. I had packed all the right equipment, of course: Small gas cooker, blanket and food, as well as the right shoes

Ahem. After traversing several, extremely cold snow-fields we arrived at the refuge at Lui d'Août,  but I had forgotten the coffee, so my girlfriend succumbed to sleep

and my energy-levels were not much better. We sipped some hot milk (condensed milk with hot water, not too bad actually), and then turned back, following another path along the mountainside to L'Erié. You can see our path to the right of the photo below:

this path is part of the way around the Châtelard, and it provides extremely nice views - we'll definitely come back in a month or so.


GPS-track:

Lousine - Lui d'Août - L'Erié at EveryTrail

Dallying in Derborance

Last week the fabulous F. and I went for a wee walk just south of the Diablerets, from Derborance to the barrage at Goedy  and back. A very pleasant and not too long walk, it still had me puffing, but it wasn't too bad considering I had had 39 °C of fever three days before. Here is the GPS-track for your enjoyment:

Derborance - La Lui - Godey at EveryTrail


I am happy to say that the Nexus S is much better at conserving battery power while tracking than the iPhone 3G - after 4 hours I still had three quarters of power left.

Finally, here are some photos:

View near La Lui Dessous

Near Cirith Ungol

Spring is definitely here

Luzern

Mi tresora F. and I spent yesterday in Luzern, with my friend M.

M. on the right. Myself on the left. Photo by the talented F.

Luzern is a very, very pretty city, on the shore of the Vierwaldstättersee, or 'lake of the place with four forests'.

In the background on the right the third of the four forests. I guess.

A famous sight is the newest bridge of Luzern, built in 1993 out of wood, which does not even carry cars or trains:

Seriously. You'd guess the bridge was a historic landmark or something, the way they carry on about it.

Frankly, I don't get why it is so famous, since it is only a copy of another wooden bridge, which coincidentally, burned down in the same year. Also, ware the attacking birds! Birds in Luzern are a constant threat to the unwary visitor, here is one on an attack run:

Look into its empty eyes and despair.

I hope you, gentle reader, will appreciate the photo I took instead of trying to safe myself! Thankfully my life was spared, since the birds of Luzern are also known to be myopic - a boon to all ugly men, or so it is said. I wouldn't know about that aspect, of course, since I had only eyes for the lovely F.

Luzern - lovely but lethal, at least for me.

Whether she wanted to or not. Did she manage to strangle me? Tune in next time to find out!

Lac de Tanay

Last weekend I and F. (who may very well be the reason there have been so few posts here lately) went up from Le Flon to the Lac de Tanay.


View Larger Map

The weather was amazing, hence my state of near-undress (which had nothing to do with wanting to impress F. by my manliness and general imperviousness to the cold. Ha! Which cold, I ask you?).

We found an excellent spot for a pique-nique,  under a southward-facing overhang heated by the sun

The lake was frozen, and exploration of the surrounding peaks will have to wait until the snow has receded a bit, but we'll be sure to return!

Bern and its mutant bears

An old bear-emblem, pre-ninja era

Bern, the capital of Switzerland is known for its bears. Has been known for its bears for centuries, in fact. It was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke von Zähringen. 1193 it suffered a meteorite impact. Said meteorite had an unusually high concentration of Cobalt-60, and as a consequence the local bears mutated, becoming hyper-intelligent tool-users. They proliferated in the fertile lands around Bern, and several skirmishes (also known as Bärenchriege) were fought over the next years. Eventually Bern fell in 1218, with the Berthold V. suffering a gruesome death at the claws of the enraged bears, being torn apart atop the Zytglogge, the famous clock-tower of Bern. Berthold V. having no heirs to continue the war, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II had no choice but to leave the bears in control, declaring Bern a free imperial city.

The Zytglogge, where Berthold V. met his end

The bears joined the Swiss Confederacy in 1353, and stayed in power in Bern until being occupied by French troops in 1798, during the French Revolutionary wars. The bears vanished from public live. How and when they managed to contact the Tokugawa shogunate is hotly disputed by scholars, but it is clear that when they reappeared in 1848, they had been trained extensively as ninjas. The bears, now hyper-intelligent mutant ninja bears showed no inclination of retaking the reins of power, even though they certainly would have been capable of it. Instead, the seemed content to hang out in the Bärengraben, vanishing from it from time to time to conduct secret missions and assassinations, an activity they have continued to this day.

View of the Münster and Bern, from the Bärengraben

I personally nearly met my end on the hands of a slightly myopic ninja bear, who afterwards apologized profusely for mistaking me for his target, before leaping onto the rooftops and vanishing.

It was shear chance that the bear noticed I was not his target, a split-second before tearing out my throat.

Apart from these rare, unfortunate incidents, Bern is a very safe city for tourists, and the "Bärenlugen", trying to spot one of the illusive ninja bears in one of their many disguises, or on one of their clandestine missions, is a popular national past-time. Everything and everyone can be a bear, in Bern.

Depicted: A bear in disguise, emerging from his cave in spring.

Bollocks to this...

...I am off to Paris, to the 63rd Gaseous Electronics Conference. There may be some physics-related posts in the near future.

Sunrise in Quy Nhon

It is a great injustice that the best light and the best colours happen at sunrise. You'd think sunset would have the same effect, but no. Dawn is where it's at, mostly because the gods hate photographers.

Half past fucking four in the morning, Quy Nhon, Vietnam

Of course, everybody else and their grandma is already up and chipper

Why not jog in the pre-dawn light? Why not stick a fork in your eye while you are at it?

The sky, it is mocking me.

I'd say a mellow yellow, only it is still not even bloody 5 am

To add insult to injury, the first morning I misjudged the time and trudged down 10 minutes too late. This is, of course, the time where the sky shows you the fading remnants of the most awesome colours ever, just to mock you. Thank you, sky of Vietnam.
But! There is a way to trick the forces of nature - just stay up until sunrise. Of course, you will be too drunk to take any good photos, although you'll think you are snapping the next Pulitzer. Oh well... back in the hammock.

Mekong

No time to properly blog, have this photo from the Mekong-delta instead.

Staff demo

Not much time to post today - my parents are visiting. But here is  an insanely fast staff demo I filmed in Saigon, Vietnam a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy!

Cao Đài

Which religion venerates Victor Hugo, Jeanne d'Arc and Julius Caesar as saints?

No, it's not the Illuminati, it is Caodaism. Founded in 1926 in Vietnam (then, of course, Indochine) by Ngo Van Chieu, it is an eclectic fusion of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, with a sprinkling of Christianity thrown in. Then Ngo Van Chieu stopped and meditated for a while - something was not right with his new religion. It was not... wacky enough. Bright colours... check. Weird saints... hey, what about weird saints? And how about worshipping a radical rationalist French writer? How about making Victor Hugo one of our principal saints? Huh, how about that?
Fast forward to today, we have the Holy Seat of  Cao Đài in Tây Ninh

Seemed to me that it was mainly designed for Tourism - a convenient gallery encircles the cathedral, full with tourists snapping pictures of the ceremony which takes place four times a day:

Here it pays of to have a long lens:

I think these guys are Caodaistic (?) laypersons, as far as I know only priests take part in the ceremony itself. Either that, or they are the Holy Seat's assassin squad.

Dragon!

Hanoi: Streets

Chaos. Utter chaos.

And yet... as you step gingerly (and slowly, ever so slowly, if you value your life) across a street of Hanoi, a hint of pattern starts to emerge. Not real order, no structure to the insanity - but even chaos has a few rules. First of all, you, the pedestrian, are at the bottom of the pecking order, no question about it. You do not have a metal body, you are soft and squishy, and while there are rumours about the existence of Vietnamese traffic regulations, they are not confirmed, and I frankly do not believe in them. Neither do the Vietnamese.

At first glance, stepping on the street seems paramount to suicide. And yet, the pavement doesn't offer succour either, since for a Vietnamese on his scooter, the pavement is nothing less than an additional, if narrow, lane. So eventually you get tired of clinging to a tree, and, commending your eternal soul to Victor Hugo, you step on the street.

It will take several seconds for you to notice that you are not dead, although you might wish you were. Scooters, cars, every style of motor transportation known to man is rushing by you, missing you by a hair's breadth, honking merrily away to compliment your misery (Oh god, the noise). Still, you are not dead yet. And then you realise the chink in the seemingly impenetrable mechanised armour that is the Vietnamese traffic: No self-respecting Vietnamese wants to scrape your squishy organic flesh from his shiny new scooter. Therefore, and with an inhuman faith in the reaction speed of their fellow motorists they swerve, they evade, and (inescapably) they honk.Use this weakness to cross the street. There is no need to look left, right or in any other direction - rather, if you value your sanity, it is advisable not to look at all. You will not spot a break in the traffic, for there is none. The side of the road has no correlation to the direction of the traffic flow, as the Vietnamese scoff at the notion that such mundane things as the side of the road should determine the direction in which they travel. So why look? Just step on the road, slowly, with a slightly mad grin on your face. Step on the road in the secure knowledge that the Vietnamese motorist will do his utmost to miss you.

Also, it is either that or being run over on the pavement.

Vietnam: cliché

Vietnam was one of the most excellent countries I've ever been in. The energy in the streets of Hanoi (or any other city for that matter) is astounding - and while I am not too sure that I could stand the constant noise for longer periods of time, I would be willing to try. Anybody know of any post-doc positions for plasma physicists in Vietnam?

But Vietnamese street-life will be the topic of it's own post, for this opener I thought I would start with some stereotypical pictures:

Not what it looks like - she is working.

 
The dichotomy between rich and poor is nothing short of astounding, and sobering. While many in the cities are poor, you still get the impression of modernisation: Everybody (and I mean everybody and their dog) has a scooter, and you can sense the economic upswing that Vietnam has been having since the introduction of a capitalistic economy in '86. Leave the city, especially in the north, and you find this:

Dirt-poor farmers, grubbing in the muck. I know that my impressions may be a bit off, since even in the north a farmer generally has two harvests a year, and they probably won't turn out their Sunday best to work in the fields, but still. Seeing any kind of technology being used in the rice-paddies of the north is rare:

The South, as always in Vietnam, is better off, with mechanised or at least partially mechanised farming the rule, not the exception. Stay tuned for some thoughts about Hà Nội, tomorrow.

Teaser

Finally started sifting through the photos, de-shaking the video-clips and whatnot.

First post about Vietnam will go up tomorrow, have this short clip from the International Tournament of Vietnamese Traditional Martial Arts, Ho Chi Minh City meanwhile; it's part of a demo of the three section staff versus double sabre:

Back

Back home. I'll start posting my impressions and the best photos soon.

But first I'll have to sort them: more than 4000 photos and a couple of short movies.

Have this Vietnamese wanted poster meanwhile:




- tales from the road

Location:Avenue du Tir Fédéral,Ecublens,Switzerland

Cankon

A. has not taken the charger for the battery packs of her Nikon D80, because she knew that two packs were good for three weeks of shooting. Except those three weeks were two years ago, and lithium- ion packs age.
Nobody else had this particular model, and of cours chargers are not compatible between models, let alone between brands.

But! All these packs use basically the same 7.4 V cells, so it stood to reason that in principle, a Canon charger should have no problem charging a Nikon pack. A bit of fiddling, and lo and behold! the abomination Cankon was born:








In other news, getting up at 5 to watch sunrise at Na Trang beach: totally worth it.

- tales from the road

Location:Tran Phu,Nha Trang,Vietnam

Mekong

I know I said there wouldn't be any nice photos until I return, since I am too busy snapping away on my SLR to take out the iPhone, but today the battery on my camera ran out, so I had half an hour to kill before we got back to the bus where I had left my spare.





There you go, but don't get used to it.





By the way, I won't be able to reply to any comments until I get back, since the app I am using doesn't do comments - sorry about that!

- tales from the road

Location:Lê Thị Riêng,,Vietnam

Still alive

I know you are all waiting with baited breath for news and photos from Vietnam - but there won't be any, because there is too much to do and see. I have barely time to steal a couple of minutes to type this, here in the Me Kong delta, the it is off to the floating Market, and some rat. Mmh, rat.

Here have a photo of a photo of the fish tanks of a small roadside restaurant ( hole-in-the-wall, to be frank), with some ba ba (turtle) swimming happily around, unbeknowst of its eventual fate. We didn't have ba ba though, but rather some nice grilled frog and sparrows.







- tales from the road

Location:Lê Thánh Tôn,Can Tho,Vietnam