Travellin' Penguin

“Foto Friday”

Posted on August 9, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

Snip20190809_5 — I woke up the other day, sat up in bed and this was the view from my window. A Tasmanian sunrise over the River Derwent. I love winters here.

Another weekend is rolling around. Where does the time go. I need a bit of a winter shake up so have decided to putter around with the blog. This blog has been going since 2011 in one or another and it needs a bit of a shake up. No worries though, it will always be about what I’m reading, where I’m travelling and what I’m taking photos of. I don’t seem to be reading as many books lately because I’m spending a lot of my time with photography books, magazines and You Tube instruction around photography and Photoshop/Lightroom.

Never fear though, I always have one, or two or more books on the nightstand and there is always an audible book on the go. I’m getting quite a few photographer followers from Instagram so I will be expanding this side of the blog a bit more. I’m not a steady blogger and I can go a couple of weeks or more with no post, only to add two or three in one week.

That is what retirement is about. No schedules, no commitments. I use my blog as a personal journal and I love my friends who follow me but if I had no followers at all I wouldn’t mind. I’m too old to worry about how many Instagram Likes, FB Likes or Blog groupies I get. So having said all of that, let’s get on to what I’m going to do with Fridays.

Friday and weekends are the days I tend to stay around home and pursue my own interests. I do socialise a lot but tend to do that Monday through Thursday with friends and my Play Reading classes or film nights.

Snip20190809_3 — This is the donkey down the road that Odie and I visit with a carrot on our walks. I love this old girl but don’t know much about her. I need to meet the elderly lady I’m told owns her and at least learn her name.

I am going to devote Fridays to my Photography. So if people aren’t interested in that they can tune out. I’ll post about books and other interests on other days. Streamlining things a bit.

So welcome to my first “Foto Friday”. When we visited Sri Lanka last year we went to a gem store (as you do in any Asian country) and there was a mine out the back. The mine shaft was narrow and went underground, straight down, quite a ways down. We could not see the bottom. At the bottom of the shaft there are tunnels that go out of the main shaft perpendicular. The miners shimmy down ladders to the bottom and disappear into the tunnels. It looked very claustrophobic to me and I have quite the respect for these miners, many who are not young that spend their working life digging out gems in these mines. Occupational Health and Safety does not seem to be anywhere on the agenda.

As we looked down the shaft a man popped up out of it. I snapped a photo of him with my phone. I am really happy with this photo as I look back on it and decided to keep it. My main photography interests involve Street Photography, Documenting Life and Travel.

Snip20190809_2 — Sri Lankan miner. You would not believe how deep that mine shaft is.

I later read about a competition in Fremantle in Western Australia. In raising money for Osteo-Arthritis research which Mr. Penguin copes with on a daily basis an international competition is being held for Portrait Photography. To make a long story shorter, I entered the photo of the miner. I was notified two days ago that there were 1700 + entries and my photo is a finalist, landing in the top 6% of photos chosen.

I have until the end of August to now submit the larger image for their exhibition being held in October and if it makes the final cut it will be displayed in said exhibition.

I am more than stoked about this photo being selected. I think it is important for those of us who live in such comfort much of the time to see how others live around the world and this photo depicts what I would love to share more of.

I will share the photo with you and hope it does go further in this competition but if it doesn’t I am more than happy for it to stand where it is. I will let you know if I hear anymore about it.

I feel this is a great way to begin “Foto Friday”. I hope you find the photo as interesting as I do.

Until then……click that shutter!!! bluejumper

Animals, Fiction

A Bit Late with Simply Sunday

Posted on August 5, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

Snip20190720_1 Well, I finished The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell. I listened to it on audible and the narrator, Gretchen Mol did an excellent job reading this book.

Penguin and I immersed ourselves in 1920s New York City where this story takes place. Rose, a plain orphan girl grows up and finds work in a New York City precinct police station in the typing pool. She resides in a share room in a boarding house that is run by a WWI war widow with a small child. She doesn’t fit in with the others and keeps to herself. A real plain Jane. She enjoys her work as she listens to criminals give statements, records what they say and types it up. She is infatuated with the Sergeant who oversees much of what goes on day to day and doesn’t entirely trust the more arrogant Lieutenant who is really in charge.

One day a very sophisticated young woman, Odalie, arrives as a typist in the pool. Dressed to the nines, a fashionable bob, all heads turn. Rose becomes very infatuated with Odalie, envies her appearance, her character, her fashion sense. She is really taken in by Odalie.

The story is how Odalie ingratiates herself into Rose’s life and completely takes over. Rose moves into her beautiful hotel suite that Odalie lives in, goes out to illegally run boozy clubs, wears her clothes. Odalie becomes Rose’s life. Where does Odalie get her wealth? hmmm

The story is told in hindsight as Rose relives her life from the time she met Odalie to her current circumstances. She is in a mental institution/jail. How did she get there? What happened? You will have to read the book to find out. No spoilers here.

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bluejumper I found this to be an average though unforgettable read. I enjoyed the time period very much. I enjoyed the location. I thought the tale was quite predictable as events unfolded with a few red herrings thrown in. It was entertaining to listen to through bluetooth as I drove around running errands. It was worth 30 minutes of listening to at night as I set the sleep timer before I would drift off to sleep. I was interested in Rose and Odalie but I really did wonder why Rose couldn’t see what was coming. It was quite obvious. I had many theories and I kept listening because I wanted to know if I was right. I was most of the time but not always.

It was just fun fiction without too much energy having to be spent. If this is your type of book you might enjoy it. I did.

I have been studying photography a great deal. Studying Photoshop and learning how to blur backgrounds, clone out unwanted items in the photo, how to change colours, brighten landscapes.

Charlie 2 copy My friend who has an adopted greyhound named Charlie had a play date with Odie at the beach. I had him involved in a photoshoot and was very happy with the results. So were his owners. We have another play date scheduled for later this week.

I’ll try to get some of my travel photos up for Thursday or Friday this week. I have been sorting them into categories. Doors and windows, portraits, street scenes, landscape, animals. It has been fun. I’ve even changed some backgrounds in some of them.

The weather here has been a warm wintry 12 or 13 degrees C during the day which has been very pleasant for photography and walking my dogs. I’ll share a couple of photos I took of them yesterday. They were happy to run around in the reserve behind our house.

I’ve started a new book. A travel diary by an Australian author. Actually she is from the UK but now lives here in Hobart and I am enjoying her daily diary she kept during her travels in Australia just after 9/11 in 2001. More on that later. So until then, say hello to Penguin, Odie and Molly.

Molly 2 — 14 year old Molly (Molly Melodrama as a friend calls her)

Simply Sunday

Simply Sunday–21 July

Posted on July 21, 2019July 21, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

It has been a quiet week here (for a change). Our Play Reading class is about to start a new play next week. Good Reads describes it as: Snip20190720_6

“Ring Round the Moon by. Jean Anouilh, Christopher Fry (translator). NYTs Brooks Atkinson called it a work “of many moods… wistfully romantic, satirical, fantastic…” To make his points about love, Anouilh invented a story about twin brothers — Frederic, shy and sensitive, and Hugo, heartless and aggressive. To save Frederic from an unhappy marriage, Hugo distracts him by bringing to a ball a beautiful dancer who entrances everyone. The twins are played by the same actor. “Beautifully translated with wit and grace and style,” said critic George Jean Nathan, that plays “like a theatrical miracle.”

Jean Anouilh – June 23, 1910. He died 23 June, 1987.

“Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux and had Basque ancestry. His father was a tailor and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, a violinist who supplemented the family’s meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon.”

I think we will have quite a bit of fun reading this. I didn’t know Stephen Fry translates pieces of literature. I’ll let you know how we go with this.

BOOKS:

I finished the Australian book, My Mother, A Serial Killer by Hazel Baron with Janet Fife-Yeomans. Wow, what a tale. I will never forget these characters. I found it most interesting to follow the family dynamics throughout their lifetimes with everyone knowing the crimes Dulce, the mother, committed and how their children coped with this knowledge. I thought it was written very thoughtfully and although the crimes were committed, I didn’t feel any of it was sensationalised for the reader. Great journalistic reporting.

I am now reading the book, The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell, published in 2014. I remember reading reviews about it at the time. It sounded interesting so I picked it up where it has been sleeping on my bookshelves since.

I am planning a real crackdown on my TBR piles of books. Looking at a serious challenge for the remainder of this year and the first half of next year. We’ll see. More on that later.

The Good Reads blurb is as follows:

“A haunting debut novel set against the background of New York City in the 1920s…

Confessions are Rose Baker’s job. A typist for the New York City Police Department, she sits in judgment like a high priestess. Criminals come before her to admit their transgressions, and, with a few strokes of the keys before her, she seals their fate. But while she may hear about shootings, knifings, and crimes of passion, as soon as she leaves the room, she reverts to a dignified and proper lady. Until Odalie joins the typing pool.

As Rose quickly falls under the stylish, coquettish Odalie’s spell, she is lured into a sparkling underworld of speakeasies and jazz. And what starts as simple fascination turns into an obsession from which she may never recover.”

I love the time period where it takes place, the early 1920’s. I love that it is in New York city. I love remembering about typewriters!! I loved typewriters. I loved the sound they make, the way the type is imprinted onto the white, crisp paper. The nostalgia of it all.

I remember when in university doing my Masters degree in the early 1970’s at Central Michigan University. I had an electric typewriter. It was a high school graduation gift.

I had a report due and spent quite a bit of time on it. I thought everything was fine. Content, structure, you know what I mean. It was handed back to me to do it again. “Why?” I asked. “Clean the letter /e/ on your typewriter. It has a slight smear on it. You cannot deliver professional reports if the keys on your typewriter aren’t clean. So off I went, cleaned the key, typed the entire thing again and turned it in.

Younger people out there….. you have no idea.

I am also reading a library book that came in about the early days and photographs of Annie Leibovitz. I’ll do a separate post about this book. It is called Annie Leibovitz: The early years, 1970 – 1983. I’m finding it very interesting at this point.

The rest of the week went by with my dogs, cats and I pretty much holed up. Mr. Penguin was house sitting for a friend. The wind howled into Tasmania from the Southern Ocean for five consecutive days. We had quite a bit of rain earlier in the week. Lots of snow on the mountain. I won’t take the dogs out in the strong winds because there are too many gum trees around here and the branches are known for dropping when you least expect it.

We watched some Netflix, read, studied photography, fed and watered animals and cleaned up hairballs and litter. There is always laundry and Odie had a bath and is very fluffy this week.

That’s our week. Hope yours was under control. See you later.

And just for fun…….

Snip20190720_3 — Mr Penguin gets home from house sitting and Cousin Eddie helps him unpack.

Snip20190720_4 — Odie has a bath and becomes a big fluff ball.

Snip20190720_5 — This is how we spend cold, very windy nights here.

images — We’re all staying warm. See you next time.