Innovations by ladies ...

I don´t think any man would have thought of these gadgets...

Sorry Lena, I took the liberty to borrow "your" pictures... :o)

A very special dog ...

Somehow, I feel kind of related to this particular dog and it´s relatives...

I wonder why... ;o)

Jeffrey Scott Brown ...

För oss som uppskattar miljö, fantastisk mat och dryck finns denne man att tillgå. Hans erfarenhet och kunskap är få förunnade. Välkommen till Jeff och vår värld...

"My culinary talents today are a direct accumulation of all my experiences throughout my life. One of the most profound was shopping on the Rue Mouffetard in Paris. I first heard of it while living in Colombia, reading Hemingways 'A Movable Feast'. He lived on the Place de la Contrescarpe, and would often stroll down the Rue Mouffetard for espresso or shopping."
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
Ernest Hemingway, 1920

För mera information se nedan eller ring 0708-320498 så berättar vi mera...

www.yourchefjeff.blogspot.com

www.threelilybuds.com

Changes ...

I went for another walk on "our" beach the day before yesterday. It was simply wonderful.
Yesterday, the weather changed dramatically. It comes with the season, I suppose. As usually...
Both pictures are taken at the same spot, approximately at the same time of early evening.

Speaking of changes, here´s Ozzy and his daughter Kelly. I very much like their voices and the lyrichs. I´m sure you´ve heard it before.

Hope we´re all open for the changes to come...

One night in Singapore ...

Well done Lewis Hamilton!

And - fifth today is not to bad, Jenson...

www.formula1.com

Scott James ...

Autism is treatable and beatable. Here´s a living proof.

R.I.P Michael Jackson ...

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry is definately two of my favourites!

Another UFO ...?

It is possible, you know! Or...?

Stavros Flatley ...

There´s no way you can get depressed by these guys!

Have a good weekend!

UFO ...

In 1954 winemakers in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France, made a new law pass through. The content was that UFO´s no longer were allowed to land in vineyards... In those days newspapers almost every week reported of new sightings. The mayor of the village therefore decided that all unidentified flying objects were to be prosecuted in court. Today this law is still valid... No UFO´s has been seen in Châteauneuf-du-Pape since 1954... Efficient!
(Source or saucer...: SkD)

Peter Gabriel ...

Peter Gabriel will recieve the 2009 Polar Prize this afternoon. Well deserved, I think!

http://www.petergabriel.com/

Wanted alive ...

Last saturday a man disappeared. His wife had plans regarding painting. He thought this was a good idea. However, he first had to go shopping, otherwise they wouldn´t have anything to eat for a week. So he left at 1 PM...
At 3 PM, the same man was spotted at Gustav Adolfs Torg in Malmö, apprx. 25 km´s away from home. Eating a cheeseburger from McDonald´s!

He´s still missing and his wife is still painting...

(he doesn´t like paparazzi ;-)

Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862 ...

Until today, I´d never heard of this man before. But this quote is not bad:

IT TAKES TWO TO SPEAK THE TRUTH.
ONE TO SPEAK AND ONE TO HEAR...

And this one...

Melodikrysset ...

Nyligen, en lördag, löste kära mor (83) och jag Melodikrysset som vanligt, med gemensamma ansträngningar. Precis som vi gjort varje lördag mellan tio och elva. Under ett antal år! Denna timma är sedan länge helig. Ingenting får störa... Jag kunde inte komma på hela texten till denna melodi. Ord på två bokstäver... Skulle det vara NU, DU, SÅ eller DÅ? Ja, då återstår det att "fuska på Google". Och vad hittar då en "gammal" flygare som jag? Jo, en ung ABBA-Agnetha som flyger (?) en 35:a...

Svaret då? Naturligtvis NU!

TLB in the air today ...

Another nice day at the beach in Höllviken/Kämpinge. I´ve said it before, I personally don´t like crowded beaches.
But - I couldn´t miss this "event"...

Please feel free to visit http://www.threelilybuds.com/

Maybe you´ll be surprised...

Horse or snail ...

Earlier this morning, three horses passed by our small cottage. What the three lady riders were discussing, I don´t know. I wasn´t listening...
I don´t think this little fellow were paying very much attention either...

Until I saved him from the horses...

Louis Blériot 1872-1936 ...

This is what happened a 100 years ago.

After years of honing his piloting skills, Blériot decided to go after the coveted thousand-pound prize offered by the London Daily Mail for a successful crossing of the English Channel.
Blériot had two rivals for the prize, both of whom failed to reach the goal. The first was Hubert Latham, a French national of English extraction. He was favored by both the United Kingdom and France to win. He had arrived first and attempted to fly across on 19 July of that year, but six miles (10 km) from the shore at Dover he developed engine trouble and was forced to make a sea landing. The other pilot, Charles de Lambert, was a Russian aristocrat with French ancestry, and one of Wilbur Wright´s students. However, Lambert was injured in a major crash during a test flight, forcing him to quit the competition. On July 25, 1909, the three rivals each arrived on the shores of Calais, France. Blériot had a badly burned foot, caused when a gasoline line broke on his #VIII machine during one of his trial runs, although he did not withdraw. The #VIII was Blériot's largest and most successful design up to the #XI. After his crash in the #VIII which left him with the burnt foot, the #XI was the only other aircraft he had available to make the Channel flight.
Before the trip, the French government allowed a destroyer to escort and observe his plane during the trip to Dover. Blériot used the Blériot XI, which was a structurally strong but simple and maneuverable monoplane of his design powered by a 3-cylinder Anzani radial engine with 25 horsepower and a 2-bladed fixed-pitch wooden propeller. The flight started a little after 4:30 AM on the same day, July 25, 1909, when dawn broke. He reported, in a telegram to the Washington Post, that he throttled his engine to 1,200 revolutions per minute, almost the top speed of the engine, to clear telegraph wires at the edge of the cliff near the runway field. Then he lowered the engine speed to give the XI an average airspeed of approximately 40 miles per hour (64 kilometers per hour) and an altitude of about 250 feet (76 m). Soon after, inclement weather began to form, with the Channel becoming rougher. Blériot lost sight of landmarks, and rapidly outpaced the destroyer escort. He stated: “for more than 10 minutes I was alone, isolated, lost in the midst of the immense sea, and I did not see anything on the horizon or a single ship”.
The landing was in turbulent weather, and Blériot encountered numerous problems: rain was cooling the engine, putting it in danger of being shut down, and strong wind was blowing him off course. As Blériot reduced his airspeed for the landing, the gusts of wind nearly caused his plane to crash from an altitude of 20 meters (67 feet) when he cut off the engine. The landing severely damaged his landing gear, along with the propeller, although the rest of the airplane was fine and the landing was deemed successful.
He flew 22 statute miles (36.6 km) from Les Barraques (near Calais) to Dover. The trip took 37 minutes. Blériot gained immediate fame for this flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot

Yesterday it happened again...

Stora nyheter ...

På Sydsvenskans hemsida kunde man för en stund sedan läsa:
"ZLATAN LANDAR I BARCELONA IKVÄLL"

Nu precis kom en ny rubrik:
"ZLATAN FRAMME I BARCELONA"

www.sydsvenskan.se

Foto: AP/Sydsvenskan

Det var ju bra att han kom fram...

Vad hade hänt annars?

In Hungary ...

Extraordinary preformance by Lewis Hamilton today. Well done!

www.formula1.com

Nothing is over before the last race. So - Jenson and Rubens - as you already know, it will be tight in the end of season...

And - Felipe, get well really soon!

Swedish Coast Guard ...

The other day I went for a another walk on the beach. Rainy and windy as it were, some people still needed to feel the chill of waves.
Inspite the noise of the waves, I heard another sound in the sky. Swedish Coast Guard flew in on very low altitude with one of their, since a while operational, new Dash 8-Q300.
It made me remember the day of October 26th 2006. My wife and I were outside in the garden. Suddenly we heard a strange, sort of bang. We soon learned that one SCG aircraft, a Casa C-212, had crashed in the channel. It later showed that four men were killed.This happened almost three years ago, but there are those who will never forget...

Photos: Myself and Swedish Coast Guard/KBV (the one above)

Heroes ...

Today we are celebrating heroes of their and our time. Fourty years ago, man sat foot on the moon for the first time. Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins couldn´t have done what they did, without the help of many, many others. They tried and were succesful!
Today, sixtyfive years ago, Claus von Stauffenberg and associates also tried. But they didn´t aim for the moon. Who knows - if they also would have been succesful - would we live in another kind of world today?
Anyway - they all tried. Let us all at least do the same...

Jersey Channel Islands ...

Probably for the first time in history, The States of Jersey (or The Bailiwick of Jersey) flag now sways over Höllviken, Sweden.
It arrived with British Mail this morning. And I´m very proud...

Fawlty Towers...

I´m still learning english...

24 HOURS IN MOSCOW / Part I...

In the spring of 1992 I was the Swedish managing director of a Danish tour operator. Late in the afternoon my phone rang. It was the Big Boss in Copenhagen.

-Lasse, as you know we have 78 clients travelling to China two days after tomorrow.
-Yes...?
-Change of plans. We are using another airline, so they need to stay overnight in Moscow.
-Ok...?
-So - I need you to go to Moscow tomorrow morning and arrange accomodation.
-Well, I can do that. Only, there´s a small problem. I´ve got no visa...
-I don´t care, try to get it on arrival. This is important, just do it!
-Right...

Immediately I contacted Novotel, that I already knew had opened a brand new hotel just a few minutes walk from the airport and made an appointment with their sales manager. I booked my ticket to Moscow (and avoided Aeroflot). The morning after I flew with SAS to Helsinki and onwards with Finnair. Easy enough. Bearing in mind that this was just a few years since the perestrojka and the fall of the iron curtain, I was a little bit excited...

Arriving at Sheremetyevo 2 I hoped that my Swedish passport could get me through passport control. The young man in the booth, with his AK-47 standing beside him, just smiled and said in russian-english:

-Sorry, we are not there yet. No visa, you stay in transit.
-But...!?
-As you can see, there are others waiting, so go back and contact transfer desk!

Transfer desk was crowded with people. By their looks, most of them were on their way to Pakistan, India, Thailand or Afghanistan. As I wore my uniform, I went straight to the counter. There I met Anna. I explained my problems, no visa, nowhere to stay, 78 clients and so on.

-Follow me, she said. We went for a coffee and she told me that I could get a provisional visa the day after. The "office" was supposed to open at 9 AM. I asked her if she knew a place where I could stay the night, without having to sleep in a hard plastic chair. "No problem for you, sir. You obviously have dollar". She told me to make contact with "the barman...". He knows, she said and smiled.

I had nothing else to do that day but finding somewhere to eat and sleep. So I went to the bar, as Anna suggested. There I met Colin, "the barman" and from Ireland. He told me that the only place I could stay at, while in transit, was "Cockroach Village", a hotel for people like me. Without a visa. After the second large whisky, I agreed to just do that. The time of that day was now apprx. 6 PM. After having spent a few hours walking around in the terminal I was very hungry. There were no restaurants open. Only the Irish bar. I went for a sandwich and lager, but Colin had gone "home". At that time I was sure he´d taken the first available flight back to Dublin...

Later on, the terminal became rather empty. I was waiting to be called out for my transport to "Cockroach Village". Sitting in a very hard plastic chair, nearly falling asleep at around 11.30 PM, two large russian women in yellow dresses suddenly appears at a range of 50 meters. They were looking at me and shouted:

-You!

-Me...?

-Yes, you!

They took me downstairs out on the tarmac where a coach for about 50 persons was waiting, along with two remaining IL-62´s. I was alone with the two women and a driver. Three persons were taking me to "Cockroach Village"!

To be continued...

Carla Bruni...

Whatever the tabloids says all over the world, Nicolas Sarkozy married a talanted and beautiful girl last year.

Not bad for a president´s wife...

Bruce Willis and Die Hard...

Bruce Willis did well acting in Die Hard I...

To my surprise, in Die Hard II, one of American Trans Air´s Lockheed 1011´s turned up at the end of the film. Our company used them for chartered flights from Copenhagen to Los Angeles, a year after the film was released. I still wonder why, I know it wasn´t without cost. ATA Airlines went bankrupt in 2008, as far as I know...

And - again back in 1987, dear Bruce did this together with The Temptations...

OK, that´s it...

By bus...

This afternoon I went to the Big city of Malmo. The bus became crowded, as usual. Today it was crowded by youngsters that obviously havn´t got any manners at all. One elderly lady got onboard and had to stand up for the whole apprx 25km ride. The youngsters were very busy with drinking Red Bull, sending and/or listening to SMS, MMS, MP3, DVD, PMS or whatever...
Maybe I could have helped the lady by making my way through these people and offer my arm and seat. But - if I would have left my seat it most certainly would have been occupied by one of the children of our future... So - CATCH 22...

Never mind 4th of July in the USA...

Who used to be (!?) a very dear friend of mine, once asked me to bring home a scary movie. I couldn´t find one... But I did find this classic! She wasn´t very happy at the time. I always try to be nice, so today she´s celebrating her 42nd birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY dear, and enjoy! ;-)

I believe I can fly...

I went through new and old pictures today. It´s to hot to be outside. About 30 C. We´re not used to those temperatures up here in the north. But I´m not complaining!
This is to celebrate a very nice flight my friend and I did exactly one year ago. Well, not exactly, it took place July 7th 2008.

Refuelling is sometimes necessary.

A typical backseater...
The pilot...

Backseater risking pilot´s camera by taking a photo outside at 1500 ft...

Backseater had to go at 29000 ft... ;-)

I believe I can fly!

Skiathos vs Höllviken...

As I menshioned before, the runway at Skiathos is rather special. Signs are available to avoid accidents...
The picture below shows our daughter and son in law. During the past years Daniel has been called (depending on actual haircut...) Zlatan Ibrahimovic and as late as yesterday I called him Andy Garcia. He doesn´t like that. I wonder why... (Sorry, Danny Boy ;-)

And here he is again. Obviously I had to keep my eye on things, so I rented a small ship and went to Greece. They didn´t notice my arrival, I´m sure!

Back in Sweden I had to show everybody my courage at the beach. The temperature felt like below 19 C. Brrr! My own is usually around 37 C...

Suddenly I was attacked by some ninja-turtle-girl (evidence on below left)

I decided to return quietly to our peaceful home...

And what a surprise! When we got home our nephew and his girlfriend came to visit.
It doesn´t happen very often nowerdays. Always feel welcome, you kids...

That´s it, for now...