Arty Tuesdays: People Watching

I've been having a lovely week in the sunshine. It really makes me very happy. 

I like people watching when the sun comes out. There's so many more people about and they tend to be wearing much more interesting outfits. And everyone just takes on this chilled out, loungey persona and splay themselves about grassy areas. If you invest in a good pair of sunnies it's even better - no one can tell you are watching them. Creeeeeepppy. But effective.

By the way having a bit of a re-jiggy with my blog-o so sorry if it's a little messy. Just mixing things abouts a bits.

Daniel Kornrumpf

Embroidered geek, yes.

Fab Ciraolo

Nice colours and clean detail.

Mark Powell

I like the combination of old people, old sepia envelopes and black and white. Nostalgic.

Michele Del Campo

Something about the style of these paintings is pleasing to me. Maybe the texture/tone of the skin.

Rajacenna

This is a pencil drawing. Yes really.

Steve Payne

There's a whole series of these type pictures. I think they're great. 

Zach Johnsen

A different kind of portrait!

Arty Tuesdays: Colour

For a while now I've been planning on giving my blog a bit more substance, rather than just blabbering on about my little life all the time. A lot of the blogs I enjoy are about design/DIY/creativity. I have lots of artsy people in my family and it's definitely in my genes. Art was one of my best subjects at school and I did half expect to go down that route in life. But the way it was taught at school just made me sick to death of it, and I kind of thought I'd like to keep it as a hobby rather than a chore, and get a "proper" degree under my belt. I don't do a whole lot of drawing nowadays, but I'm trying to get inspired again. So I hope to make 'Arty Tuesdays' a regular feature!

With Summer coming, I am loving all the colour that is coming back into life at the moment. It's good to see green back on the trees and yellow in the sky! So I thought I'd theme this Tuesday 'colour'. Hope it brightens your day!

Andrew McGibbon

Beautiful, crazy, messy photography!

Gabriel Moreno

I love the mix of black and white and colour, and the more neutral tones against the brighter ones

Gabriel Moreno

Seems like the colour is leaking out of her skin

Marumiyan

Lovely tones. And I love a detailed picture like this.

Marumiyan

The white space left blank makes this picture for me

Nielly Françoise

I've never been great at big bold paintings, these big  fat brush strokes make me wish I was!

Alice X Zhang

This is just stunning. Love the mix of blurriness against the accurate facial detail

Tilt

This makes my head hurt a little but I couldn't not put it in. I really like the perfectly clean line between the two.

Zach Johnsen

I feel ya Zach! Let out a bit of colour when life gets mundane!

Zach Johnsen

Liking the splashes of colour with the tie and coffee on this one

Zach Johnsen

Nice composition

Which do you like best?

J x

All things bright and beautiful

My adventure of the week was a trip to the Balmoral Show with my lovely housemate Melissa, who is a Balmoral veteran and expert guide! We had contacts on the inside and got in free, saving us £15 each :)

Even with the rain it was a great day!

We got to see lots of animals and get a ton of free samples in the food section. Also saw some show jumping and sheep shearing, got some fish n chips and took a browse around the country folk shops (Joules was not to be missed!)

William Whittaker showjumping

Alpacas

Kids

ChickChicks

Eeyore

Sheep Shearing competition!

Pigatron

Fluffball

Baaa.

I also went to visit my friend Ruth's farm (well it's not hers but whatev). And got to hand feed this beautiful sheepie! 

Been spending time with two of my favourite boys in the sun also...

Animals are great!

x

Poppadom'o'clock

Do you remember Common Grounds I spoke about in my last post? This weekend I headed there with friends for a bollywood night! We got some delicious curry and a lesson in bollywood dance all for £7!

The proceeds of the night went towards building a baby rescue centre in India. The dowry system and other factors over there mean that daughters are generally unwanted by families, and this leads to 7,000 baby girls being killed every day in India, often through being poisoned or buried alive. For more about this see here (also check this book out, I mentioned it in a blog a while ago but it's a good read on this subject globally).

The bollywood dancing was GREAT, I've been trying to find a good youtube demo vid so you can all learn it too! Sadly I'm struggling, but you can at least enjoy the song we danced to. JAI HO!

Wee Cuppa.

So I kind of realised recently that I haven't blogged about life in Belfast enough really. I love hearing about different places from the people who live there. I guess because I'd been to Belfast quite a lot over the two years C and I were long distance, it wasn't so brand spanking new for me to live here, and I already knew the city a bit. But I started thinking and I thought I would share with you some of my favourite Belfast cafes! I love a good cafe, and I think these are the places you start to "live" in in a city, and how you start to befriend a place. 

Often these cafe trips are slightly guilty due to my need to save my pennies.. but you can't beat a nice lunch or brew with friends!

The Black Bear Cafe

This is a new place opposite the city Museum. It's small but really quite nice, lovely big chunky tables and artwork on the walls, plus proper homemade food. OK, so pretty much every time I've been there they've messed up something in the order.. but I can't help but give them a 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th..) chance to prove themselves. They are new here (like me!) afterall!

Always a good sandwich and soup deal at The BB

Common Grounds Cafe

OK, I love this place - largely because it's all fairtrade and homemade! Nicely done out and yummy food. Get yourself there.

Cafe Conor

Bit of an upmarket venue, so I've only ever splashed out for a coffee. But it's lovely inside, decorated in the style of Penguin books! 

Maggie Mays

Simply the best greasy spoon in town.. and their milkshakes hit the spot on a hot day. 

Sinnamon

If you want a nice sofa and maybe even a traybake this is the place to go.

And finally, there is one cafe I have not ventured to yet but am very keen to try.. it's featured in visitor guides and Marie Clare magazines. Anyone fancy a coffee date here?!

By the way I've been talking to various people recently about Starbucks new forced "friendliness" re: asking your name every time you go in. I do like Starbucks, but it just feels fake. You're a massive, corporate company, not the hipster little local cafe. You ain't foolin no one mate.

Adventurings in Madagascar

Bonjour mes copains!

Well it's the big news everyone's talking about and it's true.. I'm doing my dissertation in Madagascar this summer! It's been a while in the pipeline but confirmed as of a month-ish ago. I was kind of dreading the thought of spending my whole summer in front of a computer doing desktop literature reviews, and I figured my opportunities for travelling will largely diminish once (if) I get a job. I was actually looking into the trip when I happened to start reading a book I got for Christmas called 'Pink Boots and a Machete' about a female national geographic explorer. One of her first expeditions happened to be to Madagascar and it sounded amazing and I basically wanted to be her. So I decided I would be her (kind of).

So let's have a funtastic factual fiesta bullet points about this awesome country...

• It is in fact a real place and not actually a figment of DreamWorks imagination
• It is the world's fourth biggest island
• Almost all it's population live in poverty
• Around 90% of all plant and animal species in the country are endemic (i.e. not found anywhere else in the world)
• Because it is so rich in biodiversity it has been referred to as "the eighth continent"
• It's in Africa (which, let's be clear, is a continent and NOT A COUNTRY. ha.)

So far, the main stress was the matter of flights, which finally got booked up a few weeks ago. I'm going with STA Travel, flying from Heathrow to Antananarivo (capital of Madagascar) via Nairobi with Kenya Airways. Then I'm staying a night or two in the capital before flying to Fort Dauphin in the South, from which I will be driven 4 hours through the rainforest to where I'm mainly going to be researching, Ifotaka in the spiny forest region (although I'll be travelling around 3 main villages during my 6 weeks). Pretty exciting, huh! I won't be on my own when I get there though - I'm doing it with an organisation called Operation Wallacea, so there will be a group of us students as well as researchers who are already out there.

Fort Dauphin Beach

Vaccs were the next thing to sort. Those recommended were Hep A, Tetanus, and Typhoid. I already had Typhoid so I just had the other two, one in each arm, at my local health centre. Rabies and Hep C were the other options. However, rabies wasn't nec because I'll always be at least 24 hours from medical help (and a vaccination doesn't prevent it anyways, it just increases the time you have before you start frothing away). Hep C was an option in case I had any Malagasy sexy affairs (unlikely) or had to have an operation out there. But it required 3 injections, each at £30 so I think I'll just take care not to burst my spleen or anything. Malaria requires popping pills everyday and either having horrible side effects and chundering everywhere (cheap option pills) or splashing the cash (pricey option pills), so I decided not to be such a cheap skate on that one.

Potential reconstruction of me with rabies

Equipment wise there's not much left to buy, maybe just some adventurous style clothing. I went to Go Outdoors and got some biodegradable soap and a new platypus water carrier (I dug out my old one from DoE and it had turned an unusual blackish green colour). They only suggested bringing a water bottle, but I'm terrible at keeping myself hydrated at the best of times, so I thought having the handy little hamster-style drinking tube at my shoulder might help this. Plus it totally puts the fun back into drinking.

The final prep work is to brush up on my French - Madagascar used to be a French colony so that's what they all speak. So far I have learnt how to say "the father is in the sitting room reading the newspaper", I'm fully convinced this will be a very useful phrase.

The Spiny Forest

So what am I actually DOING?

Potentially I will be doing more than just prancing around with pretty lemurs. OK, so I'm basically researching the effectiveness of projects such as REDD+ (google it!) which aim to create a win-win situation for development and conservation efforts. So in the example of REDD+, local communities are compensated for conserving forests (rather than clearing them for timber/slash and burn) by companies who want to offset their carbon emissions. This works because deforestation and degradation release the carbon stored in trees, so preventing this reduces emissions. So in a simplified, ideal world, the impoverished people win through compensation (in the form of money or other things) and the environment wins because there are loads of trees left to hug - happy days! Obviously we do not live in a simple or ideal world so the happiness level of these days cannot be guaranteed - which is why I am out there helping research some of the less simple and ideal factors e.g. how dependent the local communities are on their natural resources, if the compensation is going to the right people etc. Well that's pretty much that in a nutshell, but the ideas still a bit of a work in progress and I'm still getting my head around all the issues sooo don't quote me on anything just yet.

Mouse lemur says :P

But anyway, I'm not off till mid June so there's still time! I'm hoping to do some blogging out there but internet will be pretty scarce so don't get your hopes up just yet! Lol. Anyway just a wee update for the time being. 

Much Love!

x