✈️ In the air. Traveling solo to England for my mother’s 90th Birthday celebrations.

April Photoblogging Challenge, Day 1: Toy suggested by @pcora

A row of wooden toys in the shape of castles, people and animals, all sitting on a shelf with a window behind. Outside there is blue sky and a green hedge.

This morning’s rainbow 🌈

A rainbow traverses the sky, slightly broken by cloud. In the foreground is a flower bed full of vegetation and a lawn.

🧘 I have, am having a busy few days. When that happens my mind starts to pull me onto the next task before the current one is finished. From that anxiety builds and patience can diminish. I must remember to stop, to breathe and be aware of others around me. Rest…my body will appreciate it and the jobs will still get done.

☕ My coffee in take had been going down. One or two cups in the morning. However, in the last couple of days I have going back to another cup mid-morning. I'm not sure what is up?!

🏞️ Digitizing slides. Reliving memories.

I have been silent on my running posts for six days now. I haven’t run in that time, though that is not the sole reason for not posting. The last run took the wind out of my sails. More so than I initially thought. I was tired by the time that I finished my last run because of the increased run times that the Watch To 5K had me doing at the Week 4 stage - at least I assumed that that was the reason. However, though those run times played a part I now don’t see them as the sole reason.

My mind was in comparison mode, comparing my current run’s distance and time with how well I had done on the previous run. In essence I had been competing with myself and telling myself that if I ran further and/or faster, both was a real bonus, I was doing better.

I was essentially in race mode. Racing with myself, though I did not see this. I need someone else to point out to me that this way of running was simply not sustainable. Rex Barrett kindly reached out to me on Mastodon giving me some perspective. He pointed out that the pace that I was running for my training runs, was a race pace. I needed to slow down and set myself more realistic paces for the training runs, along with the time that I spend running.

Something else that I am forgetting is my age. I turned sixty last September. I’m in pretty good shape, but whether I like it or not, I’m not where I was forty years ago. I am older, the body is slower, it needs more time to recover. I need to recognize this and proceed with my training accordingly.

I hope to get back to running today or tomorrow, before I loose the momentum. I don’t think that I will, I want to see myself running a 5K whatever the speed, but the mind can be tricky and as I said at the start of this post, that last run took the wind out of my sails.

We watched Mrs. Doubtfire last night. I had never seen it. I miss Robin Williams.

Experimenting with a Different Way to Capture the Travel Slides

Benaulim Beach in Goa, India. A long wide stretch of white sand, no one in sight. Two local fishing boats are pulled up on the sand. Palm trees line the beach. In the distance a hill can be seen.
Benaulim Beach, Goa, India.

A month ago I explained how I was capturing the slides that I am using in the “Story behind the Photograph” series (all of which can be found here (RSS), or under the map emoji 🗺️ in the menu bar above). Well I have now found a gadget that I was given a number of years ago. Its purpose is to digitize slides and negatives. Due to the device’s age, the scans are probably not the best. With the slides also being about thirty years old, the resultant images have a vintage look to them. Possibly the original method, which includes the use of a modern day iPhone camera, is producing better images? Either way, I am going to continue experimenting with this little gadget and see if I can do any fiddling with the images to improve them, without at the same time loosing the authenticity of the original.

My reason for doing so is because this method allows me to digitize the slides so much quicker, and I do not have to wait until nightfall for it to be dark enough to use a projector to view the slides. The slides themselves are still in a complete jumble, and so finding groups of photos centered around one part of the trip, one story, is not always easy whichever method I use.

The Story Behind This Photograph

The photograph above is of Benaulim Beach in Goa, India. I have not altered this image from the scan that I made with the little device. The photo was taken about two weeks into the new year of 1990.This image pretty much summed up how busy the beach was, and it was a very long stretch of beach. Once I got past the village of Benaulim and the fishing boats, there was no one there. My memory is that the beach went on and on until it came to the mouth of a river right at the end. Apple Maps confirms this, though it does not give the river a name.

As I walked the length of the beach I saw the beginnings of construction of what looked like resorts and hotels. Goa now has an international airport, and so I do not know what this beach looks like today? My hope that its shear size swallows up any development.

A thick row of palm trees hiding a village underneath them. In the foreground is what looks like thick rice fields.
A village hidden beneath palm trees.

On arrival had no plans for how long I would stay there. I had a room in a house that I shared with another traveler; what might be called at 1990s AirBnB. The house was in a small village and only fifteen minutes walk from the beach.

At that stage I had been on the road for seven months. The relaxing atmosphere of this part of Goa ate into my bones and I ended up staying there for a week. I walked, read, met people (both local and travelers) to sit and talk to. It was just what I needed at that time.

Sunset looking out over the Arabian Sea. In the foreground is the silhouette of a two wheeled cart with two long handles.
Sunset over the Arabian Sea.

👓 The new glasses arrived today with progressive lenses in them. My first pair of progressives and they feel a little disorientating at the moment. I sense that I'll get use to them, but for now I think that I'll be switching back and forth between the new glasses and the old.

I remember being in college when Space Invaders first came out. Then there was Asteroids, Pac Man, and a few other Space Invaders variants. Pinball machines were still available in UK pubs, and then as Space Invaders started their, um, invasion, evenings moved from trying to keep a metal ball on the playing field to huddling around the boxes that housed Invaders and the like, trying to better your score.

I was never that good at these games. Maybe they just weren’t my thing or I did not have the aptitude necessary to improve my game.

Recently I think that nostalgia got the better of me. I purchased The Iconfactory’s iOS app, Ollie’s Arcade. Recreating the video games of yesteryear, three of them and done very well as The Iconfactory do, they are a fun to play. However, I am still not very good at them. My scores remain low, but I keep on coming back for more.

🗣️ I’m trying out various translation apps to decide which best suits my needs. I find apps that offer a slower play back of the foreign language helpful. Though finding an app that has everything I want neatly packaged, is not easy.

♻️ I wouldn't mind restarting today afresh. I've got things done, things that needed to be done, but I'm sitting here now at the far end of the day feeling a little dissatisfied, maybe frustrated as well? Such is life....up one day, down the next.

🍃 I’m waking up to wind and rain, hard showers followed by a wait for the next one, this morning. Yesterday’s sun appears to be an anomaly at the moment. It appears that we have a little longer before the winter rains recede.

🌱 Clearing in the garden today. Pulling out an invasive plant. There is still some to move, but it just got too hot….so I started work on a new blog post.

I’ve said it many times on this blog…in essence to myself…that not doing something will not get it done.

This time I will add that the satisfaction of getting that something done is enormous. To see it in the rear view mirror as opposed to constantly looming over me.

Yesterday I ran the furthest to date. It was only by 0.1km, but at 3.51km this was the further distance that I have covered so far in the Watch to 5K program.

Last night I was feeling it. The glow of exercise was accompanied by a tiredness in my legs and by the time that I went to bed, I was exhausted.

I’m in the middle of week four. At the moment the routine is walk, then run, then walk, etc, with the run times increasing and walk times being commensurate recovery periods. However in four runs time, the end of week five, I am going to be running for twenty minutes. Apart from the warm up and cool down walks, there will be no other walking. Just twenty minutes of running. Right now, I don’t know how I will do it? I am wondering whether to repeat week four before moving on?

Keeping the Company of Good Friends

Every Thursday night I sit in a weekly men’s group. I’ve mentioned before the value that I get from sitting with this group, but of late I have been reminded of something else. Maybe it’s the same thing but I am just now finding words for my experience? It’s simple, common sense advice to “keep the company of good friends”. That is, the influence of those around me, rubs off on me. When that company is good, the effect can only be a win for me.

I originally came across the concept through my practice of Buddhism. Buddhism in part is about developing the mind - though you might see the Tibetans placing their hands on their heart when they say “mind”. So if I wish to develop my heart, it is helpful to me to make sure that those around you have similar aspirations, or live a life commensurate with that aspiration. Why? Because until my heart is strong enough, I can easily be influenced by the actions and thoughts of others. Striving for change requires commitment and is a whole lot easier with support.

And this is what I experience within my men’s group. I feel held. I can even have an evening when I am relatively quiet, but as a saying goes that I have heard in similar groups,

Through the work of others, I do my own work.

The group builds trust by strengthening its core. This is done through group agreements and accountability,

  • “Are you in accountability with the group agreements?”
  • “Are you in accountability with yourself, what you said that you would do?”
  • “Do you have a charge with any member of the group?”

In each case there is an opportunity to take a look at that which is out of accountability, or to look at that charge. These are each addressed with respect and trust.

Through seeing, hearing and experiencing the vulnerability of other group members, I find myself touching the vulnerability inside myself. With time, the example of good friends rubs off on me.