Sabine in Gozo

Murky weekend

To be fair, not the entire weekend has been murky – but pretty much most of it!

Video-shoot Chasing Pandora

Yesterday morning heavy grey clouds adorned the sky, which seemed a big bummer considering the scheduled shoot of Chasing Pandora’s music video for their new single “People”. But when the shooting started, the sun miraculously had broken through, and remained that way until it was a wrap. (Then, unbelievably, it got all cloudy again!)

Chasing Pandora's videoshoot for 'People'

Contrary to what I expected and what I believe was planned, every extra actually had to lip-sync one short line of the chorus; I wasn’t prepared to be more than just a woman passing by the wayside. Obviously now I’m even more curious to see the finished video!! Of course there’s a chance that they cut out my part in the end… we’ll see! I’d love to play the song for you – it is another great one! – but it is yet to be released. In the meantime, if you’re on facebook, there are some more photos I took during the video-shoot here.

Long exposure shots

Well, I’d been planning on creating – and then showing you – something new in my photography repertoire, but thanks to the said murky weather, that has to wait another week. *sigh* Yesterday I received a neutral density filter I had ordered last week, an ND400 to be exact. Such filters make it possible to take photos with long exposure, even in bright daylight (see some great examples here!). Today it’s been raining on and off – I’m keeping fingers and toes crossed for next weekend!

Update… In the meantime the rain has stopped and I was really dying to try out the filter. So here is my first daylight long exposure shot with a Hoya ND400 filter! During the 20 seconds, I casually walked into the frame and had a seat. Goofy, I know, but fun nonetheless! *grin*

Shutter Speed: 20.0 sec - Aperture: f/13 - ISO: 50 - Focal length: 24 mm

On other fronts…

Healthwise I haven’t improved one iota. I keep functioning with a varied diet of different painkillers. Mind you, not all at the same time!! Solpadeine is definitely working best, but it’s also the scariest of the lot. Googling “solpadeine addiction” throws a collection of horrible scenarios at you! I’m extremely careful in that respect and take them only about every other day.

Give us this day our daily bread...

Variety is the spice of life. They say. Hmph!

Once the effect of the painkillers wears off, I’m thrown back to square one. Slowly but surely it’s driving me insane. I haven’t heard back yet from the hospital regarding my physiotherapy appointment. So probably I’ll go for a private one. A friend has given me a telephone number of someone she recommends, and I’ll call tomorrow. But I admit to doubting that this is really the solution to my chronic pain. If only I knew exactly what’s causing this nightmare…

Totally forgot to post these…

When we went to Malta a couple of weeks ago, I took these photos upon leaving Gozo. I didn’t want to add them to the post with my Malta pics; then I forgot about them and in the end things happened that reduced my computer time drastically.

So this is Mgarr Harbour, the place you’ll see first when you come to Gozo – and last, when leaving the island…

Scared kittens, scared me

More kitten shots… Human presence still seems extremely intimidating to the little guys, something that I really cannot figure out. From far, they do see us interact with the other cats (most importantly, with their mother!), but one step in their direction, and they just run like hell.  Max (pictured below) is slightly less scared than Moritz, who is a real escape artist. He’s so quick, you wouldn’t even notice that he’d started running.

I can't see you... so you can't see me either - right?!

Don't come any closer!

You think you gonna catch me? Keep dreaming. Ha!

What do you want from me anyway?

As you can imagine, my life has been playing out in a very tight radius recently. Mainly stationed on the living room sofa, I do occasionally venture out into the garden; an attempt at keeping sane. Still trying to make sense of what’s happening to me, really. I mean, I’ve never been really ill and this cholesterol thing really scares me. The funny part is, I lost two kilos in the last couple of weeks; if I start a diet now, where will that take me?! I feasted on bread with ‘cholesterol-reducing’ margarine today (just remembering the taste sends shudders down my spine), and I even switched from coffee to tea – if only for the reason that it tastes slightly less yucky with skimmed milk than coffee… *huge sigh* Stupid question on the side: Why does margarine have to be salted??

Let’s change the depressing subject, shall we? I was pleasantly surprised to find out this morning that a fellow deviantArt member has uploaded my pic of Roger Hodgson to a Radio Paradise forum thread about ‘Even in the Quietest Moments by Supertramp. By the way, Radio Paradise is a really cool internet radio station, playing mainly prog rock. I’ve been listening to it since I found out about my photo. Great stuff!

Less than two months till Tollwood now; I pray that nothing else will pop up and cross my plans unexpectedly!

Wish y’all a nice Sunday (or what’s left of it!) and a good week; I’m going back to work tomorrow, too!

Pride comes before a fall!

In German we say Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall. This post is being written by a woman who despises all forms of food and drink that carry attributes such as diet, low-fat, low-calorie,  light, extra-light. I used to think of them as silly marketing gimmicks.

There’s more. For instance, I don’t like the taste of margarine, and I loathe I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter (believe it or not, I CAN believe that that stuff is not butter, because it simply doesn’t taste like butter!!). Just looking at the watery appearance of skimmed milk lets me shudder. One of my favourite snacks is fresh bread, thickly buttered and smothered with (full-fat) mayonnaise; I even blogged about that a few years ago.

Brie cheese (55-65% fat I believe) is one of my favourites, and the local advertising for ‘Baronesse’ cheese claiming to have less fat than any other comparable cheese invariably makes me groan and counter that it also had so and so many percent less taste.

I could go on and on listing all the culinary delights I love to indulge in. But I’m already drooling, and that’s rather frustrating as I’m going to have to eat humble pie henceforth: turns out my blood-tests (both the one done by my doctor and the other at the hospital) revealed a high level of cholesterol. At least my blood pressure has been as low as it’s always been, but still… I intend to take heed of the warning. But man, it’s depressing! I don’t even know where to start making changes to my diet – it would appear I’m a cholesterol addict! Luckily I’m also a fan of oats, which I’m told is a good cholesterol-fighter, but it’s probably not a good idea trying to subsist on three meals of oats a day.

I’m still reeling from my headache troubles that haven’t gone away, and now this on top of it; I’m wondering what’s next on the list of stuff that karma has in store for me…

Well, I will live!

At around 1.30 pm my hospital adventure was over and I collapsed on the sitting room sofa, wearing this unflattering thingy round my neck and devouring the delicious rice dish my brother-in-law Karmenu so kindly prepared for me. He and my sister-in-law Antoinette brought me home, after Antoinette spent hours waiting with me for my last appointment that stood between me and my dismissal. Dr Aquilina had to check out my neck muscles but came almost 2 hrs later than expected because he’d been so busy with patients in the outpatients clinic. All in all, a lot of my “activity” consisted of waiting since Monday morning – the worst of it obviously last night and this morning, when my mind mulled over the possible results of that CT scan. I’m so glad it’s over, even though the headache has not changed one little bit.

Now I’m wearing one of these sexy “soft collars” (see the goofy webcam pic); it’s really only soft as long as you don’t wear it! It’s supposed to provide rest to that muscle between right shoulder and head. Apparently the culprit responsible for my pain has been my work, which glues me to the PC for practically the whole day. In recent months the monitor was also placed to the right of my head because the monitor cable of the new computer I had received, was too short. That has been rectified a couple of weeks ago, but obviously the harm was done. Now I’m waiting to get an appointment for physiotherapy (yes, waiting again!), which will hopefully start next week.

So the worst part is over, which was the worrying. Maybe that will already help to ease the pain. A big thank you to George’s – my! – family who spoiled me rotten while I was in hospital, and to all my friends, many of whom moved me to tears with their lovely messages…

And finally I don’t want to finish this post without sending get-well messages to anyone who is hospitalised right now. Spending a couple of days there made me realise how insignificant my own pains are in comparison with all the suffering others have to endure, and how blessed I really am!

PS… I’m not sitting in front of the computer, but with the notebook on my lap, just in case you were wondering LOL!

Gloomy morning

Third day already… not really what I’d expected. At 5 the night was over again, and it looks like a really gloomy day ahead. Quite the match for my mood…

Ejjew Woman is wide awake too. Miskina, at least she’s got a reason for her distress with a broken leg, but she really doesn’t make my headache any better with her shouting and screaming (and singing!).

As for myself, I’m waiting for the doc to come around and tell me what they did or didn’t find in yesterday’s CT scan. I’m getting more and more nervous as the minutes pass. Will take a shower for distraction now.

Talk later…

Temporary change of residence

Monday morning the pain finally drove me to hospital. Well, ok, it was hubby who drove me… I had x-rays of my troubled head and neck, and another ton of blood was drawn. Preliminary findings are that all this pain is caused by a muscle rather than the head itself. This is sort of reassuring but the pain is still there and I’m wondering what happens next.

For now I took up residence in bed number 15 in the female ward, but I reckon I’ll be released today. Which is just as well, as there’s this woman somewhere in the depth of this door-less ward that has a knack of screaming “Ejjew ghennuni” (come help me)  all day long, and little is being done to get her to tone it down. My head was throbbing worse than it had been before!

Through the night it was quiet here, though, but I didn’t sleep well. Then some time after 5, just when I seemed to be really fast asleep, a thermometer was shoved under my arm. Before 6 am, “Ejjew” woman  rebooted. The night was officially over… Just now I’m waiting for hubby to bring me a towel. I had been warned I’d need to bring my own soap but nobody mentioned towels!

Max & Moritz

I already re-titled this post twice before even starting to write anything LOL! Confusion reigns. This morning I went – undrugged – to the doc and had lots of blood drawn; well at least it seemed a lot. I hope it will produce at least some conclusive result. I spent over 90 minutes in the waiting room, there were that many people… In the meantime the pain continued unabated, and I wanted to kick myself for not at least having taken two panadols or something. Oh well, that passed, too. I finally got a referral for the outpatients clinic of the local hospital, but that appointment can take ages to materialise… so I’m keeping fingers crossed I’ll be still alive by then.

Arriving back home I popped a couple of sopadeines and drank a litre of water. AND did some serious relaxing out in the garden. A couple of days ago, our new ‘mom’ (funny, we actually haven’t given her a real name yet!)  brought back her two little ones, but they are awfully shy. And extremely quick when playing hide-and-seek! I interrupted my relaxing session a couple of times for a few shots, they are just so irresistible!

The white-black(ish) one is a little less shy and did let me near him a few times. The other one is more elusive… And even when I get a shot at him, the noise from the shutter release (even from several metres’ distance!) alerts him and he runs as if the devil was after him!

He would never let me get this close… the above is actually a crop of this one:

And after that he promptly knew what I’d been up to…. he gave me chance for one last go, and was gone!

Again, here’s the full frame of the pic:

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We haven’t given names to the little ones yet, either… at first I was drawn to Laurel & Hardy, but the family didn’t approve. Today Max and Moritz came to my mind… two little naughty boys from the German fairytale by Wilhelm Busch (see  picture on the right – almost spitting images of our kittens, wouldn’t you agree?? LOL!)

Meeting my cyber friend Carin!

Yesterday I finally got to meet Carin in person! She is dutch but grew up in Gozo – and left the island round about the time when I arrived, so we never met. But obviously the subject of Gozo has provided a tie, which began back in 2006, with a little help of the internet!

This week Carin is here with a friend to revisit – and reminisce about – all the places they used to know. We met at the Kempinski, which she hadn’t been to yet. Yeah I know, out of all places we went for a drink at my place of work… but I assure you it’s a wonderful place to meet friends for a chat as long as you’re off duty; and it’s especially enjoyable when the weather is nice and you can sit outside on the terrace of the Café & Lounge. Almost feels like you’re on holiday…. *sigh*

Carin, it was great meeting you! I’ll send you all the full-sized photos by e-mail. Have a safe journey back to Holland!

Malta visions…

Just an eclectic collection of impressions of our trip to Malta yesterday…

Valletta - fountain detail

Valletta bus terminus - traditional vs modern transport

Valletta, St George's Square

Valletta

Valletta

Valletta, Republic Street

Valletta

Fortina Hotel & Spa Resort, Tigné

Tigné Point

Dr Juice at Tigné Point