April 2011

My wife loves cats. I love dogs. It seems that we can not get a pet unless someone is able to couple a cat and a dog. Not sure why it never has been tried? But the real reason why we got neither cat nor dog is that we both work full time during the week. We think it´s not fair to have an animal waiting for us the whole day just to entertain us in the evening. Well a cat would not wait anyway. Cats are not like dogs. Cat lovers will tell you that they are strong and independent individuals. I think they are wild animals. Your cat would kill you if it would be strong enough. They try all the time by huddling against your legs while you are walking. They wanted you to fall down, maybe down your stairway. They are killers! Any doubts? Watch a cat playing with a mouse before it kills it. Now imagine a cat the size of a polar bear. Then the mouse is you. They are killers period. But as they are so small and have a nice fur people think they are pets.

So why there is a cat sleeping in our livling room? Most of our neighbors have cats and as cats can not be stopped by fences lot´s of them are using our garden as their hunting ground. They kill the voles ( of course only after playing extensively with them ). Most of these cats have a natural dislike about us and I think mankind in general so the keep distance. It was the same with the cat in the image. He watched us carefully while walking through our garden. Someday, somehow he visited us on our patio. He played all the tricks: he clung to our feet, he layed on my wifes lap and finally landed on mine. There I was. A small killer on my lap. When I started to stroke him he started to purr. But after a couple of minutes the sound changed. He no longer purred - he snored. The killer has fallen asleep on my lap! After that the situation was clear. My wife and I were lost. Now he visits us regulary. Mostly to get his share of kindness and some sleep. I still think cats are dangerous animals. They can´t kill you but they can steal your heart.

The image below shows a street in Bucuresti, Romania. My sales manager for Romania and I were driving to a meeting. The road is leading to the "house of the people" built under Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator. The road is 5km long and to build the road and the gigantic palace they distroyed 40.000 flats and a couple of churches in the center of Bucuresti. Before that Bucuresti was known as the Paris of the East. Now it´s the ugliest european capital I have seen so far. It took 20.000 workers to build this monster in three shifts within 6 years. It´s the second biggest building on earth. It has 5.100 rooms. The biggest one is 16 meter high and has 2.200m2! What a waste of money and manpower in one of the poorest countries in Europe.

Last but not least. The fastest man on earth, Haile Gebrselassie, running in Vienna. It took him a couple of seconds above one hour to run 21,1km! I just started to run and usually I need about 50 Minutes for 8,6km ( two times around a small lake ). So he is twice as fast. I have to admit that he looks quite different too.

setting main shot: A-Mode, 1/250s@f2.8 and 400ASA