Bucharest, Easter 2008

Over Easter I will be in Bucharest (that's in Romania in case some of you are not familiar with the name) to help out blind children and teach cane -and some kitchen- skills to volunteers (as no one does my job there).

A few months ago, whilst working at RNIB ("Royal National Institute of the Blind"), I was approached by a charity ('Light into Europe') to see if I could help them out in their wonderful venture. Their goal is to help rehabilitate deaf and blind children and young adults so that they can lead more fulfilling lives in the Eastern Block. They badly need skilled workers but with no school to train volunteers in the first place, and no manuals available in Romanian to even learn about the kind of job that I do, the task ahead is immense... but pretty exciting too. The local government will also need to be approached to discuss what can be done to improve accessibility, etc. I think they also want to introduce me to the British Ambassador to that purpose.

It will be more like work than a holiday but I hope I can raise above the challenges! Believe you me, it is one thing to teach mobility in England where you can stop traffic by pressing a push button and hear a ‘beep’ to tell you it’s safe to cross (there’s even tactile feedback when the ‘green man’ symbol comes on for people who are deafblind), it’s quite another to tackle road crossings in a country where there is almost no consideration for disabled people's needs... I will have to rely on my practical mind to use their other senses in a more effective way.

I've never been to Romania but I can't think of a greater way to discover their capital city than with a couple who have dedicated their lives to improving the future of vulnerable children. I have no doubt they will continue to be a wonderful inspiration.... I am personally moved by all their efforts.

The day before I was due to book my flight ticket BA dropped their prices, quite unexpectedly, by £50... I was astounded. I thought 'wow. What a great omen'. I want to believe that it was divine intervention ! :) May God keep on blessing them and increase their riches... :)

California Dreaming, 16-24 Feb 2008

Mid February 2008 I went to San Francisco for a week to visit some dear friends. The city was as beautiful as I’d remembered... but I’d last seen it in August 1993, and it was a lot warmer then. In February it was a whole different ballgame... very much like London. I had packed all the wrong clothes...

However, it was still great to get away from work and to eat out at so many lovely restaurants (some with lovely views across the bay).

I guess that one of my fav days was in Carmel, when we stayed at the Hyatt in a wodden cottage with a real fireplace, great balcony overlooking the ocean and the pool, and a huge spa in the bathroom. This is the kind of suite that I could not normally afford ! What a treat ! The whole set up was beautiful and I’d highly recommend it if you are in the vecinity... and have a fairly sound bank-account too, hum.

We also went to nearbyMonterey to see the famous aquarium.... as highly recommended by friends and family who had visited previously. All the displays were beautiful but the jelly fish tanks were quite something... you could watch dozens of jelly fish pulsate in harmony, to the tune of classical music playing in the background... and some were actually very pretty and unusual (I’d never realised before how many different types of jellyfishes there were out there). It was hard to remember that these see-through creatures that looked to be made of nothing much could be so deadly.

They also had huge tanks with shoals of silver fish that would spin round and round, as well as the usual (bigger) suspects – hammer sharks, etc.

I was really hoping to see baby sea otters as they are just little balls of fluff when they are ‘toddlers’ but we only saw the one, cuddling to its mother. They did look seriously cute.

We had tried to see them in their natural habitat at Lobos Point and Seal Point, but didn’t have much luck. We saw just one seal. It was wrapped around sea-weed so that it wouldn’t drift back into the sea and I actually thought it was dead until it decided to pop its nose out and greet us with a smile – or so it seemed.

The coastline around Monterey is exquisite... very Californian cliche I thought. Pebble Beach Gold Course was also quite scenic and I took some really nice atmospheric shots there (as you can drive around it). Lots of cypress trees too...

We also flew to Orange County for a day, as one does, to have fun at DisneyLand. It had expanded quite a bit since 1993 and was better than I’d remembered. I probably would have enjoyed it better had it been warmer (we expected 10C more in LA but I personally never noticed much difference) but the rides were still good fun, no matter how old you are and the queues were a very reasonable 15 minutes average.

We had our last dinner at Teatro Zinzanni which has a cabaret set up, with jugglers, acrobats, and a lot of Circus-like acts, as well as singing acts. Every member of staff there seems to be an actor in some capacity or another. For me it was a unique experience as I’d never even been to a circus in my life (in case we saw performing animals which was against my ethics, even as a child + I guess lack of money in the Macle family prevailed too!), so some of the acts looked very impressive to me. Some performers seemed so at ease, it was like they defied gravity... they made it look so effortless too.

The week went by FAR too fast.... It’s like we never got to do a hundred other things we were planning to do... but then they do say that ‘time flies when you’re having fun’... right?