The Discovery Launch!!

It looked beautiful! I know, other people call flowers beautiful rather than a massive space shuttle leaving the earth with a hell of a huge exhaust plume, but to me, this launch was perfect.. it's at least as fascinating as flowers, come on, you must admit that!
Watch Discovery blast off from Cape Canaveral (and tell me you didn't like it afterwards!):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4716463.stm
The crew consists of seven people, the commander being a woman called Eileen Collins who says she's always wanted to be a teacher.. nevermind, just become an astronaut instead, not that much of a difference, really, is it?!
Of course, the NASA team is quite full of self-praise now. Not to forget Mr (eh, President) Bush: "Our space programme is a source of great national pride, and this flight is an essential step toward our goal of continuing to lead the world in space science, human spaceflight, and space exploration." Luckily he remembered to add these last few words to his sentence and didn't just stop after "lead the world"...
Apparently it didn't all go as smoothly as it looked like, though, because some pieces of the insulating foam covering the tank have come off during the start, the same thing had happened 2 1/2 years ago to the Colombia space shuttle when the foam hit the shielding tiles which led to the Colombia's explosion when reentering the earth atmosphere.. so this is what NASA has been eagerly working on since then, just to discover the same problem happening again! The poor astronauts have to stay crammed in the International Space Station now until their colleagues manage to come and pick them up..
I bet some highly developed and intelligent creatures watch us human beings down on earth struggling to send a shuttle up safely, thinking how primitive our technologies still are ;)

London's message to the world:

http://www.werenotafraid.com

It's quite a typical reaction that people suddenly tend to become very patriotic after an attack like that. By the way, the "London Bombings Relief Charitable Fund" has up till now collected a total amount of 6 million pounds (!) of donations from people.. Don't let the developing countries know about that, they might try to blow up bombs in their home country as well in order to get such a massive response from the world. The world seems to be much more willing to get outraged about bombs in Europe than poor people starving and dying from potentially curable diseases elsewhere.

Some Of My Photographic Art Work

This is what happens to pictures after they've gone through ACD Foto Canvas with me. As you can see, this programme offers endless possibilities of betraying a formerly truthful picture.. so much fun, have a look at some of my "art work" as I like to call it. After all, everything we do is art, in a way.
(Tip: Just click on the pictures to enlarge them.. as some people do not seem to be aware of that possibility..)


My very dear parents viewed from a different angle.. don't worry, they're not always like that! Although, there are times when they tend to get a bit confused about directions.. but they usually stay down to earth.


My parents again, in the airport in Tegel, Berlin, waiting for my grandma to arrive. They look quite excited about her coming to see us, or is it just an effect of my modification..?


Don't look away: "Against War And Occupation"
Lilly at the celebrations of the end of WWII on 8th May in Berlin!

Peace, world!

Remember our last day in school? Never again... Don't forget you ripped down the "horrible" posters in the corridor, I'm still so proud of you and, by the way, in possession of the evidence in the form of a video..


Ljuba in an amazing picture, what a creation ;)

Ulla being visibly happy about her newly acquired earrings at the Carneval of Cultures in Berlin.

Report from London

As I live in London at the moment (in case you don't know me.. ask for my biography ;) ), all those attacks and everything that has been going on here has been very close to where I live so I thought, as I've now created this truly fantastic website (appreciate my modesty!) I might as well share some of my impressions, although everything seems to be rather long ago now and I admit that the point has been reached when you just don't want to read anything about it anymore. But there you go, you don't have to read this, it's just me jabbering away, a small fish in a big pond who has been observing the scenes like many others.
I was quite disgusted by the way the media loved the topic, blowing it up to "7/7", reminiscent of "9/11" (that's even The Times which disappointed me there.. but I find English newspapers pretty bad anyway, to be honest).
Anyway, I was woken up that particular morning by the very persistent noise of sirens and helicopters, I could even smell the kerosene. Kings Cross is literally around the corner and so is Tavistock Place where the bus exploded.

This is as close as we could get to the scene, if you look very closely you can make out the top of the red bus between the trees.

I stayed inside with two of my flatmates watching the news on tv until late afternoon which turned out to be a very good decision as we couldn't enter the streets in most directions anyway because they were blocked. When we finally went out to have a look around the air felt so tense it was almost palpable. It was unusally quiet although there were masses of people walking down the streets but everyone seemed to walk on cotton wool and whisper, it was really quite scary actually, I've never perceived silence like that. The look in people's eyes was strange as well, it was like everyone passing by had this haunted and nervous but nonetheless understanding facial expression which freaked me out a bit. Basically everyone knew someone who knew someone who was involved.

This picture speaks for itself..

..and of course, there was no way of escaping these kind of stories, like "On a usual day, I would have been on that train but due to some lucky coincidence..." and "Oh, my alarm clock didn't go off this morning, what if..?" or "It was such a beautiful morning I decided to walk instead of taking the bus, what if..?"... Sorry, you can easily tell I don't like when people what-if me. They should be happy that fate, God or coincidence was with them and not go about telling every newspaper their story, what does that make the victims feel like, are these people too ignorant to think about that? Although, I do admit I caught myself what-if-thinking because all these places they showed on Tv after the bombs were places I recognised as places I regularly walked by.. usually...
What amazed me most was the speed with which London returned to normal again although the white canvas covering Tavistock Place still reminded passers-by of what had happened some days ago. And you couldn't pretend not to see these posters everywhere:

Now that the canvas cover has gone as well, people didn't even seem to flinch after the recent failed attacks. The pubs were full of people on the 7th and we went in one as well to have a drink and we even played a few games of pool, strange as it may sound but what are you to do on this case, sit in the corner and keep silent? The message London was keen to deliver became clear right after the attacks: "We are not afraid!" said all the banners and flags, in harmony with the sea of flowers at Kings Cross station. So we get on with life.. and keep going.

I saw this reporter guy on tv just before I met him at Tavistock Place. That's what I call live, I could see their way of presenting the news was not as fake as I had always liked to believe!

The day after, London stays cheerful about the Olympics. Apparently, people were quite amazed that London had been chosen, those I asked before the decision was made all said, no way London was gonna get it.. but I believe we have been thinking "no way this is gonna happen" a few times too often by now.

That's me! A Turkish-German Berliner, if I may introduce myself..

Der erste Eintrag/The First Entry

Willkommen allerseits, ich wünsche euch allen eine schöne Zeit auf meiner ersten höchstselbsterstellten Seite..!

By the way, this isn't going to be a bilingual blog, I don't think so.. far too much work for a lazy daisy like me.. Therefore, an English "hello" to whoever, besides my German friends, will visit this website. I decided to stick to English for my future posts though, so a warm welcome to all international visitors!
Aylin