UPDATE on Brazil nuts and book shop!

For those of you following my posts closely and regularly (which of course all of you do consistantly..!) there's a little update now: At the moment I'm chewing on some freshly bought Brazil nuts because they stared down at me from the shelf so I remembered my duty to my loyal readers (that's you!) and bought them, thus hopefully saving the rain forest (if you don't get that inside joke you might have to read my post about the Brazil nuts..)!
These nuts do really look like the ones on the picture and can be found in a very modern "peel&reseal"-package. So are they really made in Bolivia then? Hm, on the back it says: "Packed in Italy, Produce of various countries"...? That's weird, so how can I tell which of the nuts is actually from a Bolivian tree? They all look the same to me ;-) Anyway, they look like they're really soft but if you bite into them they crumble and taste very dry, reminiscent of the dry bark of a tree (not that I've ever bitten into the bark of a tree, but you know, you can imagine..). To be honest, it's not the most tasty nut I've ever tasted but it's nice to chew on and imagine you've just picked it from a tree in the rain forest outside your window..
Today, I've also popped into that book shop where I had spotted this brilliant poster of Tony Blair earlier on and had a good look around. As I expected they have loads of very interesting sounding books, literally shelves and floors full of books about politics with a huge range of topics. I just wanted to read all of them so of course ended up not buying anything at all.. it simply left me with the deep frustrating realisation of how little I know! And there are so many people out there who radiate so much wisdom! If you know a lot about a certain topic and have an opinion on it then that seems to be enough to write and publish a book.. I liked the smell of old rotten second hand books. Why don't more people go in there? If I'd live here I'd be a regular customer, these kind of shops should be supported by the public! Ignorant fools, everyone! ;)

A Short History Of The USA's Election

In the beginning, there was the candidate. His name was George Bush but some people lovingly referred to him as "Dubya", emphasizing his middle name. Every serious man who possesses the slightest bit of self-esteem should have a middle name, and Dubya's self-esteem was bigger than himself, so he thought it appropriate for a future President to have one. Anyway, Dubya put a lot of effort into his election campaign. He travelled the world and impressed everyone with his enormous competence.

After his visit to Latin America he expressed his deep regrets of not having paid more attention in his Latin lessons back at school, otherwise, so he said, he would have been able to communicate with the people there.
He attached importance to make his message clear to the world, after all he's proud of his origin: "Don't mess with Texas"


His election campaign also included some very thought-through reforms to benefit the country financially:

So those few people who were allowed to vote or just lucky not to have been removed from the lists "by mistake" went to look for the nearest "polling station", unfortunately some confused it with "police station":

Like real proud Americans do, the voters took what they felt was their duty as true and loyal citizens very seriously and they said:




So off they went and voted. Some people encountered various problems due to a strange system of punching holes into a piece of paper which was meant to be the actual vote:


In the end, they all got it right though and their votes were counted as usual, except for those who accidentally happened to put their hole into the wrong place. Finally, the USA had a new President and with it even came a Vice President for free!


Rumous have it that for the next election a different and much easier ballot system is considered to be used:



And what did the rest of the world think of this election? Pretty much something like that:

°°°THE END°°°

The Brazil Nut To Save The Amazon Rainforest?

The accelerating deforestation is part of everyone's common knowledge by now although it belongs to those topics which people preferably tend to ignore and hide in the back of their memories.. (I bet after having started to read this first sentence your first thought was something like, oh no, please not that moral blackmailing again.. but don't worry, this is interesting and it doesn't end with the number of a bank account for your donations!)
Anyway, while Brazil is facing serious deforestation its neighbour Bolivia has discovered the Brazil nut for a demanding and increasingly interested world market. According to a bbc-report Bolivia, South America's poorest country, now has an 80% share of the world market and with over $5000 a ton enjoys good export earnings and many jobs while at the same time ensuring the maintenance of the nut trees in the rainforest. It's illegal to chop them down so people look after them to sustain the market for the nuts and thus their jobs. A tree can live up to 300 years and grow as huge as 50m! I don't think I've ever tried these nuts:
Ironically, Bolivia profits from Brazil's deforestation which resulted in Brazil's export in nuts having gone down 50% since 2000.
Apparently there's a project which uses the discarded nutshells as fuel for generators and they're trying to convey this knowledge back to Brazil from where the nut has its name originally.. nice gesture among poor neighbours, isn't it?

Make Tea Not War!

Today on my way to the famous English supermarket chain called Tesco (seriously, we all love it, once you're in there you just have to spend money, it's like a trap where you can only buy your way out of it!) I passed by a second-hand book-shop and a poster caught my eye: There was Tony Blair with a tea cup as a helmet on his head and a big shotgun in his hands, a fierce expression on his face.. and above his head the truly English statement: MAKE TEA NOT WAR!

A very political book-shop, it seems, I'll check it out soon, surely they must have some brilliant anti-Blair propaganda for me to read! Although, poor old Tony can't be that bad, he shares the same birthday with ME, after all.. just the day, obviously, not the year, I think he's something like 52 now. I bet being a Prime Minister enhances your midlife-crisis even more, especially if you're the Premier of Great Britain and even your voters make fun of you (and your voters only helped you win the previous election(s) because there's no alternative..!), let alone the rest of the country who thinks you're a whimp..

The London Series

(click to enlarge.. it's worth the effort of clicking!)

Did you know they were reconstructing Trafalgar Square...?














The Eye Of London, also known as The Biggest Advertisement For British Airways




See, London is such a colourful city, I felt I had to emphasize that!





Watch out, if you look at this picture for too long you start seeing the same people again and again..




Hello London.. I love this city! And this is my official love letter, hehe. But look what you can find in London: It gives back its love to those who look closely enough :