Corner View 10

The theme of this week's Corner View is Street Fashion.

Please visit the other Corner View bloggers:

jane, kim, ladybug-zen, ian, sunnymama, kyndale, samantha, karen, kristina, angelina, dorit, goldensunfamily, sophie, janet, nicki, ruth, mcgillicutty, desiree, di, travelingmama, aimee, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad, caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana, denise, cabrizette, bohemian girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, girl in the yellow shoes, mister e, janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa, britta, virginia, april, rebecca, b, jenell, guusje, juanita, pamela, inna, daan, myrtille, cris , ibb, susi, jodi, lily, gillian, doobleh-vay

Corner View 9 Salalah

The theme os this week's Corner View is the view out of your back window or door. As the whole of mine is blocked by a great big new villa, I decided that the view out of my office's rear window and back door, which opens onto a balcony, would be more interesting.

For the last few weeks I have watched a Rüppell's Weaver making his nests and trying to lure females into them. I have become quite attached to this little fellow and have lived through the emotional rollercoaster of his life, cheered his triumphs and shared the sadness of his disasters. During this period he has made more than ten nests. They are all woven from the fronds of one coconut palm tree which he flies backwards and forwards to. Oddly, it is not the nearest one, but he only seems to want the palm fronds from that particular tree. He then ties a series of knots around a thin branch and weaves the globular-shaped nests which he suspends from it. The female bird, when he attracts one, then inspects the nests, chooses the best one and lines it with leaves and feathers.

Rüppell's Weavers, given the chance, will be polygamous. In spring, he briefly managed to attract two mates. One of them laid eggs, which hatched, and he divided his time between building new nests and helping her to feed the chicks. This was his best time. but, then one day, I stared out of the window and sensed that something was wrong. He was alone and looked crestfallen. The females had gone. On a large branch just behind him, I saw a metre-long lizard, with a red and black head. I guessed it must have eaten the chicks because the feeding stopped and the chicks never emerged.

Since then, he has made several new nests and when he has failed to attract a mate to them, he has destroyed them in frustration, then started all over again in an attempt to make new, improved versions. On a couple of occasions recently, female birds have looked inside his newest nests and he has got very excited, fluttering his wings like crazy in a mating dance. But, to be honest, his newest nests are not as big or as well-constructed as the earlier ones. I fear his mating season will end without him producing any further offspring. I hope I'm wrong because I know he would be so elated if he had a mate and a new batch of chicks to feed.

In the top photo, you can see him feeding his ill-fated chicks, in the second he is building a new nest and in the third you can see some of the sadly-unoccupied finished products.

Please visit the other Corner View bloggers:

jane, kim, ladybug-zen, ian, sunnymama, kyndale, samantha, karen, kristina, angelina, dorit, goldensunfamily, sophie, janet, nicki, ruth, mcgillicutty, desiree, di, travelingmama, aimee, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad, caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana, denise, cabrizette, bohemian girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, girl in the yellow shoes, mister e, janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa, britta, virginia, april, rebecca, b, jenell, guusje, juanita, pamela, inna, daan, myrtille, cris , ibb, susi, jodi, lily, gillian, doobleh-vay

Corner View 8 The Beach

I'm posting this week's Corner View earlier than usual because I'm going to be travelling for the next couple of days. The theme is the beach, and Salalah has some of the finest beaches in the world. There are literally hundreds of deserted sandy beaches in the Salalah area, some of them palm-fringed; some backed by dramatic cliffs. Currently, there are just two resort hotels, the Hilton and the Crowne Plaza, which attract mainly Swedish tourists, but five more hotels are planned as part of the Salalah Beach Project.

Being surrounded all the year round by such wonderful beaches may be one reason why I'm not taking a beach holiday this summer. Instead, I'm heading for the Himalayan 'Shangri-La' of Bhutan, and I'm really excited about that.

Please visit the other Corner view bloggers:

jane, kim, ladybug-zen, ian, sunnymama, kyndale, samantha, karen, kristina, angelina, dorit, goldensunfamily, sophie, janet, nicki, ruth, mcgillicutty, desiree, di, travelingmama, aimee, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad,caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana, denise, cabrizette, bohemian girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, girl in the yellow shoes, mister e, janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa, britta, virginia, april, rebecca, b

Ghost Town in the Prairies

My favourite subject at school was Geography. I enjoyed every class, but the ones I liked the best were the ones about the Canadian Prairies. I come from a country where everything is small, including the landscape. So, the vastness of the Prairies seemed wonderful to me.The place that caught my eye on the map was a place called Medicine Hat.When I finally got the opportunity to go to Canada, I flew into Vancouver, hired a car and decided to drive all the way across the Rockies and the Prairies to Medicine Hat. I was not to be disappointed. The Canadian Prairies were everything I expected them to be and more. I got out of my car in the middle of a seemingly endless sea of flat wheatfields and savoured the moment. It felt as if the sky was so big that it was almost touching my head. It is something that I will never forget.

Just before I finally reached Medicine Hat, I came across a ghost town. Whitla is a truly off the beaten path place. It is a place that before I started my journey across the Prairies I had never heard of, but it is a place with a unique, wistful atmosphere. There was a heavy summer silence, broken only by the cry of a kestrel soaring above the grain elevators. I couldn't better this evocative description of the place: "Whitla is a whole street of abandoned buildings. Located 20 miles southwest of Medicine Hat, it is a real ghost town. The town began with the opening of the area to homesteading in 1908. It was named for R. J. Whitla, a Winnipeg merchant who visited the district in 1885 when it was a mere siding on the newly built Turkey Track Railway. In 1910 there was a general store followed by a lumberyard, a hardware store, a farm machinery firm, a Union Bank, several cafes, and three auto repair shops. During 1917 drought, dust storms, grasshoppers, and rabbits began consuming the crops and chasing the settlers away. The exodus from Whitla had been gradual throughout the 1920s and increased noticeably through the ‘30s and ‘40s. By the end of World War II, the town had all but vanished." H.B. Chenoweth.

Twenty years ago, when I was there, only two grain elevators remained. Now, even they are gone, but hopefully the descendants of that kestrel still patrol the Whitla wheat fields.

If you'd like to read more about the ghost towns and disappearing grain elevators of the Prairies, these are two of my favourite sites: Ghost Towns Canada and Grain Elevators Canada .

Corner View 7 Cityscapes

7

The theme for this week's Corner View is cityscapes. Oman's only real city, with a population of one million, is the capital, Muscat, so I've selected a few scenes from here. Muscat means 'anchorage' and it is actually a string of villages, forts, souks and mosques wedged into a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea. Some people say, it doesn't really have a city centre, but I would say the harbour area of Mutrah, featured in the photos, around which the city grew, is it's real centre. If you were expecting an ultra-modern city full of skyscrapers, like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha or Manama, you'd be in a for a big surprise. Sultan Qaboos likes to conserve traditional Omani architecture, and any modern development is very strictly controlled.

Please visit the other Corner View bloggers for views of their cities:

jane, kim, ladybug-zen, ian, sunnymama, kyndale, samantha, karen, kristina, angelina, dorit, goldensunfamily, sophie, janet, nicki, ruth, mcgillicutty, desiree, di, travelingmama, aimee, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad,caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana, denise, cabrizette, bohemian girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, girl in the yellow shoes, mister e, janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa, britta, virginia, april, rebecca, b

Where Has The Mongolian Girl Gone?

A few people have been asking me this question and I feel I owe you an explanation. I am sorry I didn't post one sooner, but I was still undecided about what to do next. Where shall I begin? Perhaps I should go right back to the very beginning. When I was a boy I told my favourite uncle, who had been a sailor in the Pacific fleet and was quite an inspiration to me, 'I have a plan: I am going to travel the world and then write about it,' and in a way I have been quite faithful to that plan. It wasn't really my own plan. I got the idea from Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Paul Theroux and other writers of exotic tales set in faroff lands.

The first novel I started to write was set in Malaysia. It was called South China Sea Dreams and I had the whole story in my head, but somehow I could never seem to get past writing the first chapter. It's still there in my head and I hope that one day the pages will all come spilling out.

The idea for the second one came much later, after I'd been in Outer Mongolia during one of the most turbulent phases in its history. Out of this came The Mongolian Girl. I wrote feverishly day and night and finished the first draft in just twelve weeks. If the book gets published, I will tell you more about what happened to that first draft.

Recently, I decided to completely rewrite The Mongolian Girl and every time I finished a section, I posted it on this blog, where many of you were kind enough to read it and make encouraging comments, which really motivated me to keep going. Altogether I posted about 22,000 words, which is between a quarter and a third of the whole book. Everything was going fine, then one day I was surfing the internet and came across a blog post warning that if you post a novel on the internet, you won't be able to get a publishing deal. This made me really worried, so I started to look into the matter and found that this is essentially true.

Because it has been my life's dream to become a full-time writer, it really is important to me to get The Mongolian Girl published, so I cannot post the rest of the story online. This is not for any financial reason. Money has never been important to me. I just would love to see my novel in a bookstore. I'll probably buy every copy I see.

I know I owe you, my loyal online readers, a big thank you. So, when I finish writing it, I will e-mail you all a complete manuscript free of charge.

Since I stopped writing online, I have discovered just how much your encouragement meant to me. It is so much harder to write now. Perhaps you can help me finish writing it by telling me what you think is going to happen next and how you would like to see the story end. Here is a link to the last online chapter of-------------->
THE MONGOLIAN GIRL

Corner View 6 - Coffee

The theme for this week's Corner View is coffee. Now, when you mention the word 'coffee', the first place people think of is Brazil. The coffee beans in the picture, which I will grind for my morning coffee tomorrow, are indeed from Brazil, but they have, in a way, returned home, because like most of the world's best coffee beans they are Coffea arabica and as the name suggests, they originally came from the Arabian peninsula, just over the border from here, in Yemen, where coffee was first cultivated more than a thousand years ago. Arab traders took these beans to Indonesia and East Africa hundreds of years later and eventually they were exported to Latin America.

Last summer I was in Panama and learned a lot more about coffee when I was given a guided tour of the Kotowa Coffee Estate by Dutch coffee farmer, Hans van der Vooren. The first and possibly most important thing is, don't buy coffee that's already been ground. Coffee not only loses its flavour and aroma very quickly, it also absorbs smells and tastes from its surroundings. So, for example if you fry bacon and eggs near ground coffee, that's what it will taste of. Also, for the same reason, you should keep your coffee beans in a vacuum-sealed container. When buying coffee beans, what should you look for? Well, they should have a uniform shape and size as this shows that they have been properly sorted and graded; bigger beans tend to be more expensive. And they should be 100% Arabica as that is the best variety. Why, you may wonder, do farmers bother growing any other variety? The reason is that Coffea arabica is not easy to grow and requires very specific conditions: warm mountain slopes with a minimum altitude of 1,500m and light shade, which is usually provided by surrounding trees. The other main variety, Robusta (Coffea canephora), which is the basis for most instant coffee, is far easier to grow and can tolerate direct sunlight.

Now, with regard to how the beans have been processed, Hans explained that you don't want them burnt too much. Light roast beans (the pale coloured ones) will retain the greatest bouquet of flavours. These complex natural flavours can range from citrus fruit to vanilla and chocolate. If they are poor quality beans, they will also have unpleasant bitter flavours present. So, the cheaper beans are roasted for longer to get rid of the bitterness. Dark roast beans are invariably poor quality which is why they needed to be roasted for so long. The worst culprits are the French roast beans. They are from the cheap Robusta variety and have been burnt almost to a cinder in order to eradicate their natural bitterness. Medium roast is indeed a happy medium as it will retain much of the original bouquet of flavours, yet at the same time not be too bitter.

Panamanian coffee is currently considered to be the best in the world. Based on price and results in international coffee-tasting competitions, the world's best coffees are Panama's Geisha, Jamaica's Blue Mountain, Hawaii's Kona, Indonesia's Kopi Luwak, Guatemala's El Injerto, Brazil's Fazenda Santa Ines, El Salvador's Los Planes, Island of St. Helena Coffee Co. and Rwanda Blue Bourbon. They are all Coffea arabica. A kilo of Geisha beans from Boquete can cost more than $200.

For those of you who haven't ground your own beans before, you don't need a mortar and pestle. There are lots of cheap, efficient electric coffee grinders available in the shops. I particularly like the Kenwood CG100.

Please visit the other Corner View bloggers:

jane, ladybug-zen, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad,

caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, kim, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana, denise, cabrizette, bohemian girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, girl in the yellow shoes, mister e, janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa, britta, virginia, april, rebecca, b