Pictures recently taken:

Let the Good Times Roll

Found a friend! Gill and the Herne Bay Crew

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kate, Gill and can it be Holly? SuperKool! A couple of years at UKC Herne Bay & Tankerton. Gill's husband Graham was my best man.

Lucky old me! Love 'em all

Quotes I Like

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the human soul.” --Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Technology

Ain't technology great! I plugged in my phone to update my photos and it told me new software was available for download. Fifteen minutes later and my phone had a makeover with all new software.

I've started taking more exercise and feel better because of it. A friend and close neighbour of mine, Aideen, has a great camera - Canon SLR digital - I helped her install it on her laptop as well as getting her broadband. She said I can borrow her camera anytime - hehe what fun. The pictures it takes are between 4 & 8 Mb! Fantastic resolution - 17mm to 80mm zoom - great stuff.

All you hippies out there - listen to KFOG while you surf. In ireland when I get up its still only 5am in San Francisco so I get great streaming and very little ads.

Birthday

Happy Birthday to me! 59 and still counting.Got a 2gig upgrade for my phone, a lovely bunch of flowers from Anna & Rhiagh, roses from Aideen, a very beautiful cactus garden from my daughter and clothes from Dermot. All in all a good day. I will be writing a chronology which will have details of some of my memorable birthdays just for the craic...........

Thursday - Aideen threw a party for me! Great craic, lovely women were invited and Ash & Jerry from USA and all these lovely women were 40+

PJBlog - Diabetes

Sooo, made a start - http://pjblog-diabetes.blogspot.com/

To Do

Set up a Diabetic Blog - Done It - http://pjblog-diabetes.blogspot.com/ Great resources on the Net here are some
http://www.officialdiabetesblog.com/
http://www.diabeticfootjournal.co.uk/
Take care of your feet and avoid amputation!

Alternate Blog on Microsoft http://pjb-pjblog.live.com (Link)

So little time.........my birthday soon - another milestone and sixty looms large next year - I'll start work on my Chronology.........
I've had some great birthdays - birthdays should be celebrated I'll set up a sixty birthday blog

And so on........

The Himalayas

Good resource for trekking: http://www.himadventures.net/ but there are a few.

After the Himalayas I never thought I would be awed again......

From West To East

Ladakh - Two weeks in one of the highest habitable parts of the Himalayas - the flight from Kashmir is great and the landing strip in Leh (capital) is quite hairy as you approach the valley.

http://www.jetairtours.com/ixl.htm - good ref

Our return plane couldn't land because of dust storms so we were "stuck" at 3500m. Great fun!

'Little Tibet' or, 'the moonland' or 'the last Shangri La' are all names that have been applied to Ladhak. It is an 'other-worldly' place with gompas perched on soaring hilltops, shattered looking landscapes splashed with small but brilliant patches of green and ancient palaces clinging to sheer rock walls. Leh at a height of 3,500 meters is the main entry point to this region. The Ladhak and Zanskar valleys are trekker's delight. The region has the highest motorable road in the world and getting there by road, from either Srinagar or Manali, provides one of the most exquisite views of the Himalayan range.

MONASTERIES

Alchi, Hemis, Lamayuru, Likir, Phyang, Shey, Spituk, Stok, Thiksey, Shankar , Basgo, Chemrey , Stakna, Matho , Mulbekh and Tak-Thog

McLeod Ganj - A year with the Dalai Llama, Tensing Gyatso - I lived somewhat strangely in a stone cabin in the grounds of a bungalow where meditation courses from the Thai tradition were held (Vipassana). It was about 1000ft above McLeod Ganj overlooking the Dalai Llama's palace.

http://www.gonomad.com/destinations/0010/axelrod_dharamsalaguide.html

When the Chinese occupation of Tibet erupted into violence in 1959, forcing His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and his government to flee the country, the Indian government offered them a new home in Dharamsala, an abandoned colonial hill station nestled in the foothills of the western Himalayas. Thankful for the refuge, the Tibetans accepted, and in the nearby village of McLeod Ganj (named after a colonial Governor), they rebuilt their government and culture-in-exile.

Pokhara - 3 months with a Nepali family (mother and four daughters 10yrs old to 22) Three really big mountains - Dhaulgiri, Machapuchari, Annapurna spread out above Lake Phewa - check out - www.pokharacity.com meanwhile here is

Machapuchari - my favourite Himalaya

The Fishtail. Has anyone climbed it?


















Spent a couple of weeks in Darjeeling, closest I ever got to Everest - you can see the highest mountain in the world in the distance. Take a trip on the railway - great fun. You can get a bus from Darjeeling to Kathmandu, which I did. Takes a couple of days but it is very cheap.

Darjeeling (Nepali: दार्जीलिङ्ग (help·info) ) is a town in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the headquarters of Darjeeling district, in the Shiwalik Hills on the lower range of the Himalaya, at an average elevation of 6,982 ft (2,134 m). During the British Raj in India, Darjeeling's temperate climate led to its development as a hill station (hill town) for British residents to escape the heat of the plains during the summers.

So ends my Himalaya blog - go see this glorious range of mountains - it will change your life. Om Mani Padme Hum.

The Cat - Kittiyana Pushkin

Our Cat.

Sleeps on top of Veea's tank or on his chair when vacant. He is a great character. Food plays a big part of his life.

(The cat (Felis silvestris catus; commonly referred to by its original name Felis catus), also known as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from other felines, is a small carnivorous species of crepuscular mammal that is often valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin. It has been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years.^[2]

A skilled predator, the cat is known to hunt over 1,000 species for food. It is intelligent and can be trained to obey simple commands. Individual cats have also been known to learn on their own to manipulate simple mechanisms, such as doorknobs. Cats use a variety of vocalizations and types of body language for communication, including meowing, purring, hissing, growling, squeaking, chirping, clicking, and grunting.^[3] Cats are popular pets and are also bred and shown as registered pedigree pets. This hobby is known as the "Cat Fancy".

Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal.^[4] However a study by the National Cancer Institute published in the journal Science found that all house cats are descended from a group as few as five self-domesticating desert wildcats Felis silvestris lybica circa 8000 BC, in the Near East)

Kitty can be quite wild! He rolls on his back, chirruping in a very sweet way and invites you to stroke his beautiful soft downy belly and you do and then he strikes! Arms and claws wrapped about your arm, teethsunk bloodily into your hand and he's got you. Cute huh?

The Snake - Via (Veea)

Veea -
The Red-Tailed Boa Constrictor

Belongs to my daughter and lives with us.

It is quite uplifting to have such an exotic creature in our living room She is about two feet long now and Sekani (my daughter aged 14) wears her like a piece of jewelery

Veea is six months old, about 2ft long, will grow to 6 - 12ft, and will live for 25 years. When she is BIG it is advisable to have an extra person around when handling her! She currently eats a mouse a week but will move on to a rabbit! Serious or what! Just posted a video on YouTube ( Link ) of Via (daughter's preffered spelling) eating a dead mouse! I'm trying to capture the strike but she is so fast.........

The Nile

The longest river in the world
Map: http://www.mbarron.net/Nile/bestmap.jpg

One of the things I have done is to travel the length of the Nile from Cairo to one of its' sources Lake Victoria (Stan's Pond). It took three months by boat, train and hitchhiking and left a deep impression. I worked it out and it cost me about €40 + food. Considering I only had a $100, this was rather good. It was all memorable - on the roof of a train traveling across the Nubian Desert, a day and a night on Lake Nasser and the remarkable boat trip through the Sudd which took 12 days. Not too mention the walk across the Sudanese / Kenyan border for 25 miles followed by a lift by a White Hunter in his convoy (listening to Strauss waltzes going through the Rift Valley in his Rangerover)..........I could go on. Thirty years plus have gone by yet it is still fresh........

Om Mani Padme Hum Meaning

OM MANI PADME HUM




By His Holiness the Dalai Lama It is very good to recite the mantra Om mani padme hum, but while you are doing it, you should be thinking on its meaning, for the meaning of the six syllables is great and vast. The first, Om is composed of three letters, A, U, and M. These symbolize the practitioner's impure body, speech, and mind; they also symbolize the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha.

Can impure body, speech, and mind be transformed into pure body, speech, and mind, or are they entirely separate? All Buddhas are cases of beings who were like ourselves and then in dependence on the path became enlightened; Buddhism does not assert that there is anyone who from the beginning is free from faults and possesses all good qualities. The development of pure body, speech, and mind comes from gradually leaving the impure states arid their being transformed into the pure.

How is this done? The path is indicated by the next four syllables. Mani, meaning jewel, symbolizes the factors of method-the altruistic intention to become enlightened, compassion, and love. Just as a jewel is capable of removing poverty, so the altruistic mind of enlightenment is capable of removing the poverty, or difficulties, of cyclic existence and of solitary peace. Similarly, just as a jewel fulfills the wishes of sentient beings, so the altruistic intention to become enlightened fulfills the wishes of sentient beings.

The two syllables, padme, meaning lotus, symbolize wisdom. Just as a lotus grows forth from mud but is not sullied by the faults of mud, so wisdom is capable of putting you in a situation of non-contradiction whereas there would be contradiction if you did not have wisdom. There is wisdom realizing impermanence, wisdom realizing that persons are empty, of being self-sufficient or substantially existent, wisdom that realizes the emptiness of duality-that is to say, of difference of entity between subject an object-and wisdom that realizes the emptiness of inherent existence. Though there are many different types of wisdom, the main of all these is the wisdom realizing emptiness.

Purity must be achieved by an indivisible unity of method and wisdom, symbolized by the final syllable hum, which indicates indivisibility. According to the sutra system, this indivisibility of method and wisdom refers to wisdom affected by method and method affected by wisdom. In the mantra, or tantric, vehicle, it refers to one consciousness in which there is the full form of both wisdom and method as one undifferentiable entity. In terms of the seed syllables of the five Conqueror Buddhas, hum is the seed syllable of Akshobhya - the immovable, the unfluctuating, that which cannot be disturbed by anything.

Thus the six syllables, om mani padme hum, mean that in dependence on the practice of a path which is an indivisible union of method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha. It is said that you should not seek for Buddhahood outside of yourself; the substances for the achievement of Buddhahood are within. As Maitreya says in his Sublime Continuum of the Great Vehicle (Uttaratantra), all beings naturally have the Buddha nature in their own continuum. We have within us the seed of purity, the essence of a One Gone Thus (Tathagatagarbha), that is to be transformed and fully developed into Buddhahood.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Contact Me

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