Ask me anything!

Posted on May 19, 2012 by

Hello everyone!
Switzerland is dreary and grey these days, but when the sun comes out, you can see how green everything is, flowers and blossoms are everywhere… I realise I missed the overflowing riches of nature. Down in the south, plants struggle to survive, they are grey and weathered by the mistral and the blazing sun.

But whilst I enjoy my weekend relishing in the riches that the world is providing, I do have a little task for you:

This is not a busy blog, but there are a few people who read it – like you, thank you so much! And from time to time, I do get emails or comments with questions regarding stuff that I wrote about or my life or whatever else you can think of.

So I thought it might be funny to gather these questions and make a post to answer them for you all to see – maybe there will be one or two that you will find interesting.

And to make it even more interesting, you should ask, a question too, if you haven’t yet. Anything you’ve always wanted to know or that isn’t clear for you, that’s puzzling you… send me and email, leave a comment, or contact me on facebook.

I’ll wait for your inputs until sometime next week.

I’m looking forward to see what else you’re coming up with!

Have a lovely weekend!

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Random French vocabulary #2

Posted on May 18, 2012 by

This word will be essential for your survival in a French-speaking country, so learn it well!

I mean, it is *really* important to be able to pick the one brand of cookies that has the extra chunky choccolate chips, isn’t it?

I’m sure it is.

They are called “pépites”, so watch out for something like this when you’re in the supermarket:

Leo says: “Pépite(s), f. – Nugget, chunk, highlight”

Happy studying!

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Self Portrait Thursday, week 20: Stormy waters

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

It’s still confusing and stormy here in my life. By now, a few things have become more clear, but I still feel like the waters of life are raging all around me and I’m taken here and there without really knowing where I’ll end up.

I must admit, I don’t know how people who don’t do spirituality handle situations like these. In the middle of all this mess, praying is often the only thing I can think of that makes any sense.

It gives me back the security that I am not only here to satisfy myself, but that there is a greater meaning and that if things are not going my way, I shouldn’t throw a tantrum but stand up straight and take on the task.

Here’s to courage.

Have a good rest of the week! <3

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Picture taking practise

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

I’ve been taking pictures with the dslr whenever I can, playing around with all the possibilities. I’m still very much out of control of it all. I’m turning the wheels and pressing the buttons, but it is luck more than ability if a picture turns out the way I intended it to.

Nonetheless, there are always some that I like, and some that I even like very much. Here’s a selection of them:

(Click the thumbnails for bigger picture)

These are some glimpses or my balcony and backyard.

As always, comments and tips are very welcome!

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Exercising updates

Posted on May 15, 2012 by

Hey, how is everyone doing?

It’s been a busy three days but I’ve enjoyed them immensely. My sister arrived in Montpellier on Friday afternoon and we spent the rest of the day catching up and taking a little peek of where I live.

On Saturday we went to the beach with the bicycles. It was a very hot and sunny day, but a nice ride. The beach was quite crowded and felt a lot different from the lone, rough nature scene that I’ve encountered the previous times I’ve been there.

We spent Sunday strolling through town, having icecream and drinks and chatting for hours and hours.

On Monday we took the train to Zurich, and I am now at her place at the moment, trying to get some stuff done.

I got a bit out of sync with my workout program after last weekend, but I pushed myself to finish the current week and yesterday I went for a glorious run after the weekend off.

It is always so cool when you can do more than you expected! This is week 5, I’ve never come this far! I’m to ten intervals and it’s going good. My nr. 1 probem since last week was that I had difficulties keeping count of the intervals. I have an app on my phone where I can put in the number of intervals, how long the respective high/low times should be and even a warmup-delay before the whole thing starts. There is a whistle every time a new phase starts. (My app is for whindow phones and is called tabata stopwatch, but if you do a search for interval stopwatch I’m sure you’ll find something that suits you).

But it’s hard to know which one will be the last.

So I came up with this little trick:

I put nine hairbands on my right wrist. After every sprintphase, I slip one band to my left wrist. I’m finished when there’s no band left. Easy, isn’t it?

On the yoga front, however, I must admit I haven’t done a single sequence in the past week. I just did not feel capable of it. I have to restart this week but of course this means that I’ll stay with the program that I showed you for a little longer.

I hope your workouts are going great!

xxx
yaga

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Self Portrait Thursday, week 19: Not planned

Posted on May 11, 2012 by

I thought that in the past three years I had learned quite well to accept that life doesn’t go as planned most of the time.

But these days, things are really not going as planned, not even remotely, or at least that’s how I feel. I feel like all the things that were stable in my life come crumbling down.

Nothing life-threatening or truly catastrophic has happened, it’s just certain twists in affairs and things that develop quite differently than I am used to that slowly creep on me and are giving me the feeling that there is nothing to hold on to at the moment.

I am sitting at the beach of life, and I feel too tired to plunge in and swim. I feel like there has been one too many sharks and big waves, one too many times I’ve trusted and then found myself sinking to the bottom. I’m tired, but I’m also angry and dissappointed. With life, with people, with myself… I don’t even really know what to aim at.

I’m happy I can be with my family for a while.

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Trev and Yaga in Paris

Posted on May 10, 2012 by

It’s weird when something as exciting as going to Paris becomes familiar… but the fact that this happens is somehow exciting, too!

I arrived in the late afternoon and had enough time to look around and check out some nice places to go for the weekend, and even do some grocery shopping before Trev arrived later in the evening.

Trev's birthday cake

The next two days we strolled around, but we didn’t really bother with sightseeing (done it all before, hehe). Rather, we just took our time walking, having coffe, sleeping long and eating good food.

If you ever go to Paris, don’t miss Princess Crèpes, the sweetest Crèperie in the whole city!

Oh and remember when Trev dropped a bottle of Pastis on his foot and cut himself with the shards  just before flying to Scotland? This is what the wound looked like. He complained that it still felt painful though, and after a bit of digging, we pulled out this piece of glass…!! (hairclip for size comparison)

He’s such an expert with weird stuff like that.

It’s a very, very strange feeling to spend three days together and know that there will be more time spent apart… it’s not only all happiness, but also a bit hard and bittersweet. I almost expected that being alone would be harder after seeing him again, and it’s true. I’m off track with everything and I feel totally hazy. I’m looking forward to my sister visiting this weekend and then spending two weeks in Switzerland for my birthday. I hope it will get me back in the world of reasonable human beings.

For now: Choccolate, reading, tea, and a lot of sleep.

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The mystery package – revealed!

Posted on May 9, 2012 by

Shame on me, I almost forgot that I promised to tell you what was in the package I went crazy about last week.

You must excuse me. I’m currently bathing in self-pity and my mind is not very reliable.

Some of you might remember this little scene:


It’s part of a picture of a story I have been working on for the past few weeks. I have one project that’s being layouted and printed at the moment but that takes a long time and I get frustrated with it. The other story I had been working on was coming along slowly and I felt like I needed the kick of something finished and in front of me to get me back on track with that one.

So I decided to start on one that I’ve been thinking about for a while and set myself a deadline. As it happens, the hero of this story is Pinkerton, the little stuffed elephant. Pinkerton exists in reality (you can see him on the “read more books” button on the left!), he used to be Trev’s favourite toy when he was a child.

So I decided I would have a first version of the book ready as a present for his birthday.

Trev left on 25th March. His birthday was on 16th April. This gave me a little over three weeks to finish all the pictures (I started from just a few sketches and a storyboard), the text, the layout and having it printed and sent.

I didn’t do much else for these three weeks, but it was a glorious and very rewarding experience to see the whole project unfold like this.

Trev still didn’t have any address to have the present sent to when his birthday came, so I had to keep the whole thing a secret until we saw each other this last weekend.

It was so exciting to have it in front of me as a real book!

It’s not at all final, it could be seen as a draft, and there are already a thousand things I feel I have to change, but at least it has a shape now, and I’m quite proud of that!

It was even more exciting to see Trev unwrapping his present though! I’m not very good at keeping secrets and he is very, very good at putting one and one together… so he had already guessed what would be in the package.

I do think that he still liked it…

The story, roughly, is about how Pinkerton gets left in the library, and what adventures await him there.

Posted in Art and creativity, In progress | 3 Comments

Iyengar yoga sequences

Posted on May 7, 2012 by

I’ve been practising a little bit of yoga for quite some years, but always looked at it as something that stays in the classroom.

It wasn’t until I decided to do yoga for myself at home about a year ago that I got deeply fascinated with the whole philosophy that I discovered behind it.

Since beginning of this year I’ve made yoga a daily practise and I love it. Many people I’ve talked with were interested in how I do it, so I decided to make some posts about this topic here.

I got B.K.S. Iyengar’s book “Light on Yoga” about a month ago. Iyengar is one of the big characters in the rise of yoga in the west and Iyeangar yoga is considered one of the more ‘classic’ yoga styles, as far as I’m informed.

source: amazon

His book, which has just recently been released in an updated and very easy to use design (it was first published in 1966) contains an easy to understand and concise description of all aspects of the yoga philosophy. The main part concentrates on a full index of all classic yoga positions, complete with pictures, descritption and level-indication. There are also instructions for breathing exercises, and a proposed week-to-week schedule that takes you through all the positions from a beginner to the very advanced levels (the whole course enrols over 300 weeks!).

The book is considered one of the bibles on yoga.

I’ve been following through the above mentioned course for four weeks now and I really like it. I like to have some guidance and structure to what I do, and to know that I’m working towards a goal and improving myself.

For now, the sequences are changed slightly every second week. Mostly, just one or two poses are swapped out or added. This makes for consistency and ensures that I can throroughly practise each pose, but still adds a little change every now and again so that the practise doesn’t get stale.

I’ve written down the new sequence for the next two weeks (weeks 5/6) below.
I think I’ll add the first two sequences as archive posts later. I’ll tell you when it happens.

If you don’t know a certain pose, look it up on yogajournal.com, my favourite website concerning all things yoga. (I’ve added the direct links to the list for convenience)

It would be fun if some people would follow along in the course! But even if you just wanna try, this is great!
(I still claim it’s the only thing that keeps my neck from falling off on long workdays at the computer and drawing board!)

From my yoga-sketchbook ;o)

Week 5/6

(If not indicated otherwise, Iyengar suggests to hold all positions for 20-30s)

Extended Triangle pose (Utthita Trikonasana)
Extended Side angle pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana)
Warrior poses I and II (Virabhandrasana I and II)
Revolved Triangle pose (Parivrtta Trikonasana) – ca. 4 breaths
Intense side stretch pose (Parsvottanasana)
Wide legged forward bend (Prasarita Padottanasana I)
Upward extended feet pose (Urdhva Prasarita Padasana)
Full boat pose (Paripoorna Navasana) – up to a minute
Half boat pose (Ardha Navasana) – ”
Supported Shoulderstand or Candle pose (Salamba Sarvangasana) – up to 5mts. (the longer the better)
Plough pose (Halasana) – 3mts
Corpse pose (Savasana) – 20mts

For the first 5mts of Savasana, practise Ujjayi Pranayama (Breathing exercise).

This is the first time a pranayama exercise is added – exciting!

Have fun!

Namaste
yaga

 

Posted in Spirituality, Yoga | 2 Comments

Random French vocabulary, #1

Posted on May 6, 2012 by

In the past two weeks, I’ve been out more and spending time with French-speaking people. Simple socialising with lots of different people in everyday situations has really pushed my French level out of the rut that I was in. After three months of language exchanges, I just felt like I didn’t make any progress anymore. My speaking was ok, but I wasn’t very spontenaous and my understanding didn’t seem to improve.

Now I feel like I broke through the barrier and am more at ease with conversations.

But if you have random conversations, random words get thrown around and you sometimes pick up new ones that feel like you want to keep them. So I thought, sometimes I’ll just post one or two of these, for your amusement and my remembering.

Today, I bring you: La limace!

Since I couldn’t seem to make this word stick in my head, I invented a story about a slug who likes to do funny faces and laugh at herself in the mirror of a puddle in your backyard. Watch out for her on the next rainy day!

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