Saturday, July 11, 2009

Happy Birthday my love


Today is my husbands birthday, so I have a little party planned for him this evening. Pretty much everything is ready since I have a busy day ahead of me.

I'm still finishing my rebreather course so today I have to make 2 boat dives this morning, them in the afternoon I have a salon appointment to trim my eyebrows, pick up a table and pick up the cake....

Hope everything goes well, will take pictures and try to post them later. Have a great day and...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK, I LOVE YOU!!!

Friday, July 10, 2009

Backyard Paradise

Just a few pics I took on my back yard, have a great weekend!!!


yellow beauty


bougainvillea

pretty in white

so delicate

loveliness

a touch of lilac

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Diving dejavu

From the first time you start diving, the first times you are on the water you are really only thinking about; your gear, making sure that you have plenty of air, that you are equalizing well and mostly that you are not going to drown!

Then when time goes by, the more you dive, the most confident you feel about it, then you finally look around and really enjoy your environment, the fish, the scenery, etc....

After that and specially after you are able to control your buoyancy well enough, you start to explore and actually look around for stuff and maybe even get to the point of getting and underwater camera and start snapping pictures.

Well, I've being through all those stages through my year as an open circuit diver.

But now, I am starting to be a different kind of diver, a technical diver with a completely different equipment and different things to learn.

So, here I am back at the point where I started... meaning, right not I'm mostly only conscious about my gear, making sure everything works, trying to control my buoyancy and trying not to worry...

On yesterday's dive, at the beginning I was really only focusing on those aspects of it, until I saw my favorite fish (which by the way I haven't seen one of them in over a year of diving at least once a week)... then I relaxed, took a deep breath and realized that if my equipment is in good shape and I'm doing things correct, then there's nothing to worry about and enjoy the dive.

Here's an old picture of my favorite fish, a Spotted Drum. (Of course it is an older as I don't carry a camera yet on this new type of diving... as they say here on the island, "soon come").

juvenile Spotted Drum

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Playing with my camera

This morning I watered some of the plants inside my house and then I decided to try some macro shots, here are the best results...

new peppermint leaf


about to drop


nice natural light effect

Only I wish I had a better camera to get better results... but at least this one helps me practice!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

"I guana" cry!!!

Yesterday as I was driving home from work and in one of the busiest roads on the island (West Bay Road) I saw 2 green iguanas hit by cars. I'm pretty sure none of the two survived...


juvenile green iguana

Unfortunately for the islands, these species of iguana (green) are starting to become a huge problem, they were brought from Central America a few years back, introduced to the environment and on such a small territory they are now taking over. Mostly they are eating a lot of the local flora, damaging the trees and specially invading the territory of the other endemic iguanas of the island which is the blue dragon.

adult blue dragon iguana

Being an animal lover, seeing iguanas get kill was pretty say and shocking experience, unfortunately this is very common on this busy road.

So, even considering that the green iguanas are consider sort of a pest to the island, they are still animals and we should be very conscious about them (specially on the road), because it is so sad to see them kill all the time.

At this point in the history of the planet, I think human beings need to be held responsible for the future of many species, so if we humans brought these iguanas to the island, we should care for them and find a way to control their impact in our environment and try to avoid a massacre on the roads...

Monday, July 6, 2009

Constitution Day

Today is a national holiday in the Cayman Islands that commemorates the first written constitution, which came into being on 4 July, 1959. The constitution that governs us here today was revised in 1972 but also that document has been amended several times in the past 36 years.

About 2 years ago the government started a project of "modernization" to the constitutions which the locals voted to accept or not just this past May 20th. I've been reading a little bit about this but not very sure when the changes are coming into effect...

So, to all Americans reading this today, Happy (belated) Independence Day and to all Caymanians reading this, Happy Constitution Day!!!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

One of the many reasons why I love my country....

Costa Rica tops good life survey

By Simon Briscoe in London

Published: July 4 2009 05:04 | Last updated: July 4 2009 05:04

Costa Rica, the country of fewer than 5m people sandwiched between Panama and Nicaragua, tops a new global ranking for combining a happy and long life with limited environmental degradation.

The country blends beautiful countryside, a great diversity of species and has long since got rid of its army. The merger of its energy and environment ministries has reversed deforestation and helped it produce 99 per cent of its energy from renewable sources. It has also scored highly, relative to other developing countries, in surveys of poverty, press freedom and democracy.

The Happy Planet Index, “Why good lives don’t have to cost the earth”, published on Saturday by the UK-based new economics foundation, combines measures of life expectancy, happiness and ecological footprint to assess the sustainability of growth in 143 countries.

That the top 10 in the list of “greenest and happiest” nations is dominated by Latin America might raise a few eyebrows, as the region is better known in the western imagination for its slums, inequality and coups. Zimbabwe languishes at the bottom along with a dozen other south, east and central African countries.

But the Latin Americans score highly, the report suggests, due to non-material aspirations and strong social capital among friends and relatives. The grim performance of the developed world might also prompt some westerners to cast doubt over the value of the report. Among the rich nations, the highest placed country is the Netherlands – but it manages only 43rd.

The UK languishes midway down the table – 74th, behind Germany, Italy and France but ahead of Japan and Ireland. The US fares particularly poorly, in 114th place. The western countries have long life expectancy and people are reasonably happy, but the countries suffer in the rankings due to their ecological footprint, reflecting high levels of consumption.

The challenge for the west, the report says, is not to keep increasing incomes but to aim for more meaningful lives and stronger social ties. That might be a leap too far in the near term but the index is released when policymakers are exploring broader measures of progress rather than a desire to boost growth. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s “Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress” is due to report soon.

Critics of such measures and summary indices say they are based on arbitrary data and calculations but most welcome their contribution to the policy debate.

“HPI is one of the several attempts to go ‘beyond GDP’ and to bring attention to important aspects of our life,” Enrico Giovannini, chief statistician at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said. But, he added, “It is impossible to capture in a single indicator the complexity of our society.”

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