Posts Tagged ‘transportation’

this one may prove to be unpopular

Posted: 19/03/2013 in Africa, Zimbabwe
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I know the below article from Outdoor Life Magazine is controversial but I want to share it anyway because as a Zimbabwean it is a subject close to my heart. I know the article is about Tanzania but the subject is transferable except that the percentages in Zimbabwe’s case are even higher with regular tourism not bringing in anything like as much as the big game hunters.

I personally have never hunted a lion and even if the national lottery came a calling would the desire ever possess me, I have hunted plains game for meat though and would do so again tomorrow if the opportunity and finances presented themselves.

What do my readers think?

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Hunting: The Only Way to Save the African Lion 

The New York Times ran an editorial Sunday arguing that the only thing that can save the African lion is legalized hunting.

In the piece, director of wildlife for the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism Dr. Alexander N. Songorwa explains that American sport hunters constitute 60 percent of that country’s trophy hunting market and that money from this group finances Tanzania’s game reserves and wildlife management areas. Yes, Dr. Songorwa points out that some of the money for these operations comes from tourists but “[hunters] pay thousands of dollars to pursue lions with rifles and take home trophies from what is often a once-in-a-lifetime hunt. Those hunters spend 10 to 25 times more than regular tourists and travel to (and spend money in) remote areas rarely visited by photographic tourists.”

The editorial continues by breaking down how that money impacts the country.

“In Tanzania, lions are hunted under a 21-day safari package. Hunters pay $9,800 in government fees for the opportunity. An average of about 200 lions are shot a year, generating about $1,960,000 in revenue. Money is also spent on camp fees, wages, local goods and transportation. And hunters almost always come to hunt more than one species, though the lion is often the most coveted trophy sought. All told, trophy hunting generated roughly $75 million for Tanzania’s economy from 2008 to 2011.”

If the United States Fish and Wildlife lists the African lion as endangered, as many are proposing, the decision would be “would be disastrous to [Tanzania’s] conservation efforts.”

Lion hunting, of course, is heavily regulated in Tanzania.  Females and lions under 6 years of age may not be hunted.

For now…

If the USFWS lists the African lion as endangered, no one from the US will be hunting them.

 

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my fathers adventures in Matabeleland

Posted: 11/09/2012 in Africa, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe
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for some reason Tuli and the Shangani Patrol keep coming back to me at the moment with references in novels etc now I find that my father has been on another adventure back to Matabeleland and these remote and unspoiled historical regions largely forgotten by the worlds tourists.

If you’d like to visit Zimbabwe please do check out his blog http://www.birdingzimbabwe.com

Birding in Zimbabwe

Hi All

I’m back…………

Let’s continue on our journey.

We left off last time with a fantastic breakfast of the Nesbitt Castle and me telling you that AJS is not a birder but he is passionate about the history of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe – a passion he has had since a boy.  We filled up with fuel and headed south, past Chipangali Wildlife Orphanage, (whose founder Viv Wilson sadly died this week) through Esigodini and Gwanda.  About six kilometres later we turned right and our direction now became south-west.  After about eighty kilometres the tarred surface abruptly ended and an hour later we passed through the metropolis of Hwali !

We were now in the deep south-west of Zimbabwe and Baobab country. The nests are those of the Red-billed Buffalo Weaver.

It is very dry down there and there were plenty of these spiny beasts.  Anyone out there know what they are ?…

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more adventures with Mr Litebeer

Posted: 08/09/2012 in Croydon Riots, Oiks, parking
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Here we go again I have worked myself up into teeth spitting fury and frustration, I’m sure that those of you who go to the effort of reading this rant will think by the end that I am a sad, arrogant arse and I wouldn’t blame you for feeling that way because it’s probably true but I cannot help but share this with someone especially as Mrs BC has given up listening to me pontificate my frustrations.

A few of you who have stuck with me for a while now may remember my two-part series from October last year which if you don’t you can read here and here but if understandably you can’t be bothered to go back to my earlier rants I’ll give you a brief background, My kids go to a nursery school which is set within the grounds of a privately run but government-funded high school, their basic tenet is to make profit and take control of a school that was failing under government control. To earn the big government moolah they have to show lots of shiny statistics that include things like reduced exclusions etc. this is very easy for them to do as they basically just ignore every behavioural problem that they can.

The school is run by a slimy young businessman who in these pages I have named Mr Litebeer, I met with him last year to complain about a specific indecent I witnessed and he chose to brush under the carpet. Since then our paths have barely crossed, barring a minor rant from me about the amount of litter around the school which to his only credit in all of my dealings with him did improve for a few days thereafter.

Yesterday though I found myself trying to drop my boys off and all the allocated nursery parking spaces had been occupied by builders skips, delivery vans etc. as I was on my way to work and time was of the essence I chose the first available parking space which I will freely admit is clearly marked Principal.

Ten minutes later I returned to find the following note (only names have been edited otherwise it is as written)

PLEASE DO NOT PARK IN THIS BAY CLEARLY MARKED “PRINCIPAL” 

THERE ARE YELLOW BAYS CLEARLY MARKED “CUTE SHINY NICE KIDS NURSERY” FOR YOU TO MAKE USE OF.

THE PRINCIPAL

of course I being an arrogant arse myself I could not leave this be and drop this so decided to respond to Mr Litebeer thus

Dear Mr Litebeer, 

Thank you for the note you left on my car this morning.  Whilst I appreciate that the bay I was parked in is CLEARLY MARKED “PRINCIPAL”, somehow the yellow bays clearly marked “CUTE SHINY NICE KIDS NURSERY” seemed to be full of delivery vans that were clearly making deliveries to the school. 

If you are unable to ensure that your delivery people park in spaces other than those clearly designated CUTE SHINY NICE KIDS NURSERY, I am afraid that I will be forced to continue to park wherever there is available space. 

However, while writing, I would comment that one of the principal tenets of secondary education is readying young men and women for the real world and that as PRINCIPAL your primary role should be setting an example of how to earn the respect of others.  Your note definitely does not set any such example. 

With this in mind, I also would like to bring to your attention that I have seen no marked changes in student behaviour since we met last year (the incident where one of your male pupils punched a female pupil in the face and you chose not to punish them).  I do realise that since the majority of construction has ended there is less interaction between pupils and Cute Shiny Nice Kids’ parents, yet we are still forced to endure daily lashings of loud and disturbing swearing, tomfoolery and disrespect for their elders – never taking into account the impressionable young ears surrounding them.  

It is ultimately your responsibility for making sure that the pupils are aware of the nursery school children and the public in general and that they conduct themselves appropriately.  It may appear that in today’s society swearing is commonplace, but it is still generally unacceptable in polite society and allowing it to continue on school premises to me shows a lack of control by the school over the pupils. 

Yours sincerely

The concerned parent of the next generation

Mr Bunny Chow

 

this solicited the following response from Mr Litebeer.

Thank you for your observations which I refute.
We do not tolerate swearing on the school premises and deal with it whenever we hear it. I agree that it is not necessary in polite society.
I will ask our site team to remind deliveries not to park in the Cute Shiny Nice Kids Nursery bays. 
If they are occupied, as they sometimes are, as often more Cute Shiny Nice Kids parents arrive at once than there are spaces, please feel free to park on the yellow hatched drop off zones that run along the kerb before the bays you parked in. Many Cute Shiny Nice Kids parents do this currently when they need to.

Smarmy Litebeer

Principal
Scummy failed Government Academy 
I know, I know I should probably have dropped it at this point but couldn’t resist a final dig, below is my final ignored email.
Mr Litebeer, 

Many thanks for your prompt response, I regularly make use of the cross hatched area as you suggested but as I’m sure you noticed when parking this morning that too had a delivery vehicle in it. 

As for swearing and intolerable behaviour may I suggest spending time listening to and acting on the complaints of the public rather than blindly believing that your pupils behave in exactly the same manner as when in your presence.

If you would like to meet with me again to discuss the behaviour of your pupils I’d be more than happy to take the time. 

Regards

Mr Bunny Chow

I know, I am such a boorish arse of a human being and quite rightly the Nursery have put out a general email reminding all parents that we should only be making use of our designated bays and not inconvenience Mr Litebeer into having to park in the bay next his own and walk a whole extra two feet to his office. None of this changes that I cannot contain my wrath that this smarmy, greasy, nasty little administrator has been entrusted to raise hundreds of the next generation of oiks as they transition into adulthood. It leaves me angered that it is only a year since the riots that brought London to its knees yet this total lack of interest in the behaviour of oikish youths by the very people being paid vast sums of money to educate and mould them into acceptable members of society.

I am honestly surprised that we have not had a repeat of the looting and burning of our area if this is the attitude of the system.

I should probably stop now before I break my keyboard by typing too forcefully.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

 

 

A walk through South West London

Posted: 28/07/2012 in ouch, photography
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I hate public transport it’s full of the great unwashed.

I’d better start that again.

It was a beautiful day when I went to get my stitches out so instead of catching the bus from Wimbledon to Tooting where the hospital is I decided to walk and take some photo’s along the way.

I’ve done a little more post processing than I normally do but I’ve tried to give them all something of a vintage or retro feel and think it’s been quite successful. I know that apps like instagram have made this look über trendy at the moment and for once I’m happy being on trend because it’s a look that works for me.

I loved this rather tatty beetle especially with the faux coca cola air cooled sticker in the rear window.

There must have been something in the air because I kept finding retro stuff to shoot.

as usual I stopped and smelled the roses

can you spot the mini bomber squadron?

A little slice of the country in the middle of the city

of course it’s not all green and pleasant.

Not a huge amount else to say but I hope you enjoyed them as much as I have.

Thank for all the message about my thumb I’m much more comfortable now that the stitches out and might stop whinging and whining at some point in the near future.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Long Exposure

Posted: 08/06/2012 in iPhone, photography
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one of the reasons I decided to expand my camera collection from my excellent FujiHS20EXR is that whilst it does have full manual controls they are hidden away in deep dark recesses and its whole design philosophy is based around let us help you to take brilliant pictures by having lots of set themes that allow you to tell us what you want and then we’ll set the camera up to do just that.

This is the modern way as pioneered by companies like Apple telling us what we want before we know we want it. It’s a brilliant concept and allows mere mortals to do extraordinary things with technology that we would never have dreamed possible just a few years ago.

The difficulty comes in when we decide that we don’t want to take what would normally be deemed an attractive photograph and whilst my Fuji would allow me that manual control it made it as fiddly and awkward as possible. My newly acquired Canon EOS 10D on the other hand was made in a time before the iPhone and whilst it does have fully automated options it will just as happily let you, nay encourage you to push the envelope of accepted dogma and behave like an idiot. It’s like being able to switch off the traction control on a modern car, sure  the car probably knows better and ignoring its advice may mean you kill yourself in a lurid slide of acrid tyre smoke but shouldn’t that be the choice of the consumer not boffins in a lab.

Phew that almost turned into a rant of Mr Bunny Chow of old proportions, you’re really just here to look at some long exposure shots aren’t you.

Right then without further delay Nick of Nick Exposed and Shannon of Seeing Spots set forth another challenge following on from the great success of their Quotography challenge this time challenging us to come up with Long Exposures.

I’ve been exceedingly busy over the last few weeks so haven’t had the opportunity to really push the envelope with a tripod and super steady shots but such is the beauty of the flexibility of the Canon EOS system that I was able to produce some interesting shots none the less.

Cycle Strobe

What’s going on

Racing Corner

Please let me know what you think of them and feel free to leave comment, tips and critique.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Quotography # 3

Posted: 03/05/2012 in photography, quotography
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this is the last post that I’ll be doing showing my quotography efforts but I do plan to share some stuff from Nick Exposed and Seeing Spots as well as whoever else from the project takes my fancy.

Part one of my own posts can be found here and part two here

The third and final quote I had to work with was “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” which was from Thomas Edison the commonly agreed inventor of the carbon filament light bulb as well as being the man who brought electricity to the masses.

My thought process here initially was to find something like an abandoned shop or discarded book or guitar, but the more I thought about where this quote had come from I realised that I had to do something with light, Edison himself tried hundreds if not thousands of different filament materials before settling on carbonized bamboo threads.

As many of my regular readers will know by now I have recently had access to a decent DSLR thanks to The Falklandislander and decided to try my hand at a little light painting, something that would never have been possible without the efforts of Thomas Edison. 

The technique is really quite simple, take a long exposure shot, in this case 30 seconds and either move the camera or light source around to create the light trails you can see.

You can get very technical with it but I chose to keep it very simple just going for a shaken look.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed my take on these quotes and I can’t wait to see what other people come up with for theirs.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

 

Project 52 Week 15

Posted: 05/04/2012 in photography, Project 52
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I’m in a bit of a rush this week being rather pushed for time trying to catch up on loads of work after a weeks holiday on the beautiful island of Malta so forgive my brevity I will try and do a more detailed post with more pictures over the long weekend but for now I wanted to publish this weeks project 52 picture.

I had a choice of two themes this week, the first was fire and the second Easter and if I’m honest I wasn’t overly keen on either of them.

Those of you who know me well will know that I’m the worlds least religous person and despite my love of old churches it’s difficult to get me into one during a service even weddings and funerals make my skin crawl. I have no issue with other peoples religous or non religous views I’d just prefer not to hear about them.

Before I offend my readership further though I’ll talk a little about the picture I chose instead. The shot is of the Rotunda of St Marija Assunta or Dome of the Church of St Mary in Mosta on the island of Malta. It’s a stunning church with it’s own catholic approved miracle having a bomb pierce its dome or rotunda and fall among a congregation of several hundred people failing to detonate or even injure any of them.

The picture itself is not my finest work having been taken through the rather grimy window of a bus moving at speed but I think it still works.

Project 52 Week 15

As I say I will try and publish some more pictures of the trip over the long weekend, next weeks theme is Technology which will no doubt have me posting pictures of either my new to me Canon EOS 650 film camera or brand new out the box but I’ve still not even seen it yet delivered today Android Ice Cream Sandwich equiped HTC One X which the wonderful and beloved Mrs Bunny Chow has on charge waiting for me to get home.

I’m still not sure if abandoning the tried and trusted iOS for Android is the right choice but my geekier side suggests that it will probably suit my own personal needs better, check back for a full report in the coming weeks.

I’ll love and leave you for now with a badly cropped image of the same church

Project 52 Week 15 also ran1

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Project 52 Week 12

Posted: 15/03/2012 in photography, Project 52
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Greetings to you all,

It’s that time again, all be it a little later than is perhaps usual for me to share with you my photo of the week.

This week the suggested theme was Planes, Trains and Automobiles, something that I initially thought I would find easy but then I realised that being the geek that I am I have already photographed all of the interesting cars that are regularly in my area, trains are boring as all hell and despite visits to the airport this week I failed to photograph any planes.

Fear not though as I persevered and have gone back to my roots with a rather dark and grungy picture of a BMW that whilst I certainly don’t lust after I cannot help but admire its cold efficient german industrial lines.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

As is my prerogative I’m going to include a couple of also ran but didn’t quite make it shots for you to contemplate and share your thoughts on. 

as you can see this is a boat so doesn't quite fit the theme, I think it's a pretty boat though so I'm going to add it to the mix.

the antithesis of the cold hard German, the building in the background is The Bank of England, I like the photo but it missed out on the top spot as I don't think that it's technically a very good photo despite the emotive response it generates.

again not technically a great photograph but the guy on the bike was so friendly, he noticed me trying to take his pic when another biker pulled alongside him and blocked my view then when the lights changed he stayed back and hooted so that I could grab the shot before he pulled off. Unfortunately my focus was slightly off in my rush not to inconvenience him.

Next week we’re playing with light so until then. TTFN Mr Bunny Chow

Project 52 Week 11

Posted: 07/03/2012 in photography, Project 52
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Howdy all,

yes it’s that time where I’m going to waffle a little bit about my Project 52 and the suggested themes from Google+ and I’m not going to break the mould as it works for me.

The suggested theme this week was Spring/Autumn and as I mentioned last week I didn’t really want to just share an image of a daffodil, so despite the fact that I took some pictures of daffodils this week I’m not going to share them with you, instead I’m going to share two images that take the term “spring” a little more literally than was perhaps intended.

The first image is of a motorcycle of unknown provenance stripped back to almost its component parts attached to a Swallow Side Car which just has fantastic patina.  For those of you who indulge my geeky tendencies the Swallow Side Car Company morphed into Jaguar Motor Cars after the second world war when their initials became unacceptable in polite society.

Spring has Sprung

Because I like to spoil you I’ve got a second picture to share with you this week again taking the interpretation a little bit too seriously its of the high lift spring underneath a heavily modified Suzuki/Range Rover Hybrid.

Spring has Sprung again

Next week the theme is Planes, Trains and AutoMobiles, I wonder how badly I can stray away from that seeing as I’ve stuck them in this week.

Until the next time

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow