JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Creature

Cockatoo

Öttu belongs to my son’s boss and goes everywhere with his human. A pet? No not really, a member of the family. He sits on his owner’s shoulder most of the time, or perhaps likes to explore a garbage can, and sometimes he even takes a flight, but not far. He talks, but has his own language. Food: paper is always good, it encourages beak creativity . Otherwise his owner has planted a nice box of sunflowers: not that Öttu appreciates flowers, but the seeds. He is a sunflower seed addict, but so are most of this tribe.

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Creature

Daily Prompt: Since we have computers

Eiger, Mönch and Jugfrau - Ferdinand Hodler

I am not an expert in paintings. Whether this is strictly surreal or not I do not know, but Ferdinand Hodler, the Swiss painter, managed a good job on painting the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains. We have a few original Hodlers hanging in our local museum, unfortunately not on our walls.

Today everything is a little surreal, although daily life has become so surreal that we just take it for granted. A week ago Mr. Swiss celebrated his birthday. It was a quiet affair, we did not publish it in the newspaper or send out invitations. When you celebrate so many birthdays as we have, it is just something that happens every year.

Even a day before the great day he received his first voucher for 50 Swiss francs from a clothing business. Any purchases would be 50 Swiss francs cheaper, but of course only if he spent at least four times as much on his purchases. Wonderful, a birthday gift from a company that you did not know existed, but they knew it was your birthday. Strange, almost surreal. If you do not use your voucher then you miss a chance of buying with a reduction. If you buy nothing, you have spent no money and have made a profit of 50 Swiss Francs.

And then the next voucher arrived for the computer of his choise, or a camera, or anything eletronic, again stating the amount you must spend to be able to trade in the voucher. How do these companies know he was celebrating his birthday? Had they marked the date on their internatl calendars that Mr. Swiss would be happy to receive a birthday gift?

These gift vouchers were limited in validity, only a month. So how did they know he was celeratin his birthday? It was all registered in their computer. Even my personal computer at home sends a reminder that great aunt Mabel (fictitious of coure, I have no great aunts). will be celebrating her special day,  And so all over the world, any company where Mr. Swiss has purchased online, has noted his birthday. He did not tell them, but it seems there is a trade in the world on personal information. Companies actually pay for private information. The first details you supply are name and address and date of birth. Have you ever paid by credit card on line? Of course, and this is the first step to your birthday gift.

There seems to be a cyberplace where details are sold to companies wanting to honour your birthday. How lovely, real good friendship and consideration. Of course if you take advantage of their offer, you invest perhaps more money than is being offered. That is not so important, it is the thought that counts.

Needless to say Mr. Swiss refrained from accepting birthday gifts where he invests money to receive them. I am now looking forward to my birthday on 6th December (do not forget). Perhaps Apple will send me a voucher for my new iPhone X, that would be great.

Daily Prompt: Since we have computers

Good Morning

Road to Langendorf 25.10 (3)

There are misty days in my area. It happens every Autumn towards November and stays awhile. This photo was on the way to the store, and it was already 10.15 in the morning. On the way home the mist had began to clear and a sun was showing a faint yellow ball in the background. We all blame the river Aar which runs through everything, The afternoons are sunny and not even so cold.

Road to Langendorf 25.10 (14)

There is a building site as we are approaching the supermarket and even the cranes were enshrouded in mist. I cannot resist taking photos of those cranes since I have lived in my own building site for the past 7 months, they seem to follow me everywhere. This is a project which will result in appartment buildings in a natural setting of trees and greenery. It used to be a residential working classe area with appartments, Mr. Swiss lived there in his younger years. We watched them demolish the old appartment buildings as we travelled past, and now a couple of months later they have dug the foundations to the new building and are creeping up to the ground level. There are no longer men working in the cranes, they stand below with their remote controls and press the right buttons at the right time to do the work.

I had one of my spectacular accidents yesterday evening. We have one carpet in the appartment, the rest is floor tiles which suits me. I am not a carpet person really, they only collect dust. I was on my way from the kitchen to the next room and my foot decided to trip over the edge of the carpet. I am quite the perfect stunt person, turning and twisting as I go down to to spread the landing area, although when 84 Kilo of flesh, muscle and bones meet the floor, they do tend to hit the ground with an impact. I did a quick body check lying prone on the floor and discovered there were no strange cracking noses where the bones were placed and so I decided to sit. Standing does not come into the question, as that is something that my body no longer can do under its own steam. Of course Mr. Swiss came running, not knowing what he would find, but I was still breathing.

My main aim was to perhaps stand again on my own two legs, but I need support for that part of the job. I manoevered myself to a chair and son No. 1 and Mr. Swiss managed to lift me as far as the chair seat. The rest was easy peasy and after a while I could stand again under my own steam, with my cane of course. I carried on as normal, although did not feel so normal as usual. I even slept more or less OK, although I noticed with time that there were places that hurt that usually do not. Meeting a stone floor does not go without bruises in places you did not even realise you had.
Autumn Trees 25.10 (1)

Today I am not going anywhere or doing anything strenuous, just a few windows to clean, but that is no longer as difficult as it was when I was fighing my battle with building dirt. Yesterday we got our new sun blinds, and they are not as bad as I thought they would be. They are dull green and somehow remind me of the days of the DDR, East Germany under communist rule, when all the furniture in all the houses looked the same, boring and nothing special. Even my Autumn trees brighten up the day more.

And now to move on to other things, my vacuum cleaner is waiting impatiently for its daily walk around the appartment. Enjoy the day or night and be careful as you walk, especially if you have carpets – they often have evil intentions with the human body.

Autumn Trees 25.10 (2)