Day: July 30, 2011

In the Eastern Forest

Playout date: 3 October 2006
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: Windows Movie Maker – medium use
Location: Primorskiy Kray, Russia
Other people featured: Various Foresters
Genre: Environmental
Music used: Solovenko Ukrainian Songs
Languages used: Russian, Ukrainian
Animals featured: Not many other than the ladybirds on the video, but this is the domain of
the Siberian Tiger, black bear and snow leopard. Numerous unusual forest
plants are also seen in the gallery

It’s a long story how I came to be here, and in fact I can’t go into details at it involves work – I ended up auditing the forestry operators of a territory larger than Greater London. The climate was hard and the Mosquitos were hard. I was working for China, and they needed an English speaker who knew Due Diligence and knows Russian, and they received recommendations that I was the man for the job.

Well, it took all summer five years ago, and I still have the Mosquito bites. The gallery shots show in places the anti mosquito suit they managed to bite through. suffice it to say they are simply not in the same league as the European ones.

This is one of my earliest “gallery style” films showcasing photographs and I haven’t really got the style right, they are flashing through too quickly and they’re not fading into each other as I started doing when I got the hang of it.

But still some of the photos are not too bad though I say so myself and worth a few additional comments – the foresters were very friendly folk, we spend a great few days with people that live a very close to nature way in the forest in conditions that most of us would find wearing. These are not the kind of parks you get in Europe. They are logging and replanting in forests that are being cultivated effectively for the first time. This sort of forest in Europe exists only in any size in Bialoweza, where the bison are. The fauna here is very varied, but it’s not common to see them. When I went behind a tree to go to the toilet at one point, I saw a Siberian chipmunk,  or “burunduk” – but when I told the woodsmen about it they said that when I go off to have a leak I’d better let them know so that they can cover with a rifle, because it’s when they do what I just did that they come across other “stripey animals” but ones who are more inclined to attack us than the burunduk are!

We saw cedar nut trees and manchurian nut, and those strange grape like things that you see in the woodsman’s hand – to get them he swung out over a fifty-foot drop on a tree branch, as agile as a monkey. Also you’ll see the huge ladybirds that they had there, you can see one that landed on me – they are so pick that when they land on you it feels like someone’s flicked you with their finger.

The tipped over lorry full of logs you can see in one photo there goes to show how tough the terrain is there – they basically dig their roads out as they woork the forest.

Don’t miss also near the end the home-made fitness area they made for themselves from various machine parts. It showed their skill in making do.

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Restu kun mi

Playout date: 3 October 2006
Camera: Logitech Webcam
Post Production: None
Location: Home
Other people featured: None
Genre: Song only
Music used: Abide with me Karaoke track
Languages used: Esperanto
Animals featured: None

This is, obviously, Abide with me sung in Esperanto and it has been very well received by Esperantists, some of whom have asked me to do more similar pieces and I have always intended to do them – for reasons of the way my family has developed that intention hasn’t been easy to put into fruition.

For the record I didn’t do the translation – as explained in the comments, most of which are in Esperanto on YT – I took the Esperanto version from the standard little green Esperanto hymnbook “la Esperanta Himnaro” which contains hundreds of well translated hymns from around the Christian world and is a great joy if you can but lay hands on a copy.

 

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Imbecile’s guide to the EU

Playout date: 30 September 2006
Camera: Hypercam
Post Production: Windows Movie Maker – medium use
Location: On the net
Other people featured: None
Genre: Quirky
Music used: None
Languages used: English
Animals featured: None

 

This piece is a Hypercam piece with a voice-over.

The voice over was an imbecile based on the level that this awful EU propaganda film appeared to be aimed at. It was a little influenced by Brookers’ successful “paste” character in the early days of YouTube.

In April 2009 I took this down and today I have replaced it by as unlisted – you won’t find it in any of the standard in-site links in YT, and only follows of this blog and anyone you’ve shared the link above with will be able to see it.

The reason was not that the EU became less objectionable to me or the propaganda film from the EU site which I’m showing here any the less pathetic, quite the contrary. I just did not want random people coming along to think that the object of my mockery was people with speech impediments, or genuinely low-intelligence people who don’t deserved to be mocked, as they didn’t choose to be dull and where less is given less will be required.

I believe I can trust the regular viewers of this blog to be more discerning than the at-large YT population, hence the chance from private status to unlisted today, for this blog only.

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