Iceland for sale on eBay
Great scenery and wildlife but financial situation in need of repair — collect in person.
Iceland, which is going cap in hand to Russia for a 4 billion euro loan to bail out its failed banks, was offered for sale as a wholesale lot on eBay on Friday.
“Located in the mid-Atlantic ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland will provide the winning bidder with — a habitable environment, Icelandic Horses and admittedly a somewhat sketchy financial situation.”

source: uk.reuters.com
             screenshot of the ebay item page
 

Paradise almost lost: Maldives seek to buy a new homeland
The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has told the Guardian.

source: guardian.co.uk

follow the below link and you’ll find one of the funniest email conversations i’ve read since the laminated plaque dialogue by zefrank.

the seven-legged spider

according to the authors, both conversations are real and unchanged!
 

just recently, somebody sold the drawing of the 7-legged spider on ebay. ;)

four our second week in thailand, we left koh samui and headed on to koh tao [G] – a tiny island (it has a maximum diameter of 7 km) situated about 50 km northward.
we did a padi open water course with emily and amanda at big blue. while i very much liked the course itself, i cannot recommend staying in their cheap rooms. they’re cheap for a reason!

four days later, we took our temporary diver’s certifications and headed down to the southeast of the island and spent the rest of the week at coral view resort, a lovely, quiet place with a beautiful beach, with a panoramic view of close-by shark island, and koh phangan in the distance.
right by the resort restaurant, there’s the office of impian divers.
robert, who runs the diveshop, told us: “impian divers is the smallest diving school of koh tao, and probably also the smallest dive instructor” (pointing at himself).
the entire staff (all three of them: keitha, robert and tom) were very friendly and welcoming, and they took the time to chat.
with hindsight, i’d have done the entire diving course at impian divers.

there was a lot of underwater life to see, even just snorkelling (i was snorkelling when i met the shark).

amongst others, we saw a blue-spotted stingray (taeniura lymma), hawksbill turtle (eretmochelys imbricata), yellow boxfish (ostracion cubitus), triggerfish (balistidae), baby squid, giant groupers (epinephelus lanceolatus), sergeant major fish (pomacentridae), barracuda (sphyraena sp.), seal-faced pufferfish (tetraodontidae), and three nudibranches (cool stuff!) including phyllidia varicosa.

all of the underwater photos (except for the last 5) were taken with my pentax optio w60, which is waterproof down to 4 meters without any housing.

alltogether, i think diving has been one of the greatest experiences i had in several years – especially around koh tao, where the sea seems to be stuffed with wildlife.
 

[view photos: koh tao (thailand pt.2)]

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distantly related (youtube):

draw the mona lisa in microsoft paint
draw the mona lisa in 80 milliseconds

i think that botanical gardens are great in showing different plants of all over the world in one spot. they give you the opportunity to actually see something that is usually only growing thousands of kilometers away.
on the other hand, there’s often a huge difference between what you can see in a greenhouse, and what the same plant looks in the wild.

having spent some time in the greenhouse of innsbruck’s botanical garden, i’ve come to notice that i’ve seen quite a bit of the world.
here are three examples of plants that i’ve also had a chance of seeing in their natural habitat.

[view photos:here and there - juxtaposition]

related albums:

• drosera binata: flora on codfish island, new zealand
• welwitschia mirabilis: swakopmund and welwitschia plains
• hoodia gordonii: (not online yet)

this is probably more of a “memo to self”-sort of post that saves me the time of searching, next time firefox decides to cause problems.
still, you might find some of it interesting:

[more...]

here’s a selection of photos from the thailand vacation 2008.

the prehistory: when four friends (lisa, stefan, mathias and markus) weren’t able to find a sufficient period of time to visit a fifth one (rene), they had to rearrange. the result was a thailand trip of 5, in 3 stages.

part one is about the first week, when mathias and i visited rene¹ in koh samui, thailand.

highlights include: take-away food everywhere (i mean it!), loads of exotic fruit including durian, dinners on the beach, thai food in general (especially curries!), a thai massage right by the beach, coconut drinks (basically just coconuts split open) on the beach, ang thong marine national park, sleeping right at the beach, fried insects, bioluminescence, …
 
[view photos: koh samui & ang thong national park (thailand pt.1)]

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