In the village life depends on the mood of the locals.
As a customer, you depend on the mood of the shopkeeper for your wares. If they don't feel like opening today, try again tomorrow.
If you own a shop and the local wholesalers don't like you you will have trouble buying goods for your shelves. If you do not have the right contacts at the market you may have to pay more for your stock than other shops. You need to have the right contacts with illegal fishermen to get the cheap fish from the trawlers which go fishing without the necessary licences and in places where fish are protected, such as marine reserves. These fish are cheaper than legally caught ones.
The locals call this system the "mafia" because they can't find an English word for it and it's always better to present such things as alien by using a foreign word. We don't do that sort of thing in our culture! In German they have a local word - Klüngel - but also like to use the foreign term. It sounds more malificent when others do it.
Here, the local culture protects and maintains its special privileges by whatever means they can. They drive their cars on the fragile beach environments, fish out the oceans, use up the land and prevent all positive change. Is it like this in your locality? Do you have a "mafia"?

What is the meaning of Easter in the southern hemisphere?
The days are getting shorter, the cool winter time is coming. The harvests are over.
This is not the time when the leaves come back on the trees and when nature starts again to provide us with fresh food. The rabbit, the egg and the baby lamb are not the appropriate symbols for this time of year here. Millions of rabbits remain a major pest in the landscape expanding the desert as they eat all vegetation from the surface of the land, unchallenged by any predators. Sheep compact the soil with their hooves and transform the landscape which has been shaped by soft-footed marsupials.
Nevertheless the supermarkets are full of chocolate icons representing fertility in other climate zones.
Some people here recognise the bilby as an easter symbol. This endangered indigenous animal has long ears like a rabbit. There are children's stories about it like the one here:
http://users.netconnect.com.au/Easter_Bilby/default.html
Meanwhile the winter flowers are now getting ready to bloom in the evergreen forests and heathlands.

It's time now to return from the village to the big city.
The village is totally car-dependent. Even to go for a walk you first have to drive somewhere. The beach is very nice and isolated with few people on it and every day there are new objects washed up on the sand. But first you have to sit in a dangerous car for 30 minutes to get there.
In the city, the beach is just a walk away, but it is full of people and it is hard to find a shell or interesting rock. You can walk without a car and go to a café by the sea.
People have to be more civilised in the city. In the village they believe they can do anything because others are further away. But this is not really true.

Every landscape has its own special animals and unless they have been eliminated by some disaster, often caused by humans, they live in very intersting communities. One of the large lizards of the world lives here on the east coast of this Pacific island. It is called "Goanna".
A goanna grows to about 2 metres long and loves to eat bird eggs in the trees it climbs. That's why it has long claws and a long tail for climbing.

The village is preparing for Easter today. All around petrol is pouring into lawn mowers to get the grass cut to its roots before the long weekend.
As city residents abandon their urban wastelands and head for the coast for a different lifestyle, they bring their habits with them. The weekend ritual of using up unique carbon resources to cut grass in a small back yard becomes in the villages a half-day ceremony because there is more land and people have no concept of using it. The petrol engine solves everthing. The air fills with exhaust gas and noise until darkness puts a stop to it.
Those who can afford to live on the land have more lawn to remove. For them there is the "slasher". The countryside is now characterised by unproductive land use, consuming oil rather than agriculture.

Heute war ich tief im Regenwald. Draußen war es superheiß, dort wo der Wald entfernt war. Dort wachsen jetzt nur Bananen in der heiße Sonne. Im Regenwald wachsen aber eine unglaubliche Vielfalt von Pflanzen. Palmen strecken sich nach oben, um ein bisschen Sonne zu bekommen. Riesen Feigenbäume wachsen auf riesigen Eukalyptusbäume. Und es ist angenehm dort zu sein.

Today it was another hot day at the beach. There were not many people there because there were dark clouds over the ocean and rain was falling into the water somewhere to the east, maybe at Lord Howe Island. But there are never many people there and the beach is long.
We walked for a while and then jumped into the warm water. It was too warm really. I like a bit of resistance from the ocean, that cool shrinking feeling on my skin.

    

Near the beach there was a group of kangaroos lying in the shade and occasionally eating some grass or scratching themselves.

The Pacific Ocean is the biggest ocean in the world and it is wild! It is still a very nice place to swim. Today at sunset it was quite warm and after a walk in the cooling water it was good to dip in. The beaches are long here giving a feeling of wide open spaces.
The only downside is the cars driving on the sand. These old men should think about parking off the beach and walking with their fishing rods to the water. The exercise would do them good.
We saw a large jelly fish washed up on the sand. This is unusual here. Because of global warming these creatures are now found further south. They used to be only up north in Queensland in warm waters.

I have been working on the latest addition to dotAtelier so you haven't heard from me for a few days.

What is new there is a series of works presenting sound and visual ambiences together. They are inspired by natural and urban contexts. If you have been to the north coast of New South Wales or know German cities, you may recognise something. But it may be better if you don't recognise anything and just enjoy the moment of the sounds.

Go to dotAtelier and follow the links to sounds and make sounds.

If you have broadband the sounds and pictures will load quite quickly.
These small applications are Java based, so you need a java virtual machine to see them. You probably have one anyway.

The search for home begins.
Who ever has to think about the question of home?
The pages in this weblog will investigate the "homes" available to those who are seeking. This is not everyone. Those who are 'bred and born' in Tuttlingen or Wagga Wagga may never see the need to find or make a home. Even when they find a partner, if that person is also from Tuttlingen or Wagga Wagga, chances are they will not even ask the question.
Reflection on home is a reflection on the self. Self-discovery is an option in life. The other option is to leave yourself undiscovered by yourself.