End of March snow?

This morning there was a few centimeters of snow in our garden, very unusual for March......On the news was that at 8.30hrs there was an 888km traffic jam, not the all time high, but second best ever in Netherlands.





On the way to my work I shot this nice picture while driving through the woods.

Astronomy picture of the day

I found a very nice site each day has a different very nice picture of an astronomy object.

Look at:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

.......

Back from Pila

Here we are flying in an Alenia ATR72 turboprop from Poznan to Warsaw......











And from Warsaw with an Embraer jet airplane to Amsterdam. Here we are flying towards the west, where the sun is setting on the horizon.
This airplane had a lot of room in the economy class, very special for such a small plane.

Final testing

Here one of the kilns is running a cooling test.

Almost ready!

This is the inside of one of the kilns. You see the ceramic heating elements that heat up the kiln. Each element can heat with a maximum current of 90A and 8kW. This enables us to heat the kiln up to about 1300 degr. Centigrade......






And this is the control room. On the right is the computer that controls the kiln I put over here last year. On the left are the 2 new ones....

Pila report 2

Yesterday we had dinner in the "Orange Piano" where they serve the famous Polish "Zurek" soup in a very nice piece of bread......
I had many times "Zurek" in Polish restaurants, but this was one of the best ever....






And this morning when I opened the curtains of my hotelroom I saw a very nice sunrise.......
It became a very nice day today, with a lot of sunshine! (Maybe spring has started over here......)

Pila report

Today is Sunday, we went to the factory for some checks on both kilns. After that we took a nice walk through Pila because it was nice and sunny.
Here's one of the churches.




The people over here paint their houses in very nice colours.......

Both kilns are already running burnout curve

It is all going quite well over here in Pila. Today we burned both kilns out and tomorrow we are going to test with a dummy load of products.







One of the kilns had a broken UPS. After checking it thoroughly I found that one solder spot of the main relay was damaged.
I soldered a separate wire to the connection points, and the UPS started working ok again!

Back in Pila again.....

So: I'm back in Pila again for starting 2 new kilns.
The trip was long and boring: from Amsterdam to Warsaw in 2 hours time, then 5 hours waiting in some kind of -shithole- and then in 1 hours time back from Warsaw to Poznan. From there with taxi to Pila.

The weather was very nice though, see the picture......

Watching birds at the Kampina

It was nice weather, so we decided to go to the Kampina again. A very nice place to go, quiet and with many lakes. There we a large number of different birds. And that already in February.
Here's a duck couple, the male was courting with the female all the time.....







Here duck is landing.











And here the duck has landed...





Here's a Cormorant (aalscholver) flying around....











We saw a great egret "grote zilverreiger" on the hunt for fresh fish.











This is a very nice view on the lake, just when the sun was coming through the clouds.






Here's a very nice great crested grebe "fuut". I photographed it far away with my 300mm lens.










A "koolmees".











And a Nuthatch "boomklever".











We saw 2 Canadian geese landing. They were making a lot of noise while doing that!










Here it is landing!











The geese have landed!











And we saw large groups of tufted ducks (kuifeenden).....

Nice walk on the Cartier

It was a little bit cold, but we decided to take a walk on the nice "cartier heide". It is next to the road from Eersel to Postel. It has many small lakes and marshes.






Many "meerkoet" waterbirds were very busy......Since there was enough light I could try the borrowed Sigma 500mm F/8 telelens. You can get very close. This one was taken 50mtr away from this bird.




Here another one is dipping his nose in the water....








Here's a nice view.......







There's a small path over the marshes, covered on both sides with trees and bushes.










And another nice view on the lakes....







The Sigmal 500mm F/8 mirrorlens is a real bird-catcher......

M81 and M82 galaxies

There were some clear nights with fresh air, which is good for clearing my lungs that were full with shit from China..............I decided to find the M81 and M82 galaxies (Bodes Nebulae) in Ursa Major. I already tried to find them some times, but didn't. This time I did! They are beautiful through the telescope. I also made a photograph of them. Total exposure was 40x2min autoguided, so 80min in total. Both are at 12 million lightyears distance.

Big Buddha impressions

I made these pictures of the lantau big buddha in the streaming rain, cleaning and drying the camera between every exposure. The result is not too bad.






Around the big buddha are many statues honoring it.









Different shot.








Close up....

The Lantau Big Buddha

Since we left late with the airplane at 0.50hrs, we had some spare hours. We decided to go to the Po Lin monastry on Lantao Island. First we checked in our suitcases, stored our handluggage in a locker and then we went to the monastry via taxi. It was a very nice mountain road. Unfortunately the weather was very bad, much rain and wind and very cold (only 5 degr.). When we got there the taxi driver pointed: there is buddha, but there were only clouds.....
We decided to go into the monastry first and wait for better weather. Here's the inside of the monastry, very beautiful.
Here's an outside view from the monastry, the buddha is nowhere to be seen!










At the monastry is a very good vegetarian restaurant. We decided to have some snacks, and they looked as good as they tasted. Very delicious.





In december 2007 there were problems with the cable car that goes down from Ngong Ping village (next to the monastry) all the way down to Tung Chung, near the airport.
But we decided to go anyway and hope for the best.....




Here's a view on the famous Buddha from Ngong Ping village.







And a more closer look.











And from Ngong Ping village we went with the cable car all the way down to Tung Chung. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and rainy and not much to be seen....





This was the kind of weather we had today....












Here the wind and heavy rain bashing the small cable car.....

After arriving in Tung Chung we saw a new construction site where construction workers were creating a brand new anthill for people to live in........





After that we had to dry up and lounged around Hongkong airport until our plane left.