goodbye magipearl. hello planetmemories. 
After a long, long though process, I have decided to get rid of the hard-to-remember name magipearl, and to move towards the easy-to-remember name planetmemories. This blog was never meant to be permanent. So today, I am launching my real, one of a kind website. Make sure to have a look there!
While spending some time at the local flower shop the other day, I heard two ladies talking. The one told her life story very concisely. That woman has been through a lot in her life, yet she always found something to hold onto and a reason to live.
I strongly believe that a flower can brighten up pretty much any dull day. It won’t provide a reason for living, but it is a reminder of the One who loves us.
I have always loved inanimate subject matter, as you might have noticed if you have been following my blog for a while. The following three pictures are the result of a brief for the academy. The task was to shoot a still life and play around with textures. Needless to say I enjoyed that.
I have had a colourful set of (christmas) lights for years, without ever using them. Finally, the right opportunity came along to trash them.
As part of my course at the academy, we did some painting with light during the week past. In a group of 5, we put our cameras on tripods, set the shutter speed to 15-30 seconds and went mad. SO much fun!
Sometimes in life, the best thing you can do is grab an opportunity that opens before you with both hands, embrace it, and not let it slip away. And it might start with something strange as going for coffee with someone who you met through a mutual friend on facebook.
I had one of the most interesting weekends this year now. Part of it was to document the drumming part of recording an album. Helmut was so kind to take me along. You should really check out his website, click on “artist” and listen to some of his songs.
Since I was really, really small, I have always enjoyed looking over other people’s shoulders, observe, and learn. That’s basically what I did now, and here are some of the pictures:
I just realized I haven’t posted anything since returning to South Africa. Shocker!
Well, I am enjoying myself thoroughly. Life is just awesome around here.
Here a short list of things I am very happy about:
Photos will follow again with the next post. Some nice projects for my studies in the pipeline.
There is a show on German TV called “Goodbye Germany”. It’s all about people who choose to emigrate from Germany to the country of their choice. In 2006, more than 150.000 people left the country without returning. I hope that by the end of the year, I will officially belong to those statistics.
I am at the end of a three week holiday, and it’s been dreadful. My family be excluded here, they are just awesome. But apart from that, it is amazing how within five years you can change so much that you don’t fit in anymore where you grew up. I have grown so used to South African culture that sometimes I don’t even know how to behave German anymore.
Therefore: Goodbye Germany, hopefully never to return for good.
You might remember Claudia’s pregnancy shoot. That was perfect timing, because Laura was born 24hours later.
I met her about two weeks later while she had her first sleep in her baby bed. She is SO cute!
There are two things I’d like to share in this blog post. Both of them hurt.
We all know by now that Germany didn’t make it to the finals. I am not a soccer fan AT ALL, but I quite enjoyed the gees that came with it this time as any other. We have developed a culture of celebrating something we don’t have any influence on. Quite weird.
Obviously, I was secretly hoping Germany would get it’s fourth star. Now I watched all that soccer for nothing. And everybody’s sad. Not nice.
On a completely different note… Sometimes you meet people who are nice to you for a while, but actually, they are not.
Please take this with a bit of humor: I am one of those. Okay, check out the picture first:
That was me. No, that’s not my arm. I hit that guy so hard that he retained the memory for a week and a half, so far. Yes, I hit people. A friend once showed me how to do that, and I’m really grateful he did.
Needless to say, though, that I felt pretty bad afterwards and then went on to being really nice to my victim. 
I love flowers and all kinds of small things. My eye is just drawn towards that stuff.
Recently, I took my camera for a walk again. I used to make that sort of tour summer and winter. It was interesting to go through all those memories again. That is, especially because I saw a girl I last saw some 15 years ago, and because I saw my former maths teacher going for a jog (which was hillarious).
At the same time, this is my opportunity to show you a little part of the Germany I have always known.
