A cloud of my words...

Okay, liked this tool and since I haven't posted anything for a while, thought I'd copycat from Liam.

These are the words I most often use in my blog, through http://www.wordle.net/. Pity though that you can leave out common words used (like articles and such) but only in one language (hence the huge 'de') while I sometimes write in several. 'Hosted' comes out quite a lot, of course 'Zimbabwe', and (no surprise there) 'Thomas'. 'Weekend' is nice, 'counting' and 'chiffres' made me smile.

Wasting food...

Le chiffre de 40% de la nourriture présente dans les supermarchés étatsuniens qui ne sera jamais consommé fait froid dans le dos et illustre à lui seul à quel point nos économies du nord sont mal organisées et loin d'être un modèle de développement. En Angleterre le gaspillage alimentaire a fait l'objet en 2009 d'une attention toute particulière, le Food Ethics Council un organisme indépendant y a consacré son dernier magazine auquel a participé Tristram Stuart, l'auteur de Waste : Uncovering the Global Food Scandal chez Penguin 2009. Les chiffres sont effrayant :

• 1 milliard de personnes souffrent de malnutrition dans le monde, avec le quart des aliments gaspillés en Europe et Amérique du Nord, ils pourraient tous manger à leur faim.
• avec l'eau d'irrigation nécessaire pour cultiver les aliments gaspillés on pourrait couvrir les besoins en eau de 9 milliards de personnes.
• de plus la surconsommation au Nord fait "artificiellement" monter les prix des céréales et denrées alimentaires au détriment de ceux qui ont du mal à les acheter.
• La production et la distribution des 6,7 millions de tonnes de produits comestibles non consommés et jetés à la poubelle au Royaume-Uni représentent par ailleurs l'émission de 18 millions de tonnes de CO2.

Merci à Damien, par qui ces chiffres me sont parvenus lors de son quiz annuel.

Valentine weekend at Vumba

Last weekend we decided to go and spent Valentine weekend in Vumba, which is a mountainous area in the east of Zimbabwe, resembling the south of France.

Thomas decided to let his hair down, or should I say, his beard. After two weeks of ignoring the itching, this is what he looked like. Most also add that this was the last picture of him as Bluebeard, since he shaved it all off.

And Aymeline who had come along to see as much of Zimbabwe during her stay here, picked these lovely flowers...

Hope your St Valentine was as good as ours!

Happy St Valentine!

Mirroring 3.14

I thought this was kinda cute:

We all know pi, π is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It's a irrational and transcendental number, the unending and never repeating 3.14 series... But pi, pronounced 'pie' in English, also approaches a palindrome: look at the mirror image of 3.14 and it spells pie.

Maybe not a proof God exists, but amusing anyway...

Couchsurfing 2009: the numbers

Out of curiosity, I checked how many people we hosted in 2009 through Couchsurfing, a website that allows you to be hosted or host travellers, mostly backpackers, and tell them about your life and work in a place.

Last year I received 135 emails through CouchSurfing, of which 56 were requests to be hosted. In total, I hosted 35 people (not counting Thomas' hosted people), for I would estimate an average of three days (some stayed only one night, others a LOT longer). All this is not counting friends or families staying over, or the volunteers that often crashed at our place as well... We're thinking of putting up a sign: BnT Hostels, what do you think?