Assuming the technology does what it’s supposed to, I will be twittering while I’m there, so if you are interested in hearing what I’m up to you have a couple of options: Follow me @ http://robpannell.com/twitter or at http://twitter.com/robpannell. Some of my updates will automatically become statuses on facebook, but please bear in mind I will, in all likelihood, not be able to read or reply to any comments or replies etc.

Six weeks ago the thought of such a trip wouldn’t have even formed in my brain. Four weeks ago I could barely move out of sheer terror of the needles that were imminent, and now the day has come when I’m actually going! It seems crazy to me, I never thought I would be doing something like this.

The point of the trip is to visit the many projects of the Cleaford trust, who support some of  the less fortunate communities in Romania in many ways. Of particular interest to me is the Better Homes Project, which replaces slums made of wood, cardboard etc, with small brick housing. The youth group I help lead at my church is raising money to help with this project and so I’m going to see exactly how we are helping.

We land in Bucharest tomorrow afternoon & drive North to Sacele near Brasov through these mountains:

(I cannot wait for that drive!). We will stay in that area til Monday, visiting Brasov Hungarian speaking Baptist church & Brasov children’s hospital.

On Monday after lunch we head a few hours North to Targu Mures to visit the Baptist church & various church plants in Mures county.

On Thursday we’ll return to Sacele & visit the surrounding villages & projects through to next Saturday when we will fly home.

So, please throw up a few prayers for us, and I hope to have some good stories when I return!

Let me give you the background first:

Last week I had to get the bus to work one morning & planned to buy a ticket in the newsagent before getting on the bus, saving me £1.80. I had just enough time to buy the ticket & get back out to the stop before the bus arrived.

I stepped up to the counter and asked for the ticket, at which point my wallet decided to attempt to safeguard my financial future by welding the two halves of the zip together, sealing my cash away.

As the seconds slipped away and the bus neared, I got slightly more aggressive each time I tugged at it, resulting in a catastrophic rip as the zip came clean away from the wallet spilling the coins everywhere.

So I got a new wallet this morning, having had enough of my change jingling around in my pocket, and whilst it’s a very nice wallet, I’m still left thinking how much I liked the other one. If it hadn’t broken I’d have kept using it for years and it saddens me that I have to let it go.

Chatting to a colleague about it this morning, he mentioned a keyring that he’s had for years, really loves & wouldn’t think about replacing it. If we were talking about an iPod or a mobile phone then neither of us would give a second thought to upgrading to the latest model.

Why does my wallet that cost £4.00 hold so much personal value to me, when my phone, which cost considerably more remains emotionally detached from me?

Yes, I did make the bus.

This has been a really good weekend.

Jonny and Kristina (who, yes Dan, is a ‘beast’) came to stay with us from Thursday till Saturday, so we grabbed the excuse for a jolly and took them out on Friday night. After enough deep-fried cheese & butter to cause a coronary in a 30 ton mega-elephant (bronchial pneumonia optional) followed by a huuuge rib eye steak at Steki in Brighton, we went to the Latest bar to see Funky Buddha play. We’ve seen them a few times before & they’ve never failed to impress so we thought we’d pass the experience to Jonny & Kristina who also approved.

It was a great night out after a very long 8 or so days, so was very welcome.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to move my photography on a bit, and since a bad workman always blames his tools, it seemed like a camera upgrade was definitely the way forward.

So on Saturday, I shared my thoughts  with Sarah, who rather than saying “don’t be so stupid, we can’t afford that kind of thing” etc, actually said “Well you’re going to Romania (by the way, I’m going to Romania if you hadn’t heard! more news on that in later posts) very soon specifically to take photos amongst other things, and then you’re doing a friends wedding very shortly after, so if you’re thinking of a new camera, we’d best go get it today!”

After I’d recovered from the shock, we bundled Jonny & Kristina into the car, took them on a whistle stop tour of Middle Farm for lunch, then Firle beacon to see the paragliders do their thing, and chucked them out (having genuinely had a great couple of days with them) at Burgess Hill Station on the way to Park cameras.

I bought myself a shiny D90 and a shiny 18-105 VR lens to match.

To celebrate, I took it out at dusk, and yielded to Neil’s encouragements to have a crack at HDR photography. The picture at the top of this post is my first real attempt, and I’m really made up with it. What do you think?

]]> http://robpannell.com/2010/01/family-gigs-romania-weddings-new-toys/feed/ 0 http://robpannell.com/2010/01/hoge-veluwe/ http://robpannell.com/2010/01/hoge-veluwe/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:05:15 +0000 Rob http://robpannell.com/?p=585 A second of my photos has gone up on Imanao.com today.

This one is called ‘Hoge Veluwe’ which I took whilst in Holland a couple of years ago.

Imanao.com (Japanese for ’still’) is where you need to go.

My first photo, Memory in colour, wen’t up on Jan 5th. More to come soon…

We decided to spend some time decorating our lounge over the break, so 4 solid days work later and we have a nice new lounge to kick the year off.

Here’s a poor mobile photo (we haven’t done the curtains yet):

Unfortunately I seem to have developed some pretty bad knee trouble which made the return journey pretty painful, but I think it was worth it for the pictures. Judge for yourself:

Complete set on flickr

]]> http://robpannell.com/2009/11/the-chattri-jack-jill/feed/ 0 http://robpannell.com/2009/10/today-i-bought-a-tape-measure/ http://robpannell.com/2009/10/today-i-bought-a-tape-measure/#comments Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:00:08 +0000 Rob http://www.robpannell.com/2009/10/today-i-bought-a-tape-measure/ …at B&Q as we’re redecorating our hall and thought it’d be useful.

The packet said “keep away from children and pets”

So if Boxer needs to measure up for a set of shelves or something, then he’s gonna be disappointed!

I invested in a digital photoframe, thought it might add something…

It’s very nerve racking knowing ppl are looking at my work. I’m going down there tomorrow at some point, so will get to hear what some of them think I hope.