Seeing that I will be in port and the next few days will be a bit busy, let me wish you all a very happy new year. I hope you all have a very healthy and wonderful year ahead. :)
PS: Eniko! - Thanks for the comment. I had joined this ship in August so it is possible that I missed out on posting you a card. My apologies. But I don't have your address. Drop your address in the comments and I will send you one from Chile and
Nicaragua! Happy new year to you too!
Here is another stamp from the N.A for the festive occasion. I hope you all had a good time.
Merry christmas to everyone out there. I hope you all have a great day today!
PS: Thanks for the wishes people. Best wishes to you all too.
This is the last stamp in the series released for the year of the pig by the Neth Ant. The Warthog holds special significance in the Hindu Religion as it is one of the incarnations of Vishnu and is thus holy by default. Also they do remind me of the Wild Boars that Astrix and his friends keep chasing in Gaul.
PS:Cheers All! Post Call at Panama -
Paquebot -
Gulfman - Taiwan
Benedikt - Iceland
Alexander - Russia
Prazeres - Portugal
Covers :
Lefung - Malaysia
Cotard - France
Eric (Jura) - France
Postcards :
Gem - Canada
Yukiko - Germany
Lenka - Czech Rep.
Please let me know once you get the above. Also if you people on the Paquebot list would like to recv ordinary covers with the local stamps, do let me know and I will put you on the other mailing list.
Sorry for the people I didn't cover this time. Time was limited and will put you one from Chile.
Thanks to Gulfman and Yukiko, its been established that the next year is the year of the rat. Somehow I think even less countries will be lining up to release stamps of the rat, then they did for the pig.
As per Yukikos comment, I think I was born in the year of the Snake. I don't think that can be very good.
Anyway, Since the pig stamp did come up, let me also show you a couple of stamps that the Neth. Antelles released along with the miniature. This is the Berkshire Pig in all its glory. I have read many stories of Wooster and jeeves which simply revolve around the bowel functions of these very intelligent creatures.
I just passed through the Canal after a very long day, so lets do the post call tomorrow.
I don't have many days left for this stamp, so let me present you the sheet of the year by Neth. Ant. 2007 was the year of the pig, and these guys have taken out this sheet with the qualities of the person born in the year of the pig. Among other things , if you were born on one of these years, you are tolerant, gallent, honest , loyal and many more such nice things. Apparently you also cost other people a lot of money because this sheet was about 5 Gilders, which is about 3 Dollars.
Any idea which year is 2008? Eric sure would be glad if there was a year of the frog! :)
Panama comes up tomorrow morning. Will send across some mail over the next day or so.
PS: Cheers all!
Glenn - Great that you got the card. Hope you get the other one soon as well. Best Wishes for the New year.
Yukiko - Thanks & have a great holiday!
Since we started off with Frans Hals, it seems only correct to show you the other stamps released by the NA (Netherland Antilles) in his name. I think it is safe to say that the image of the mach man has changed considerable since the times of Frans Hals.
PS: Cheers All:
George - Not to worry. Will be sending you a Paquebot from Panama, did not send you a cover from Curacao because I didn't send any Paquebots from there. Best Wishes for the new year to you too.
Gem - Thanks for the comment. Hope you get the cards soon.
It took us a long time, but we are finally out of Curacao. The Island is a beautiful place, but is expensive as hell. The place is like Europe where everything is imported. So everything is expensive. Even Fish is expensive on this Island. Baraccuda that I purchased fresh in Togo for 3.55 USD per KG costs 15 Dollars here. If you can't get fish cheap on an Island, something is very wrong.
What I am coming down to, is that the stamps are very expensive. No one is going to debate that this sheet of a painting by Frans Hals is anything but beautiful. But the cost of 550 C equates to about 3.2 US dollars and 125 Rupees. Which really prevents one from buying 10 of them just so that you can exchange them if others later so desire.
But I did manage to track down the only Philatelic counter on the whole Island and got my hands on a few stamps. Let me show you these over the next few days. After all my next visit to a Post office will be in Chile at the year end!
PS: Cheers all! Thanks for your comments. The post out of Curacao looked like this:
COVERS
------
Eric Bruth - France
Eric from Jura - France
Alexander - Russia
Cotard - France
Yan Wu - USA
Zhou Fan - China
CHarles Jensen - USA
LeFung - Malaysia
Prazeres - Portugal
POST CARDS
---------
Yukiko - Germany
Gem - Canada
Leela - India
Next up is Panama from which I will be sending out Paquebot mail. New on the mailing list is Benedikt from Iceland. If anyone new wants to get mail, this is where you drop in a comment.
Take Care!
I don't follow football. At all so I'm not really sure if Senegal took part in the 2002 Football world cup. But they sure did come out with a series on the cup. This is the first of the series and shows the world cup and the footbal over a stadium floating in the universe as if out of something you read in a Duglous Adams Novel.
One thing I have not been able to figure out is that the cost of the stamp is 290 + 50. I'm not sure what that means? Does it mean that if Sengal doesn't make it to the finals, we all have to pay 50 extra?
PS : Cheers All! Thanks for the comment everyone.
Eric From Jura : Sad that the stamps were not cancelled. Will send you another from Panama. They cancel it out so much you will be hard pressed to find a stamp underneath! :) Regd you seeing a snap of my ship, I write a regular blog called the "Bills
of lading" which you can usually go by following a link on the right of this page. These days I have taken the page out of circulation for a while. Once I put it back up, you can see all the pictures of the ship and the sea and the birds and all.
Alexander : Glad you got the Paquebot and glad you liked it. My address is also on the right of this web page. you can send the mail there. I will see it in a couple of months. You can send me miniatures on , Military, comics, Dinosaurs, fishes or ships.
Have been absent in the near past and the trip was rather hectic. Infact I never got to show you the stamps I got in Senegal during my visit. I had gone to their main city of Dakar and it is one of the biggest cities of West Africa. A beautiful city but one where we stayed for only a day.
The Dakar Rally is the only reason why I had heard of Dakar before this and it was good to get my hands on this stamp.
THe stamp features two SUV's and one bike on the top left. For some reason, one camel is also shown there. As if a stamp on India needs to have an elephant in the background!
Also of interest is the wordings of Senegal , which are in the colours of the Senegelese flag.
360 cfs roughly equates to 36 Indian Rupees and 1 US dollar.
PS: Cheers all! Thanks for the comments people. I'm glad that the letters from Togo & Dakar have started reaching. It always is a gamble with the Paquebot mail that it might very well end up in the garbage bin of the post office.
Cees - Thanks. I should be celebrating New Years in Chile. A beautiful country that one.
Yukiko : I should be back home in Jan or Feb. Hope you have a great holiday back home. Thanks for the comment.
The last few days have been passing very fast. I must be having a lot of fun because the Atlantic seemed to be a much smaller place this time around.
Anyway tonight find me drifting off Curacao waiting to go in. At the end of the voyage, its kind of fitting to put up this sheet for you people. I sadly don't speak french, but many of you do so you will probably know more about these.
The main Sheet claims it to be the 50th year anniversary (1945 - 1995) of the end of the Guerre Mondial, which I assume must mean the World War & shows the English Churchill tanks crossing the Rhine into Berlin.
The top left stamp is nice and fits into my Aeroplane collection. It is apparently the "La luftwaffe Lance une attaque finale desesperee"
The next one to it is about the allies gaining supremacy in the Atlantic.
The third one is about "Le pont ludendorf est pris intact". I think it is about capturing something lookling like a bridge intact.
The final stamp in the series is about the Katyusha Russian missiles hitting Berlin.
The russians are again active in the bottom row of stamps with their tanks rolling into berlin and by something sad in the next stamp which describes the scene as "Les Russes reprennent Varsovie devastee"
The bottom end are about peace with the left bottom announcing the Italian Cessesation of hostilities in the "Ravagee par la guerre", & the bottom left showing us the flag of the UN.
I'm not sure that we've actually stopped fighting since. Lets hope one day we actually do and stamps such as these become obsolete.
PS: Cheers all. Thanks for the comments Lefung & Yukiko. Good to see that the Dakar & Lome cards are reaching. The people on the mailing list are going to remain. If anyone else would like a card / Paquebot / cover from Curacao / Panama / Chile /
Nicaragua / Honduras , drop in a comment here with your address.
I always like marine sheets and if you remember I had some time back shown you a sheet from Thailand that Charlie had sent over to me. This reminds me of that sheet, but is not of that neat standard.
My particular favourite in this is the Hammerhead Shark with the anchor. :)
If the last few stamps have lead us anywhere, then it is to this sheet. This sheet is my current favourite and by all standards other then puja's, one of the best sheets ever made. Puvilaand excels himself in this sheet and depicts the scene when the asteroid / comet hits the Earth, bringing in the Ice age and the subsequent extinction of the Dinosaurs.
People with a scientific inclination of mind may note that the Dino's depicted on the top of the panel from left to right are : Plateosaurus (Trias) , Sceudosaurus (Jurassic) , Kentrosaurus (Jurassic) & Heterodontosaurus (Jurassic).
The dino on the bottom left, in whose eyes we can see the reflection of the comet (neat touch Puvilaand!) is the Compsoganthus (Jurassic), and the one in the stamp perforations and thus the star dino of the sheet, is the Velociraptor. Enthusiasts will recognise this last Dino from one of the Jurassic Park movies in which they create some ruckus.
All in all one great sheet!
PS:
Kalpana - Glad you got the Paquebot. BTW, which one was it? I have sent you three of these mails and I was wondering if this was the one sent from Curacao or Togo. Have a good time in India.
The Polacanthus is exactly the kind of stuff that a toy makers dreams are made of. One mean looking dino with sparp horns all over to kill, maime, gouge and in other manners incapacitate any living creature that might habitat in the vicinity.
Like all heavily armed things, its not hard to imagine how they must have gone extinct. It must be pretty tough to get any procreational activity going on between all those horns!
PS: Cheers all! Thanks for your comments.
The next port of call will be the Island of Curacao and mails will go out from there. I shall not be sending out Paquebot from Curacao so people who have asked for a paquebot will be sent one from the next port.
Benedikt - Got your address little late for Senegal. Will Send you a Paquebot from Honduras
Kalpana - Yes I did recv it at my home. It is said to be one stunning peice of postal package. Thanks a lot. I will miss seeing it for some time till I return.
Eric Bruth - Yes Thanks. I did recv your Letter and sheet as well. Thanks. Did I mention that I send you something from Togo?
Lenka - Got a nice envelope from you as well waiting at home. Thanks.
Finally we see a mean looking dinosaurs, I had previously classified Dinosaurs as either "Eaten" or the "Eating" types. The Coelophysis definitely seems to belong to the latter group. Watch out from those mean looking claws and sharp teeth!
PS: Cheers All! post call Ex Senegal:
Paquebot mail :
Alexander - Russia - Got your address in time. Paquebot on the way.
Kalpana - Germany
Eric from Jura - France
Mr Prazeres - Portugal
Covers:
Lefung - Malaysia
Post Cards:
George - Taiwan - Sorry ran out of Paquebot stamps this port. Did send you a card from here & one also from Togo.
Gem - Canada - Got your address just in time. Postcard on the way.
Kalpana - Germany
Lenka - Czech Rep
Cotard Stephane - France
Ms Yan Wu - US
Charlie - Thailand
Yukiko - Germany
J - India
Please drop a comment once you get them.
PPS : Eric Bruth - Thanks for the comment. Sorry could not send you a cover from Senegal, but did send you a cover from Togo. Hope you get it. Plus I'm not sure if your sheet made it to Home. Hopefully it will. Thanks for putting up my paquebot on your
blog. Will check it up once I get online in a month. Cheers & good health!
Let's take a break from the dinosaurs today. Today is world Aids day and its only fitting that I put up this stamp up here. It was released by India on the World Aids day of 2006.
There are more then 5 million cases of Aids in India alone. If we don't do something about it, rather then me putting up stamps of Dinosaurs up on the net, we might have someone else putting stamps of humans on their blogs.
PS : Eric : I'll send you a cover. :)
Today we look at Mr Brachiosaurus from the Jaurassic era. I'm not sure about this painter. The backgrounds are stunning, but something seems to be wrong with the dino's. Take this big fellow for instance, he really does seem upbeat about his extinction
and is actually smiling. This seems particularly praiseworthy because his head seems to be all bumped up - probably because a caveman hit him with a piece of wood. I like this chap.
PS: Cheers all!
Lefung : Will send across a Paqubot your way. And don't worry about registered post. The letters will be accepted and kept safely till I return.
Alexander: I have been on your blog & liked it. will send across letters without fail, but I don't have your address and can't log on to your blog now. So type in you address in the comments space so that I can send letters.
I think we all can agree that even his mother would have been hard pressed to call the Dilophosaurus a good looking bloke. I don't know if its this chap in the foreground that does it, but the background of this stamp is nice. Its got the morning misty look with the sun coming up bathing everything in the mysterious foggy orange that looks great.
BTW, thanks for the comments :
Yuki - I didn't send you a card from lome because you didn't post a comment to let me know you recd my panama card. I'll send you one from the next port. Say if you are in Japan, can you get me the full set of stamps on the Steam Engines that I had
shown a month of so back?
Gulfman - I thought you must have got tired with all the paqubot covers fo I send you a postcard from Togo on the 26th. Let me know once you get it.
Lefung - I haven't got it with me yet, but I haven't checked up my mail since the last two months so it might have arrived at home. Please let me know here is you send/recv anything. Will send across some covers your way.
Cheers All!
Hi all.
I did put in a post about it some time back but since I'm not online, let me just say it again so it's somewhere on top.
It's like this. Anyone reading this is most welcome to put in a comment here. I will read it. If you want to recv a card or a cover from me, you'll have to put in your address in the comment and I'll dispatch a letter from the next port of call.
I can send you the following :-
a. A Paquebot mail (lots written about it in the posts past)
b. Post cards
c. Covers
What I would like is stamp miniature sheets from you in return once you get my letter & if you read my blog, you know the topics I'd like the stamps or FDC to be on.
So if you want to get a card, drop a comment on this post & I'll send a card from the country you want. Or from all the countries you want it from!
Countries coming up in the next month or so:- Senegal , Netherland Antilles , Panama , Chile , Equador , Honduras , Venezuela.
PS: Ms. Yan Wu - Already sent across a card in your direction the day before. Let me know once you get it.
Coming up next in the series of the Togo Dinosaurs is the Pachycephalosaurus also from the prehistoric era. This chap seems to bear a striking resemblance to the pictures that I have seen of Dodo's. I wonder if it even waited for the ice age to go extinct!
I was not really active much around here for the last few days. I apologise to all those who did drop by and found nothing new. The last few days were spent a bit busy in the port of Lome. It is the only port and also the capital of a country called Togo.
One good thing that did happen was that I managed to get to the Main post office of the town and went through the Philately section. I have decided to officially include a collection of Dinosaurs in my stamps. Picked up a few of them over there and let
me show you the first one - A Scutellosaurus from the pre-historic age.
The artist seems to be someone called "Puvilland" I will need to do a google on him and dig up more info on that chap.
Recd in the same cover as the previous post, this is another stamp in the same series of ships. As with the Express, the SS Nicolai is on a great stamp, but we can see that it is based on a more classical approach towards beauty and seems to find most
of its propulsion from Wind rather then Steam.
also of note is the beautiful postmark from Helsinki dated the 23rd of Aug that has come with this mail. It is a great pleasure to recv covers with good covers. For some reason, everyone one who put up a comment after recv my cards from Panama reported
getting horribly postmarked cards. My regrets.
I know I said it & I'm sorry, but I like cartoon stamps too much to stay away from them for long.
This is surprisingly the only Moomin stamp I have. Surprisingly, because Finland has released so many of them & I have so many cards coming in from Finland and everyone from Finland seems to like Moomins and send everyone else moomin Stamps, that
anyone who could have followed this sentence would have logically assumed (as I did) that I would be swamped by Moomin stamps. It was because of this, that I have as of now not requested any of my Kind Finnish friends to send me a Moomin Stamps.
Flowers. Finnish people seem to be crazy about flowers. Nine postcards out of ten from finland seem to have flower stamps on them. To every one of them I reply with stamps of snow & barren mountains.
So any of you kind reader from Finland who happen to drop by here, please remember that I was talking about the other people who sent the flower stamps. Your flowers were wonderful. Now send those Moomins! :)
PS: BTW, in all the rant about the stamps I never got around to talking about the Moomins. I have sadly read only one of the Moomin books (a few years back)& it was lovely. Please do read them if you haven't. This stamp by all accounts of my feeble
memory is of Moomin Mama. Who is cooking with evident nonchalance. As she does everything else.
Stamp was sent by Ometsola of postcrossing. Thanks!
Following up on the order of fishes, I ordered about 60 KG's of fishes at the next port and hopefully they should last for a good month or so. I was thinking that if I could somehow fit one of these whales in my freezer, I might as well drop all
wsorries for feeding the crew. :)
This is a beautiful stamp by any standards & the small sub-stamp (I'm not exactly sure what it is called) that is part of the sheet has also been sent to me. This seems to be a joint issue stamp as can be seen from the two flags of the top left. If I'm
not mistaken, the picture on the top right is the map of the Arctic ice-cap. So this might be a stamp issued on the occasion of some joint survey or some such event. Anyway, the event doesn't matter as long as they keep dishing out such beauties.
Many thanks to Muhv from Postcrossing.com who swapped with me and had sent across the beautiful Edward Wiiralt painting miniature that I had posted much earlier.
We have pretty much reached the destination in Western Africa and I was busy ordering fishes for the provisions. The only thing happening out in this places seems to be fishing and hopefully they should be good. That reminded me that in the mad comic
rush out here, I haven't shown you much of the fishes collection other then the sheet of Ibrahim. Pictured above is a set of fish stamps (used) from Hungary.
Gabor was kind enough to send me this full set.
Thanks Gabor!
Today from my collection on fishes, lets have a look at this sheet from Malaysia that Ibrahim was kind enough to exchange with me. Its got a great look to it & the background coral snapshot is great to view. I haven't done much diving in recent times.
It is kind of sad because this ship has recently been travelling around some of the best dive spots in the world. Maybe if I sign off at Curacao or Venezuela, I could arrange for a few dips in the sea. :)
This is another stamp from Curacao & I think it must be depicting the Queen of Netherland. I like it because it is actually issued on behalf of the Island of Curacao & that it shows the kind of buildings that this Island is famous for. If you check my regular blog, you'll see a picture of this type of buildings there.
I also like this stamp, because at first sight its not arresting to look at & doesn't have very jazzy graphics, but it does have a reserved regal look about it that does look nice the more you look at it.
PS: Thanks Msyanwu for the comment & the cover.
Today we celebrate Diwali in India. Diwali is called the Festival of lights. So today I present to you this beautiful stamp from Curacao which looks like nice lamps floating in the water on lotus flowers.
I wish this diwali brings good fortune & health to all you people & your families.
PS: George : Thanks for the wishes. Wish you the same. :)
This is another of the sheets that I got in the US this time. I don't particularly collect nature stamps, but this sheet is definitely beautiful. The sheet comprises of 10 stamps of 41 cents each, but has a total of 24 birds, animals, butterflies or
flower species included in it.
Alpine tundra begins above the tree line in high mountain areas such as the rockies, & the stamp pane depicts a summer scene in the Rocky Mountain national park, Colorado. The prominent birds & animals depicted in the sheet, from left to right are :
American Pika, White tailed Ptarmigan, American Pipit, Bighorn Sheep, Golden Eagle, Short tailed weasel & the yellow billed marmot.
This Alpine tundra sheet is supposed to be the ninth in the series of "Nature of America" This series, "features the beauty and complexity of plant & animal communities in the US." and I think it certainly does justice to that aim.
The last few days I have been writing on my regular blog about Curacao and insects, so I thought that I might as well write a post about the stamps of Curacao. Now I have been to Curacao before & I have had the stamps of that place for well over a month, and yet I have never put them up before this. The reason for that it that they are spectacularly dull. If you go back many-many posts, you will find one revenue stamp of Netherland Antilles that does actually look rather neat. But the stamps used for postage seem to be vying for the top spot of uninspiring art works.
But of the whole lot of stamps that I managed to get my hands on, this stamp of the Dragonfly is the only one that I really liked & will probably put up here. The rest of the stamps I do put up in the Paquebot mails that people ask me to send.
Regd this stamp, it is issued under the name of St Eustatius. This is another beautiful Island around these places & I was there a couple of years back. St Eustatius holds a special place in my heart because I learnt to dive there & I have yet to dive at a place better then that. The Island itself is beautiful & basically consists of an Extinct Volcano & friendly locals. Worth a google earth sighting.
PS: Thanks all for writing comments & sending mails to my place. True I will get my hands on them next year, but I do get to know of mails when they reach. :)
This is another of the sheet that I had picked up at Corpus Christi during this call & deals with the subject of Pollination. Not much to talk on the subject, but the sheet is nice and features four ways that pollination does take place.
I particularly like the bat stamp because you get to see bat stamps so rarely & well.. bats are cool!
When the republic falls, the greatest fear of Obi-wan Kwenobi is realized: his former apprentice Anakin Skywalker has turned to the dark side and been named darth vader, dark lord of the Sith. Obi-wan confronts his old friend on the volcanic lava planet of mustafar, where their fierce light saber duel leaves a severely wounded Anakin dying on the charred gravel of a hellish world - and forever changes the destiny of the Galaxy.
This duel on Mustafar is a great stamp right in the middle of the sheet, & seen separately, it seems surprising to find such a bright stamp in the star wars sheet, which seems to be a dark sheet on the whole. But if you go back a couple of posts,
you'll see the whole sheet that I had put & the whole thing is very nicely laid out.
Though this sheet does not really fit into any of my collections, but I wanted to show you these stamps because I picked them up on this visit to the US post office, and because they are beautiful.
This miniature is about the Vintage mahogany speedboats made in the US. As the Miniature explains in the back, "From the Mid 1920's through the 1930's, American craftsmen raised the design & construction of wooden pleasure boats to an art form.
Influenced by rapid advances in the look and performance of contemporary automobiles, boat manufacturers combined their passion for detail, with sleek hulls, chrome hardware, & powerful engines. The result was an incomparably beautiful marriage of speed and grace.
The high-quality, low-cost crafts of this period made recreational boating attractive and widely affordable. with a promise of luxury, affordability, easy handling and comfort, these stylish boats became the floating pieces of the American Dream.
The golden age of the Vintage mahogany speedboats lasted through the 1950's, when material like fiber glass & aluminium changed the nature of American boat building. Yet their unmatched charm continues to fire the imagination of both novices & lifelong boating enthusiasts. Symbolic of a bygone era, elegant wooden boats remind us not only that boating that fun can be simple & wholesome, but also that freedom is within our grasp."
The four boats featured in the sheet are (from left to right) the 1915 hutchison, 1954 Chris-craft, 1939 Hacker-Craft , 1931 Gar wood.
These boats certainly look amazing & the picture of the boat speeding through the water is sheer poetry. It must be great to ride one of these, but years of sailing on the sea's has made me a cynic & I can't help but wonder how much it must cost to maintain one of these. I have a hard time keeping my steel bucket in shape. I can only shudder thinking about sailing on a wooden ship!
I always worry about whether my stamps or sheets in a swap reached the other person or not. I'm mortified that I'd post a swapped stamp here only to get a comment from the concerned person that the stamp s/he swapped for never reached them.
So it is with a clear conscience that I can show you these cartoon stamps of the Netherlands as sent by Cees of the chicken blog (link on the right of the blog). She had exchanged these and the smurf maxicard (shown earlier) for a few chicken stamps of Thailand. These stamps are much like the comic stamps of Netherland I had shown earlier from Wim but I'm not really sure of the background.
The easiest one to understand is the bottom stamp in which the goalie realises that he's going to catch the shoe while the football is going past him in the goal. :)
Thanks for the swap Cees & I'll definitely drop by your blog when I get online the next time.
I wanted to show you this sheet for no other reason then the fact that this sheet is lying scanned on my comp for such a very long time. I hated to put this up without atleast some info to write about these planes, but even after a long port stay in the US, access to internet couldn't happen & I doubt I'll get it for some time now.
The planes in this beautiful sheet from Malaysia are the Airspeed consul & the Douglas DC3. Apart from the fact that these are American planes, I don't really know much about them. They do look like the planes from which air drops used to take place
during the World War & the one on the right looks a bit like the Dakota that is still in the Indian Air Force.
Ibrahim was kind enough to swap this sheet with me along with the one of the bird that I had put up a few days back. Thanks again Ibrahim!
The last few days were a bit crazy with me stuck up in Corpus Christi. Now that I am out in the gulf of Mexico, there seems to be a storm brewing on the south east of Cuba & I'm not sure that it was such a good idea getting out of Corpus.
I have of course gone to USA many times before, but this was the first time I went to a US Post office. If there is one stamp sheet of the US that deserves to be put up on the blog it is this sheet of the Star wars. It is one of the most splendid sheets
that I seen & certainly one of the better ones with me.
I actually got this sheet before I reached US by a swap with a couple of people in the postcrossing circuit & it gives me great pleasure every time I look at it. There are a total of 15 stamps in the sheet & many of them are worth a separate post in
themselves. Maybe once the seas around here settle down, then I can tell you more about them.
PS: Kalpana & Cees - Thanks for the Comments. Kalpana - will send you a Paquebot from next port.
In addition to the miniature that Jose had sent me, on the cover were these two more bikes. Portugal released a set if these bikes (if I remember, there were eight of them) and of these, only four of them were on the miniature sheet. Jose was kind
enough to include two more on the cover.
Not only are these bikes newer looking then the bikes that we saw yesterday, but I like the setting of the two bikes facing each other. Also if you look at the postmark, it looks like a motorcycle tyre!
Weather by accident or a deliberate act, it looks splendid. :)
Now that I am reaching texas in a day or so, I wish I had saved the stamp of Davy Crockett for today to show you. But Today, America is so much more then a bunch of people standing and shooting at other people. Okay so America is still a bunch of
people who shoot at other people, but now they do it in style.
And that brings us to the Motorcycles. I'm not going to show you Harley-davidsons, but the classic bikes series taken out by Portugal. Jose was kind enough to swap these with me for stamps on bridges. (Jose collects bridges - if you find any, do post
here).
These are classic looking bikes & sadly I'm not auto expert so I wouldn't know much about these bikes. But the one on the bottom right actually looks like the kind of bike that we drive in India these days. :)
Of these four, I personally like the bottom left. It looks old enough to look like its not handed down by your elder brother & it has a mean & low look to it like a dog growling at your testicles.
Lets have your favourites with reasons please.
I left the canal yesterday & am on the way to Texas right now. I don't suppose that I'll be passing through the canal for some time in the future. The Last time I did it was in 1999 & the next time might be as far ahead. Thought that I'd put up a nice
stamp of Panama as a parting post.
This time I could manage to get only two new stamps. One of it was the one above. It was a very pleasant surprise to recv the above stamp sheet. I have put in a lot of pictures of the Panama Canal in my regular blog over the last month, & this stamp
sort of completes the circle. The locks shown above are the Gatun Locks. You can make them out by the white light house on the left of the locks.
The stamp shows a picture with one ship in the lock & two more approaching the locks from the north. In the background you can see the Atlantic Ocean (or the Caribbean if you want to be more specific).
A great finale of stamps from Panama in my opinion. :)
Today instead of a stamp, I wanted to show you the postcard that Wim had sent across along with those stamps of the comics. I have heard of Edward P Jacobs, but I really don't know the comic in question. Wim assures me that the comic is well known at
least in Europe.
It does look like a lot of fun. :)
Thanks Wim.
Now that we have left behind the coastlines of all countries, lets have a look at favourite - comics. These are stamps sent to me by Wim of postcrossing, who also sent me a superb comic postcard on which these were posted. I will show you that card some
day as well.
These stamps seem to be from a series of comics that I have never read. Probably they have not been translated in English. the first stamp is about a violin teacher, the second is about a lady who seems to be rather alarmed at the age of her dentist, & in the third stamp the father seems to have cut open a trunk to make a dog house.
Maybe one of you out there in Europe might shed some knowledge on the origin of the stamps.
As Chile has been left far behind & Panama is far ahead, let me show you some more stamps that you all have sent across. Yukkio from Japan was thoughtful enough to send me these stamps. The first of the stamps is a very classic painting from North
India. And the second stamp is of course of the Taj Mahal.
I'm not sure if Japan released a series on different countries, but it was very nice of Yukkiko to send me these two together. Thanks again.
Lets take a last look at the stamps from Chile. This is also from the "Chile- All ways surprising" series & features the Villarica Pucon Volcano. If you look at my regular blog you'll see my explaination for these volcanos.
Leaving chile, the north coast looks pretty much like the stamp up here. The cliffs along the coast are spectacularly barren. Reminds me of the Ladhak Valley in North India.
This stamp is also of the series of the " Chile - All ways surprising" series
Since I'm still in Chilean waters, let me show you another from the Pais Turistico series. These are nice stamps and the pencil finish probably makes them better then what a picture might have represented them as.
"Pais Turistico" probably means "Screw the tourists", or something else to do with the tourists, and each of the five stamps deals with a separate region of Chile. The great thing about Chile is that it extends in a great thin line pretty much
throughout the southern hemisphere. This allows for all sorts of landscapes in the country. You have The deserts in the north & snow in the south.
We have already looked at two of the regions of Chile in the last few posts. This stamp is from the "X Region". I really will have to open up google to tell you more about that. But it does seem like a nice place to rest for a while.
Location : Chile Coast - 22 55 S, 075 25 W
I got a comment from msyanwu on the post "Chile - Easter Island".
Thanks for the comment & its great that you would like to swap with me. Sadly I managed to get very few stamps this call to Chile, so I won't be able to swap these particular stamps with you as I have only one set.
Also I have two limitations at Present. I am not connected to the internet & I won't be able to get back to home till Jan 08. So I will resume all swaps from Jan.
In the meanwhile, if you put up your addresses in the comments (Its not as if anyone else reads this blog. :) ), I can get it and will definitely send across a letter or a card from every port that I go to.
The ports that I go to in the next few months : Panama, USA, Netherland Antilles , Africa West Coast.
msyanwu : I sail for about 7 months in a year. The rest of the time, I take pictures of postoffices!
PS: Eric, Gulfman & Lenka - Came to know that your mails have arrived. Thks. Looking forward to seeing them.
Location : Chile Coast - 27 26 S / 073 43 W
I had sent a few envelopes of Paquebot mail from Panama on the 24th of Sep, & Gulfman from Taiwan reports as a comment on the penguins post that he recd it yesterday. This is great. This does mean that the rest of the covers are on their way as well, &
it'll be fun if my own cover reaches my home. :)
PS: I also sent a couple of these letters from Chile. Let me know if anyone of you get them.
Since I'm still in chile & I have new stamps to show off, let me today show you all a set of stamps on Penguins. These stamps, like the last set are also taken from the same two sets & feature the same subjects. The Penguins are quite commonly seen in
the southern parts of Chile & come us to as far north as Valparaiso, but in smaller numbers. Valparaiso is about 35 Degrees south Latitute and in the northern hemisphere it would be like finding Penguins in Gibralter.
But the reason that they are able to survive as far north as Valparaiso is because of the cold Peru current, that fows northward up the west-coast of Southcurrent. In Chile, they don't like calling it "Peru Current", & infact call it the "Humble
current" or the "Humbolt Current".
Sadly I didn't see any penguins, but a pair of sea lions have been hanging around the ship for the last couple of days.
Well as I am in Chile, I wanted to show you a couple of stamps that I got my hands on yesterday. These are stamps from different series, but as both are on the same subject, I'm clubbing them together. These are the men of the Easter Island. Again lack
of Google makes my blog a bit shallow, but if memory serves me right, there is a bit of a mystery as to what & why caused people to make these on a remote Island in the middle of no where. Though I did see a cartoon where it was explained that these
guys resonated on an inaudible frequency & did some fourth dimensional thing. :)
Stamps wise- these are both good stamps. The upper one is a set of five nice pencil sketch of different parts of chile, issues for some tourist promotion.
The lower colored stamp is more of a trade promotion. A couple of years back, the chilian trade federation started a campaign called "All Ways Chile". This series was issued as pert of that campaign to increase trade & other cultural exchanges.
Since I featured a bird in my regular blog, let me show you something very much similar out here. This is a wild duck from Malaysia & the miniature sheet, is beautiful but a bit small. But since it contains only one stamp, I guess that makes it the
right size.
Thanks to Ibrahim for the swap.
Today lets visit the middle east & another unfortunate intervention of the USA in their internal affairs. The Story of Aladdin has been around for a long time, since the tales of the 1000 nights. It is the story of a street kid, who gets his hands on a
magical lamp with a genie and uses it to defeat the evil magician to get his princesses. It is a classic tale of victory of good over evil & Walt Disney took it & made it into something rather unfortunate.
I don't think the movie was awful. I am not very finicky about movies, but the movie first came out when Hollywood was not very comfortable with depicting stories of another world. If you look at the movies, you'll think that the movie was based on a
couple of Americans stuck in Basra.
I like this story basically because its not about some lady fainting and waiting for a prince to come along and kiss her. Its a story about a common man, who along with a little luck & weird coincidences can go anywhere he wants.
Thats the reason why this story isn't going to get old any time soon.
I forgot that the blue chap in yesterdays post is called the "Smurf" for some reason, I just couldn't rememeber that name.
Let us look today at a person who never faces that problem & always remembers his facts. Tintin is an amazing chap who has been all over the places- from The mountains of Tibet to the amazon jungles to the dark side of the moon.
I grew up on Tintin & Astrix. The amazing part of Tintin was that the chap himself is so subtle in front of the supporting cast such as Capt Haddock, Professor Calculus & the thompson twins, that at the end of a story, you hardly remember what it is
that tintin did in it. What sticks out is Capt Haddock shouting "Bristling Blue Barnacles" every time his rum bottle is broken. In this stamp released by France in 2007, we again find this mild mannered fellow stitting quitely in a boat. I'm not sure
if they brought out a series on the entire cast, but we can be sure that Capt Haddock won't be pictured sitting so quitely.
Apart from minor achivements such as finding water on the moon to busting international crime sindicates, Tintins crowning glory is to find himself with friends that love him & a dog that adores him.
Thanks to Pazzolina of Post Crossing for sending me this.
It really is very gratifying to receive nice comments from you people. Prompted by Meike's comments to having seen Marsupilami's in Belgium, I dug around in my collection of green people from Belgium. The only thing I cam up with was these blue chaps.
To be honest I am not sure what these are called, but I must say that I have seen a lot of them around. I especially remember the women on these people, who if you ignore the fact that they are blue, are rather comely & with a great head of blond hair.
Presented above is a maxicard that the Belgian Philatelic dept took out way back in 1984. The Stamp on the bottom left is a replica of the card, & if you can make out on the picture, the postmark is of a mushroom in which these little people stay &
party.
Cees the chicken lady (Link on the right) was kind enough to send this across to me for a couple of chickens from Thailand.
So thanks Cees & thanks Meike. :)
