Swaps with Velu

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.

Togo - Dinosaurs

Location :- West coast Africa

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!

Togo - Dinosaurs

Location : West Coast Africa

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.

Finland Ships

Location - At Anchorage, West Coast Africa

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.

Finland - Moomin

Location - Anchored on the African coast

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!

Estonia - Whale

Location : Coasting West Africa

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.

Hungary - Fishes

Location - Off Western africa - 03 48 N,007 20 W,

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!

Malaysia - Fish

Location - The Atlantic - 06 16 N, 024 50 W

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. :)

Curacao

Location - The Atlantic - 07 34 N, 033 48 W

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.

Diwali

Location : The Atlantic - 08 13 N, 038 26 W

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. :)

USA - Alpine Tundra

Location - Atlantic - 09 59 N , 050 27 W

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.

Curacao

Location - The Atlantic - 11 03 N, 057 41 W

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. :)

USA - Pollination

Location - Off Curacao - 12 05 N, 068 57 W

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!

Star wars - The duel on Mustafar

Location - The Caribbean - 12 43 N, 070 50 W

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.

USA - Vintage Mahogany speed boats

Location - Caribbean - 15 52 N, 077 43 W

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!