Around the World (Who travels a lot can tell stories...)

Ihave moved...

KaiBar — 2006-10-20T13:27:00Z

My new blogg will start soon here:

http://kaischi.blogspot.com/

Let's hope I will be more active again...

still blue goals...

KaiBar — 2006-06-28T11:55:00Z

Sorry, if my stories are not very interesting but I am still in Hamburg and enjoying the soccer. That's why I want to show you people (especially the ones who don't live in Hamburg) our great blue goals...

Blue goals

KaiBar — 2006-06-14T06:25:00Z

In my last message I mentioned the blue goals in Hamburg. Now I have finally been able to get a photo. Can you see the header????
It is very fascanating because it is a big piece of art. Now with the start of the world cup green lasers are fireing into those goals so simulate a soccer ball.

In the beginning nobody really new what those glowing goals were about. I mean we were close before the world cup so must people assumed it had something to do with it.

Now hamburg is enjoying a nice show every night. And I am safing a lot of money because one of those goals shines directly into my sleeping room. So everything glows in a nice blue colour and I don't have to use the ceiling light ever again... ;-)

Hamburg....

KaiBar — 2006-05-29T14:19:00Z

is simply the nicest city!
It helps soooo much to be away a lot and to have the opportunity to come back! nobody who hasn't come back to HH might understand that but it is great!
Now that spring is here and it warm and all the trees are green...

...and another 10 days befor the soccer world cup! Fantastic!

I will try to shoot a photo of hamburg at night. For those who are far away at the moment we have several hundreds of blue shining goals on roofs all over the city! It looks great. where aver you look you see a glowing goal!!!

Once again: Hamburg is fantastic at the moment!!

Hamburg

KaiBar — 2006-05-29T14:19:00Z

Hamburg...

KaiBar — 2006-05-29T14:17:00Z

...still on the Mine

KaiBar — 2006-05-12T13:48:00Z

I should have got used to it...but somehow I still can't adapt to the inefficiency in these places! We are here to fix our optical sorters- what we did - 3 days ago!!! The customer wants us to do efficiency tests to proof that the units are recovering the diamonds. Well, obviously we can't do that our selfes because of security issues. So now we are waiting for 3 days to be able to test our units.
It is one guy who is responsible for that and must organise everything... wow, but it simply doesn't happen... He is so important that he has to do soooo many things every day that he cannot find time for our things. He is even so busy that one day he could not come to work before 10 o'clock... It is so nice to sit in the desert and waist your time...

Oranjemund, the place to be...

KaiBar — 2006-05-06T10:16:00Z

...at least it looks like it is the place for me to update thite site. In the past I always sent something from here. The reason might be that there is simply nothing else to do here. Caught between the up to 40° hot dessert in the east and the 10° cold ocean in the west, there is nothing here!
For all of you who don't know where Oranjemund is (and that will be about 99% of all) I attached a map of the area. Please remember we are in Namibia!

It has been quiet here for a long time...

KaiBar — 2006-02-23T07:30:49Z

Hopefully I will be able to change that again!

At the moment I am back at the same place ffrom where I sent my last message: Namibia, Oranjemund.

This time we are here to do the final commissioning of our sorters. We had our first successs of finding diamonds. On the first day of our test run we recovered a lot of stones out of a small sample (<300Kg).

Let's see, how it goes!

Kiting the Orange river...

KaiBar — 2005-12-18T20:11:52Z

In the diamond Sperrgebiet, next to the diamond mines I was able to Kite surf on the Orange river. I was the only one... Great!!!!!!

A country without Petrol

KaiBar — 2005-12-15T20:41:52Z

It is crazy. It started at Cape Town International with a fuel delivery of such bad quality that the airport send it back. This caused a shortage of fuel so that on Saturday flights were delayed by hours or even canceled. Flight from overseas still came in and were filled up but not all domestic flights were. Some plains had to fly to Port Elizabeth to fill up. Private plains were not filled up at all. That was the reason why the De Beers flight to Oranjemund did not go and some guys from the project team could not come up. Meanwhile the problem is solved and the flight are in time again

Now it starts on the roads. SA is changing the petrol to a cleaner standard. The result is that the oil companies cannot cover the demand. A lot of petrol stations have already run out of fuel. And they say the worst is yet to come because the holiday seasons only starts now.
Driving up to Namibia we came to 3 patrol stations without fuel!!! Fortunately we were always looking for new fuel when the tank was half empty so we managed to arrive in Oranjemund. Just imagine running out of fuel somewhere in the nowhere The area between CT and Omund is not really busy
Being in Oranjemund did not really improve on that situation. The only fuel station in town is empty!! So far we dont know how we will come back.. Maybe we leave the car in the sand and just fly back

A perfect sunday

KaiBar — 2005-12-15T18:12:04Z

After those cold winter days in Hamburg I had such a wonderful Sunday in Cape Town. I slept long and then had a nice breakfast with the view of Table mountain. After lots of coffee and fruits I relaxed for some time on the balcony. So nice being only 30 meters away from the beach listening to the waves braking on the sand.
While I enjoyed the morning I suddenly realized that Signal Hill (the hill basically in the middle of the city was in flames. Three helicopters were flying in constantly to extinguish the fire. Everything was in smoke but after a few hours everything over and the city was safe.
In the afternoon I went to Blaauwberg beach for a bit of kite surfing! Oh it was soooooo much fun. It was the first time for me riding and so high waves. But the water was extremely cold. After 30 min I couldnt feel my feet anymore. Since the wind was calming down anyway I stopped for the day.

But it felt so good. And it was a good day before driving up to Oranjemund

A class of its own...

KaiBar — 2005-12-11T09:44:09Z

My company was so kind to upgrade me to business class on my flight to SA. What a dream. To others it might be a normal thing but for me it was like literally being in heaven. It was so nice to be served with nice food and wonderful south african wine. But the best of all was the seat and the possibility of lying almost flat. It was the first time that I slept for 7 hours...

And now I am once again in Cape Town. So the above picture is valid again! :-)

40°c temperature change...

KaiBar — 2005-11-28T11:36:04Z

I am back in Hamburg.

What a change 2 days ago I was near Kimberley with up to 39°C and now we have -2°c.

But I am back in Germany. for 10 days

Home in J'burg

KaiBar — 2005-11-26T13:00:59Z

Finally the maintenace at Finsch is over. It took a bit longer than expected but finally our little diamond sorter is working again.
Friday at 11 'o clock we left the town after waiting for 2 hours for our parts from the ecovery to be released. It was a 6 hours drive until we finally arrived at the good old 'Oaklands Inn'. We came through quite a few thunder storms with temperature fluctuation from 35 down to 15. At one stage hail came down but it was flying parallel to the ground because of the wind...
Now 2 more days in summer South Africa and on Sunday night home into the snow! I see that Hamburg has 0 to minus degrees!!! That will be a change.

But in 2 weeks time I will be in SA again and then travel up to Namibia...

Monday morning I am back home!