Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

When I arrived in Auckland (New Zealand) as a fresh-faced and innocent 18-year old over a decade ago, I was determined to do everything my way, which means I checked into a backpacker hostel. There was a woman at the desk who welcomed me to the hostel and to the country. I don't remember her exact words, however as people do, we talked briefly. About New Zealand, about my flight, about the facilities at the hostel, about the weather... Yes, I'm very happy to be here...   My flight was fine, thanks...   Yes, I've been here before...   No, I don't need a map, I know the city... What I do remember is that she mentioned that Auckland weather was like four seasons in one day. Seeing I'd lived in Auckland before (and was raised by a Kiwi!), I readily agreed and thought she'd come up with a very clever way to describe Auckland's weather. The words sounded familiar too... What I found out later was that the woman at the hostel didn't come up with those words on...

The wind is raging outside, the trees are blowing in the wind as if they're small shoots and news reports ( Telegraaf.nl, in Dutch ) speak of trees falling down, trucks falling over, cancelled flights at Schiphol airport and severe weather warnings in parts of the country. There's a big storm raging, indeed. Stormy Weather Today | Nimavenl Code Yellow for most of the country, Code Orange for everything to the north of me and in Germany the storm's bad enough that they've named it Hurricane Niklas. Wow! " The KNMI weather bureau is warning of dangerous conditions throughout the Netherlands and has issued a code yellow weather warning. Gusts of 110 km an hour have already been recorded on the Wadden Islands to the north of the country. " Storm brings transport chaos to the Netherlands | DutchNews.nl Clouds were raging past outside my windows earlier (see the photo to the right) while right now, all I'm seeing is blue sky with one tiny cloud. The b...

Last night I posted a photo of a very foggy street - which, due to the fog, was pretty much invisible - and asked myself what would happen if flesh-eating zombies suddenly came out of the fog to roam our streets. Trying to find descriptive words that somehow work well with vague photos of trees and descriptions of fog and mist and zombies, I came across the following explanation for the word haze. I like language and am no stranger to complaining about Dutch / European weather, which makes this description a must-share. Do enjoy! Haze    n.   1706, probably a back-formation of hazy. Sense of "confusion, vagueness" is 1797. The English differentiation of haze, mist, fog (and other dialectal words) is unmatched in other tongues, where the same word generally covers all three and often "cloud" as well, and this may be seen as an effect of the English climate on the language.   Word Origin and History for haze  | Dictionary.com

The Day The World Disappeared | Nimavenl After enjoying the latest episode of The Walking Dead tonight, the world beyond the living room windows suddenly seemed to disappear.  As the fog rolled in and the footpath and houses across the street turned invisible, I couldn't resist the spectacle outside and - of course - took a gazillion photos. It isn't every day that the world practically vanishes, after all!  The street and the footpath below, the windows of houses across the street, trees beyond those houses and buildings in the distance - all gone. All that could be seen was what the photo shows - vague shapes nearby with lights behind them; the shapes only clearly recognisable as trees due to the brightness of the lights. With so much of the 'known world' suddenly missing, we wondered - What would we do if a Walker [a zombie] suddenly appeared out of the mysterious haze? How would we respond to such a strange sight? Would we even react to flesh-e...