Cosima Underwater

I shot very few pictures for HNT in 2007, which doesn’t make it any easier to choose a favorite. But here we go…

It’s this one. I think the lighting is fabulous, and hell was it difficult to set up. I don’t have any professional lighting equipment, and I can tell you an ordinary bedside lamp is very hard to work with.

And have you noticed? My boobs can be seen. They are ordinary boobs, a bit on the small side, and like every female pair of breasts have seen quite some changes up until now. At the present stage, there are definitely not perky young things anymore, but I love them nevertheless. Call me shameless, but in the right circumstances and context, I am not embarrassed to show them.

HAPPY HNT!

On Tuesday evening, little man and I went to a beach party to celebrate the Chinese mid-autumn or lantern festival. While the grown-ups were slowly getting drunk on cheap wine, the kids played with glow-sticks. They are sold in packages of fifty, together with joints that let you make armbands, long chains, balls, and other kinds of fun stuff. Most kids on the beach looked like electric cowboys…lol. We also had traditional paper lanterns, but it was rather windy and one of them caught fire. Little man has been talking about it ever since. Luckily nothing happened, the fire was quickly put out.

The mid-autumn festival is one of my favorite holidays here. It is a harvest festival, celebrated on the autumn equinox when the moon is at its fullest. The tradional food of the holiday is mooncake, made out of the yolk of a duck egg and other ingredients. I have to admit that it’s not my thing taste-wise, but it looks very pretty when cut, with the yellow yolk in the middle symbolizing the full moon.

The mid-autumn festival also reminds me of one of my favorite German holidays, Martinstag, which is celebrated on November 11th. In the evening, children and grown-ups gather outside for lantern processions. It looks so pretty when these light snakes wind themselves through parks and dark streets.

I would have loved to tinker with a candle light lantern, but these glow-sticks are fun as well, don’t you think? Happy HNT!

HOLD! Don’t go away yet, because:

!!! Boobie-thon is just around the corner, and my blog-friend Eveningeyes has a special blog up to ask you all to join by donating pictures and/or money. Please join us! And don’t forget to do your regular breast exam !!!

I have unpacked a few boxes at my new site, so to speak. Notice the new theme? It is based on Red Train by Vlad Simovic, but I had to make quite a few changes. The good thing is that I learned a lot in the process: editing background graphics, changing a style sheet, and learning all the behind-the-scenes functions of Wordpress. I would like to change a few more things, especially adding a few more widgets to the sidebar.

But enough of that for today. I am taking a break, to see what the rest of you have been up to.

Oh… don’t forget to update your bookmarks to:

http://cosimaunderwater.com/

Happy HNT!

Someone recently suggested to me that I should put a stamp on my head and mail myself to him. I think, I’ll also wrap a bit of bubble wrap around me and write “Fragile handle with care!” on the package :).

My work-out today was packing lots of boxes for Cosima Inc… half-nekkid… does that count as sports HNT? To see me train for even more Olympic events go here.

Visit Lecram for a list of other HNTers posting sarong pictures today, and of course Osbasso for half-nekkidness, with and without sarongs.

PS: I am swamped with work today, but will visit you all later today or tomorrow! Have a wonderful HNT!

Yesterday evening, I began scanning family photos, which my parents keep in various albums and boxes. There are hundreds of images, and I won’t have the time to scan all of them while here, but I would like to save at least some, especially those with fading colors. While most of the black and white pictures are in very good condition, a lot of the color photographs have developed a red tinge over the years.

The oldest photograph I found is this christening picture of my grandpa. There is no date on the picture, but he was born in 1896, and I am guessing that the photo was taken not much later.

My great-grandparents had an agricultural machinery business, and could afford to bring their kids to the local photographer once in a while. On the other hand, we have not a single turn-of-the century photo from my father’s side of the family, which was working class, i.e. poor as church mice, and could barely feed and cloth their off-spring.

My grandpa a few years later, posing in his sailor suit.

In 1914 World War I started, and the picture below was taken shortly before my grandfather had to leave for France. The story could have ended right there, but instead of dying in Verdun for the follies of the Kaiser, he was captured by the French and brought to a POW camp in Calais, where he spent the rest of the war.

My grandma’s brother, fifth from right below, was not so lucky. He had just gotten a coveted position as a violinist in a spa orchestra, when World War I started. He boarded the train to France, and must have been killed shortly after his arrival. My grandma’s family never heard from him, nor did they get any information on what happened.

But my grandpa did survive World War I, and eventually met the young Fräulein sitting on the left, my grandma. The young woman standing next to her was her best friend. The friendship lasted until my grandma died in 1986.

My grandparents married relatively late, and my grandma was already thirty-five when my mom was born. These days thirty-five is normal child bearing age, but then it was considered very late. And guess why it happened so late… yes, my grandma thought of her career first ;). She was a tailor and went to “Meister”-school to be able to open her own business. Until the nineteen-sixties she owned a tailoring business with half a dozen employees.

Red riding hood on the very left is my mom. There are very few pictures from the years afterwards, when World War II even came to the small town my mom and grandparents lived in. Fortunately, my grandfather was too old to be drafted, and my mother too young to serve in any of Hitler’s ridiculous youth organizations. So they just had to get through the hunger and the bombings, which where not as bad as in big cities. My dad, on the other hand, grew up in Berlin, where the going was much tougher. Still no pictures from his side of the family.

That’s my mom in the mid-fifties, shortly before she left her hometown in East Germany for richer pickings in West Berlin. At that time the border was still open, and East Germans were leaving by the hundred thousands for the West.

In Berlin, she met my dad. My mom was standing in front of a newsstand, studying the lottery numbers, when my father asked her if she had won… not a bad pick-up line, if you ask me.

My parents tried and tried and tried to have children, and eventually after much trying and waiting little Cosima was born. Notice the smile on my grandma’s face? It’s the same as in the picture above, that shows her as a young woman. (Btw, the spots are on the photograph not on my grandma’s sweater.)

That’s me with my best kindergarten buddy. I am the one holding the pen in the left hand, something I inherited from my grandma.

Oh… since it’s half-nekkid Thursday, here is a topless bonus pic. I am the half-naked … on the very left. Obviously, male …, right before my eyes, hasn’t shocked me from an early age.

[I decided to take this pictures of my blog and photo site, as my statcounter showed that people who searched for pics with very troubling search terms were directed to it. It was a pic of me, five years old, and friends at the pool. I also deleted words that were part of the search term.]

No public nekkidness from me this week, I’m afraid. All say “Aaaw” now! ;)

I couldn’t sleep tonight, and took a deep dive into my photo archives. I found these two reflections of me. The first one shows me killing time with my camera, while waiting for the subway. Most subway stations in Hong Kong have glass panes and sliding doors in front of tracks, to prevent people jumping or being pushed onto them.

The second shows me taking a picture of a hat shop in Basel. When I shot it, I didn’t even notice that I was in it.

Today is my first blogoversary… yippee! Come on in and celebrate with me! Raise a glass of bubbly – alcoholic or not – to Cosima Underwater’s first year!

I almost missed it. I was thinking about introducing a few more labels and clicked on the first post one, and there it stood May 4th 2006, the day that I started Cosima Underwater, pretty much on a whim, not actually sure what I should do with it, nor where it would take me.

The second post on the same day was a picture, an HNT picture, and it introduced me to a wonderful community of people. That I met you all, while we were being half-nekkid, made it all the more enjoyable :).

So, on my first blogoversary I would like to thank Os for starting it all. Os, you are my Da Count for today. Without you, I would still be traveling alone in cyberspace… completely clothed. And how boring would that be?

Cheers and kisses,

Cosima