Famous Four Stackers: RMS Aquitania

Love her. 😍

Ocean Liner Blogger

After White Star’s  Olympic proved successful even though she was not intended to be fast, Cunard planned a third four funneled liner which entered the water in April 1913. This was intended to give Cunard their own trio of large transatlantic liners, however Lusitania was sunk in 1915. Now this new ship would replace Lusitania and continue the tandem crossings from Europe to America and back.

The name Aquitania was derived from a Romandivision of southwestGaulextendingfromthePyrenees to theGaronneRiverknown as Aquitaine.

There was great success with Mauretania and Lusitania. This new, larger ship was ordered to compete with White Star. This ship was not intended to hold any kind of speed record. She was built for stability and luxury. Her dimensions slightly exceeded those of White Star’s Olympic trio. 

Her maiden voyage came the day after the disaster that sank…

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Holidays. But properly.

For me, holidays are holidays when I do nothing but to lie back (or to sit on my hands).

And this is a new insight to me!

When I let it all hang out on a day off or at the weekend, then this is really good for me. Usually someone has to remind me to do this. And to remember me to do that and that alone: To sit somewhere and enjoy the sun or the wind or the rustling of the leaves in the forest or the monotonous sound of a stream.

Recently, however, I was on a trip “in the wild,” I took off my sports clothes and lay down in the sun. Then it crossed my mind:

“That is how must be your next holidays!”

Because my holidays are always full to bursting with this and that, I want to see this, read that, go there. And in the evening I recover from my holiday.

I have to stop that.

I need proper holidays. (Or I have to gain the attitude that turns every day of my life into a holiday for me.)

Well, first I have to take care of hanging out for two weeks, on a beach or in a lonely tree house or on a boat maybe.

What about you? What is your favoured kind of spending your holidays?

 

Yeah, yeah, spring is coming :-(

Yeah, yeah, I know: “Spring is fluttering its blue ribbon again” (a piece of poetry from German Poet Eduard Mörike). Spring is nice. Spring is pleasant. Spring is lovely.

But for me every March begins a time, when I feel the sunlight as particularly bright, as intrusive.
Do not get me wrong. I like to be in nature and I love to travel alone. Because I love silence.

 

When I have a day off during the week, I’m drawn “to the countryside”, as they say. And during the week there are hardly any people on the hiking trails.

 

I need protection from the sunlight. For many years nobody thought that my headache might have anything to do with the sunlight. When I “get” this glistening light into my eyes, I may not be able to get rid of the glaring, no matter where I look, no matter if I put a towel over my head – it stays there and is glaring in my head. Headaches are the result.

 

I don’t know how other people from the autism spectrum feel about the sun … I like the warm rays and it does my neck, my back good and it relaxes me to sit in the sun for a while. But I also have to be careful.

Is it time for autistic people to change the world?

Is it time for autistic people to change the world?

You probably know Greta Thunberg.
A girl who hurries from conference to conference and advocates CO2 reduction.

She has also encouraged – directly or indirectly – school strikes in some cities.
Does that bring the change, a better world, we hoped for?

Greta is presented in the media as an icon of climate activists.
Greta is said to have “a variant of Aspgerer Syndrome”. (Whatever that means.)

Time to ask myself: Can we, Aspies over the world, be a kind of “role model”? (I don’t want to be presumptuous: I know we are a minority.)

Because what would be – besides avoiding inland flights or sharing a car, planting trees and and and … – really useful?

I believe that school strikes will not turn the tide. (Why should you strike the school? It doesn’t make any sense at all.)

Should students not stand up and speak up much more concretely in their everyday life and in their school environment for …

Not every student should own a smartphone, right??
Or change to a new model every year?
Spend your school trips at the youth hostel instead of going abroad, right?
Planting trees is certainly not wrong. Painting trees on protest posters won’t help.

The “Aspies”, which I know, they act almost without exception more than admirably:

They often live in a humble way in a small room or with their parents. They hold on to their beloved smartphone, do handicrafts, tinker, repair stuff by themselves … often until they ca not do anything and they have to buy a new one.

Many have neither a large Hi-Fi system nor a telly – or both are available, but rarely in operation.
They eat modestly. I don’t know gluttony from any of my Aspie friends.
They live modestly.

And they’re not going on a world tour.  😉

In the language of climate activists, they leave a very, very small “C02 footprint.”

Maybe this is not the time when Aspies change the world. But we can contribute our part. (If we don’t do it to a large extent anyway.) What do you think?

As an Aspie in the workplace …

The last four weeks were exhausting: the work started again. There were new colleagues, many face-to-face talks, conferences.

In the first two weeks there was no afternoon that I didn’t have to recover from working day. And by that I don’t mean a 20 minute power nap. Some days I’d collapse straight into bed at home.