Reading Time: 4 minutes During the FIFAD event I was invited by one of the people I was working alongside to try paragliding. This is a sport that I have thought about trying for more than a decade by now. Many years ago I bought a book about the theory of flying parapente and I have often watched them take off…
Reading Time: 2 minutes On the Fifth day of the FIFAD event Claude Nicollier came. He is the Swiss Astronaut who went on a number of STS missions to fix the Hubble Telescope between 1992 to 1999. He is an astrophysicist with connections to this part of Switzerland. The Sonneurs D’ormont rang cow bells as the group moved from…
Reading Time: 2 minutes The fourth Day of FIFAD could have had the banner of youth and children of Alpinism. It began with a conference by Swiss university students who had travelled to Siberia for their projects, a short documentary about the actress who played Heidi in the recent film, disadvantaged youth who went to the mountains to help on a…
Reading Time: 2 minutes FIFAD Day 2 FIFAD’s second day’s documentaries were introspective. They looked at mining in Bolivia, Jean Troillet’s life of adventure and the film Sherpa. Tous Les Jours La Nuit Tous Les Jours La Nuit is a documentary by Jean-Claude Wicky who passed away recently. The documentary looked at the lives of Bolivian miners who have to work…
Reading Time: 2 minutes FIFAD Day 1 From the 6th to the 13th of August 2016 The International Alpine Film Festival, FIFAD, is taking place in the Alpine town of Les Diablerets. This is a week long festival of Alpine films covering the environment, extreme sports, adventure and more. Alpland Alpland is a photo exhibit outside of images of…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Via Ferrata and Edelweiss can be combined. I was reminded of this when I was looking at Salanfe’s Instagram account images last night. I saw an image of a chamois and her young and then I saw the picture below of an Edelweiss and I wanted to share that I had also seen Edelweiss. #monpetitbonheur…
Reading Time: 2 minutes The weather was clear so I was admiring the Tour D’Aï from the Via Ferrata de La Cascade. I was in Les Diablerets as I am one of the volunteers at the FIFAD film festival. I turned up three hours before I was needed and as I had all my climbing gear, except the pulley for…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Plague inc is a game that is available on multiple platforms. These are pc, android, ios and windows phone. The version I played was on android. If you want to watch someone play the game you can watch this series: I was at the first general Staff Meeting for the UNAIDS program a few years…
Reading Time: 3 minutes The First of August, in Switzerland is a national holiday. This is the day when Switzerland celebrates its own existence. The Swiss are celebrating the Pacte Fédérale from 1291. I saw a tweet saying that Switzerland is about 725 years old. They have only been celebrating this since 1891 when the confederation was 600 years…