Pixabella

Have you ever wondered how people go from rags to riches and become Nouveau Riche with hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars to their names?

I have, one day I'd love to be part of that same group of people, imagine having an apartment in London or New York, a house in the French countryside, and maybe an island in the caribbean? Hoping for a lotto win isn't really the way to get rich, you also need to work at it.

Back in 1991 Fortune Magazine wrote about the top 100 billionaires in the Nouveau Riche category, see if you recognize any of the names, but most interestingly, look at where people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Warren Buffett are now. It's fascinating to see they are amongst the most well known and influential people in the world today.

From everything I've read there are two ways to become rich, one is through starting a business that creates a product, or invest in property, and the property angle is where we started off. We've learned a lot by renovating houses but long term wealth doesn't come from short term investment of properties for renovation, at some point you also need to hold on to your investments and receive monthly revenue from them, essentially to let them pay for themselves.

That's how we plan to re-enter the race to become Nouveau Riche, of course nothing in love is quick so we know it's going to take several years of hard work but we're willing to put in the effort to provide for our future years.

On our drive to Germany a couple of weeks ago we stopped at a small petrol station about an hour north of the Spanish-French border and scattered around the forecourt were all these beautiful boxes of Petunias in full flower. The photo was taken in a rush on a small snapshot camera so isn't perfect but the ambience is wonderful.

I had a funny thought the other day. When I'm online chatting to friends or participating in forum discussions I often throw in a LOL, or even an ROTFLMAO, amongst other things. I frequently use smilies winking or just looking happy, sometimes I use the stunned smily, but I actually don't know why I do.

You see quite a lot of the time I'm actually not laughing, or flirting, or anything really. Most of the time in fact my brain is just on auto-pilot, I'm thinking of something else and being polite when I LOL because otherwise the other person has no idea if you're still there or you get what they're saying.

So I kinda made a decision, using acronyms and smilies might be great for online chatting but it's not real, so I'm not going to LOL or ROTFLMAO anymore unless it's really really deserved.

From now on I'm just going to use smilies that only smile, you know just to let the other person I'm paying attention, and if they get upset because I don't laugh at their jokes, well I'll just explain that it wasn't funny and in real life they'd know that because I wouldn't be laughing, and now I won't online either.

We've been away for the last week and a half, we drove to Germany for a short break and caught up with family and friends. The weather wasn't very welcoming though, we arrived in hard driving rain and had to navigate our way through the D?sseldorf ring road system barely able to see more than a few meters in front of the car.

Fortunately we arrived safely and were able to get ourselves settled into a hotel without too much bother. The city hadn't changed much since we left, contrast that with Spain where there is just so much going on that in six months a lot can change.

While I was in Germany I bought a new Wacom tablet for my laptop which I'm keen to try out with Inkscape, my drawing abilities with a touchpad are OK, but I really want something better and the tablet should make a difference.

We also sold our car, and plan to buy electric bicycles in Spain to use as our main source of transport, well, other than buses and trains for longer trips. I plan to write a bit about how great battery powered bikes are.

The other day we went for a walk in the countryside and while I was standing next to a rock looking at some flowers, I saw to my amazement an ant on the stem, and it was guiding the aphids, basically farming them like a shephard with its flock.

A quick read of Wikipedia tells me that the ants protect the aphids and milk them using their feelers, and when the aphids reproduce, the ants will take their eggs back to the ant hive and look after them, then carry the young aphids back to the plants to start the process again.

The Internet is so huge these days that staying upto date on your favorite things just becomes too difficult, I mean, pick a recent box office hit, or chart topping band and Google them and see how many results come up, then try figure out the latest news or gossip about them.

It isn't easy, and wading through hundreds of pages is just too time consumimng for me. There is a new social network that got my attention, it's called pop bandit and they promise to find the latest info for you, but the site is more like a social network because when you start tracking a topic or vote on topics they automatically introduce you to other members who have the same interests.

I joined up and I've started a new topic about Berlin so I can get the latest about my favorite city, but I'll need to login to my pop bandit account in a couple of days to see if its been approved, but I'm also tracking Madonna and Tyra Banks.

Movie Recommendations though are what I most want to use Pop Bandit for. I don't get to see movie previews on TV here, and often I don't even know a movie has been released, so being able to see recommendations based on my voting will keep my upto date, then I can just buy the DVD online. Cool!

The other day we decided to take a drive down one of the little side streets that leads out of Ronda, just to see where it would take us.

You can imagine our joy when it actually took us down to the bottom of the gorge and a bit further away than you normally get from the Puente Nuevo so that we could get this photo of the cliffs from some really weird angles.

It just goes to show how deceptive flat ground isn't. When you walk around the old town of Ronda you don't really notice the slope, but standing down at the bottom of the gorge looking up it is so noticeable.