Finally the winter is here.

There were still holidays celebration traces when winter attempted again a timid comeback as shown in this clip. This time though the comeback was for real. Click here, here and here to see some video snapshots of how it settled over the Grand River in the Waterloo Region. The snapshots were taken across the river from the place in this picture.

Changing climate in the climate change debate.

At last the world gets it and starts to take action. European Union leads with the toghest action. In United States the federal government is called for environmental action by the USCAP partnership and the Canadian government took environmental action right away.

It's a good sign that developed countries take action since in terms of the Kyoto protocol "Governments...launch national strategies for addressing the emissions and adapting to expected impacts" as the UN Press Conference on Climate Change says.

Watch the video on this link for an inspiring vision on the need for climate change actions.

Check out also the WWF blog for other climate change news.

Green Confluence.

New Year's Day is like a confluence in time when the New Year starts its journey in history along the old one.

It so happened that our first hike this year was at the Grand River confluence with Speed River in Cambridge Ontario. Follow the 5 pictures from this link to see Pearl snapshots taken along the confluence.

Liner Trail marks in time the Confluence's historical significance for the Waterloo region. And since the New Year started green click here, here and here to see video testimonies of this.

What a difference a week made.

Compare this with the same Grand Valley Trail one week later, as shown in the 5 pictures starting from this link.

New Year promises.

Happy New Year and best wishes in 2007! When time renews itself at the beginning of the New Year, human soul could be tried by different feelings.

Some could be depressed by what we loose as time goes by, as Romanians national poet brilliantly expressed in The years have passed poem.

Others are optimistic for the past year accomplishments and the eternal Becoming potential that the new year could offer (the present comes from the past and aims into the future).

New Year resolutions are a sign of optimism. The struggle to keep them though could yield to pessimism. Here it is a quick tip on how to keep our resolutions, that I've picked up this week from a broadcast of the local CKCO TV channel: focus on actions instead of results. For example if you want to loose weight focus to walk each day instead of eagerly thinking at and checking your weight to see results.

This reminded me of the Olympic Credo that could also be paraphrased as the road is more important than the destination.

New Year resolutions offer us a chance to be Olympic champions each year. Since the main competitor is our weaknesses, everyone could live the Olympic dream of winning.