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MCH
Meeting - A Chronicle, by Frank
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Well,
if someone told me last year I would spend a weekend with fellow
cichlid hobbyists from Greece and Italy I would have laughed and say
come on, this is impossible! Now that it really happened, I can only
say that this was one of the most pleasant weekends in my life!
It
all
started with me talking about the coming 13th show of
the Belgian Cichlid Association sometime in February. George asked
me some info about this event, mainly as an opportunity for us to
finally meet. After discussing the details and the possibility of
Francesco to be there too, we finally agreed that the 3 MCH authors and
their families should meet in the last weekend of the ABCV show. For me
this was also a rather risky date because of my very tight schedule.
Of course I had to help with the buildup of the show. I also had a
kitchen rebuild going on and there was also the possible birth of My
and Hilde’s second child. Not much time for something else to do.
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Day
1: Friday June 22
Due
to a strike of Alitalia (God bless the unions!), the whole MCH
team arrived between 8.30 and 11.30am. I was a bit nervous before
the meeting, although nothing went wrong. Actually everything in the
time schedule fitted perfectly !!! The t-shirts were printed, no
traffic-jams that Friday morning, George’s battery charger and
fish food were bought and kept safely in the trunk of the car, the
weather was fine and there were no signs of the birth of our second
child yet! As I’d seen their pictures on the site and they both
described their clothes and bags to the last detail, both George and
Francesco were very easily recognizable. Francesco and Stefania were
wearing a green J&B whisky t-shirt supporting a naturalist
project of re-introduction of rhinos in Malawi. George, Christine
and Johnny were all wearing CRLCA T-shirts with
a big Maylandia Zebra Red
Top on them. After parking the car we went to
arrival Hall A where the MCH team finally met! After getting
introduced to each other and George finally experiencing how tall a
2.07m man is, - halfway through their stay Francesco gave me my new nickname:
Hightower Frank!!! - it was time to split up the luggage and
transfer the Nimbochromis polystigma that George brought for me as a
present into a bucket with conditioned water. Wow, that fish really
impressed me!!! Francesco already had rent a little blue Ferrari, -
soon we found out if was a Fiat - so it was time to rush to my home
to transfer the Pseudotropheus msobo and Copadichromis borleyi fry
that he had brought from Italy as a present for both me and
George. Gladly, all the cichlids were bagged with extreme care so
they hadn’t suffered one single moment during the transport.
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The Nimbochromis polystigma that George brought for me from
Greece
swimming in my 1000L aquarium
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After
transferring them to already cycled tanks we could finally go to
a restaurant to get something to eat. Of course I ordered some good
Belgian beer with the meal that was appreciated very well. Our 2
year old son Matthias kept on dragging the visibly tired Johnny (he
was awake from 3.30am) to the playground. After seeing some
beautiful pics form Francesco’s trip to Lake Malawi it was time for
the guests to check in to the hotel and have a little rest. Of
course we were not planning to sleep the whole weekend, so at 6.00pm
we left for a visit to Frank Janssen’s shop Aqua Blue Zaire that
just received a shipment of half sized Malawi cichlids.
Although there were no cichlid purchases planned, the
Dimidiochromis compressiceps immediately came to the attention of
Francesco. To the horror of George there was no Buccochromis
lepturus male available, no large Buccochromis lepturus male, no
juvenile Buccochromis lepturus male, no fry Buccochromis lepturus
male, no Buccochromis lepturus male at all!!!
Luckily this was the
only low point of the whole visit.
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