Hi Andreas,
I am assuming that perhaps you have not "packed your bags" completely yet, and probably have been reading these sincere and heartfelt responses to your message, or at least I hope you have done so.
As for myself, I found my "feeling level" response to your posting to be somewhat odd, as I really don't "know" you in the strictest sense of the word, yet I felt a deep sadness and profound shock, way out of proportion to what I would have believed "should" have been my logical response, especially if seen or evaluated by a non-involved "outsider" like my wife, for instance. Your decision seemed to carry the same type of response reaction that humans go through when dealing with personal loss, sometimes called the grief response: shock, sadness/grief, denial, anger.... Very interesting considering the circumstances, yet I have come to realize that all of our "relationships" here is somewhat magical and unique, as I've very seldom if ever seen, felt, or experienced the caring, comradrie, humor, and single-minded purpose that I have seen on this forum. I have shared your photos with all my family members and read many of your posting comments to my wife, who felt that my reaction wasn't overblown (just unique), as she felt sad herself.
A very large part of my reaction was in fact due to that "uniqueness" quality of this forum experience, (remember my posting re: Sony Talk Forum addiction and all of the humorous yet truthful responses) which in no small part has been due to your presence here, your support for others, humor, gentlemanliness, gentle humanness, and personal "uniqueness" all of which have seemed to me to be very important ingredients contributing to all of our obvious joy from sharing with each other on this site. Certainly I don't "know" you, yet look forward each day to in essence "talking" with you. The contemplated loss of that is, for myself and obviously for others, a truly sad situation. Your presence here has set the tone in a very deep and meaningful way as to what I believe this forum at its' core is all about. You have helped me to realize that the world is not so large a place after all, and that our somewhat vast separation in terms of location and distance, has nothing to do with the newly recognized closeness in proximity and feelings, of the human heart and experience. If I "knew" you better I would be most proud to call you my FRIEND, instead of "friend". In terms of the help you have given me and your contributions here, the former is more the felt reality, which appears to be the general consensus of feeling as reflected by the other postings of our Sony Talk Forum "friends" here in response to your message.
I think cross- culturally, we males of the human species can be pretty "determined" when it comes to taking a stand or position on a subject or circumstance. Our proud maleness sometimes makes it hard then for us to back-track or modify those staunch decisions. This I hope is not one of those times. I hope also that in all of your FRIENDS sharings here, that the warmth and obvious affections expressed for you don't then also make for a harder or more difficult decision to change your mind due to embarrassment. Personally I think we could all proceed quite nicely if we could all learn from this experience and continue to make the forum even more unique, and simply start again from this slightly more enlightened reality, a little wiser perhaps, but on again to the "business" at hand. Whatever your decision, good luck with your photography talents, and I'll hope to "bump into you", " here and there", "now and again"! Curt A.
LOL!!
Nahh! Andreas isn't that kind of guy either.
Andreas is a fine young man, sooner or later he'll accept the apology.
Why don't we just blame the "the kind of flame thing in the Nikon forum".
(OK, that's a joke!)