New Covers

Here are some new covers. I unfortunately can never find the time to research about them since I'm always on the go, so there aren't any long explanations on these. However, I'm pretty sure you guys would prefer to see the covers either way.

Anyway, most of these issues are self-explanatory. :-)

Thanks to the Cernohous Family. Belated Merry Christmas to you, too!
Well, actually, the cancellation reads 8 Oct, but I received this just last week!



Interesting postmark. Is it official?



Slovenian food! Yummy! I initially thought this was the Slovenia issue for the Europa CEPT topic on gastronomy, but that theme was for 2005 and these were issued 2008!
Thanks, Enzo Pittana!



Reminds me of my visit to the Singapore National Orchid Garden, a very nice place to visit and be one with nature.

Thanks to Andrzej Bek for this FDC from the late Pope's homeland. I deduce that this FDC celebrates 30 years since Pope John Paul II was declared Pope since his papacy began on 16 October 1978.

Habemus Papam = "We have a pope!"
Non Omnis Moriar = "I shall not completely die"

It's surprising that Poczta Polska offers no English translations on its FDCs and stamps!

Notice how the spelling of Norway is Norwegian is inconsistent ("Norge" and "Noreg").
This is because there are two standard official Norwegian languages. "Norge" is Bokmål (literally "national language"), which is spoken by about 90% of the population while "Noreg" is Nynorsk (literally "New Norwegian"), which is spoken by 10%. The difference between the two is that Nyornsk was intenionally developed in the 1800s to distinguish Norwegian from Danish since Danish was the language used in writing at the time, while Bokmål can be considered the "virgin" of the two in the sense that it arose out of the phonetic evolution of the Norwegian language, and not from intentional intervention.

Although both are officially used, I'd think that Norway Post should at least standardize, right?

Thanks, Jung Min!
새해 복 많이 받으세요



Thanks, YW Leung!
恭喜发财

My first cover from Cuba with a postmark and the postmark's not very clear..... :-(
¡Muchas gracias a Alexis Izquierdo!
¡Responderé a su carta pronto!

This wasn't actually sent through the mail system per se, but mailed inside another envelope because, according to the sender, there is not enough space onto which the other Olympic stamps could be affixed. Actually, the cover is indeed quite small compared to the standard size.
Anyway, you can't really tell if this was processed by the post or not since both the Philippine and Brazilian postal systems don't print processing labels on the envelopes (like they do in Italy, the UK, Canada, and the US) and the only way you can really tell that it never went through the postal system is by the absence of a backstamp. But, then again, backstamps are sometimes not applied anyway....
Thanks to Luis Alberto Kalife for this cover!

Notice the neat pointillism on the bird depiction. At first, I thought that this was just a printed image on a commercially available envelope, but after closer inspection, I noticed that the bird was drawn using pointillism! Wow, a personalized, one-of-a-kind cover!
Thanks, Ahmet!