(no subject)
I like intense weekends. I really like them.
After work ended on Friday, I headed out with a good old friend to catch up. We go KFC. It was epic. So good... And then chilled at his business office later on, leading up till hanging out with other folks watching the movie Kick Ass, which I have to admit is quite funny and yet also quite disturbing how a comic book adaptation stars an 11 year old killer and an M18 rating from the government censorship/propaganda arm. And then I woke up strugglingly early on Saturday to catch up with my pledge son. Who isn't doing so well these days. We caught up over a lovely breakfast which he paid for and then I shopped around and ended up getting myself a Netbook.
I guess since I was looking for a portable device to store my pictures in excess of 16GB when I went to the US, I figured that a cheap netbook would be a good purchase to keep in touch with the world, to store my pictures and also to not be a bore by borrowing another person's laptop whilst I was in the US. I'm just worried that my flight via moscow will be affected now no thanks to damn Ice Cube Land. Of all times of the year. Right now?
And so now I own a windows netbook. Windows 7 start definitely sucks because its so crippled. So I'm trying/hoping that I'll eventually be able to get an optimized copy of Windows XP onto the system. All my attempts so far have failed. So I'm not sure if I should actually go out and buy the external DVD drive. I can live with this crappy version of windows for a while, but at the rate I'm going - working off stuff that's on the cloud, I think that I might very well be better off running Ubuntu or some other distribution of Linux on it in order to optimize speed.
After that, I did a photoshoot for yet another church couple. Its getting awkward being single these days. The shoot did not go well as the weather was terrible. Plus the couple had spent a few hundred renting a very old school vintage volkswagen beetle for the shoot, which was rendered useless. The thing had no seat belts, no left mirror and we stuffed it with bright red balloons. And two guys riding on the expressway in that shell of a junkyward 36 horsepower antique. My goodness. It sure was a sight one way or another. NO POWER STEERING! Plus it rained heavily and you had to manually turn the next to useless wipers on and off as we "speed" at 60-70km/h on the expressway.
In the end we did manage to get some shoots, and upon first opening them in Lightroom, they look reasonably good. And for the first time, I was forced to use ISO 6400 on a photoshoot. I guess its one of those times when having a Nikon D3S would be extremely helpful to continue taking pictures after dark and rendering darkness like daylight. So in one weekend I have considered buying a Nikon set up over a Leica or Canon and also bought a windows based netbook. The Dark Side Of The Force is coming on strongly onto me...
After the photoshoot, I headed home and went out within half an hour plus to hang out with some old friends. It was great. We hung out and chatted from 9.30 till about 4.30 in the morning. Its almost like a full day job except that its overnight, on the weekends and we can finally pay $10 for a cup of coffee. To top it off, as we bade our farewells to each other, we saw one of the few Lamborghini Diablos, that had been repainted in brilliant orange parked on the side of the street. It was truly a sight to behold. Truly. So much character, so much soul. So low and so beautiful a car to just comprehend, much less to own and drive one someday in the future.
Our group of friends have crazy ideas like biking from Singapore to London, or through Thailand even though I don't have a bike license. And taking the train through Malaysia, visiting Laos and then to Bangkok for a while and then up to Chiang Mai in Thailand. We truly are the first generation in all of human history where the regular common folk of reasonably well developed economies have both the capacity, technology and time to travel and see vast spheres of the world in our lifetime. We don't need to read about it. We can see videos of it, hear its music, go there. More than that, the web has made it easier to stay in touch, keep in contact and to upkeep relations. Its amazing.
So a few more dreams to add to that bucket list. Besides attempting the Annapurna Circuit, Kilimanjaro, the High Pamirs of Tajikistan. Now we want to bike through Thailand. 700km and 1200 turns. Take the trains through Malaysia, stop by Penang, Butterworth, Vientiane, Bangkok and Chiang Mai. And then perhaps Burma too. There's so much to see in South East Asia alone, it should rank as one of the first destinations we all should attempt in this day, age and youth. Europe will always upkeep its expensive grandeur and history and can be seen at a later stage of life. But for now, Asia it is. And then I still have Boston to comprehend, as well as that goal of cycling across the United States.
Oh my goodness. I'm never going to be rich. But Life has to be worth living. One has to do the things that make him come alive in a world filled with soul deadening work and spiritually dry purposelessness.
After work ended on Friday, I headed out with a good old friend to catch up. We go KFC. It was epic. So good... And then chilled at his business office later on, leading up till hanging out with other folks watching the movie Kick Ass, which I have to admit is quite funny and yet also quite disturbing how a comic book adaptation stars an 11 year old killer and an M18 rating from the government censorship/propaganda arm. And then I woke up strugglingly early on Saturday to catch up with my pledge son. Who isn't doing so well these days. We caught up over a lovely breakfast which he paid for and then I shopped around and ended up getting myself a Netbook.
I guess since I was looking for a portable device to store my pictures in excess of 16GB when I went to the US, I figured that a cheap netbook would be a good purchase to keep in touch with the world, to store my pictures and also to not be a bore by borrowing another person's laptop whilst I was in the US. I'm just worried that my flight via moscow will be affected now no thanks to damn Ice Cube Land. Of all times of the year. Right now?
And so now I own a windows netbook. Windows 7 start definitely sucks because its so crippled. So I'm trying/hoping that I'll eventually be able to get an optimized copy of Windows XP onto the system. All my attempts so far have failed. So I'm not sure if I should actually go out and buy the external DVD drive. I can live with this crappy version of windows for a while, but at the rate I'm going - working off stuff that's on the cloud, I think that I might very well be better off running Ubuntu or some other distribution of Linux on it in order to optimize speed.
After that, I did a photoshoot for yet another church couple. Its getting awkward being single these days. The shoot did not go well as the weather was terrible. Plus the couple had spent a few hundred renting a very old school vintage volkswagen beetle for the shoot, which was rendered useless. The thing had no seat belts, no left mirror and we stuffed it with bright red balloons. And two guys riding on the expressway in that shell of a junkyward 36 horsepower antique. My goodness. It sure was a sight one way or another. NO POWER STEERING! Plus it rained heavily and you had to manually turn the next to useless wipers on and off as we "speed" at 60-70km/h on the expressway.
In the end we did manage to get some shoots, and upon first opening them in Lightroom, they look reasonably good. And for the first time, I was forced to use ISO 6400 on a photoshoot. I guess its one of those times when having a Nikon D3S would be extremely helpful to continue taking pictures after dark and rendering darkness like daylight. So in one weekend I have considered buying a Nikon set up over a Leica or Canon and also bought a windows based netbook. The Dark Side Of The Force is coming on strongly onto me...
After the photoshoot, I headed home and went out within half an hour plus to hang out with some old friends. It was great. We hung out and chatted from 9.30 till about 4.30 in the morning. Its almost like a full day job except that its overnight, on the weekends and we can finally pay $10 for a cup of coffee. To top it off, as we bade our farewells to each other, we saw one of the few Lamborghini Diablos, that had been repainted in brilliant orange parked on the side of the street. It was truly a sight to behold. Truly. So much character, so much soul. So low and so beautiful a car to just comprehend, much less to own and drive one someday in the future.
Our group of friends have crazy ideas like biking from Singapore to London, or through Thailand even though I don't have a bike license. And taking the train through Malaysia, visiting Laos and then to Bangkok for a while and then up to Chiang Mai in Thailand. We truly are the first generation in all of human history where the regular common folk of reasonably well developed economies have both the capacity, technology and time to travel and see vast spheres of the world in our lifetime. We don't need to read about it. We can see videos of it, hear its music, go there. More than that, the web has made it easier to stay in touch, keep in contact and to upkeep relations. Its amazing.
So a few more dreams to add to that bucket list. Besides attempting the Annapurna Circuit, Kilimanjaro, the High Pamirs of Tajikistan. Now we want to bike through Thailand. 700km and 1200 turns. Take the trains through Malaysia, stop by Penang, Butterworth, Vientiane, Bangkok and Chiang Mai. And then perhaps Burma too. There's so much to see in South East Asia alone, it should rank as one of the first destinations we all should attempt in this day, age and youth. Europe will always upkeep its expensive grandeur and history and can be seen at a later stage of life. But for now, Asia it is. And then I still have Boston to comprehend, as well as that goal of cycling across the United States.
Oh my goodness. I'm never going to be rich. But Life has to be worth living. One has to do the things that make him come alive in a world filled with soul deadening work and spiritually dry purposelessness.