Category: General

The pictures from my photo walk to the local park aren’t great. But here they are anyway.

I developed the film with the Bellini Foto C-41 kit yesterday and scanned the negatives as soon as they were dry. The process was a little stressful, because I had to maintain the chemicals at a precise 38⁰C whilst keeping time and agitating the development tank the correct amount for each stage. But at least, the good pictures below (from 2018) tell me that the development was successful and is not the cause of the bad ones.

As I said, the FG-20 held an unfinished roll of film from around 2018. In addition, it was a film that expired in 2005. Its age is a factor in the poor quality of the pictures, but I am mostly at fault for not setting the correct exposure on the camera when taking the shots.

I finally visited the park that opened near my house in 2020 amidst COVID lockdown. It is a former golf course that has been rehabilitated as a green area. I carried a Nikon FG-20 camera with an unfinished roll of film on my walk and took pictures of the trees and wild grass that have grown all over.

Back at home, I pulled out old negatives that I had never bothered to scan until now. Going through the photos, I feel my interest in film photography being rekindled.

I don’t have pictures of the park because I am still waiting for delivery of new chemicals to develop the film. In the meantime, here are photos from over a decade ago that I scanned just today.

I finished the last post by describing my plan to cover the shed roof with a tarpaulin. Dissatisfied and impatient, I executed it two days later. The task was much easier than I had expected.

I was well prepared, having run the procedure in my head many times, even at the beginning when I was considering which of felt and tarp to use for the roof. So, when Amazon delivered the 3m x 4m tarp, I already knew that I had to use holdfasts to secure it against the wind whilst I worked, that I had to fold the slack so that it fit on the 2.5m x 3m roof, that I had to fasten it with washers and screws, and that I definitely had to stand on a thick board when I was on the roof. Starting the repair as soon as I signed off work, I finished in just about one hour.

Later that evening, the rain that was forecast arrived, and I could assess whether the job was good enough. I was pleased to see that water did not leak into the shed—everything inside remained dry. But I was concerned by water puddles remaining on the roof for a few days after the rain stopped.

My other worry is about the quality of the tarp. With a weight of 90 grams per square metre (gsm), it is noticeably thinner than my other 150 gsm tarp used to collect garden rubbish. I am not confident that it will last long against exposure to the weather, foxes, and the neighbourhood cats. This said, I console myself with the thought that the tarp is cheap and easy to replace.

I put a hole in the roof of the garden shed. It happened when I was working on the shed, replacing the old felt. Distracted, I stepped on an area of rotted wood between two beams. My foot went right through it.

With felt already laid on half of the roof and without any material available to fix the damage, I carried on despite the sour mood, pretending that the hole wasn’t there. The rest of the job was easy, as I had the brilliant idea, albeit a late one, of using a large board to support my weight. Had I thought of that before, the repair would not be bodged. And I would be confident that the roof will keep out the rain that is forecast for this week.

After this experience, felt and bitumen annoy me. The felt dug into the skin as I knelt to hammer nails, and the bitumen was difficult to spread, smelled foul, and stained body and clothes. Because I don’t want to handle them again, which I will have to if I replace the roof boards, I plan to instead cover the shed with a large tarpaulin. Tarp blows noisily in the wind and doesn’t look pretty, but it will make an easier repair, will keep out water better, and will last longer.

I am reminded by Facebook of my time at 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. I was there to deploy a software that my employer had sold to FIFA. The plan was for me to be in Johannesburg for five days, but technical difficulties forced me to extend my stay to two weeks.

Having to get the system running before the opening ceremony, I worked day and night. This meant room service dinners at midnight and power naps in the hotel room, followed by countless hours in the FIFA administration block in Sandton. It also meant missing the World Cup opening ceremony, Shakira’s concert and football matches to which I had courtesy tickets.

Eventually, the death march ended, and the system was operational. I could now return home, but before leaving, I managed to see the Group G match between Brazil and North Korea.

We made a short trip to Bordeaux. On the first day and the second day, we had to shelter indoors from the heatwave. With the temperature reaching 42 degrees Celcius, walking and carrying a heavy DSLR under the harsh midday sun was going to be unpleasant. So we took our promenades in the evenings, when it was cooler, and used our mobile phones for snapshots. Here are pictures of things and places we liked.

After using the Dvorak keyboard layout for more than 15 years, I am returning to the QWERTY layout. The switch seems more difficult than learning to touch-type for the first time, given how arduous it feels.

As I write this post, when I think of a word, my fingers immediately hit the Dvorak keys for the letters, as if of their own will. But with the QWERTY layout, what comes out on the screen is gibberish. To avoid mistakes, I have to stay alert and be conscious of every single keystroke; only thus can I overcome the power of muscle memory and slowly form the new habit. Writing is thinking has never sounded so true as I try hard to separate the typing from the thinking.

But why do I endure this hardship? I think that, when I adopted Dvorak, disruption of my previous typing patterns relieved me of the pain in my left arm. Now that my right arm hurts in that familiar way after much typing, I hope that another change will have the same positive effect.

After taking last week off, I resumed work today. Because I still had 26 days of leave remaining for the year and had to use all of them before it ends, I booked a week of holidays without any planning. The break from work, especially after the recent hectic weeks, was a welcome change. And although I wasted the first few days on Discord and reddit, I eventually relaxed in the more pleasurable activities of reading books and watching films.

I saw Passengers yet again. I am not equipped to review films objectively, and so at the risk of being ridiculed I admit to loving Passengers. I am fascinated by how the film depicts the despair of people who are condemned to a prison of time and solitude. Also, the characters of Chris Pratt—who “used to be chubby”, P reminds me—and Jennifer Lawrence—”she’s not all that”, P also says—had me completely engrossed. I disagree with the reddit opinion that the plot should have been darker—but I also admit my bias for romance.

Amazon Prime then started suggesting to me the Hunger Games films. I had watched the first one a long time ago and had not been impressed. After seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Passengers, however, I gave Hunger Games a chance. They were entertaining, yet not deserving of all the hype. Still Lawrence retains my new found appreciation.

Over the last couple of months, I had been reading three books: Line by Line, a book on English grammar; Writing Solid Code, a book on programming; and Crossing to Safety, a novel by Wallace Stagner. I wanted to finish Line by Line quickly because it is the type of book that easily falls to the wayside if it loses the reader’s attention; I am glad I completed this goal. I also finished Writing Solid Code, which was always going to be a slower read, the ideas in it requiring careful reflection.

Crossing to Safety gets special treatment. I am deliberately taking my time to read it—I might actually have been at it for longer than two months. Although it is a short book, it tells a great story, has interesting characters, and is very well written. I continue to savour it a few pages at a time every night in bed.

This week, I also made some small lifestyle adjustments. I removed the company’s Outlook and Teams apps from my phone. Without those, I have to start the work laptop if I need to see my work calendar. But I think setting boundaries in this way is good, especially now that home is also the office. I uninstalled the reddit and Discord apps, realising how much of my time they had taken. I then subscribed to several long-read blogs, which goes the theory, should fill my freed time with more reading.

Altogether it was a decent holiday. I disregarded work, ate out, ordered take-aways, read books, watched films, and made life adjustments. I am now filled with new vitality to tackle the last few weeks of this long year.

I went to the office on Wednesday for meetings and a team lunch outing—the first time I travelled into London since March 2020.

While everyone was happy to see colleagues in person again, I saw no evidence of excitement. The office was too cold, too quiet, and too different to home. The pulled pork feijoada at Cabana restaurant, however, was delicious.

On my way to London, as I plunged into deep thoughts to escape the dullness of the commute, I realised that I had been awake for two hours and still had at least one more hour before I reached the office and started working. By the time I walked through the front door, I would already be tired. In contrast, if I was working from home, I would be starting the day fresh and full of energy. There and then I knew I was never going back to working full-time in an office.

The day would have been uneventful if one colleague who lunched with us didn’t send an email later in the evening to let us know that she had tested positive to COVID-19.

Today I replaced the batteries of my Photon Micro-Light and gave it a bit of TLC. With some elbow-grease, the little torch was once again clean and shiny. Although it shows wear from being carried on my keychain for 20 years, it still evokes happy memories.

I bought three of the novel and rather expensive Photon Micro-Lights in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2000. Back in Mauritius, I kept one for myself, gave another to my dad, who was then building up a remarkable collection of electric torches, and the last one to Bambi, my late brother-in-law. I thought then that he would find the small light useful in his dark nightclub DJ booth. Today the micro-light in my pocket remains a link connecting me to the great person and friend that was Bambi.

Sidenote: We were in South Africa to attend the African Computing and Telecommunications Summit (ACT 2000) in Sun City and to meet providers of satellite Internet. The mission was, first, to learn about the opportunities that were burgeoning in Africa and, second, to find an Internet provider to participate in the cybercity project in Mauritius. It was a precursor to Ebene, and we were tasked to see how we could attract investors in a freeport technology park with a reliable and cheap Internet service alternative to Mauritius Telecom.