While sitting and lazing at work today, the bug of environment and conservation suddenly hit me from nowhere. Not that it is something new but now there was some sudden unexplained rush in my head. I went around browsing many related websites and in the process did two things that I was planning to do for a long time - subscribed to Down To Earth magazine published by CSE. I am also about to subscribe to Sanctuary Asia. I could not do it right away since they don't have an online subscription system. I hope this bug stays with me for a long time(unlike many things I stop almost as soon as I start). Now, I wonder how did it all suddenly strike me. It definitely has nothing to do with World Environment Day which is just round the corner!
A couple of days back when I was playing with my little nephews ans cousins, I decided to spend some time photographing them. I came out with some pix I found interesting. See the pictures and the article - photographing children. Below is one of the pictures.
Since buying my digicam, I have been spending a lot of time trying to understand complete digital photography workflow. I am overwhelmed by the amount of information that I need to go through and the depth of technologies that I need to learn. To keep a tab of things, I have started a weblog on digital photography. I will be documenting all my learnings and experimenting with digital photography in this weblog. Happy reading!
I have been wanting a picture of these birds for a real long time. Being birds of the canopy that usually tend to stay high up the trees, they had always eluded me. Finally, here is one who did not mind co-operating a bit.
Unlike my usual penchant for trying to discover my new acquisitions on the same day as I bought it, my digi stayed in the box for a little longer than usual. I only took some test shots and tried to understand its capabilities. After nearly a week since buying it, I finally aimed it on birds. Result was surprising. It is much easier to get a shot on the digi than the film camera but the quality of the pictures I am managing on the digi leave a lot to be desired. Here is one of the first pictures produced by my brand new hardware.
When my office folks decided to shift to a new place that is far far away from my home, I was quite worried. Many people suggested that I could shift my house to somewhere near the new office. But I quite liked that place I lived in and was not ready to leave it. Instead, I was even considering quitting and finding work somewhere near home. I used to commute 6kms to work earlier and it was bound to increase to 24kms! I decided to try out the new place for sometime first and then consider what to do.
The biggest problem turned out to be the timings. Earlier, I would wake up leisurely, take my own time and start to work at my own discretion - sometime around 9 to 9.30am. Now I had to catch the bus to work as early as 7.30. That meant I had to wake up almost 2 hours earlier than I used to. My friends still say - 'so you wake in the mid night and run to catch the office bus'! In the early days I would miss the bus and drive down all the way. In the process, I discovered that the commute time is pretty much same despite the distance. The 6km drive in the city used to take me 45minutes in the busy city traffic and my new 24km journey would take me just 50 minutes! So the issue of commuting time more or less did not exist!
Overtime, I got used to waking up early and taking the bus to work. This in fact added to the commute time. Walking up the bus stop and waiting for the bus would add 10 minutes, and the bus being slower than a car took around 60 minutes to reach office. That was 25 minutes more than it took for me to reach my previous office. It was annoying indeed. But I did find some good things about taking the bus. I did not have to drive at least - some one else would take care of that. Besides I had this one hour of time to do something useful. I took out the pile of books that I had bought over last 6-8 months that I had not read for having been constrained of time. But in the last 2 months, I have read quite a few of them and have cleared a good part of the backlog. Now when my friends come home, see my books and if ask me I have read them all(believe me, people do!), I say 'yes' to most of the books unlike before. There are still a few books waiting in the queue but they will soon be exhausted.
I still miss the luxuries of working within the city instead of some far away deserted place. Working from this new place means I would miss my pretty big choice of restaurants for afternoon lunch. There are few places to hang around and kill time near the new office. If I have small chores to be finished, I will have to wait for the weekend since there are no amenities near office. I miss luncheon meetings with friends that I used to enjoy before. The new place is definitely boring and bad location to be working from, but the compromise does not seem to be as terrible as I dreaded it. Now getting used to it!
