A missed opportunity...

December 6th 2005, 1145B

<>Sometimes I could kick my own ass, & today I'd kick hard. I've been bitching for awhile that I've not been taking photos, that I'm a little weary of pointing a lens at uncooperative locals, & that even when I want to take photos usually I can't because I'm in vehicle that's bouncing all over the bloody road. Well today, the camera gods have conspired to present me with a fantastic opportunity to get some great shots - we're stationary, the scenery is beauts, there's a large crowd of locals happy to have a camera pointed at them providing interesting subjects, & there are some fantastic shots for the taking - but do I have my camera with me? No I fucking don't, dumb bastard that I am. When the last moment tasking came in for this escort I thought about grabbing the camera at the same time as my body-armour & medical kit, but decided against it because the last few times had been a wash out so far as successful shots are concerned. I mean, it's seriously frustating to cart around a sophisticated camera, and take dozens of pictures with it, only to end up dumping all but three in the recycle bin because the shots are blurred to shit with camera shake from the moving vehicle. I don't think I even took any photos the last two times I was out, & I also somehow managed to trash the UV filter on my 55-200 lens - I think the lens is still fine at least - so I have at least something of an excuse for leaving the camera behind today. But I'm also fully cogniscant of the fact that you never know when the photo of a lifetime is going to happen right in front of you, & should always carry a camera because of that.

So yeah, right now I'd be kicking myself if I could. Still it really is a lovely day, & being here is making for a much nicer day than I would have had otherwise, being annoyed with myself not withstanding.

And not having the camera here is also providing me with the opportunity to play with another toy I treated myself to a few weeks ago. You see, I'm busy typing this post up on my phone. The other day I once again proved a sucker for shiny toys, & hardly even blinked before handing over the cash when I saw a Nokia 7710 going for a shit load less than it would have cost me in SA. Ok, so it's not something I was ever very likely to have bought back home, so it's not as much of a bargain as I'd perhaps like to suggest, but we'll just ignore that for the moment. Boys and their toys, & all that lol

Anyway, the 7710 is as much a PDA as it is a phone, with Office functionality & a pdf reader pre-loaded, which is why it appealed to me in the first place - I do a lot of traveling & it's really handy to have what amounts to a pocket sized library to keep me amused, with a battery that’ll last for more than just an hour or two of the trip. It's hardly the largest screen to read from - and 'typing' with a stylus is also proving to be a challenge lol - but you get used to it. And it sure as hell beats the snot out of twiddling your thumbs for 9 hours on a bus. Surprisingly for a Nokia it even has a 1.2mp 'camera' rather than the usual piece of shit vga thing they seem so fond of. It's still crap - Samsung & Sony-Eriksson slap Nokia silly where camera-phones are concerned - but it's pleasant surprise to have few images come out sort of ok. One point where it's pretty weak though is storage space - it uses the Nokia proprietary MM cards, the largest being 128mb, so while it has an mp3 player, you only have space for maybe 10 tracks by the time the installed apps & so on have taken their bite. It'd be neat to have one handheld device that could manage comms, reading & music all in one, but I guess that’s why I bought the i-Pod lol

I think I'm going to end this off for now though - this typing with a stylus is giving me a bitch of a 'writers cramp'. I'll carry on with this later though, when I'm back at the base & have transferred this onto the pc

Cheers till then;)

2345B

Well, it’s a “little later” now, & I finally got around to sitting down in front of the pc – after I got back from the escort at 1600 I pretty much went straight to bed, & only woke up at around 2200. Not the brightest of moves, as now I’m really going to have hassles getting to sleep. There was no way I could keep my eyes open when I got back though, as I’ve been up since around 0200 & it’s also been a long, hot & at times incredibly frustrating day – the locals put on a “stellar performance” for me today…..

Problem is, I’m busy screwing my sleeping patterns up completely, & it’s going to be a mission to get them back to normal again. It’s one of those Catch-22 things – because you wake up seriously early, you’re knackered by 1400 & can’t keep your eyes open, so you have an afternoon nap. Nothing major, just 2 hours or so, but it’s enough that you either battle to get to sleep that night, or once again wake up at some un-Christian hour the next morning. So you end up having to have an afternoon snooze the next day, which just means you can’t sleep that night..... and so on & so forth, ad nauseam.

Enough of that though. I may as well put the time to good use, seeing as I’m awake, & catch up on this a little.

It’s been, for the most part, a very pleasant few days since I got back to town & once again I’m surprisingly happy to be back in the capital. I’m not exactly crazy about deploying to Muramvya, which may have something to do with it, but yesterday in particular was not a bad day at all, on its own merits. For one, I enjoyed pretty good comms with home & managed to make a few phone calls, getting hold of Ash & Rob. With Ash I have to call her on her cell unfortunately, & with the restrictions on phone usage I have to keep the calls very short – 5 minutes, max – which sucks, but it was the first time we’d spoken in two weeks so I really enjoyed chatting with her all the same. If I get it right to install an internet connection of my own here, I’m going to look into that Skype Call service, as from what I remember the rates weren’t too bad at all. Shit loads cheaper than cellular rates from here anyway, where I’m paying around $1 a minute to call SA. I remember that Skype didn’t work too well over the i-Burst I installed at home, due to the latency issues inherent in wireless connections & it’s likely to be the same here, but it’s worth at least trying.

With Rob I score a luck, as I can call him over an internal line – the switchboards here & in SA are connected by a microwave link – so we got to chat for quite awhile. He had one very nice piece of news for me when I called, and that was that my nice shiny i-Pod has finally arrived at home :D Ok, so I’m still not going to see the damn thing before I get home in another month or two at least, but I was still very pleasantly surprised that it’d arrived. In fact I’d been getting impatient to the point where I’d been about to cancel the order with Kalahari & organise one from one of the shops here. I’d really wanted to avoid that though, because even if it’d been a bit cheaper here I’d not have had any sort of guarantee on it, unlike the one I’d ordered from Kalahari.

One funny thing is that I can’t remember ever seeing that the money for it ever came off my credit card, so maybe Kalahari sponsored me a very nice Christmas present…. I really doubt they’d forget to bill me for an order of R4k+, but one can always hope I guess lol

One other piece of pleasant news that Rob had for me is that Gazaz, who he can buy from at wholesale prices, stock the Acer notebooks so there’s a good chance I’ll be able to pick up that 8104 I’ve been looking at for even less than I thought I would. I’ve decided to be at least semi-sensible & laugh off the Eurotek that I’d really wanted, because even though it may be worth what you pay for it – the D900T really is the hot sexy bitch :P – I just cannot afford to afford it. I’ll miss a few things about the Eurotek – the 17” screen & wicked G-Force 6800 for example – but the Acer is still a damned nice piece of equipment, & a large step up from what I’ve got now. Chances are I’ll ask him to order me one on the 15^th or so, so that it’s waiting for me when I get home. Now just to sell this one so that I can afford to afford the Acer…. lol

Just to get back to comms with home, I managed to get to a net café yesterday & had chance to download my mail & also get in a decent chat with Mark and another friend of mine in the UK called Martine who I’ve not spoken to in well over a year. It’s the first time I’ve had chance to chat with Mark in quite some time, as I’ve had trouble getting my MSN to sign in the last few weeks, so I was really happy that it decided to play along for a change. One person I didn’t manage to get hold of online was Shirley, and Mark was saying that she’s stopped freelancing now and so isn’t online so much. I’m really going to miss chatting with her on the odd occasion that we’re online at the same time, but given how badly the freelancing was running her down maybe it’s not such a bad thing. I received a few texts from her today though, & she’s sent me a mail which I’m really looking forward to reading as soon as I get to download my mail again. She evidently handed in her dissertation for her honours today, which I can imagine is a huge load off her back, so I’m very happy for her & holding thumbs that she’s done really well.

Anyway, I’m going to end off here & try to get some sleep. I don’t know how successful I’m going to be, but the eyes are a little droopy at least so maybe I get lucky…

<>I’ll likely catch up on this again soon, but cheers for now ;)