Saturday 31 October 2009

Update from Sai Kung

Well, we have got the keys to the new house. Mrs.Ha has met the contractors and we have a very clear idea of what is going to be done. And no idea what it will all cost. When will we move in? Hopefully by Christmas. A very short walk this afternoon convinced me that patience will reward me with birds, butterflies and dragonflies. Probably some different moths too.

I promised I would report back on the scanning of the slides. Very mixed. Some are frankly awful. Some not to bad.






Three of the shots above are scans and one is a recent digital image straight from the camera. Can you pick the odd one out? Clue, location may help! I am at a loss why the standard is so variable. It could be the processing as I picked a batch of decent images to try first. I may get some redone elsewhere as a control. If they don't work then I may invest in my own scanner.

I have spent so much time travelling recently I am doing little photography I'm afraid. Cathay have just made my life worse as my usual flight to Bahrain (direct) now goes indirect via Riyadh adding almost 4 hours to my travel time. As an added bonus when I got back on Friday pm they were late and had nobody to operate the air bridge. Luckily I discovered Emirates has a better option so just when they are desperate for revenue CP will be losing a fair chunk of mine. They seem to be deteriorating fast in just about every department. The food is uniformly inedible - I now travel with a supply of cereal bars instead. The coffin seats are a disgrace to modern design and if one more member of the crew thanks me for my custom I shall be tempted to tell them a few home truths.

The really bad news came the week before in Dubai when I was called at 6am by AmEx (who in fairness thought it was 10am and I was in HK) to thank me for my business. I can only assume Mrs. Ha has been on the loose with her supplementary. Oh my! Oh golly gosh! If I were not permanently off the juice I'd have to have another sherry, Bishop.

BTW, captions are invited for the bottom picture, which educated chaps and chapesses will have ID'd as a Nazca booby. Ooh er, as Fumie would say, I'm sure.

Toodle pip.

4 comments:

Private Beach said...

Did anyone at Cathay actually sit on one of their new seats (preferably for 12 hours) before they placed the order for them?

dgny said...

I so envy the travel.

I saw something a couple of weeks ago that made me wish I'd had a camera. A Swallow hawk landed on the roof right outside my office window with a bird in his claws! He just stood there, trying to hold the bird still while it tried (without result) to get away. Forlorn little occasional flaps. It was just beautiful.

ulaca said...

So when's the housewarming?!

Andrew said...

PB: almost certainly not.

DG: I am green with envy

Uli: Who knows? I shall consult Mrs. Ha