Okay, what a weekend. The only amazing thing is that I arrived at work this morning suffering only a minor case of sleep deprivation and not a massive hangover. It all began on Friday afternoon, around 2pm we left the office for our quarterly team lunch. We went over to the Wijnhuis where despite tasting awesome I found their wonderfully raw beer would later make my stomache a tad unhappy. I ordered the spatchcock baby chicken and upon seeing it, my first comment was: “I guess if I ordered it yesterday it would have been served sunny-side-up.”
Apparently when they say “baby” they are not kidding. Stil, credit where due: it tasted awesome. Right after lunch I headed out to the west coast, parklands (very near my home) to be exact. Left around ten past three, didn’t make it past the koeberg interchangen until 4pm (yet another truck overturned on the N1 below the interchange). Finally I did make it though – and picked up my new camera. A Canon D400 which is really sweet. I’ve been shooting everything I could get in focus. Right now I only have the standard 18-55 lens Canon’s come with but that’s at least a good general-use lens until I can buy more.
It also came with two 1GB memory cards, not exactly huge things. I spent most of Friday night getting the settings tweaked, including switching to Raw+JPG mode (which this camera supports). I then rapidly changed my mind about it – in RAW+JPG the 1Gb cards could only take about 40 pix each. I switched to RAW only, more than doubling my shots-per card, still, even with both cards that’s about 180pix between downloads.
I’ve already filled up and downloaded about 5 times over the weekend and there are some good stuff in there I think. With camera in hand, I had to head back into town, I avoided the M5 this time and headed down through woodstock missing most of the traffic disaster and getting to Arno and Christel’s around 5:30pm. We went down to Fat Cactus and finished… three jugs of margarita-like cocktails over the next few hours. In between I called my dad up for camera-tips, a conversation that lasted a good hour in which I once-more learned a lot.
Finally, semi-drunk and widely excited – we went off to see district 9. Now just about everybody has been tweeting and blogging this movie but I have to say – it is just bloody perfect. It couldn’t be more South African. The culture and nature of our society could not be better portrayed, an alien-encounter movie with a plot that’s actually original. Real drama, real humor and excellent action. There is just nothing I could fault about it. In fact, the portrayal of South African life was so good, with the sifi so carefully blended into it that I had, perhaps, the most complete suspense of disbelieve I have had in a movie, ever – and that makes it in my book, one of the best movies ever made. Not just one of the best sifi movies, not even just the best South African movie- just outright, one of the best movies ever made. Somebody asked, and I stand by it: it’s better than watchmen.
I’ve never before come out of a movie and felt a genuine expectation that our cab-driver may have tentacles before…
With that, we went home and passed out- ending Friday. Saturday morning I had to do a stint at the office before Arno, Christel and Anita and me somehow all ended up at my place playing WII, drinking a massive amount of salty-dogs and discussing life. A sort of accidental geekparty. I must say, it’s nice to still be able to be good friends with my ex and just have a hang-out like that to get smashed on a hot day.
Sunday morning I went down to the wimpy near my house for breakfast, in the same center is a small photography shop that’s been having a special on tripods. I of course, wanted to have a look – they had a nice one at about the same price that second-hands of the same variety go for so I bought it. It’s a nice light-weight one that’s easy to transport in a small carry case, yet full height. Not the sturdiest tripod in the world and you need to tighten the bolts well when it’s set up or you still have a tendency for shake but it is pretty much everything I need this early on at a great price and it’s light weight means you could even take it on a hike for that perfect middle-of-nowhere portrait. Afterward, I went out to Kirstenbosch with Ani to join Christel-Michelle and her family for a picnic. It was a baking hot day, in which a bottle of Merlot disappeared and lots of crap was talked, sunshine enjoyed and the general serenity of the gardens provided the perfect slow-down ending to a rather hectic weekend.
Upon coming home, I downloaded the new pix, and then continued processing the kruger-park pix, I’m about halfway through the ones that survived the first round of culling, still deleting many and making the others as awesome as I can.
I watched the Da Vinci code on E-TV on Sunday night, once more feeling that the movie really doesn’t come close to the book, and if that’s not bad enough – the book is rather shallow with riddles and codes that feel like they were copied out of a pre-schooler’s puzzle-book and a plot that’s more predictable than government stupidity, but I was bored and it was adequately mindless for my state of mind.
Went to bed. Slept.
Which brings us to this morning, where one of my first acts was to sign on to Kalahari.net and complete my order of Gimp2 for photographers which I expect tomorrow, it’s one of many books currently on special there so if you’re looking to score a bargain on it, I suggest grabbing it now.
Now, on with Monday, and on with the week. I declare this Monday I will not suffer the normal Monday-blues. This Monday is gonna be my bitch, and it better behave.