Tagged: 8 Things

I was tagged, in a general way, by Tiffany. Here goes:

8 Favorite TV Shows:

• M*A*S*H
• Blackadder
• Fawlty Towers
• Monty Python’s Flying Circus
• Midsomer Murders
• Without a Trace
• Good Eats
• Strictly Come Dancing

8 Things I did yesterday:

• Went caroling
• Received an unexpected Christmas present all the way from Australia
• Ate out
• Skipped dinner as I had so many snacks during caroling
• Read a project document
• Chatted with a friend in the US
• Wrote out some Christmas cards
• Sent e-mails

8 Things I look forward to:

• Understanding all the settings on my camera — the day will come!
• President Obama’s inauguration
• Getting through the books of Moses without experiencing mental exhaustion (task for 2009)
• My next trip abroad
• Finishing Michael Porter’s “Competitive Advantage of Nations” (750+ pages long, and no murders anywhere!)
• The Wurtzbachers returning to Chennai — they’ve promised to bring me a jar of Wal-mart peanut butter
• My next date ;-)
• Dinner!

8 Favorite Restaurants:

• Sangeetha (the one in Adyar, Chennai)
• Freebird’s (College Station, Texas)
• La Costenita (Corpus Christi, Texas)
• The Butter Churn (Sinton, Texas)
• Madras Pavilion (Houston, Texas)
• Acme Oyster House (New Orleans, Lousiana)
• Blackeyed Pea (for their meatloaf)
• Jason’s Deli (for their Reuben sandwich) And special props to the fish & chip shop on New Street in Birmingham--saved my life more than once!

8 Things on my wish list:

• Another trip to Temple Square
• Liverpool winning their 19th League title
• Visiting Palmyra, New York
• Being able to afford an external flash for my camera — those things are pricey!
• Trident cinnamon-flavoured chewing gum
• A PhD
• A skydiving trip in Europe
• A reunion with Steve and his family

Am I supposed to tag someone? Well, I'll tag whoever hasn't done this list, yet.

O Tempora O Mores #1

This is the title under which I will make my observations about how technology is influencing life in general, and mine in particular.

* * *

I remained a stubborn holdout against the digital bandwagon in the world of cameras for a number of years. Not that I had anything against going digital: I was just waiting for the number of megapixels on offer to reach my minimum threshold of 8.0, and at an affordable price.

Also, for the past few years, I've been using my cousin's very nifty Nikon F-601 SLR camera, and I was very pleased with the results. So I was not going to go for a compact digital camera, but one of the big daddies, a digital SLR.

Last year, by the time I got to Qatar, I had identified the one that I wanted: the Canon 400D. Unfortunately, every time I went to the mall to buy it, it was out of stock.

Finally, it showed up in December, just before Christmas. I was stoked. Until I discovered that it didn't come with a memory card, and also without a proper bag. That made the quoted price not that attractive.

I was with my friend, Shaun, at the time, and he suggested we look at a couple of stores to see if any of them had the camera in stock. We went into another store which didn't have my camera, but had the Olympus E-510 on sale. It looked very nice, but I wasn't too sure as I hadn't done any research on it, and it was a little more expensive than the Canon.

Shaun then told me that there was an Internet Cafe a few doors down in the mall, and we could go and do a little research there. I went to Google, and then typed in the two camera models in the search box.

This is what I found. Someone was looking out for me.