After three years of relatively stable lifestyle here, it's rather amazing how drastically my life will be different now.
Between my first and second year, I moved three doors down and bought a used car. During my second year, bought my 100mm Macro lens and my first iPod (the 160GB), and in Summer of 2008, got the 400D. And that's about all I can recall to report.
But this fall, the number of variables in play almost takes my own breath away.
Though to list them amounts to little more than navel-gazing, I suppose.
Most profoundly, we've been moved into an entirely different accommodation. Rather than a nice modern apartment in a quiet secluded compound in a suburban neighborhood, we're now living in the old condemned housing on the main University campus. Other than plumbing problems and new kinds of bugs to combat, I quite like it, much more than most my colleagues. It's an efficiency rather than a two-room place, and I grew quite fond of the efficiency lifestyle during my Lex years. (My first place there was an efficiency, and set up the big room in my second as if it were an efficiency, so the front room could be the photo studio.)
The kitchen (and especially the fridge) are too small, the shower is awkward, and I miss having sweet water on tap throughout (only one sweet water tap in the kitchen now), but as a space, I quite like it. And there will be drastically more photography opportunities around here (once the humidity backs off). The suburban neighborhood was crawling with security guards who didn't even speak English, and all too eager to confiscate my gear. Around here, my faculty ID will run off the rare interference.
Am still waiting to get a proper dual-workstation desk from Ikea. The provided furniture is terribly unergonomic, harkening back to an era before computers. But I'm using it to "mock up" where the new tabletop will be. Most notably, by placing my new 37" flat screen right in the middle of the apartment, so it can be rotated toward any possible need: where guests sit, where I work, where I rest, or even where I would exercise, if I got around to that.
Though, unlike the previous years, I don't have any television programming to feed into it. Opted not to renew with my satellite provider, sick of paying for TV that I rarely watched just to have internet. So now using a SIM-card router which seems to be working well (though it contains me behind the government filters and keeps me from a lot of photography sites). But why get a TV then?
To hook up to the Mac Mini that brought back from America. The processor and video card blow the doors off my 2005 iMac, and it's got 4GB of RAM to drastically better juggle Photoshop and Aperture tasks. So the iMac will become my web authoring, email, and iTunes machine, leaving the Mini free for imagery and occasional movies.
Of course, barely check email on my computers anymore, because it's so much more intuitive to check on the fly with my iPhone 3Gs. Honestly, wasn't so eager to jump on that bandwagon, and bought it only for two primary tasks: to replace my aging Nokias, and to show off photography on that gorgeous glass screen. (By that latter standard, it practically paid for itself during my two months in America.) But have been entirely surprised by its usefulness altogether - a computer in our pocket - and the convenience of grabbing an app on a moment's notice from the App Store.
Am practically swimming in earbuds, though. I'd bought five of the clip-on iPod Shuffles earlier in the year, so the iPhone brings my iPod army to seven strong. (Why five? Because I use different colors to represent different moods. Always grab "green for go" on the way out the door, for example.)
Didn't buy any new camera or lenses this summer, but did invest in a whole bunch of new lighting gear. Umbrellas and stands that might not get too much use here, a couple of 580EX II flash heads that might, and the 240 EX Macro Twinlite that certainly will. There's a greenhouse down in Doha that proved how badly I needed one, and now can hardly wait to go tackle it again. (The first attempt was a total wash.)
Came back with desperately-needed new clothes (the fashions for sale around here are abysmal) and four new pairs of glasses, including two pairs of prescription sunglasses with polarized lenses. One of those is the magnetic clip-on style, so for switching back and forth between polarized views, critically important because as soon as I walked out of the optometrist with them on, I had to immediately order polarizing filters for all my lenses. I just couldn't believe how different the world looked, and I wanted immediately to shoot it. But shouldn't look through a polarizing fiter with polarized glasses on, so that switchable pair will be my "working glasses."
Got a new Fireward Card Reader for getting my photos onto the computer. Though, regrettably, my G4 Powerbook seems to have died. Still, my Windows laptop from the University has Firewire, and it's drastically more efficient than USB. (Though, unfortunately, Windows can't natively read RAW files like Macs can.)
Oh, and one change that I'm feeling constantly is the benefit of wireless Mighty Mice for both computers, and a wireless keyboard for the Mini. With that 37" screen, I'm doing lots of photo-editing from the couch now. Though I really wish Apple made a full-size wireless keyboard with a number pad - I use the hell out of that in Photoshop.
But the changes in my life aren't just acquisitions. Summer in America (and my eventual return here) altered a couple of long-standing habits. Most notably, I finally broke my addiction to reading. You might thing that's a strange goal, but my first three years here, it was quite literally my primary means of procrastination, six hours a day when there were lots of other things to do. And now feel little or no temptation at all, other than checking headlines on my iPhone.
Speaking of the phone, I finally replaced my old burned-out Vonage router, and now have unlimited minutes for calling the USA (or several other countries, for that matter). I've been paying them to maintain a number and a voicemail box in the US for years, so it's about time to take advantage of their voice over IP. Which should have big implications for my sense of isolation around here (and my American friends' sense that I too far long gone).
Discovered meditation this summer. That's been huge. I think my life will ever divide into before and after for me.
Have also cut my coffee intake to about a third of what it was (down from two full pots a day to two thirds of a pot). The first couple of weeks back here were during Ramadan and in a hotel room, and thus was drinking much less coffee than I would have liked, thus lowering my tolerance. And it doesn't get along with my meditation anyway. (It does not help one meditate when one needs to pee all the time.)
So, tomorrow, the new semester starts, and our classrooms have new smart boards in them, which should be an interesting learning curve but ultimately a positive game changer. Have always hated the sensation of chalk dust on my fingertips, though have tolerated it rather ably. Thankfully, though, this will be my first new year here in which we're not changing textbooks. And thankfully too, my request was met to teach the higher level for the second time this semester. I warned them for years not to ever give me the higher level because I knew it would spoil me, and it certainly did last semester. I don't ever want to go back to the beginners again.
So, a status report of sorts, in time for the most drastic change of all? Finally getting this website in motion, "coming back out" into some light of day, and sharing my photography and art again with new themes, new places, new subjects, and a new titling scheme that caters to those who don't care for embedding the titles in my prints. (They're still there, but much less imposingly.) Oh, and new print providers. (Losing daPrints was the hardest thing about leaving deviantART, because it took ages to find another comparable level of service.)
Still waiting on the new desk later this month, and hopefully a new Cintiq by December, and hopefully an exciting new lens for shooting architecture by February, but I've been "dormant" far too long.
Nothing motivates me to finish art like an audience, so hopefully my artistic life is about to evolve back into something much better.
Oh, and did I mention that I'm a year older now?
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wow someday I will get a number to catch up via voice over IP....
Posted by: Gregg Cook | 02 October 2009 at 05:30 PM