Dear Diary ...

Photo diarys are fun. And from the feedback I received from my last one, you seem to like them too. So I've put together a photo diary of my easter long weekend.

In a nutshell:

Friday - lazy. Long bath, tv, PC, sleeping in etc etc.
Saturday - Leicester Square, British Museum, Camera Cafe, the theatre
Sunday - Pancakes for breakfast courtesy of pancake king Paul, easter eggs, a long walk around Wimbledon Common
Monday - lazy again. A bit of shopping in Wandsworth and then gourmet delights for dinner.

Follow this link to my photo diary of the easter long weekend.

Enjoy

You know where the devil is

DSCF0319_edited-2
Originally uploaded by bloggerpaul.

You know, I have been umming and ahhing about what new digital camera to buy.

First, I decided that I would by a super-zoom. I like the fact that they are reasonably priced have up 12x zoom. But I am concerned that the actual photos aren't as good as they might be.

Which then made me decide to buy an SLR. Great photos. Great flexibility ... but also a great hunk of camera to lug around. Not to mention the additional (and substantial) cost of extra lenses.

But then I read an article about the immediacy of compact cameras. So here I am, decided that I will buy the smallest, thinest camera possible. Until today.

Went for a walk around Wimbledon Common with MS's 10x super-zoom camera. It was not perfect(shutter lag, for one), but that zoom was great fun. And I got to get just a little artsy - see how the background of the photo in ths entry is blury ... fancy, eh?

Looks like I am back where I started.

London vs Melbourne. You decide

The pic on the left was taken at Portebello Market in Notting Hill and the pic on the right was taken at the beach at Dromana in Melbourne's Mornington Penninsula. Two totally opposite settings, yet two very similar themes.

Telephone booth red

Fire engine red? They should have called it telephone booth red! I took this whilst in Covent Garden last week. Five big red telephone booths all in a row. Very iconic.

Caricreature

MS and I went to Covent Garden today and got these caricatures done (or as I like to say ... caricreatures) and we are not convinced that they look like us at all. Paul says it's certainly a caricature of my nose and chin and I think it's a pretty good likeness of MS's eyes and hair. But that's where the resemblances end.

What do you think?

Luke ... join the Dark Side

So, look ... of course I was just looking for an excuse to put this very cool gizmo on our site. If you are interested in making your own (and I know you are!) you can click here. For those of you who don't know me, I promise it is much funnier to those who do.

Not much else to report. Work has me going all over the country-side, so I can tell you that I have developed an interest to go and visit the south-west part of the country. Really very scenic. And so green.

Right, I am about to head off to start the day. Moo is keen to go to Covent Garden and Sat really is the day to do it. Hope all is well with you and yours.

Learn from the apprentice

Speak to your average pom and they will tell you that Australia (and Australians) are basically uncivilized, uncultured, and underdeveloped. The reasoning being that the country has only been around for 200 odd years (a sophism, in my mind). On returning recently, I thought I would highlight a couple of places Australia (or at least Melbourne) has it all over England in terms of how far along they are in the scheme of things.

1. Customer service
   
   As rule, customer service is atrocious in London (can't say for elsewhere in England yet). They just do not want to be there. The excuse the locals give me for this is that they are not paid to be polite. I always retort, 'Should they have to be?'
   
   
2. Driver's licence
   
   The UK still use paper licences. Worse still, in an effort to move across to a more modern card based approach, you are issued with both a card and the paper licence and both have to be presented when asked for. It will eventually move to a card-only basis, but the authorities are not saying when and don't seem to be in a rush.
   
   
3. PIN numbers
   
   Up until Valentines day this year, if you went into a store to do a direct debit purchase (aka EFTPOS) you signed the receipt to confirm the transaction. You weren't asked for a PIN. You couldn't use your PIN even if you wanted to. The holes-in-the-wall used them, but in-store PIN ... oh well, better late than never.
   
   Actually, banking is quite a bit behind here in comparison to Oz, but that will probably be subject to its own post one day.
   
   
4. Garbage collection
   
   Is done the old fashioned way. This is not such a silly thing as a quaint thing. The streets are often very narrow so I imagine it is near impossible to get the big automated truck down them. Still, I find it novel.
   
   
5. Shopping hours
   
   Or, rather, the lack of them. Thursday is late night shopping day when closing time is 7pm. Whoopie. On Sunday, most shops have to open late (10-11am) and close early (4pm) - including supermarkets - because that is what the law allows. Ok ... Oxford St stores close a bit late on Saturday, but all in all it can be tough to get to the store you want when you want.
   
   
6. Television licences
   
   Up until the early 70's, Australia funded the ABC by issuing television licences to homes wanting to use their television. Clearly, the powers that prevailed around that time realised how draconian and inefficient that system was and simply incorporated said funding into the tax system. It is 2006 and no such change is due to occur in the UK any time soon. In the meantime, I will pay the 100+ pound a year to run a television in our home ...
   
   
7. Pennies
   
   You can't buy anything with them, so why not get rid of them? When did Australia get rid of one and two cent pieces? Hands up who misses them?
   

Right, that will do for blight-bashing for now. One day soon I will do the opposite exercise - what the UK does much better than Oz (let's start with pay-as-you-go mobile ...)

OK Paul, get on with it

Right, so I have gone walkabout for a bit. No rhyme nor reason, just the way of things. So I will get on with it.

I don't know if Mel has covered this off yet, but my sister, MS, has moved in with us over the last couple of weeks. During this time she would have picked up on some of my quirks. Certainly, that I do not throw anything away. And more recently that, as effeminate as it sounds, I am really into bags.

Not girly bags. Not man bags. But my thought is that there is a perfect bag out there somewhere. Buggered if I can find it, though. My criteria are thus:

• One that can hold your laptop in case you need it. But this laptop holder should not take up too much space in the bag
• It should hold all your gym stuff. I like to go to gym in morning (not that you could tell at the moment) and that includes showering and heading off to the office. So the bag needs to hold a lot of stuff. I have found that 35 litres is about the right size.
  
• It should hold a magazine in a separate compartment to the main compartment - which is where the gym stuff would go - because I like to read magazines on the way home from work
• It must be small enough to take a carry-on luggage onto a plane
• The jury is out, but I think it has to be a backpack. And if it is a backpack it has to have those seat-belty things across the straps to secure it properly to ones self
• It has to aesthetically pleasing (read, conservative) enough to take to work
  

And it is this point I have had a problem with. Some of you would know that I picked up an-almost perfect Quiksilver bag. Does everything. But she's bright. Oh so bright. White camouflage. Can't use it in the office (well, not when seeing clients anyway).

So the search continues. Yesterday, I spent a good 2 hours opening and closing bags at Selfridges. I think I found my looking-like-business-laptop-come-overnight-carry-on-bag roller by a mob called Travelpro, but I resisted buying it just yet.

But resistance was futile as I moved from the luggage section into the Selfridges Technology section. Massive. Just massive. I managed to walk past the walkie talkies, the PDAs, the B&O, Bose and Tivoli sections, the camera and telescope sections. But I did buy one very small thing, the telephone you see in the picture. Actually, it is a Skype phone which plugs via USB into the PC. What for, you ask. For me, making or receiving a skype call meant running around the house and finding a mike and a pair of headphones. I had to reject a few phone calls because of this. The Tosh in the picture is rugged(-ish), portable and (almost) always on.

All we need are a few more takers at the other end ...

Hope all is well with you an yours.