My computer crashed and I fumbled in its recovery thus rendering myself without a Net connection at home for a week now..... I'm still without a connection at home and registering this entry over lunch time at the office.

I had at first cursed the viruses and spammers who about brought this disaster. I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms without access to the virtual world for a few days ..... not being able to play my busy-body role in the various forums and not being able to reply to emails and unable to weild my 'sword' in response to a couple of ridiculous threads (eg. "Bokeh on a Nikon 85 f1.4 is the best in the world" and "Canadian-made Leicas are Bogus").

After this initial bout of cold turkey, I realized that being away from WWW was a blessing in disguise. After initially wondering how to kill time in the evenings being disconnected, it suddenly made me realize that I'd been putting alot of other stuff to one side for many months now.

On my shelf were publications and books that I'd accumulated over the last 8 months and had not even flipped a single page to read yet........ until now.

Collecting dust, I had the following that needed my attention....

1. a biography on the life and works of W Eugene Smith
2. a copy of Requim
3. 60 Years of Photographs by LIFE photographers
4. National Geographic's Greatest Adventures
5. 4 issues of Grain Magazine
6. 3 issues of Photo i Magazine
7. the entire manual of the Olympus 5060W

I'd spent the last 5 days literally devouring these books and magazines in an effort to come clean with my laziness. Reading actual print now seems so much more enjoyable than reading much of the same stuff on the Net.

I also actually spent the last few evenings catching up on a stack of DVDs and cable TV.

I was actually going to call the IT people from my office to drop by and recover the PC..... I think I'll leave that till the end of the month.

I didnt realize it until this incident that I had turned into an Internet Addict.

Its GREAT being a couch potato in the evenings now with a book in hand and the TV in front of me.

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I called Tay Kay Chin on the phone a couple of days ago and he'd just returned from a few weeks in Italy. He needed this short sabbatical and he's totally recharged having covered Capri, Rome and a few other cities in search of rejuvination and new inspirations.

His book "Panoramic Singapore" will be going to print soon. With an initial tiny run of 1000 copies, its going to be one rare publication (I hear that 100 copies are going to be autographed by the President and put up for auction to benefit a charity)


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Friend Darren Soh just returned from New York with a coveted PDN award for Student Work with his submission "While You Were Sleeping". Other Singaporeans picking up awards were NY-based John Clang (advertising) together with Yang Tan (advertising) and Jonathan Tay (advertising).

When will we see the day that a homegrown picks up an award in Photojournalism?

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Back to being away from my PC at home........ I've started to dream again of other things that have nothing to do with the Net....... but nonetheless still photography related.

Just had a spooky dream last night.

I dreamt that a camera manufacturer came up with a sensor that cut down over exposed areas of an image by 2 to 4 EVs ...... effectively a digitally fluid ND filter where it identifies areas of an image that are blown out whites and cuts down exposure values on these specific areas so that the overall image exhibits an exposure latitude of no more than 5 stops maximum.

Dreamt too that some crazy manufacturer released a digital camera with a dedicated grayscaled sensor without color!!!!!

Is this a premonition of where some of this digital technology will head towards over the next few years?

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17 June

I had lunch with Theirry Delarue today an old time favorite .... the Il Fiore ..... they need a renovation job bad but the food was just as good.

Theirry's exhibiting next week at the Photographers' Gallery at the MITA Building. His body of 20 works revolve around the theme 'Sensual Singapore' and I accepted his kind invitation to be at the opening cocktail party.

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