Mowaššaħiration!

Woah! What a relief! After passing more than half of Ramadhan going to work everyday, I am now relieved as I did start my little vacation for the last 10 days of the month of Ramadhan, which will be followed of course by Eid Al-Fitr (i.e. the feast). So we have here some good 2 weeks or a bit more even which I'm trying to fill it with everything I can grab; Sleeping, camera work, sleeping, gaming, sleeping, and of course typing something for this blog - Too bad I can't find any room for my conlanging activities though. Yet, I'm still posting weekly on my Ayvarith's Instagram page (every Friday), but honestly, I do miss working with the rest of the conlangs and scripts that I've used to create. I think though that it is a good thing to focus on one conlang for some time to develop it further. Anyway, as the time goes by, I'm slowly setting up my camera and working with the sky (no results so far) as well as doing some of the projects that I've been planning to do for a long time now.

Mowaššaħ-ired

Well, a fancy subtitle, parallel to "inspired." If the reader is not familiar with what "Mowaššaħ" is, well it is just a form of singing that developed and made popular in Andalusia during the Islamic/Arabian rule over the Iberian peninsula. I'm a fan of this folk art in general, specially when such songs are performed by Sabah Fakhri [صباح فخري].
One of these songs (or Mowaššaħát) sparked in me the idea of some photo that I wanted to perform for some time now (months in fact), and it took me a while to get that mood to work with it and even to decide about the look that I wanted. To be honest, I didn't decide about the look that I wanted UNTIL I've started setting up the lights and camera! But first, let me get you into the mood with me in this, with the Mowaššaħ itself:



I hope the recording is good enough though. Most of these recordings date back to the 90s and before. I think it is also proper to put the lyrics down so it would reflect on the image later on as I go through its details:

I Yearn with eagerness to some lands - Where in I've seen the beauty of Salma

I've drank therein intoxicated water - From the hand of the cold drink bearer

The inspiration here comes from the first verse of the first line only. Even though, personally, listening to this music time after time gets me somewhat in an intoxicated mood. As I've mentioned before, I didn't really realize how would go about preparing or shooting this one, but I had 2 major images in my head: a globe, and a face (my face of course since I have no one to help and because it reflects something in me).

أحن شوقاً
Yearn with Eagerness

As I started putting the gear in another room to try and figure out what to do, I realized then that I would be sitting looking at this globe miniature. However, I wanted movement, and that yields that I must use a slow shutter, and a slow shutter yields the fact that I drag the shutter (or use the 2nd-curtain sync mode). Ridiculously, this option cannot be activated with my speedlites UNLESS the speedlite is connected to the camera AND no wireless option is turned on. Unlike the HSS mode (i.e. high-speed mode), where I can connect a speedlite to the camera and control another speedlite via wireless to shoot in HSS, this is not the case with 2nd-curtain sync. For those who do not really know what is 2nd-curtain sync: If you take a regular shot using a speedlite for a moving object with a relatively slow shutter speed, the movement would appear backward, and hence the 2nd-curtain option would be required to trigger the flash JUST before closing the shutter at the end of the exposure (of course we are talking here in terms of milli- and microseconds). Why would I need it for the globe? Well, I was turning this by hand and if the speedlite was triggered at the beginning of the exposure, my hand could be there obscuring the view (because the speedlite light would freeze the motion at the moment it strikes the body while the shutter is open). However, trying hard to make it all in a single shot, my trials were in vain. The globe itself didn't even budge with an air blower! I could move it by hand, but it was hard to move it with air, however strong it was (almost flipped the miniature itself but the globe itself didn't move!). So, it was time to break it down to chunks, and collect them together in post-processing.

The first chunk was to record the globe as it rotates separately, and then shoot myself for another chunk and merge the two. That also didn't work because the motion blur of the globe was not so obvious; I was using the ambient and flash light together here (and even used ND filter but then removed it) to fix the situation, but probably the shutter speed should have been a bit faster? slower? I really couldn't say. So, I ended up shooting several shots for the globe on various positions and then simply blending them together in post-process, in hope that that would give out a motion sense! Looking at it now, I don't think it is so though, except, maybe, for some apparent shake on the edges of the sphere (in the full size image) which mark some motion is there. This shake, I believe, is not a real motion shake, but merely an artifact from overlapping various frames; I believe.

100% Crop for one side of the globe in the original image.
Click to enlarge.

Left to say, I've tried to add some "dreamy" look to the whole image in post-processing (using specific techniques in editing). I would be using the Clarity slider if it was one image only, but with such a blend, it would be hard kind of balance all together across the frames. I did in fact use the Clarity slider for one frame, and that's the one including me, to reduce the rigidness of my face! After finishing the whole blend, I've added a golden tint to the whole image; Something which I've tried to introduce using the white balance in-camera but it didn't work quite well (the effect was hard to notice so to say).

Finale

Here we go; One project down and some few others left! And I need to work around them ASAP before my vacation is over and be back to the daily routine the fatigue. In fact, I wanted to talk about another image which I've created this week in this blog post, but I've preferred to keep it for another post (otherwise this thing would be way too long here!).
Meanwhile, I'm trying to have the time with myself, isolating myself from the rest of the world because apparently I'm not on the same page as the world is. It's hard to explain or maybe it is hard for ME to explain but it is like the feeling how you feel when you think about something being a complete waste of time and effort, and no use in trying to fix it. This is close to what I feel in the current days. The thought of resigning and just get some time for myself is a frequent visitor to my mind, but yet I do realize the serious consequences of such decision. And this is what keeps me walking; Just walking…
Well, for the time being, let me just get rid of those ideas that I'm bound to work with my camera for the time being, and let's hope I do catch something interesting in the sky other than the simple stars that I usually catch now... now that would be such a great breakthrough!

Another boring "deep sky" shot (stack of shots in fact) with lot of artifacts.
Shot on May 28^th, using Hα filter (converted to B&W).

Mental Diaspora…

Some weeks passed without counting them. I had to stop writing in this blog for a while (and the Arabic one too of course) after some drastic downfall in my mother's health; something almost costed her her life. Even though she is in a better condition somewhat but it is far from being the normal-her, as she is mostly bound to bed here at home and I'm trying, with the rest of the family, to take care of her and most importantly of all, to raise her self-esteem and make her smile despite the painful times.
Meanwhile, I was in fact trying to prepare for some photographic experiments which eventually were put on hold after the events, and trying slowly to get back to the pace and even trying to force myself to work on some projects.
I know, though, that some photographers advise against forcing oneself to work with the camera and leave it to inspiration alone, and initially I'm in that line of thought, but circumstances right now require some special measures, and probably forcing myself might take my mind off from the domestic problems that plague my life for the time being.

Let's Cook!

I've attended (and will in the near future) a workshop with members of the group given by the leader of the group which was about the imagination of the photographer and how to develop it. Our main theme for the practical part of the workshop was "kitchen utensils."
The topic of the workshop was, in some sense, forcing your brain to think differently about ordinary subjects (with a side dish of planning beforehand).

Boring Cold
Canon EF 50mm + B+W 920 IR filter,
f/9, 320^-1sec, ISO200.

Before the practical part, I've picked a box of utensils which I didn't really consider what was in it, and thus I had no time to explore or think about what to do until I reached the meeting place. Anyway, the first idea to pop in my mind was to use a friend with 2 ladles as hands and show some boredom, as seen in Boring Cold. To add flavor to this shot specifically, an infrared filter was placed on lens (using my converted camera here and 580EXII speedlite on camera with diffuser). I didn't feel comfortable with this one, and probably my friend here didn't gauge his expression perfectly (trust me, modeling needs skills). I changed to my second idea which was inspired by the Jolly Roger flag (and, let's not talk how I got the inspiration).

Kuwaiti Jack Nickolson
Canon EF 50mm, f/9, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

Using the same converted camera but without any filter on the lens, and also a speedlite here, the Kuwaiti Jack Nickolson was supposedly to be looking like the Jolly Roger, but with the facial expressions here and the hardships in holding the ladles in proper positions, the idea drifted away from that. Anyway, I liked the looks here so I worked for some time on enhancing the sharpness and the colors (specially the eyes and the mouth) to make it look more like a maniac's profile shot! The sharpness here was exaggerated on purpose and it was not done with convenient plugins (e.g. NIK or Noise Ninja), but it was done manually using layers in Photoshop (implementing the High Pass command). After these 2 shots, seeing that I don't work well with faces, I decided to concentrate more on the abstract lane of my thoughts and started playing around with the same ladles to come up with something unusual.

Metallic Lane
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/14, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

I've finally arrived at that idea when I made a contact between the bottoms of the ladles (and it was hard to stabilize the set). Usually in such situations, I automatically switch my mind to think about macro details and look for abstracts and shapes, just like in this situation with Metallic Lane. A twist to the WB was applied to give it that bluish luster instead of the dull metallic one.
Major problem with these experiments is that the ladles were scratched and not polished in a good way, and however I washed them the stains and scratches remained. The practical part of this workshop was not the final deadline to present some work but it was a practice under the guidance of the founder and the teacher of the group, and we agreed to give results one week later which unfortunately passed without doing anything, since I've been busy with my messy life. However, I got new ladles with good polish and worked on them later on, as I will explain later in Rain-Bubbles section below.

Nailed It…

Before the dramatic events with Mom, I was already working on a little project, related to my previous post, The Fakhroid Muse, which is about getting inspired from a song or songs from the Syrian master, Sabah Fakhry (صباح فخري). Might be a good idea to read that blog post if you didn't.
I've been working on this idea, as I've said, before the dramatic events, and even after Mom being out of the hospital, I couldn't put a mind to it and finish it until just recently. I have to say though that I did a lot, a lot, of testing shots. The main problem was that the set was on ground level and I had to find a way to levitate the camera up to a certain level from the set (beside finding the good lens and the good position for speedlites).

Lovely Pain
Voigtländer 20mm, f/4.5, 4000^-1sec, ISO200.

Generally speaking, the idea was inspired from the same song discussed in the Fakhroid Muse post, but a different line:

أثاريك نسيتني مع الأيام
ورضيت تفوتني على الآلام

Just to find you've forgot about me along the days
And you were satisfied to let me through the pains

The second line of this verse is the one that ticked in my mind and decided to implement the idea here. I've spent some time drawing a valentine heart on a cardboard and pinning some nails in it as it can be seen in Lovely Pain. In the beginning, the idea was to use 15mm fisheye lens because its perspective would help on forming the valentine heart more clearly (because of the distortion), but the wide field of view made it problematic to use such a lens, specially with speedlites placed around the set. As it can be seen above, the shutter speed is high, because I wanted to kill the ambient light completely (and of course that requires working in High-Speed mode).
I wanted to work with red food coloring in the beginning too, but apparently that was hard to show on metallic heads and (since I had no model to work with except of myself) it would make a mess for me, thus it was safer to work with red gel filter placed on the main speedlite. One speedlite was actually enough, sort of, but added another one on its side (was planned to light the feet alone), and for this we have here light heads sparkling (and lighter red tone). At the end, I've changed to Voigtländer 20mm lens for it is not as wide as the 15mm fisheye lens. Working with this lens can be tricky somewhat since it is manual completely and I had to re-focus as I adjusted the elevation and the direction of the camera several times (beside changing the spot to be under the focus several times).
The tricky part here is after shooting: on camera's LCD view, everything was alright, but when the file is opened on PC with large monitor, the valentine heart is barely recognizable and would require longer time of concentration to realize that it is a heart. Maybe it was my mistake even to draw it in reverse like that!
I'm still on the lookout for more inspiration and probably from the same song still. I do have some ideas already as I'm typing this, but the vivid glimpse of this idea would require having a model - someone to work with; something I'm not good at, and not available as well for me (of course, unless I pay money for a professional model I believe). I'll keep that for later though.

Rain-Bubbles

As a continuation for the kitchen utensils project which was started with the workshop mentioned in the first section of this post, Let's Cook!, I've tried to work with new ladles I've purchased specially for this project, and they are with good polish (but completely though). Big, small, and some tiny metallic container; I liked how they looked in the store without really thinking what to do with them. It took me some time to wander and to look, and finally got the idea of shooting reflections in some way, since these utensils do look like half spherical mirrors (concave or convex). Anyway, I did reflections, but in some other way. Completely different way!

Qtar 1 (droplets 1)
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/10, 250^-1sec, ISO100.

As for the title of the image above, Qtar, I somewhat miss the Maltese language so I decided to use Maltese to name this series of images. After roaming my mind about, I finally sought hanging the ladle on the edge of a table (using clamp) and putting some drops of corn syrup (as a substitute for glycerine); water won't help much here with its low viscosity. Of course a setting as plain as this seem boring, so we have to add some colors to add life to the abstract, and thus I got colored sticks (like those tongue depressors used by doctors) out of my accessories arsenal, and placed them on the top of the ladle making a small window for the lens to peak into the droplets.

Full setting used with 2 speedlites. As it can be seen, the tripod legs were opened wider to get lower and closer to the ladle. Upon the ladle sit a number of colored sticks. Click to enlarge.

The first problem to encounter is which proper lens to use and I have discovered that sometimes, lot of times, we tend to complicate things instead of going directly to the problem. After trying a lot of lighting methods, and lenses with extension tubes, I reached the decision that I should keep it simple: single lens, no tubes, and even speedlite without any modifiers. The only thing here, as seen in the settings, the speedlites were not pointing directly but almost lighting the edge of the ladle which in turn spread the light all around the droplets.

Qtar 2
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/3.5, 200^-1sec, ISO100.

Qtar 3
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/2.8, 200^-1sec, ISO100.

Qtar 4
Canon EF 100mm macro, f/10, 250^-1sec, ISO100.

As it can be seen here with this series of 4 shots, each change in the aperture (i.e. f-number) or the direction or power of the speedlite can produce interesting results; all that without touching anything in the settings but only changing the parameters in the camera and speedlite. Not to say also, the order of the colored sticks can be changed or the colors themselves (or even use something else other than sticks). Such a simple experiment can have great variety of results and the expectations are limitless!
Probably of the 4 above, Qtar 3 is the most liked one. Processing these images underwent a number of cleaning processes and adding lens blur to remove some of the scratches in the background (except for Qtar 3).

Finale

My mind is scrambled right now after all the dramatic events. Somewhat the world doesn't mean much for me. I don't feel it. But in the middle of all this sway and trying hard to concentrate and to work on something I like, to take my mind off from my personal problems, despite the fact that my work of art would mostly reflect some of the personality side, as in Lovely Pain.
On the other hand, my addiction to games is increasing as well as a way to escape reality (and people), as well as my worries. What does the future hold? Would I be able to see the outside world again? I'm going back to work by next Sunday, just to add more to my mental struggles…

Fakhroid Muse…

Well, schools are back here and traffic jams as well of course. The typical "normal" life I usually lead is here. What is not normal for me now is the fact that I'm not traveling this year anywhere. No plans so far.
My friends urged me to follow them to Germany for Photokina event (even if not from the very first day of the opening) but anyway I couldn't just skip everything on my shoulders and fly away; beside the budget that I'm trying to manage. According to news, our club did pretty well and the most astonishing part is the fact that we are the first "club" to participate in the history of the expo, and the first Arabian party to participate as well! Unfortunately, I don't have a proper coverage to post right now but I might try to get some for later.
Meanwhile, after ensuring that everything is going fine with the group, I asked for pardon from the founder to withdraw for a while from all the activities in the group, mainly to touch my camera more and create something.

Muse

My hands and mind are eager to work with some panorama, but the lack of locations in mind still put a block on my way. To find some rest, I decided to try to work on something at home and try hard to push my imagination further. For this reason, I've started to attend the theaters for a while, but the most significant effect took place via music, and specifically, Arabic classical music.



I've been fascinated lately with his voice: Sabáħ Fakhry [صباح فخري]. Even though I do remember watching him on TV when I was just a kid but I wasn't much into this art back then of course, and my mentality had changed drastically since then of course. His voice and the lyrics of the Syrian folk songs as well as the traditional classical Arabic Mowaššaħát do make a mesmerizing mix; specially the song posted above, with the title Send Me A Letter. I will type the lyrics at the end of this post if dear non-Arab reader wishes to know what the song is about.
Listening to Sabáħ would eventually form some ideas and created a sort of muse inside my head, but still lot of work is required to perfect this sense. My first trial is sloppy but I will post it here anyway, since this is all I could do for now; and probably I will try to make it better next time if I get any new "museful" input! 

إن كنت هويت ونسيتني
(if you have loved and forgot about me)
Sigma 70-300mm @120mm, 250^-1sec, f/29, ISO100

In the beginning, I was thinking of something with a romantic look, but my mind doesn't wander much into that arena. I wanted to point out a break of heart, some emotional breakdown of some sort, and after doing some tiny brainstorming, I arrived at the idea of reflecting a line from the lyrics off a broken mirror; the envelopes and drops of color (mimicking blood) came out later to fill some of the emptiness which was abundant around the writing. The hard time was delivered for breaking the mirror, placing the mirror, and placing the speedlite properly.
I decided to work here with my converted camera, and with a calibration from the WB disk, the colors were almost back to normal (some bits of color fixing was required later). The shot above is in fact a tone-mapped HDR slide, which after all, probably, wouldn't differ much from editing a single RAW file in a proper manner, but it was an experiment I loved to make. Later on, it was time to take "real" Infrared shots with this converted Canon EOS 7D…

 (IR) إن كنت هويت ونسيتني
(if you have loved and forgot about me)
Sigma 70-300mm @120mm, 250^-1sec, f/11, ISO100

Now, because of applying the infrared filter on the Sigma lens, I had to decrease the f-number a bit to allow more light in and make the exposure faster (even though the camera was on tripod). The fact that the camera is converted would still, at such high f-number such as f/29, require a second or so for exposing with the infrared filter on (threshold=650nm). The drop in the f-number proved drastic in terms of depth of field here as the envelopes and the cracks as well got blurred quite easily while focusing (using AF function) on the reflection of the writing itself. Processing the image later was quite easy but fixing the tilt (unlike the first version) made some out-of-ratio crop (i.e. 3:2) and produced quite a space on the left side. The first image was cropped as well but according to the ratio (3:2) and the tilt was not fixed there.
Now, generally speaking, it was sloppy idea as I said before and I had some imagination for it to be taken with a candle and some quill and ink. However, seems, to me, that such depiction is quite "soft" and doesn't reflect the meanings behind a broken heart.



Listening again and again to Sabáħ Fakhry has some hallucinating effect to my mind, if I dare say. For my break from the group's activity, I'm thinking of getting inspired constantly from his songs (though lot of them are actually traditional and Syrian folk). Thus, I might as well continue to think of something to create out of the lyrics of his songs, or at least the first song posted above. Sounds weird that despite the fact that I'm an Arab, I'm indeed discovering my own culture like I've never seen it before, and even deeper a bit to the limit of reading about Arabic musical culture and Maqams, beside calligraphy (which is a passion as well). Sad to realize that we have a rich culture, abandoned by its people…

Finale

Well, I won't go strolling about life matters for now and all my ups and downs and mood swings. As I've mentioned above, I'm going to put the lyrics for the song above (first Youtube post). The language is colloquial Syrian Arabic, and in translating I'll try to stick to the meaning as much as possible (and of course no rhyme). Notice that some lines and verses are repeated all over and over again and that's why one song takes such a long time. Each repetition is supposedly done in a different vocal style or Maqam. The lyrics are as the following (but without an order of stanzas or lines):

Send me a letter and let me rest*
if though it is a blame
but don't abandon me

Your absence has been long
and I'm waiting
and your heart is in rejoice

If you have loved
and forgot about me
and been cruel to me
without consideration
Just send me a letter
and let me rest*

Been patience with you
and tasted bitterness
and sent to you news and news
just to find that
you have forgot about me
along the days
and you were satisfied
to let me through the pains
but send me a letter and let me rest*

I have a God who knows me well
Who will bring justice
for the heat of my sighs
I cannot say you are the culprit
I'll be patient with my sorrows always
just send me a letter and let me rest*

* "rest" as opposite to worrying about something or someone.

Well, I hope dear reader enjoyed some of the music for this post. I'll just hope that I'll create more work and get inspired more to work on some of these projects!

Paralyzed...

As the title says. This week I've been paralyzed. Not much activity (except of some self portrait issues) and all of that because of, mainly, the car issues. In the middle of the week we had a special religious occasion and it is customary to fast on this day so I did fast 2 days in fact - and with fasting, my powers go down a bit and I wouldn't be able to do much after working hours. some ideas are there, but to work them out, I would need either more resources or, so to say, more objects to buy and/or help (something I seriously lack).

Source: B&H

My savior cable turned out not much of a savior. However, it still works. After getting the Vello 33' cable, I've found out that I can't access the speedlites via the menu in camera but I have to do mostly everything manually. Strangely, this problem persists only when the speedlite is attached to the far end, but I can access the menus when the speedlite is attached to the main head connected to the hot shoe on camera.
After contacting B&H they did indeed help me out and sent me a Return Form to be sent through UPS, but unfortunately, this service doesn't work out for international destinations like from Kuwait. Thus, I have to keep myself contented with what I have right now. The main thing is applying High-Speed options which might be problematic, but the wireless triggering works just fine so probably I would have some work out around this problem.

Source: B&H

On the other hand, the new ColorMunki is working just fine and I've already calibrated my new laptop and the desktop monitors. What is left is to try out and calibrate some projector (which I don't really need but to get the hang of it) beside doing some printer calibration when possible. All of that is on hold for the time being till I finish my car problems!
What I like about this ColorMunki is the more sophisticated options it has (beside of course the basic calibration which a beginner can still use). It has options to calibrate according to the ambient light or according to a light temperature (e.g. D50, D65) and so on. My monitor now looks significantly darker than it was with the calibration done from the old simple ColorMunki (with monitors settings set to default or factory settings).

Other toys are just fine and the pinhole mount specifically needs more experimenting, but initially the test is fine. For the time being, I'm thinking of using my light meter to initiate the calculations for finding out the required exposure time when using the pinhole (of f/222). To find the required exposure here I would have to measure the light level at a specific f-number and then build up the exposure time up to f/222. I will try the simple formula:

V = 2*Log(N) / Log(2)

Where V is the number of stops needed, and N is the f-number. However, for N here, I would substitute for the difference in f-number (i.e. ΔN) between f/222 and the initial f-number (say f/8 for example). I'm not sure this is mathematically correct, because I think I'm suppose to drive ΔV and not simply V. Anyway, my mathematical expertise is not good enough to derive such a formula. My main, and simple, derivation is from the equation mentioned in Wikipedia's page here.

Of course then, after calculating the stops (V in this case) I would use it in the following formula to get the required time for the exposure:

T = S * 2^V

Where T is the Time that we need to know for the exposure, and S is the shutter time calculated at the initial f-number (f/8 for example as stated above) by means of the light meter. You might think or feel it is kind of ridiculous to work with all these equations just to use a pinhole (while you have a set of lenses that I can use still with TTL systems), but trust me, it takes a physicist or a mathematician to realize the sweetness of such experimenting and the joy when you find out that you've done the right thing.

Away from this mess, I'm still spending some time with other people's photos and trying to enhance them somehow. Lot of nice photos but the noise level makes it horrible to work with such photos. Anyway, I'm advising everyone I can reach to get a real camera instead of a phone camera.

The Gaze
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3,
400^-1sec, ISO200.

In the meantime, I've decided to work with my own camera little bit and do a half-portrait; after all, I didn't take much photos of myself for a long time, and I didn't even edit much of my photos to make some of them as pieces of art. The setup was time-consuming and I had to stand, literally, in a jungle of tripods. 

I've taken many shots with different setups of the speedlites and among the tens of shots Ive taken, only one that got through, even with some lighting problems. 

The Gaze II (Edit)

The main problem here is that I was using the 430EXII speedlite with a honeycomb grid to act as a spotlight and give extra light to the eye area, after lighting the whole face with 580EXII speedlite plus reflector. Anyway, pointing the spotlight is so critical and I've never got it right after all, and as you can see in the images, the closest I could get is the area under my eye, on the cheek and thus we have an overexposure in this area specifically.

The Gaze III (Edit)

However, I'm glad that one shot survived at least from the tens of shots I've made (and how ironic in the beginning I was using the speedlites on the wrong side of my body). Everything in this experiment was set on a tripod; two speedlites, monitor, and camera. Moving was something delicate. My main idea in the beginning was totally different in which I wanted to use some flash drag technique while moving my face (to create a ghosting effect) but for this case I would probably need a darker atmosphere rather than the hall in which I've conducted this experiment. In hope that I would be able to do this soon. Just thinking about the configurations and the settings that I have to do makes me a bit sluggish and lazy to do all of that. For this experiment though, I might use a simple hatchet configuration, which is made by placing 2 light sources on the sides of the face, and yet because I have 2 different speedlites here with 2 different powers, I might as well have to change the distances accordingly, making the 580EXII further away from my face (or reduce its power accordingly) - and probably the guide numbers would help with this. New venturing, let's hope it goes smoothly without much headache!

Finale

As of writing these words, I'm still struggling with my car yet and I'm not sure there is an easy way out to fix the damn A/C. Living without an A/C in your car in Kuwait means a catastrophe for most of the fields of your life - because you need to do your business outside and with no A/C, you are simply a melted chocolate!

After the shock from the original car dealer which offered fixes for 520 K.D. (approx. US$1500), I've pulled the car from there without fixing it and now I'm trying to find a good substitute. Some times I do get some hope from some garage owners, and some times they get me down, but after all one thing is certain: it's not going to be a cheap fix. I'll be just happy to finish this topic and have some peace of mind before Ramadhan's arrival and the beginning of the fast.
Mom's situation worries me and it does sound more like a chronic issue. Despite the fact that she seems to be in a good health and she goes in and out of the kitchen as she used to do before, but the matter with the dialysis is not finished yet and my elder sister brings some bad news now and then. Poor mother, we keep the bad news away from her to keep her calm, and God knows what's waiting for her. Just wish if I can give her one of my kidneys if that was possible. The least I'm hoping for for the time being, is some reduction in her dialysis times.

All what I want for the few coming days, is to stare at the sky at night and see some stars. Just, some stars...

Busy Busy Busy

It was one hard day at work... running here and there (and yesterday was as well) and checking with the latest updates and news at work.

I hate Mondays, but not because they are the first day of work, 'cos they aren't here, but most of problems happen in this day. I had a plan to help my friend by making a contact to someone and pray for some hope that I would get a feedback, but since it is Monday, the person I need to talk to was not there. Also, while I was driving my car today and listening to the Superstation RKFM, I heard DJ Linda propose a question in some contest, and she mentioned a website, I really wanted to answer that question but I couldn't follow her with the website and google did not help either. Monday!

While I was googling though, I found out that many people hated the superstation RKFM and some hated Linda herself... I wonder why is that? I mean, well, to me I'm not a radio fan, and not a fan of Superstation as well, since they play lot of music that just don't meet my mental needs, but I would say such bad things or express my anger in that hideous way all over the blogs! Would I? I hate when they play rock music and rap in the early hours of the morning when people are just waking up and need something soothing to let them smile by early morning while they go to hell... OPS sorry, to work. After all, I see that Linda is doing her best... I don't know her personally, but I think she's funny at sometimes.

I still feel some guilt after leaving the little kitty on the grass jut before the Marina Crescent in front of the seashore facade... the looks in the mother's eyes, that stopped to be available all the time in our yard, were like talking to me and say "where did you take my son?" I hate this feeling, but then I reckon back and convince myself that I would feel worse, if he died in front of me without being able to do anything to protect him.

Ironically and amazingly today amid the busy ups and downs at work, I was sparked with a thought of a poem and I typed it down. I submitted the poem as a contest entry for the Bite-Size contest in www.writing.com. I called it "With The Voice of The Silence" and it is a short dedication to all the deaf friends I knew online so far.