Disappointment...

A sluggish week passed on. My vacation is over by now without doing something useful with my camera (or other projects). I was concentrating more on my camera work in fact.
I wanted to spend a night on Failaka island but the schedules with the ferry were screwed up and it was jammed in the middle of the week! I've never knew that people would go on it in the middle of the week that much; I was wrong with my calculations or it's just my luck, as usual. So, pictures from there was a far-reaching idea now.
On the other hand as well, I've tried to go inside the Aquarium, in the Scientific Center, to take pictures again like I did back in April, but I was disappointed and slammed out. I live in such a melancholic world indeed. Makes me urge myself to start some new vacation ASAP just to get away from all the restrictions here.

I've worked on plenty of images before going to Hajj, but it was a fast paced work to fill in my Ninth album from Ireland. Not much to be mentioned really. One panorama which was done before was done again but with time with change of the WB, which transformed the whole thing into some sort of a night scene. It was good enough for a QTVR but I was lazy to do a small one, only a large one (50MB in size) was done and kept for my own reference.

Living Night in Dominican Graveyard

Well, it's Thursday now and who knows what will happen. Nothing so special about this Thursday since I didn't start work yet (by next week), but maybe there is hope to do something with my camera? I hope...
In the meantime, I got two new books to read (or see). The first is How to Draw and Paint Fantasy Architecture, by Rob Alexander; the one I have has a different cover design than the one in Amazon, but the title and the author are the same!
The second book is The World Encyclopedia of Swords and Sabres by Harvey J. S. Withers. The one on Amazon is a bit different in title and cover colors, but the cover design is the same as mine. Ugh, the damn Amazon gadget in my blog window doesn't work to put the pictures of the books more easily!
I didn't start the second book yet. Hopefully, I can enrich my imagination and my sense of art by reading and viewing such books. I don't know how it would help me in photography but it might as well push me to do my own sketches, though I testify for myself that I've been bad with sketches, forever.

Well, time to post this and see what home chores I have to do (beside sleeping and eating). Until next Thursday, I hope more chances present themselves to me. It's really sluggish to have a camera without using it or being able to use it. Just out of boredom, I've decided to do something out of the context a little bit...

eĞalíŧ eĄiramramán yi adam liYifąal, hú liYadaą húta yisfal baYáħavah.

And don't ask for a translation please...

Facrad [fucQrud]*

The turbulance in my sleeping made me dull. Yesterday, I barely wrote some lines in my stories, after being asleep in the office for like 3 hours. I barely drove to the work place to make my attendance with the damn fingerprint, but I didn't want to make a sacrifice here by going back home with the same eyes. Everytime I remember how the situation should have been and how I did not get the cooperation that I was hoping for from colleagues to use my new "crack" for such machines, I feel very disappointed. We are waiting for an attendance scanner device to be installed in our building just so their highness would be comfortable and not afraid to do the fingerprint mimicking, and that means it might work by 2020, hopefully.

The yield for today is 1 verse, reaching line #720 as it is recorded in the original draft. Of course this is with the mistakes in numbering that were discovered before, but I keep it that way.

I got some of the stuff that I need before travelling: locks, dog leash, hook screws, extension plug. The most amusing part was to buy the locks. They were for KD4.3 each!! That is around US$12.9 for each. I can't deny there were some cheaper varieties but this one looked nice enough and I need two for my backpack and my suitcase. Why is it that high, I just don't know!
On the other hand, the dog leash was something like 20ft long (as written on the card that comes with it), but I would need something around 6 or 7ft only, so I'm going to check if I can cut it into smaller portions. I don't have a dog! But the leash will work with the hook screw to stabilize the camera (a bit) instead of using the tripod everytime (or sometimes you can't at all), and here how it works:

1. Connect the hook screw to your camera's base.
2. Connect the leash to the hook. The leash is better be longer than your height a bit.
3. Step on the leash on the ground and raise your camera up to the maximum you can go. Of course the maximum should be fit to your eye level.

I learnt this method from one of the books that I had on PDF. Hopefully I will mention my resource when I get back home. [Canon DSLR, The Ultimate Photographers Guide - 2008]

For some time, I think I'm falling in love with my own work. I don't mean to be a snob, or some arrogant, but working with some photos makes me eager to see the personalities that I've created out of ordinary photos. Not to say the owners of the photos were ugly or anything, but adding the sparkles and colors to some ordinary photos, makes my imagination go vivid and wild. Could it be used for story-writing some day? Maybe, who knows.

One of the words that I encountered today in my work with the translation, and did not find any words done for it before, was "separate." Thus from reading the Hebrew, Aramaic and the Arabic words for that meaning, I decided to make up the word "facrad" [fucQrud] (to separate). I wouldn't go to explain the various tenses for such a verb but maybe some main points worth mentioning here:
1. Verb: facrad [fucQrud], meaning: separate.
2. Verbal adjective: mifacrad [mifucQrud], meaning: separated or separate(adj).
3. Verbal donor (noun): facrúd [fucQrwd], meaning: separator.
4. Noun: facradah [fucQruduH], meaning: separation. Masculine.

The change in the word's gender in case of verbal adjectives or donor's name is due, by adding the (-iþ) ending to it, with "þ" meaning as "TH" in "thing."

* In Ayvarith, the "C" is similar to "S" sound but with more rounded lips that go outward. Close to the sound of "S" in the word "Sun" in English, or somehow close in sound to the German "ß."

Disappointment!

Disappointment... it is very disappointing. I just discovered that my abilities to sketch is not up to the task... at all.

I might have done some ornamentations or so, but sketching figured, specially in a away similar to those used in medieval manuscripts, is out of my skills. I asked my brother though to see if he can do something similar but he did not answer me at all on MSN!

As for the time being I'm continuing my work with the translation as I finished 2 verses and finished the transliteration for the 1st and the 2nd verses. OpenOffice might have created some problems for me with the foreign letters (foreign: not used in the English basic letters), I might have to switch back to Word, which is something I don't like at all. I might consider doing a manuscript-like effect without doing any sketches for persons. I will concentrate on translating and transliterating for the time being.

It's Thursday, and few minutes from now I will be out of this place and back home to have a nap and get out at night. I'm planning to start fasting starting from Friday, and with this hot weather it is really a challenge. Also, I might be able to go to Failaka island again this Friday (and hopefully I'll be fasting as well!!). So much pressure as it might seem... fasting and hot weather and also cruising out in this hot weather... well... fasting is about challenge in the first place.

If you ask why I'm gona start fasting, well, it is the month of Rajab now in the lunar calendar, and it is said fasting in this month has lot of rewards... not physical rewards that is! I did the same already for 2 months + Ramadhan (that is 3 months in total) in hot summer days last year, so hopefully I shall continue on the same path this year. Wish me luck!