On Politics...

Reactions to recently concluded drama by Wimal Weerawansa titled “Fast unto death” had been a good gage of the political maturity of my colleagues.

Some actually thought he would actually fast till he die! And he's doing it for real patriotic reasons etc. They couldn't really tell if Mahinda was with him or not till the last moment. They were touched by the resignation letter and some would have actually sacrificed their own lives for the cause of Wimal... These people sympathized with him and actually thought Ban Ki Moon would actually give a shit about it... Their history has close ties either with the JVP or UPFA; they voted Mahinda just because he's their candidate... They fought each other when JVP and UPFA parted, became allies when they formed governments together etc. etc.; And the JVP fraction followed Wimal when he left the JVP.

The second category actually thought Wimal ate munchie lemon-puff biscuits out of a big brown cardboard box which was marked “Manchie lemon-puff”! Lemon-puff? Really? Why not cake from Hilton? They have labeled cardboard boxes too.. And they genuinely thought that scanned piece of paper with an stupid agenda in hand writing is a real leak! This is the category of people who voted Sarath Fonseka just because Ranil or Somawansa asked them to. Wimal was once a hero for the JVPers but as soon as he left JVP he became their traitor of the decade. UNP never liked Wimal; he was a pain for them. But their ingenious brains simply could not put together the pieces of the puzzle to understand the amount of planning that went in to Wimal's drama. They didn't really understand whether it's staged or not; they just wanted to shout that's false...

The third; actually understood what's going on. They laughed; They predicted and they laughed again. First laugh was at Wimal's act; they predicted what's going to happen with it even to the detail of Mahinda offering him water... and the final laugh was at those from the above two categories. These are the people who made their own decisions in the presidential elections. They could have voted either Mahinda or Sarath; but not because of party affiliations but because they made informed decisions and actually cared about the outcome.

Photo per day progress

I just posted at http://365.photoweaver.net for the 46th consecutive day! I'd like to think that my photography has improved; but I know for a fact that now I'm more satisfied.

I no longer feel limited by the gear I have; I'm quite confident that 80% of the time I could make the photo I want with my existing gear. For the remaining 20% of the time; it's simply not worth it to invest thousands of dollars to capture those moments on digital storage.

I also feel that my 70-300 VR is quite obsolete in my camera bag. Its use probably fall in to that 20% of the times above so my success level with the current gear should be something like 80.5% and the limitations should be 19.5% or something. I only use it to take pictures of birds and; to make any decent picture with its light hunger, I need to shoot at ISO levels above 1000; which simply isn't fair by my old D80. I'm not going to buy a better body only to satisfy a single lens.

All that said; I've also come-up with a list of two things (he he) in a precise order by which I would benefit from having them.

1.) One more SB-600 Speed Light
2.) Nikon 105mm Micro (I would also settle for the 60mm Micro)

Now; I do have some cash which I've preserved for something of that sort; but the problem is, I don't have a friend coming down from the US to bring that for me..

Anyways; I would still kill to get myself a D3s or even a D700.. But I wouldn't spend my hard earned money on them yet. I simply don't need them.