"This #@&* thing!!!!"

Ever since I got back from my holidays in Phuket, I have been kept busy with one thing after another.

I came back with over 300 pictures taken with my Nikon D200 and two HD video tapes of one hour each. It was difficult handling two cameras, but fortunately my daughters and son helped out with the occasional shots. I got to the point where I forgot what I shot with my DSLR and my video. Coupled with that, one day I ran out of tape for my video and out of battery with the Nikon. I missed some pretty good shots, despite the fact that I had spare batteries and tapes with me. My camera bag was big and quite heavy. So I did not carry that around with me. Defeated the purpose, really! (Sign of old age!)

Anyway, for the last couple of days, I sat in front of my PC and worked on the pictures with my Photoshop CS3. Deleting the bad ones, I ended up with 301 pictures. Editing with CS3, the pictures came up nicely and I am well pleased with them. My daughter later passed me 80 shots from her camera. This added on to the whole lot.

Putting them all together, I managed to compile a slide show of 327 pictures with background music. The whole show would have taken 30 minutes to view at 5 seconds per scene. Problem was the music to fit. I had to eventually use Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 1st movement. At 22 minutes, I shaved some 7 - 8 minutes off, not counting the odd seconds. The final result was good, and I burned several copies for the family. I understand my grand daughter Emma has been happily watching it at home.

Having accomplished my slide show DVD, I next ventured on editing my video. That was when my problems started. (See my title on top for this posting.) Since upgrading my PC, I now have a problem capturing my video. I now have a HD video camera but my video capture card is still a composite one (old technology!). Since I could not capture my video, I found a way to import my video successfully. Well and good, but my Sony software, which was bundled free with the camera, gave me one heck of a problem. I could not cut and edit, and the instructions and tutorial was so complicated that I gave it up. Finally I had to resort to my Pioneer recorder to do the cuts and edit.

I had allotted all of Tuesday - 19 June, to work on my video. This week, all the Priests have gone on retreat, so there are no morning Mass in church. I was also scheduled to serve the altar but no Mass, no duty. So this week I had more time in the morning.

Working feverishly on the video after my breakfast and reading the papers, I found the Sony program getting more complicated. I had problems with the transition, so I left that out. I managed to put in the titles and the background music. I copied a CD of Thai songs and loaded them in. After what I thought was a plausible video package, I previewed it and was ready to go to the next phase. The file got lost! I tried to retrieve the file but found it in drips and drabs. It was already late afternoon when I threw my hands in the air!

After quiet contemplation, I decided to re-work the video again. After much interruption including taking my shower and the wife calling me for dinner, I finally put the whole thing together. When I finally rendered the video after finding all the necessary settings, I found that it would take four hours to complete the process. It was already past 9 pm. I was not going to wait four hours. So I decided to leave the PC on for the night. Albeit, when I checked at 1.45 am, the rendering had completed but I was too sleepy to work. So back to bed.

By 5 am, I got out of bed to check. It was then I discovered the program would burn the video to VCD and not DVD. Rubbish! I got out of the program and managed to use another program to burn to DVD. Then I discovered that the video had to be transposed! (Whatever that means! I thought only magicians transpose.) So I left the program to do the job while I went on with my other morning rituals. Halfway through reading my papers, I checked and found that the DVD disc was sitting on the open tray. I loaded the disc in my DVD machine and lo and behold, my video appeared on tv as I had packaged it, with titles and background music and all the editing. What a pleasant ending to a marathon of frustrations. I quickly made copies for the family.

Besides the above, I also had another problem. When I was in Phuket, I had a mild case of constipation. Normally, my bowel moves twice a day starting as early as five in the morning with the second one after breakfast. With all that eating, I had full house inside me, despite the irregular movements.

So I decided to take a laxative for relief. Something I do not take normally. Since I need not go to church, I took the pills on Monday night, according to the instructions.

At four on Tuesday morning, I was awakened by stomach cramps. Lying in bed, I felt the cramps moving slowly down my abdomen. I had thoughts of women having labour pains. I was about to give birth to my lump of sh*t. When the cramp reached my backside, it gave me a jolt and sent me running to the toilet. The time has come! What a relief! I was so glad that I wanted to put one lump on a tissue paper, photograph it and put it in my blog. Maybe another time. To you my readers out there who are reading this, do you think I am going senile or suffering from my second childhood? Let me know. With all these writing, I wonder whether anybody is still reading my blog.

When I was a small boy, I used to sometimes have worms. Squatting over the toilet one day, I had this tingling sensation on my backside. Looking down, I discovered a long tape worm emerging from my backside. Efforts to dispel it failed as it hung sentimentally to my backside. In desperation, I grabbed it and pulled. It hung on. I then realised that while I was pulling it, my backside was trying to suck it in. So relaxing my backside, I made a grab for it and pulled. It flopped on the toilet bowl like a long white spaghetti smothered with minced beef and brown sauce. It was the length of a track shoe lace. Incredible how it got in there in the first place.

I went for my brisk walk on the track today for six laps. I weighed in at 65.4 kg. It has been this for the last two weeks. Despite all the eating at Phuket, I have not gained weight.

To whoever who bothers to read my blog, see the pictures above of the house in Phuket.

Till then....