This 'High-Tech' World

For the last three days, I was frustrated by my computer in trying to edit a video I shot with my new Sony Handycam.

In the process of packing and moving house, I had bought a new Sony Handycam, which is the latest model capable of shooting HDML into a 120G hard disk. I had shot a series of video clips of my old estate, and since I was so busy, I had no time in editing the video.

As I am now settled in, I decided to edit the video, cleaned out the disk in preparations for the Christmas season. Tried as I did, I just could not import the video into the computer with my handycam. I remembered I had copied the entire video into a DVD. So I tried that. Eventually I managed to import from the disc into the editing software.

Having got the video in, I then had problems burning the DVD, for some obscure reasons generated by the computer. After half a day of fiddling, I finally burned the DVD. When I played the DVD on my home system, I discovered that the video repeated itself towards the end.

On the third day, I painstakingly tried again. I edited out a lot of bad video, added the sound tracks and reviewed a rather nice video with nice background music. When I tried to burn to DVD, problems started to surface again. The %#@&#! computer told me that it has determined that the contends were too big and required a bigger disc! How much bigger can a DVD get????

So I deleted every damn thing and started from scratch again. By 10 pm last night, I managed to get everything together and burned the DVD. Eureka! The DVD was successful. By the time I finished and shut down, it was past midnight.

I had spent $14k buying the latest kitchen equipment for my new kitchen. So last Monday the guy from DeDietrich came to demonstrate and teach us how to use the oven, the steam oven and the induction hob.

They are all so high tech and fully computerised. They practically cook for you and you only have to put the food inside. It was very impressive and the choices were many. The 'chef' inside the computer will work out for you, the temperature and cooking time. You only have to key in the type of meat, ingredients and type of cooking. The program will do all the cooking and you only have to project what time you want the food to be ready. For instance, you decide what you want for dinner, get all the ingredients together, and utilising both the oven and steamer oven, you program the dinner time. When the food is cooked, the oven will keep the food warm and when you come home, the food is ready in the oven.

So last Monday, we tried it out. The steam oven cooked the rice, steamed minced pork, chawan musi and broccoli. Into the oven went one chicken on the rotisserie, a chunk of pork belly (my own choice) and potatoes. After about two hours, the food was ready except for my pork belly, which I had to put under the grill to make the skin crispy.

The chicken was very delicious and looked like Obama colour. My pork belly was good with crispy skin, but I feel I can improve in time. Unfortunately, I had mild diarrhoea the next morning.

All in all, it was a very good and enjoyable cooking session with everyone laughing away and having a good time eating. I must improve on my pork belly roast. I would also like to try my hand in cooking veal, and making noodle soup on the induction hob.

Recently I bought myself an MP3 Walkman with FM radio. Could not figure out how the darn thing worked until my daughter came to my rescue and set it up for me. I am planning on buying a Sony PS3 to play Blu Ray disc and some games. Wonder what awaits me!

Since we are all in this high-tech world, there is no way getting out of computers and gizmos. For us old folks, this can be very humiliating and frustrating. Even some of the old technologies have trouble catching up with the new. That is why systems clash and crash. Although I consider myself quite savvy with my computers and cameras, I find myself dumbfounded by my hand phone and MP3 player.

Till then....