Food & Pets

I'm so glad that these days I'm not as obsessed with food as I was just 2 months ago. But I still like to take photos of some tasty bites. These were all taken with my HTC so don't expect anything fascinating.

I still need to suppress all my implulses to eat just to have fun, but it's still easier now than it used to be during winter (or more like last 7 cold months).

On the other note - I really want to get degu as a pet. I know it's not the right time to do so considering how little time we have left, but I haven't had any pets since Sasha had moved in and we got rid of our 2 cats (found them new owners). Assuredly it's just a whim and I managed to take it under control. But...these rodents are so small and cute! There's no majesty in their looks but in my opinion it doesn't make them pitiful. Degus are similar to squirrels (but their tales aren't furry) and chinchillas (but not so big and lazy). Anyway, if I had such beast I'd get a very vast and comfortable cage for it and would allow it to run around the house from time to time. Beause there's no point in taking a degu from pet shop and putting in the same horrible conditions. The smell, overcrwoding, bad nutrition - I just can't look at cages with mice, rats, chillas, rabbits and the like. It's now these lovely creatures are supposed to live. It's not an overstatement - I do care about the animals which I tame. Now we just need to wait til we settle down in Melbourne and will have an opportunity to bring some fluffy friend into our new house. This may happen only in a year or two but I'd love to have an animal at home.

More photos of food are below.

Shoot now, focus later?

Shoot now, focus later? Sure, but only if image quality isn't crucial to you.
I've just checked out the review on the new Lytro camera. Well, just as I have expected...nice idea, poor realization. Of course I'd love to have a camera where you can change the DOF and point of focus everytime you look at the photo, but apart from this function you get:

1) Low resolution - 1080x1080, you must be kidding!
2) Bad image quality (high noise levels, low shutter speed, noticeable chromatic abberations)
3) Lack of controls and settings
4) The design is surely attractive but not handy
5) Being bound to it's own software
6) Very petty 128x128 display
7) And the most annoying - you can take only SQUARE photos! 2:3 ration didn't come from nowhere, you know.

So what seemed like a great innovation turned out to be very raw product which (in my opinion) shouldn't be offered to customers just yet. For 400$ you get an average cell-phone quality camera that can, however, do some magic tricks. Don't know about you, but all I want from my photos in terms of focus is to simply have the focus on the right object. I don't want to play around with it to show the background instead of the foreground. If I blur the background then there's nothing worth seeing there, huh. So to me this would be useful only as a tool to correct slight focus mistakes.

Btw, I definitely loved the official preview images, but I doubt they were taken with an actual Lytro camera. Looks more like a compilation of differently focused shots taken with DSLR.

I hope this technology will develop with time and they'll have something more adequate to sell to photographers as well, and not just to people who use their cellphone cameras and don't ask for an outstanding quality.

Feeling uneasy

So today I'm feeling a bit cranky. I know it's my own fault that I decided to read a couple of blogs about unsuccessful immigration to Australia, but I didn't expect to take it to heart. However I did. And now I think about all the bad things that may happen and it makes me really nervous. It would be much wiser to just read Marsel Proust instead of someone's whiny notes. Oh well!
On the other note - my gums feel considerably better now and I don't need to take painkillers anymore which is a good thing. I still have to visit my dentist on May 17th, just to be sure that I'm leaving Russia without any major problems with my long-suffering teeth.
Yesterday I went to the park with my school classmate Yana who's shooting a video about me. It is supposed to be a portrait of a person, project she's doing for her University course, and I'm happy that she chose me as an object of such attention. Feel kinda privileged now! Anyway, she shot video-interview and I took a few shots around the park. Everyone's happy :)
I am a bit worried about Sasha's health and wheezing in his lung. During our short trip to dacha he has probably caught cold and now has these unusual sounds while breathing. I don't want to think that this can be anything serious, but still we're going to visit a doctor tomorrow morning. Hope everything will be ok.

Everyday I feel more and more grief for my usual life in St. Petersburg which is about to end. I know many good things will come soon, but I cannot let go this "future nostalgia" just yet. Wherever I go, whoever I talk to, I wonder - will I miss this place, this person, this habit when I leave for Melbourne? Surely, I don't have many friends here and my course of journalism stopped being useful many months ago, but I can't get over the thought that some parts of my life here may seem quite romantic after some time.

I really, really miss the idea of going to dacha during summer! Even though we weren't paying visits to Oskui very ften over the last 2 years, I think it is a nice and important place to me. How many beautiful things happened there! I recall many carefree, sweet summer days spent in those houses on the riverside. How we watched same movies on VHS over and over again, so I knew some of the dialogues by heart, How we played Playstation with my friends, Crash Bandicoot being our favorite game. How I swam in the river under observation of my nanny Nelly. When I was a teenager I was reading all night long, and because of white nights hours flew by very fast. At the time when I had started writing stories of my own I used to go to sleep only  after sun rose. There were many fun and remarkable things there. I realize that by now it's all in the past, it's gone and cannot be repeated, but memories are hard to convince to be reasonable. I remember the feelings, and they make me want to go back again. And I am especially worried because mum is thinking about selling the house. I know, now we have new annoying neighbours behing the fence, but in my opinion it is something easy to cope with!

Дачное

Съездили в Оскуй на первомайские. Все бы хорошо, но, кажется, эти поездки нравятся одной мне. Я пособирала мусор на участке, затем запалили костер, пожгли всякие деревяшки...
Соседи выбешивают. Весь день копаются в огороде, что-то пилят, жгут, сажают, поливают...брр. Но это уже второстепенная причина для негодования, так как неприятнее всего то, как они оттяпали у нас кусок участка, где мы раньше парковали машину. Пришлось калитку и ворота перенести в сад, правда парковаться там особо негде. Бедные яблони! Но в этот раз нам не пришлось решать этой проблемы: до своего дома мы не доехали, а увязли в грязи, как только свернули с асфальтовой дороги.
На второй день мы съездили в сторону Кириши, сходили на песчаный карьер и к озеру. По возвращении продолжили жечь бесхозные деревяшки, которых на участке скопилось немало.
Вечером Саша начал задыхаться - видимо, аллергия. Хрипел он довольно страшно. Снова появились пугающие мысли о пневмотораксе. Пришлось отвести его спать в старый дом, где обогреватель помощнее. В тот же вечер мама сломал зуб. Я одна осталась невредима, так что и уезжать не хотелось только мне.
Теперь на девятомайские мы вряд ли поедем, а жаль. Ностальгия, как-никак!
Дальше идут фото...