The scan isn’t very good, but you get the general idea… There are a few pieces of garbage in the neg from the processing, but that’s nothing a little photoshop can’t take care of when it comes time for printing…. And for the record, the materials you use DO matter… If all goes well, there will be a few more shots up on my account, click on “my photos on the right to see them or go directly to my Flicker account…
Things went pretty well. My first two rolls were basically me getting used to the camera. It has a shutter interlock system that gave me some overlapped frames. It turns out I have to cock the shutter and then advance the film. I also kept forgetting to close the frame number window on the back. The result was more than a few pictures with some red streaks on them. Oh, and the framelines are, to quote a popular pirate movie, “They be more like guidelines…” The framing is significantly off. Guess I’ll have to just shoot loose and crop later. I’ll get used to it eventually… The good news is that the exposures were good and the focusing was mostly good. Shooting a medium format camera wide open requires some careful focusing… There was the expected issues with the lab. A very typical thing to have happen is to get grunge on the larger film. 35mm is thinner and so many labs just keep the center of the rollers clean, but when you run 120 film through there and use the entire roller, you get to see all of the upkeep issues at the lab on your negatives. The guy promises me that he’ll have it clean next time. I’ll give him another shot, they were quick, and more importantly, they are nearby. There is another place I can go to, but it’s a bit of a drive to get there. I’ll do it if I have to, but here’s hoping this place can get it’s act together…
… but I’m distracted. I’ve been watching some sci-fi shows and I’m amazed at their views of the future. The original 1960’s Dr. Who (William Hartnell) provides some laughs. They go to futuristic places with technology way beyond what the present day earth has and yet they still have telephones attached to cords and computers that take up an entire wall. That stuff is forgivable, I mean, c’mon, they made that in 1965. Far more interesting to me is the Max Headroom series. No, not his interview show, the drama that centered around a courageous reporter, always searching for the truth… That show was based on technology, there were computers galore and the namesake of the show was an entity that was totally digital and was an AI. They came so close… The beginning of every show said that it was set “20 minutes into the future.” The show was deliberately retro in some aspects, old, manual typewriter keyboards are seen everywhere along with cars from the 60’s and odd architecture. There’s no question of when the show was made (1986/86), just look at the hair and the outfits! They got the wireless communications right, and they got the people sitting around screens right, and they got the idea of having lots of computers around and lots of data available. They even got the concept of of an entity living inside the computers, but they missed several important things. First, everything dealing with computers is strictly text based as far as input goes. There are no mouses, there isn’t a GUI, it’s all command line baby, just like the computers were back in 85. Most importantly, they never saw the internet coming. They got a lot of the concepts right, but they were focused on the wrong medium. They used TV and its satellites for all of the communication, data gathering, and even as the conduit for the AI Max Headroom. They used computers for many things, but they didn’t see the interactive aspect of networked computers coming. To be fair, I doubt that any of us did, I was excited by my 9600 baud modem attached to my Commodore 128D (yeah, I’m old school) and I didn’t use a GUI until I got out of college in 94.
It just goes to show that even if we get a lot of our guesses about future technology and its consequences right, we’re going to miss a lot. Back in ’85, no one saw the power of broadband and networked computers that would be in place as early as ’91 (that’s when I started surfing the net, on a Digital Vax machine running UNIX. It was all GOPHR and WAIS servers back then…) and would be common by ’95. Right now we have people creating online worlds (Second Life anyone?), who knows what the next 10 years will bring us…
It sure is different here. Not only do the kids scream “SURA SURA” all the time (they want me to take their picture), but adults want me to take pictures of their kids and them. I explain that my camera doesn’t have a screen on it, but they don’t care, they just want me to take their picture. Back in the states you get a dirty look if you have a camera and are within 50 yards of a kid. It really refreshing to, you know, not be treated like a pervert when I’m out taking pictures. If you like taking picture of people, you’ll love this place!
I’m out taking pictures again! I mean actual, real photography, with film and everything. I’ve started my first roll in my new camera, it’s more or less a test roll. I have to see how the camera works, how well the lab develops the film, and most importantly, if I can remember how to use an all manual camera… Hmmm, shutter speed, fstop, depth of field, focusing… it’s coming back to me, but slowly…
We had another discussion yesterday, the topic was whether or not women should be allowed to drive. No really, it was a little controversial. The class split up primarily along gender lines, all of the women were in favor of being able to drive while only one guy was in favor of them driving. The guys started the argument by saying that women would cause more accidents. Naturally, I scoffed at this, but later on Tami made the point that you have almost zero peripheral vision when wearing Niqab. There seems to be an easy solution to that, but that wasn’t discussed… Later the guys asked the women what they would do if the car broke down. The clear assumption is that they could not ask a man for help and any other woman would be useless. I was tempted to ask if maybe the problem wasn’t with women driving but with learned helplessness and strict gender segregation, but I decided not to go down that path.
Eventually, the argument went into the area of what women could and couldn’t do. Luckily, there weren’t too many of the guys that stuck to the idea that men are always better at all things. Most of them even admitted that they would allow their wives to work if they were going to make significant money. But still, it was another amazing day. The trouble is that none of the students really understood how weird the topic was. In my youth, I remembered seeing films from the 30’s and 40’s with old men saying that women can’t drive, that’s about as close as I’ve ever come to this topic before, I plan on discussing it more in my class…
We talked about dowries some more yesterday and one of the women brought up an interesting point. She was in favor of dowries being as high as possible as a hedge against divorce. The idea is that if a guy hates his wife, he’ll think twice about divorcing her if he had to pay a really large amount. There really isn’t any stigma attached to a guy that is divorced, but divorced women live a shamed life. It’s unusual for a divorced women to be considered good marriage material, but it does happen… Anyway, a high dowry is one way for women to protect themselves here…
The new principle wants me to come to her with a list of topics that I plan on using for my conversational English class. I’m having trouble coming up with the 20 topics that she asked for. It’s harder than you might think… There are some obvious topics that can’t be brought up due to the culture here, there are a whole slew of topics that are just too controversial here (women’s rights/roles, Palestine/Israel, etc.), but the category that is giving me real trouble is the one encompassing all of the things that are outside of their knowledge due to a lack of education and insular culture. Talking about what kind of foods they like would be a short conversation, as would where they have travelled, pets, romantic relationships, etc.
Tami ran into a similar problem with her class. One day she asked them to bring in some pictures for the class to talk about, they all brought ID or passport pictures… She was expecting vacation pictures, pictures of relatives, anything really, but she got ID pictures instead…
So I’m struggling a little. I’m sure that once we start talking, the conversations will naturally flow, but in the meantime I need some topics to hand into the principle…
Tami and her teacher were having a conversation about the American election process. Her teacher finally asked her if she was nervous about what would happen after the election. “Well, no, it’ll be a relief getting W. out of there…”
“But what if he doesn’t want to give up power?”
Wow, just… wow. Not much shows the differences in our cultures better than that statement. While I guess in theory if the president has the backing of the military, he could ignore the elections and rule via martial law, I can’t think of any American that thinks that that scenario is even remotely likely. Her teacher was expecting, at the very least, riots and demonstrations. I think we had some demonstrations in the last two very close races, I can’t remember any actual riots. Plus, the candidates were not the ones behind those things, or even their parties. Political stability, respect for the rule of law, and a transparent election system may be the most important things that separate the US from Yemen. The respecting the rule of law bit is sorely missed here, many of the problems here would be at least minimized if not eliminated if the government would just follow the rules…
Anyway, in this light, I expect the election to be pretty dull, but at least it’s going to be a good race:-)
There have been some complaints that the gas price is rising here in Yemen. The “official” price for 20 liters of gas is 1200 YR, that’s about $1.14 a gallon. Recently, there have been complaints that places are refusing to do 20 liters for that price, they “demand” 1800 YR instead. That’s a 50% increase, and that’s got to mean something. The government owned stations are still pumping at the official price, but if other stations can get away with charging 50% more, then I predict that the government stations will have long lines if not actual shortages. There’s no stopping prices, if price is rising, either supply is dropping or demand is increasing. In either case, there is less gas than there is demanded… The last time the government tried to raise prices there were riots. The same thing happened in Iran when they tried to raise the price of gasoline. As the price for gas keeps going up, governments (and especially ones like Iran and Yemen) can afford subsidies less and less. That’s one of the big problems with subsidies, people quickly become accustomed to the low prices and it doesn’t take too long before they feel entitled to them. When are governments going to learn?