Have been wanting to write a post, and the closest I got was a few days ago, when you could hear the rain drops against the tiles in the backyard and the only illumination came from my desktop monitor. There is a certain comfort to that environment, where you know it’s cold on the outside but you are feeling warm within. You feel safe with knowing what is familiar around you. Heh, the writing just didn’t materialise, there were more thoughts swirling in my mind that night.

Not much going on of late. Job hunting is slow. Looking at finance/banking jobs, they have dwindled over the last month based on the listings I see on the job search website. Heh, it’s always a test of patience with these things for me. I am trying my best at the moment to find a suitable job to get the cash rolling in again. Have adequate savings to get me by but it feels like limbo at the moment, not waking up everyday sticking to a schedule and doing work. I feel my IQ has dwindled over the last couple of months. When you are not actively solving problems, your brain deteriorates, just as your body would become sluggish if you stopped exercising. I seem to have detached myself from the world a bit, dealing a little more with the daily things in life. I know I like being comfortable with familiarity, but then again, I also like the challenges of the unknown, and if I do get thrown into the thick of things, I like the idea of having to deal with it, even if I’m not exactly sure how!

I’m trying my best to study for the CFA exam in December. There’s plenty to read and I’ve only covered 10% of the material. It’s partially stuff I’ve studied at university, some of the mathematics I learnt while I was at high school. Heh, I reiterate I never thought I had much use for these things, but how do you explain the importance of corporate financing, statistical analysis for investment decisions to a 15 year old kid who only has his head around computer games at the time? Only 3 odd months left, and I will need to study smart. Asking friends who have previously done it is a good start.

Heh, the studying encourages me to dabble with other things. I borrowed a spare power supply unit and refitted it on my older desktop. It was crashing at random prior to this, and this seems to have fixed the problem. Since I don’t use it as my main rig now, I can’t really verify that this has solved the problem, but I’m feeling optimistic about it. The old PC has plenty of extra storage space on it and I plan on clearing it out to store some of my other files, to make room for more photos and other stuff. I like shooting RAW with the flexibility it gives me in post processing and editing pictures. It does, however, take up a huge chunk of storage space. My normal shooting flow would yield me 4 or 5 pictures per RAW file, so it’s not terribly efficient.

Speaking of taking pictures, I’ve sort of stuck to having just my 28mm on my D300. It seems to do the job 90% of the time for casual shooting and I feel I have stopped learning to make better photos. With the crop factor of the DX format, the 28mm takes pretty decent closeups. I haven’t developed further the idea of shooting portraits, and I really should give it a try. I want to lug my tripod around when spring arrives to capture some sunsets along the Yarra River near Flinder’s St Station, as well as the cityscape from the Docklands. I have many ideas I’d like to try, just waiting for the weather to get a little warmer.

Heh, it feels like a longing, to be doing different things. I’d like to have more time to tinker with computers, and it’d be nice to be able to afford the various parts and pieces just to try something else, to expand my knowledge on the topic. I feel the same with photography, and wouldn’t it be nice to be able to take off at any time of the year to go to various places to see the blooming cherry blossoms in Japan, or the city lights of Paris. There is so much longing, but I’ve accustomed myself to have less expectations, to avoid disappointment. There has always been a pragmatic approach to life, where all the expectations are to do things that will get you from status A to status B, which is the responsible thing to do, and not to lead the selfish life of living whatever you dare to dream about.

It’s been a while since I’ve pondered about other things. Heh, much to preoccupy my mind with, but I should never get stuck in a spiral going down just because the immediate seems more urgent.