So I finally proposed, after almost a year of wanting to do it. Had some friends help out, with an indoor setting, a song and a four course meal. Had a number of ideas on how I’d propose, after failing to do so in Europe. Heh, in the end, I decided to use them together and having set a date and with friends helping out, I managed to push the intent of proposing all the way. So I’m glad.

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I have missed many friends’ weddings over the last few years because I’ve been away from Malaysia and strangely enough, I have a few lined up for the year. Will be attending some as a photographer, so I’m keen to get the experience of the event. Some will involve travelling overseas, and it’s time to invest in a laptop for editing on the road so that will come in as a business expense.

Laptops have dropped a lot in price over the last decade and my last one was a Dell XPS that was around the AUD$2k range. It was a laptop that was supposed to have enough grunt for gaming yet light enough to lug around easily. It was 2kg in weight and while it ran some games, it wasn’t really ideal for it. It’s gone through major surgery twice, with a defective motherboard and cracked screen replaced. Heh, that was another $650 to fix the issues mentioned.

The weight was clearly an issue for travelling as I started to stock up on camera gear and I could feel my aching shoulders hand carrying a laptop plus camera gear back from the US so at the end of 2008, I got myself an Eee PC at $600. That netbook has served me well for getting basic things done but the processor is so anaemic that any serious photo editing would have to wait until I got back from my trips. This is a problem at times as it takes a while to look through more than a thousand pictures.

I’ve been looking and the Lenovo X121e was decently sized but a little heavy at 1.56kg. The internal 2nd gen Core i3 is quite a bit faster than the Core Duo on my Dell laptop and the $660 price tag was intriguing, after including a 128GB SSD and putting in the occasional 15% discount. For an extra $600, you get a 11.6″ Macbook Air. It’s 1.08kg, or 60gm lighter than my Eee PC, but subjectively it could be 10x faster. I am personally quite interested to test out the Mac experience, with simple creative possibilities with the built in iLife suite of apps. The alternative would be the Lenovo X220 which is slightly heavier but much chunkier with slightly better specifications at a cheaper price.

There’s pros and cons looking at the different systems, and after a while, there’s only so much research and comparisons you can do. Then again, I might wait until the introduction of Ivy Bridge based laptops in April before buying anything, but that usually trickles down much later to Australia and I need to be familiar with my workflow on a laptop by July before travelling. Heh, so I have plenty of information now and it will depend on when I want to pull the trigger on getting a new laptop. For work purposes of course. Heh.

It’s not much to look at, but it’s pretty tasty. Had a bacon steak for brunch at St Ali cafe, and it’s more ham than bacon in flavour. The waitress brought up our plates and said that it was healthy. With the layer of fat, I won’t disagree.

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Signing up for the last CPA paper. Not many jobs on the horizon and the daily economic news in the papers are depressing with the government and private sector both shedding jobs. Read a book last night talking about behaviour and sometimes you just have to realise that you can’t affect anything that’s beyond your control, but you can control the things you do on your own.

Have a few shoots to do over the next few months, and the spread of my services through word of mouth has been helpful. People that I personally know have signed up, so now it’s time to break into the market of people I don’t know directly. I know it’s going to be a slow process, but as I said, patience and perseverance will be the key things to remember and to use it as a steer to guide me.

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The 2012 Kid’s run opens for registration at the end of the month. Haven’t done much running yet, so I’m keen to start tomorrow. Heh, time to set those goals again. If you can measure it, you can know how well you are performing. Sometimes it’s setting up the measures that’s time consuming. Or maybe it doesn’t need to be.

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Having some luck with cooking these days. Made some curries from scratch and I’m starting to see a recurring pattern. Heh, I still know that I’m not one for precision work, but at least I’ve learned how flavours work together and the processes required to extract those flavours. Still keen to make a ramen soup base and I have the simple ingredients worked out, it’s the process of making the soup that requires some labour and patience. Might try that for next week.