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Huhu… Next week onwards, my parents will be needing the camera that I’m currently using, and they don’t know about the existence of this website and that I need a camera to take regular pictures for it… What should I do?? =(

Image taken using my mobile phone’s camera

In desperation, I have 3 options:

Option 1: Stop putting pictures into my entries, and thus causing my blog to be as dull as my calculus textbooks.

Option2: Take pictures using my mobile phone, but then it’d be absolutely useless when it comes to taking group or scenery photos; and, it also makes me look very unprofessional walking around taking photos with a Nokia.

Option 3: BUY A NEW ONE!

I think the 3rd is the only acceptable solution, BUT, I’ll need to spend a rather huge amount of money again! After spending so much money on my new room, every high-cost spending now is as agonizing as being cast the Cruciatus Curse. (Please don’t mind the Harry Potter terms in my posts these few weeks, it’s Harry Potter season!)

But I guess I have no choice: For the sake of my own pleasure when I want to re-read my own blog a few years later, and for the few readers who visit this website, I’m going to get a new camera!

I have my eyes set on 2 models:

The Sony DSC-T20 T Series Cybershot,

Which has a nice, shiny, full metal body, 8.1 mega pixels resolution, and up to a staggering ISO 3200 film speed!

Glen’s brother has a T-20 and he said that the daylight images he’d taken were incredibly sharp and nice. I haven’t done much research on this model myself, should I believe him?

The specs are all very impressive but sometimes I think any camera with more than 5 mega pixels or higher than ISO 800 is quite pointless for me since all my pictures are going to be scaled down to 400 x 300 pixels anyway, and a picture taken with ISO 800 or higher would have so much noise in it that the resulting image is not at all appealing.

And one thing, the design is just sooo nice!!! I mean, it’s not like the boring rectangular box camera design that almost every other brand is using! And you can choose from 4 different body colours!

Anyway, the other model that I’m considering is the Canon Digital IXUS 70:

Which has an insane thickness of less than 2 cm! It can even fit perfectly in my jeans!

It has a resolution of 7.1 mega pixels, slightly less than the Sony, and a max of ISO 1600, which is also less; but as I said, they don’t really matter much to a noob-user like me. Haha…

I think the design losses slightly to the Sony model, but some of my friends told me that taking images in the dark with a Canon is usually much better, compared to a Sony.

Here’s an image taken by a camera that really sucks in low light conditions, completely blurred out:

Besides, the Canon model looks more rigid and strong, as I’ve had friends telling me horrible stories about how Sony models were so easily smashed and damaged…

Anyway, the most persuasive, and iterated, point I’ve heard from my friends was: “Because, you know, most Pros use Canon.”

Now that’s a good point. No, really, it is! =)

Both models are of almost the same price, one excels in daylight photos and the design; the other dominates in low-light conditions and durability, assuming all that my friends told me are true.

Argh… I dunno, really can’t seem to decide between the two. Maybe I should buy both! Hah! But no way! It’d be like 2 Cruciatus Curses cast together on me! *dies*

I’ll have to think about it, will post it up when I’ve finally bought it!

The only thing that is not boring in my life these few days is reading Harry Potter.

It was like a dream, I was drifting through the days. It’s like, I dunno, when I look back to what I’ve done in the past 3 days, I could remember nothing. Nothing at all!

Well, except for the usual wake-up-late in the morning, rushing to classes, tending to business, having meals, and a whole lot of chatting, day-dreaming, and time-wasting stuff.

When I reached home after dinner, I’d do the daily business accounts and planning, followed by going online, surfing and chatting, then sometimes going out yum cha, and when I come back (it always shocks me,) I’ll find that it’s 2AM already! I had accomplished nothing!

Cursing the annoying morning class that I’d have to attend the next day, I’ll go to bed, but not to sleep – It has been a years-long habit to read Harry Potter while lying on my bed. It is the only time that I can forget all the worrying muggle-stuff in my life and be fully submerged into the world of Hogwarts, Horcruxes and Death Eaters.

Having slept at 4-5AM in the morning, I’d have 2 options the next morning – Going to class tired, grumpy, and appearing like a zombie; or simply skipping the morning class, and ask my friend to sign the attendance for me. The latter of which I occasionally choose, hehe, it is absolutely unbearable to go to class after only 3 hours of sleep.

If I ever got barred due to insufficient attendance, J.K. Rowling would be the primary culprit! But I’m not complaining!

Speaking of 3 hours of sleep, I remember that I used to sleep for only 3 -4 hours every night when I was doing my Foundation Studies in Melaka. Most of the folks in EP (short form of Emerald Park, the apartment in which I lived) never slept until they’ve DotA-ed or CS-ed till their heart’s content at 3-4AM!

Though I’ve kinda stopped hardcore gaming now, but I’m still not getting enough sleep! That’s really unacceptable. Sigh… Perhaps I might as well start gaming once again…

By the way, acted on a sudden impulse, we watched SAW III on Jon’s computer just now. I was never a fan of gruesome horror movies, and I don’t understand why a good human body should be disfigured like that, but tonight I was presented with one of the ultimate ones.

OMG, flesh ripping, bones cracking, heads splitting… Are they even necessary? But no doubt the the director and actors of the film have done a great job making the film look so grotesque and real... This film really rivals medieval torture, or maybe worse!

Oh I’m really feeling sick now, gotta get some fresh air outside… See ya!

I’ve got it!! Argh! Finally! *pants* It’s… 21st July 2007! It’s here… It’s FINALLY here…! Har.. Harr.. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! I cannot believe it! Oh…! *faints*

After the traumatic experience of watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – the movie – days ago, I am so, so, SO happy to finally have an ‘original’ Harry Potter book to enjoy!

Who’s going to die? Is Severus Snape good or bad? What/who are the remaining horcruxes? Will Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny get together at last? Who is R.A.B. as written on the fake Horcrux? Is Dumbledore really dead? (Sigh… Oh yes he is, J.K. Rowling confirmed it herself… *sob*)

Still, ANSWERS! I NEED ANSWERS! There are just too many questions that need to be clarified!

Anyway, before I retreat to my sweet affair with the book tonight (Aww I really have no life! Not for these few days!), let me record the astonishing event that happened today on the first day of the book’s release.

This morning, to my utter surprise – along with hundreds of thousands of Harry Potter fans in Malaysia – I saw these articles on The Star and New Straits Times.

For those of you who are not into Harry Potter, this might be a small deal; but if you’re an avid fan, and major bookstores in your country are NOT selling the final book of your idolized series, that’s one helluva big deal!

Apparently, MPH, Times, Popular and Harris Bookstores are NOT planning to sell the super anticipated book anymore because the ‘nice people’ at Tesco and Carrefour are selling at a much, much lower price!

I pre-ordered the book more than 2 months ago, and the price was announced to be RM109.90; typical HP book price, I say. True, bookstores like MPH earn substantial amounts of profit every time a Harry Potter book is released, there’s no doubt about it.

I can imagine the people in MPH or Popular eagerly estimating their upcoming profit months before the book was launched… They’d be expecting millions and millions of Ringgit… Perhaps some of the top managers were already planning what to do with the huge amount of money!

And then, all of a sudden, Tesco and Carrefour came out with this!

LOL! The manager of MPH was probably, like:

——-

*Reads the Carrefour newspaper ad*

*Stuns for 1 minute staring at the big ‘RM69.90‘ figure*

*Looks at his own bookstore’s ‘RM109.90‘ banner*

*Tries to say “What the…?!”*

*Vomits blood*

*Faints and dies*

——-

That Carrefour newspaper ad was like an Avada Kedavra sent straight into the Bookstores’ chest, instant kill!

I must say, I couldn’t agree fully with what Carrefour and Tesco are doing. Although it is a competitive business – the lowest price gets the highest demand – but still, hypermarkets can afford to sell the book at unprofitable prices because they have many, many other goods to compensate!

Once you go to Tesco or Carrefour to buy the book, you’ll probably end up buying something else too! But what about the other chain bookstores? You don’t go to MPH to buy Harry Potter and end up buying a whole bunch of other books you didn’t intend to buy, do you?

When I went to MPH in 1 Utama today, I saw the newspaper cuttings of The Star and New Straits Times pasted on the wall announcing the bad news.

For us who pre-ordered the book, we were generously given a choice to either proceed with purchasing the book at RM109.90, or have our deposit of RM70 refunded (now that some people might wanna buy in Tesco instead).

It may not be the wisest thing to do, but without hesitation I chose to buy the book at the original price. First, because I wanted to start reading the book tonight and didn’t wanna waste time going to Tesco or Carrefour, furthermore risk having the ‘cheaper’ books sold out.

Second, I pride to have the RM109.90 price sticker by MPH Bookstores on the back cover of my book. With all due respect to the hypermarts, A Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book with a RM69.90 price sticker (if any) by a hypermarket seems pretty ‘cheap’ to me. (None of the previous hard-covered HP books were that low-priced.)

However, I’m not sure if the act of the major bookstores ‘not selling’ the book nationwide, is really the best way to solve this problem… Yes, Penguin Books (the HP book distributor) might be pressured to stop distributing to the hypermarkets, but what about the fans?

A huge amount of fans have waited passionately for this day to come, they’ve waited for years, and not pre-ordering the book doesn’t mean they’re any less real fans or eager to read the book.

I can imagine how devastated I would be if I were one of them, when I eagerly walked into a a bookstore on the very first day, excitedly hoping to buy the book, only to be told that they’ve decided not to sell it! Damn!

And not to mention that Carrefour and Tesco are not everywhere in the country! Some small towns don’t have them! What about the fans living there? =( They must be really sad and disappointed…

I really hope that the parties involved in this issue could come up with a decent solution real soon. Yes, I know this is business, and business is about profiting; but while considering options to settle this, please try not to choose a way that’s done at the expense of the fans, they really don’t deserve it…

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Sad news away, I gotta start reading the book! Oh I’ve used up too much time on this entry. So, see ya! I’ll review the book when I’m finished with it later!