Month: February 2006

Am I so uncharitable?

I got onto the train and sat down in front of a couple with their three year old daughter. She was a cute chubby little girl with blonde curls. No wonder the parents cuddled her so.

She was eating something. It looked like a slice of ham, one of those pink circle pieces. She finished it and made a small noise. Mum peeled back the lid of the clear plastic container in her lap and gave her daughter another piece of ham.

After one or two minutes, the child had finished her ham again. “More!” she said. Mum took another piece of ham out, gave it to her and continued talking to dad.

At this point, I looked at mum and dad thoughtfully. They were both quite overweight. The toddler wasn’t overweight — yet. I started feeling a little anxious.

The toddler finished her ham and gestured urgently for more. Mum paused and said, “What do you say?”

“Please,” the girl mumbled. Mum smiled indulgently and gave her another piece. When that one was finished, the girl, of course wanted another. Mum exclaimed, “Don’t they feed you in daycare!” And gave her another piece.

By this time, I was quite distressed. Every time I thought mum would put the tub away, she acceded to another demand for ham. Are these people clueless? How can you live in modern society and not understand the basics of healthy eating? What about moderation? Processed meats for a child! Okay, one or two or even three pieces. Maybe more in a sandwich, even. But as a never ending food pacifier? Do you know how much salt and fat is in processed meat?

I usually give people the benefit of the doubt. I considered, “Maybe the kid hasn’t eaten all day. Maybe the ham is lean and organic. Maybe the ham is an alternative to her usual chocolates and chips.”

But in the end, nothing I could imagine could excuse the sight of parents blithely handing over a whole tub of ham, sliver by sliver, to a kid who should have the healthiest start to her life.

I wanted to say something. I wish I had some grapes to offer them. Why aren’t people licenced to be parents?

It is a mystery

“What’s this?” Dad picked up a thin 2.5 cm long cylinder next to the letter holder. Inside the clear glass tube was a tiny stem of tightly coiled copper wire.

“We don’t know,” I answerd. “It’s been there for a while.”

“It’s got…a solenoid in it.” He looked perplexed. “This is an important component of something.”

“That’s why I didn’t throw it away. It looked important,” Mum said cheerfully.

When mum and I left to go shopping, dad was still studying at the piece in puzzlement.

Working on the prairie

I was typing at a furious pace, hurtling towards a deadline when suddenly, there was a *tick* and everything went black. A unified gasp of horror reverberated around the office. I leapt up from my seat. At the same time, everyone else had stood up, craning their heads over the pod partitions. We looked like dozens of prarie dogs peering out of our holes.

People’s confused expressions were soon replaced with looks of distress and anger. Wails of despair could be heard as engineers, scientists, planners and architects realized that their last hour of work had been snatched away by the blackout.

“What can we do? We can’t write reports, we can’t make calls!” they cried. Some consoled each other, while others went to the tea point to drown their sorrows in coffee and biscuits.

After a pause of worry, I brightened. Finally! Here was the perfect opportunity for me to tidy my desk! Over the past two weeks, I have been so busy doing charegeable work for clients that I couldn’t file the mounds of paper building up on my desk. The untidiness and disorganisation gnawed at me.

Hooray!

Post-purchase support required

A week ago, while enjoying Peter’s photos from his trip to Thailand, I was overcome by the most violent case of lens envy. It was time; I was ready to purchase my first true telephoto lens.

The Olympus lens I wanted costs $500 in Australia. On eBay, I was delighted to find the lens was available from a USA retailer for around $250, including shipping. I was ready to place my winning bid when I was distracted by someone selling another lens — second-hand, the cheaper Sigma brand with different specs but ready to be picked up in Melbourne.

What to do? I agonised over the decision for two days. Here is the comparison.

Olympus Zuiko lens 40-150mm

Sigma lens 55-200mm

PROS

  • Widely acknowledged to produce sharper images
  • A faster lens (wider apertures), which I’d appreciate because I don’t carry a tripod
  • Better build quality
  • Has a 58mm filter thread so it can share filters with my current lens
  • 1 year warranty
PROS

  • Still reasonable image quality; as a prosumer, I probably would not have been able to tell the difference
  • Around $130 cheaper
  • I can pick up the lens in Melbourne and use it straight away
  • 25% lighter in weight
  • Longer focal length — reaches 400mm, compared to the 300mm of the Olympus lens (35mm equivalent)
CONS

  • Located in the US, which means if there are problems and I need to use the warranty, there will be expensive shipping charges
  • Opposites of the Sigma pros (i.e. more expensive, heavier, shorter reach…)
CONS

  • Has a 55mm filter thread so I will need to buy new filters
  • Second hand
  • Opposites of the Olympus pros (i.e. less sharp, less robust…)

In the end, I thought back to my previous dEBAYcles. Every time I’ve had a problem with eBay, it’s to do with an item I bought from overseas. Being in different countries just multiplies the hassle.

I bought the Sigma lens. I regretted it a little bit. Post-purchase support would have been nice (Vera? Vera? “Joan, I think you did the right thing. You’ve saved money and it’ll be easier for you to travel around with a lighter lens, right? And being able to zoom further in is definitely worth it.”)

Oh well. I made peace with myself and arranged to meet up with the seller. I brought my camera along because I happened to go on site that morning and used my camera.

We met up and I asked if I could test the lens. We tried to mount it onto my camera but it quickly became obvious that it wouldn’t fit. It turned out that Sigma makes 55-200mm lenses for Canon cameras (which have larger mounts) as well as Olympus cameras (and Nikon, and Pentax). To be honest, the seller had made it clear that the lens was for Canon mounts but I hadn’t realised that the same lens could come with different mounts.

It was totally my fault. I was totally embarrassed. He was decent enough to let me renege on the sale. That’s really bad eBay form; winning an auction is a contract. Your reputation as an eBay buyer and seller relies on you following through with your contracts. I did pay him $10 to cover his listing fees. He will re-list his lens but I was the only bidder last time. I don’t know if he’ll be able to sell it.

Anyway, now I went home, logged back into my eBay account and bought the lens from America. Price was no object (actually, it ended up being only $100 more expensive, once I included the cost of filters I would have bought for the Sigma). It’s on it’s way to Australia now (I’m tracking it). I am optimistic that this dEBAYcle is over.

Population onion

I read this odd spot* some time ago: If the population of China was to walk by you in single file, the line would never end due to the rate of population growth.

I thought, “No. Really? Really?” I’ve looked up China’s birth rate in Wikipedia and with a population of 1,298,847,624 people and a growth rate of 0.57%, and assuming that growth is mainly due to births, then there are 14 new Chinese babies every minute, or one birth every 4.3 seconds.

Now, I reckon that in 4.3 seconds, about three people could walk pass me in single file. That means that if I wait long enough, then I will eventually get to the end of the line.

It would take a while and I suppose I can work out how exactly how long. Bother. It’s late but now I have to do it. Hey, this would make a good short answer problem in Unit 3 of Maths Methods.

Okay, it’ll take 58 years based on the assumptions above (and 365.24 days a year). If someone wants to check this, I’d appreciate it.

Of course, the growth rate 0.57% won’t be constant. China’s population profile is onion-shaped. I’m not sure what that means in terms of rate of population growth. The profile is probably dependent on the Government’s population policy too. Perhaps the current state of affairs isn’t all that significant in the grand scheme of the 58.4 years that I’m sitting there watching them all walk by.

*Girls will probably know this trivia already and also the ones that go ‘Until 1990, sausages were still legal tender in East Germany’ and ‘No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times’.


China’s population onion (Source: NationMaster.com)

Blue moon Tuesday

It was a blue moon on Tuesday. My parents and I went out to dinner then to the 6:40 PM showing of Memoirs of a Geisha. My mum was enthralled by how visually beautiful it was. I ended up with tears that I couldn’t wipe away because I was wearing eye liner.

I am very sad to think of parents having to sell their children.