South African Airways – uh oh
It occurred to me earlier today at work that a few weeks ago I borrowed the January copy of Airline Business from work, stashed it into my laptop bag, and never read it. (ooops.)
So tonight I took it out of my bag and read through it. Midway through the interview with the new CEO of South African Airways I came across the following passage:
In IT, SAA is behind other Star [Alliance] carriers. While SAA has completed a painful transition to the Apollo reservations system, it still takes SAA staff several minutes longer than most of their Star counterparts to check in the average passenger. It does not have the technology to read frequent flyer cards or ascertain if a passenger has loyalty status on Star, which gives customers free lounge access and a larger baggage allowance.
And to think on my upcoming trip to Africa I’ve got CPT-xJNB-xNBO-JRO on three different itineraries. Yup. THREE different flights I’ve put together. CPT-JNB is the return portion of a JNB-CPT round-trip ticket while JNB-NBO is the continuation of my original award flight from Sydney to Africa. At least they’re both on SA. The final segment is on a completely different airline, Precision Air (PW), going from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro.
And then there’s another question that’s been bugging me since I booked all my flights … Does SA have an interline agreement with PW?
I want a new camera
A few days ago it occurred to me that my beloved Fuji Finepix F10 with its 3x optical zoom is probably not going to cut it for my upcoming safari tour in Serengeti. I began to research photography on safari tours and I discovered the almost universal recommendation of at least a 300mm lens (about 10x).
Given that I’m already over-budget as it is, a new camera was definitely out of the question and I pulled-out my older Fuji Finepix S5000 with its 10x optical zoom. I looked for some batteries, put them in, set the date, and fiddled around with it. Not satisfied with what I saw, I dug out the manual as well and read through it as if it was a new camera.
And just like that, I suddenly began to grasp the basic technical concepts of photography and how they worked together.
So I’ve spent the past few days playing with my old camera while wishing I could buy a new dSLR so I could really put to practice what I had learned. Today I decided to take some practice shots with passing cars on the road to see the effects of different shutter speeds and aperture sizes and I learned a few more things about my camera, about exposure compensation, and so on. I also became resigned that in sunny Africa, my camera was probably not going to produce the best results at 1/60s ISO 200 as it can only go down to f/9 while zooming. Even in sunny Australia things were over-exposed.
Then I decided to play around with the RAW functionality of the camera and here I was surprised. The resulting images, taken at the same settings, were much better without the camera processing it. In fact, all I can think of is: WHAT THE HELL?!
All the images were taken at 1/60s at f/8, ISO 200 with -2 exposure compensation. Below the images have been re-saved in lossless PNG after a resize.
And after processing:
As is obvious, the original RAW image looked pretty decent as it is whereas the original JPEG image acquired a really washed out look to it. Even after cleaning-up the JPEG image it was still nowhere near the untouched RAW original. I never thought I’d have to shoot in RAW but this looks like it might be a good excuse to do so–good thing I’ve got a 2GB xD memory card coming in on Monday as shooting in RAW is really going to eat-up space!
In search of takeaway sushi in Sydney CBD
A conversation with a friend based in our Boston office reminded me of Shino Express Sushi on Newbury St. Good quality sushi at takeaway prices–and on Newbury St. too! How they survive on non-Newbury St. prices is beyond me. Then again, I remember it was almost always packed. Anyway. Thinking of Shino made me realize there’s no similar offering in the Sydney CBD.
(Asagao does not count. A friend and I used to visit either their Chifley location or the one at the corner of Hunter and Bligh until we both realized we were guaranteed to feel sick afterward about 75% of the time.)
Of course, I can walk into Azuma in Chifley or Masuya (a Japanese friend of mine says that out of the few Japanese restaurants she tried this was the one closest to restaurants in Japan!) on O’Connell but they’re pretty far away from “takeaway prices”. Sosumi Sushi Train at Martin Place is also out. I tried it out about a year ago or so and walked out with a $40 or $45 dollar bill. The quality as I remember it was good, decent. Nothing special but definitely decent/good. But $40-$45 for a sushi train? I know it’s No. 1 Martin Place but holy cow, your offering is not worth that much! This is like Shino in Boston pricing their offering as if they were a high-end Newbury St. food joint. In other words, I was pretty much paying for the location with that $40-$45 bill. So, no, out of the list. Not only does it fail on the “takeaway price” qualification, it also fails as a Japanese restaurant. Out!
Craving sushi at takeaway prices, last week I went with a friend in search of Megumi at Wynyard Station (I read about it on the ‘net). Upon finding it I knew I was in trouble because we both thought the slices of fish on display looked dodgy. After pondering it for a moment or two, I also realized that the queue that had built-up contained no Asians, much less Japanese. Trouble. (Anytime I visit an ethnic food establishment I look at the patrons and see if anyone from the region of the food is present. Lack of their presence means a very localized offering.)
But you know, it was such a walk and trouble to find it that I shrugged away any hesitation and got their salmon sushi offering. Upon eating it back at the office I realized that it wasn’t that bad at all but most definitely not worth the walk. So Megumi is out. (Last time I trust stupid anonymous internet commentators.)
On a whim, last Friday I decided to try Ton-Ton’s sushi offering.
Ton-Ton, for the record, is the food hall shop that’s owned by Azuma and has been an absolute hit with the Japanese community (the critical part) and everyone else. Walk into the Chifley food hall during lunch time and the number of people crowding at Ton-Ton speaks volumes about the place. That said, I remember the first (and last) time I tried their sushi offering shortly after they opened. I didn’t find it all that remarkable and until this past Friday I always remembered it as “the Azuma sushi leftover from the previous night”.
But when I tried it again last Friday I thought it wasn’t bad at all. However, it is a bit pricey and the selection is very limited.
And so, the search continues.
(If you were reading this hoping I had found it, sorry! But if I do find anything, I will definitely post it here!)
24S6: I quit
24, Day 6: 17:00 – 18:00
[Episode 12]
I quit.
When I realized Jack was going to storm another consulate it was only sheer willpower that kept me watching episode 12. There was definitely no interest and I definitely had a plethora of choices as to how I would my evening. By the time Jack was torturing the consulate general (and subsequently captured) I had made-up my mind to stop watching the series.
But then it looked as if we were about to meet Aaron Pierce’s Russian counterpart. Agent Pierce is the secret service agent who had always stood for “truth, justice, and the American way” throughout the series by defying some Presidential orders. And likewise we suddenly had a Russian agent who believed Jack that the consul was involved with the nuclear attack earlier in the morning. My interest was immediately renewed with the appearance of this character.
But just as he called CTU to pass a message from Jack, he was shot.
And with his death, so did my interest in 24 finally died.
I don’t know if I really have the power to quit–but man, this series sure sucks big time.
My theory is that 24 follows a cycle which repeats itself every 3 seasons: First season is great (S1, S4), followed by a mediocre season (S2, S5) and then really going downhill in the third season (S3, S6). Of course, there’s no way to tell how true this is until we see next season. -sigh-
In the meantime, I quit.
