{"id":780,"date":"2008-04-03T14:01:20","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T05:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2008-04-03\/780"},"modified":"2008-04-03T14:01:35","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T05:01:35","slug":"venting-about-my-sort-of-cursed-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2008-04-03\/780","title":{"rendered":"Venting About My (sort of) Cursed Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

I was feeling just dandy last Saturday morning while we awaited the\nairport shuttle to pick us up to start a five<\/span>-day mini vacation to a\nsomewhat<\/span> tropical island in southern Japan, so I was<\/span> more than a little<\/span>\ndismayed when after hauling the luggage down to the van and settling into\nmy seat that I suddenly<\/span> realized that my cold – one that plagued me\nfor a month<\/span> but had, I thought,<\/span> been over for the last week – had\nreturned with the almost audible thud<\/i> of a proverbial<\/span> ton of bricks\nhitting me. I suddenly<\/span> felt miserable, and the shuttle driver hadn't even\nreturned to his seat after loading our bags.<\/p>\n\n

Our flight and five days in paradise awaited.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>1000 sec, f<\/span>\/5, ISO 400 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span><\/span>\nThis Pretty Much Says it All<\/span>\nDead sunflower in a field<\/span> of pretty red and pink flowers<\/span>\nAmami Ooshima, in the East China Sea in southern Japan\n<\/div>\n\n

Other than being sick the whole time, it actually was a nice<\/span> trip, but\nbeing sick was only the start of what seems to have been a cursed<\/span> vacation. So many little<\/span> things went wrong that it started to become comical even\nwhile we were being besieged by them.<\/p>\n\n

I don't like to complain (too much) on my blog, but I do<\/span> want to record\nsome of the issues we faced just so that I can<\/span> revisit and laugh at them in\nlater years. It was not<\/span> a “vacation to hell” or anything like that... just\na “one of those days” type vacation.<\/p>\n\n

We went to Amami Ooshima Island in southern Japan, repeating an\nexcellent new-year's trip that produced a\nbunch<\/span> of posts<\/a> with more still in the queue. The primary<\/span> goal this time\nwas for Fumie to attend a concert<\/span> event that included an appearance by\nKousuke Atari, a Japanese<\/span> pop singer we like and have seen many times<\/a>\nbefore.<\/p>\n\n\n

Anyway, let me list some of the “issues” we faced....<\/p>\n\n

    \n\n

  1. \n\nI was sick the entire time.\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  2. \n\nFumie's attraction for this particular Kouskuke Atari concert was that it\nwas being held in his home town (the small city of Naze, on Amami Ooshima\nIsland) and due to the nature of the event, he was expected to perform the\ntraditional folk singing he was locally famous for before becoming a\nprofessional<\/span> pop singer. I don't<\/span> care for the twangy nature of this genre\nso didn't attend the concert, but Fumie was really looking forward to it.\nUnfortunately, it turns out that he did only one such song, as an encore. His concert<\/span> was otherwise pretty much the same as all the others we've\nattended (which isn't bad, but disappointing considering the expectations).\n\n <\/p>

    \n\n(As an\nexample of this traditional music, try track 5 on this page for\na CD<\/span> he made six years ago<\/a>, in his early 20s. Contrast that with his latest\npop single, which (annoyingly) starts playing\n automatically when you visit his official site<\/a> at his record label.)\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  3. \n\nFumie's goal for the trip was the concert, but for myself, I wanted<\/span> to be\nsure to visit Honohoshi Seaside, a “beach” that has grapefruit-sized smooth\nrocks instead of sand (seen on this earlier\npost<\/a>), to make an audio recording of the surf, which – due to the\nrocks – makes a wonderfully<\/span> interesting and soothing sound.\n\n<\/p>

    \n\nWe tried to make the two-hour drive on the 3rd day, but I was<\/span> just too\nsick, so we had to return. I felt a<\/span> bit better the next day, so we made the\ndrive and arrived to promptly find that the video camera I'd prepared was\nnot in my A\/V backpack where I thought<\/span> it was. I had the<\/span> external mic and\nextra batteries, but no camera. I tore the<\/span> car apart looking for it, but we\nmust have left it at the hotel. Sigh.\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  4. \n\nTo add insult to injury, I found<\/span> out the next day that it was<\/i> in the\ncar while I was<\/span> looking for it, but in an arm-rest compartment that I\ndidn't<\/span> realize was there (at least, not after having apparently placed the\nthing inside earlier in the trip).\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  5. \n\nAfter spending a few frustrating minutes trying to attach a polarizing<\/span>\nfilter at the beach, I discovered<\/span> that I couldn't<\/span> do so because there was a\ndent<\/span> in the outer edge of the lens where the filter threads are.\n\n <\/p>

    \n\nI've traditionally kept clear “protect” filters on my lenses, but lately\nhave wondered whether the protection they afford is worth whatever\ndegradation they cause to the image. I know that<\/span> these filters can cause ghosting<\/a> in really\ndark situations, but otherwise I've assumed that they don't degrade the\nimage. Lately, though, I've thought to try without them until I can<\/span>\nquantitatively measure their effect, so last week I took<\/span> them off.\n\n\n <\/p>

    \n\nThus, when I bumped the edge of the lens sometime since then, I ended<\/span> up\ndamaging my $2,000 Nikkor\n70<\/span>-200 f\/2.8 zoom<\/a> instead of an $80 filter.<\/p>\n\n\n

    Doh!\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  6. \n\nAfter leaving Honohoshi Seaside, we thought to make a couple<\/span>-hour detour\ntoward the western (largely unpopulated) edge of the island to see the\nsunset. I used the<\/span> map in the car navigation system to pick a likely<\/span> spot,\nand we made the drive only to arrive to find that I'd not noticed a huge<\/span>\nsub-island right off the coast, totally blocking any concept of a sunset.<\/span> It was right<\/span> there on the car-navi map; I was<\/span> just stupid for not having\nnoticed it earlier.\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  7. \n\nSo, we returned to the hotel just in time before the restaurant closed, and\nour dinner was waiting for us. While eating, we found out that Kousuke\nAtari had eaten at the table right next to us, a couple<\/span> of hours earlier. Had we not<\/span> made the ill-fated attempt to see the sunset, we would have had\ndinner right next to him (and we would have become a bullet<\/span> point on his\n“things that annoyed me during my trip home”\n\n post :-))<\/span>\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  8. \n\nOur hotel package came with pre-planned breakfasts and dinners, and the\nvolume of food they brought was so overwhelmingly astounding<\/i> that I\ncontinually<\/span> felt really bad about the egregious waste of food that no one\nhuman could possibly eat, even when not having a cold.<\/span>\n\n\n <\/p>

    \n\nThe one day that I stood a chance to actually make a good<\/span> dent in\nwhat they offered – the yakiniku barbecue on the night we just missed Kousuke Atari – I felt<\/span> a bit<\/span>\nqueasy from the cold and couldn't do more than nibble.\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  9. \n\nAt some point while taking pictures of Anthony running around on the beach, I realized<\/span> that my camera was not in its highest-quality “raw mode<\/a>”, but had somehow\ngotten switched to low-quality “basic jpg” mode. Ugh. I'm still<\/span> a bad<\/span> enough\nphotographer that I rely<\/i> on the latitude that shooting raw affords,\nand that was lost for a whole<\/span> day's worth of pictures.\n\n<\/p><\/li>

  10. \n\nI got a call from Zak<\/a> telling me that my\nblog had been down for the last couple of days, in case I wasn't<\/span> aware of it. No, I wasn't.<\/span>\n(With help from Zak and my brother, I was able<\/span> to get things repaired,\nso their help is a bright<\/span> spot that I appreciate.<\/span>)\n\n<\/p><\/li><\/ol>\n\n

    There really were some wonderful moments (and I'll share them another\nday), so I'm glad we went, but it did feel a bit<\/span> cursed at times. I enjoy<\/span> the location, so I look<\/span> forward to going again sometime, preferably when\nI'm not sick(!)<\/p>\n\n

    Having gone also saved us from the apparently horrible cold and rainy\nweather in Kyoto during the time. We returned<\/span> yesterday afternoon to a\ndreary<\/span> Kyoto, with cherry blossoms approaching full bloom but appearing\ntotally drab and pathetic. Traffic in our area was a nightmare,<\/span> as it is\ntwice every year, during cherry-blossom and fall-foliage seasons.<\/p>\n\n

    I returned to find 510 emails messages in my queue (all but a few<\/span> being\nspam or related to my server problems), 360 unread messages on the private\nLightroom beta-testers forum, and 100+ unread items on the blogs I read<\/span><\/a>. Add to that<\/span> the release of\nLightroom 2.0<\/span> beta<\/a> that I was<\/span> out of town for, and the 1,207 photos we\ntook, and I had<\/span> my work cut out for me.<\/p>\n\n

    Today, my cold is a bit better and the weather is wonderful. The sun is<\/span>\nout and the cherry blossoms look great, just begging to be photographed. I'm not sure<\/span> I quite<\/span> have the energy today, but the forecast is for\never-improving weather for the next few days, so things continue to look\nup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was feeling just dandy last Saturday morning while we awaited the airport shuttle to pick us up to start a five-day mini vacation to a somewhat tropical island in southern Japan, so I was more than a little dismayed when after hauling the luggage down to the van and settling into my seat that I suddenly realized that my cold – one that plagued me for a month but had, I thought, been over for the last week – had returned with the almost audible thud of a proverbial ton of bricks hitting me. I suddenly felt miserable, and [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}