Bouncing Red Ball

It’s been ages since I updated Bouncing Red Ball. Things have been slower lately, days-off getting wasted, plans getting wrecked and boredom just stopping short of overwhelming. There are two things I’m waiting for right now: 1.) The 2007 World Chess Championship which starts in five days in Mexico City; and 2.) much closer to home, Typhoon No. 9 which slams Tokyo in a couple of hours. This typhoon promises to be one of the strongest this year; classes in elementary schools all over Japan has been suspended.

Don’t you ever wonder why growing certain plants is against the law? And have you thought of a rational explanation for that? (Just thinking aloud.)

Things are really slow around here all I can take pictures of are flowering plants. The poppies below are your common variety weed, not a source of opium.

The end of the fiscal year in Japan is fast approaching and it seems everyone is caught up in a great rush to wrap things up and finish deadlines before starting the new year in spring. Reports have to be written, products manufactured in quantity, flaws detected and fixed, inventories counted, resignation letters submitted, contracts renewed, moving plans finalized, the list goes on and on… And we’re caught up in this rush, too, of course.

But when you’re over your head with work in the office or factory, it’s always refreshing to take a break and head to the great outdoors.

Here’s a photo of a friend of mine, testing his ultra-modern Pentax K10D coupled with an ancient Takumar 400mm/f5.6. While Nikon gets all the credit for making their pro dSLRs compatible with their manual lenses, no camera company beats Pentax for lens backward-compatibility. Old, rusty M42 screwmount lenses work on the newest Pentax dSLRs without a hitch.

Sometimes when the scenery is flat, it’s much more interesting to take pictures of people. Even of people taking pictures. Of yourself. (Also, it’s even much easier to post pictures here than to blog.)