Okay, so for some crazy reason the Gravlax salmon is being sold at Ikea again..! It was totally surprising to see loads of them being sold at Ikea, cause I went there just to get some light bulbs and didn’t expect to see the fish at all. This is after like a year of waiting for the fish to come in stock again… I instantly bought 5 packs of them and finished a whole pack the first day (as seen in the pic). So tasty…~~~

Another big happy is that the Kalimba that I bought from Amazon.com arrived. I had to go to Point Roberts to pick it up, but it was well worth the effort (even though I later realized that they sent me the Huge Tracey Treble Kalimba instead of the Alto Kalimba that I ordered) I played with it for a couple hours after getting home, and a bit more the same evening - it really hurted my thumbs…lol However the sound was really nice and almost haunting. It’s hard to tell how nice or not nice a sound is but all I know is that it’s the kind of sound that I really like. Tried to play some simple song, while trying to remember which tine correspond to which musical note - it wasn’t easy at all. I have to wait for my nails to grow back in order to play it properly - you’re supposed to play it with a bit of the thumb flesh and mostly the nails. Holding the instrument on hand gives me a very magical feeling, knowing that it was made in Africa and that the African actually plays on it during rituals and stuff like that. I know I will be playing on it a lot the next couple weeks.

Here are two new lenses that I bought off Amazon.com recently. They’re both exceptional lenses that I had been wishing to buy for the past two months….and… as usual I wasn’t able to hold off on them any longer and bought both of them last week..! The one on the left is the Zuiko Digital 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, which I paid $675 for it…! Which is double the price of my camera…lol….It’s extremely useful to use though when I travel and also it’s very useable in tight indoor space as it can take in 180 degree field of view so for example if you point the camera towards the front it will be able to capture someone that stands right beside you on your left! Also it can create some amazing bloated out imagery that would give me an entirely new perspective of the world…so stoked to make tons of use of it!

The one on the right is a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 prime lens (fixed focal length / no zoom….oh the fisheye has no zoom as well) . It’s a very “fast” lens as they say it because of its f/1.4 aperture rating, i.e. I’ll be able to capture nice imagery in really low light environment without much blur causes by camera shake. This is really useful as my camera doesn’t have built-in image stablizer. I think I paid something like $350 for this one…..so these two lenses totaled over $1000….! Kind of crazy but I’m sure what I get out of them will pay for the price.

Had to goto the Burnaby Active office today for a conference call with some client, so tired when got up at 8:30 in the morning so I had to drag my body alongside some cookies for breakfast and a $1118.xx check for this year’s property tax which I dropped off at the city hall on the way back…. $1118….gone… Well guess I’m used to all sorts of fees since I started owning this place…property tax, sewage/utility, maintenance fee, electricity, natural gas…..all sorts of crazy pointless fees to pay argh

Anyway I’m looking forward for tomorrow going down to Point Roberts in the States to pick up some packages that I ordered from Amazon.com. Supposedly I’ll be getting 2 packages, both are lenses: Zuiko Digital 8mm fisheye lens, and Sigma 30mm f/1.4 prime lens. SO happy! I have been wanting to own a fisheye lens probably since day one of buying my new DSLR camera and now I’m going to own one! Pretty sure the happiness that I’m going to gain from using it will balance off the price of it. And then the Sigma would be very nice to have due to its large aperture so I’ll be able to take nice shots in a relatively dark environment… so stoked to get them!