Having just packed for Hong Kong, everything was running like clockwork—count the number of days, the itinerary the conference people have planned, what I’ll need to bring, and so on—only stopping short at the usual question: Which camera shall I bring and how many lenses is too many?

The correct answer, of course, is you can never have too many lenses. But I’ll be bringing a fair bit of elektronik ekwipmunt so I don’t really want to risk accidentally falling off the next random high-rise bungalow while somehow carrying my ekwipment hand luggage, so the D70 will have to stay at home for this round.

The circumstances (and my innate paranoia) will force me to bring a delightful FM2 instead and restrict me to a 35mm and 50mm prime lens. I think this’ll be good for me. I’ve found that inversely proportionate to my explosive quantity of pictures churned out digitally, the quality of the shots have likewise plunged straight down. I need to be forced to think through my photography again. Sad, but it’s about time.

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This evening, I sold my old laptop off ultracheaply via Yahoo! auctions, so that’s a well-timed bit of pocket money for the trip. I had to back everything up from the old laptop in a jiffy though, so I just copied chunks of interesting-looking folders to a memory card.

Not sure which was important, I clicked through random songs and poetry I had written, and found myself utterly disgusted and depressed at both the quality and subject of these creative outbursts. I mean, songs entitled “Slowmotion Wreck” and “Altogether Vacant” speak of the self-pitying overemoting so characteristic of my creative floods (when they happen) and listening to all of them back, I felt like everything inciting them—every one of them—was re-happening to me.

I guess time heals all wounds, but records scrape them out again.

Oh, but with my new digital multitrack recorder, at least you can be assured that future self-pitying overemoting shall be digital quality self-pitying overemoting. Huzzah.