Progress?

Being away for a few months, one becomes acutely aware of the pace of change we experience in KL. Even the view of the KL skyline from our apartment balcony has changed noticeably since we left in May. I got myself a new camera (Sony Alpha 100 DSLR) and have been playing with it, trying to take shots of Lucas (difficult) and the view from the balcony (much easier). I've managed to take decent pictures of Formula 1 cars whizzing by, but Lucas moves faster and less predictably! So I'll have to practice a little more. The shot here is a typical "just before the deluge" shot - the sky turns almost black as night, but the sun is still shining from behind (and 5 minutes later, the view is completely wiped out as the rain completely obscures the city). The twin towers stand out especially under these conditions.

I'm already experiencing a little buyer's remorse with the camera, but not because it's not good enough (it'll probably take me several months to even utilise it to 50% of what it can do). A couple of days after I bought it, Sony came out with a very attractive promotional offer that includes a lot more accessories (e.g. 2GB memory stick, free photo workshop, etc.) for less than what I paid. Also, I heard the new and better model (the Alpha 700) is being launched in November. Anyway, that's the pace of change thing again - one really should not fall for it. My 12 year old car and 15 year old TV set are still working just fine. Actually when I was buying it, the salesperson was trying to convince me to buy the Canon EOS 400D instead. So not only do we have "improved" models every year, we also have more and more choices of equally improved models.

Is this a good thing? Well - in my case probably not. I hardly use any of the features of all the new and improved models of phones, cameras etc. (I think I actually took my best pictures with my 20 year old Minolta manual compact). Unfortunately, you can't buy a 5 (or even 2) year old phone or camera anymore. It's actually quite difficult to buy a phone that just does calls and sms (and doesn't need to be "rebooted" every now and then!). Soon it'll be difficult to buy a camera that is not capable of inadvertently uploading your private pics to the internet!

That brings me to one unique thing about Malaysia that makes this such a great place - thanks to Proton (our very own car manufacturer), we can actually buy a 20 year old car factory new if we want to. None of the stuff that just causes trouble like computerised ignition, digital displays, ABS, airbags, traction control etc. Just a car that gets you from A to B, and it actually withstands floods quite well (except when parked in a basement car park)! Unfortunately, there are not enough people like me who just want simple, single function products and that's why Proton is probably doomed (and why people like me have a job)! Still, one would think that someone should be able to find a market for such "obsolete" stuff, given that 90+ % of the world's population does not own a phone, camera or car...