Avinashsing Sunkur

I’m finding it really hard these days to focus on my work. It’s been a long time since I decided to rewrite of my websites and I only seem to be gathering ideas rather than putting them to practice. I’ve noticed that when I get bored with what I’m currently doing, I just log onto facebook and see what other people are doing. It’s pretty much just gossip but it’s kind of addictive. Therefore I’ve decided to take a 30 day challenge of not using facebook.

I started this challenge yesterday (16th of June 2010) and I’ll be completing the challenge in a month’s time, on the 16th of July 2010. I don’t have many friends on facebook, probably like 25 friends but the problem that I’m experiencing is that whenever I want a break, I just sign onto facebook and without realising I’ve wasted some 30 mins.

It will be good to see if I become more productive without facebook. I might even consider suspending my account so that I don’t receive any updates through email but for the time being I’m just leaving it as is.

I’ve been thinking of getting a new digital camera for a long time now because of some limitations of the compact (point and shoot) cameras. I remember when we were in Egypt and I wanted to capture some great photos of us going down the water slides and I couldn’t get any good shots and had to do it a couple of times and still end up missing the action. The problem is that the point and shoot cameras don’t have a fast shutter speed and since it takes a couple of seconds to take the next shot, you either get the person at the top of the slide or down in the water. Continuous shoot is a real problem but that’s not the only reason why I wanted more from a digital camera.

Usually in the evening after dinner, we would stroll along the pool or places which are not properly lit and the pictures that I would take would not look nice. It was really frustrating that only good shots could be taken when there is plenty of natural light. The other problem I had was to do with the zoom. You cannot get good zooming on point and shoot cameras. Therefore I wanted a camera which addresses all the problems I’ve been having and when I looked at which cameras could give me the performance I wanted, it came down to having a professional camera, that is, an SLR (Single Lens Reflex).

DSLRs (Digital SLR) come in two flavours – with Live View and without.  Live view allows you to get a view of the shot before you actually take it and it helps you to decide whether the shot is perfect or not. Without live view, you may not be certain that you’re capturing the best shot. I wanted live view in my DSLR but did not want to spend more than £300. When I looked at some cheap DSLRs, they did have all the requirements that I wanted. The cheapest camera I could get was £350 but that was not a brand name that I was looking for. In my mind, it was only Canon or Nikon because when you buy a DSLR, you tend to stick with it for a long time and making the wrong choice at the start could cost you more in the long term.

It’s things like replacement batteries, lens and compatibility that you need to watch out for. In the end, I had a couple of cameras which seem to suit my requirements. Canon EOS 1000D, Canon EOS 400D, Canon EOS 450D, Nikon D3000 and Nikon D5000. My budget had been raised to £500 at that point. After reading reviews and looking at advice on various websites, I decided to go with the Nikon D5000. The cost of the camera itself was £529 and it comes as a kit with the 18-55 lens.

What you don’t think about when you’re purchasing a camera is how much it’s going to cost you to have a working camera. You need a memory card (high speed one for a DSLR), a camera case and insurance because if you’re spending so much money on the camera, you might as well protect it against accidental damage. Extended warranty for 3 years costs £69, SD card around £20 and camera case £20 because of half price discount of buying an expensive camera. When you put all that on top of the camera, you end up paying around £650 which is more than £100 on top on the camera.

I will be getting £50 cashback on my Nikon D5000 because of a certain promotion on that particular model but then again £600 for a camera is quite expensive. I must admit that the pictures from the DSLR very good though. I can also take High Definition (HD) movies on the camera, so it’s killing two birds with one stone. Mind you that lens are quite expensive though, around £150 and there are other things to consider as well as you get into photography like flash gun and tripod but I suppose that these have to wait not until I’m familiar with all the modes of the camera. Overall I’m very happy with my birthday present which came some days before my actual birthday.

After a long search for the perfect house, I finally found one which has got most of the features I wanted. Of course, if i had it my way, i would build a house from scratch rather than buying an already built house. Anyway, because I was renting before, i didn’t find it necessary to buy my own furniture at that time and it would have been a hassle moving furniture to the new house and costly as well. Therefore I had to find a nice comfortable sofa so that i can watch tv in my cosy little place.

I went to all the big sofa shops (DFS, Land of Leather etc) and some small shops as well but i didn’t really find one which really appealed to me. There were some sofas which were ‘alright’ but it seems that i was settling for something that i did not really want because i didn’t have any other choice. But when they told me that i need to wait for like 3 months to get my sofa delivered, that was it for me. I could understand waiting 2 weeks but not three months! Where was i supposed to sit for a quarter of a year? On the floor, you’re having a laugh! I’m not paying hundreds if not thousands of pounds to sit on the floor.

This is when i decided to look into custom made sofa. At first i thought they were expensive but when i looked into it, i found that the prices were actually cheaper. The company itself is called Nabru and are based in London but you can order from anywhere in the UK. You need a sofa that’s going to use the space in your living room efficiently while providing the nicest and most comfortable seats. You can read the nabru sofa review here for more information on the company.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people tend to make their houses fit around their sofa when it should be the other way round. You can sometimes see sofas in really awkward places or find very little room to walk in because standard sofas were bought and the shapes and sizes are not meant for the room but still they are there (probably because people who bought them didn’t have any other choices or they got it for cheap!). My advice is to look for custom made sofas because they are not that expensive after all.

For a couple of years now, I’ve been looking at my previous year’s resolution and see whether I’ve managed to achieve them or not. So for my 2009 resolution, here’s what has been happening:

1. Spend more time with Poum (holiday, less time on computers etc) – more or less achieved
2. Set up a business – pretty much done
3. Exercise – no time to do
4. Play guitar – no free time to play

For 2010, I’ve decided to concentrate on the bits which I didn’t manage to complete in my last year’s resolution. Therefore my 2010 resolution will be as follows:

• Exercise & healthy eating
• Find more time to play guitar
• Increase business revenue
• Travelling & more family timev

Now let’s see how many will get completed during the course of this year!

Since yesterday, it’s been snowing all over London and flights have been suspended across major airports like Gatwick. My once used to be green garden is now completely white with snow and my cats are loving it. They were the first ones to step onto the fresh snow and all you can see now is pawprints everywhere.

Unfortunately though, I’ve had to cancel my trip to Ikea because I don’t want to be stranded in traffic because of the snow. I wanted to go there to get a few things in preparation for Christmas and New year but I suppose this could wait. In a couple of day’s time, it’s supposed to stop and that would save me the hassle of having to drive in snow.

Not sure we’re going to have a white Xmas but I’ll be making the most of the snow in my garden and throwing some snowballs later on. Not to mention the usual snowman that needs to be built.

It’s been a tough decision for me but i finally made up my mind to give my chickens away. The reason for this is that i plan to travel a lot next year and chicken boarding will work out too expensive. Having chickens and getting your own fresh eggs is an amazing experience. I’ve been getting eggs consistenly everyday from 2 of my hens (hybrids) and the 3rd one was just about to lay eggs. She was 2 weeks younger than the others but because she was a pure breed (Orpington), she takes more time to lay. Anyway, they are now being fostered at the same place where i got them boarded when i went to Spain. The lady was kind enough to take them in

I was meant to buy a new laptop for quite a while now but I never really got to it. During the beginning of this month, the need for a new laptop grew even more but I held back because I knew that Windows 7 was coming out on the 22nd of October. All the laptop shops had Vista installed on their laptops but assured that you will get free upgrade to Windows 7 once it’s out. However if you purchase a new laptop, you will have to return it to the shop to get it upgraded to Windows 7 and this means that either you will have to pay sending back and delivery charges if you ordered online or will have to go back to the shop and probably have to wait a couple of days before getting your laptop back. I didn’t want the hassle so I waited.

I wanted to get a completely white laptop but couldn’t find any. Apple Mac was the only one I could get in white but when I thought about it, it wouldn’t be a good option for me. I’m used to windows and mac is quite different but my main reason for not going with Macintosh is that I already have Microsoft Office 2007 and finding an alternative office suite would just be stupid. So I spent hours trying to find the best white laptop I could get with windows. Sony was the best brand out there and I decided to go for the NW series (NW20EF/W). I’d have to say I’m quite pleased with the laptop. I haven’t yet tested the new features of Windows 7 but I really like the ability to compare (view) two opened windows side by side without the other one getting minimised.

It’s amazing the amount of junk people can have. You don’t realise it until you start wondering whether you really need these stuff. I recently came across a couple of books which were taking a lot of space on my bookshelf and decided that I was no longer in need of them. I wouldn’t read them again as they were old programming books which are mostly outdated now. So I decided to take them to charity instead of chucking them in the bin. Some people might find it still useful. There was one Java programming book amongst them which cost me around £50 5 years back when I was still at uni and another IT Management book which was around £40 I think and a couple more books on databases, PHP and ASP/ASP.NET.

Soon as I walked into the charity shop (either Cancer Research UK or Oxfam, can’t remember now because they were next to each other; or it could have been British Heart Foundation), I went straight to the old man on the till and said that I would like to donate these books. I expected the man to take the books from me and thank me for my donation. To my surprise, he pointed at the far end of the shop and told me that donations should go there. Now this is really annoying. Why can’t he just take the stuff and sort it out later? The charity is going to make some money from my books, right? And I’m giving them away for free! So the least the staff can do is make it easier for me but no they couldn’t care less. I had to take the books to a back room where another staff was sorting donated items. Agreed, she said thank you to me after taking the books but it was more something she had to say than meaning what she was saying.

Charities exist to make a difference and they rely on the good nature of other people to succeed in their purpose but unless their attitude is changed, I doubt they will 100% succeed in what they are doing. Just because you’re a charity doesn’t mean you should things for granted.

Just came back from a fabulous holiday in Menorca. It is pleasantly surprising that the one place that we’ve been trying to avoid for so long turned out to be one of the best places we’ve visited so far. The reason for avoiding Spain is because it’s a cheap getaway and most touristic places there have lost their Spanish uniqueness in a bid to please an ever growing influx of British tourists. You tend to get more British food like “Fish & Chips”, “Baked Beans & Omelette” instead of traditional Spanish dishes. Another reason for not wanting to go Spain was that the beaches did not seem very pretty in the pictures I’ve looked at (and I’ve looked at hundreds of them!). My idea of a beautiful beach is one which is calm, turquoise in colour (or light blue or green), transparent (you can see right through the water to the bottom) and finally the sea level progressively takes you into deeper water.

Spain itself was not ideal but The Balaeric Islands which constitute Menorca, Mallorca, Ibiza are very nice. The holiday spot was in Cala Galdana in Menorca on a self catering basis for 1 week. The apartment we stayed at had the basic things we needed (cooker, fridge, microwave, toaster, kettle), 2 bedrooms (4 single beds), 1 sofa bed, bathrom and toilet and an outdoor table with chairs. The apartment was situated on a slope with quite a few stairs to get to. However it was only 5 mins walking from the beach. There are 2 supermarkets just outside the apartment where you can get pretty much everything (milk, eggs, cooking oil, drinks, bread, cheese, pasta & sauces, chips and fry ups).

The exchange rate for Euros was crap (nearly 1 pound sterling for 1 euro) so things seemed much more expensive than I thought they would. Eating outside costs a lot of money (dish of Paella 13 euros, monk fish with shellfish in sauce 23 euros). There are some fantastic excursions out there which are really worth it like visiting 6 beautiful beaches in a glass bottom boat for 12 euros each but we waited too late and didn’t manage to do this one. There’s a chu-chu train which takes you round Cala Galdana for 6 euros each and it’s well worth it because you get to know the place and it takes you on a hill where you get an amazing view of the beach from the top.

So far, this holiday has been the best compared to Turkey and Egypt due to the fact that people don’t hassle you into buying stuff and the lagoon was really nice to swim in (btw you can’t really swim in the sea in Turkey and Egypt, they are awful).

Unbelievable, I’ll tell you. Just when I wasn’t expecting it, it happened. I was going to clean the chicken coop and as I was passing by the chicken run, I saw a tiny egg looking directly at me. It didn’t click at first but then I realised it was my very first organic egg from my own garden. The proud hybrid has given me my first egg. Just can’t wait to taste it now, yummy!