Huh. In the current economic climate, GAS to me is something I get after eating too many refrito beans...
There I was, planning a return trip to Southeast Asia for April, and now the rug has been pulled out from under me. The OzzyDolla (aka South Pacific Peso) has just hit $0.597 cents, something not seen in almost 20 years, and every Asian country I was hoping to visit except one is in lockdown - the exception is Indonesia, for now, in the next few days it too could go under lock and key.
So my travel plans have evaporated like so much gas, pfft!! Later this year, maybe. Or whenever.
My partner will return early next week from an ill-timed visit to Malaysia, to 14 days at home in "self-isolation" (= quarantine) by government order. So I'll get to play nursemaid and do the shopping for two weeks, if there is anything left to buy in our local stupormarkets after the buzzards have done their pecking.
My new plan will keep me busy and, I hope, sufficiently stimulated to keep me from getting bored and depressed.
1. A complete inventory of all my film stocks frozen at home.
2. The same for my enlarging paper stocks and testing the older (mostly FB) papers for fog.
3. All cameras will be cleaned and the shutters tested.
4. Each camera will have one roll of film shot with them and the films processed. Two Nikon D700s in mothballs will be taken out, batteries recharged, cards checked and reformatted, and shots taken. Autumn in Victoria (Australia) is very beautiful in parts, the European trees change colors and it's truly a joy to get out on cool, sunny days to look at and photograph nature and architecture.
5. My five portable hard disks will be inventoried and duplicate files (each and every file to be checked beforehand as after making minor additions and corrections I have the bad habit of saving them with new titles.
6. FINALLY I will finish reading the manual for my still-new Nikon D800, to me the best DSLR I've ever owned but, I now suspect, a little too much camera for me. But it was a bargain, and I love its ergonomics and how it handles.
After buying the D800, I vowed I would never ever buy another camera in this lifetime. Time will tell and we'll see.
All of which should keep me busy for... two weeks? Six months at the very least!!
One's time at home can either be wasted or made productive, depending on one's mindset. As an old Chinese proverb goes, when there's no beef, eat pork, when there's no pork, eat chicken. All the way down the food chain to tempeh and tofu.
C'mon, we have to laugh - it's the best escape valve we have in this misery-ridden crisis.