photos... lost!

As many of you are aware, I take LOTS of photos each time I go for a trip... be it work or pleasure. No matter how tight the schedule, if I go a new place, I'll make it a point to see at least a bit of the place... a camera in hand.

This recent trip to southwest England & parts of Germany was no exception. And as usual, my *travel followers* would ask "Are the photos up yet?"

I've been wanting to post my photos ever since I stepped out of that Boeing 777 early Monday morning some 2 weeks ago. But I've been putting it off for several reasons... the main being that I had the unfortunate experience of "memory card error".

The incident happened while I was in Berlin. First day there I think. After happily snapping hundreds (I think it was around 800+) of photos throughout the journey in England and a bit of Berlin, my camera (or technically speaking, the SD card) died on me.

Panic shot through my veins when I saw the message appearing on the 2" screen of my Canon IXUS. Baca bismillah... switch off and turn on again. Same message appeared. I took a deep breath and tried pusing the tombol on top hoping that the effort might get my camera out of its *weng* state. No avail...

It was a new SD card... 4G, bought specially for the trip because I knew that I would be taking lots and lots of photos and I wanted to be sure that I won't run out of memory space. The Sandisk card worked well... and I was extremely content. Tapi, as fate turned out, I lost several precious shots that were taken, mostly while in England. Fortunately for me, this time round, I brought both my compact and Ina's SLR. In a way, I had some backup photos... but I had only used the SLR when situation was more conducive (eg outdoor, scenic view) coz it was quite leceh to carry it around, put on the lense etc. I had relied on my IXUS for a large portion of the road trip through Cotswolds coz when you're on a drive-stop-take photo-drive mode, you reach for what's most convenient.

Nasib baik lah while in Oxford, I had downloaded all the Oxford photos using Afidalina's PC when we went over to her place for lunch. But photos of everything else... Warwick castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Winchcombe, Stanway, Broadway, Snowshill, Chipping Camden, Moreton-in-Marsh, Stow-on-Wold, The Slaughters, Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucester, Painswick, Cirencester, Bibury, Tetbury, Bristol, Bath, Castle Combe, London... are all gone! That was the major part of the England jaunt... the very reason I had wanted to drive around through the Cotswolds.

I'm most sad about Castle Combe because it was a magical place, tucked away in the hills which was perfectly preserved a la the kind of scene that you see when you watch those English movies zaman dulu2. In fact, it was my favourite town during our journey through the area... we had to lalu a small road, kiri kanan the greenest green pokok, the ground blanketed with wild flowers and I really mean blanketed!, a small stream greeted us as we reach the town, the buildings were made of those stones mcm those resting places when horse carriages would stop for an ale or for the night, with a well in the middle of the town... =( Now all I have are images in mind about that place which I had really wanted to share with all of you. Which I obviously can't since they've not created a machine that can read minds and none of you are psychics. In fact, with my fast degrading neck-top, I'm worried that even those images will disappear with the passage of time. Thinking about it raises such despair within... Dah lah tu pulak, at that one place I did not make use of the SLR walaupun padahal it was there in the car, with me. So not a single shot... Dah nak jadi, apa nak kata... but still huaaaaaaaaaah....

I had hoped that the experts at LowYat could apply their *magic* and somehow recover those images, but the news I heard last Wednesday was not encouraging. "Card cannot even read lah" the technician said. I'm still not giving up... there must be someone with the necessary skills to recover whatever they can from that card. I'm really hoping. So if any of you know of any tech wizards, pls let me know. Those images are priceless...

The one thing that I fear most had happened. My worst nightmare... except that it has become a reality. It was exactly these kind of things that I wish I had brought a laptop so that I can download the photos I've taken at the end of each day. But, lugging a laptop on a roadtrip was not feasible. And so, when I was in LowYat last weekend during my "save the photos" mission, I had discovered that ASUS now has a mini-PC which can be easily taken on trips and is selling at a very reasonable price. OK... the exact price is RM1,299 but if having that piece of equipment can help prevent the kind of heartache that I'm currently experiencing, I'm more than happy to fork out the $. It was also one of the reasons why I had previously preferred to buy several 1G cards instead of purchasing just one larger sized card. The rationale: if something happen, I won't lose everything and have others to spare. I've always held on to that principle... until now. It was quite leceh to lug around extra card, have to change when you're at that "wish i don't have to stop to change card" mode, hence the decision to just buy a bigger card this time. Why didn't I listen to my own advice... And I should have spread the risk, not all eggs in one basket. Should have made use of my 2 1G cards first or taken photos using separate cards. But itu semua on hindsight... what I *should have done* but *did not do*. No point crying over spilt milk...

But I'm still sad. Hence the lack of enthusiasm to upload the photos. I was still harbouring hopes... still am because I'm still searching for that tech wizard who would be my saviour.

Tapi, I should not let that stop me from posting whatever other photos that I have. Learning from that lesson, while I was in Germany, I tried my best to take duplicates.. on the IXUS and on the SLR. Which in itself poses a bit of a problem because I'll now need to sift through and pick the ones that are better represented. When you have around 2700 photos to go through, that takes a while.

So to my so-called photo fans... do bear with me. I've not quite decided whether to letak je semua dulu and then delete, or sort them out first. But one thing that I have decided though is that I'll be posting the photos on my fotopages instead of the trip blog because I've realised that my memory space on blogspot is running low... and that fotopages now no longer have memory space limit.

I've not uploaded anything yet, but from time to time, go and checkout http://kakijalan.fotopages.com/ God willing and by some miracle (amin....!) you'll get the chance to *see* Castle Combe as well.