Friday, October 15, 2021
5:58 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
I’m not feeling particularly sharp this morning. It’s like my brain is stuck in high gear, but I can’t engage the clutch. I can’t stop and truly focus on any one activity or idea or task. I was the same for much of yesterday. I noticed it as I was riding around on my scooter. I had a bunch of things to do, but I just couldn’t focus on them. And the flow of traffic seemed to freeze me in place. Everywhere I went, I felt stuck. There was no flow to the traffic and no flow to anything I was doing. But let’s see what thoughts I have.
I had one funny thought this morning when I woke up and started the routine of my day. I realized I was fixated on the date of October 22nd. That’s when I need to return to the hospital to get my vaccine certificate. And my plan is to go to Kamphaeng Phet between now and then. But the weather took a turn for the worse, and it started to look like I’d be riding my scooter in the rain all the time. Things just started to look complicated. The plan was to pack today and leave tomorrow, on Saturday. But the weather forecast is calling for a 98% chance of rain. Same for Sunday. So then I started thinking about delaying my departure. But then I’d have fewer available days in Kamphaeng Phet.
And then when I woke up this morning, I had a ridiculous realization. I say it is ridiculous, because it really is quite obvious. Anyone else would have figured this out long ago. The friendly English-speaking clerk at the hospital said my vaccine certificate would be ready on Friday, October 22nd. But I realize now that that date isn’t carved in stone. For my vaccine appointment, I had to be there on the exact date. But even if my vaccine certificate is ready by October 22nd, surely that doesn’t mean I MUST pick it up on that exact day. Why can’t I go a week later and pick it up on October 29th? Or two weeks later in November? And it makes perfect sense that I can. Why not? The certificate is just going to be sitting in a drawer or in a pile on a desk.
Anyway, that was my epiphany this morning. And I’m actually going to walk to the hospital today and talk to them and make sure that I don’t actually have to return on exactly October 22nd. As long as I’m fine with not getting the actual certificate for a few more days, I should be able to pick it up the following week or even the week after that. And that will free up my schedule for Kamphaeng Phet. I can plan to leave on Monday, when the forecast is calling for light clouds and a gentle breeze. That sounds a lot better to me than Thundery Showers. And the forecast for Wednesday is the wonderful-sounding Sunny Intervals.
I feel much better now that I’ve had this idea. It means that my schedule is wide open, and I won’t have any sense of time pressure or a schedule for my trip to Kamphaeng Phet. I could even extend the trip beyond that city. There is an enticing road leaving from Kamphaeng Phet and heading northeast up to Sukhothai, a place I still think about visiting all the time. I could combine the two places and get a true immersion into the history of Thailand. I could even go quite crazy and head south to some far flung places I’ve had my eye on. I’m still tied to Mae Sot with this rented room, the scooter rental, my relationship with the immigration office, the vaccine documentation, and, frankly, my constrained budget, so I’d have to return here by the end of October. But with this new plan, I would have a solid two weeks for this trip as opposed to just three or four days.
That’s one thing that is on my mind. Another is that I finally learned how to say hundred in Thai. At least I think I have. And it’s my new favorite Thai word: Roy. Of course, I can’t just say the name Roy as I would in English. You’ve got to trill the R and do some other fancy stuff with it. But I like the idea that the word hundred is a simple English name like Roy. That makes me smile: “How much does that cost?” “Two Roy.”
And since I now know the basic numbers from one to ninety-nine, that opens up the possibility of understanding larger numbers. Of course, the numbers don’t roll off my tongue. Even though I can now say something like 554, I have to work it out slowly in my head first: Ha-Roy-Ha-Sib-Si. My brain creaks over like an engine that hasn’t been turned on in five years, but I can eventually work it out and get there. I was actually quite proud of myself yesterday when I stopped at a local shop to pick up some lunch. My full order came to eighty baht, and I understood the woman when she said eighty in Thai: baed-sib. While I was riding my scooter from Mae Sot to Sam Ngao and then to Tak and back to Mae Sot, I entertained myself by counting aloud from one to ninety-nine and then backwards from ninety-nine back down to one. With this new knowledge that hundred is Roy, I can now count all the way from one to one thousand. The big problem is that trilling and rolling the initial r sound in Roy is difficult for me. Plus, I still have no idea what anyone is talking about whenever they mention tones. I just ignore all that, to be honest. I’ve never been able to hear, understand, or replicate tones in any language in my life. It all sounds the same to me, and I have no idea what anyone is talking about when they refer to tones. I have a very bad attitude when it comes to tonal languages in general. I just find them to be inefficient. Why bother having tones? Just get rid of them. I figure that if a language is tonal, that’s their problem and not mine. They can deal with it. I’ll just fumble along with the language for the time that I’m there and I’ll pretend that tones don’t exist. Because, for me, they don’t exist. I don’t hear them and I can’t reproduce them. They’re like ghosts to me. People say they exist and have seen them. Well, that’s their issue to deal with, not mine. Obviously, I don’t believe in ghosts, and I’ll never see a ghost, so they don’t have anything to do with me. Same thing with tones in languages. I’m told they exist, but my ears produce no proof of that.
I also made some progress last night in terms of my understanding of the gimbal modes of the Pocket 2 camera. My unconscious brain apparently works very hard during the night as I try to sleep. It worked all this out without me, and I woke up at three a.m. with a scheme all worked out in my head. I turned on the light and wrote it all down. Now, I’m hoping to shoot a short Learning Curve video about this topic today while the scheme is fresh.
The basic idea is that I realized that DJI approached describing the gimbal modes in a highly technical manner based on the three axes of the gimbal: tilt, pan, and roll. And they came up with their three modes based on an idea of which axis is locked and which “follows” in each mode. And they chose the names for the modes based on that perspective. But I found all that needlessly complicated and not intuitive at all. In fact, the Pocket 2 doesn’t even have three modes. It has four modes.
My brain eventually discovered a new way to think about it, and it makes much more sense to me. My scheme changes everything. It changes how many modes there are from three to four. It changes the names of the modes. And it even changes the order in which I think about them. And once I do all that, it all makes perfect sense, and I have no more issues with understanding them.
Here’s how it breaks down:
DJI lists three gimbal modes in this order:
Follow Mode
Tilt-Locked Mode
FPV Mode
And this is literally word-for-word how they describe them in their manuals:
Follow: the pan and tilt axes follow the handle while the roll axis remains level.
Tilt Locked: only the pan axis follows; the tilt axis is locked and the roll axis remains level.
FPV: pan, tilt, and roll axes follow
And all of that is precise and technically true, but does it really help a normal person like me understand the gimbal modes and when I would use one mode or another? I don’t think so.
And my brain eventually came up with its own scheme. Here’s how it goes. First of all, I mentally put them into a different order, and I add a fourth mode:
FPV
Follow
Tilt-locked
Gimbal-Lock
And my scheme uses normal language.
Basically, in FPV Mode, the Pocket 2 acts like a regular camera. That’s it. It takes video of whatever you point the camera at. Think of any camera you’ve ever had in your life, and that’s FPV mode. You can point the camera up. You can point the camera down. You can move it from left to right. You can put it on an angle. You can put it upside down. Whatever you do with the camera, that’s what the video or picture looks like. If you put the camera on an angle, the video is on an angle. In FPV mode, the Pocket 2 just behaves like a regular, standard camera. It behaves, in fact, exactly like my Panasonic LX10, my Panasonic G85, and my GoPro Hero 7. No difference at all. Therefore, that mode comes first in my list, and I changed the name to Standard Mode.
In Follow mode, the Pocket 2 keeps the camera level. And that’s all. Nothing else changes. The Pocket 2 acts just like a regular camera except that the video or picture stays level even if you put the camera on an angle. In a GoPro Hero 8, 9, or 10, this feature is called Horizon Leveling. This is something you can turn on or off in the GoPro settings. Therefore, Follow mode is identical to Horizon-Leveling in a GoPro. And in my brain, I changed the name of this mode to Horizon-Leveling or simply Level. Because that’s what it does. It keeps your camera level even if you put it on a an angle. Simple.
In Tilt-Locked mode, the Pocket 2 can pan from side to side. And that’s all you can do. You can’t point the camera up or down. And you can’t put the camera on an angle. The camera is frozen in every way except that you can still move the camera from side to side. You can pan with the camera, but that’s all you can do. And that’s such a simple idea. Yet, the name DJI chose doesn’t reflect that at all. So I now think of it as Panning Mode. The DJI name focuses on what the camera CAN’T do in that mode. I like to focus on what it CAN do. And in this mode, it can pan. And that’s it. So, it is Panning Mode. For some reason, I ended up thinking of it as like a Terminator. The Terminator is locked on its target, but it still needs to be able to scan from side to side to look for new threats. So, it is laser-focused, but it is still able to pan from side to side with peripheral vision.
Finally, the Pocket 2 has a special Gimbal-Lock mode. In this mode, the camera can’t even pan. It can’t do anything. DJI treats this as a special condition. But it really is a separate and complete gimbal mode all on its own. So, I think of it as mode #4. To enter Gimbal-Lock mode, you can press and hold the Function button. The gimbal is frozen in position for as long as you hold down the button. But you can also press and hold the Switch button for one second then release. This locks the gimbal in position permanently. And it stays locked until you push the switch button again. This mode reminds me of the SpotMini robot from Boston Dynamics. SpotMini can extend its gripping arm and hold it absolutely still in all dimensions while the body can do whatever it wants. SpotMini can go up and down, move left to right, dance, rotate, do whatever it wants, and that gripping claw stays locked in 3-dimensional space. It’s freaky looking, and it makes the robot and this Pocket 2 look alive. That’s what Gimbal-Lock mode is like on the Pocket 2.
So, there you have it. Here is Planet Doug’s list of DJI Pocket 2 gimbal modes:
Standard
Horizon-Leveling
Panning
Locked
And these are based on what the camera CAN do in each mode, not on what it CAN’T do. Plus, I mentally add the name of a different camera that I’m familiar with to make it more clear:
Standard (Hero 7 mode)
Horizon-Leveling (Hero 9 mode)
Panning (Terminator mode)
Locked (SpotMini mode)
And, apparently, this is what my brain does while I’m sleeping. It’s no wonder that I’m exhausted all the time. I can’t get my brain to shut down even when I’m sleeping.
I was also really scatter-brained and unfocused yesterday because I spent the morning shooting some close-up video for another Learning Curve project and then trying to edit that project in iMovie. Talk about a steep learning curve. I had no idea how to shoot the close-up video. And I had zero idea of how to do anything in iMovie. I can edit video very fast on my phone in Kinemaster. But it takes me so long to do anything in iMovie, because I have to put in so much time just learning how to do the most basic things. Learning how to edit video in iMovie is confusing and time-consuming. Even the smallest task requires a period of research and reading. It’s agonizingly slow.
All I wanted to do yesterday was add some video to the layers and decide how big or small I wanted it on the screen. And I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to do that. I had never done it before. I figured it out, of course. But that involved doing the work. I had to read the manuals and I watched some tutorial videos on YouTube. And that took a couple of hours, just to learn how to do one simple thing, something that I already know how to do in other programs easily. I’m also really struggling with simply controlling my cursor and playback. I’m using the trackpad to do everything, and I haven’t quite mastered that art yet. By the time I was ready to set that project aside, I was mentally and physically exhausted. And I hadn’t really accomplished anything.
After that, I turned to the second video of my Sam Ngao/Tak trip. That trip ended days ago, and I still haven’t even completed a video from the second day. I have no idea where all the time has gone, but I seem to have been so busy in Mae Sot upon my return that I have finished and posted just one video. And this second video is turning out to be just as problematic as the first one. It’s just kind of long and rambling, as all my scooter trip videos turn out to be. But I’m probably not going to worry about it too much. I’ll probably just get it as short as I can and then post the whole thing and be done with it. I thought about carving it up into several shorter videos, but that just seems like a lot of work right now for very little gain. I hope to finish this video number two today and post it today.
I’ll also invest some time in learning more about iMove. And I will probably shoot a Learning Curve video about the gimbal modes of the Pocket 2. If I have the time and energy, I’ll shoot a second Learning Curve video about using the Pocket 2 with various grips and mounts. That’s been a big part of my own learning curve with the Pocket 2. I thought I might as well talk about it on camera.
I’ve also been watching some TV shows. There are times when my various devices are busy copying files or exporting final videos. And while I wait, I fire up my tablet and dive into my various pop culture obsessions. I’m still keeping up with the TV series Chapelwaite. I can see how this show would not be for everyone. But I’m enjoying it quite a bit. The most recent episode was a nailbiter, and with my experience watching hundreds of similar episodes in my lifetime, I could really appreciate the way it was shot. The story was a familiar one in that our heroes were badly outnumbered and barricaded inside their house. The bad guys were outside the house and trying to get in. We’ve all seen that a million times. And the tendency for most modern shows is to go overboard with the theatrics and the action and the noise and the drama. But Chapelwaite took a more classic approach. It was very quiet. It was still. And for that reason, the tension and the fear and the sense of dread and danger was heightened. I thought it was very well shot. The danger felt real. The fear felt real. The tension for me as the viewer was quite real. A casual viewer just tuning in to random scenes might have thought it was boring. They’d think, “What? They’re still just sitting inside the house talking? And what’s so scary about the bad guy? He’s just walking slowly around the lawn.” But for me, it was the best episode of the season.
I’m also still watching the Isaac Asimov series Foundation. I believe the first season is up to four episodes. Again, I can see how this show wouldn’t be for everyone. The story is complex and spans a vast amount of time and space and involves a lot of characters and storylines. And there are large time jumps in the story itself. This can be frustrating for a viewer, as you have to fill in a lot of the blanks and figure things out for yourself. But I don’t mind that at all. I find the subject matter fascinating. And the technology on display is stunning, as is the cinematography used to show it. But the best part for me is the concept of Empire. This concept is an example of the best that science fiction has to offer. The concept of Empire is that a great leader in the galaxy’s distant past had the idea to extend his benevolent rule into the future by cloning himself. And the brilliance of his idea came in the form of not just cloning himself once but having several clones alive at the same time but at different stages of their life. All three clones would be the same person, and they would all sit on the empire throne at the same time, but they would rule together with different responsibilities and levels of power.
One clone is always a child. This is Brother Dawn. The next is in the prime of life. This is Brother Day. The third is elderly. This is Brother Dusk.
Brother Day and Brother Dusk would train and educate the younger Brother Dawn. And as they grew older, they would move through the roles. At a pre-determined time, Brother Dawn would become the new Brother Day and assume the central ruling role. The current Brother Day would step down from the central rule position and become the new Brother Dusk, entering the final stage of his life. A new genetic clone would be born as a baby and become the new Brother Dawn. And since there can only be three ruling at any one time, the current Brother Dusk would, temporarily, become Brother Darkness. And he would live out a final day or two going through a ceremony to welcome his replacement self, the new Brother Dawn. And then Brother Darkness would allow his body to be destroyed, and he would cease to exist.
And this cycle was intended to go on for millenia, if not eternity, with essentially the same man ruling a vast empire forever, ruling as three people at once, but at different stages of life, with each generation training the next generation to come. In fact, each Brother was the same person, and they were, in essence, teaching themselves, just younger versions of themselves. And from the point of view of the citizens of the empire, Brother Dawn, Brother Day, and Brother Dusk were all the same person. And they were addressed individually and collectively as Empire. And the power that Empire wielded over the galaxy was godlike. With little more than a whim, they could assemble a fleet of quiet ships to wipe out entire planets and civilizations.
I could go on and on about all the things I find compelling in this show. The concept is brilliant, and it is the kind of thing that you find only in science fiction. A comparison can be made with Star Wars, of course. Even some basic facts are parallel, since in Star Wars there is also a galactic empire and a weapon that can destroy entire planets. But the difference is that Star Wars is, at heart, a cartoon. The empire and the emperor are comically evil. We know the emperor is evil because he says he is. And he is suitably ugly and he laughs maniacally as he hatches his evil plans. It’s a cartoon. The story in Foundation at least tries to be as subtle and complex as real life. As with many historical empires, the empire in Foundation justifies its rule over the galaxy by claiming to bring peace and prosperity. I believe their slogan is “Enjoy the peace.” You could argue that however you might feel about this Empire ruling over the entire galaxy, its existence brings stability, peace, and prosperity. That would be their defense for any violent action they might take to suppress rebellion against their rule. They are ruling for the good of the ruled. They view themselves as good people and good rulers. They are not the cartoon villains you see in other, lesser, science fiction.
I tried to watch the second season of Ted Lasso and the eighth season of The Walking Dead. I thought season two of Ted Lasso would be good, so I wanted to watch it. I was a big fan of season one. And I knew the eighth season of The Walking Dead would be awful, but I wanted to know what happens in the story. But I gave up on both. Ted Lasso turned into a strange show that I don’t understand at all. I have no idea what happened between season one and season two, but it transformed into something that feels rather pointless. I have no idea what the show is about now, and I gave up on it. And I can’t bring myself to waste my time on The Walking Dead. There are so many great shows being produced worldwide now that it doesn’t make sense to watch bad television. Why not watch something great or at least something new and interesting instead? The Walking Dead outstayed its welcome many years and many seasons ago.
My next show will probably be the Korean series Squid Game. It appears to be making a big splash, and everyone is talking about it. I want to find out what all the excitement is about. Is it actually any good? Will I enjoy it? I don’t know.
I’ve also got my eye on a series called Y The Last Man. I thought the premise was intriguing. But I recently listened to an episode of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast on which they discuss this show, and it didn’t sound appealing at all. There seemed to be a lot of heavy-handed gender politics in the show, and that just seemed like hard work to me. I was hoping for something similar to The Leftovers. The ending of The Leftovers disappointed me badly (as does everything created by the dreaded Damon Lindelof), but I enjoyed the premise and much of the set-up of the story. There was just no payoff or reason for anything that happened. But it could be that the themes of Y The Last Man are so heavy handed that there is little in the way of story and character to enjoy. I imagine I will watch an episode or two and see if it grabs me.
And if you want to talk about the very definition of pop culture, I also watched the big Deontay Wilder vs Tyson Fury boxing match. I’m much more interested in MMA, but I will take in a boxing match if it captures the world’s attention. And this match very MUCH got on the world’s radar. It was a big event. And it did not disappoint. Personally, I can do without all the theatrics of the big entrance that boxers make. That just strikes me as silly and a waste of time. It can be stunningly cheap and vulgar, like the worst of professional wrestling. I prefer the simple dignity of how MMA fighters in the UFC approach the octagon. Even the theatrics of Bellator and One Championship is too much for me. I fast forward through all of that if I can. I’ll even watch those two fighting leagues with the sound completely off.
In this case, I did watch the full entrance of both Deontary Wilder and Tyson Fury. I was so astonished at the over-the-top nuttiness of it that I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the screen, to be honest. But I knew this was fodder for countless Internet memes in the future, so I drank it all in. It was like a fever dream from another dimension. And it certainly had nothing to do with athletics and boxing. It was hard to believe there were actual finely-tuned athletes under those ridiculous costumes.
Luckily, the boxing match itself was full of excitement and twists and turns. I get nervous when I sit down to watch a heavyweight boxing match, because chances are that the two behemoths will simply grab each other and hug each other for most of each round and the ref will have to force them apart constantly. That tendency is the main reason I lost interest in boxing. At least in MMA, there is less risk of that happening. If you try to hug your opponent, he’ll just knee you in the stomach or get you in a body lock and slam you to the mat or try to take your back and choke you unconscious. It’s more difficult to just hold your opponent and stall the match as so often happens in boxing.
But Wilder and Fury had no interest in hugging and stalling. They came to fight. And the match was quite exciting in its way.
Another big event from yesterday consisted of an email and series of messages from a friend in Taiwan. This friend of mine does occasional professional work as a translator. She translates English novels into Chinese. And she will occasionally send me a series of questions about things in the books that she’s having trouble translating. I really enjoy answering these questions. The thing is that they aren’t grammar questions. She is a professional editor, and she doesn’t need help understanding the grammar. Her questions tend to be more about cultural things that she hadn’t come across before or unfamiliar English idioms or slang. And often, there will be a sentence structure that is so complicated that it’s difficult for a non-native speaker of English to figure out the meaning.
I love her questions because each one is like a puzzle. I get to figure out what the English means, but I also have to try to see the English from her point of view. Sometimes it isn’t obvious to me what it is that she doesn’t understand. With language, it is common to take a lot of meaning for granted. We just see it without even thinking about it. We can feel what it means, and we might assume that other people just feel it as well. And it is an interesting exercise to try to step outside of my own brain and try to see it from the point of view a person for whom these are just words on a page, just words from a dictionary. And then, quite often, with a cry of triumph, I will suddenly see where the confusion is coming from.
But much of the time, the questions are quite simple ones. And the fact that I know the answer has nothing to do with being dumb or intelligent. It’s just that I grew up in North America speaking English. That’s my world and my culture. So I recognize things in English books that she doesn’t in exactly the same way that someone from Thailand would know Thai names and songs and TV shows that I know nothing about.
Sometimes, in fact, I struggle just as much as my friend does. And this was the case with yesterday’s book and yesterday’s series of questions. The problem was that this novel was from the UK. And as such, it contained British idioms and slang. And I have to look these up just as much as someone from Taiwan would have to look them up. I often have a vague sense of what the expression means, but I still have to confirm what I suspect. One example from yesterday is the expression “fair innings.” This is not a common expression in Canada. I don’t think we use it all. It’s purely a UK thing. I’d come across it before in my life, and from the context, I could safely guess what it means. But I still had to do a bit of Googling to make sure I knew exactly what it meant and where the expression came from.
In helping out my friend, I’ve come to have a deeper understanding of just how difficult it is to translate anything from language to language, let alone an entire novel. It’s not a simple matter of just replacing a word from one language with the matching word from the other language. It’s much more challenging than that. I’d say it is closer to an art form than anything else. The person doing the translation has to have nearly the same level of writing ability as the original author to truly do a good job and capture the tone and mood of the original work. Ten people could translate the same book from Chinese to English, and the final ten books would all probably be dramatically different based on the personalities and skill levels of the ten translators. Translation is a fascinating world.
I think the difficulties of translation only become apparent when you truly come to grips with it yourself. A fascinating example from yesterday was contained in the section at the end of the book where the author traditionally thanks everyone who helped them write the book. I really had to think about this one. This is what the author wrote:
“My partner in life, if not crime, deserves equal praise.”
Imagine being faced with that sentence and having to translate it. It is short, but there is a lot going on. It is, of course, based on the expression “partner in crime”. You have to be familiar with that expression and know what it means. For that matter, you have to understand “partner in life” and know what the words “deserve” and “equal praise” mean. And all of this is folded into a sentence structure using the “if not” construction.
And quite often, dictionaries don’t even help you out. If you look up the expression “partner in crime” online, you will likely be told the original meaning. A partner in crime is someone who helps you commit crimes, such as robbing a bank. This person might drive the getaway car while you go inside and get the money. The driver is your partner in committing crimes. But that expression has moved on and come to be used in normal life and in a somewhat jocular fashion. Even as a native English speaker with a lot of experience in teaching and editing, I might have trouble explaining exactly what a partner in crime is. I can feel it. I know what it means. I know how to use it. But try to actually write down a clear and simple definition. It isn’t easy.
So, if you were someone born in Taiwan with Chinese as your first language, who only learned English in classrooms through textbooks, how could you even begin to understand what this sentence means and how to translate it? What if there is no expression in Chinese similar to “partner in crime”? What if Chinese grammar is such that this “if not” construction is not possible? You essentially have to have a very deep understanding of what this sentence means and then know how to express the same meaning in Chinese. You can’t just assemble a Chinese sentence by doing a simple search-and-replace on the English words. It’s more about absorbing the full meaning of the sentence and then reproducing that same meaning and tone in a completely different language using different words following different grammatical rules. It’s a challenge, pure and simple. I admire my friend for even attempting it.
Well, I think that is enough of my thoughts for this morning. At some point, I have to turn to this new day and new thoughts. The question is which task to turn to first? I really want to finish the Planet Doug video about the scooter ride from Sam Ngao to Tak. But I also want to film the Learning Curve video about the DJI Pocket 2 gimbal modes. Maybe I will do that first. Then stroll down to the hospital to ask my question about picking up my vaccine certificate. I should bring my friendly English-speaking clerk a present for all her help, but I don’t know if that is appropriate or what I should bring. I don’t want to give the impression of bribing someone for help in getting vaccinated. But a small present, like a snack, should be okay, right?
12:15 p.m.
Progress has been made. I spent some time replying to comments on my Planet Doug YouTube channel. I haven’t had much time in recent weeks to reply to comments. I enjoy doing that, so I’m trying to set aside some time for that each day. And once I ran out of things to say in the comments, I went for a walk to the hospital to check into this idea of coming to get my vaccine certificate at a later date. I was successful in that errand. The hospital was much less busy this morning than it was on Monday morning when I went for my second shot of Pfizer. The vaccination clinic was jammed on Monday morning. But it was quite empty and calm today.
I thought ahead to how I would ask my question, and I had even prepared a piece of paper on which I wrote down the dates October 29th and November 1st. I wanted to ask if I absolutely had to come on October 22nd to get my vaccine certificate. Or could I come to the hospital a week later, on one of those two dates? I could sense that this was a silly question. Once the certificate is ready, surely it doesn’t matter when I pick it up. It’s not like having a doctor’s appointment for a specific time and day. But I wanted to make sure. And when I asked my question, my friendly English-speaking clerk laughed and said that of course I could come in on a later day. I clearly didn’t even need to ask. Her laugh told me she considered it to be common sense. In fact, she thought maybe my certificate would already be ready. It had been four or five days since my second injection. She went over to a pile of papers and sorted through it, but it wasn’t there.
But I was still glad that I checked. Now I know for sure, and I can plan around the rainstorms that are threatening to arrive over the next couple of days. I can plan to leave on Monday morning, and that will give me Friday, Saturday, and Sunday here in Mae Sot to get a bunch of things done and get organized. And then I can just take off for a full two weeks until the end of the month, if that’s what I want to do.
After I got back from the hospital, I set up my cameras, and I shot a Learning Curve video about the Pocket 2 gimbal modes. I’ve finished that, and it was exhausting. As always, I made it more complicated than it needed to be, and I ran into a world of technical problems. I’m constantly running out of memory these days because I don’t have enough memory cards. And the GoPro Hero 9 kept overheating and shutting down while filming. I eventually gave up on it and just used the Panasonic G85. It is much more solid and reliable, though more complicated to use.
But now that I’ve finished filming the raw video, I feel like I made the video too complicated. I almost want to reshoot the the whole thing in a much simpler form. Try to get it short and straight to the point. I was thinking I might just go back and simply read what I wrote in my journal earlier. In that short piece, I said exactly what I wanted to say. I need a teleprompter so I can look into the camera and read a prepared script. That at least would prevent me from going off on wild tangents, as I tend to do.