The world around us

Ever since we did our first investment in an apartment, we have become quite interested in the concept of flipping apartments or property’s to increase one’s investment. I happened to see an advertisement for Alabama land for sale and was immediately intrigued and wondered if we should investigate further to see if we could go in for another property investment so soon after our earlier one. Well, it still remains to be seen whether it will be financially feasible for us, but the whole concept of buying property and selling it sooner than what one would keep it earlier has made this kind of investment much more interesting.

I’ve not been posting regularly for the past couple of weeks since I have been on a bit of a break since my parents are visiting. That’s the advantage of being a freelancer, that I get to decide when I want to work or not. The pay is not regular of course and varies as you work more or less, but that’s really fine by me. I’d much rather have the flexibility of being able to set my own schedule and to be able to take longer vacations and work half days, which is what I will start doing once I get back to work. Might as well enjoy my time as I decide to, right!

Since the weather has been so lovely lately, we’re planning to do some barbecuing one evening. All we need to do before is to get some nice outdoor lighting set up, to set a nice ambiance for the evening. At present, we only have the basic outdoor lighting that surrounds the perimeter of the house, and which is not all that great for setting the mood for an al fresco meal. One needs to have some softer lighting, and since we have some trees outside, I’d like to maybe even twine some lights on a branch or hang a lamp almost like an outdoor chandelier. The ideas and options are endless, really!

Since I’m on the subject of photographs, here is one of mine that I recently posted. I took it last year and was quite happy at the way it turned out. It was taken at Dubai Festival City, which is a veritable treasure trove of photographs waiting to be taken. Every direction that you look in, you will find something interesting and eye-catching. It could be a water feature, an architectural detail, the light coming in from the curved glass ceiling or something similar. You are sure to find lots to photograph there.

I love to surf and buy interesting stuff on the Internet. I recently came across these magnifiers that are available at First Street, which are a really great find, as it’s not always easy to find nice looking magnifiers at regular stores. Most of the ones I have seen are very basic and do not look nice at all. These, however, are really creative and user friendly. I especially like the flip-top watch with a magnifier and the pendant magnifier, both of which are really innovative uses of magnifying glasses. With the baby boomer generation reaching its peak, the demand for things like this is only going to increase and I hope more stores realize the importance of stocking items like these for this growing and aging segment.

I’ve been playing around a lot with my photographs on Flickr lately. I’ve uploaded more than I usually do and found lots of really great photographers there as well. A lot of the photographs are very basic but there are some really outstanding shots there as well. My personal preference goes towards the ones that are not too perfect, since they either look faked or just too posed and primped. There needs to be a certain element of surprise or roughness to a photograph to really make it stand apart and I have found some really great examples of that on Flickr. I would gladly pay money to buy some of the photographs and put them on my walls at home.