Pakistan… the true picture!

The true picture of Pakistan…

Bought a new point-and-shoot camera

Its been quite a while that I have been using my old Sanyo point-and-shoot camera and now since my last trip to Blue Mountains it was quite evident that it lacks a lot of features (especially zoom) which the current new ones got. So I decided on finding a new one…

While making the decision few things I was considering were:

- Ease of Use
- Good Zoom feature
- Quality of photos at night
- Size
- Price Range

First thing I looked at were SLR cameras, they are just amazing with picture quality but not good for me when keeping in mind the price and size. The other important point was ease of use as most of the times its my wife using it so she wanted something that is really easy to use for which SLR cameras were not good for the case.

After doing some search this weekend, we ended up having good deal on a Lumix camera (DMC-TZ11) from a Harvey Norman shop near our place. It met most of our requirements…

- Very easy to use with its intelligent mode
- Zoom up to 10x which caters for most my zoom demands
- Photo quality has just been amazing till now, will upload some of the pictures as we plan our next trip
- Not big in size, just like an ordinary point-and-shoot camera
- Came with a very affordable price tag of AUD $400 (US $257)

Lumix DMC-TZ11

Just a little about other features…

ISO Speeds : 800, 800, 1600, 1600, 400, 400, 200, 200, 100, 100, Auto, Auto
Digital Zoom : 4x
Optical Zoom : 10x
Camera Resolution : 8.1 Megapixels

Cant wait for the next weekend to really test it out

–
Shoaib Mir
shoaibmir[@]gmail.com

A weekend trip to Blue Mountains

Living in Sydney and not been to Blue Mountains is something you cant miss and not having done that trip yet, I decided on the last Friday to just do it over the weekend.

We left on a beautiful Saturday morning and reached Katoomba (centre of Blue moutains) in around two hours and did a small town tour for like 30 minutes and then went to our booked room at motel in order to freshen up. Once in the motel we got all the maps and details from the reception and then we were ready to start the Blue Mountains exploring tour. As its been said a blue mountains trip cant happen if you haven’t visited the three sisters at Echo point so we started it from there, there is an old story attached to three sisters…

The Aboriginal dream-time legend has it that three sisters, ‘Meehni’, ‘Wimlah’ and Gunnedoo’ lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. These beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry. The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle. As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the witchdoctor himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to  return the ladies to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come.

Echo Point

After that we followed the cliff drive and stopped at Honey Moon lookout, Leura cascades, Katoomba Falls, Gordon Falls, and Leura Garden. It was pretty late after that so we stopped for food at Leura Shops and found a pretty good resturant where they had a very nice vegertarian pizza (Roma) and then we were back at the Motel to relax and freshen up before going back to Echo point to watch the sunset.

Around 7:30 PM we left our motel to watch the sunset and it was just amazing to be there at that time. This is where I decided now its time to get a SLR camera and get rid of my old point-and-shoot camera haha.

Sunset at Echo Point

We had dinner at one of the funky looking resturants on Katoomba Street and they had some good live music been played there as well. The band was “Dirty Lady” which I had heard before but the performance was petty nice.

We left Blue Mountains early in the morning on Sunday and then having a small stop at Westfield Paramatta we were back in Sydney around afternoon.

Next thing on the list is to see the “Jenolan Caves”…

Shoaib Mir
shoaibmir[@]gmail.com

ANZ Stadium (Sydney) tour

Its been more then a year here in Sydney for me but never got a chance to visit ANZ Stadium and having being heard so much about it, last weekend I thought lets give it a visit

It turned to be a really good experience as I got to know quite a lot about the history of the stadium from the tour guide. A little about it:

- Construction of ANZ Stadium commenced in September 1996 and was completed in March 1999.

- The Stadium project cost approximately $670 million.  This includes $545 million in design and construction costs, $32m in surrounding precinct works and $93m in development and financing costs.

- This $670 million covered the stage 1 Olympic configuration . A further $80 million was invested in the post-Games reconfiguration work involving the installation of an oval arena, moving stands on the east and west, roofing over the north and south stands and a new tier on the north stand.

- The Stadium in its final configuration has a capacity of 82,000 for oval sports (AFL and cricket) and a capacity of 83,500 in rectangular mode (for rugby union, league and soccer) and the ability to switch between these modes regularly.

Took a few pictures as well…

Stadium Entrance

Inside the Stadium

Matrix on Win-doze

This is just hilarious and a great tribute to our very own Win-doze