Sunday - January 26, 2003
This morning, while Chu-Wan and the camcorder where
in the other room, Michelle, without any prompting, lifted herself up on her
hands, then did a push-up on the tips of her toes. She's been doing this for
days, but what made it different today was that she then proceeded to pull her
knees down under her in a classic "crawling" stance and proceeded to move
forward two crawls. She then collapsed and didn't repeat the
process.
Made my usual trip to the Cong You Bing vendor only to
discover he was closed! He must take Sundays off. During the rest of my walk, I
studied the handicapped paths along the way and realized that whoever designed
these was a vicious, evil person. Many of the sidewalks still have special
paths which have special raised stripes in them to aid the blind in navigating
the sidewalks.
I've already mentioned the serious problems presented for
someone in a wheelchair, but consider the plight of the blind person who
follows one of these paths only to have it end with an 8 inch drop down onto a
busy street. Or the path the leads along the way until it passes right under a
metal bar placed 6 inches off the ground. There's another which leads right
into a solid wall.
I only had 2 things on the agenda today, get a pizza
and look at cameras. Since one of the Round Table Pizzas was relatively near
the area of town that specializes in cameras, we went there
first.
Hurrah! It was still there and I had a terrific sausage and
pepperoni pizza.
When then headed towards the nearest Metro station,
but as we approached it, we came to an intersection that you have to go
underground (via stairs) to cross. Michelle was asleep and we didn't want to
wake her by unpacking her from the stroller so we turned and decided to walk
the whole way to the camera street.
We passed a small park and
stopped to rest for a while. This pretty little park exists, essentially under
an expressway overpass.
Markets were setup across from the main train
station and we bought a couple Chinese outfits for Michelle so she'll have
something to wear on Chinese New Year.
Along the booths was one
extolling the virtues of the Linux operating system. The Linux campaign is the
phrase "Unbreakable Linux". That may be, but I don't know that I'd emblazon the
word "unbreakable" on an inflatable penguin.
Last night I did enough
research on the Konica camera I was looking at to decide that I didn't want it.
Everything looked good right down the line except that it only simulated 100ASA
film. Slow enough that shots at night or any moving subject would be too dark
or blurred. I was without a camera to look for, but we went anyway to see if we
could get any ideas on a suitable replacement. After looking up and down, I
came across the Sony DSC-P71, it looked like it might be what I wanted, but,
once again, I needed to return and study it on the Internet.
Chu-Wan's mother met us at a toy store near the
house, where she bought Michelle a toy to play with. Hopefully, that will give
her more to keep her occupied during the day. Currently she hasn't got a lot to
do, so she really has been clinging to Chu-Wan all the time.
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