[Photo credit: Roberta]
We only had to go 2 stops on the bus but we went three
because we missed our stop. Then we had to trek back. Thankfully it was all
downhill....until we came to our actual stop. Then it wa
s uphill. For our stay
in Gozo, Roberta had found this great plate which was a two-bedroom flat within
an honest-to-god fort called Fort
Chambray. As a photo
location that place was epic. But to climb up the hill to get to it....? I
don’t know if you are keeping track but we still had our suitcases with us.
Everything we had carried with us from UK
plus whatever we bought in Malta,
namely the keyboard, we were carrying with us. So, it was not a fun climb.
[Photo credit: Roberta]
There was a big gate which was closed. Roberta called the
flat owner and he opened the gate for us by an app on his mobile. Technology,
huh? A little more climb then we hunted around for the actual flat. Didn’t find
it. Walking up and down the dark corridors of the fort was not fun. Thankfully,
the flat owner was available on phone for directions and after a couple of
false starts we found the place.
What a lovely place! The fort was old but the flat was new
and fully furnished including dishwasher, fridge, microwave and anything you
wanted. First thing we wanted was to rest our legs. So we plopped down on the
sofas and talked about food options. The flat had a fully functioning kitchen
but we were missing two things – groceries and the stamina to cook. We took the
easy way out and ordered takeaway from Bolt Food. We had to walk down to the
big metal gate to receive the food but now we had a remote to “Open Sesame” the
big gate.
In the Bolt Food menu there were many different restaurants
and we had ordered Italian because that’s one cuisine Roberta and I agree on.
More on that later. I had ordered a plain Margarita pizza and garlic bread
hoping that at least one of them would be good. Boy, was I wrong. The pizza was
burnt and tasted like it. The garlic bread, let’s not talk about it or your
stomach will turn. I had two slices of pizza from the non-burnt part then lost
the determination to continue. I threw away the garlic bread then and the rest
of the pizza next morning. Roberta was more forgiving and about finished her
pizza. If you are keeping track, this had been a longass day and we were both
tired so after the “dinner” we retired to our rooms.
While I might not be a kickass professional photographer, I
do try to cultivate good habits of the professionals. One of them is to put all
my gadgets on charge before going to bed. Malta
has the same electric sockets that we have in UK so we didn’t need to pack
international adapters but I had packed one anyway just in case and also because
it served as a multi-plug. I had also packed an extension board that gave me 3
electric sockets and 4 USB charging sockets. Using these two, I set all my
stuff on charge – phone, camera battery, smartwatch etc.
The second good habit I follow is to copy all the media from
a day’s shooting before going to bed no matter how tired I am. If I took photos
in Malta
and lost them through a mistake or accident, I would be kicking myself because
they can’t be reproduced easily. My phone has a big storage and I was carrying
a few solutions for the USB-C port that is offers. Using a USB-C card reader, I
copied today’s photos and videos from the camera card on to the phone. From
there they would automatically get sync’ed (I used an app called DriveSync) to
my Google Drive.
Two backup copies. The photos I take on my phone get sync’ed to the Google Drive
instantly anyway.
Once that was done, I had time to check the keyboard. It
worked like magic. I was able to do all that I wanted to do on the tablet
including writing fiction. Touch typing was possible at almost my full typing
speed. Then it was time to sleep because sunrise was expected about 0730 and I
wanted to be there to greet it.
The next morning the disadvantage of living in an
impractical, hard-to-reach fort paid off in full.
No comments:
Post a Comment