After 6 months of travelling, with little more than a week in one place, I have a hard drive full of hard-gotten, but since forgotten images. The D810 takes humongous images: approx 70mb raw files and it takes a long time to empty the three 64gb SD cards I regularly fill.
Thinking back on the last six months in East Asia, South America and Europe, it seems an appropriate time to take count, because I will soon, for the first time in two years, be in a country where English is the primary language and native language. I’ve had the piece of mind to live and travel through countries where I don’t understand the idol chatter for that time and I’ve become a great fan of having an excuse to ignore chatter around me.
On the odd occasion when I’ve been waiting in line for a restaurant or historical site, I’ve been bludgeoned back into realising that the majority of what people talk about is mindless. I’m equally talking about Brits, Americans and Australians, so at least I equally hate everyone's everyday eloquence. Yes, I’m that guy :) but I’ll admit it.
Living in a country where you don’t understand anything, at least in the beginning, has a counterintuitive effect. You become more sensitive to what you can understand. Changes in body language and the occasional comprehensible word catches your attention much more than back home and, if you do end up in earshot of an English conversation, then it is very difficult to tune it out.
So, with the UK on the horizon, I have a little trepidation over whether I’ll be able to handle all the comprehensible but mundane conversation being had around me. Perhaps I’ll just have to find something really interesting to talk about: like the shot frequency to video duration ratio of my last timelapse.
