Here a few pictures of Madison and Jacobi that I took while I was down visiting in early July, Madison is making a late night snack and Jacobi is squezing the stuffing out of the family dog Cuki. They sure are growing up and getting bigger.
Well, you may also notice the pictures are not the best quality, especially in the photo of Madison her face looks a little blurry. I can blame that on my "ancient" camera, here's the story.
Probably about 6 or 7 years ago it was time for me to get a decent camera, at the time I had been accustomed to using the disposable one-time use cameras and digital cameras were just coming out so of course they were fairly high priced. On my many trips to Chile I usually connected thru Panama and usually had a long layover which wasn't bad because Panama is one huge duty-free zone and their airport is full of shops selling everything from electronics, cameras, perfume, clothes, watches, and pretty much anything else you can think of. So on my many connections there I would check out prices on cameras and I remember that they were lower priced than cameras here at home by usually about 50 dollars, not bad at all.
So one time I was down in Chile and the plan was I was going to buy a camera in Panama on my way back since I had another long layover and I would have time to do some shopping. It turned out though that while wandering the streets of Valparaiso I came across a photo shop and they had some cameras for sale in their window. I took a look and it turned out that they had the same Nikkon camera that I was going to buy in Panama but it was even lower priced so I siezed the moment and bought it there. I was very happy with the camera and it was nice, not a professional camera but a definite step up from what I had been using and it did take very good pictures.
The camera served me well over the years and I took many nice pictures with it on different trips and I even won a photo contest at work with a picture that I had snapped in Cancun.
Fast forward to Summer of '07, Mom and Dad went with me down to Chile to visit the kids. We had a good trip, although it was winter there and a little cold and cloudy most of the time. On the next to last day of the trip we went to the beach in Vina just to walk around and take a picture or two. This was when I discovered that my kids were more advanced than I am. I took of picture of them with Mom and Dad and once I had snapped it they came running over and said, "Let us see the picture." I had to explained to them that this was not a digital camera but a camera with film where I could not see the picture immediately but had to wait till I got home and send the film away for developing. Madison and Jacobi looked at each other for a moment, then they looked at me, and then they burst out in laughter and screamed, "Que antigua! Que antigua!" ("How ancient! How ancient!")
I stood there for a moment and contemplated my place in the world and how old I was and how young they were. I at one time, not too many years before that, had felt good about myself and the shiny new camera I had purchased. Now I felt "antigua," both me and my camera.
Fast forward again to this latest trip in 2009. I still hadn't gone out to get a new camera because I thought it still had some life in it. As I took some of the above pictures not only did Madison and Jacobi remember that my camera doesn't show the pictures immediately but they discovered that my camera made a sound (the sound of the film advancing after a picture is taken.) Now they had something new to laugh at, and as I told Madison and Jacobi to sit on the stairs and I would take a picture of them (the top picture above) Madison could barely hold back the laughter as I prepared to take the picture. The picture was taken, the film advanced, the sound could be heard and the two of them laughed for a good five minutes.
I returned home and took the pictures in and got them developed. Could things get any worse? Yes they could as I soon found out, I got the pictues back and low and behold all of them were blurry, or at least mostly blurry. I sat in my car dejected as I thumbed through the pictures and realized the time had come to join the 21st century.
Sincerely, Mr. Antigua
