“…So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it’s worth it was worth all the while
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life…”
- Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) by Green Day
More than ten years after most of his friends owned one (maybe more), he finally got his. He is still suspicious of the 30% discount he got from the shop. But that’s not the point. The package came with everything but the manual. He assumed he could easily guess how to operate it with two eyes closed.
He got the basics – 2 stopwatches, 5 alarm clocks, world time of 48 cities and dozens of useless stuff that he wouldn’t bother to use were easily configurable. But he couldn’t get the damn Auto EL backlight to work. What the hell is DST? How to mute the irritating beep?
Like any other netizens of the 21st century, he googled. No luck on the official website. He found the Casio’s ftp where all the manuals are stored. Easy, except that they are not named according to the model number. Weird. A forum thread actually suggested to download all the (1000+) files and check one by one afterwards. Very funny.
Shortly he spotted another thread that traced to yet another resource which “lists all the Japanese release G-shocks from 1983-2007″ in spreadsheet and text file (Update: Previous link is broken, try this link instead.). There was a corresponding module number for each model number. The dots were connected. The module number 3031 for his G-9000MC-8JF led him to the correct manual qw3031.pdf. It was like breaking the Da Vinci’s code for beginners.
Operation Guide 3031. Three and a half monochrome pages, with diagrams and tables. He found what he wanted.
He woke up at 6 am and it ended at 9 pm. He had neither prize won nor great photos to show off. He even had a great fall at the roadside. But he participated with passion, survived the challenge, and definitely had heck of a playtime at the marathon today. Fresh perspectives, unusual experience and pure enjoyment didn’t come together as often as that.
Besides being the photo marathon with the most number of participants to date, he guessed it was also a mass parade of photo gears (he could see L everywhere) of the grandest scale yet. If anything, the guy with enough of equipment to dislocate his right shoulder and the other 3-4 kids below 10 playing with 1Ds like Lego bricks truly deserved some special awards.
Lao-tzu said, “千里之行，始于足下”. This blogger renews his blogging journey with his niece’s little foot that has yet to learn how to walk. The destination is unknown, the purpose undecided and the luggage unprepared.
“Hello world,” the little foot is waving.