It will not surprise you to learn that I like to follow the latest gadget stories. Part of each day is spent catching up on the latest releases in the world of cameras, computers and anything I might conceivably want in my life. Anything released that does not have the Spike seal of approval is roundly mocked and cast aside. Objects that are approved are briefly lusted after and then rejected because of cost, or on the basis that “not even Spike can justify owning that”. Only rarely does something pass through this rigorous and scientific evaluation process and end up joining the massive pile of rarely used toys in my collection.

For many, Monday marks the start of the working week and is, as I recall, a time of great depression. But as I arrive at the twilight of my years, the long slow descent into senility and incontinence (Ed: Give it a rest), Mondays are no better or worse than any other day.

Some attempt has been made to return to the horrors of my working life by the chairman of our condo committee who has decided that we will meet every other Monday at 10:00 to regurgitate the same issues we discussed at length at the last meeting. And so I had to drag myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 09:00 in order to present myself, coffee in hand, for a two hour wankathon. I believe I did myself credit by behaving disgracefully and losing my temper more than twice; with a bit of luck they will sigh with relief when I don’t put myself up for re-election next year.

Still, these Pattaya meetings are as nothing compared to the main committee meetings in Bangkok which take place every two months and exhibit every “how not to run a meeting” trait that you can imagine. The chairwoman is a well-meaning and charming old lady; but she is totally incapable of following what is going on, let alone controlling the discussion. As a result, meetings descend into shouting matches and, as I believe I reported previously, I walked out of the previous one in disgust. Retrospectively, I blamed my raging hormones and have used the same medically unsupportable excuse to avoid the next meeting, which is tomorrow. Hurray for hormones.

Meeting out of the way, it was off to meet she who must be obeyed for lunch. I always enjoy having a meal with my beloved; but it turned out that half of Bangkok had taken advantage of the public holiday today, and had also taken off yesterday in order to concentrate on clogging the streets of Pattaya.

Back home, and I could not bear the prospect of venturing out again to the windsurfing club, even though the wind was blowing. Instead I settled down to the onerous task of setting up torrents to download the various preferred TV programmes from the weekend, and then spent the evening watching many of them.

In between the downloading and the watching, I took a little stroll down the beach and took a few photos, one of which I shared yesterday. Here are three more:

I realise that my unbridled enthusiasm for Micro Four Thirds has been indirectly responsible for the ruining of many other wallets, to the extent that if I had been on commission I would have received enough cash from Panasonic and Olympus to buy… well, I suppose another bloody lens.

The latest potential victim is a friend who made the mistake of buying a Canon lower end DSLR with a Tamron lens and now discovers it doesn’t do much more than his old compact cameras in terms of image quality. He is pondering the new Nikon D600 full frame camera, with a suitable lens attached, and very nice that would be too. But he was wondering whether for much less money and bulk, he could join MFT and still get good enough IQ. Only he can decide the answer, my only contribution has been to throw a selection of reviews and image samples in his direction to help him in his decision.

He wants to start with a zoom lens with a range roughly equivalent to a 24-70mm on full frame. He could spend $1,000 plus on the new Panasonic X 12-35mm, but a much cheaper and smaller option would be the Panasonic 14-45mm.

It’s such a genius idea, it’s a wonder that nobody has thought of it sooner. In this age of celebrity, what could be more appropriate than ladies forking out fifteen thousand pounds to impregnate themselves with the sperm of a famous man.

Yes, it’s FameDaddy, and it’s not a hoax because it has been reviewed by national newspapers (but there again, so was the invasion of Iraq).

The concept is as simple as it is unworkable. Successful men will give up their time and bodily fluids to contribute to a sperm bank. Strangely perverse women will then spend large amounts of money for the frozen sperm. Result: Profit. And children.

Avid readers* of my Russian camera saga will recall that I carried out an exhaustive** trial of the various lenses that had come into my possession following the acquisition of too many Kiev cameras. The winner was the Helios 103, a vision in metal and plastic representing the finest Russian craftsmanship of its time (joke).

The Helios was produced between 1978 and 1984 and was shipped with Kiev rangefinder cameras. Problem was that the quality control on the cameras reached such a low point that entire production runs were sent for scrap, to reappear later as wheelbarrows. So by 1984, the lenses that were being produced had no associated camera, and hundreds (thousands?) of Helios 103 lenses ended up in a warehouse, unloved and forgotten.

But with the resurgence of interest in film cameras, and the medium of eBay, these spare lenses are being dragged out of storage and put up for sale. The going rate is between $25 and $40, and I paid near the upper limit, $39 for a lens with caps, a rather dirty box, and a piece of paper which is worth nothing more than amusement value; although thirty year old Russian paper does have an interesting aroma.

“Is it OK if my sister comes to stay with us for a week?” enquired my wife, the day before said sister was planned to arrive. I could hardly refuse, although I realised that the “us” in her request meant mainly me, because she who must be obeyed spends most of the day in gainful employment, whilst I spend all of mine in gainful sloth.

Little sister is well-behaved and now speaks English well enough; so the visit should be a painless enough experience. But really, what the hell do you do with kids nowadays?

We had a conversation about youth. She wanted to know what mine had been like, with a particular interest being expressed in music. I told her about The Beatles, she had never heard of them. She likes Justin Bieber and One Direction. I tried to explain that The Beatles were like One Direction, except with talent; but that didn’t go down too well. She also wanted to know about my girlfriends, but I suspected that that question had been planted by she who must be obeyed so I advocated celibacy until marriage. That didn’t go down so well either, because she didn’t understand the word ‘celibacy’ and I was not going to be the one to explain it. We didn’t have a conversation about fashion because I am too old to feign interest in things that bore me shitless; and she is too young to feign interest in anything, especially the merits of the micro four thirds camera system, a fascinating subject I tried to raise on a number of occasions.

In desperation, I took her to the place I vowed I would never go to again, Art in Paradise. The good news was that they were now offering the Thai price for non-Thais with driving licences, the bad news was that the place was rammed with parents who also had no idea what to do with their kids during the school holidays. People were queuing, in that very special Asian way that that an Englishman would define as shoving, to photograph each other. It was mayhem, not helped by a power cut and near darkness at one point.

We elbowed our way round the paintings and gathered enough snaps for her to fill her Facebook feed for a couple of days.

I don’t do heights. I won’t go anywhere near an unguarded significant drop. I climbed up the side of a very steep temple in Bangkok and then refused to come down when I realised I was now on the edge of what appeared, to me, to be a cliff with a sheer drop. Took me an hour of whimpering and scrabbling to eventually make it down.

So I was quite surprised at myself when I volunteered to go up in the gondola at the bungy jump in order to get a couple of photos from on high.

Does not include this: