It’s taking ages to connect to the Internet. I’ve always known the Bruneian telecoms services to be insidiously unreliable, but this is really pushing it! It’s been two frigging hours already! And yet my repeated attempts to log in have all ended in futility. This really sucks. I can’t book out, there’s nothing good on TV, and the Internet is busted. It’s times like this when a low-definition web-camera and a sudden bout of narcissism can help to pass the time.

For all the excitement surrounding advances in digital photography, I’ve never been part of the megapixel-chasing crowd. Sure, higher-megapixel cameras give you clearer and sharper pictures, but when it comes to self-portraits, it can be devastating for the genetically disadvantaged – like me - to see their blemishes captured in full detail; worse still, if one is untrained in the arts of Adobe Photoshop editing.

So, even though my humble less-than-one-megapixel web-camera should probably be consigned to the museum of digital cameras by today’s standards, I would never discard it, because the fuzzy, blur and low-resolution pictures it produces conceal my flaws perfectly.

With such an ego-inflating gizmo, who needs the snazziest camera around?

(Sheesh…the Internet is still not up yet. I really wonder if this entry is even going to see the light of day.)