Hold losely...

So I'm trying to be friendly with the neighbors. You can't last long in this country without finding a sense of community, and they are my best bet. I help the oldest son with English a couple of times a week, though he needs more practice than I give him.

One night, he told me that they were going to a nearby ski resort, and he wondered if he could borrow my camera. Saying no really isn't the culturally appropriate thing to do, though, as a foreigner, I have a little extra leeway. But I have two cameras, and I figure I can spare the point and shoot for a few days.

Nearly a week later, he brings the camera back to me. At first glance, it looks fine. At first glance with the power on, it's not fine. The LCD screen is pure white, except for a few cracks and black patches.

He had no explanation for how it ended up that way. (My guess: The camera was the mouth on the snowman. But that's just a guess. But it'd be cool to have a snowman, and when you look at the mouth, it takes a picture. Right? No? Well, I hope the answer wasn't snow-soccer. That'd be lame. We have that. It's called hockey.)

Thing is, the camera still works fine. You just can't see anything. So I smile and nod and take it back.

The next day, he gave the memory card to me and asked me to put the pictures on a DVD for him. I figured that was a small enough task, I could do that. As soon as the memory card hits my card reader, my antivirus flagged it. And the longer it stayed in, the more the antivirus complains.

I'm not a big fan of viruses. But apparently here, they LOVE them. Every computer has one. It's not an exaggeration.

I gave him the card back and told him he was on his own. A couple minutes later, he returned, saying he'd formatted the card.

I stuck it in. Virus alert.

So I expected to never see my camera again. This was still a step up. And I got to see what an SD card looks like when you crack the outer shell. It's pretty interesting.

I can't say whether I'll loan anything else out yet. That was valuable relationship building, after all.

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