The Wizardry of OZ

Let me start this post by really thanking God that i had the chance to visit my sister down under for about 2 weeks without any agenda (!) other than to visit her. Previously i've been there before, but both times were bogged down with agendas (marriage etc) so this is the first time that we actually go and have some fun in Sydney. Thank God that she was also on leave when we came so we have a free tour guide as well as food critic in town. =P

Well anyways, i believed i've taken a small break and posted some HDR previously, so i shall type more on this one and put some pictures here and there. We actually arrived in Melbourne for a few days before taking the journey up to Sydney. (No camera in Melbourne hence no pictures) After which my sis decided to bring us to do the tourist thing - i.e. to tour around town with a cheap day-pass. it's quite a good concept actually, to pay a fix amount and go to as many tourist spots as you can in ONE day around town. we managed about 5? But it was good - like the wildlife center and the aquarium.


Other than seeing some of the iconic animals in Australia (which i later found out, really are everywhere in Australia), we also managed to take a tour around Opera House which was quite cool. But of course, i could never miss out the OZ jet boat ride. It was really one wet experience as the jet boat took us around the harbor and riding waves of ferries and private boats.


However, the fun really starts on the second week (to me at least, haha) when we took a 4 hour trip up to Snowy Mountain. We ended up staying at a very scenic little town called Talbingo, which wasnt snow covered (i was half expecting that) but has frost every morning. Nonetheless, another 30 min drive up to Mount Selwyn will have my eyes sore blinded by snow. For some 山芭佬 like me who has never seen snow, its quite an excitement actually.


Talbingo is hidden somewhere but this is that sort of scenes you get at the little town. It is also here that i've found out that in the countryside of Australia, there's a loooot of wild animals everywhere. we spotted kangaroos like packs residing on the hills, dead wombat (shucks) as a victim to roadkill, emus striding beside the riverbanks and tons and tons of birds. The birds especially, are really very chio so took a lot of pics of them.



No this is not the house that we stayed in. it's just a random house on natural trail we found on the way and decided to slow down and have fun. build a snowman and took some pics!


Other than building snowman, we went to ski as well. really quite fun, a bit like roller blading but much, much faster. haha. crashed a few times before getting the hang of it and ski like a pro.


Overall it was really a very fun and enriching trip. Once again, i want to thank God for this opportunity and also my sis for letting us stay at her small little house and showing us her little darling Casper. I kinda miss his mischievousness. =)

Busyness is my Week

Alrite, i have been wanting to post on the blog for the past few days (honest). but i havent had the time to do that. i'm really serious about it, and this is one exception of posting cause i'm waiting to do something else at work.

For the past 4 days, i have been working 745 - 445, then on Tuesday and Wednesday went to Leadership Preparatory Camp (LPC) for Hall CF at Trinity Theological College straight after work, and returning only at like 11 plus 12? time to sleep so no time to blog.

Thursday have practice at nite for coming Blueblood on Saturday until 12 sth also. Tonite going off to have dinner and have practice after that. WOOHOO!

And i just got news from my supervisor that i have to do something very tedious today. its so tedious i felt tedious when i want to type out what to do. so i shall just take my leave.

Talking bout' Swine Flu

Talking about creativity. Actually for many times, Mrbrownshow has been one of the more hilarious entertaintment (i haven't watch TV regularly since like, 7 years ago?) that has made me laugh heartily when listening to them. There was the 'Tur Kua' issue, the 'Mai Hum' issue and many more which really tickles me especially when you live in the environment which they portray, sometimes very aptly through satirical parodies. 

Then now this. Yes swine flu was a major issue (btw, Singapore just got their first confirmed case) but the MOH decided that it wasnt as severe as the severe acute respiratory syndrome so we're still at yellow. 

Being a rather lame person, naturally i'd find this not just entertaining, but really rather creative. Seriously, to come out with a lame joke is not easy (unlike some friends of mine, who are naturally talented at this kinda thing) and that is why i enjoy some other satires such as South Park. And some other lame but rather entertaining 'documentary' - Top Gear. 

After all, a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bone =)

Stardust 09!!!

Hi guys, please vote for our band competition titled stardust here!!!

Our band is B01 Con Men!! =D

Flying Here and There

When Airasia came out quite a few years back i really thought that flying will be cheap. YEAH RIGHT.

1) They dont fly KL - Singapore - KL at that time.

2) Budget airlines always have this irritating concept of oooh "$0.00 DOLLAR FARE!" and end up you have to pay a few hundreds just to get from one place to another. Airport tax larh, fuel surcharge larh, insurance larh.. it's endless. Why dont we have restaurants that dont charge you for your bak chor mee, but charge you for using their spoon, their fork, their plate etc... what an idiotic idea.

3) Budget airlines have some very "interesting" airplanes. the kind that gives you free roller coaster rides. if you know what i mean.

BUT! lately i've decided to give it another try since fuel prices has dropped and flying seems to get hit quite hard in the recession. Furthermore Airasia seems to have established the route to Singapore quite firmly. SURPRISE SURPRISE! i actually managed to book a ticket which has a total cost (yes after adding all those irritating stuff) of < SGD35.00 when flying back from KL!

AND i've just bought another tix back to KL after my intern. it costs less than 50 bucks. cheaper than some bus tix. this time round it's Jetstar though. you just have to shift around Jetstar, Airasia or Tiger to get some good deals.. 

i guess sometimes recession might do some people really bad, but they also do some people good!

Today is April Fool's Day

Seriously, people have always joked about my birthday. it's kinda fun coz they dont believe you when you tell them 'eh today my birthday you know...' hahaha! 

jokes aside, another year has just whizzed past me like there's no yesterday... 2 years ago i remembered posting somewhere in the blog about getting kicked out from St James coz i'm still underage -.- OK dont get me wrong we were there for the purpose of watching good bands but who'd have thought that the only eligible place we can go is a huge dark room with nothing but bass beats.. =.= "we" here being me and yeekiat... 

now i'm 23 liao *so fast*. but yeekiat is not 23 yet... so its not so fast after all. what nonsense am i talking. Anyway, today is rather meaningful as well, because my beloved sister chose to have her wedding 3 years ago on this very date. very interesting indeed. i'd like to wish her a happy anniversary and hope that i'll become an uncle soon. 

so the whole point of this post is to thank all those who wished me a happy birthday on this very funny day and may God bless you all to have many birthdays to come! 

Gundam 00 Ends...

Finally after 2 long years, Gundam 00 comes to an end with 2 seasons of 25 episodes each... I've mentioned in my previous post before, i wasnt a Gundam fan until this series came along and well, it really is much better than a lot of anime/cartoons out there...

if you have the time, go and watch it.. HAHA.. and the video i posted is the 2nd end song of season 2 with the very tragic couple in the series..

Margaritaville

To be honest, South Park has got the best sense of humor out there. 

Margaritaville proves it all.

Go and watch ppl.. season 13 episode 3. i think is the best episode of south park ever. for those who dont know yet, south park is back on season 13~! 

Back From LalaLand

Hi all i've finally managed to clumber back to sunny Singapore. Though in my very humble and honest opinion, Sungai Besar is a much more sunny place. BUT, it was a good rest nonetheless and i've rejuvenated myself, albeit gaining a few spots on my body and well, starting to feel like a fish being scaled off daily. 

When i first thought of going back, there at the back of my mind i wanted to take nice pictures by the not-so-nice seaside (consists of mud and sand and... more mud and sand) i also wanted to take my mum's little piece of land called the garden, which in a few years time, has blossomed to become a tiny tropical rainforest. ALAS! i forgot to bring the charger for the camera's battery o.O 

Well, not to fret, since there are of course photo shops in Sungai Besar, to help the local develop photos of course. Upon checking, they have NEVER seen a canon DSLR battery before. well... o.O 

which ultimately leaves me with only a few pictures that i manage to salvage with about half the battery life. In fact there is a second battery, which i left here in sunny Singapore. THAT is how smart ppl can get when they are infected with chicken pox. enjoy the pics though =)

This is none other than one of my mum's multitude of plants. i dunno what is its name. just like we all dunno what's the names of those trees in the tropical rainforest. it just looks nice.

Another fruit and AH HA! it's called 'LIM KIM' in hakka i dunno wad it's called in other languages. someone enlighten me.

Being a fishing village, of course Sungai Besar will have a seaside. it's just how nice the seaside can be. Well, not very nice. i've taken this shot to purposely make the silhoutte stood out.

One of my favorite pics from salvaging the remaining juice of the battery. it's the stilts that some of the chalets are on.

Also one of my favorite pics. a crane was resting on top of the log. but too bad the lens is really not far enough even at 200mm it still appears to be so small.

P/S btw i really didnt expect Sungai Besar to turn up on wiki. wiki rawks =D

Holiday Ending Soon

Finally, after a tortuous 1-1/2 weeks i'm finally going back soon. to be honest, it was only tortuous at the beginning of the ordeal. 

CANNOT SCRATCH! ITCHY! FEVER! 

after that, they slowly dry up to be scales on your body and on top of that, you get to eat good food (fishes everyday), get to sleep for 12 hours daily, get to take photos at the beach, get to use the computer to read manga and watch gundam, and best of all, even get paid... and now i'm going back soon. God is good =)

well, even going back wont be so bad coz there appeared to be cheap air tix from KL to SING so decided to get it since it's once in a lifetime it can get so cheap.. so i'll be back soon peeps. !! 

MUAHAHAHAHA! 

Poxy Update!

i'm currently recovering well in a small town eating rice with steam fishes and vege everyday. yes i know it seems like i've retreated into a reclusive villa of some sort but please do not think that having chicken pox is having fun at my age T_T apparently a lot of ppl does not know that you will be hospitalised if you get chicken pox at the age of 30. and it is fatal. 

hopefully i will be back to my computer to update soon...  

GREAT NEWS!

i'm down with chicken pox (not confirm but i have small, watery red dots over my body, mild fever for about 2 days or so AND I HAVE NOT HAD CHICKEN POX IN MY LIFE). Confirming with doctor tomorrow... horrible nite tonite... i can so predict. 

now should i be happy or should i be anxious? -.-

Caleb One Month Old

Last week i had the opportunity to attend a baby shower (not really shower larh but probably means the same thing) of Deacon Lim's little son named Caleb. He is such an adorable boy he covered his ears while sleeping because we all uncle aunties are making too much of a noise.. SOO cute!!! 

as time went on sooo many ppl brought their little toddlers along to the baby shower and it was very happening indeed. Only posted some picture because as enthusiastic as i am about taking pics, i'm still as lazy as ever to go wait for it to upload *since i've already uploaded it in one million other websites*. 

But overall it was a very busy day last Sunday. And as i'm posting this, just out of a sudden random rant, i think Singapore is experiencing equatorial style winter today. it may not be winter tomorrow but today sure is super cold. island wide raining for the whole morning + afternoon + evening. weather's gone wonky. 

anyways, here are some pics. 

The mums/mums-2-b taking pics with the star of the day. He just keeps on sleeping and sleeping and sleeping... like me! 

not to forget, we also have another little boy who turned 16 months? normally when he's in church in the cry room, he's not as active as he was that day so seizing this golden opportunity i snapped some shots of him :) btw he just learned the cute 'O-ohhh'! haha

and here's my favourite picture of the day, which was taken earlier that day when we sat down to have a sip in the hot weather. Hot?! yar.. it was summer on sunday, winter on monday. i'm surprised our body dont fall sick from it.. 

High Dynamic Range Imaging

To be honest, when i first heard HDR it has nothing to do with photography. or digital imaging. it had to do with games. Yes and until today, the most realistic games like Crysis and Far Cry 2 uses HDRI in their graphics engine to create that kind of surreal environment that you see in games.

And after reading some chunks of material on the net (i thought i was damn difficult to do), i decided to try it out myself. yes i know i look like i'm damn free but it's all well planned ok. i'm preparing myself for the aussie trip so i can shoot nice pics over there, IF i get to borrow the SLR over... 

Anyways, during my orchard trip as some of you might have seen on facebook, i managed to take some pictures of the supreme court and some skyline using the auto exposure bracketing feature of the camera to get 3 pictures with 3 different exposures together. Merge them in photoshop and walla! here are some pics.. click to enlarge it is damn sharp. 

This is the old supreme court of Singapore.. which in my honest opinion, looks much nicer than the stupid new disc structure. That's why i didnt even bother taking its picture tho it's just next door.. 

The skyline of Singapore as seen from clarke quay. the HDR makes it almost surreal, emphasizing the dramatic sky and saturating the color so vivid it looks like a painting. i hope to catch the opera house in action during my trip.. HAHA.. !!

there you go. HDR makes up wonderful images tho i think that i still have loads to learn as an amateur.. 

New Template!!!

Yeap, i'm officially satisfied with my new template.. it is nice, chio and just fabulous. Credits goes to the following:

Bloggerbuster.com

repeatxy.com

deviantart.com

for providing tips, tricks and images so that this template can be custom made :) 

The Power of RAW!

Since bitten by that bug, i've been taking some pics here and there. As we all know, digital imaging software is also progressing by the light years together with the cameras that are produced. To be honest, even with all that geekiness in me, i dont really play with photoshop or paintshop pro or wadsoeva. Yes i did play with them quite some time ago (proof of my geekiness) but i never really liked them because

1) Their program is laggy and huge AND COMPLICATED. 

2) I'm too lazy. 

3) My picture look worse than when it is unedited. Which is usually the case for me and it has been sceptical for me since i touched those program. 

So since i was bitten by that bug now, i figured i shall just check out what they do normally to make pictures look nicer.. they say that curiosity kills the cat.. BUT i'm not a cat... at the very max, i can only be a mosquito due to my name but not a cat.. so curiosity crept in. And lo and behold, i discovered something called the RAW format. how noob of me. 

Here is a picture of a pretty girl in a nicely diffused background with nice colours and all. Normally i would just look at it and go, wow! quite a nice picture.. but then if it is blown up to quite a bigger size, things would be different. and from my crappy experience with digital imaging, this would probably be the best image that the camera can produce and any altering will lead to grains, noise and those ugly stuff that makes your picture worse. 

So after reading a bunch of material regarding histograms, tonal range and blah blah blah, i decided to try it out myself by shooting RAW formats on the SLR. They always say that RAW can preserve this larh, that larh and result in lossless color correction etc etc. i always take them with a pinch of salt because my eyes tell me that JPEG looks as good as the RAW that i shoot when i look into the LCD. And if i do anything to the image on processing, things will go wrong.. 

Initially when i blow up the picture in my screen it really does look a tad uninspiring. When it is still small like above it can look quite alrite and acceptable but when blown to about 5R size there's a distinct warmish color cast and the whole picture just look flat. So after tweaking with the white balance, tonal range and the exposure, together with some curves adjustments, i got the shock of my life...

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I couldnt believe my eyes actually until i click another button to compare them both... well in my honest (even though noob) opinion i really think the latter picture looks more striking in colors, and with better contrast and exposure. so THAT is how RAW format can do. and there you have it.. even a noob photographer like me can do something like that without using photoshop.. just some basic color correction and exposure adjustments... how cool is that.. 

Photography Bug

They call it the photography bug..  when i was young, there was something called the film camera. the SLR for film is smaller, lighter and less complicated BUT the films costs a hell lot. And you cant see what you've taken..

so for that simple reason, i cant afford to buy any camera. or any film for that matter. until one day this thing call digital camera popped out. so i promptly *actually i got it much later* got myself a small little camera the size of my wallet. at first it was quite fun pointing and shooting here and there. but then, when i got to travel a bit more it kinda disappointed me coz the pics doesnt turn out the way i want it to.. and i was too lazy to find out how to make it turn out i want it to.. 

well, up until last year when i got to try something bigger. it was scepticism at first coz 1) i've never used one before. 2) it probably will just produce that sort of dull flat pictures even with the perfect angle and so on.. 

ah ha! that's when i was quite a bit surprised because of how nice the pics turn out when photographed in indoor lighting. that sparked off something so after a few months later, i figured that i'd go online and read a bit about aperture and shutter speed. which is not a good idea because this bug is now bugging me like mad. 

Just nice that my dear fren has his SLR on the free, because of busy FYP (ah ha!) and stuff so i got to borrow it for a while to take some pics.. which is also not a good idea because now the bug's growing bigger. 

oh well, i shall just take some nice pics *in my opinion* from now and post some if i've got the time... haha! 

p/s: btw if you havent noticed, the blog skin has changed... with the help of some tips and tricks online... i will tune it a bit more on the days to come so stay posted =D and go download this if you havent to see the nice fonts!! 

Mummy & Papa Here!!

Yeap just a short post here.. my parents came over to sunny singapore to visit me!!! and asked us to come for dinner so here are some pics which i've collated...

quite interestingly, they were looking for some kinda sweets.. yes i know that my dad has diabetes but still, mummy was lookin for that sweet which she ate when she was young... Sooooo.. turns out that Grace knows the sweet well too and too bad my parents are just here for 1 nite or else we could have went somewhere else to buy it..

it was a nice little dinner somewhere near paya lebar mrt with the *nicest* to date lamb rib soup that i've tasted sooo far.. even ah pa say it's good so it must be good.. den headed off to chill out at coffee bean coz can sit down comfortably...

oh well, it's just a short trip down here so i hope they enjoyed themselves.. coz i do!! and Grace does too!! haha!

Gundam 00 End Song

It's very nice.. and here's the lyrics lol:

Friends by Stephanie

You had on the same smile

Even though the years have piled upon us

Impatient, we ignore the scenery passing by

Throw away your useless pride

Show kindness to the world

I gotta say

Even if we put on a courageous facade

We cannot live alone

The promise you made that day

Remains deep within my heart Even now

Partings and meetings

Finding light walking down new roads

Since the day we were born

This repetition has linked us together

When did you and I

Acquire such differing futures?

I gotta say

Even if we're far apart and never meet again

There is a strong bond between us

"Let my dreams come true"

I pray from the bottom of my heart

We're friends forever

Let's pledge to meet again

Swear on it

We're going to walk forward

Toward an unseen destination

Even if we're lost

We'll continue

No matter what

Amid the changing seasons

And the flow of time

Familiar melodies

Even when we grow old

They won't fade away

Our precious memories

I gotta say

Even if we put on a courageous facade

We cannot live alone

The promise you made that day

Remains deep within my heart

As life goes on...

Because we mustn't forget Yeah

Don't let it go...

This wide world or the people you hold dear

Possibly The Best Street Fighter Scene. Ever.

the best street fighter moment of all time.