1st Anniversary

It's been a year since the passing of my beloved swim coach from Beijing. I thought I should put this up as a reminder for myself and a few of those swimming friends who had the opportunities to be under her tutelage.

A year on and life seems to go on for all of us. There were some good news among the swim friends - engagements, marriages, babies. It's very much like flowers (tulips below). Flowers whither and die but new bulbs will bloom.

Taken during a visit to the Tesselaar Tulip Festival in Silvan.

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Busy Weekend

I had a busy weekend, in terms of taking, processing and posting photos. It's all about learning through trial and error as I have never been very good technically.

First, it was getting up around 5am-ish to be in the City and Queen Victoria Market before 6am. What prompted me to for the pre-dawn activity is capturing the atmosphere in the morning. Market is never opened at night, for one, while city life at night is pretty much a norm. So, why not getting up for pre-dawn shoot? The atmosphere, life, emotions in the morning at the market would be different.

On the night itself, we had a small and cosy get-together as well as celebrating the belated birthday for a very good friend of mine. So again, more opportunities to capture the moments. It's even better that they knew I would be bringing my camera and everyone was comfortable with me taking their shots. I bought the birthday cake at the very last minute but it was definitely a very very good cake! For sure, I will get cakes from there again.

What a blast for the weekend though nothing much was pre-planned during the week! It's tiring but it's all worth it.

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RIP: Luciano Pavarotti

Pavarotti passed away at his home in Modena, Italy today after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. The Maestro was 71. He was one of the Three Tenors, the others being Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras.

Thanks for your voice.

Life-long Learning

For the past few days and weeks, I was (still am) being exposed to lots of new things. With my new job outside of auditing, there are so much to pick up. Lots to come.

Other than my job, I have the opportunity to learn some new techniques in photography through a fellow photographer who does weddings. Shooting into the sun which has always been a problem is something I pick up recently and tried while in Sydney. Another is flash photography which I have been trying out either as balance/fill flash or just creating shadows. I am still trying out BW conversion which has been shared to me. Below are some of the shots.
There also have been some sharing by friends on some historical incidents like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Life is all about learning. The moment we stop learning is the moment we lose our lives!

Merdeka Day

Today marks the 50th Independence Day for Malaysia.

50 years ago, the late Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj chanted the famous "Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!" in the Stadium Negara. I have bumped into this great figure when I was just a little kid. I could recalled he dropped by my grandpa's place once for house-warming and for poker. Being that little kid then, I didn't really care who he is back then! All I could remember was his huge black rim specs!

50 years on, the multi-cultural, multi-racial nation has experienced tremendous and colourful growth, albeit controversial at times. It has come a long way

The recent announcement of NCER by the current PM for the northern region seems to be a good plan. We can only hope that the plan will be executed accordingly, as in walk the walk, talk the talk and not talk cock, sing song! The Northern Corridor plan will certainly benefit the northern region where Penang, Perlis, Kedah and Perak are located.

Happy Merdeka to all Malaysians!

New Chapter, New Beginning

I had a good break (though tired...a lil' of that later) after leaving my last job. Meeting and catching up with friends in Sydney. It's been years since we last met. In fact, the weirdest thing was those in Sydney never even met up til my visit! I am disappointed by that but it's great that I managed to bring them together once again.

Sydney was certainly warm and sunny. So am I! I caught up with some friends on several occasions - from ex-colleague who drove me around, Uni friend who will be going through a surgery soon and of course swimming friends (who also put me up and brought me around). It was very tiring trying to squeeze everything into a few days as well as walking with my heavy camera pack from Circular Quay on to Harbour Bridge then to The Rock! I'm so tired that I decided to stay home on my last day just to rest my back and legs. Surprisingly, I fell asleep on the couch too!

Of course, food we had were awesome! Jap on the first night, Yum Cha (or Dim Sum) for lunch, Korean for dinner, Pancake for lunch and again Jap for dinner. Probably the long walk have burnt the fats away! Truly, I enjoyed spending those time with friends. It's all worth it. Life is short, I'll cherish them as much as possible and while I'm able.

Thanks for the hospitality extended to me.

Having said that, I did take some photos albeit not as many as I would have hoped for. There were night shots that I had to improvise due to the lack of tripod. I will post the photos later.

Tomorrow's the beginning of the new chapter for me. I am excited but am also afraid because I do not know what to expect. I guess I will, as usual, ford ahead with my head held up high.

Bring it on!

Time for bed.....