Marching pass the month of March

Well I’m doing accounts so somehow this financial year end seems to conclude a year of my hard work with my budgets finally uploaded to the system and getting all ready for the new FY.

March is a month of overflowing birthday babies. To those I knew personally and addressing them as my dear friend, I hope you have a wonderful and satisfying birthday celebrations and may your wishes comes true.

Dad used to remind us that birthday wasn’t a day to be celebrated; in fact, it was the day your mum struggled painfully and finally delivers you to this world.
Although he often disregard this occasion, I do remembered seeing a smile from him on some occasions like this, especially the one for his precious little daughter.

It wasn’t that bad for me either. I remembered he will always surprise me a small gift on my birthday when I was young. I got my first pair of scissor when I was 7 years old. That was the day he felt that I am qualified to own my first pair of scissor. Subsequently, some other gifts I got from him were wallet, watch.

He was a practical person and maybe because of our environment, we need don’t own any unnecessary luxurious products. Toy was considered a luxurious product; in fact the only toy I got from him was LEGO, which he acknowledged the benefit I might derive from playing with it.

Yes we were poor then, but he taught us generosity. To share whatever things we had. I remembered the LEGO didn’t last long with me. My dad asked me to give to my cousin who already owns 20 times more toys than me. I remembered my sister crying over her only Barbie doll that my dad insisted her to pass to another cousin. She was full of tears which I really offer her my sympathy.

My Dad was born in the month of March, so was my mum, my elder sister and now, my brother-in-law. Just spending on gifts alone, it’s a huge amount, less mentioning the treats.

Yes Birthday to me should be fun and enjoyable. Ask me if I remembered how I celebrated my birthday before I reached 24?
Nope, I chose to forget them, my childhood was bad, primary school days were equally bad, secondary was bad as well, the memories was all similar, with my family and relatives thanks to my little sister who happen to fall on the same day as me so mum just “shun bian” celebrate for me as well.

All except the one I remembered during my Poly days, the silly one I asked petty along and she asked Jo and finally the whole class came and shared this “wash once and shrink” fake bathing ape t-shirt after knocking me on a treat at “Fiesta”, my heart bleed for few months. Now thinking back, it might be some professional scams all pre arranged by P****.

Okay moving on, Mum’s present was pretty easy to get, she likes $$$, brother-in-law a simple undemanding dinner treat. The most difficult and threatening was my elder sister. I still remembered how she flares up when I never get her anything.

I really love my family, I just hope my mum don’t always ask me about money, always nagged me to sleep and always rushing me out of my house for work.
I did pretty well this year and I hope I will too in the coming financial year. If possible, I really love to move out of this financial year thing and start on something interesting. Hopefully!

Some interesting pictures we post for this blog!
I'm not inside my own camera again!
Birthday Girl

Riverside Walk

I would describe this day as Humid, stuffy and rather discouraging to walk the streets. It was a Lazy Afternoon and it struck me that I should take a walk along the river side and have a nice brunch since there was no lunch at home.

I grab my camera and took a train to Clarke Quay Station. If there is a place where you can freely aim and shoot any picture, it would be Clarke Quay. Every few steps, you will see someone holding a DSLR taking pictures as thou it was a license to shoot. Well, it’s not always perfectly okay to take picture of others where we call these street candid, definitely when we didn’t ask permission. It seems that the place was overwhelmed with shooters and we are free to shoot.

Some of my favourite shots…oh and Petty was asking me what HDR was when she read the spec on fujifilm F200EXR, these shot below are HDR processed..

















Boats are a common scene at Clarke Quay. The business is good!







This was a “love bridge” self proclaim by me back in the days at Giantpot.com. Very interesting structure of the bridge and once in a while, they will repaint it.








I had a quick dinner at Liang Court Meidi-ya. The curry rice is still fantastic. This supermarket preserves the culture of Japan. Most of the products are air flown from Japan.

Freshness in terms of Quality




Kids corner when mum is doing her grocery.


Like I mentioned, candid shots at this place is so common and no one took any offence being aimed at. It was so normal.








It was getting dark when I left the place, passing the baton over to those night shooters armed with their tripods and reserving place for good angle shot when the city lights is off since it was the Earth Day.

New Acquisition ~ Manual Lens

Today was my Bonus pay out day and apart from the tax paid to my Mum, I gotten myself 2 New or was it an old classic Manual lens for my camera.

To help myself documenting the name of the lens, I give it a post here.

Olympus Zuiko 35-105mm F3.5-4.5 macro.
This is a really nice contra sty lens, best part, comes with macro foucs as well.


This lens was free together with my above purchase.
Olympus Zuiko 75-150mm F4


There aren't any pictures taken from these lens yet and that's why im going to try them tomorrow..hopefully it will turn out as nice as the previous owner did...

and of course, price of damages, $200....Quite a good catch for me i suppose!

A Night Stroll along Esplanade

Every photographer or hobbyist would love to try night shooting. That is where you really practise shooting under low lights with or without the use of a tripod.
For me, this night photography was unintentional.

We were supposed to have for our KTV session at PartyWorld Liang Court and coincidentally, that day; it was our Divisional Bowling event. As such, I was too lazy to bring my gear out.

But who would have known that the KTV was fully booked and we change our plans to meet at City hall instead. I even had the time to race home and pick up my gear before meeting them.

So immediately after the movie Mall Cop, i managed to persuade them to walk this really long distance to Esplanade. The views and environment didn't disappoint us.

Some of my shots…thanks to Xin Xin and LiLi who accompanied me there =)
City Scene Night View








A Vespa we picked up along the way


We walked to the bridge to capture another view of the Esplanade


I have done some cloning to this picture; can you tell what I removed in this picture?






Amazingly, the night views of Singapore are pretty enchanting. Hopefully the picture can convey more!

A Flick in Thoughts

There is a popular belief among anthropologist that you got to immerse yourself in an unfamiliar world, in order to truly understand your own.

So do you really know who you are and what you want?

When I was in my early 20’s, I set myself a goal and I thought I would follow through and even achieved it. Now, if you ask me again the question, I am lost.
Deep within, I doubted my beliefs. Whether I am moving the right direction still holding on to my faith or should I make a left turn.

I am giving myself time to reconsider all my plans, my objectives and of course, my future. Hopefully, when I awake from my daze, you will find a completely new me with hopes filled once again.

Meanwhile, let me immerse myself in an unfamiliar world! A world with no network, no computer, no communications. Au Revoir et Salut =)

My Weekend Get-Away - Batam, My Cottage Part 2

It is so tiring to process all the pictures…Just this trip alone, I have taken almost 250 pictures. Processing them is quite tedious; especially I shoot them in raw format. Not to mention, its eating up my hard disk pretty soon at the rate I am storing my pictures. Need to get an external hard disk soon.



I am going to wrap up the whole trip in this posting and so it is going to be a long long post...have fun reading.

As mentioned, I will show more of the cottage we lived in.

These are along the seas and basically they are individual by themselves. Just 1 room for each villa and I won’t recommend for elderly people to stay here. The stairs is going to kill them before they reach the room.


The below are some that are closer to each other, basically they are single rooms as well sharing the same corridor.




This is a Villa all by itself.


Some special stairs linking to each Villa but looks steep, imagine on a raining day. You might as well roll to your door steps.


Our Cottage












Nice views from the Living Room but it was pretty warm.


The Living Room








My Bed Room


It looks a bit like a country cottage, and a bit like some kelong. Well, at least the rooms are air conditioned and you can’t expect too much from places like this. The minimum, it’s clean and the toilet is working. Don’t expect a Spacious Jacuzzi waiting for you in there.



Night Views.
There weren’t much street lightings in this resort.








You can expect no activities on the Island or at the Resort, unlike Bintan of Bali, you can’t find any water sports, even if they have it, I bet you won’t want to step into their sea considering their toilet flushing systems connect to the ermm “You know where”. The only form of leisure was doing SPA or trying their Indonesian/Jeva Massage.
The difference between the massage in the Resort vs those outside massage parlour was the Sea View, the sound of the wave and the spacious room.

The Spa was located at the far most right side of this stretch of houses.


Well I didn’t really enjoy mine. I felt it was too tough to undergo the rubbing and more rubbing along the same spot. “Ouch” was the word I use to describe it.

If you weren’t someone that enjoys massage and spa treatment, there is another option. Shopping!
We spend 1 day at the resort and signed up for the City Tour on the next day.

It happened that the day we left the resort was the Guan Shi Ying Buddha’s Birthday. We did some offerings at Guan Ying Temple just right beside our cottage before we proceed for our breakfast.




Some final shots before we left the resort for our one day tour


Look at the Blue sky




The Dirty pool

Our Main Transport, mini bus


Yes, Of course part of the tour was shopping..and we were left to do our own shopping at this Mathahari…A safe Mega mall, but if you were to ask me, I preferred the one opposite Batam Center Ferry terminal.


Favourite A&W spotted


Okay..before I went, Fion told me that the sanitary pads were cheap. Well of course I DON’T use them but I still went to check out the price…haha…


Yeah if you were basing on the conversion rate at SGD1 = 7500 rupiah


So the girls grabbed some home.


Surprisingly, I didn’t have any A&W for lunch. As the group wanted to try the local Indonesian food instead, so we pop by this small kopitiam across the mall to try it. Food was normal, price was expensive.


This is nice




Last few stops were visits to Temple. These are the place; you will see more of the Indonesian Chinese around. Taoism and Buddhism was one of the few main religion on the Island apart from Muslim.

The MaHa ViHara Duta Maitreya Temple
Maitreya was the main worship in this Shrine along with other Buddha and God.











The Last Temple we went to was a famous Da Bei Gong Temple.
This is a Confucious temple next to it.


The Hawkers were mainly selling Nonya Kueh and Coconut.






Price wasn’t cheap and don’t think that places like this sells nice food. The coconut was sour. The mangoes I bought was sour too.

Overall the trip was fun but the tiring part was to carry so many things to board the squeezy Ferry. The trip back was terrible where we sat at the open areas and people were smoking non stop beside us.