妈妈的家传菜

妈妈从我一出世，就是家庭煮妇。所以煮菜是她的专长。这是她的家传菜：

1. 五香
2. 咖哩鸡
3. 梅菜扣肉
4. 过年煮的斋菜
5. 笋
6. 番“谢”炒野菜花和虾

Majong Session @ Ah Goh's place

As in previous years, we (Kp Tan, Bird, Pang family & William) went to Goh's place for our yearly majong session. Goh's wife cooked fried bee hoon, fried rice, chicken curry, chicken wings, fried sotong balls and desert for us. A simple but very delicious lunch.

Bird is the only one who is unmarried and he "forced" us to give him ang pows which we did. Unfortunately for him, he lost all his 5 ang pows money. I won the most, $53.60 is more than enough to cover the 6 ang pows that I gave out :D

25km Passion Run - 22 May 2010

After my full marathon run in Dec 09, I have been doing very little running. I need some competitive events to movitate me to run regularly again hopefully 2 to 3 times a week. So I decided to participate in the Passion Run 2010 to be conducted on 22 May 2010. I just registered for the 25km. People would laugh at me if I chose the 10 km run ;-)

有希望是幸福的！

I learnt this interesting phrase “有希望是幸福的” from the movie “锦衣卫” that I watched with my family on the 2nd day of chinese new year. I had the opportunity to use it yesterday and today!

Yesterday, I went for a 6km run with my army friends, KP Tan & William, at Chinese Gardens. After the run, we chit chat and talked about the 10 millions Toto to be drawn on next Friday. We decided to joinly buy a package numbers. William said “有买有希望”, I replied “有希望是幸福的!”.

Two hours ago, I went to Hougang Point's food court to buy a cup of coffee. My conversation with the coffee auntie went as follows:

Auntie ：新年快乐！
Me : 新年快乐！有发财吗？

Auntie : 有啊！你呢？

Me : 还没有。

Auntie : 没关系，快了，这个礼拜，有买有希望！

Me : 有希望是幸福的！（Auntie 听了有一点 blur blur!)

Met my Army Encik today

Encik Tan Tiong Tee was my superior when I was in 7th Singapore Infantry Brigade from 1988 to 1990. He is someone that we (Victor, Cheah & I) love to hate. He is "guei lan" most of the time but, occasionally, he can be nice to us too. He retired at the age of 50 in 1990 and I have not seen him for about 20 years. Sometime when I had a gathering with Victor and Cheah, we would talk about him and we wonder whether he is still alive. So, it was a pleasant surprise to meet him at Hougang food court today. He aged only a little and I have no problem recognising him. We had a simple chat and I am glad that he is healthy (should be 70 by now) and enjoying his retirement life. I got his contact number but it is unlikely that I would call him to meet up ;-)

DVD 1/2010 - 十月围城 (Bodyguards and Assassins)

I watched the most movies during my army days and "拍拖" time but I have seen very few in recent years. Price for movie ticket has increased quite substantially while it is getting cheaper to buy DVD. Also, with bigger and better quality LCD TV, it makes sense to watch DVD instead. I enjoyed watching DVD with my family members. I watched only 2 movies but more than 10 DVDs last year.

I watched 十月围城 last night, the first DVD movie in 2010. It received very good reviews when the movie was shown in the cinema in Dec 09. Most reviewers gave at least a 4-stars rating. It is also nominated for 19 awards for 第29届香港金像奖 to be held on 18 Apr 2010. It must be very good right? Not really! The movie has not lived up to the hype, in my opinion. It is, at best, an above average show. I would give a 3.5 star in term of entertainment value. But hey! 3.5 star is already a very good rating from me considering the fact there are hardly any good chinese movies nowadays! The best chinese movie that I have seen last year was 保持连络 (Stay Connected), a highly entertaining show which deserves a 4-star rating.

PS:- 十月围城 has a simple story line whereby 8 original people come together, each with their own reaons, to protect Dr Sun Yet Sen from assassins while he visits Hong Kong.

How I deal with small unhappiness?

When I bought my very first car (Mitshubishi Lancer) on 6 Jun 2001, I washed it once a week consistently at least for the next 2 to 3 years. But when I bought my 2nd car (Toyata Altis) in Apr last year, I don't wash it so often any more sometimes longer than 3 months. Am I lazier now? Certainly yes! Anyway, my car had not been washed for more than 2 months now, and with CNY approaching, I decided to wash it today.

While washing, I noticed that there are a few scratches, one of which is quite deep, at the rear bumper. As it is still considered a new car, I felt 心痛。It was quite obvious that it was purposely done by a mischievious idiot. I cursed that person for his or her misdeed!

On the road, I may get angry when someone drive rectlessly and I hate those who tailgate me. I would usually scold that person inside the car "you stupid idiot dumb-dumb!" and I felt better.

I was unhappy with the priest who made insensitive comments on Buddhism and Taoism recently. He got the punishment that he deserved and I am not angry with him now. Let's move on.

This is my simple way of dealing with small unhappiness. You may think that this is stupid or naive but it works for me. I am not unhappy with the person who scatched my car now ;-)

Don't trivialise and insult other religions

It was reported in Today's Straits Times that a Christian church leader was called up by ISD after receiving complaints about online video clips that show him making insensitive comments about Buddhism and Taoists.

Religion is a highly sensitive issue and a sensible person should never trivialise and insult the beliefs of other religions. I have watched the video clips, and even as a free thinker, I find his comments offensive and unfair. Hopefully such incidents would not occur again.

I will write about my thoughts on religions soon.

What make a nature photograph stands out?

Graeme Guy, an outstanding nature photographer and the founder of Nature Photographic Society of Singapore, mentioned that there are 4 elements that make a nature photograph stands out:

(1) Action - This may include a flight shot or a running cat in hot pursuit.

(2) Behaviour - The old adage of every picture tells a story is never truer than when unique behavior of a species is catpured in an instant of time on an image.

(3) Colourful - Nothing pleases the retina more than some highly saturated colours in pleasant harmony within an image.

(4) Cute - Nothing stirs the emotions more than animal babies. Fluffy duckling bobbing along on waters reflecting the mood of spring evokes pleasant thoughts.

To be a better nature photographer, I shall work more on these areas.

Dry Cabinet - Digi Cabi AD-50

Photography is an expensive hobby. Beside the basic camera body and lens, you need many other accessories such as tripod, flashlight, cable shutter release, extension tubes, teleconvertors, filters, etc. All of which are not cheap items. My recent addition is a dry cabinet that I purchased from John 3.16 at $168. It is supposed to keep your camera and accessories in top condition.

Most people with a DSLR camera would have a dry cabinet usually after they made the purchase. I bought it two and a half year later. I didn't do it earlier as I thought there was no need to since I photograph quite often i.e. at least once a week. Besides, I don't really have expensive camera body and lens (Canon 40D, 17-40mm/L, 50mm/1.8 & Tamron 180mm Macro lens). Many of my photography friends were very surprised when I told them about it. I was not wrong as my camera and lens are still in very good condition. I decided to get one only after I won the 5D Mark II camera with a 24-105 L lens worths about $5,500 recently. It doesn't make sense to take the risk now ;-)

You fish, I photograph ...

My army friend, Lau, likes fishing while macro photography is my hobby. Sometimes, we would go out together to do our favourite pastimes. In order to do so, there need to be a river, a stream or a reservior for him to fish and with lots of bushes nearby for me to find insects to photograph. There are not many such places in Singapore, one of which is a Canal opposite Ngee Ann Polytechnic, which we visit once in a while. We went there this morning again but fishes, according to Lau somehow are getting smaller and fewer here. Lau said that someone recommended him a river near Quia Hu Fish Farm and he wanted to check it out. So, there we went.

It was not difficult to find the place as the river was wide and long and we could see it from the main road. Lau was excited about it as he felt that it should have big fishes here. He was right, within minutes, he got one big fish, easily more than 1 kg in weight. This is one of the biggest catches he had and he was very happy with it. We are likely to revisit this place again.

Road to Macro Photography

I love to travel and it is my wish to capture beautiful memories via photography. I finally bought my 1st basic Digital Single-lens Reflex (DSLR) camera, a Canon 400D, one day before my trip to Yunnan, China from 2 - 13 Jun 07. I know nothing about photography at all. What is aperture? What is shuttle speed? What is ISO? What is depth of field? They sounded so alien to me. But I have this naive view that with a DSLR, I should be able to take very nice photos. So I took a lot of photos during the trip. I was disappointed that all the photos were just slightly better that those I took using a point & shoot camera. However, there was one particularly photo that I like a lot, a close-up shot of a colourful wild flower.

(Close-up of a wild flower taken in Yunnan - 7 Jun 07)

I began to like macro photograpy. While searching the internet for photography ideas, I came to know Nature Photographic Society, Singapore (NPSS). I was very impressed with the photos posted there and hope that one day, I could be as good as them. I submitted the above wild flower photo for critique and comment. Most members gave me a warm welcome and commented that “it was a very good first post considering that I was using a kit lens”. With this encouragement, I went all out to shoot macro and continued to post in NPSS. The comments given were still encouraging but most suggested that I should get a dedicated macro lens.

In Aug 07, I bought my 1st lens, a canon 100mm macro lens. I went to Chinese Garden to try out the lens immediately. But guess what? All my images came out blur! Of course I can’t get sharp images if I do not have good handheld technique! Subsequently, I was advised to get a tripod & an external flash which I did. With all the equipment in place, I was confident that I was going to improve by leaps and bounds. I remembered I went to Bukit Batok Nature Reserve and got some very nice shots. I chose two of my top best shots (see below) and posted in NPSS sometime in Sep 07 expecting to receive nice comments.

Darren, an experienced macro shooter, was usually kind to me when commenting on my earlier posts but this time he never held back. He commented something like for the grasshopper image, the framing was too tight, focus was off, lighting too harsh.

For the robberfly image, the angle was not ideal, background was messy, image was noisy, etc. Other members gave me similar feedback.

This was really a good wake up call for me. I started to realize that despite two solid months of macro shooting on my own, there was very little improvement. I decided to join NPSS as a paid members and sign up for the Nature Photography Course in Oct 07. This has to be the best decision that I have made in photography.

During the course, Graeme thought me about good composition, Darren thought me about all the basic skills in macro photography, Con thought me about post processing skills. But I missed out one very important lesson, intermediate Macro Photography, where Han focused a lot on the correct use of Fill & Full Flash. Until now, this is still my weakest area. Anyway, it was the first time that I met the seniors and those who had commented on my posts. The practical lessons after each lesson were really helpful.

After the course, I started to join NPSS informal macro outings. I started to make progress but one major problem that I have at that time was that I could not get sharp images using a smaller aperture of f16 and above. Most of my better shots were using f5.6 & f8. So, I often received comments like “insufficient DOF, why don’t you use a smaller aperture of f16 or f22”. I was subsequently advised to get a cable release and to use Mirror Lockup to prevent motion blur caused by the camera. But how do I solve the problem of motion blur caused by the wind? I usually did my shooting after 9 am or after 5 pm where it is usually quite windy. My big break came only after I started to shoot very early in the morning sometimes as early as 6.45 am and stop at 9 am. During this period there is very little wind and you get the best ambient light for macro shooting.

I continued to shoot regularly, , I posted frequently at Early To Learn section and I received a lot of feedback and suggestions for improvement from the seniors. With their guidance, I finally "graduated" in Apr 08. But that did not slow down my shooting. In fact, I shoot even more and post even more. When you shoot more, the chances of getting nice images are higher. So, eventually, I won the NPSS’s Photo of the month award in Oct 08.

Four of my photos were also nominated for Photo of the Month Award in the following months:

January 2010
October 2009
September 2009
June 2009

I also won the Canon Photographer of the Year 2009, a major achievement for me.

Invited to be a speaker at NPSS AGM

Yixiong, the Treasure of Nature Photographic Society, Singapore (NPSS) asked me this evening whether I could be one of the speakers at the incoming NPSS AGM in Mar 2010. He said that the President of NPSS hopes that I could share my experience on winning the Canon Photographer of the Year 2009. I felt honoured but declined his offer. I told him that it is not because I do not wish to share, but rather I have no confidence to give a speech due to my poor presentation skills and fearful of speaking in front of a big audience of more than 40 people. He encouraged me to take on this challenge. He asked me to reconsider and revert to him in a few days time.

10 minutes just cut ...

I normally go to a salon near my mother place to have my monthly hair cut. A 45 mins hair cut with washing plus a little massage at the shoulder and neck areas costs $28. But, during chinese new year, it is usually crowded and it costs almost double. So, as in previous years, I went to QB House near my shop this morning for a 10 minutes just cut. It costs only $10 without any extra charges during CNY and I didn't have to wait. The standard of cutting is acceptable to me.