Century egg congee

Stuff you need (serve 4):
1 preserved century egg
1 salted duck egg
1 cup of rice mixed with a handful of glutinous rice (pre-soaked for 1 hour)
2 chicken thigh fillets (trimmed and diced) and marinated with soy sauce + sesame oil
1 shallot finely diced
spring onion and coriander for garnish
served with "chinese friend bread" or youtiao (optional)

This is a very simple and great tasting recipe that I would like to share with you. I must admit I don't think it's as healthy as your regular oat porridge lol! First, you boil the eggs and roughly diced them. With a hot pan, add oil and stir fry the shallot until brown, then add the chicken fillets. Add all the ingredients, including the cooked chicken into a large pot with 4 cups of water. You can substitute a cup of water with some chicken stock for more taste. I prefer to use pressure cooker because it will cook a whole lot faster. If you use regular pot, you will have to stir and porridge occasionally while cooking on low heat. Cook until the porridge is smooth and thick, you can adjust the consistency by adding more water to you liking. Add salt and paper to taste and serve hot with "youtiao".

Something for the kitchen

Despite needing regular sharpening, I love my big and cheap Chinese cleaver which I probably have been using for more than a decade now. While the cleaver is great for cutting through bones and making mince out of steak, it is sometime too big and clumsy for other purposes.

We have been looking for a good cooks knife for quite sometime now and today, we finally bite the bullet and bought not just one, but a full block set of knives! As you can see from the following photos, each Ran knife is beautifully crafted and forged from 69 layers of damascus steel and sharpened to perfection. While using the newly sharpened meat cleaver is great, cutting using these Ran knives is something else! They are so sharp that they are in fact, a bit scary to use.

X-Mini

X-mini Max 2 to be precise, is a piece of rather impressive capsule-shaped gadget I must say. I have never even heard of these miniature speakers until Wayne showed me his X-mini 2. These stereo pairs cost around $60 is definitely a steal and would be a great gift idea for this festive season.

The two modules can be joined and held together at their magnetized bases for the ease of transport and the built quality is very impressive. The one I have here is black with elegant matted finish, which is far better than the cheap shiny plastic that you get with most, well, cheap stuff nowadays. Audio connection is via a 3.5mm headphone jack which is compatible with most portable audio devices and each of these speaker can be daisy chained together by as many X-mini speakers as you can afford to produce HUGE sound! Each speaker has a "Base Xpansion System" which can add extra volume to the speaker for better lower frequency performance.

Each powered by a built-in rechargeable battery, according to the manufacturer will give you more 10 hours of continuous use from a 2.5-hours charge via USB. The sound produces by these speakers is loud and crisp with noticeable distortion only at the upper limit of the volume. Overall, a very impressive ultra portable audio system and would make a great travel companion for both music lovers and gamers.

Good Bye Crumpler

Hello Billingham! It's hard to envisage how the idea of such a beautifully crafted camera bag was originated from humble fishing bags. I have always wanted the Billingham 307 since "Kai" from DigitalRev TV introduced their range on their website. At first look at the bag, you know that it is not just "another" camera bag, it is something special that you would like to have as part of your camera accessories, just like a good "L" lens from Canon! You know that its sturdy construction and heavy padding will help to shield your expensive camera equipments from damage and drops, heaven forbid!

I don't think I need to say much about this awesome bag; if you want to know more about Martin Billingham's wonderful range of bags, please check them out here. Camera Electronics, Perth sells them if you want one :)

Thank you my dear for this wonderful birthday present!

Perfect Stand

We were looking for an ipad folder/holder which will not only provide it with some protection but also be able to support the pad in both vertical and landscape orientations. "Cloak" by Quirky was the closest and the best Jin has found that will fit the purpose until we saw the stand by Griffin in DJ. Although the stand does not offer any physical protections, it does provide rigid support to ipad in all 3 orientations; vertical, landscape and typing positions. The stand itself is made of quality brushed aluminium that will definitely compliment the look of the ipad. The biggest minus is in fact the cost, at $79.95rrp, it is definitely not cheap!

Photo session with i-family :)

i-love Apple...

Beautiful Sam

My brother's new pride and joy :)

Another New Toy

Oh...I mean "tool" :) On Sunday, we went to Myer in city to take another look at those iPads because Jin was very interested in getting one. However, we both agreed at the end that and an iMac would make better sense and more useful than an iPad, although the price difference between them was rather astronomical in comparison. So we ended up with a 27" iMac i5 2.8Ghz but the problem was, we parked all the way back at the far end of Northbridge and the sky was starting to spit. It thorough explains why my whole upper body was aching like no tomorrow the next day!

Setting up the iMac was a breeze and pleasantly surprised since this is the first Apple I have ever owned. I must say powering up the iMac was eerily silence in comparison to my PC, which sounds like a rocket ship is about to take off every time I press the power up button. However, I was having a few issues while trying to connect to my 802.11n home network at full speed. Apparently it is a fairly common problem but nevertheless, it was fixed now with a simple tweak on my Netgear router.

Looking at the screen, it is definitely worth every single penny that we paid! The color reproduction and the 2560x1440 resolution are light years ahead of my current PC display. It's simply awesome! And yes Wayne, you are right, photos do look way better on iMac, even lousy photos lol!

Movie News

Well, not much of a news really. Last week we watched the much anticipated "the Last Airbender" (no no...not the original cartoon series which is brilliant by the way).
As I have suspected, it was mediocre bordering a total blockbuster flop. That's nearly 2 hours of my life wasted that I will never claw back. If given a choice again, I would rather chose to sit on my ass reading my boring pharmacy journals that are piling up on my desk for instance!

Reasons?
1. A western kid as Avatar?
2. Fire Nation from India? really?
3. $150 million?
---> Please check out the brilliantly made "Monsters" on a budget of just $15,000!
4. just poor acting
5. if I continue the list, I might get sued by the movie producer or worse, being called a racist!

The Big Brother of f1.2

Today I added another "red ring" to my lens collection, the renowned Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II. First impression was its weight, it is surprisingly heavy and chunky for a piece of short telephoto glass. Apart from the 50mm f1.2, it has the biggest aperture of all the lenses that are currently manufactured by Canon. The depth of field is razor thin at f1.2 and focusing obviously will be the biggest challenge of using this lens.

The biggest advantage of having such a huge aperture is it's ability to send everything not in focus into beautifully diffused blur or bokeh. Of course, big aperture also comes in extremely handy in low light conditions.

However, it's not all good news unfortunately. The biggest problem which I encountered so far with this monster is serious chromatic aberration when shooting wide open. The purple/pink fringing is particular noticeable on high contrast or shiny objects. It's kind of disappointing considering I almost have to literally sell one of my kidney to buy it! The second problem is of course slightly slower AF system comparing to my other Canon lenses. It also tends to hunt a bit more whenever there is a slight light falling directly onto the lens during focusing. ...and what's with that dodgy "electronic" manual focusing ring at the front of the lens?? BUT, I am willing to overlook all these shortcomings and thorough fall in love with this piece of glass as soon as I press the shutter button and watch the background disappears into beautiful BOKEH!

Oh...did I mention I love the BOKEH?

Right to Photograph

After lunch at Mal's house, we stayed and chatted for a good few hours about various topics from photography to environmental issues :) Apparently there was a protest in Sydney yesterday about the right for photographers. Details of the protest can be found here.

How ridiculous it would be if you are required to purchase a license/permit to photograph at any of the public location/building! I know these "restrictions" mainly apply to commercial photographers but how are they going to police it? How are they going to know if I am not a commercial photographer or does it mean if someone wants to buy a right to one of my photo, it would be illegal for me to sell my work because I am not commercially motivated?

Here is a quote from the article itself:

"The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority requires commercial photographers to pay a minimum $150 AUD ($141 Cdn) per session if more than 10 crew are involved. That's in addition to $65 an hour for a site co-ordinator, $65 an hour for security and an additional $65 an hour for cleaning. Each of those services must be paid a minimum four hours."

Seriously, if you were going to shoot a wedding at outside of the Opera House, do you need a site co-ordinator just in case you lost your mind or a security guard just in case if you were attacked by a mad dog. And, $65 an hour for cleaning? You cannot be serious!

Stop making photographers feel like criminals!!

Inception

Inception is a rather long and complicated movie to watch and digest.

I said long because it did feel that way to me unfortunately. Don't get me wrong though, it is really not a bad movie to watch but does it worth the movie ticket you pay for? You will have to decide it yourself I am afraid. May be because there is no real villains or heroes in this movie and because of that, I failed to figure out which character to get behind.

Basically the plot takes place in a world where a person can enter another person's dream by mean of "injection" containing powerful chemicals and sedatives. It is just like entering the "Matrix" except without the fuss of super computers and cellphones! Even better, unlike Matrix, if you die in your dream, you simply just wake up to reality! Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a special ability to enter people's dream to extract and steal their secret. He was being wrongly accused of killing his wife and hence, unable to return to US to see his two children. Saito (Ken Watanabe), a rich Japanese businessman asked Cobb to plant (termed "inception") instead of stealing, an idea into his biggest business competitor's heir Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). The idea was so Fischer would breakdown and destroy his own company, and in return, Saito promised to see Cobb back to his children. Inception was considered impossible but Cobb has done it before, he did it to his wife which subsequently lead to her demise.

Jin was complaining of a headache after watching the movie simply because she had to concentrate so hard to understand the movie. While I did enjoy the spectacular CGI and the fast action, the movie did leave me with lots of questions to ponder.

Will I watch it again? I don't think so but the movie will sure make a great discussion topic with those of your friends who have watched it as well!

Toy Story 3

I couldn't believe 11 years have gone by since the release of the Toy Story 2! Usually the reason for releasing sequels to a successful movie is to capitalise on the success of the original movie and more often that not, sequels are usually, to put it simply, bad. Of course there are a few exceptions and certainly Toy Story 3 is one of them. In fact, out of the 3 "stories", the last one could be simply the best of them all!

If there is a Noble price for consistently putting out brilliant computer animated movies, it has got to go to the folks at Pixar. It's witty, inventive, creative, funny and choked full of emotions! It can make you laugh and it can put tears in your eyes too. The show simply glued me to the seat and kept me begging for more like a little child!

I am not going to go into the detail of the movie, but if you haven't already watch it, you don't know what you are missing out this year guys! I love Pixar!

Sienna Lodge

We went for a short trip down to Yallingup for a couple of nights last weekend and it was fantastic. We stayed at the Sienna Lodge, situated at the corner of Cave Road and Canal Rock Road, nestled amongst the wine growing region of Margaret River. The accommodation was surprisingly good and, I might add, different but in a good way. It was so rustic and beautiful! Talking about good taste, the room even came with a bottle of complimentary wine produced right here at the Sienna Estate. That Momentum Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 07 by the way was pretty easy to drink and very fruity, great for novice wine drinkers like us :)

Unfortunately, both Sienna Restaurant and Cellar were closed until further notice (I really hope they will reopen again), and it's a fairly long drive to basically anyway, I strongly recommend anyone who decided to stay at the lodge to prepare plenty of food before hand or load yourself with tons of instant cup noodle, like us just in case you feel like munching away in the middle of night lol! Apart from that, it's a great place to relax even for a weekend and it's only a short drive to Canal Rock where you can enjoy spectacular sunset every evening!

I will post more photos at my PhotoBlog.

Good Bye Joey

Our dear pet rabbit, Joey died yesterday. It was indeed a truly sad moment for us...rest in peace our dear companion :(

Kick Ass

It's been a while since I have watched such a hilarious and crass movie as Kick Ass. The movie centered around Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a regular high school teenager who has nothing much going on in life. He has only a couple of good friends and his high school sweetheart thinks he is gay. Dave wants to spice up his life by being a superhero like Spiderman or Batman, the only trouble is he has no superpower at all, not even one single piece of fancy weapon. He is only armed with a green dive suit which he bought online and a great deal of courage/stupidity. Lucky for him, there are two others who have the same idea but actually know what they are doing.

Damon Macready a k a Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his even more violent and dangerous daughter Mindy Macready a k a Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) are vigilantes who work hard to stamp out Frank D’Amico Frank D’Amic, the top criminal boss in town.

I reckon it is a fairly good movie which will give you plenty to laugh about!

FlexTT5 x2

I couldn't believe how fast this shipment actually arrived from Hong Kong, thumbs up to those guys at DigitalRev, they are indeed the best in the game!

At the moment, I can't really write anything about these PocketWizards because I haven't got a chance to try them out yet. But at first glance, these are indeed serious toys (tools) that are very well constructed. I can't wait to try them out soon!

Poppo Korean & Japanese Restaurant

Well, as expected, we didn't go to the ANZAC dawn service as previously planned because we just couldn't bring ourselves out of bed that early in the morning :P As a matter of fact, we woke up around 10am in the morning, that means we also missed the ANZAC parade in the city this morning! In the end, we decided to head down to city anyway to find something to eat. First we decided on dimsum but as we found out later, most dimsum places had literally queues long enough to put Saturday nightclubs to shame! Actually, we were surprised that most of the shops and cafes in Perth were shut today??! Anyway, we ended up in a tiny Korean/Japanese restaurant on Barrack Street called Poppo. We ordered a fried tofu (tempura tofu) as starter followed by our mains. Jin ordered a sashimi rice (something like seafood bibimbap) and I had a tempuro prawn don. Overall, the serving size was very reasonable and the food standard was on par with those of more expensive restaurants. But the most importantly, the total bill only came to under $30!

Meet Joel Salom

Went to Fremantle on last Friday to check out the street events during the Fremantle Arts Festival 2010 but it proved to be a rather futile effort as I got the dates all messed up. It turned out that the event was actually scheduled for the next three days! We were going to go yesterday but we ran out of time (woke up too late to be precise). Fortunately, we managed to get our act together and made it back down to Fremantle this afternoon. It was a very family orientated event and we had a fantastic time down there. There were so many great shows by so many talented local and international artists, performers and comedians. However, I dare to say the show by Joel Salom was the best out of the lots. He is a great comedian, musician and a brilliant juggler, and his little robot dog (Erik) act is hilarious. Here are some of the shots I took during his performance, more photos to come on my photoblog soon!

Playing with lights

I am not really a big fan of flash photography, the reason I am saying that is probably because I totally suck at it, and I am. Last night I decided to get two of my flash guns and experimented on Jin in our lounge room. The first one was placed slightly to the right about a meter behind Jin and the second one was pointed towards a wall on her left. I quite like the results :) The three shots below were taken with 3 different flash ratios. I think I am starting to like it! Time to hunt for a bunch of PocketWizards lol!

Welcoming the Little Brother

Finally, this little brother of Canon has joined our ever growing Canon family. At first glance, the G11 definitely does not look like a typical point-and-shoot (pns) camera. With metal and composite construction, it is also much heavier than most typical 5x compact cameras out there, and the built quality is excellent. There are plenty of controls on top of the camera and I think the most useful one being the ISO dial. Comparing to G10, G11 still sports the same sensor size but with reduced resolution in order to improve image noise control. As this is the very first G-series compact I have ever own, I am unable to provide you with any comparison between them but from what I read online, it certainly works in favor of G11. Jin will bring this little baby for a test drive later and hopefully able to come back with some sample images to post.

From my brief experience with it last night, the only fault that I can find with the G11 is the tiny little viewfinder at the top. The VF is too small for my liking and I find it really hard to compose images through it.

Copyright of humans

Well, this is the second day of my do-nothing week, a break from my otherwise stress ridden, life-degrading and boring work life. Well, not exactly do-nothing as such, I did go out and do some grocery shopping, mowed the lawn and cleaned up my front garden this morning before the weather got too hot. Tomorrow unfortunately need to go back to work for a few hours in the afternoon but I am really looking forward to the dinner with a few friends coming over tomorrow night.

Now where were we....oh yes, for those of you who love taking photos of people in the street, or anywhere for that matter, have you ever wonder about your rights as a photographer? Have you ever wonder your action of taking photos of people (or buildings, statues or display of arts such as the sculpture by the sea) infringes any copyrights at all?

Well, I have been asked a few times because of my itchy trigger finger and I have also been told off a few times for doing just that. Well, I have done lots of reading this afternoon and I am glad to find out it is indeed perfectly legal to photograph anyone, with or without their consent (within certain limitations of course) in Australia, under the current Australian laws. Better reading here. However, in a few countries like France, publication of unauthorized photos (including on personal blogs/websites) is strictly prohibited although candid shots in public areas are not illegal.

Photography is not (yet) a crime!

The Blind Side

I am not really a fan for drama but this movie is both intriguing and inspiring! The film is based on the earlier real life story of Michael Oher, who is a current NFL player playing for the Baltimore Ravens. Michael (The Big Mike) came from an impoverished family of 12 siblings and he was separated from her drug addicted mother since he was young. Since then, he moved from one foster family to another until he met Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) and Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw) on one cold night. Leigh Anne realized that Michael was homeless and was shivering in the cold weather, she decided to invite him to stay at their house. Slowly, Michael became part of Tuohy's family and their children love him.

Because of Mike's huge stature and gigantic strength, he is particularly suited to play American football and soon, he captured the attention of coaches from around the states. However, to in order to receive the NCAA scholarship, he needed to achieve 2.5GPA (I have no idea what it means but probably equivalent to TEE in Australia) but his GPA was too low at the time. Hence, Leigh Anne hired a private tutor to teach him at home and soon, all the teachers at the school were trying to help him out as well.

This one of the best "feel good" movies I have ever watched and it is probably Sandra's best!

The Goose

Went down to Busselton for the long weekend and it turned out to be the perfect break just as we wanted albeit a really short one. We have passed through this tiny town numerous times in the past but we have never stopped overnight. As expected, most accommodations were fully booked for the long weekend but we were lucky to find a great motel room vacant near the beach. Unfortunately, we didn't take many photos as initially planned, partly due to the unusually hot weather I guess. This morning, we went to The Goose by the beach for some breakfast and what can I say, the photos speak for themselves! They were delicious and servings were rather generous too. I had the "Big Breakfast" and Jin had French toasts with grilled banana and bacon. MMMM :))