Real Steel

Real Steel is a very interesting and surprisingly great family movie. I know some people (me included) may be kind of sick of below average movies with giant butt-kicking robots such as the last Transformers but believe me, this one is different. I said it is a family movie because it basically is about the journey between a father and his son in rediscovering themselves and how they rebuild their shattered relationship. It is also like Transformers meet Fight Club, a story of Rocky retold with boxing robots in WRB (World Robot Boxing).

Starring Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a former pro-boxing champion whose days of glory is all but behind him. Now a total loser and a "bad bet", he tries to dig himself out of holes only to fall into deeper ones. When he finds out that his ex-girlfriend has left him with an 11 year-old son whom he has never met, his life is about to turn around slowly and ultimately they become a great father and son's team on their way to create the people's champion in robot boxing!

The storyline is rather easy to guess but very effectively told. Highly recommended!

Little Mac

Finally we added another member to our Apple's family, a small Macbook Pro for Jin :)

Magic Trackpad

Today I got an Apple magic trackpad to go with the OS X Lion. I know it will probably never replace the good old rodent especially precision is your main concern, but it does work seamlessly with the Apple new OS. The trackpad, through the new operating system enables you to bring the full "touchscreen" ability of an iPad into your regular desktop. The gestures work perfectly and it makes navigating between programs a breeze, especially flipping through multiple active desktops. However, the most impressive thing to me is not the trackpad itself, it is how fast Apple actually delivered the product to me. I placed the order through Apple online store yesterday afternoon and it was delivered late in the morning today from Sydney. Now that is what I call fast service!

Transformers 3

As one of the most anticipated movie of the year, Transformers 3 was a great let down for me. I think Megan Fox got out at just the right time. Although her replacement, a beautiful model from fashion powerhouse Victoria Secret, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley failed to bring anything fresh to the franchise. I don't have much to say about this movie except the movie was way too long for its own good and without much essence! 2 out of 5 I am afraid and this is coming out from a Transformers fan.

Roomba 577

iRobot Roomba 577 is an automatic vacuum robot which can be programed to run on its own according to a set schedule of up to 7 times a week. I bought this for Jin as her birthday present but in fact, it's probably a present for both of us. Vacuuming has never been this fun since we adopted this little baby! It comes with a self-docking station for recharging and 2 "lighthouse/virtual wall" units which can be placed strategically around house to direct the Roomba where to vacuum and where not to. The units are crucial for the Roomba to find its way back to the docking station once it finishes vacuuming. The unit comes equipped with multiple sensors at the front to detect obstacles such as walls and furniture and to help it navigate around them. It is also clever enough to detect a ledge so it will not fall down a flight of stairs.

I have tested Roomba on carpet, rug and hard floor and it passes favourably. Because Roomba can adjust its height automatically, it has no problems going from one surface to another, and also unlikely to get bogged down by wires or uneven surfaces. I am absolutely amazed at how effective this little gadget is at the job and the sheer amount of dusts and hair it is capable of picking up.

More info can be found here. If you are sick of regular vacuuming, give this iRobot a go and you will not be disappointed!

BBQ Pork Buns

I have been wanting to share this recipe with you since our trip back home but I was just too lazy to do anything else apart from sitting on my ass every evening watching some Chinese dramas downloaded off the net :P For this recipe, I cheated by purchasing the ready made BBQ pork from a restaurant in Northbridge. You actually can achieve very similar result by marinating pork in Chinese BBQ sauce before cooking them, or even substitute the pork with chicken.

The following recipe with be enough to make about 12-15 buns.

For the dough:
500g plain flour
5 tbs white sugar
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp of instant yeast
1 tsp of melted butter
260mL of water

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large bowl and make a center. Add the yeast and slowly mixing in the water with the yeast and work your way out from the center. Add in butter and knead the dough until smooth and set aside in a large bowl covered with damp cloth. Leave the dough for roughly 3 hours at room temperature or until at least double in size.

The filling:
200g of BBQ pork cut into small pieces
3 medium size mushrooms roughly diced
1 large brown onion diced
2 tbs cooking oil
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs chilli sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs tomato sauce
2 tsp sugar
small amount of water and starch mixture


Fry the onion with oil in a shallow pan until slightly brown. Add in mushroom and BBQ pork, fry the mixture for about a minute. Add in all the sauces and sugar. Lastly, add in just enough water and starch mixture to thicken the filling. Do not add too much water. Set aside to cool.

Remove the dough and knead it down again until smooth and you are ready. Roll a small amount of dough at a time using a rolling pin and gently fold the filling into the dough as shown in the below. Sit the bun onto a small round piece of baking paper to prevent it from sticking during steaming. Set aside for about 30 minutes at room temperature before steaming. Place the finished buns in a steaming tray and steam under boiling water for about 8 minutes.

Tip: Cooked buns can be frozen immediately once they cool down and can be kept in freezer for a few weeks or longer.

Fast Five

Fast Five is not only the fastest but I reckon, it's simply the best out of the five in the long running Fast and Furious series. Hell, it could be the action movie of the year; and yes, I know we still have more than half of 2011 left; and yes, the Transformer sequel is at the horizon; but the Fast Five is that good! Although the storyline might be a little thin but the jaw dropping actions and special effects are more than enough to make up for the shortcomings. It definitely kept me at the edge of my seat most of the time and when we reached the movie credits, I was craving for more!

The Athlete's Foot

No...not the fungus or tinea infested foot, I am talking about The Athlete's Foot shoes company in general. My pair of New Balance runners were long overdue for replacement, so I took advantage of the new year sale and got myself a new pairs at The Athlete's Foot in Belmont. I have never shopped in any of the stores before and to my surprise, it was a truly enjoyable experience indeed. Not only they measured and recommended a pair perfect fitting shoes, the girl that was servicing us even told me I am an "overpronator" and required shoes that minimize pronation on the medial side of my feet. She recommended a pair of Wave Nirvana 6 by Mizuno, which is a superseded model and that meant good bargain. Jin got a pair new Nike runners too at the same time. We were there for more than 40mins from start to finish and not at any stage that we felt rushed by the girl, even though half of that time was passed their normal store closing time! Being in retail for a fair while myself, I know how annoying it is for customers to come in just before closing time, but to The Athelete's Foot, this is obviously not the case. That's what I call service! We know where we will go next time when we need new sport shoes, do you? :)

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!