A gift for my birthday

This year I got one of the best present ever from Jin, a Canon 50mm f1.4 prime lens as I mentioned earlier. Although not exactly a surprise because we have already discussed about the purchase few days earlier, it has still more than made my day :))

It may not be as sharp as the 100mm f2.8 but it produces some of the best bokeh I have ever seen.

Today we went to Mandurah with Jin for a "photo session" and undoubtly it is a superb lens for portraiture, producing reasonably sharp images even at the maximum aperture of f1.4. In my opinion, the Canon 100mm f2.8 is still the best medium telephoto lens for portrait work but I think this little baby is pretty close to it. Well at least with this little prime, I don't have to walk back 10m or so for a full body shot :)

Coffee Break!

"The bad news is that the All Ords fell by 200 points. The good news is that I didn't know there were 200 points left." - Compareshares.com.au :))

Lake Monger Reserve

Today was just another typical non-eventful day, having to work yesterday and again tomorrow, the weekend just wasn't long enough by any standard. Jin was struggling with curtain in the morning (yes, she is making new curtains for our lounge room) while I was trying to filter through news from the rotten financial markets around the globe to find any sign of reprieve. While all this is bad news for those average investors stubborn enough to hold on to their investment portfolio they started some 6 years ago, subsequent drops in interest rates from our reserved bank is much welcomed by most of us mortgage holders. Which means that at last, we can breath a little easier and I might not have to wait too long for my next camera upgrade...I am looking at may be a 50D next year sometime :))

Anyhow, we decided to go out for a walk in the afternoon. After all, today's weather was too nice for us to be locked up at home anyway. After I dropped something to my brother in Wembly Down, we went to the nearby Lake Monger Reserve. I haven't been to the reserve since I finished my college and I was totally stunned by how tranquil and beautiful the surrounding areas are. Luscious greens with scores of wild birds and black swams, it is just awesome!

Yorkshire Pudding

Yorkshire pudding is a dish that originated in Yorkshire but attained wider popularity. It is made from batter and most often served with roast beef, chicken, or any meal in which there is gravy served with it, or on its own. Gravy is often served alongside. It is often claimed that the purpose of the dish was to provide a cheap way to fill the diners - the Yorkshire pudding being much cheaper than the other constituents of the meal - thus stretching a lesser amount of the more expensive ingredients as the Yorkshire pudding was traditionally served first. (Source: Wikipedia)

Well, I guess it serves a similar purpose to rice or potatoes but to my surprise, they actually taste quite nice! Here is the recipe which I used to prepare ours last night :) The more complicated part was to get our roast beef done, which nearly cought fire in our oven hehe!

We had the puddings with roast beef, served with creamy mashed potatoes and steamed cauliflower with tons of gravy....yum!!!

Big Gun No Brain

Video game turned movie or movie turned video game, I couldn't really think of any truely successful incarnations except may be Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Max Payne is one of the latest video game turned movie title that hit our big screen lately.

I am a big fan of Max Payne game series and the use of "bullet-time" in the gameplay was nothing short of revolutionary at the time! This was also one of the main reason why I had convinced Jin to watch it with me a couple days ago. To cut a long story short, the movie definitely wasn't worth any cents of your hard earned $15 and the 100mins in life that you will never get back!

The movie is a little "too dark" to my taste and all the characters inside, including Max Payne have failed to connect with the audience in my opinion. At the end, I couldn't care less about what actually happened to any of them. The movie is not only lack of substance but also blatantly boring right through till the end.

The plot is fairly simple, Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is cop who is still trying to get over the death of his wife and baby while investigating several murders, while Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) costars as an assassin desperate for her own revenge of her sister. However, it's not all bad, the movie still manages to pull out some rather impressive visual effects and mindless big gun fires!

My advice - safe the $15 bucks. If you haven't played the game before, go and get yourself a copy of Max Payne or Max Payne 2 which should only cost you a couple of dollars by now :)

Back to Rottnest

With only less than 2 weeks to go before Yeong heads back to Korea, we thought it would only be fair enough that we showed her to our only island escape paradise in Perth, the Rottnest Island :)

We went there on last Saturday by catching the Rottness Express ferry off C Shed at Fremantle Port. The day started really cloudy and managed to spit a little, but as the day progressed, it turned out to be a fantastic day on the island with really mild temperature and plenty of refreshing sea breeze.

However it's not all fun and games, Yeong somehow managed to drop her prescription glasses into the ocean and lost them! So the rest of the day, she would just have to be content with her non-prescription sunnies :)

Of course, there are only a few ways you can get around to explore the island and in my opinion, the best way will be on the bikes. So we rented a bike each as soon as we arrived on the island in the morning. However, the only down side of riding these rental bikes is the "pain in the arse" at the end of the day - for those who have been there and done that would know exactly what I meant LOL! For me, it was the fifth time I have been through this and every single time it nearly killed me :)

Through camera lens

Ever wonder why sometimes photos look different from realities? Well, I am not talking about the result of acne/mole touch up using PS but through perspective distortion by your camera lens. The distortion is most apparent if the object being photographed is placed too close a wide-angle lens. This is also the very reason why wide angle lenses and long telephoto lenses do not make ideal portrait lenses. Objects closer to wide-angle lens will almost always appear larger and disproportionate to the rest of the objects away from the lens (big nose??). In contrary, objects will always appear a bit flatter if a really long telephoto lens is used. Personally, I find that my 100mm macro lens is a very capable portrait lens and I will keep saving up money for my dream portrait lens, Canon 85mm f/1.2L :)

Public Art

Found this a few weeks ago behind my workplace :)

School holiday = trouble time

Want to share some "art" work on my fence with all of you. Haven't these idiots got better things to do?

Six months later - another new car :)

Ok Ok...we are now officially broke but we are happy :) Introduce the new car for Jin, a Ford Focus 2.0 with all the bells and whistles such as alloy wheels, cruise control, trip computer, semi-automatic transmission, electric everything and leather-clad steering wheel. We traded in her aging Holden Barina which we bought about 2 years ago from the City Holden. That Barina was a total nightmare in the last 6 months and had gone through one repair after another, costing us in excess of $2k in total. Saying that, we did not just buy a cheap second off the street, it was a $11k car we bought from a reputable Holden dealer and for that price, you would expect to get at least a few more years out of it right? WRONG! In fact, way wrong! In the end, it's just another lemon from Holden (anything new?).

Anyway, gone is the trouble :) Jin is overjoyed with her new car and with 107kw of power at her disposure, it's a far cry from a useless and gutless 1.4 thrash in the Barina. The car is smooth to drive and the 4 speed semi-automatic works flawlessly in peak hour city traffic as well as on the freeway. We got the car from John Hughes Park Ford in Victoria Park and was delivered this morning. The staff at the dealer are really friendly and helpful and purchasing the Focus from them was a delightful experience. So there you go, if you are looking to upgrade to a new Ford, head down to Park Ford and you will know what I mean.