Avatar

I can tell you right now, there is no better movie to wrap up 2009 then this blockbuster movie from James Cameron - Avatar!

You know when you go to watch a movie that is all hyped up, where almost everyone; critics or critics-wannabe alike, all said it's a bloody good movie, quite often you will leave the movie in disappointment because of your high expectation for it. Fortunately, this is not the case, James Cameron delivers a movie that is both original and spellbinding. If you haven't already watch this movie, do yourself a favor, go to watch it in 3d and your eyes will thank you for it. So stop reading this spoiler and get your butt into the movie!

Avatar is set in the year 2154 and takes place on a moon-like planet called Pandora where humans or rather, "evil" RDA corporation trying to mine a precious mineral. The only problem is, na'vi, a clan of feline-looking native humanoids is in their way and they are refusing to move. The science division of RDA, headed by Grace (Sigourney Weaver) created avatars, genetically engineered human-na'vi hybrids, to study the mysterious tribe. Jake (Sam Worthington) is recruited to replace his murdered twin brother and take the role of an avatar to infiltrate the na'vi. While studying them, Sam slowly falls in love with the princess of the na'vi clan, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The story takes you through one of the most engaging and beautiful journey of Jake and Neytiri, and how they eventually fall in love.

However, when Jake fails to convince the clan to move away from their Hometree, where the greatest deposit of the precious mineral is, all hell breaks loose. The human forces, headed by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) starts to attack the Hometree and killing many na'vis along the way. Jake takes the na'vi side and starts to lead the na'vi to counter attack the humans. The main story is very simple and it reminds me of the movies like The Last Samurai. However, all the characters are so brilliant portrayed in the movie and they are so engaging...yes, did I mention engaging? ....emotionally engaging...it's simply beautiful! Although the movie has its sad bits but do not worry, na'vis believe in fairytale and the ending is a fairytale ending too :)

I give it a 4.9 out of 5! I hope James Cameron will continue to make the two sequels he promises lol!

2012

Have you got a billion euro to spare or two? Because that is how much you have to pay to reserve a seat to live beyond 2012!

From the director that brought you "Independence Day" and "The Day after Tomorrow", 2012 brought disaster movie to a new height! Everything is epic in this movie and almost everything is destroyed beyond imagination and to an epic proportion. The movie started a little bit slow but I was at the edge of my seat for most part of the movie.

As giant tsunamis and earthquakes escalate around the world, the rich and famous secretly embarking on their secret journeys to some giant heavy-duty ships in China while ordinary citizens of the world just go about their normal lives, seemingly oblivious of what lies ahead.

The dialogues and logic might be a little thin but I am a junkie for disaster flicks, so there are plenty to satisfy my craze and more than enough to compensate for the shortcomings.

It may not be as good as "The Day after Tomorrow", may be a bit cheesy at point and down right silly but it was a perfect movie for a mindless Friday night!

I give it a 3/5!

Big Brother is here!

Yesterday I got my long awaited Canon 580exii, the Canon flagship flash accessory. Compared to my old 430ex, the biggest noticeable difference is its size and weight, and of course, the build quality. Do doubt this is a Canon professional flash unit built for tough life ahead. It has a metal footing at the bottom and all the switches, buttons and covers are water sealed. Of course, the only part that is not water-sealed when fitted onto my current cameras is the hot-shoe footing, which is only available on Canon 1d Mark III or newer. Well, not that I am going to shoot in the shower or anything like that, but I suppose it is nice to know :)

It is also a lot more quieter than 430ex and in my brief experiment last night, a hell lot stronger and faster. Not that 430ex is inadequate my any mean, I love my 430ex for its compact size but when you have flash modifier fitted on, such as a diffuser; or bouncing off higher roof, 430ex in some situations, could be a little under-powered.

Just another year...

Not only a year is approaching the end, I suddenly found myself a year older as well. Well, actually I have stop counting since I clocked past 30 and I virtually lost count since (intentionally of course)! This year, we had a great dinner at Saowanee's Place in North Perth, not only a local award winning Thai restaurant, but also a kitchen headed by Dao, Jin's long time friend from tafe. We had an enticing entrée followed by paw paw salad, red beef curry, red duck curry with rambutan, beef salad and concluded with a marvelous mud cake from Cafe Mozart. Not only I am getting older a year, I think I also put on another kilo onto my expanding waist line too lol!

Eating and taking picture at the same time would be a skill worth learning :) Here is David with his new baby, a brand new Canon 7D with 50mm f1.4.

Thank you Dao, Lisa, David, Benna and my dearest Jin for the wonderful night.

유부초밥

Originally from Japan, 유부초밥 (yu-bu-cho-bab) is a Korean version of Inari sushi which basically is vinegar-ed rice stuffed in fried marinated tofu skin.

The steamed rice is mixed with a boiled mixture made of vinegar, sugar, salt and kelp (for flavouring only, removed before mixing with rice). The rice is then mixed with the rest of the ingredients which consist of
finely diced carrot, beef, crab meat and furikake.

This was my dinner and will be my lunch tomorrow at work :)

Hartland Camera Repairs

I am a person that always expect things to turn out the worse way possible, you can call me pessimistic but I think it has its advantages. Well, if things do turn out the bad way, at least I am not surprised :) Our trip to Europe was fantastic in many ways, but we also had a few hiccups along the way. My beloved camera 50D was one of them! Well, simply it just decided to pack up on my first shot in London! What could be worse? I felt like loosing my eyes!

The good news is, I returned it to Hartland Camera Repairs in Northbridge as soon as we came back and it was sent over to NSW for a warranty repair. To my surprise, I received an SMS from the Hartland Camera Repairs in about a week saying that my 50D had been repaired and was ready to be collected! What really surprises me is, there was no charge for the service, not even the postage and handling, not a cent! Well, it did state on the Canon's warranty card that Canon Australia is not responsible for any associated cost of postage and handling.

Thank you Hartland Camera Repairs! By the way, they are Nikon authorised service agent too, so you know where you should go for your next camera service! Service with a smile!

Escargot

Finally I got to eat snails! :) Actually I have tried a few variant of cooked snails before in various places but this by far I think is the best. Jin didn't quite like it because she reckoned it was a touch too oily or cheesy for her.

They look like your typical garden snails, hymm...I wonder how they will taste like lol! The restaurant that we had this was called George V on the famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Unfortunately, the main dish that I ordered, a steak burger, was virtually uncooked and tasteless. To add insult to the injury, I was charged 7 euro for a small glass of orange juice! I missed Hungry Jack or Burger King all of a sudden then lol!

Second "L" glass

I have most of my focal range covered now that I have got my long awaited general purpose lens, the Canon EF 24-70mm f2.8L. For a while, I was torn between the 24-70 and 24-105 but at the end, I decided to go for the slightly bigger brother. This lens has been around for for sometime now and is probably one of the most used general purpose "L" glass on the market despite weighing close to 1 kg. I have never tried the 24-105 before but from what I read online, these two are fairly similar, optically however, most people agree 24-70 has the edge and also not forgetting, it's a full-stop quicker. Going down from f4 to f2.8 means doubling the amount of light hitting camera sensor at any particular shutter speed. This coupled with high ISO could mean getting sharp images of moving objects, for example humans in low light, or blurred mess/ghosts unless that's your intention :) There is another difference between the 2 though, the 24-70 is unfortunately lack of image stabilizer (IS) but I guess if there is one, it will only land bigger blow to my hip pocket lol!

I did a rough test and the images shot are very good, sharpness and contrast are definitely better compare to those of EFS 17-85mm IS. However, it still doesn't beat my favourite prime, the mighty Canon 50mm f1.4 stopping down to f2.8!

If you need more info about this marvelous lens, click here!

Back to Reality

A two-weeks-and-a-bit was just too short for a trip to Europe. We spent 2 weeks in 3 cities and we were still running out of time, how those tours can do the whole Europe in a month is beyond me! We did have a few problems and hiccups along the way but overall, the whole trip was very enjoyable.

Will we go back? Of course we will, especially to Rome, I love the city. Our opinions were divided on Paris, no offense but most Parisians won't too friendly to us while we were there. They seem to have a chip on their shoulder and those subways were just filthy! Seeing beyond that, Paris is a beautiful city in its own right and as Jin said, a very romantic city :)

London to me is very similar to Melbourne, very clean and fashionable city. Chinatown is an absolute hit and the "dimsum" that could be sampled there is top-notch! All the musical performances are residents there and two thumbs up for the Lion King show, absolutely brilliant!

No doubt I will write more about our trip in my next few entries and perhaps more later, and may be some things to do and not to do there :)

Where has the time gone?

It's been more than a month since my last entry into my blog but the problem is, it felt like last week I just updated it. Am I going nuts or what? One good thing is, we are just one more week of sleeps away from our European trip!!

I know I am a little bit too late but for those who are here and didn't realise that yesterday us Chinese celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival; well, happy belated Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone! ...btw, my brother is one of them lol! We were planning to have some mooncakes last night but we just couldn't stomach them after having 8 pizzas at Little Caesars in Mundaring for dinner (they were 7 of us btw...so kinda not too bad hehe!)

So here it is, we are having one for breakfast!!