Australia Day

These shots were taken from an office building overlooking the Bell Tower and the "mini" ferris wheel (bottom left). Unfortunately, because the window is heavily tinted with some kind of reflective material, I just couldn't get sufficient exposure on most of my shots. To further complicate the matter, I have office background reflections on the window :(

Well...may be will have better luck next year!
(f/10;35mm)

A long day

We headed to Mandurah at about 4am this morning, the plan was to catch as many crabs as possible at the estuary and have them for lunch. Well, at least that's our plan but I was also hoping to snap some good sunrise shots while I was at it. Despite a gloomy forecast by the weather bureau, the weather actually wasn't too bad as it turned out.

Unfortunately, after a long day of hard work, we were only managed to net 6 crabs that were not actually undersized. Nevertheless, it was still a great day out, even though a tired one.

By the way, we had instant noodle for lunch :) As you can see in the second shot, the weather was very overcast.

Non-productive week

This week was a rather non-productive week and hence, nothing much to write here. The stifling summer heat is killing me slowly and I just can't wait for to arrival of autumn and the end of this rediculous daylight saving trial in Perth. I bet there are not many places on earth you can still get sunburn after 7pm!





























Like to share few shots taken at home (anti-clockwise): tailor made ted clothing by Jin, new toy made for me by Jin and a gift from Dao (feeling cooler already by just looking at it, don't you agree? hehe!)

Hot and Cold

Last week, my experiment with the Thailand fried noodle (Pad Tai) was apparently a success according to Jin and my sister-in-law :) This week I thought I might give the Thailand's hot and sour soup (tom yam kung) a go. Here is a simple recipe for the soup, it is actually quite easy to prepare as long as you have all the ingredients ready.

Ingredients:
1.25 L chiken stock
1 tbs Tom Yam stock/paste
4 kaffir leaves (whole)
2 stalks lemongrass, squashed
3 tbs lemon/lime juice
fish sauce to taste
1 large cut red chillli
2 tsp sugar
some straw mushroom
10 raw deveined king prawn

Boil the chicken stock, add the Tom Yam paste, kaffir leaves, lemon grass and cut chilli into the pot and bring to boil. Then, add the rest of the ingredients into the soup and simmer until the prawns are cooked. Add some sugar if the soup turns out to be too sour. Simple as that :) ....The soup is best served with cool air conditioning :)

Earlier today, we went out to Rick Hart and got ourselves an ice shaver. Jin was craving for "ice kacang" for a long time so finally her dream came true today! We gobbled up our first homemade "ice kacang" as fast as we made it and it was indeed a slice of heaven in a long hot week!

Happy New Year!

Jin's mum said your age correlates to how fast you are travelling through life. For instance, a 10 year-old child will proceed through a year at 10km/h whereas an old fart like me will be travelling more than 3 times faster! And that's a truely scary FACT! People always say end of the year is the time to reflect on the past and make new resolutions for the next. As time is running out faster than ever, it's hard to think of any significant accomplishment of the past year let alone making new ones for the next :) Well, shot less photos last year, got 2 speeding tickets (me and her each) and lost some money in shares are hardly called "achievements"!

We started new year with a big clean out of our backyard which was full of weeds and spiders. I must have killed more than 20 spiders (I hate spiders!!) and found one family (or colony?!) of mice near our gas hot water system. I caught three little mice but decided to let them go because they were just too cute (some might disagree) LOL! But we did go to Bunning this afternoon to grab some rodent bait so Jin can feel safe in the house :)

It was a extremely hot day today and the last thing we want to do was to turn up more heat to cook our dinner. Luckily, our friends Dao and Lek decided to come over and cook dinner for us!! A little intro, they currently work in a Thai restaurant and Dao is actually the head chef there and that could only mean a one thing, a restaurant quality meal at home!!

Happy New Year to all my friends and visitors to my little blog and all the best for the 2009!

The magic of Canon

I have used my new Canon 50d for roughly a month now and after nearly 600 actuations, I must say it is a truely amazing midrange camera from Canon. Don't get me wrong though, I still absolutely love my first dSLR, the 400d but this 50d just opens out so much more options for me to play with. The most useful feature that I found (and sadly missing from the 400d but available through later 450d and 1000d) is the auto ISO mode and in the 50d, it switches between 100-1600 in auto mode.

Pairing it with the large aperture of 50mm f1.4 lens, the 50d takes amazing handheld night shots. Another plus is a significantly lower noise level at higher ISO of up to 1600. Although it goes all the way up to ISO 12800, things start to get a bit too grainy for my taste above ISO 3200. Another important plus is the maximum shutter speed of 1/8000 seconds, which allows the use of bigger aperture in bright daylight for portrait work without the need to use ND filters. Oh yes, did I say the 3" HR LCD screen is a godsend? It's just amazing that Canon can pack the resolution of a standard VGA monitor into a 3" screen!

The photo of this beautiful singer was taken at ISO 1250 with minimal lighting at Bistro38, Joondalup Resort. She performed for nearly 3 hours continuously while we were feasting on the buffet. Just in case you are thinking about having your next all-you-can-eat round there, my advice is you are more likely to get your money worth at the Jetty Restaurant at the Hillary Boat Habour. The buffet is worse or on par with the Atrium Restaurant in Burswood and you will be paying through your nose!

Zoom Zoom!

I usually spend countless hours in front of my monitor surfing the web when I run out of things to do or photo to shoot. I came across this image which I thought was quite funny and like to share with you guys....an ultimate Nikon freak! or...may be something my dear friend Wayne would admire lol!

As a Canon user, I found some interesting stats for a similarly rediculous lens made by Canon and since has been discontinued in 2005. Of course, to showcase a lens of this calibre would be absurd not to include a hot chick like those exortic cars at the expo right?












The lens is a Canon EF 1200mm f5.6L USM and it costs a whopping US$99,000; it's 84cm in length, weighs in excess of 16kg and comes with the heavy duty tripod! Go figures!

Two slices of heaven

Well, we went back to our favourite pizza place again in Mundaring last Friday and it was again fantastic! The first of the two pizzas we tried was aptly named smashing pumpkins and the other was some sort of seafood pizza with huge succulent prawns (sorry...forgot it's name). Smashing pumpkins was the pick of the two, it was indeed the first slice of heaven for the week :)








The Second slice of heaven was found at the King Street Cafe in the city. I am a great fan of everything made from banana and the guys there at the cafe bake one of the best I have come across! They have two sorts of banana cakes, the regular banana cake and the baked banana cheesecake. The later one is the one to die for...trust me :)

A fun weekend or not...

Yesterday night, we attended the Rio Tinto Christmas party at the Adventure World with my niece and nephew. Overall, it was not too bad at all if not because of my pounding headache. I have never been to Adventure World before and because I have heard so much great things about the park, I went to the park carrying high expectations.

To my disappointment, I was suprise to find out how small the actual fun park is. Moreover, the facilities and equipments there are fairly old and ill maintained considering the astronomical entry fee per person that the park demands. The last check on the board, for $45/adult, $37/child and $39/pensioner or concession card holder, it is not cheap by any standard! Nevertheless, it was still a fun night out with the kids. Will I go back again?....well, definitely not as a paying patron :)

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 :)