Does it just open up your saliva taps? hehehe

Taken sometime back during my short trip to Penang. This is the sambal you add on to your curry mee according to your liking and your spicy-o-meter.

First of all, the building itself is visually pleasing. Lots of metal, glass and wood combination. I like!

A mixture of modern coldness with the warmth of wood. Nice mix!

Some of us making out way down to their… erm… function area? That’s a water feature that goes round the area.

Hmm.. free flow premium coffee? I like!!

That’s what digi people call the Reload. Basically it’s their makan place. See the umbrellas and tables/chairs. You can have your meetings and discussions there as well. If you do not mind the heat. :p BTW.. the rock feature on the right, there’s some interesting feature there. Wanna know? Pay them a visit.

Our friendly guide into Digi explaining their work concept. Pretty interesting. There’s no permanent place for you. Your desk is practically anywhere where no one is sitting at that moment. Pretty cool eh?

They were pretty good hosts as well.

They fed us well!!

These are very nice otak otak!

There’s wine tasting…

Chocolate tasting..

And coffee tasting as well..

Plus they threw in some entertainment for us..

You can putt

You can PS3

Get online and update your statuses.

Or if you want, have some make up as well

Of cos.. you can also sweat it out with their Wii!!

Oh.. one interesting note. See that building across the car park and it’s green feature? That’s not paint. That’s REAL grass.

Thanks to DiGi and their “I AM CURIOUS” campaign.

After reaching the Southern most tip of Western Australia, we began our journey back up North to Perth. The drive was long. Good thing we had 3 drivers. We took turns to drive. Ensuring maximum alertness.

Seriously, I should have kept track of where we went. I am not able to remember the names of the towns we visited :S But the view was spectacular. This photo above was taken during sunset, or when the sun was setting. Marvellous!

Our accommodation was at this little guest house situated on a hill.

We rented something like a suite. Not bad. Simple yet cosy.

It has a little patio, something like a little balcony with table and chairs.

And the view out was simply stunning.

This was taken in the morning.

There’s some garden table and chairs out on the gorgeous grass with a BBQ pit and wash basin should you want to BBQ.

After checking in, we drove a little bit to get to a very nice place to view the sunset.

Dem.. even a shot from the parking lot looks great!

The place had some sort of rocks formation or something like that. there’s a nice little path for the casual tourist to walk through the rocks. But the younger ones.. or at least the young ones at heart tends to take the path less taken. hahaha.

It’s very nice actually. Not THAT dangerous.

Have to pose a bit. Bottom up angle not very flattering. :p

The sun set… nice! Takes much longer to set over there.

Stunning eh?

And there… a little CLS to bring out the people

The next morning.. we had a nice breakfast out on the patio.

No worries about the sun. It was cool enough I miss the cool weather. Anyways, we packed up, then continued our journey. The next stop? A wine yard for some wine tasting and lunch on another balcony/patio overlooking the beautiful wineyard and blue skies.

Our first stop was a wineyard… but here we were looking out for some nice coffee beans.

… and maybe some crocodiles?

Anyways.. we continued on to several wine yards, the more notable ones.

The wine yards were all like a huge mansion! with beautiful gardens. Check out the grass!!

Can roll around like in bollywood movies

Most, if not all of them, have a nice restaurant inside. You can have your wonderously juicy steak paired with a red. Nice!!

And during wine tasting, they have a spittoon there for you. Lucky I know what’s it for. Another group of visitors were asking the lady there what’s that for :p  you would not want to get drunk on your first wine yard stop.

This particular wineyard has got it’s own artsy thingy. It’s labels are a collection of arts.

So naturally they have their own art gallery.

We took one of their tours. Here our lovely tour guide began the tour by introducing to us the history of the wine yard and the estate.

Then she showed lead us through the wine making process. Contrary to the believe that red wine are made from red grapes while white wine are made from green grapes, both red and white wine are pressed from the same red grapes. The color in the red wine comes from the skin which are added to the mix later on in the process. Interesting.

Massive containers containing the wine. Or rather, juices which would become wine.

Hmm… one of the olden pressing machine? Probably a machine which replaced people stomping on grapes in a barrel. Hmm… would be interesting to try it out grape stomping I mean.

More gigantic barrels. Notice these are iced up. I was not paying much attention. I think it had to do with quality or something like that.

And.. finally, the storage. These barrels are not cheap! If I am not wrong, it’s in the 5-figure region.. Aussie Dollar!! Apparently, lower cost wine yards buy these barrels used.

So, after the tour, off we went to another wine yard our lunch.

Nice glass facade…

.. with an even nicer view!! See the building on the left, there’s like a balcony overhanging the yards? That’s where we had our lunch.

The view from our lunch table.

And.. the other view.

I think this is lamb..

This is my prime aussie ribeye.. medium and slightly charred on the outside. Served with a nice big glass of red nicely paired by the friendly staff. Delicious!

And this… hmmm… it’s duck. I think it’s almost raw!

It was a wonderful lunch. Nice weather. Sunny yet cold. Bright blue skies.. taking it all in on a ledge over hanging the wine yards. Pricey, but ok lar. Worth the experience.

After lunch? Photo taking session. Note the photo-taking stance? hehehe

There’s one thing you gotta love down under : The deep blue skies.

It’s extremely blue!!

Really really blue!

Our final stop was Busselton Jetty.. stretching 2km out into the sea.. it’s the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere!

Almost the same view, but love the flare.. hehehe.

Notice the blue blue skies? Check out the ocean as well. Nice clear.. inviting! But also note the darkish clouds looming on the right?

And there’s the dark clouds again far in the background.

And another view of the jetty.. and the deep blue skies.. Too bad it was under construction then :S

aha!! another photo-taking stance.

Oh.. almost missed this photo. I love this. It’s not night, just that I exposed this photo this way to catch the glitters.

And finally, we made the long drive back to Perth. On the way, we managed to catch up to the dark skies.

More like fiery skies to me.

Ok folks. After detouring off the road to take these shots of the fire skies, I was beat!

I hope I will be able to update more on my stay in Perth soon. There’s BBQ and a visit to the Aqua Centre in Perth

This is a photo taken with a 24mm prime lens at f1.8. It gives a rather unique angle and feel to the photo. The following photo of fishingcow is also taken with the same 24mm prime lens at maximum aperture.

It’s wide… and it has bokeh!!

Loving it!!

I was contemplating selling it, but now I think I shall keep it It’s not easy to use and needs some time to master. I still getting the hang of it. Hopefully will master it soon

Financial planning is your own business. You do not need to pay money to have someone else tell you things that you already know. Like, watch your expenditure and credit cards, buy stock low, and sell high, strike when iron is hot.. etc etc. Plus, I will tell you somewhich which financial seminars will NEVER tell you; for every successful stock market player, there’s 50 who have failed have are now in tremendous financial debt.

And about Positive Motivation…. I have this friend of mine whose sister’s boyfriend was a very simple man who rode a motorbike around town and rides to work. Then he got conned into ’setting up his own business’ and dumped a good deal of money into buying stocks from the company. Stocks as in goods. Something you burn then out come magical healing scents. Anyways, as if it was not enough that he emptied his bank account and piled up a huge amount in credit cards, his ‘upline’ then told him that since he is in ‘business’ he should look the part; with new fancier clothes and fancier cars like a BMW. So he went and upgraded himself from a simple kapchai to a BMW. Fine, he can always reject, but these fellas have a way of pushing you to a corner and making what seems to be a guaranteed way of loosing money, seems ok and a very good idea at that time. Needless to say, when things start to go south, his up-line turn a blind eye and left him to himself. Good thing my friend and her sister are very supportive and he is now back on his feet.

About wedding photography; One of the things which I struck a chord for me during a recent photography seminar I attended was this statement

“..you have spent so much money and efforts on your wedding day, why stinge on the one thing which will immortalise it forever?..“

Think about it while I show a photograph…. a blog post without photos is boring

image by Daphne Gan.. thanks girl

.. .and this is my own saying…

“.. to be a good photographer, one must be comfortable to be in front of the camera..”

And this…

.. is his new monster, the Canon EOS 5D MarkII

Seen here coupled with his Canon EF85mm f1.2L.. bokeh king..

Check it out..

oh.. the handsome model here is Unker Long.

hehe.

Totally random

Take a look back at what you did last year. Yes, it’s a way into 2009 to be thinking of 2008. But if it means a better half of 2009, or a better 2010, why not? Has 2008 been good? If it’s bad, why is it bad. Was it something you did not do? Or was it something you did, but did it in a wrong way? Did you trust the wrong person? Did someone play you out? Or are you the person someone should not have trusted? Was it you who played someone else out?

Can this get any more random?

Lunch today is just some swiss roll. I have been working here in IT central of Malaysia. The food is sickening. The place is depressing. Some people might love this place. But not me. There are so many things which I am not able to do. For example, should I need to do some banking, I would have to take at least half day leave. Yes, there’s a bank here. Maybank. BUt I do not use maybank. Back in civilisation, I can drive out during lunch, do my  banking stuff and still have time for a quick bite before heading back to office. Same with getting my car serviced. Sad. Some people adapted and accepted the hash life here. I have yet to.

So what has Proton been up to? Well, to me it’s basically nothing. New MPV with an underpowered 1.6L engine? Please lar. Lame excuses. Can you imagine if Proton never existed? A Honda Civic will only be RM60-70k, same price range with a Waja. Bah!! Dun get me wrong. I drive a proton. It’s not bad. What is bad is the price. Local car.. costs so much. *sigh* Quality also quite bad, but at least improving.

Windows also another sad story. Everyday crash. Kena virus. Memory problems. Microsoft being such a HUGE company, can’t they just take windows’ platform and throw it out the window and start a new, with a completely new base.. and get things right once and for all. YEah, that will cost them too much money. Sad isn’t? It’s called investment. Apple did it. Why can’t Bill?

See… apple. Design nice, stable OS. Only thing is it’s cost. If they drop their pricing a bit, a lot of people would jump over. I am sure Apple can afford a 30% drop in price to achieve 100% up in sales. Their old stock, they should drop 50% then we will see a suddenly increase in mac users.

Times up.

LUnch time.

Jason and I were asked to cover Sunny and Patricia’s engagement last Saturday in Singapore. Since both Jason and I both do not know Singapore well, we decided to spend the night in Johor and then catch a cab into Singapore. Our initial plan was to head down south after work on Friday. Which was also why we decided again driving into Singapore, especially at night. Anyways, to cut the story short, it was a financial disaster. The next round, we will drive directly into Singapore.

Sunny and Patricia were great to work with. They had great friends who were also wonderful in front of the camera. I think it is important that subjects are comfortable in front of the camera. This paves the way to even greater photos. Of course a good photographer makes the subject feels comfortable, but only if you have the luxury of time. In our case, or rather in most actual day weddings or engagements, time is usually not a luxury that we have.

Here are some of the teaser photos taken during that Saturday. More will come later.

See.. friendly people. Very eager to be in front of the camera.

All photos were shot with the AF-S 50mm f1.4G lens wide open @ f1.4, except for the last one which was shot at f2.8.

After the registration, they headed off to a nice cruise in a yatch. Everything was completed by lunch time and the happy couple ensured that we had a full tummy before letting us off. How considerate of them.

Jason and I then wondered Singapore for a bit before deciding that we were a little too tired to wonder anymore and thus headed back to Johor in preparation of our long drive home. So that Saturday, I had my shower at 5am. The next shower I had was almost midnight. I was smelly, sticky and extremely tired. My nice comfortable bed never felt nicer.

and it does not matter if you are shooting from your hips…

This is so fun.. tee he he he