Seven Seas

On such and such a day before the day of the year that we recount upon an about bygone year, me and a merry band of brethens found ourselves bridged into the oceans expanse. Hours of sit, hours of walk. There, on the return ferry, I found for a moment, to not feel the sea-sickness, to be spirited away from land, to reflect on a long journey swiftly sweeping behind.

Returning to the beginning, I had not began this blog with the intention of writing for any intended audience, but rather a chronological archive of my largely uneventful personal life. We always like to think of leaving a piece of ourselves, in the event that we are gone. By and large, I broke out of my cryptic cover because of messages and original works of art that I was convicted upon and yet unsatisfied being delighted in by myself only. Honestly, I never ever liked to be recognized by what I do or contribute, it is the sharing of my art and perhaps a chance at communion with a fellow being that brings me joy to keep going. Perhaps the experience is more promising when someone who shares that same wonderful vision and fervor joins in the creation of the work. I kept this blog as an outreach, to find and persuade some of my friends whom showed the most promise to dwell into this picturesque world I saw. So I waited but no one turned up. Now I must move along, leaving this land behind. For a long time I questioned this as the Almighty's plan going wrong because I did not see a better one than this. I grasped eternity and yet grappled with faith, because I could not see the manifestation of His love or plan that was foretold.

Question we always must, to stay alive, to stay human. No time for any more questions.

The paradox of my thirst has an answer, that I do know, and a longer journey lies ahead to unravel it. I want to thank many thoughtful friends whom dropped a note or two to ask me why what over email, gtalk or library study, you have all been of great help and counsel in the many months bygone. Thank you for the bridges you have opened up to me even as I closed mine to many others. Thank you for being the ships on the horizon, flashing your guidelights amidst the same storms we encountered. I have sought more than I should, only to know every little opening is a blessing.

On the Eve of History, when you take the left, and I take the right, at least I know someday the same rain shall fall on us wherever the seas take us. May you be of a true heart, may the universe conspire to bring you fulfillment and joy on your destination in the next chapter of history. Au revoir.

Hymn to The Fallen

The time of the year when ends meets starts. Let us solemnly reflect our time at the frontline.

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays 'pon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

Silent Night

And among the many lights of the night, there was one small shimmering one that gave out a burst of its spark. And darkness fell, but there came hope that the light would return. Somewhere, perhaps a light spoke and we moved in search of it, knowing that it is there.

Running around today on Christmas Day capturing other's happiness, I'm dead tired. I'm neither sad nor happy that on this day I'm by myself in my own world like many others, but at least I'm at peace, rest I shall find.

Juiced

I haven't been home much lately, just came back from Malacca yesterday yesterday. I shot about 1200 pictures, but most of them aren't with me.


One heck of a church camp, sleeping at 3am every night, here's the merry lot. 

Yesterday, went to Deb's family Christmas party on the premise that there were too much food for them to finish. Everyone in this picture is suffering from Overseas Withdrawal Syndrome. Great ham, wine, and too much youtube. 

I'm being wedding photographer later today for a wedding on Christmas. No time to be shagged.

Redshift

I shall be out of the country for the next few days till Monday.

Finally I got myself a new hotshoe flash yesterday.

Ajar

Why do we keep hitting ourselves with a hammer?

Because it feels so good when we stop.

Larkin Step

After my years of amassing a vast array of gadgetry and tools of the trade for my photographic interests, I have come to the inevitable.

Liquidation.

First and foremost, its a shame that they would fall fallow in my charge since I cannot be around to use them eagerly, thus its in their best interests to have new owners. I talk of gadgets as if they are my pets, that's very true. While I would love to have a golden retriever in the distant future, gadgets admittedly are lower maintenance and far more loyal to me than any persons I know of, who are either running from the country or forgetting to return favors or hiding in a corner falling in love. And then... never mind.

I shall be missing Ptichka (Russian for Little Bird), my first DSLR. This featherweight guy has seen me through mountain ranges, overnight biking and many rain storms. I wish I could have traveled to further and colder places with you, just us and the beautiful world. But you won't get to see as many splendid suns if you stay with me. Its all for the better =)

I shall retain a small following consisting of the Touch, Mirya and Zoreus, all the memories and work that I have done will stay with them. Eerily, this reminds me of King Lear.

Golden Compass

I finally have my independent verdict on The Golden Compass, which wasn't as bad Rotten Tomatoes made it out to be, provided you follow the story-line closely.

While asking various persons to watch the show, I had 3 respondents objecting to it due to religious reasons. While I understand that the church has been quick to provide various advisory with regards to the story, I find the premise that a 2 hours fictional tale will corrupt your faith irreversibly to be rather ludicrous. Notably, what is 2 hours compared to the years one spends in church with all those spiritual activities? If your faith is that easily shattered by a work you viewed knowingly that it was fictional, then it is perhaps a shame that your last few years have accounted for naught, and the $8 you just plonked was good money to find that out. Better now than 30 years down during mid-life crisis.

Secondly, I abide by the principle that a religious belief must be arrived at through independent and personal introspection to be truly meaningful. Having to be told what movie and media not to peruse means that your beliefs are dictated by others, thus whose religion are you living? What happens when these persons are gone? Such a belief built on foundations not from within, are as good as living in a straw hut near impending typhoon.

With regards to the movie itself, the connotations of a real life church conspiracy are in fact abysmally amounting to thin air. These allegations are overblown and have in no way affected my religious beliefs by the slightest bit, that there is an Almighty who paid a great price for us all. My argument has all along been an attack against a great evil called sheer ignorance, which I find lacking in being combatted by the education system and church leaders. Watch the movie, make an independent observation for yourself to decide if taking for pinch of salt, but golden rule is to enjoy the entertainment.

Idiots

I do not mean to be negative but 2 canceled appointments on the same day with that recurring sorry does not cut it. If one intends to apologize, at least spell out the word in its entirety, "sry" or any of its variety just do not cut out as any form of basic sincerity. Why bother responding?

Ruslan

Liberation is over-rated if you have not been purposed to do anything. While sojourning about the city yesterday field-testing my Touch and searching for a casing, I met Ruiqing at Funan sprucing up her laptop. She's as glib as ever and more money minded now. Subsequently I got caught in the storm that was forecasted to have gone away, ended up at SLS meeting the Eagle and Nova. Yes, I was enlightened to the fact that due to my recent wins, I temporarily am wealthy but not rich, unless I liquidate my winnings into cash. On a sadder note, this means I'm running dangerously low on working capital. This ensued with a camp-out at Burger King, where Nova and I were sparring ridiculously over the most value for money $4 cheapskate student meal, that we upsized to $4.55 , splitting half, and had the cheek to ask for mayonnaise, an extra cup and to cut the burger into half, while watching the cashier roll her eyes as we told her the exact price even before she punched the register. It would have made a wonderful youtube video.  

Touchy

The poor guy waiting to be sold. I do not dare look or touch it for fear that I get attached to it. Its tucked away in a lonely corner in the room, won't someone give it a home?

The new star for my holiday is this bugger sandwiched between the little white fella and the table. As the title for this entry suggests, he's quite touchy an issue.

Yes, the elusive third prize: iPod Touch. Now having spent a day with the bugger, I shall give my fair verdict on this new addition to the family. First thing you notice, it comes in this minimalist-style packaging typical of companies looking to save money in the namesake of environmental protection, which I can't be bothered to show. While you can tell at one look what function most gadgets serve by their buttons, this one completely confounds anyone. There's only a power button and this home button? For God's sake, this is a music player, give me a play button! The only saving grace is this huge screen for viewing videos, but as there's no physical play button, I doubt people find it wanting to use.

Next up, there's wireless internet, as evidenced by the presence of a Google page. Problem is, where's the keyboard? Apparently, Apple sells a physical keyboard separately for $88 that you have bring around and connect to the device, its not only bulky but further drains your battery life. I do not intend to buy that so Google search is off limits for me. If you thought that was the last of the hullalooba, you are sadly mistaken.

Apparently the built-in firewall of this device is not immune against this virus called Facebook, which has been spreading among all my friends (sheesh, the casualties). You should hear of the amount of time and productivity it robs from away you. And to think you thought that you were safe away from the PC, now you are putting it in your pocket together with your phone, which it might infect too! This is scary, and Apple has no solution to it.

Evidently, this is a bad BAD product, I do not know why so many people are dying to get their hands on it, but its certainly not music to my ears. Trust me, I'm doing you a great service this holiday season. Please spend your money on more worthwhile products like the Zune or Creative Zen, which have an actual play button. This product is over-rated, I don't even know where the name of Touch comes in except that its going to be touchy returning it to the store for a refund! Now, surely that is not going to be cool at all, and you don't want that right?

This after-note is written for people who I worry, do not understand sarcasm. The afore-mentioned contents contain only half-truths and are written for entertainment purposes. There is in fact an on-screen keyboard, you do not need to buy one as I implied.

  

Meetings

I have been too tired to post up pictures taken at the gatherings I have been to. A recent one last Thursday with my primary school mates, everyone still looks the same. Our English teacher, Adeline Chan, is still funky as ever (but whom I remembered gave the worst scoldings), you probably will mistake her for one of us in the group photo. She quit the teaching line and is now a freelance director (like me haha). I felt that our group was more closely knitted than my later mates in AC, mainly because there were only 40 of us, and we had our own container classroom separate from everyone else in the main block, inclusive of our own soccer square, garden and badminton turf. I'm not saying that being isolated is desirable, but we had a unique experience being a small group growing up together. Last of all, it was fun and childish back then since most of us weren't really matured, and there's always some childish incident to tease someone over. Yes that includes my confusing Adolf with Rudolf during Social Studies. Haha. You guys were a really lovely bunch! 

And from another isolated event: This is Vickie, she's a Mahjong-eater.

長尾

We search ever so fervently for beautiful things, that we forget the ones we already have and the price we paid for them.

Conviction Win

Basically whilst I was busy with filming works over the past week, I had also been smoking this InnovateIT competition with Ip and Haoyi. The case study was given on Monday and we had 6 days to prepare supposedly. Given that our proposal last year which earned us a miserable 2GB flash drive got taken up by the LTA in a similar form, we were in theory back with a vengeance this year.

But an observer wouldn't think so given how we only worked sparingly for half a day on tuesday and friday, a grand total of just one day of work! While some other teams worked their asses for 3 days or more. Yes, somehow with one whole morning of last minute re-hashing of slides, we got into finals and ended our 6 years career representing the school with a 1st prize bang, one macbook for each of us. Did we deserve it? It wasn't the most feasible nor our most convicted idea. We were so sure we would win last year, and we didn't think the team that won deserved it because it lacked feasibility while being chock full of features. How they beat the system, we did too, and also while garnering "Best Effort" awards. I shall look back on these competitions with a laugh. Its perhaps ironic that conviction did not count to success, but sheer tactical argument and a show did.

The prize allocation surprisingly reminded me of another competition we had in 2004, 1st prize being Microsoft Office, 2nd the Xbox, 3rd ipod mini. We were landed in final 3 round with RI and HC, and the whole team agreed to aim for either 1st or 3rd prize. The reason being, Xbox, need to waste money on games. This time round, 1st prize macbook, 2nd prize O2 XDA, 3rd prize ipod touch. You guess correct, we only wanted the macbook or ipod touch, getting the O2 would be a joke to use for the next 2 years.

Anyways, a glad but unforeseen win. The macbook is up for sale, since I already have one. A new one would go to waste in my hands for next 2 years of absence in the army. My price is $1600, of which the basic model sells for $1788 on Apple Retail. Give me a call if you want it soon.

B&J's Cloud 9 for $32 for 3 people, mmm.     

Day of Days

Tattered tears of heaven's cries
Hide the cheeks of crimson skies
Sweet endeavor coarse course calls!
To frosty fists and curses fly
Deflecting shards of earth bound dice.

Kite runners chasing a storm!
Dragged lines of winds sheared worn
Dropping questions of tomorrow's dusk
Surely this same rain falls on us
A question remotely asked

Dearly the same gravity which pulls us back
Setting our sights always on higher gaze
Take comfort in the breath of ways
Life has its magic quirks
That storms can hold perturbed

A picture holds a thousand words
A cheer holds a thousand smiles

But nothing like
A thousand splendid suns
Has its dusk barely felt
Staggered walks to journey's worth
In this day of days
We shall be the doves.

Beware Nature

Call it act of God or act of nature, there hasn't been a day of shooting that left me more exasperated and appalled than today's. Having waited for a rain that wouldn't seem to stop, we (Cow came to help) proceeded with a shoot on the building rooftop in any case. Crew, cast, equipment, permit, key, checked. Weather... Encountering obscenely bland surroundings on 13th floor, we decided to scale over this gate to the other side of the roof in the rain, bringing along umbrellas that doubled as props. Then came the question of climbing up the 3 stories service ladder to the service roof with antennas that had lesser wall obstructions. There were only 3 of us, somebody didn't want to get wet. Absolutely brilliant! We climbed up this slippery 3 stories ladder exposed to the rain, carrying paper and umbrellas in one hand. So the rain just had to get heavier and heavier while we were up there shooting our business, with lightning rods at our knee level and the umbrellas just for show. Luckily when we were done after 20 minutes on the rooftop in the rain, we let gravity handle the umbrellas and props so we could focus on the highly slippery ladder, whilst being pulled by gales on the 13th storey in the midst of a monsoon storm. Finally, we just had to scale another gate, throw over the umbrellas, and we were back to the roof access. Numerous cursing ensues after.

Nin

The tiring project has taken its toll on me: truant crew, in-punctuality, miscommunications, un-enthusiasm. On a high note, I do not mind tea or lunch, especially if persons drafted into service for the country, or escaping it to Zabiwotsi Land, cannot be found in civilization soon. Anything to get me respite from this drat project which I promised to get done somehow.

I'm surprised at the silent party of readers that traverse this outskirts of the blogosphere given the longstanding woe and dissent in its taste. Thank you for putting up with all these. I shall strive to inspire hope in all by posting my Life List. And perhaps, a letter addressed to myself 5 years from now.

If nothing from this passage of time remains to hold me back, I shall declare the vessel E as lost to oblivion on uncertain terms. The Sojourner era awaits.  

Parallels

I admit, I have noticed these parallels, the way you have written them has not escaped me. The beauty of two lines swinging in tandem.

The world holds many names for standings: understandings, outstandings, misunderstandings. There is an innate desire for ourselves to be understood by others, yet a guarded intent keeps our feathered souls from touching the air. To be lifted, to take flight, knowing that a thought has resonated nearby. When intent cloaks action, we only have ourselves to blame for a soiling loss.

I was troubled and silent then. Yet spoken words alone cannot express the soul's voice, but through my works I hope these voices have found their way that speech cannot. On these channels I tarry a while, learning to speak. If I'm asked to be honest about my thoughts, I would oblige the different answer to the facade. Nothing is perfect, but change is in the air. If the tide is caught, rising and marching to uncertain means.  

Perhaps I have misunderstood, the null hypothesis being my being misunderstood, both can be true. If it is the latter, I have spoken, for I recently made concessions, not regulations to be bounded by.

Lost on the Eve of History

There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future. Dying is easy, living is hard. 

What would you do if you knew when you would die? Sometimes that's exactly what I wish for of the countdown timer by the sidebar. When I was much younger, I found a lump in my arm. Being armed and easily misled by self-diagnosis guides on the internet, I thought I had cancer and that my brief stint on this planet would be ending soon. I have only flown on airplanes 7 times in my life, it can't end so soon! For a period of time, I lived in fear but made much more effort to do things of meaning. Later on a visit to the guy in a white coat, he dismissed these claims as ludicrous, and I returned to a life of complacency. Years later, the question has to be asked again. If you were to die tomorrow, would you be doing what you were doing now? If you overcame the greatest fear of all, the fear of death, would you live out your last days happily?   

I wish to make the best of my days, whatever meaning they can offer. If any, this is not the place I wish to be at now when my best friends are not going to be here for long.

Kerak Market

Precariously, he clutched a silver-piece, porcelain vase, and bronze ware in the other. There he stood amidst the bazaar, his darting gaze racing between the moving crowd all around. Like a child cradled into choosing between his toys for the first time, the agony of forfeiting one item for the other rang in his head. This will bring you faith, this will bring you friends, this will bring you skilled hands, this but not that. With every glance, they screamed at him of their redeeming qualities, expounding to be kept and brought along the journey. He held onto them and contemplated. The silver piece had cut him once before. The porcelain vase had broken into shards and needed to be mended. No less guilty, the bronze ware needed polish day after day or would lose its shine.

They will bankrupt me. That much he thought.

Running O-scene

How is it that you are around people and yet that feeling of being alone never leaves you? 

My feet have been bruising from injuries I never felt being made. Running around Singapore, tanking up hills, through crowds with bag-load of 12kg cameras is what I have been doing for traveling in the past few days. That hasn't included executing those excruciatingly slow taichi hand movements on a 6kg camera suspended in mid-air and sitting in totally dark enclosed rooms just to get that shot or sound. Then at the end of the day, I'm the one being called upon to bring them back and arrange these moving images in the sequence dictated by the creative genius who wrote the script. I disagree with the style and the story is not the kind I would write. But I'm still doing it, you who asked me to do it, but yet not to do it for you, you who haven't turned up, I wonder why I still do it.

Everything will freeze if I don't.

We have a mad schedule, typical of the media industry. Pulau Ubin in the morning, Botanic Gardens in the afternoon, NUS hostel in the night. I hope I look back to find it fun. Give and take, O-pportunity cost, I did meet people I otherwise never had the chance to collaborate with.