mom told me dad apparently fainted while i was still asleep at home earlier in the morning. she'd brought him to see the gp, but was advised to go for a checkup at a hospital.

had a massive sore throat, got pushed to the edge by 3-4, kicked a table and chair over, stayed back late in school, took photographs of the other staff putting up balloons for children's day. enjoyed mrs d's fabulous curry too, at the end of it!

got back home, saw kian yong when i was about to cross the road.

anyone still remember the days of sixdegrees.com, which used to map people from all over with another? it used to have a yuck interface that was a pain to use. fast forward to 2003, and we now have friendster, which isn't the most grammatical name for such a free service, but it sure works well. in just less than 3 days of registering, i have been able to map out how i'm related to soooo many other individuals i thought i'd never know - in fact, the number is already 170,000+++ for me now! of course, with some preliminary "weeding out" of those whom i wouldn't spend too much time to try to know (100,000+?), i still have a lot more people to acquaint with. best of all - i've been able to find some people i'd lost contact for good, as well as send messages with some new faces. why don't you get yourself into this friendster too?

yesterday was a hectic night - shot photos in a fully indoor situation - found the starting part stressful, because i was trying to get the basic exposures correct. i won't say i did a good job of it, but i'm sure i'm able to churn out more keeper shots than using film. mr ee gave me a ride back home - i reached back home just a bit past midnight...

today morning i went out with harlequin to the zoo, had my first time touring the place with my canon. of course, it was more fun shooting using the 70-200 f/2.8 l-is lens that i occasionally swapped with harlequin. after the shoot, it was a trip down to stanley lim's where i met chyeo to pick up the canon e1 handstrap for my camera. i ended up watching the entire studio shoot, observing how to conduct a studio shoot. later on, for the group shot, somehow or other, chyeo's camera couldn't seem to be able to trigger off his 550ex, so i lent my camera to him to shoot the group photo.

after watching the entire shoot conclude, i went over to sim lim, met raymond84, then went up to get 50 cdr's from joyce, and then toured the building for those portable hard drives with lcd capabilities. the archos av340 and the smartdisk flashtrax devices were very impressive indeed. but the price tags - woah! ended up the day by popping over to alan photo and buying a lowepro s&f deluxe waistbelt to help support my camera load. and it sure does quite well, too!

last night, swis tat and agnes (hope i didn't get her name wrongly) popped over to my place to pick up the cd's with all the photos from the canoe polo comp that i shot.

asked mark to stay back in school to finish his work - luckily at the end of it, mrs chow gave us a lift back to the boy's home, where i spoke to both his parents. just as i was leaving, claudine and kenny drove out in their car from the same place! they gave me a free ride to the junction near my home... what a coincidence to meet them!

leonard finally appeared back in school today - it was his first time back to school ever since the school holidays ended. apparently the grandpa was hospitalized for some serious ailment(s) - i guess i'll pay the old man a visit tomorrow.

the next worst news that i've come across in weeks - jin jin died recently, and kroxy. now to add to the complication, agape01 and his mother met with another vehicular accident in colorado, and his mother passed away as a result of it.

hope he pulls through from the critical condition. we were all supposed to meet up during the new paper new face shoot. life is fragile, isn't it?

went out for the saca-singapore polo club mountain bike race today, but instead of giving harlequin a wake-up call, he was the one giving me on at 7:30am while last night i asked if he wanted me to give him one! rushed down there via a cab, without breakfast nor a drink. the course was lined with horse poop, and thankfully it's nothing smelly as human poop. met also, garth, chngpe01, knighthunter, and anthony and another photographer whose name i can't recall at all. the rain didn't make the already-muddy course very photographer-friendly, so the photos were so-so only.

went out to peninsula with khairil after the psle listening comprehension - we had a fantastic talk at burger king's, and it was a very sobering session, but i found it more useful too. like the massive reasoning about the rationale for lowering the cpf contribution rates. and why the term "job" may start to cease to be the trend in the future... hail entrepreneurship!

bought joe satriani's live in san francisco from "that cd shop" in pacific plaza. excellent, friendly service from one of the ladies there. one of the coolest things was that i met a man called bill while i was searching for a cd, and we started talking all because he was wearing this boulder, colorado biathlon t-shirt. can't remember the event name though - he rides a cervelo p2k as well, on top of that he has done TWO ironmans before! and you should have heard how boulder is only 30,000 in population, but has eight bike stores, along with two professional bike racing teams alone for that community, as well as the various japanese national runners training there!

and to tip it off, siri lindley and dave scott take turns to emcee the particular race that bill was wearing the t-shirts of!

but in the mid-afternoon, something pissed me off, and i will inform stb about this shop that i happened to find very likely guilty of cheating. after i left peninsula, i happened to meet this group of american musicians, and followed them on foot by guiding them to orchard, since i was going from park mall to borders. one of them decided to buy a battery for his video camera, so when he entered this particular shop, that's all i thought he wanted to buy. later when i joined him in the store because his other mates were outside, i was surprised to see an add-on lens for the camera taken out by the storeholder. i got curious (come on, all lenses make all of us ppl gian), so i took a look. vitacom 0.45x wideangle convertor. so the boss told the american man, that it makes the image brighter, and said he would even show us the effect. he hooked up the wiring, and then put the WA in front of the videocamera. my gosh - the ho-hum image on the camera instantly LIT UP - and i thought it might have been as well as +2ev on a digital camera! as how the shopkeeper said, it "absorbs light to make the video brighter"!

so i asked to see the incredible lens for myself, and as the man serving us was turning his back, i put the WA in front of the videocamera, and DIDN'T see a damned difference in the light level! i took a quick peep over the counter, and then this is what i saw!



since i had my 10d in standby all the while because i was taking random snapshots for the american dudes, i quickly took one snap. to think that two days or so ago, the papers mentioned that they'd blacklist all these errant shops openly, and yet this store was using a contraption to evidently cheat people! and the most insulting part was that the "normal price" was ~s$120, and discounted to s$80. shame!!!

for those of you wondering how this thing can work logically speaking, when the shopkeeper put the WA (wideangle convertor) on, he actuates the switch to show a brighter image on the TV screen. in other words, there's probably some simple resistors in the device to lower the voltage of the initial video output. the switchbox is the type you can spot in some hdb common areas/schools. or in other words, the default position for the device is to lower the voltage of the video output, and when the WA is placed infront of the video camera, the device is switched to "bypass" the resistors and hence the image becomes brighter. another loophole of this cheat is that the RCA style connectors to the video camera were the red and white ones, and the end that connected to the TV was ONLY the white one WITHOUT an accompanying red cable. no way could a shop be so stingy NOT to throw away a half-usable cable, right?

and since the man didn't really know that i snapped a photo, he inquired about my camera. "what model is that?" apparently he doesn't even know the top 3-in-a-row controls for the 10D...

met delvin at kino while i was buying some magazines - surprised to see him there!

bought triathlete, bicycling, and asian diver.

met sportzie by accident at a bus-stop near school, we ended up having dinner together.

had a good time teaching my primary 1 boys how to tell time with "a.m." and "p.m." by having them guess the time i took some of my photographs.

about 1pm, i cycled down to elaine's place - she's a fairly new multisport athlete staying around my area, and passed her the photos from the nie biathlon, for 3 dollars. seems that she doesn't have a bike yet, so that kind of prevents her from doing triathlons currently.

in the afternoon, i cycled over to big splash where i passed over yiwen's photos to some of the paddle culture folks there. then of course, it was meeting michelle to personally pass her the temasek poly photos that i printed.

on a sad note, seems that kroxy and sleepyhead both passed away of late. kroxy was involved in a fatal accident during some ntu odac cycling thing, sleepyhead, aka jin jin was the girl who apparently didn't live to tell the tale, in the pasir ris schoolgirls cycling accident. may they transcend...

went to desaru with handbag and this is one of my better shots for the day, technically speaking, it's hard to have a group of riders close to each other for such a photo to be taken...



the rest of the photos are directly linked from my desaru international long distance triathlon 2003 thread that i started.

i must have been forgetful or what. in the late morning as i made my way back home from tampines, i spotted mike from teck hock hin cycling along kaki bukit. in the evening as i was waiting agonizingly for svc 163 to go to lincoln's abode, i saw the team schoeder (how do you spell that?) rider who was suffering from the big cramp last weekend.

gorilla and angie gave me a lift to town, where i hopped on the train and made my way to the ntu hostels, where i'm putting up for the night...

"the three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense." - thomas a. edison

up till now, i'm still at home. incredibly, still have not gotten my hair cut! yikes!

was looking through anne's site and i'm pretty amazed at the number of shots people can take using all sorts of imaging devices. webcams, cameras, digicams, dslrs... pdas' too! guess most of the fancy gadget manufacturers are having a ball of a time filling in their coffers with people buying erm... crap cameras and being triggerhappy. i am not immune to being triggerhappy myself. from the days of using the little cute logitech camera, to the oly 4040. i was triggerhappy at everything. now that i'm using a dslr, i try to be somewhat more selective of my shots. now i only specialize in my favourite genre of shooting - sports. now i'm doing solely "athletic" sports - those that are individual based, because that's how i see as the draw of sports - the spirit of the individual is captured. but once in a while, i'll do free prints for some people as a show of goodwill. after all they can't see themselves the way i see them, because their eyes are still with them...

i still do, and occasionally enjoy a snapfest of various trivia, as well as scenery. photographs are a visual documentation of life, don't you think so?

"crises refine life. in them you discover what you are." - allan k. chalmers

saw this meaningful quotation while i was on the northeast line going to city hall to meet agila. i couldn't manage to revive his hard disk, and it was cranking all sorts of sounds you wouldn't want to hear from a hard disk. in the end, i accompanied him on the train ride to tampines where he works, and had breakfast together, while talking about events in which we can shoot at. apparently his tamron lens got some dust in the lens barrel from the shooting at the motocross event - scary, isn't it?

tonight i'll be spending time over in the ntu hostel, because tomorrow morning both handbag and i will be heading for desaru to shoot at the desaru half-ironman. hopefully there's more than enough to shoot at. i'm comtemplating shooting wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt (both to prevent sunburn) and also my army boots!

i better go prepare my lesson plans for the week now before i go out to join angie and company + lincoln and company for the painting, and baby-visit trips later...

went out on a hectic photo-delivery schedule today.

first of all, i went to deliver some shots i want printed by saturday, then once reaching home, i took a quick shower, and then left for orchard road. met up with stuart's wife elizabeth outside the american club and passed her the photos. the lady was very generous - after telling her i was going next to the suntec area, she even offered me 10 more dollars just so that i could take a cab there! i mean, i didn't even ask! gosh... what's more, she did ask for my name card, but hey, i don't have any. *sulk* but why did she ask that for? apparently it seems that she may recommend me to do photography at the club... YIPPEE! but first things first, i have to settle my work swee-swee first... total amount transacted - $25. not bad liao lor!

next up was over at one raffles link, where i met up with colin. for his set of photos (including the surprise he wanted to give), it was $30. when he paid me, he put out a 50-dollar bill (exactly the same as elizabeth) and when i mentioned, "err... lemme check for change..." he actually added that he would like to order some more from the race on sunday... WOW!

then after that, i met up with handbag at the durian. yes, that's how i prefer to call the bug-eye place... we walked just around the durian, and later headed for peninsula plaza, to drool at optics - the real camera stuff. as i was leaving because i was going to meet vikki, i met kona with his whom-i-suppose-to-be-his-girlfriend there. by that time, handbag had already left. instead, we all met wai coming towards us! so in the end, wai tested the canon ef 17-40 f/4L lens on my camera, since he didn't bring his own camera out today. quick quick, chop chop, i had to leave to meet the babe at dover mrt!

i reached dover around 4:27pm, and our dear lil' miss vikki was a little... slow! but seeing her in person is definitely different - her web/online personality is like... not the kind of girl to be camera-shy, but she said no, no, no when i whipped out my relative massive camera. she justified that she didn't look that nice, so she doesn't want to get any photos taken. aiyah, since she's one of my xiao-meis', i gotta pacify her lor... so i spared her for the day. i also understand a bit more why she got the free haircut - because she looks just soooo bubbly!

and to top the day off, i went over to debbie's place to pick up her compaq notebook for troubleshooting. now i'm working on one notebook, and one hard disk for data recovery...

someone skydived from my block today without a parachute. apparently dived down from the 11th storey. ouch.



went back to xinghua to snap pictures of the p5 school camp. fun stuff.

kicked off the day rushing back to school to help conduct the napfa retest for those who didn't clear it in my school. but before i got off the bus, i happened to meet effy who was on her way to... work?

finished the school work, and then i called the camera workshop, inquiring if the canon bg-ed3's they have is/are fresh new units. indeed, they're new! so i went over to my dad's office, collected the money, fixed up his manager's oddly non-working ahead nero installation, and off i headed to peninsula shopping centre. bought the bg-ed3 - and then i just saw how many of them tcw has! boy, i sure enjoy the ability of gripping the camera on it's lower edge and holding two batteries at the same time...

by the way, the photos from sunday's saca road race are up already...

remembered that i met szetoh after i came back home from covering saturday's netball carnival. then on sunday evening, i met guru, yoki and their daughter when i just was out from the serangoon mrt station.

then today i met cleo at isetan orchard (lido?) as we were going for a quick lunch before going for the teacher's network workshop.

walked around peninsula plaza today, bumped into simon. then i hitched a free ride over to sim lim, where i met clown and we ended up having a loooooong talk together.

for those folks who i met at the saca road race today morning, i'll post the shots up online soon within the next two days.

in the meanwhile, please enjoy my saca mtb race 3 photos...

went out in the morning to nie to shoot some photos from the nie netball carnival.

and what do betty, rod & glenn and i have in common?

we're all guests at nizam's wedding dinner. boy, was i surprised to see betty there!

yesterday i was hit from about noon to 1pm, this gut-wrenching bout of gastric pains. went to the clinic near my school to consult the doctor, and i was told it was acute gastritis.

but i had my meals, and didn't skip any. what could be wrong?...

cycled out at 7:10am or so in the morning, to drop by xinghua to deposit the birthday card for kai li as well as the photos from the teachers' day celebrations, and thereafter i zipped down over to my own school, to join the primary 5 students to go to watch home run.

some parts of home run greatly remind me of major issues i have in life, and in work. the finishing part, where both kun and the sister stand side by side, facing a practically endless muddy road, with the caption, "now that we have shoes, things look different", or something vaguely along these lines. similarly, now that my pay is getting reinstated, and i've cleared my tp, i've gotta look at the obstacles ahead. no-one ever ever said that teaching was easy, but if i don't try, i surely can't improve.

i'm need to find out more and more about my weaknesses in my presence in class, and my teaching methods as well. though technically speaking i'm supposed to be a full-time teech, there are soooo many thing i can't do yet - most of it would be on-the-job. i need to reanalyze the reason for which the students are behaving the way they are doing now, too, if i were to be able to improve on my teaching and their learning.

reflecting upon the storyline in home run, from what i observe in my school, the boys are well-heeled. from not-bad ranging all the way to fantastically well-heeled even. reflecting on my earlier days as a runner, i would have pairs of shoes that i allocated certain distance, terrain(s), speed, or some other fancy factor for some run. light racers, trainers, "thrash-able" shoes (can thrash on the run, not trash)... i've got almost everything. now i have one more pair of soccer boots, three pairs of cycling shoes (one decommissioned, one in use, one untouched in the box) and so many more.

i'm very well-heeled, and i should be very glad. the movie sure brings back nostalgia, though i never had the chance to experience kampong days... and mom does say that she has yet to spend more than $100 on a pair of shoes up to this day. maybe it's time...

learnt that i'll only be taking the primary 1 class for mathematics, pe and health education only. phew!

presenting my latest idea...



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