I finally shook myself out of Saturday stasis, heading first to Burong's open house for the customary spot of CNY gambling and then down to St Wilfred's for 90 minutes of soccer. Like I told Estelle earlier, I overslept and missed out on the insect survey at Sungei Buloh. And then it seemed like the inertia could not be overcome, with the hours slipping away as I alternated between the computer, my bed, my grammar book, and the kitchen.

As my tired aching legs carried me away from the Sports Complex, the breeze against my face made me feel alive, and I wondered why I wasted so much time during the day trapped in that meaningless cycle. The blue of the evening sky, the patterned facade of the shop houses along the way, everything seemed so beautiful, and I was wishing I had brought a camera along.

Photography has opened me up to a whole new way of seeing the world. Too often, we rush through life, through everydays filled with routine, our viewpoints are narrowed, we cease to me amazed. It is part of the photographer's job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveller who enters a strange new country.

'To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.'
Henri Cartier-Bresson