How about some Pop Art?

Don't you just love the colours from Velvia processing? Ask me how to do this with photoshop!

Karlo Samson on travel photography;

There's nothing quite like the thrill of stepping into new territory, be it a different country, another continent or even that newly opened park down the road. What's it like to bathe in the waterfalls of Kyoto? How warm and welcoming are the people of Finland? What does a balut taste like? Travel takes your curiosity and fuels it with grand scenes and mundane vignettes, unforgettable vistas and quaint stories, captivating characters and luminous landscapes. That thrill and fascination travel brings is precisely what you want to capture when you take your camera with you. It's called a sense of place, that elusive quality you work hard to capture in a photo which transport you back to where you were when you pressed the shutter.

Remember them?

The Lizard's Convention (TLC). The early 90s was a golden era for local music with great bands like Concave Scream, the Padres, and TLC getting regular radio airplay. Ahhh... nostalgia.

We've got tickets to see Deathcab for Cutie live in Singapore!! For the first time ever!! August 12 at the Esplanade!! Woohoo. $108 but it's gonna be so worth it. Finally!! And that's 8 exclamations.

Where the Hell is Matt?


Sometime last year I posted Matt's video on this blog. This is the 2008 installment. You gotta applaud this guy, he came up with a great, simple idea, a catchy, goofy little dance on youtube and now he's paid to travel all over the world!! Ahhh, The power of the internet. No, no envy, just impressed and happy for him. He hasn't been featured on the local media yet, but I am sure he will be in the New Paper someday, give it six months or so more? When that happens, remember where you heard about him first!

A rush of blood to the head. It was cold blooded and totally uncharacteristic but he had it coming. Even if i do regret it a bit, at the very same time, I feel a perverse sense of satisfaction. Don't mess with me, I am a poison shrimp.

Goodbye Cagiva Planet. In a sort of father's day present-way I have decided to give up my beloved bike. Pump prices have skyrocketed, the insurance was up, and with the COE due next year, not to mention the 20 dollars each month for season parking, to let it go just about makes economic sense. I would have loved to keep it, if I had my own garage, get it laid up as a memento of youth but that's not possible, and so, logic will break your heart. It's been a good ride. The fulfillment of a dream. Joyrides, weaving in and out through traffic, the yellow glow of street lamps, the wind in your face, the frangipani fragrance along Lornie Road etc, those motorcycle diaries, I will look back fondly on.

When the wind picked up
the fire spread
And the grapevines seemed left for dead
And the northern sky, looked like the end of days
The end of days

The wake up call to a rented room
Sounded like an alarm of impending doom.
To warn us it's only a matter of time.
Before we all burn

Life with all its colour and all its richness, as the grand old dame takes a last bow.

Some of best moments of my growing up years were experienced here. Goodbye to the National Stadium. *sniff

Steven my new-found photography-enthusiast(he's only into nature tho) friend called this afternoon and invited me to go down with him to Sungei Buloh, and so I did. We met Uncle Jimmy, who's one of Singapore's most prolific wildlife photographer(besides that, he owns 6 leica cameras!) there and we got to hear some of his stories and his philosophy and approach towards photography . With all the big lens present (25,000 dollars worth of equipment), Steven's

and Uncle Jimmy's, I was relegated to taking photos of the people taking photos :)

At the drive-thru, they ask, do you want Orange Juice or Milo with your Big Breakfast, and sometimes you can't decide. What happens when it's bigger than milo and orange juice?

Overnight, Spain pulled off a masterclass 4-1 over Gus Hiddink's Arshavin-less Russia and then Zlatan's wonder goal inspired the Swedes to a victory over the dour Greeks. The downpour this morning was brief and after that it was wonderful weather, for lying on the couch with On The Road and Narrow Stairs, a lovely lovely surprise last night. How she managed to slip the cd onto my gearbox under the other cds without me noticing is a happy mystery. I feel totally at ease and we can talk forever but she's Virgo and I am Sagg and you know what the horoscopes say about that. 3 pages in, I start to worry because I don't really know where I am heading, and there's one girl who insists on planning, who believes in paying for SIA for peace of mind while I am itching to jet off to warzones to take photos but I can talk to her about Stephen Hawkins, about politics, about Capitalism and Obama and well she keeps me down to earth and she's Aries which just about goes with Sagg.

Track 7. Grapevine Fires.
"The firemen worked in double shifts
With prayers of rain on their lips
And they knew it was only a matter of time"

Is it time to get a check on where we stand?

Still Life

A few hours more to the kickoff in Austria/Switzerland. I was telling Davidof and Gwen yesterday over Venezia Ice Cream at 6th Avenue, "How many Euros do you think you'd get to see in your life time? 15? 16?", Everyone of them is an event to savor, if you like me have been similarly blessed to have developed a love for the beautiful game. England may not be in it, but like the newspapers say they have only disappointed so its nice picking a different team to root for, for a change. I fancy Russia(Go Arshavin! that's my nick in Dota, after Russian Playmaker Andrei Arshavin), and Croatia. I might have fancied Portugal, but events from last few days concerning a certain Cristiano Ronaldo and his desire to trade in his Man Utd no. 7 for a Real Madrid one has got me so sick. If you wanted to leave why did you sign a new contract just last year? I'm not wishing it to happen but I wouldn't feel sad if someone breaks his legs in the next few weeks.

Over the last couple of days, I have been taking naps in the afternoon after Dota and dragging my bedtime back in a bid to prepare myself for the 3am matches, it's still gonna be a challenge! I hope I don't miss too many.

I bought a kite from Bangkok, 120 Baht, a real one, made of that plasticky canvas material or whatever its called ( slipped my mind at this moment the name for it - its 1.55am!) Jaime is back from Philippines and I was telling her about my kite on msn, and how excited I was to take it out and to be flying it and asking her when she wants to fly it with me, when i suddenly realised, Kite flying is one of Charlie Brown's hobbies! Gosh I am sounding like charlie brown, I am becoming like him! That isn't so bad or is it?

In this age of supercomputers and the internet, with ipods ubiquitous - music on the go, and airplanes criss-crossing the globe and shrinking distances; sure the book could use with an update but Jack Kerouac still manages to capture the essence of the feelings and pangs of loneliness which inevitably strikes lone travelers on long trips.

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak on the old sounds of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon."

Goodbye Bangkok, we are coming home.