Itâ€s hard to believe

When Dad called me that night you slipped into a critical condition, I froze in utter fear. I wasnâ€t prepared at all. Not now, not this early; was the only thing I had in my mind. I booked the first flight out of Melbourne the next morning as Dad flew to KL that night itself.

It was the worst flight I have ever had in my entire life. Eight whole hours of pure agony; completely cut off from the outside world while all the while knowing that you might leave anytime, anytime at all. I prayed, and prayed hard, if only you could hold on.

I kept revisiting the day I left KL. You were lying down, with a blanket of needles on your body as you were scheduled for acupuncture that morning as part of the traditional Chinese medicine treatment you held on so dearly in hope when Western oncologists waved the white flag on the relentless progress of cancer in your body.

Uncle was waiting outside the hospital with my luggage all loaded into his car. I held your hand and gave you an awkward hug all the while trying not to bend any needles. I gave you a long, hard look knowing it would be another six months before Iâ€d see you again. I couldnâ€t remember what we said, but that motherly smile you gave stuck in my head all throughout.

I walked out of the hospital doors with a heavy heart, towards uncle waiting in his car. Little did I know my two-week stay with you in the traditional Chinese medicine hospital would be one of my last memories with you. “Donâ€t worry about mom,” uncle told me on the way to the airport, “Live every moment while youâ€re there in Australia. Your mom wouldâ€ve wanted that.” Every inch of me thought six months would just come and go, and then weâ€d be reunited again. I was so sure of it.

–

Eight hours did go by, and soon I found myself running past doctors and nurses, hospital beds and wards, stopping short just before the door to your ward in Palliative Care.

You were all smiles when I walked in. I clasped your hand in mine, while immediately noticing the tubes attached to you and your swollen right arm as a result of the upper arm fracture you suffered from the fall you had back in the traditional Chinese medicine hospital. My heart sank.

I remember just saying, “Ma.” I know youâ€d recognise me, but you were hardly able to speak. Neither was I, for your motherly gaze and that smile you wore was more than enough to sent me choking with emotion, tears, and a lost for words.

You were both attentive and alert, and had the complexion of a perfectly healthy person. How you managed to pull through the night before; cold, lifeless and gasping for air, only God and his grace knew. But the next few days we spent together in the ward with you as a family, dad, sister and I, was one of the most fulfilling periods in my life.

Iâ€m sure youâ€d already know this, but we have the most amazing relatives around. Your sisters, despite their hectic office hours, braved through the notorious KL traffic to visit you every single day. So did cousins and grandparents who frequently tagged along whenever they could. Every day without fail, your ward would be filled with friends and relatives as we decorated the windows and walls with origami cranes and hearts, filling the room with love, songs, laughter and happiness all the while trying to keep that lovely smile on your face, which really wasnâ€t hard to maintain at all. And all these simply wasnâ€t possible without such warm and touching family ties.

“This room is full of love,” Dr. Tan would say as he concluded his morning check-up on you, looking around at all the hearts and cranes on the walls he continued, “Can you share some with me? I lack of love.”

Due to your brain condition and lack of energy for speech, you were slow and remained mostly quiet — in speech. But one of my fondest memories of you during those days with you was the little nods and expressions youâ€d make whenever weâ€d try to communicate or ask you something. There were times youâ€d mutter hilarious single-replies that sent everyone in the ward into laughing fits. Youâ€d greet every visitor with that generous smile of yours and even occasionally with a soft “Hello.” whenever you felt a little better.

Mom, such positively is what you instill in others without much effort, even when youâ€re the one who is bedridden. Your spirit and willpower is without a doubt, the strongest in anyone I know. No one I know has the capacity to pull through six years of such a damaging disease without a single complaint. But you did.

–

When doctors took you off steroids later that week, you fell into a deep, serene sleep. That night, aunt celebrated her birthday with all of us in the ward in front of you. Everyone was there, grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and all. You were so tired you slept through the whole party. Photos of aunt cutting her cake with you sleeping away in the background still bring tears to eyes to this day.

You never really did wake up. We never really found out how conscious were you. You did manage a sip or two of milk the next morning with your eyes closed. But you looked so serene sleeping away all day and night we felt it was bad to wake you up.

You were deep asleep when you took your last breath.

It took awhile for us to notice something was amiss as you spat out water you failed to sip on. We started calling out to you, shaking frantically for you to wake up.

I ran out to the nurseâ€s station, choking with tears and disbelief, stammering at a bunch of nurses, “My mother. Breathing.”, I swallowed hard, “Stopped breathing. Please, come!”

–

It was the 9th of April. And we were all by your side.

With six years of cancer under your belt, it was a miracle you were in little or no pain at all.

Your wake was unlike any other. Not that I have attended one before, but close friends of yours came up to us saying there was definitely a joyous air surrounding the otherwise solemn aura of funeral parlours. “I wouldnâ€t worry about your Mum now,” Aunty Gui Li told me and Shuyi, with a slight smile as she gazed towards you.

It was like a grand finale of a theater play; where all the cast make a grand reappearance on stage and when weâ€d feel a tinge of sadness upon knowing that the show has come to end.

Characters of the stories you have been telling us of your childhood; your adventures with high school friends, of your popularity among boys in school, all showed up in real life. People weâ€ve never met before walked up to sister and I, “I sat beside your mother way back when we were in Primary One,” a former classmate of yours would tell us, “You should know that she was an amazing friend to me.”

–

Mom, Melbourneâ€s such a lovely place. I wish you could see the things I see, go to the places Iâ€ve been. Itâ€s a whole new world out here, and Iâ€ve opened my eyes to a lot of things. I had been looking forward to you coming, wishing Iâ€d be able to show you just how beautiful Melbourne is. But thatâ€s okay, Dad and sis will still be coming over after my finals and Iâ€m sure theyâ€ll very much enjoy their time here.

Dadâ€s at the height of his career. His efforts in his field are starting to garner attention throughout the country. Something Iâ€m surprised that it hadnâ€t happened sooner, given how dedicated and meticulous of a man he is. You know him better, Mom. After all, youâ€re the one who chose him.

Shuyiâ€s doing great, too. Sheâ€ll be doing her A-Levels really soon and frankly, nobodyâ€s worried about her given her track record in academic success. I see a lot of you in her, Mom. And and that only means sheâ€ll be shaping up into a fine young woman by the time she completes her studies in the UK.

Donâ€t worry about us, Mom. As you can see, weâ€re coping fine. We take comfort knowing that death is just the end of one life, but the beginning of another; a beginning of something more.

Sometimes weâ€d grief or cry, but thatâ€s just us trying to adapt to that void; little things weâ€d come across on a daily basis that inadvertently leads us to be reminded of you. You were, after all, our mother. And there’s no denying a mother’s place in a child’s heart.

But Mom, though you are no longer with us, your spirit and legacy will live on.

Mom and us

Happy Mother’s Day, Ma.

2010 was a wild, wild ride. Where do I even begin to describe it. I originally planned a mega-post looking back at the year, blow by blow, and to end everything with a blast. But as always, things got ahead of me and that post-to-be never came into fruition. All year long post ideas came and went. At times I’d wonder if blogs are still relevant now with Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter taking over online self-expression. Yet here I am, back in my old liar, figuring out how to make up for my most inactive year in blogging yet.

I thought I’d updated when I got myself a new phone back in May to replace my 3-year-old W810i.

Danbo and the Legend

Then I thought I’d show off my latest addition to my arsenal of lenses: the amazing Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM in October.

Danbo and the Sigma 30mm

In November, I figured I would update about my awesome, spiritually enriching trip to Japan.

Motomitamaza, Atami with relatives

Then in December, I had planned to churn another mega post to depict the mega flop that was our Mechatronics Systems Design project: a Rubik’s cube solver robot.

Cubeless

This was easily the letdown of the year. So much hope and effort was put into building this that we couldn’t accept failure; nor could we see it coming. But our final demonstration was a flop, and writing about it now still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  Nonetheless, along with teammates Wilfred and Kheng Shin, building it was great fun and despite everything MSD is still one of my favourite subjects yet.

Rubik’s cube solver in action

2010 though, was so much more than what I had hoped to blog about. But as they say, ‘What happened in 2010, stays in 2010′.

I almost forgot how it’s like becoming a Facebook wall zombie; enslaved by replying to a bottomless pit of wall postings coming in all day. And getting sore thumbs from all that texting. But on a day like this, you wouldn’t mind.

For today’s the day I turn twenty-one.

Goodbye 2010; Happy 2011!

Fail

‘Nuff said.

P/s: Happy triple-10!

Edit: On second glance, I thought ‘Right after test’ does not make much sense now — why would anyone still study right after a test? At least as dictated by the Malaysian Education System, that’s downright dumb. A bit of rationale into why I thought so: I know a lot of us who would linger right outside the exam hall after we’re cleared to leave, dissecting every question and that’s where I usually realise how I got questions wrong. And a lot of times mistakes made at times like these are the ones that stuck.

I sighed, relieved; and at the stack in front of me waiting to be sorted. I gave procrastination the finger and started rummaging through what’s to throw and what’s still needed — sorted in four piles. Numbers, formulas, workings — must be Math 3. Free-body diagrams, graphs and excel sheets — off to the Machine Dynamics 2 pile. Before long, I was speeding through the pile of notes, tutorials and lab sheets I shoved under the study table the day I finished my final exams concluding Year Two — two months ago.

Everything written on those papers now felt distant. Every time I paused a little longer to examine the scribbles of workings and circuits, memories I didn’t want to associate with again come floating back. Long, cold and silent nights spent cramming for the finals into the wee hours of the morning; whole afternoons spent on one or two math problems; walking into the examination hall the next morning drowsy, nervous, and grossly under-prepared; and then that wave of utter terror as I look down at the questions blankly, head dripping profusely in cold sweat.

I’m Done

Lifeless digits and grades on my computer screen stared back at me three weeks later, mirroring the utter disappointment that was my Semester Four final examination results. Staring at them was me, equally lifeless. Suffice to say, I was looking at my worst results yet, two years into my degree.

As the dust settled, I began to see how this might just be a fitting conclusion to Year Two. A hard slap in the face was what I needed to kick me out of over-confidence and under-preparedness. Because my final two years in degree demands of no such recklessness. With Year Three kicking off tomorrow with a whole new slew of intimidating subjects, only time will tell if this high-price of a lesson was worthwhile.

Hitting the bottom of the stack, I labelled and stacked the useful notes back together before shelving them properly with the rest of the previous semester’s notes. The floor where I was working on was empty once again as I picked up the last pile of notes — the ones to be thrown. I watched as the pile descended into our to-be-recycled paper box, stirring up another plume of dust.

This time I smiled, as I shelved all my worries and uncertainties of the past, shifting my gaze towards Year Three.

Words find themselves hard to stick in one piece as they escape his mouth riding on a heavy Middle-eastern accent. Incomprehensible syllables collapse into hypnotic murmurs that mutes the world into a muffled silence as I resorted to lip-read his 350-WPM bullet-train of sentences. All the awhile drawing my dreamy gaze onto every silent flap, sway and whirl of his arms.

I shifted my focus to the projection screen in front of the class that’s supposed to show figures and formulas and notes but nothing came into clarity. I squinted, but my weary eyes did the opposite — the world around warped into blurriness as my eyelids fell shut at the opportunity.

Large. Blank. Void. Nothing.

Clueless in the morning light.

The mid-term break right now does little to slow down what I feel is our toughest semester yet. Yes, it’s been a whole half of a semester since I wrote anything or uploaded any photos. Speaking of which, I guess I have been taking my liberation off Project 365 a little too heavily.

Endless piles of assignment, tutorial and lab work dictates firing up Adobe Lightroom an unnecessary luxury. What more clicking around with my dSLR. Not that I feel great about it. I left behind readers of my now-dormant photoblog and if I may say so, a following on Flickr that accompanied me through my 365 journey. Danbo’s lying beside my laptop enveloped in a thin but unmistakable layer of dust. Comments such as the one ejana left on my 365 finale shot broke my heart.

Lost in a sea of sand.

My inner shutterbug wants more than anything to get out.

But as they always say: desperate times, desperate measures.

Done!

I started this project without much expectations, with only the desire to observe the limits of photography with a dSLR. I was brimming with excitement with my new dSLR camera then — though I wasn’t new to photography – but what better way to do that than to dive head-first into this project?

Fast forward a year later, as I hit the upload button on my final shot; hitting the red ‘X†on Photoshop and then closing my Project 365 folder, I felt a rush of joy that accompanies the sense of liberation. An immense weight dragged off my back. Nothing was more gratifying than seeing the auto-generated completion counter on my photoblog showing a proud, ‘100% done!†I blinked, for a moment, this is it?

Then the sadness sets in. The shoot-process-upload routine has become a ritual I perform every day to please the 365 gods Iâ€ve devoted myself to for a whole year. Project 365 has become a part of my life. I wake up worrying about what to shoot; space out in lectures thinking of a setup and go to bed relieved that I have the dayâ€s shot done and uploaded. Now a mere click puts all that behind in a blink of an eye.

This is going to take some getting used to, I thought.

Day 183/365: Reaching the halfway point.

Emoness aside, the project is by far, the lengthiest self-motivated long-term endeavour Iâ€ve ever successfully completed in my life. Thatâ€s why itâ€s gonna deserve a good, hard look back on how I did it and the obstacles that plagued itâ€s entire duration.

Getting that shot

Taking my camera everywhere I go

When I started Project 365, I knew I had to bring my camera everywhere I go. Tugging my camera around during outings are okay, the real obstacle was when I had to inevitably bring it to campus — daily. The last thing I wanted was being labelled a show-off who just canâ€t help showing off his shiny new dSLR every single day. And letâ€s face it – a dSLR, even the tiny 1000D – isnâ€t as unobtrusive. The moment you yank it out, a good number of people within eyeshot would definitely look your way. There are times youâ€d wish to have a big banner above your ahead bearing the words, ‘Iâ€m on Project 365! Suemeifyoucanttakeit.â€

DSLRs are way more obtrusive compared to compacts.

So yes, I brought my camera with me to campus every single day for the past year. It spends most of the day tumbling around in my backpack, only seeing daylight when Iâ€m with my close friends – whoâ€re fully aware of my project – when I see a shot or feel comfortable enough to whip my camera out.

The creative spark

Maintaining a Project 365 stream requires a daily dose of creativity I didnâ€t have. While there are days chock full of activities and events that ends up in a post-processing nightmare, more often than not there were those boring and uninspiring days that beg of you to give up.

The first thing Iâ€d do when the clock strikes – literally – at the eleventh-hour, is to quickly browse through Flickrâ€s Explore photos. Granted, not all Explore photos are great ones. Computer algorithms can only do so much to compile a collection of ‘good†photos every day from the Flickr archive, but there are quite a few legitimately good shots out there daily that might give just that spark.

Then thereâ€s the 100-steps challenge. The idea is to drag yourself and your camera outdoors, walk a hundred steps and start taking photos of anything at the end of your path. I donâ€t follow the hundred-steps rule that strictly, but I often find myself taking strolls in the garden snapping high and low so I can be done with the dayâ€s photo. There are also days after classes where I take a detour somewhere for a short solo photowalk that can be very rewarding at times.

Danbo saves the day!

Somewhere in the 200’s into the project, I decided to get myself Danbo, an action figure from the manga, Yotsub&! I don’t think I’ve formally introduced Danbo yet, so here goes. In the manga, Danbo is actually a robot costume made of cardboard and was donned by Miura to entertain a curious Yotsuba. Despite appearing only very briefly (a single chapter, to be exact), the robot with geometrical features stole the hearts of many.

Day 334/365: Danbo getting cold feet.

There’s a reason why I thought Danbo would be helpful to my Project. I was intrigued by how expressive — or the lack thereof — Danbo can be. Tilt his head up, he can express anything from being dreamy to excitement. Swing his head back down, he’ll appear downright sad or just simply, afraid. And that sort of flexibility is especially useful when you have to shoot something daily. =)

The Workflow

A typical 365 shot you see posted takes an arm and a leg to produce. Taking the shot itself is just the beginning — the real headache starts in the digital darkroom. The photos go through rigorous polishing work in Lightroom, of which the best of the best are subjected to a stringent selection process before the last photo standing is delivered to you.

Seriously though, there are generally two types of shots I do in my 365 — snapshots and set-ups. Snapshots are usually quick takes of life as it flies by, like that quick moment as a child hands out titbits to a monkey; or candid photos of my friends in the labs. Set-ups are exactly what it means, ideas and subjects that are set-up in advance allowing me to explore different angles and variations in the process.

I use Lightroom for cataloguing and post-processing of my photos. Photos would normally go through adjustments such as white-balance, exposure correction, split toning and curves to name a few. Candidates for posting are then exported in full size and thrown into Photoshop, where sharpening, brushing and any other pixel-level editing are necessary.

The final shot for the day is then exported from Photoshop and uploaded to Flickr via the very useful Flickr Uploadr. While I throw the photo into Uploadr, Iâ€ll do the write-up for the Photoblog post and grab the photo URL from Flickr as it finishes uploading. The moment I hit Publish, the photo would be up fresh on both Flickr and my photoblog.

Number Crunching

I love statistics. Numbers tell a story when presented. And a 365 report wouldn’t be complete without some solid numbers to show off.

I could’ve plotted the following graph off the back of my head:

It shows the time the day’s shot was taken and when it was uploaded. This graph could’ve roughly been my internet-surfing habits for the past year (especially the Postings plot).

While pretty self-explanatory, I like how the graph reflects my love of shooting during the golden hour. Seriously, who could resist taking photos when everything is cast in a shade of gold? The graph also shows evidence of a few (28 days, to be exact) shots that were taken after the day technically ended at midnight (0000-0200hrs). When life got too hectic, I gave myself a little leeway to end the day only when I retire to the sheets, not after the clock hits 12 midnight. If I’d spend a day and gone to bed without a shot, then only it’ll be a missed day.

Another interesting graph to look at is the comments-per-shot plot. I’d take the opportunity to explain why I cross-post my photos to Flickr and my Photoblog. Flickr is a massive photographic community that’s bound to bring recognition to your photos if they’re worthy of it. But not wanting to leave my friends / non-Flickr readers out of the fun, I created the photoblog.

So photos posted to both sites have distinctive sets of audiences. I’ve also found out that the volume of Flickr comments are understandably based mostly on the quality of the images; whereas Photoblog comments can be influenced by my write-up if I occasionally share some thoughts and updates, if not based on how good the photo is. The graph clearly shows how Flickr comments can in-proportionally spike due to Explores but with Photoblog comments hovering about the same average all throughout. Interesting.

I’m actually surprised to find out the type of shots I’ve been taking for the past year are rather healthily spread-out. I thought Nature and Campus would’ve snatched a good chunk of the pie. Of my arsenal of lenses (of two), I clearly show huge bias towards the nifty fifty. One reason that might even remotely affect this was that my kit lens was sentenced to a 61-day stint in the Canon ICU back in May.

The Last Words

I’ve said it on my final 365 post and I’ll say it again. What started out as a project with low-expectations became a fulfilling experience thanks to all of you — readers of my Photoblog, awesome Flickr contacts, fellow coursemates and fellow photographers that made Project 365 a blast. You guys are the catalysts to the completion of this project, no less.

I opened the door committing myself to this project last year without much certainty, it is without doubt that I emerged from the other end of the path a different person today. It’s amazing what a year of photography can do.

A project of a lifetime.

I’m now enjoying life after 365. So much so that I haven’t been shooting for the past week! Haha. While I’ve said that I won’t be continuing on another project 365, I figured that I should give it another round in the (distant) future. It was really tough at times, but it was well worth it and definitely deserves another try. =)

With that, I officially sign off this ultra-lengthy post of an equally lengthy project of a lifetime.

As of writing, Pictory only has six humble but hugely inspirational features and I’m already sold as a huge fan. Photos and their accompanied stories are presented in a way that beg you to sit down, grab a cup of coffee and savour each entry in its entirety.

My favourites thus far are, San Fransisco and the latest, One Who Got Away which features a thought on the very thing humanity desperately seeks day in and out:

Thatâ€s the thing about happiness; you never can tell when youâ€ve reached a peak. You can only compare where you are to where youâ€ve been.

- Zander Coomes

Watching the bokeh-works.

Happy Lunar New Year to all of you celebrating! For the rest of the world, Happy V-Day!

Rawr!

2010 — Even Danbo couldn’t believe it.

Anyway, first post of 2010!

Five years and five days ago, like a boy who had discovered how awesome cotton candy can be (for the record though, cotton candy was never my thing), I stumbled upon WordPress —  which was, at the time, a shiny new blogging engine still in its infancy. But that didn’t matter, for I deleted my HTML-hardcoded blog whose code I shamelessly copied and modified from some random blog — and never looked back.

My host then, Stafa, graciously installed my first copy of WordPress (version 1.2.1) via Fantastico — magically sprouting a Hello World entry telling me it’s my first post and that I could edit it and start blogging. My website just talked to me, I marveled.

Back then, WordPress’s default theme was bland, full-width’ed and a dull-green that shouted for a change. Then I found Kubrick. Yes — if Kubrick looks familiar to you, that’s because it is the very look you see every time you install a fresh copy of WordPress. From version 1.5 on, Kubrick became bundled along with WordPress as the default theme we all know now — in 2010, that might also shout at you - change me!

But five years ago, Kubrick was a game-changer.

One of my first mods of the Kubrick theme circa 2005

Rounded corners, appealing minimalism, subtle footer gradients, and with an easily customisable header image to boot, it wasn’t hard to see why Kubrick took the blogging world by storm then. Once I got Kubrick running on my shiny new WordPress installation, I started, with however limited knowledge I had of CSS, modifying it so that I had the most unique Kubrick theme on the net.

Fast-forward five years later, I’m on my own domain sporting a self-made theme I designed and coded from scratch — what you’re looking at right now. Thus it goes without saying that Kubrick was largely instrumental in sparking my personal endeavor in web-design. Even the tehCpeng.net version two theme I’m running now is based on the Kubrick framework — a last-minute design decision as I wanted the new theme to differ as much as possible from my previous works off the Hemingway framework.

Later on this year, WordPress will be retiring Kubrick as its default theme — the first time in five years. Needless to say, Kubrick is now relatively dated among a largely design-centric blogosphere it helped stir about in the first place.  Tina Daunt of The Huffington Post has a great piece on how Kubrick, a single blog theme revolutionised the blog design arena. I couldn’t agree more on Kubrick’s contribution on changing the face of the blogosphere into one that not only focuses on content, but also on design and aesthetics.

Reaching my fifth year in blogging on WordPress, I can’t help but to look back on the humble beginnings. As Kubrick retires as the default theme for WordPress, it will most likely be forgotten among the new generation of WordPress users with access to sleek and shiny modern themes widely available today. But blog designers around the world would never forget Kubrick’s former glory and how we were once inspired by this humble theme to make the web a much more beautiful place as it is today.

And doesn’t get as clichéd as this — Avatar was indeed a spectacular masterpiece. I walked out of the theaters completely blown away by the painstakingly CGI-ed planet of Pandora down to every lively leaf, twig, blade and feather of that breathtakingly picturesque landscape of a tropical planet.

The breathtaking floating islands of Pandora

When I initially saw the trailers, Avatar gave me the impression of yet another CGI-overloaded sci-fi filled with blue alien creatures in war with humans. But boy was I wrong. Avatar’s Pandora wasn’t a world that was created overnight, rather, every insect, creature, plant and Na’vi syllable felt as real as it could fictionally be.

Granted, Avatar’s storyline might not be as original — the younger of us might be reminded of a handful of white-turned-native-leader movies such as Disney’s Pocahontas and even the Tom Cruise-starring The Last Samurai. But Avatar excels at taking such a story to a whole new immersive experience. Which also explains why Avatar absolutely has to be watched in 3D.

Perhaps it was the lackluster CGI (and weak storyline) we’ve conditioned ourselves to in 2012 that made Avatar so much more appealing. Or not. Maybe theater is all about the experience. Throw us a familiar story (although to Cameron’s credit — greatly refined and scifi-ed) portrayed on a visually stunning canvas like no other, everyone’s bound to enjoy it.

Nonetheless, Avatar succeeds as a technically impressive, breathtaking and emotionally overwhelming movie that does a good job at closing the decade’s movie industry in a high note. Coupled with James Horner’s epic score that impeccably compliments the whole Pandorean experience, Avatar will be remembered along with The Dark Knight, as one of finest movies of the 2000’s.