I never liked farewells.

Returning to KL used to be a yearly affair, it was only when I flew here 10 days ago I realised how long I haven’t returned to this place – an easy one and a half years.

My attachment to the capital city of Malaysia is a unique one. I was born in Perak and although every single one of my relatives are scattered across the Peninsula, I’ve never actually lived there. I practically grew up in East Malaysia, where my parents have been attached to. There is always a conflict of interest with regards to my sense of belonging, often do I lay torn between the two land masses – one bearing memories of my whole childhood, friends, my life; but the other, filled with family and relatives – cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents. Earlier that afternoon, I bid farewell to my uncle and aunt who dropped me off at KL Sentral.

The Coffee Bean @ KLIA LCCT

I’m carefully sipping through a cup of Ice Blended Caramel Coffee as I type this on a Wi-Fi connection that dropped 2 minutes ago. An European couple is sitting next to my table. The husband taps away on his iPhone while the wife slowly flips through a stack of fashion magazines. Neither uttered a single word since I sat beside them.

The World in your Palms

The Coffee Bean is surprisingly packed – the crowd here noticeably different from the crowd in say, McDs. There is little interaction – save for a few businessmen in that corner – everyone’s immersed in technology, be it laptops, iPhones or Blackberries.

Sending my sister off.

Just two weeks ago, we sent off my sister who is now doing A-Levels at Kolej Yayasan UEM en-route to the UK under a MOE scholarship. It’s a 2+3+1-year course that would end up with her graduating as a teacher. Unlike me, she already has a definite path laid right before her. A promised future.

As we were on our journey back to KL after a whole gang of relatives, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents alike saw her off, my uncle told us that we’d probably won’t see her very often from now on. I pondered about it for moment, and thought, ain’t that the truth.

Sister over breakfast

I guess I haven’t really sank into the whole leaving-home-study-abroad-graduate-and-work thing yet. Never could I fathom the reality of my sister leaving the family, void of seeing her everyday, one less voice echoing off the walls of our family home, although much less competition in the ever-present battlefield of sibling rivalry, yet I must admit, I didn’t see this coming.

So many things do we take for granted in life. Like the company of siblings, our parents, the family. Blinded we are by the fact that we won’t live together as a family forever, under the same roof, dinner on the same table. It’s all a fact of life where one day we’ll all leave the family we grew up with; the home we once played, quarrelled and fought in.

Welp. Guess it’s just life isn’t it?

The deafening crescendo of mechanical rumble disrupted my train of thought as the plane lurched forward in reaction to the tens of thousands pounds of pure thrust spitting out from a pair of jet engines at full throttle. I grasped the armrests of my seat as the plane rumbled down the runway; lights dancing around the windows against the night sky. Then the sinking feeling sets in – my body’s sense of balance telling me that the plane had left firm ground.

Take-off

My heart sank. I never liked farewells.

Nonetheless, this time I went with a whole different company of friends – Natalius and Ms. Chong planned a day trip as soon as the Saturday of the week of our last paper itself. Six of us went in two cars that morning.

Kayaks on Beach

Despite spending retreats to permai every semester break of my life, I’ve never driven there myself. There’s always someone else to be the driver. Not this time though.

The road to Damai is pretty straightforward, but there’s one patch I never seem to remember – the roundabouts in Petra Jaya. I get them mixed up all the time and I wasn’t spared a wrong turn this time either. And I had to make wrong turns both going and returning. I’m not usually bad with directions but I somehow managed to proved so during this trip, heh.

Rocky Beach Bokeh

Siong Huo was jokingly skeptical if I was on the right road all the way but I proved him dead wrong when we reached the sandy shores of the Damai beach.

Waterball

We wasted no time jumping into the water with our newly-purchased ball. But because the sun was so blazingly hot and we didn’t want to get baked on the nicely-heated sand, we jumped into a stream in cool tree shade instead.

Natalius's mighty kick failed to launch the ball

Kicking around in the tiny stream bored us pretty quickly. It was only a matter of time before we charged towards the wide open sea, hot or no hot.

We soon found out though, that it was rather tricky to actually launch a stationary ball on water into the air. Further observation would show that the density of water dampens our swing towards the ball. If that wasn’t enough, the displaced water effectively pushes the floating ball forward, causing us to miss the ball completely more often than not.

Ball Flip Fail

But when it comes to having fun, the rules of Physics doesn’t apply anymore. Hell, screw Physics anyway – the finals are long history already. =P

So we kicked and splashed around like we’ve never been to a beach with a ball.

Ninja Beach Kick

Then suddenly Heng Hong surprised us with a mighty ninja-kick sending the ball flying towards Singaporean shores. Okay it barely made it over Siong Huo’s head but it was the kick of the day.

Natalius flips the ball

Natalius wasn’t so happy with Heng Hong’s sudden fame so he sabotaged the ball and headed to drier sand and started to show some skillz. Suddenly he felt like an 80 million British-pound player.

Anyway, we were soon bored with the ball and decided to conquer the rocks instead.

Siong Huo and Natalius heading for the rocks

We dared ourselves to scale the largest monolith we could find in the area.

The brave Mt. Rock Permai three

So we camwhored a bit and savored the sea breeze from atop the rock. Chee Min and Heng Hong joined us later but we soon scrambled down the rock as it got too baking-hot for us to sit on.

Sea of Bokeh

Because we fried our butts while sitting on the rock, we retired to sea to get wet again – this time we tried kayaking. We were supposed to head out in three two-person kayaks but only one was available for another hour. So Heng Hong and Chee Min went out first while we helped them out.

Push

While both of them were out paddling around the Damai bay, we waited for the other kayaks to return so we could head out together and have a kayak-flipping war. But the Permai beach management suddenly decided to halt the kayaking rental service before we had any chance to hop on.

Out to the sea

Long story short, we couldn’t join them. But with the kayak rental service hut left unmanned and thus, no one to supervise the returning of kayaks, we swam out and as Chee Min and Heng Hong paddled near us, we flipped them off their kayak and sabotaged it for ourselves.

Chee Min and Heng Hong were tired of paddling around anyway so Siong Huo and I took over captainship of the kayak – free of charge. =D

The Bokeh Monster

The last time I paddled a kayak was during NS, way back in 2007. What mattered back then was speed in order to win the water games. But now we spent every ounce of energy left on a slow paddle along the coast when we passed another beachfront of the Permai camp where a few couples were embracing in the water.

That sight led to Siong Huo and I talking about relationships and stuff while we drifted back to the beach.

By then, we were all tired, exhausted and hungry. We unanimously decided to have a late lunch at Hartz Chicken Buffet back in Kuching. In no time we were invading the doors of Hartz like hungry zombies smelling like the beach. Luckily we had to whole outlet to ourselves or else we could’ve scared everyone else off. =D

Hermit crab digs

I was so occupied in gobbling down chicken wings and mashed potatoes I didn’t take any pictures when we were in Hartz. Go figure. But yeah, we called it day after lunch, all stuffed, drained and wearing a layer of tan that is still peeling off as I type this, but nonetheless we had great fun.

So it’s the semester break again. I’ll certainly miss the company of friends back in campus as boring as semester breaks can get. I’ll be flying off to KL tomorrow with my family to send off my sister furthering her studies to the West, but that’s a post for another day.

Until then, Happy Holidays everyone.

So – *slaps on a 3-foot-thick face* – during the mid-term break five uh, weeks ago, the family tagged along Dad to Sibu where he had official duty. We spent the night at Betong before continuing on the journey along the Trans-Borneo highway to the third largest city of Sarawak.

The famous Sibu Express Boat Wharf - 3 exposure HDR

Almost six whole hours on the road later, we found ourselves in the midst of the bustling town of Sibu. Dad took us straight to the famous express boat wharf  – a nostalgic sight I haven’t seen in some good 10 years. And boy had this laid-back town changed over the years, most prominently with the addition of Sarawak’s tallest building – the Wisma Sanyan.

Wisma Sanyan: The tallest building in Sarawak is not in Kuching, mind you.

Incidentally, our hotel was right next to this towering monolith and the country’s largest town square it looks upon. We sighed a breath of relief when Dad pulled up onto the lobby of RH Hotel, which was thankfully a universe away from the bare-boned one we spent the night in back in Betong.

The room - and my workstation throughout the stay

So this was where we spent the next 5 days.

Hanging out in the corridors

Camwhoring

Coffee?

My Sis and I was also lucky enough to find access to the executive floors one bored morning. We literally explored every corner of that 14-storey building. Funny thing was, the lift blocked access to the executive floors the next time when we tried to bring Mom and Dad up.

RH Hotel's Executive Suites

Because the rooms came with complimentary breakfast at the hotel restaurant for two, we took turns to head down every morning for a scrumptious buffet breakfast.

Breakfast was never this good

When not eating in the hotel, we’d head out. I must say though, RH Hotel has the most strategic location. It was just a stone’s throw away from the Wisma Sanyan mall and the humongous Sibu Town Square. Not to mention, only a walking distance from countless eateries of Sibu’s CBD. Seriously, you have to be really lazy to stay hungry there.

Throughout our stay, the rain gods were kind enough to spare their lightning spears and water hoses. For it didn’t rain even a single drop in the five days we were in Sibu. The clear skies all day long eventually led into beautiful sunsets over the Rejang River. Ones that scream for you to get out and shoot.

Sister and dusk at the Sibu Town Square - 3-exposure HDR

Which was exactly what I did.

Mom and Sis at the Sibu waterfront park

We also walked over to the  really well-kept Sibu waterfront park for an even better view of sunsets.

On the last day, we had lunch at the Sibu Central Market. Dad recalled of how they display livestock for sale in the market – all wrapped up in newspaper tubes with only their heads bobbing up and down. It was a must-see.

Live chickens in the Sibu Central Market

It didn’t take long for us to find the live chickens. While initially amused at how they were left with their heads excitedly bobbing, some of these poor birds just hung their heads low – as if in hopeless despair. I felt a tinge of sympathy as I shot them through my viewfinder. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not turning vegetarian anytime soon. Chickens are..well, chickens. It is their fate, however unfortunate.

Nonetheless, we headed up to the 1st floor of the market to savour some authentic Sibu food for the last time. Not missing, of course, the oh-so-overrated kompiah – dry and hard oven-baked lumps of flour sprinkled with sesame seeds. I never understood how could people eat them as-is. Other than its bland taste, its dry and rock-hard texture could seriously break some teeth.

Sibu kompiah stuffed with minced meat

But, when you slice a kompiah in half, stuff some juicy minced meat into it and deep-fry it into some golden-brown goodness – you’ve got the best delicacy 60 cents can buy you (prices may vary). It was the first stuff we ordered as soon as we sat down.

Knowing all so well one cannot leave Sibu without a large bag of kompiahs, we headed to the old Sibu Market after lunch to get ourselves some of them freshly-baked from authentic kompiah bakeries. If you’ve never seen how kompiahs are baked, here you go:

Fresh batches of kompiah in a traditional Chinese oven

The bakery workers wasn’t all that happy about me pointing my camera into the kitchen as he swiftly moved into the frame to completely block my view. As if I’m planning to copy and patent their space-age tech to mass-produce kompiahs in my mega kompiah factory. Although that isn’t such a bad idea. =)

So armed with a huge bag of steaming hot kompiahs we embarked on the journey back home with only Dad to thank for bringing us along for this trip while he worked is ass off. This is my Dad for you. Thanks pops!

I remember fearing that my neighbours would think that we missed out on paying our electricity bills when I persuaded my family to make that flick last year – which true enough, resulted in a lone dark house in the whole neighbourhood. A year later, I find myself fearing my neighbours would think we’re a bunch of insensitive jerks that doesn’t give a damn about global warming if we don’t go dark by 8.30pm, 28th of March.

Although of course, it wasn’t the kiasuness that drove me to participate in Earth Hour ‘09.

It was my photographer’s instinct.

Okay not really, but I spent my Earth Hour at the Kuching Waterfront for the photo opportunity, joining Siong Huo, Chee Min and his friend whose name I can’t remember (sorry!). Nonetheless, it was a disappointment seeing as there wasn’t much difference to the Kuching skyline when the clock struck 8.30pm.

Kuching's feeble attempt at going dark on Earth Hour 2009. Spot the difference!

Our Swinburne campus though, took us by surprise. There was talk on the campus forums that the student council failed to get the University to participate, but when we passed by the area on our way to the city, we saw Swinburne Sarawak standing in almost complete darkness.

Lights off at Swinburne Sarawak

It was so dark you could walk into the open lab and grab an LCD monitor or two and stroll out through the main entrance right past guard post unnoticed. Seriously.

My camera couldn’t focus on anything. The second shot above was exposed for a full 30 seconds with my dSLR sitting atop the car roof, making the buildings on the left in the photo above appear rather bright when in reality they were actually illuminated by the bright Simpang Tiga traffic interchange right beside the campus.

Support and publicity in Malaysia for Earth Hour this year around was phenomenal. From a little-known, let alone participated event last year, Earth Hour ‘09 was blown into a full-scale publicity event complete with television, radio and print ads, online social media groups and whatnot. Because unlike last year, Malaysia was officially a participant of Earth Hour ‘09.

There were even SMS rumors that SESCO will be cutting the power grid for Earth Hour (I know!). Earth Hour pleas appeared on my University’s online announcment board, top KL landmarks pledging to go dark, heck even the 80 NS camps nationwide flicked their lights off. In short, Earth Hour was everywhere.

Sad light switch by Declancolohan @ Flickr

But there was a negative side to this increased publicity and coverage of Earth Hour this year – the critics rose proportionally too, as with every other phenomenon humankind has ever experienced. When it was cool to participate in Earth Hour before, it is now apparently cooler to critic or boycott it.

People started thinking twice about the movement, citing reasons such as an hour of darkness wouldn’t leave any impact on our energy footprint, some saying Earth Hour is becoming a fad and that teenagers are participating just because of the cool factor and just to have fun. Others label Earth Hour of being a huge and pointless marketing gimmick that promises nothing concrete but a simple flick of the switch.

Seriously, have a look around.

People are missing the point. Forget the science, physics, statistics and numbers. It’s not about the gigawatts of power we’ll save, nor how much tonnes of CO2 we’ll be releasing as a result of candlelight parties. It’s about the underlying message Earth Hour organisers are trying to get out to the World – that our planet Earth is in peril because of the cancer of humans that are plaguing it, exploiting all of its resources with no end in sight. And as such, something must be done.

The thousands, even millions of people who participated in – or were even aware of -  Earth Hour last night, regardless of if they switched their lights off or not, be it individuals, municipal councils, cities, towns, corporations or orgranizations, made that first step. Earth Hour has made its impact, it has served its purpose. It’s the participation, the hype, the sense of unity knowing all mankind is in something together that engraves this initiative into the masses. It is now up us to continue from there. I’ll save you explaining what should we do, because everyone ought to know by now.

At the end of the day, I implore you to ponder upon this: What if the Earth Hour initiative didn’t exist? 28th of March, 2009 would just come and go, like every other Saturday night as planet Earth spins around its axis for yet another day as it has been doing for the past 4.5 billion years. While humankind buzz on their ignorant and wasteful ways enjoying the weekend. No pledges made, no first steps taken.

Of course, it will be hard to gauge any positive impact Earth Hour might have made in the long term – so we won’t know for sure. But as far as initiatives go, Earth Hour existed for generating awareness and driving the masses to tackle our ever-deteriorating planet Earth. You can’t deny it hasn’t started making waves of change – albeit small – across the globe in view of addressing global warming.

If you’d ask me, Earth Hour is about hope.

Tone-mapped 3-exposure HDR of the campus

This time around though, our brilliant brains over at the Student Admin devised another tutorial enrollment method – first come, first serve tutorial registrations during the first lectures throughout the first week. Student admin officers would come in in a middle of a lecture and wreak havoc turning a class of a hundred sitted students into a stampede of hopefuls rushing to secure their names on a list of their desired tutorial group.

More often than not, scenes like that turn ugly when the slower ones were left group-less or left with tutorial slots that wouldn’t fit the timetable. Then there are moments of utter confusion of the assigned time slots, the cutting of queues, exchanging of shouts between the student admin officers and students – you get the idea.

Tutorial registration during Energy & Motion lectures in the Lecture Theater

All these experimenting of tutorial enrollment methods semester after semester left me wondering how does our parent University in Melbourne conduct their tutorial enrollments. I’m sure there’s an effective way our student admin can learn from and stick with rather than changing how we register our tutorial slots every semester, never failing to cause chaos and confusion every time.

Eggy's pencil case during C Programming Labs

Anyhow, the dust has settled and tutorials, labs and lectures are now in full swing. This semester brings about a few rather interesting subjects other than the four boring exam-oriented ones I had last semester. There’s this Robotics Project 1 subject that includes a component on C Programming – something I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. We also have a component on Computer Aided Design which we started off with manual drawing of plans before moving on the mastering the well-known and used AutoCAD program.

Making a beeline for The Spring mall

On a related note, now that the semester has started, I’m finding it rather hard to keep up with Project 365. Not that I didn’t see this coming, but I thought I could persevere. I just couldn’t see myself bringing my dSLR to campus everyday looking for that shot. Then there’ll be waves of assignments to be dealt with, tests and exams. Blah.

I’ve been thinking hard on my decision to go on with Project 365 now that it’s been put on a temporary hiatus. Sacrificing my dSLR for my parents’ trip to NZ was harder that I thought, no doubt. But I thought it was worthwhile considering it is a once-in-a-lifetime trip and thus, are memories worth being recorded with the best gear possible.

Rest assured, Project 365 is a challenge I’m willing to push myself to accomplish – fueled both by my love for photography and you, yes you, for your support and readership – are really what that keeps me going on, be it also in praises, constructive criticisms or just plain Flickr pageviews.

Seeing chrome - taken outside The Spring - 50mm f/1.8

Until then, see you in an aeon. =)

Luckily Canon had this really, really affordable lens in the form of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II that wouldn’t really hurt my wallet after spending on the 1000D just less than two months ago. Which, bring us to the fact that its been barely two months into my foray into the dSLR world and I’m already getting a second lens.

A few friends were surprised that I’m already acquiring a new lens so soon. Thing is, I’m not new to dSLRs or photography in general. Even before I got a dSLR, I was already pretty sure what I wanted and had a (growing) mental wishlist of gears I’d like to have. The only thing holding me back is of course, budget. Because lets face it, photography is an expensive hobby.

The Nifty Fifty and its box

That said, Dad helped me get this one in KL during his last working trip there! This is definitely the last lens I’m gonna acquire in awhile, for a kit lens + 50mm combo is more than sufficient for me to move on. =)

The 50mm spent its early days as an unglamourous ’standard lens’ that came default with all SLR cameras back in the 35mm film days. Its a prime lens, which means it has a fixed focal length unlike those of zoom lenses which allow you to zoom in and out of your subject. So why would you want a lens you can’t zoom for, you ask.

Fall leaves by the road

The main selling point of the nifty fifty is it’s wide aperture, which you can’t get with the normal kit lens or cheap zooms that comes with dSLRs these days. Wide aperture lens are great for shooting in low light and are responsible for the bokeh effect due to a narrow depth-of-field associated with a wider aperture.

By the road

If you really wanna know more about the 50mm and its advantages try out this article at Gary Voth Photography: The Forgotten Lens.

I don’t know but if you’d ask me. A 50mm prime is sure worth every penny. It’s very good glass, delivers stunning quality and it’s fast. My only qualms with this lens is it’s rather noisy clunky autofocus motor, but that of course, doesn’t affect image quality whatsoever.

The Nifty Fifty and Me

So yeah.

Slap on a 130g 50mm f/1.8 II (the lightest Canon lens ever) onto a 1000D body, which also happens to be the lightest Canon dSLR at 475g – you’ll get a powerful 600g bokeh machine.

Tell me that isn’t good. =P

If you haven’t yet heard about it, check out my Photoblog at http://img.tehCpeng.net!

“See that shiny little speck down there?”

I asked my sister, pointing at an arbitrary point in an endless mass of tree canopies as we looked out into Southwest Kalimantan.

Kalimantan Border Lookout - View from 3,281 feet

“That little speck is gonna grow bigger,” I made a soft whizzing sound as my fingers portray a rapidly approaching metallic object, “Whizzzz.. Arrrgg!” I poke myself in the neck, tongue out, in great pain – imitating getting hit by an arrow.

“As I fall thud on the ground,” I continued “You’ll hear drums from afar. ‘Dum… dum.. dum.. dum..’ and the wailing of celebrative tribesmen.”

I glanced over expecting to see a very terrified sister, only to be greeted by a set of eyes rolling almost out of their sockets. “Yeah, right!”

The Southwest Kalimantan Border Lookout point was by far the best view I’ve seen all my life (photos won’t do any justice) and the best part of our 3-day Borneo Highlands trip.

Garden in the Sky - 3-exposure HDR

When it was apparent that the rain wouldn’t stop three days into the Chinese New Year, we thought it’d be a good idea to flee to the mountains before all of Kuching gets submerged under ten feet of water. The nearest highlands we could reach were the Borneo Highlands, sitting more than 1,000 feet atop the Penrissen Range, an hour and a half’s drive away where no flood could reach us. Safe.

The Path

Okay, that was obviously a joke. We pre-booked our room but seriously it was raining so hard it made the trip up in steep, wet roads rather scary.

A lot of friends were rather skeptical of our trip up though, warnings of the lack of things to do since ‘there’s nothing up there but flowers’, and ‘you’ll only find yourself chasing butterflies’ were in abundance. The fact that so many people had so much to say of that place also meant one thing – everyone’s been up there except us.

Warning: Large post laden with tonnes of amazing imagery ahead.

Jungle Cabins

We didn’t think it would rain that hard when it rained for a good two out of the three days we spent there, forcing us to stay indoors. Fortunately the Jungle Cabin where we stayed had a large shaded balcony that allowed us to still savour the surroundings despite the rain.

So we spent time watching TV, movies on the laptop (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, anyone? Bloody good movie!), take naps, and meals. Stuff we wouldn’t have done as a family back home. And when our chirpy little neighbourhood friend decides to make a visit, Dad and I would rush out, camera in hand and snap away. I’ve never had a problem with my kit lens until I realised I couldn’t zoom in enough to shoot a freaking bird!

But I’m not really into bird spotting anyway so a telephoto could wait.

Birdie Visits - Cropped photo

The sky proved it still had mercy when it stopped raining on the evening of the second day – not until there was only a few hours of daylight left though. We headed out immediately for a walk to a plateau nearby.

One Step at a Time

The air had a fresh after-rain scent, and was cool a la Cameron Highlands or Kundasang Valley if you’ve been to either one. The clearing mist surrounding the landscape around us added to that mystique feel. There’s nothing like nature I’d say.

Long exposure shot of a waterfall

Two rivers run down along the two sides of the plateau, complete with waterfalls and hanging bridges, all in their after-rain full of gushing water glory. I took the chance to try out long-exposure shots of water – kind of like those smooth feathery-like photos of rivers and waterfalls you see in poster calendars.

Smoothing water over time.

Although those that I took were far from ending up anywhere near posters. It is one tick off my list of dSLR photography technique’s to-do list though.

Pines Up Close

Anyway, on the morning of the 3rd day, we signed up for the Kalimantan Border Viewpoint tour for which you have to pay an extra of 40 bucks per head. The weather was good – it had to be – so Dad thought why not? We were taken to the border viewpoint first, which was where the first photo above was taken.

Mom and Sis at the Nursery. That's a Semi-pro Canon dSLR hanging off that guy's shoulder. XP

The second stop was the Resort nursery which had this huge collection of annual plants.

At the Nursery

After quite some time at the nursery where Dad bought a few plants, we were dropped at the final stop – a garden right above the plateau we explored to a day earlier.

Sis with hanging flowers

I know my sis is poor in her poses, no need to tell me that. xP

White.

I found out that there aren’t just flowers in Borneo Highlands, contrary to what everyone’s been saying. It’s so much more. I mean, there’s the breathtaking Kalimantan Border Viewpoint with a view to die for; some flowers, yes; a heavenly garden right above a well-landscaped plateau with flowers – lots of ‘em; a huge nursery of uh, flowers; swan lakes; flowers; waterfalls; flowers; a golf course and many more flowers. And did I mention there were flowers up there?

I had a flashback of a scene from the Bee Movie when I took this shot.

Seriously though, what else did you expect? =P

It was definitely more than a giant flower exhibition in the clouds. For those of you who haven’t made a trip up yet I’d definitely recommend you to.

As for me, I spent a really great time up there with my family. Not to mention three days in a photographer’s heaven! =D The photos shown here are really a small fraction of a those I took within 3 days – some 3.4GBs worth. Don’t worry, I’ll try to get some of them up on Flickr or Facebook.

Whew! Finally managed to get myself to complete this long-overdue mammoth of a post. More than enough to show how big of a procrastinator I am.

The coconut tree.

Just when you thought the fear of an imminent recession is plaguing the region, the Chinese New Year Eve countdown in Kuching makes you believe otherwise.

For about an hour before and after the clock struck midnight, the wealthiest in the city paraded their monetary status in the most exhaustive fireworks display of the year. Here in Kuching, Men show off the size of their balls wallets by how long your fireworks display is. And generally, if you opposite neighbour has an endless supply of these aesthetically beautiful explosives, you’ll know he’s doing really well.

The Kuching Neighbours' Fireworks Competition

The not-so-wealthy ones well, arm themselves with a tripod and camera trained at the sky snapping away non-stop. =)

Earlier on CNY eve we had a simple steamboat reunion dinner among the family.

The selection.

Nothing beats an awesome steamboat dinner prepared by my Mom and Sis.

Dad salivating at a fresh batch of steamboat.

The first day of CNY year saw an open house for my Dad’s colleagues. Towards the end of the allocated time for the open house, our long family friend, Ms. Tee came over with her children – long childhood friends of ours. One thing you experience about growing up is that childhood friends drift apart. I’m not sure why, it just happens. When before this we’d go over to play every weekend, we now only meet on CNY visitings.

Later, we followed Ms. Tee and children to Mr. Foo’s place. Another old family friend of ours who’s moving back to West Malaysia soon. It was a brief reunion of old family friends. It suddenly dawned upon me how everyone had grown up, moved on to college, etc. No longer were we playing board games or cops and robbers while the adults chat in the living room.

Now we find ourselves part of the adults’ discussions.

Well, that’s what that makes CNY a time like no other.

Happy Chinese New Year, folks and have an ox-picious new year ahead!

I had my reservations at first – would I be able to keep up, would I have the determination to not miss a single day, do I already take photos that are actually worthy of posting daily, etc. Then there are concerns that I haven’t yet fully mastered the potential of shooting with a dSLR.

Tilt-shift effect applied on a shot of Swinburne's Kuching campus

It can be really demotivating when a whole set of photos doesn’t turn out to be up to your expectations. LCDs can only tell you so much. Its only when you download them all into your PC where you can view them in their full under/overexposed, out-of-focus glory. Of course, lessons are learnt and I certainly would not expect to be a decent photographer overnight, but the high rate of failures kept me from jumping into starting a Project 365 photoblog.

But the Photojojo’s article I stumbled upon directly addressed my concerns and lists a few extra benefits of starting such a project:

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)
• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.
• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day. #

While motivating, I still had concerns if I should find myself giving up halfway. Luckily the editors at Photojojo foresaw this and even mentioned there’ll definitely be days where people consider giving up and such. So they offered tips on how tackle that, too.

More miniature tilt-shift effect fakery =P

Upon finishing that article, I felt there is no reason I should not embark on this project. It’s a big commitment, yes. And I foresee the final exams season which I would obviously have minimal time with my camera let alone going online, but let the future decide for itself shall we?

So I decided to take that plunge.

I whipped up a quick and simple dark-coloured theme and slapped it onto a subdomain of tehCpeng.net – img.tehCpeng.net – which is the address of my spanking new photoblog. The sharp ones amongst you would already know that ‘img’ is short for ‘image’. I initially used that subdomain to point all my images (I still do), but I couldn’t think of a better name for the photoblog. ‘photography.tehcpeng.net’ was a little too long, ‘photoblog-’ is way too generic. So I settled with the short and sweet, ‘img’. =)

I’ve started off my Project 365 with a photo from the 1st of January (1/365), followed by a skip to 19th of January as 2/365. That makes the photo I’ll post later on today (crap it’s already after midnight!) 3/365. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of this later on.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to

img.tehCpeng.net

*shameless plug*

Work in Progress.

It was then when I realised I needed a single-columned theme. My blog posts needed space.

During the last exam season,  the ‘design ideas’ part of my brain started kicking into high gear. Something that never fails to happen every time I’m in the midst of exam stress. All sorts of ideas started flowing in and thus, resulted in Version Two today, a mishmash of most, if not all of the ideas that reached me in my routine morning shower.

And I fear, though I’d rather not acknowledge, that once I release this theme, something is gonna seem wrong about it and I’ll be brainstorming for new ideas to replace it before I even know it. But oh well. =)

So despite being just two months shy of tehCpeng.net Version One’s first birthday, I decided to rush Version Two out. I started working on the mockup on 30th December, 2008 – the day before I got my dSLR. The 500 pixel wide photos on my old theme didn’t do any justice to the photos I wanted to potray. So I took 6 days to complete the mockup before I started gobbling up another week for the coding.

While two weeks might sound like an eternity to design and code a website, the time I spent on Version Two was easily half of that I spent on Version One a year ago. =P

What’s New?

Everything.

Okay seriously, there a few changes you might want to know. I’ve:

1. Increased the width for the photos to 600 pixels and also made use of Wordpress’s new image caption stylings.
2. Removed the sidebar and ditched most of its elements, retaining some at the footer.
3. Hidden some content at the footer for the sake of simplicity. These are accessible via the ‘more?’ link at the bottom. Try it!
4. Added gravatar support within the comments.

There also bits and pieces of shiny new stuff here and there that I’ll be leaving it to you to find out.

Notes.

As you might have noticed, my portfolio isn’t quite ready yet. I’m gonna postpone work on that while I iron out a few more quirks and bugs in the theme, which, if you look closely are still present as of now.

I’ve also haven’t really iron out browser compatitbility issues with the theme. As of now, I am fairly certain that everything should appear fine in at least Firefox 3, IE 8, Safari 3, Chrome 1.0 and Opera 9.6.

Enjoy!