insert funny quote here

Hello all!

Let me start off by saying Happy Father’s Day to all you fathers and fathers-to-be out there . You may not be celebrated as much as mothers, but you fulfill a different role (or sociological niche, as my bio teacher calls it) in the shaping of your children’s future. For those who are good at this sort of thing - bravo. For those who aren’t, but keep trying anyway - bravasissimo - your effort is equally lauded. =)


(In case you think I’ve forgotten someone, I said it to him last week. [I got the date wrong, okay?])




Now that that’s out of the way. I want to say I love my camera. (Wait. For those of you who can't stand my long wordy posts, just scroll down for the pics. Don't leave a comment)


Anyway. I love my cam. I really do. I love its crisp shots, the detail you can cram into each pic (3000x2000 pixels usually) and the endless tweaking it can be subjected to, which renders the post-pics editing obsolete. Pretty much the only thing I have to do is resize the pics before uploading them.


So now that we’ve established the fact that my camera owns. I want to say that sometimes I can still be jealous of rae. Or more specifically the teeny widdle camera she totes around everywhere. You know, the kind no self-respecting facebooker is caught dead without.



Why, you ask? Because it’s so small. It’s compact. You could stick it in your jeans and people will think it’s your wallet. Secondly, as a direct consequence of this it’s unobtrusive. Meaning you can snap candids of price tags/ concerts/ unwary friends in compromising situations with relatively low risk of getting caught.



Not so with my camera. It's bulky. It's hard to carry. When you're not taking photos with it it's a dead weight. Often the fact makes me lazy to drag it everywhere, thus missing out on some good photo ops (sunrises, gatherings, etc.) Like last night I had had some some really good peach wine - light, silvery sweet with sour aftertaste - and i wanted to take a nice pic of the bottle with the food and atmosphere and all, but i didn't bring it. Who takes a camera the size of a shoebox to dinner, i ask you? Instead i brought back the bottle and took this:

Which of course isn't the same at all. This is ....dusty. Nostalgic, even. Not to mention more boring than anything.



Secondly, as a direct consequence of the first reason, my camera is very obvious. It looks almost official. When I have it out at functions people automatically assume I'm the journalist/ photographer/ student body officer. It makes heat-of-the-moment shots very hard to make. And sometimes people get offended....


Like so.


So now we've established the fact that my camera doesn't own, at least not in all aspects. But still its pretty good methinks, and its handy for taking close-ups of very small and very fast movings things.....

taking into account that this is a water droplet the size approximate of a pimple, and the time period it was on that patch of surface was probably 1/555 seconds, , due to the fact that said surface was above 100C, enough to melt clothes
as illustrated by the recent fashion statement in my lab coat.

Which brings us to the other topic of conversation, Sunway College's Open Day last sun. Though it might as well have been a closed day for all the visitors who showed up. The upside of this was that we were mostly left to our own devices (muaha), so the remainder of the day was well spent making ice-cream,

playing with faux blood,

and the taking of dumb photos.

Ah, college. =)

Part 1 of the Boring Holiday Photo Montage

So two weeks ago we all went up to the Village Hidden in the Mist for the standard Malaysian holiday; though when I say Village I mean Amusement Theme Park, and when I say Malaysian I really mean taking ages to reach there..... ages to get back.... stopping along the way to go shopping.....visit relatives.... go shopping..... and take life at a leisurely pace (which is basically just bumming around.)

Ah, Genting. Recollections of this assortment of Rollercoaster Tycoon rides
are hazy, but they can be vaguely summarized by this

this,

and this.
Thus armed with such immaculate grasp of the geography, I boldly went forth and got lost took hundreds of photos with impunity - right up until the battery expired. (Note to self: remember to actually charge it beforehand)

So anyway, nothing much has changed between now and then; exceptions being

,

and

+

, which are those game booth things but I only had the telephoto lens with me at the time so only close-ups here (heh).

But that's just me. Other people might remember Genting for this

this,

and subsequently, this.

.

It's always refreshing to revisit old haunts after a considerable period of time has elapsed. Pull the blanket of forgetfulness away to see old things in a new light, new things in an old light, and other things missed in hasty youth.

Like the cloud bank that rolled in on our way up, the mystical beauty of which must've escaped me on previous trips since I don't remember it being this foggy.

It's even more pervasive up at the hotel, rolling in unexpectedly and casting halos on every light source in the area; where the ceiling looks like the one at Harrods. Not that anyone knows where --or what-- that is.

I must confess that out of the handful of trips to Genting, I've never once stepped foot in the indoor theme park. Not that the rides were spectacular, but the real attraction lay in the various youth-oriented clothes stores here. With some very magnanimous discounts.

Only in the Indoor Theme Park....do you get London and Paris (and Michael Jordan) cozying up against each other,

venetian boat cruises with their rather creepy boatmen....

...whose resemblance to certain ex-classmates is uncanny.
No hard feelings, Mike. In other news, Genting also has its fair share of suspicious activity: This bunch of shady-looking characters were spotted sneaking out of the arena of stars, a concert hall supposedly usually barred from public...

Might they be part of Wang Le Hom's entourage, perhaps?


Another random observation is the ah long graffiti running rampant in the lift lobbies and carparks; seen here is only a bit of it but the full scope of the blight can't be said in so many words (mine, anyway)

According to one of the staff, the workers tasked to get rid of all that never finish the job, because the industrious ah longs keep coming back to stamp their signs all over the place again, and the bloody vicious cycle continues. Think about all that paint.





There are other vaguely interesting things, of course, like the discovery of lichen(at least I think it's lichen) on tree bark; apparently it's cold enough for this







But lastly a Hayao Miyazaki moment to savour, if my below-par photo editing skills didn't ruin it so:



Really, the view was magnificent.

“No, no, no. You get your own dust.”

There’s nothing like returning from an extended holiday to find the house just as you left it; the flowerpots in shambles, cat poo in the backyard, half-peeled ah long posters on every square inch of the gate. Inside, weird smells from the kitchen, frogs hiding in the bathroom (how do they get in?) and the usual layer of disintegrated matter on everything. Ah, the familiarity and comfort of home.

Then there is the ritual spring cleaning, which is very annoying for me because after a sweep of the premises there is always one little corner that I’d have missed, and I’ll be torn between

1. doing one more round or
2. leaving it alone,

and if I choose Life-Unchanging Decision no. 1 there’ll always be a spot I’d miss, mapping me back to the original problem- yet if I choose Life-Unchanging Decision no. 2, that little neurotic part of my brain will bug me like a pesky unswattable fly, weighing me down with an overwhelming feeling of Unfinished Business, and in the end I’d STILL go back to L-UD no.1, which should now probably be called Inescapable Fate no. 0.


This is why I hate doing chores.




Speaking of dust, I always thought it blew in from outside/natural shedding of dead skin cells/uncontrolled procreation of dust bunnies. But! Why do you get it even in places with no air flow/no human activity? Where do dust bunnies come from in the first place? So! I have thought long and hard over this matter, and the answer is Einstein. See, one of the side-effects of E=mc² is everything loses a bit of mass when it moves. Or something like that. (There's a lot of theorizing and equations and thingy, but they give me a headache so I won't type it down here.) In any case it just shows that dust is here to stay because the Earth has been revolving since time immemorial, and unless it stops we will never be rid of this dirty substance! Argh..




While I was scraping lizard gunk out of the mugs in our kitchen, Daniel popped in and told me there was a cockroach hiding under the sink, after which I was completely spooked, jumping at every little movement and going whoa! oh. at cicaks - yet no sign of the skittering critter.

Just so you know, I abhor cockroaches.


After that whole episode, it should be clear that such a reaction was completely pointless. Yet it is a bit like philosophy really. You get all agitated over it only to realize afterwards that all you managed to do is get worn out and all wet. In the end, it’s not about whether nihilism/dualism/polytheism/whatever is true or not. It’s how you decide to react to it. Of course, knowing me I’ll probably come back to philosophy armed with a can of Mortein. Because I just can’t leave this alone.


At this juncture I should probably say Sorry for the lack of posts recently - but I know my blog readership and have already apologised to both - so I won't. Instead, here's one of those trying-to-be-artsy-and-almost-succeeding-but-not-quite-pictures:




Just a fraction of the boring holiday photo deluge which will be up within 5 - Don't touch that X!