assignment-fireworks

Mission- To photograph Fireworks over Marina Bay(yup you know the one that took 400k to decide to retain the name)
Spec Ops Team- The Doo Pilot
- The Moo Chief Intel Officer
- TLOML Eye Candy
- me Grunt
Mission Status - FAILED

Took more then 200 pics tonight, mostly of the fireworks, had a great time treking to our vantage point on a plot of reclaimed land, but the pic...sigh the pics didnt turn out well.

I tried too many settings when i should have just done a couple of test shots and settled for one setting, jumping back and forth i hit everything but the target.

I am only posting a couple of shots tonight and all of them i repeat all of them are seriously flawed.

Its been rather a busy day, went to work in the morning then popped over to my godmothers place to see her new puppy, silky terrier cute bugger they named him OATMEAL (pic below)
then went over to meet the other members of our team and off we went to get the shots we so badly wanted. 15mins of clr then we strolled over to lau pa sat for satay(yummy) thats where i bid adieu to TLOMY and family and moved on to meet the boys.









We walked down to the merlion and across to the esplanade out towards to mouth of the singapore river , under sheares bridge. A seldom visited place, by me anyway and a good spot to try again for the fire works!(i hope)

Forgot

i forgot to add these pics of the same sunbird(sometimes called the olive back sunbird/olive throated sunbird) shown in my earlier post...

Sunset on the day after yesterday

Sidebar-pics are cropped and resized...and typos are not an issue i care to hear about...




Wens..what can i say...was supposed to finish at 5.30 but at 5 i was told i was needed till 8. that sums up my day....this week really sucks!!
took some pics today nothing great ..the clrs were abit off i dunno why. I tried to be creative with a couple of sunset shots, dunno if it worked.


Got my hair cut during lunch..my cleaning supervisor can fo anything, i suppose cutting my hair is not challenge..set the machine to number 1 and let it rip.(no pics)
Got a pic of a fatty olive throated sunbird...the contrast was terrible mind you it was direct sunlight at noon so i was OK with the pic.

Anyhow tom is another day and it can only get better, right niki?


So i wish you a good night and a better tom.

yesterday

yesterday was another barren day in the desert that is sengkang. a dry dull dreary day. and today it looks like more of the same.BORING.

I have come to the sad conclusion that my hard working, long suffering boots are running their last laps.....they have served me well. I have used them almost everyday for the past 2 years and soon it will be time to send them to the happy hunting grounds..i have sent an urgent note to brad in perth with instructions on the replacment pair..i hope he gets em for me.
all good things must come to pass.......sniff sniff

Sunday 310705

What is a picture if it is not looked at.....

Nice day great weather, woke up pretty early today went with TLOML to submit my two pics for the hype exhibition http://www.hypegallery.com.sg/gallery.html . it really is a great idea it allows blur blocks like me to submit stuff and have it hung in an actuall gallery, one of the pics i submitted is in the online gallery just type simon in the search bar and the pic should pop up or u can type pillay for sherwins 2 pics or pereira for my mother in laws pic. good stuff.
Had some great light for photography this morning, i really wasnt expecting it but i guess that was the best bit. This is the fourth time in 3 weeks that i have been lurking in the civi district and i really enjoyed taking pics today and TLOML was there so that was a bonus. The pic with the chick(TLOML) was taken at the exhibition, they have an online exhibit and a studio exhibit.
I think i shall go there again next week, i have some unfinished biz with the area. As i was strolling along i came across a group of photographers hanging around the riverside, not very friendly buggers. i always get disappointed by people like that, it is obvious that we share the same hobby and you would think that a little chit chat would be fine BUT oh no pardon me i am too good to talk to you. Idiots. Nothing like the people at the dog show we went too after lunch at expo, tons of dogs and tons of friendly people real nice folk, with huge huskys and tiny little yorkies, pepper aka fatty didnt like the crowd and we had to carry her around...she is a shy little doggy.

I just had to take a pic of TLOML sitting in the VIP stands in front of city hall! all set for national she is! hehe we wanted to take a pic behind the presidents rostrum but were too shy to ask the guards, cheh shy what the hell is this world coming to.

If you notice i have placed a pic of the UGLIEST BUILDING IN SINGAPORE here as i wanted to shy my disgust with you. I know i have been ranting and raving on this topic but come on man look at it! its a disgrace, so ugly i could only bring myself to upload a small pic of it, i spit on it!(and if i knew how to spell the sound of spitting i would put that down here too).
The last pic as seems to be my custom, just appealed to me. No Rhyme No Reason.

Well sunday is almost over and tom is another monday, back to work..i leave you with good wishes for you and your own .

sidebar
forgive the many typos. i cant spell.
the pics ahve all been resized(smaller)

290705

SIDEBAR-Before your go further, please note that i could care less about my many typos and other errors. The pics have been cropped and resized, and if you click on them you will get a slightly larger pic than the one displayed NOT the full sized picture.

Had a real long walk yesterday, took my half day off, met Sherwin and we went down to old parliament house to see the HYPE exhibition. It was great found out that we can submit our own pics for the show....i cant decide what to send in!!
Anyhow yesterday we covered alot of ground that we have gone over the last couple of weeks, it was variations of a theme almost. i will be posting around 10 to 15 pics in this post now take note its not because they a great shots or even good shots to me they are just interesting shots. My goal is to train my eye and skill as a photographer to take shots of things we are familiar with in an everyday setting and view them from an aspect we are unfamiliar with. That’s not to say that i was successful here, thats just my goal. Of course my other goal is to be a real good nature photographer, a skill that eludes me! My greatest flaw in photography is impatience, and being to lazy to learn about the camera. I hope to improve on those flaws! I took the pic of City Hall in national day deco as i was thinking it would be nice to morph myself behind the Presidents post heheh. The fence pic is from old parliament house but what i found interesting is that they used the exact same design for the new parliament house a nice gesture of respect from the architect and designers of the new building.

The Red Carpeted Staircase is from old parliament house, the odd thing about this place is that you can take pics around the building, but not on the second floor..when i asked security why they were unable to furnish me with an answer, i call this shot elevation 1 (like real).
I found the Hype exhibition rather exciting, the whole idea that anyone could send in their artwork and it would be hung in such an old and venerable building is a thrill, the online exhibition can be found at www.hypegallery.com.sg .
After the exhibition we went down to change alley, and man oh man what a change. I remember walking across the bridge in secondary school and everytime since then that i have walked across the bridge it seems to have lost another shop, only a handfull survive. The best of whats left is a little second/ antique store they have stuff like cameras from the 20's to phonographs to watches from the Soviet block!

We had a friend who owned a little second hand book store there but he seems to have gone as well, change alley indeed..

Clifford Pier, one of the places i want to spend some time photographing before it changes or gets knocked down. I like the idea of all those heliconia flowers infront of what to me looks liek ant art deco style building, not colonial looking at all. I like buildings that have good lines that fit the environment in which they are located, sometimes buildings that clash make a bold statment of advanced technology, sometimes they just surprise us with its look that we take sometime to come around, like the esplanade. One building that will never win a prize for design or architecture is the SRC building on the padang to me it is a building that looks like Phua Chu Kang designed it, i will never understand how that dogs breakfast ever got approval. Another building which i find UGLY is the new supreme court. To me it looks like the spaceship from independence day, one of the guys said that should there be a war people can get into that and fly away. It doesnot compliment the area at all it should be destroyed or used in design school as an example of what not to do. I have another disaster to display later. We took a walk down to the Merlion Park, i always felt that the merlion is abit of a let down up close and is best viewed from a boat or on TV. I took the almost obligatory pics of it..left ..right ..rear and it was this rear shot that i thought looked the best. Just before we got to the merlion both sherwin and i took some shots in the reflection of a building, like i said at the start my goal is to see things from a different perspective and i am just at the start of this learning experience. By this time the sun was bright and hot, and there really is no shade at merlion park so we took cover under the new bridge(whose name i cant remember right now) It really is a nice looking bridge, clean flowing lines, and i think i am not alone in like t cause there were at least 5 people under there taking pics as well. They have a little coffeshop thing going on there it wasnt open but you should see all the cooking devices, might be a nice spot for a bite to eat. We walked past the fullerton twice and boy does it look different in the day, still nice but its the night that makes that building glow. Sherwin was delayed at the al fresco area they have there taking pictures of glassware and bottles, in the mean time i took another staircase, i call it elavation 2(hehe). Staircase are such interesting things to photograph.

We really did the rounds this time, we walked back down towards amoy st with the idea of taking pics at jingle bell lane(which was a BIG disapointment) but on the way we stopped by a very old temple and almost came to blows with the staff that work there, would have been good eh, fighting with temple workers! anyway i came away with several pics but the ones that i like were of the spiral hanging inscense that they use on the temple grounds. We are almost at the end of the journey now, and a long one it has been eh as i type this i am listening to Marvin Gaye. From the temple we met frodo, and walked down to clarke quay where sherwin left our company . At clarke quay i found the disaster i mentioned earlier, some blind designer decided to create an ugly out of place puke looking( insert your own vulgarity here) horrendous god knows what to call it. So what was once a nice clean looking row of colonial buildings which looked great from across the river is now obscured by wat i can only descride as hair salon dryers. God i wish the guy that approved this would let me into his house. its so ugly and it makes the whole area feel cramped and much smaller then it was, i really want to type some pretty nasty things here but i shall not. idiots, idiots , idiots.
Take a look at this lamp they blending old school design with new world technology, is it so hard?

This shot i dunno why i took. the man squatting and using his comp outside the toilet in such a bizarly coloured area was too weird to pass on.
So it ends, the 29th day of july in the 2005th year of our lord.

bits of here n there

Thought i'd put a couple of funny pics of the fatty ala pepper up. Ok not all of them are funny, remember how small she looked
when we first brought her home...my little angel
I have not been writting much over the past few days cause..nothing has been happening aside from the normal work issues its been pretty quiet on the eastern front. Went for dinner with TLOMl and the moo last night, pasta fresca at siglap. Moo had a soup thing with clams, i had calamari (ok lah but fish n Co calamari rocks!) and a pizza was shared by all, they really do make nice pizza and not bad price wise. TOML got promoted!!! she is now the boss of her level! Congrats to TLOMl.
Got a lovely book from the Moo, tis a semi auto bio of sean astin the guy that plays samwise in LOTR( also mikey in the Goonies), read half of it already! I never knew he was Patty Dukes son and his father who was one of dukes 3 husbands John Astin was the original Gomez from Adams family! she also dated desi arnaz jr, till lucy put a stop to it!
I am going to Old Parliament House to see an exhibition ( www.hype.com.sg ) and will do a nice walk around talking pics.
Not much is happening news wise, Tooks trial goes on, i will be suprised if he isnt hung by the end of it all, the head of the LTA is another one that may be looking for a new job...400k for an excercise in re-branding marina bay only to find out that marina bay was the best name for it. Thats what happens when we have too much money to spend. anyway it wasnt much just peanuts.....

TLOML

Well the photographic drought has been broken for now! TLOML was the subject today, along with the fatty aka pepper. Came home took 86 shots!! lol cook a nice little pasta dish, brushed the dog and thats that. A nice quiet day at home. click on the pic ....it grows

Drought..

Not one...not one photograph have i taken since friday. i think i am suffering from withdrawal.

Downtown in Chinatown

So we went to chinatown! Turned out to be Frodo, Sherwin, Mark, JJ and myself we few ..we happy few. I was disappointed with the results of our adventure photographic wise i think i did poorly, took 250 shots and after having a good look at them i found i could have done so much more with a little patience. I got there early around 6 so had a 45min wait for the guys. Instead of hanging around the train station i took a walk along my old stalking grounds of chinatown, i used to work in a little company in a little office on Sago Lane. My wanderings brought to the top floor of one of the flats there. I think it would be a good vantage point for some night shots of the city, not a common perspective that i am aware of anyway. I got some shots of my favourite buildings but nothing that stands out to me, there was no shot of the day for me yesterday, and though in this post i am putting up more pics than normal that is mainly to show wat i saw and not because i am happy with the results. The building on the left and below the buddha is one of my favourites, i love the old school wrap around balconey the 18mm wide angel came in usefull for that picture, i was suprised that i managed to get the whole thing. In preparation for the trip i had only mentally said that i wanted just one good pic of that building to be satisfied, i got the shot as as i am human i am not satisfied, next time i want to get it with some clouds and better lighting or even at night. The Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple along south bridge roads must be one of the most photographed buildings in singapor, so i took the obligatory shots. if i had patience i would spend more tiem composing the shot and adjusting the camera as it is i feel like i am a journalist in veitnam and need to keep moving before that arty fire drops on my head. Chinatown does lend itself to photography but not in the way i remember, it seems to have become more tacky and the new food stalls remind me nothing of the chinatown i remember of my early youth, i am not sure which is better but yesterday the stalls all seem to be selling the same things. i didnt dare ask the monk in the picture to pose...so i took a papparazi shot. he could be a monk on any street in the world and at any time in the past 150 years...

The building below the monk is on ann siang hill nad has always interested me, i reckon if i win the 5mil toto (as if) this will be my first purchase.
The last building is the Freemason lodge next to eh Armenian Church, if ever you have a chance to go in there go cause unless your a free mason its pretty hard to get in(though they do have the odd open house)
So that was China Town and its neighbourhood. I will go back there soon and try again. My next target is either Geylang Market or Kampung Glum and for both i have professional "tour guides", experts in the area to guide me.

SIDEBAR

These two shots it took earlier in the day.
Bee in flight and Bee on stem
Looks like this fella is wearing a furry yellow vest from the 70's







All pictures have been cropped and resized, please pardon any typos, spelling errors and any other problems you may find.