Lappy Died Again
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Lappy had a serious brain damage. The injury was so serious that I had no way of recovering her memory. And, yup, some of my memories which I had placed under her care are gone too. Isn't it fustrating? She went through a brain transplant less than a year ago (just before I went for exchange) and she totally lost it this time. I could at least get some of her memories back the last time. Her insurance no longer supports her after 1st August 2006 and I had to fork out ~$150 to revive her.
Lappy, please don't die or lose your memory again, it's very very stressful for you and me.
posted byWilliam at 6:51 PM 0 comments
Fast, Very Fast
Monday, October 30, 2006
The Stockholm Nobel Museum is making her world tour and it has arrived in Singapore. It will be my first day of duty at the Nobel Museum later in the morning. I have procrastinated on studying the script until this weekend and hopefully I don't stumble when the visitors ask me some strange questions. Do come and visit the Museum at the new NUS admin building; it's free for NUS students.
Time flies super super fast this semester. It feels even faster than I was on SEP. In about 5 weeks, the semester will be over. The last semester in NUS will start very soon and I predict it will be faster than ever. Blink my eyes and I will graduate next May.
I think this week will be an interesting week. Nobel Museum tour guide duty, a possible test on Wednesday, a journal club discussion on Thursday, Swedish Embassy dinner on Friday. I am looking forward to all of them!
posted byWilliam at 12:14 AM 0 comments
USP SPAN Get-Together Dinner
Saturday, October 28, 2006
The evening was spent at NUSS Guild House, Suntec with my USP old friends. I knew there is going to be lots of pretty decorations at the dinner and I wasn't disappointed. Click here to access the album. In case you are too lazy to click around in Flickr, I will post some of the better pictures here soon.
Time for bed. Going for a walkathon organized by Junyi and Kaixin in 6 hours.
posted byWilliam at 12:52 AM 0 comments
Honors Lab Group Outing
Saturday, October 21, 2006
The lab group went for an outing yesterday at Suntec. I thought we enjoyed ourselves much since there was so much boisterous laughter at the dinner table that the 翡翠小厨 waitress had to remind us to lower our volume.
After dinner, the night was spent on the movie, The Prestige. I haven't heard much about the movie before Lijie recommended it to us. In fact, I thought it was quite a boring movie. Man, I was wrong when I read the reviews and I was convinced that it could be the best movie of 2006 after watching it. The movie intrigued me and I could relate to many of the scenes since I was an amatuer magician just a couple of years back. Through my interactions with fellow magicians, I have experienced much of the deceptive nature of magicians, the desire to fool fellow magicians and sometimes the ruthlessness in them.
Here's a short introduction to The Prestige on Yahoo! Movies:
It all begins in rapidly changing, turn-of-the-century London. At a time when magicians are idols and celebrities of the highest order, two young magicians set out to carve their own paths to fame. The flashy, sophisticated Robert Angier is a consummate entertainer, while the rough-edged purist Alfred Borden is a creative genius who lacks the panache to showcase his magical ideas. They start out as admiring friends and partners. But when their biggest trick goes terribly awry, they become enemies for life--each intent on outdoing and upending the other. Trick by trick, show by show, their ferocious competition builds until it knows no bounds, even utilizing the fantastical new powers of electricity and the scientific brilliance of radical inventor Nikola Tesla--while the lives of everyone around them hang in the balance.
Trivial:
- Nikola Tesla (the electricity-freak physicist) and Thomas Edison (the Inventor) appeared in the movie.
- The Chinese magician, Chung Ling Soo, is a real magician back in the Victorian Era. He died while performing the bullet catch.
posted byWilliam at 12:38 PM 0 comments
Picture of the Day - Drag Queen
Monday, October 16, 2006
After visiting the Rhine Valley, I took a 2h train to Cologne. You have seen the Kölner Dom in one of my previous post. Let me show you some German street scenes, people I met and food tasted in the upcoming blog entries.
I took this picture at one of the many events of Cologne Gay Pride; I think the most famous event is the Gay Pride parade. This event, which I witnessed, was not so big in scale; it's more like a carnival. There are more provocative images...
posted byWilliam at 12:11 AM 0 comments
Wine and Coffee from Rudesheim
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Spreading across the whole valley, grapevines abound in the Rhine Valley. Not surprisingly, this region produces fine grape wine. Rudesheim coffee can be thought of as Bailey's but not so creamy - coffee with a hint of Brandy.
posted byWilliam at 11:48 PM 3 comments
Flickr Pro
I just splurged ~SGD40 on a Flickr Pro account.
I have always wanted to upgrade this photo sharing account but have been "psychoing" myself not to waste money on this kind of stuff. However, being a part-time official photographer for USC kind of forces me into upgrading. It's quite taxing for me with like so many people clicking on me asking me for the pictures taken during an event (I experienced it during the recent MAF). I also feel quite bad if I don't distribute the pictures timely. I know how disappointing it can be when a photographer promised to send a picture to me but in the end he/she didn't; well, people are busy and this kind of trivial stuff is easy to forget.
The nice thing about this Flickr account is 2GB of monthly upload limit (freaking large amount ~ 500 6MP high quality JPEG), unlimited photo-sets and the permanent archiving of the quality images uploaded (they don't resize and degrade the files like when I had my free account).
Ok, now that you know my account exists... check it out if you have asked me to take your picture or you know I have taken a picture of you. I will upload higher quality than before pictures so that you can download them off from Flickr and keep or print them. Frankly, I dislike those tiny weeny images that are optimized for web.
So next time, if you find a picture that is 1800x1200 in a photo-set under my Flickr account, it would most probably be optimized for 4R printing. Tell the photo lab "NO CORRECTION" and the print should turn out quite good.
posted byWilliam at 1:44 PM 0 comments
Picture of the Day - USP MAF
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Here is a picture taken from yesterday's USP Mid-Autum Festival (MAF) belated celebration. Aren't they cute?
posted byWilliam at 10:52 PM 0 comments
Deliver Us From Evil
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Have you seen the trailer for Deliver Us From Evil? This is a fierce and powerful movie that has just won "Best Documentary Feature" at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
I can't say much here. The content is too sensitive. I might just be invited for a coffee by gahmen. Watch it.
posted byWilliam at 11:31 PM 0 comments
Picture of the Day - Rhine Valley
Sunday, October 08, 2006
In a previous post, I mentioned that my hostel in Rudesheim was at the top of the valley overlooking the Rhine River. Here is the view that you will get from the top. The neat rows of plant are grapevines; the water body is the Rhine River.
posted byWilliam at 1:31 PM 0 comments
Fantastic Photography Seminar
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Jiatong (Thanks bro!) invited me to a fantastic photography seminar organized by the SMU Photographic Society yesterday night.
Here is a short recap of the contents of the seminar:
Tay Kay Chin talked about his personal work on a pictorial of Singapore which he has just published. He brought me on a Singapore journey through his emotionally provocative works; he brought me to sites and sights which I have never seen. These provocative works have brought him some trouble. Apparently, he depicted a man sleeping on the street and this picture was sensored in his book: Panoramic Singapore. The reason given by the authority: there isn't any homeless people in Singapore. Lesson learnt from K. C. Tay and Richard Avedon: All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth (quoted from Richard Avedon).
Darren Soh, a commercial and editorial photographer commissioned to produce pictures in a gift-pictorial for IMF-World Bank Seminar VIPs, talked about balancing work and photography.
Samuel Seow, a lawyer, gave a super entertaining presentation on copyrights.
Wong Maye-E and Terence Tan were supposed to give a presentation together. Terence was absent due to last-minute work duty. Maye-E (Associated Press) and Terence (Straits Times) are both photojournalist and married to each other. It was very interesting to know that the couple actually keep ground breaking news from each other to maintain a certain degree of exclusive coverage. JT and I were thrilled to see the high-quality version of photos of photojournalists; newspaper prints don't give justice to the captured quality.
Ken Seet, a commercial photographer, described his transition from film black and white to digital. I thought he was the most practical speaker of all when he gave a live demo on digital black and white conversion. In the Vineyard was converted from RAW and post-processed based on tips given by Ken. A very, very entertaining speaker; I especially like his quiet B&W landscape.
I asked the question of whether a formal education in photography is important to a professional. The unanimous answer was no, except if you want to teach photography in an institution. To learn on the job, observe the masters, never stop learning, and keep taking pictures were the advices given to me by the panel.
posted byWilliam at 8:36 PM 0 comments
Picture of the Day - In the Vineyard
This picture was taken in the Rudesheim, Rhine Valley. I remember it being my first day in the Valley and I took a freaking long walk from the train station to the tourist office with a 18kg backpack of food, toiletry, clothes, and equipment. Well, maybe, it wasn't so far but the load on my back definitely made the distance feel long.
I ended up booking a taxi with the assistance of the tourist officer and taking the vehicle up to the hostel. At the moment when I made the hostel booking, I never knew the phrase "overlooking the Rhine Valley" would be the curse of the location. The thought of having an overview of the Rhine Valley was just too great a photographic temptation. I had forgotten about how I am going to get up there with my barang barang. Nevertheless, I met three gal backpackers who took up the challenge; this happened when I was taking the picture above. There is a short-cut down the vineyard from the hostel to the town center. I saw the backlighted leaves of the grapevine and thought it would be an interesting picture of the details of the veins.
posted byWilliam at 7:59 PM 0 comments
Friends
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Anita
Grace
Valerie
BK
Jiatong
KC
Xiaoling
Ying Kit
posted byWilliam at 10:53 PM 0 comments
Article Archive
Welcome to the attic of my mind.
Here is where you can find an archive of my thoughts loosely categorized so that they are not so random. If you want everything, you can crawl through the long-ago archive where you can find everything in reverse chronological order.
Sam Honours Connect
Blog
4th Sino-Singapore Exchange 2007
Hangzhou
Xiamen
Guangzhou
Yunnan
Team-Blog
Sweden SEP
Willy in Sweden
Europe Tour 2006
Hofbräuhaus In-House Performer
Backpacking Outfit, Luggage and Equipment
White-washed Church with Blue Dome-Roof (Santorini)
Santorini Overview
Prague Bellmaker
Prague Square
Cologne - Drag Queen @ Gay Pride
Rudesheim - Wine and Coffee
Rudesheim - View of the Rhine River
Rudesheim - Vineyard
Jungfraujoch
Montreux Cruise
Rhine Falls
Berlin - Graffiti Art
Burano - Window
Santorini - Sunset
Prague - For Beer
Vienna - Silhouette Sunset
Cologne - Kölner Dom
Krakow - Birkenau Death Camp
Relationship Rattles
Issue of Attraction Continues
Issue of Attraction
More of Falling in Love
Proximity as a Hidden Matchmaker
posted byWilliam at 4:34 PM 0 comments