Instagram: ".. and worse, Jack doesn't hv a year-end leave.."

First of all I think I'm having a drained soul in a cold body. Like a disease. It happens every end of a year. Like snow. 

..and the random screen-saver on my double-screened workstation pop up a random message -- I might take it as a prescription, or a cynicism -- depending on the current condition of my year-en disease. 

Jack needs a break. 

A confession of a broken-hearted photographer...

Yes Datuk, I did not put this in the 'Terms & Conditions' when we made the agreement of me taking photos for your engagement day, and I think I should have mentioned this anyway:

"The photographer shall take the best pictures for the event covering the best lighting, best posing, best angle and best subject composition with his best effort, but the photographer shall also be given the exception should the quality of work is defected by the inner factor such as emotions. Client is advised to consider viewing the pictures as 'another way of expression'. "

-- In this clause, 'another way of expression' is free from the client's expectation, as it's heavily dependent on the mood of the photographer.

In other words, you should not blame me for some weird pictures I've taken which were not up to the standard of Ms Fatma The Ultimate Diva Behind Lens.

OK let put it straight -- If you find the pictures are a little bit gloomy, sorrowful, lonely or perhaps sensing the smell of heart-broken, you should, according to the clause, just accept it, because --

-- well, I hate to say this, you've got one of the finest lady in this world as your fiance.. and my heart was hence broken into pieces just because she's yours now.

Congratulations, heartily from your (heart-already-broken) photographer.

Ps:
1. Wakakakakka... psycho x?
2. Datuk, remember the conversation we talked about photo-editing? These photos are purposely touched up, just because of the ambiance I want -- so, though sometime photo editing is 'kinda' against a photographer's 'integrity', but for the sake of 'expression', feel no guilty.

Thousand islands. thousand sunshines..

Pictures explain thousands words. True -- so I'm not going to say more than 1000 words here to explain how cozy my recent 'geological field trip' was in Pulau Seribu, Indonesia, especially when ONE WHOLE ISLAND is only 15 of us -- just imagine, or if you can't, click here to visit Fatma's blog, or just click down there to look at my Tabblo.

The day I was snorkeling among the thousands islands, a blue star fish greeted me, and he said, "hey biggie.. swim away, I'm enjoying the sun shine.. and why are u floating? Star fishes are not supposed to float like u.. " ... Here to see my tabblo.

back to basic..

Pathetic enough, sometime we just need assurance and reassurance from somebody else, to tell us that we are doing fine for being ourselves.

Our world crumbles and we groan and moan when people around us fail to give us any assurance. And sometime we lost faith to friendship, to family-hood, to kinship, to brotherhood, to loveship and all good things in life when we thought those who supposed to understand don't understand us.

..but hey, how well deserved are we to ask for full understanding from somebody else, and more, to receive assurance and reassurance on our own life's value?

Things hit me lately and it made me ponder. And when I started to get unsure about all I believed in, an old 'K-I-V' message from a stranger reassured me.

The message is an offer. One of my photo in Prague of Czech Rep. was chosen to be included into an online travel guide. I don't consider this as an achievement but it's an assurance to me at this point of time -- an assurance that at least help to revive my confidence, at the point of time when I'm feeling I'm the biggest looser in this world.

Feel free to got to these links to view the travel guide:
Golden Lane
www.schmap.com/prague/sights_malstrana/p=160527/i=160527_38.jpg

On iPhone/ iPod touch:
Golden Lane
www.schmap.com/?m=iphone#uid=prague&sid=sights_malstrana&p=160527& i=160527_38

Blog widget (shown on my panel):
www.schmap.com/guidewidgets/p=14355408N00/c=SJ1911811

ps.."Back to basic" is something keep on flashing in my head lately, and together with the phrase, I have a strange vision seeing each of everybody is actually a planet in this universe -- I know, weird, as the rest of my illogic visions -- and I'm not going to talk about it here. My point is, the basic of our pursuit of happiness is all about feel good about what we're doing, minus the outsider factors.

Like a planet shines because of the life's growing in it and all the buzz and fuzz happening on it -- not about how its orbit cross cut the others in the universe, not really.

Lesson-learnt guaranteed

Ok.. let's talk about lessons that we pick up from what we do in our life. Sometimes when we give up and give in, the lessons rewarded are always far better to be remembered.

Here's a list of what happened in last 2 weeks -- a fully packed 2-week of back-to-back activities that guaranteed some lessons-learnt.

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1. Hiking up Gunung Dato (15th June)

Briefly: I forgot to mention in my last post, that I was kinda cautious during the night sk8 in Putrajaya as I had another plan of mountaineering on the next day, I mean I needed to save my energy.

Give-in & give-up: A leisure and relaxing Sunday and good rest before my 1-week volley ball intensive training came the next day.

Result: I had great fun and great sweating climbing up the top of Gunung Dato.

Lesson-learnt: No matter how busy and how packed your schedule is, always look for time to go to nature, because you'd never know how much satisfaction nature would give you in return!

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2. Malacca half day trip (15th June)

Briefly: Right after the Gunung Dato we headed to Malacca, aiming for dinner served with grilled seafood like ikan bakar, but ended up we spent most of the time looking for the correct routes and taking pictures in Studthuys and China Town.

Give-in & give-up: We could have choosen to have a slow and leisure ride home right after 8 hours of hiking up and coming down from Gunung Dato and enjoyed the rest of our Sunday.... but we did not take that.

Result: I found my sense of photography came alive in Malacca. The feeling was simply so-right! Check out more pictures in my Flickr and Tabblo below.

See my Tabblo

Lesson-learnt: A revisit to a place doesn't mean to be boring! A wonderful place can wake up our long lost inner sense of wonderfulness, I just experienced it!

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3. PETRONAS Family Carnival Sport Game: Training & Matches & Carnival (16 - 28th June)

Briefly: It was the very first time I joined PETRONAS Family Carnival despite of years of working in the company, and I kinda glad to join in as a sport player of one of the contingent which allowed me to participate with greater spirit and enthusiasm.

Give-in & give-up: Did I give up anything for joining this? Let me think... hmm... oh yeah, away from my workss in office for almost 2 weeks time to play sport that I love -- that's a huge giving up and giving in! *smirk*. Plus, I got deep tan for training under the sun, twice, daily, although I kinda like my tanned look now.. *smirk & wink*.

Result: Well I got tanned; I got annoyed from calls and sms from office; I felt guilty, somehow, for ignoring the works; We lost MOST of our games and only managed to get the 6th place out of 8.. but I got to play, I got to learned the right skill to play volley ball, I got new friends, I got fun.

Lesson-learnt: Learning the right way to play volleyball, checked; learning the right attitude of sportsmanship, checked; learning what does 'a penny of effort gains a penny' really mean, checked; learning to become a better player next time, checked.

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4. Promotional photo-shooting session for PGCE2009 (29th June)

Briefly: This was the 2nd time of photo-shooting session for the same purposes (check 'Who has the Ultimate Superpower' for some hint about the 1st session), and like wise, our models were still kiddos, which meant both fun and painful elements came side by side. Nevertheless, Lina and I were more prepared this time. We had a stronger concept, less cliche, more interesting probes like snails and bubble blower etc.

Give-in & give-up: Due to the tight schedule, I had to skip a dinner with mum and my sisters at a night before; and I couldn't attend the Grand Finale Night of PETRONAS Family Carnival as I needed to look for snails in the evening; I had to give up a real rest after the tiring 2 weeks of huff and puff during Family Carnival, so that I could finalize the concept of the photographs we need.

Result: More interesting pictures and another fun outing having fun times with super duper cuties like bubbly Dennis, pretty pinky Shasha and owh-he-got-such-a-big-eye-but-bad-temper Adly.

Lesson-learnt: Never work last minute although sometime last-minute works spark surprises and more fun! Never under-estimate kiddos cuz' you'd never know how much surprises and talents they would show. And last but not least, NEVER UNDER-ESTIMATE snails, they might be slow but they are good at hide and seek -- and you need to spent some time to find them out!

End of list. Alas!

Who has the Ultimate Superpower?

Let's put it in this way: Everybody has superpower(s).

But as this is a world that says 'yes' to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, our powers are measured in relative terms. And the superpower that stands out relatively, are called The Ultimate Superpower.

Well, for example, this is Ai-man. Ai-man has the power of defying gravity. He obtained the power when he practiced Yoga from his guru in India. He can float in the air like this:

Definitely, Ai-man can fly. In fact, if you knw Super-man the Man of Steel, he picked up this trick from Ai-man when they met in India 20 years ago.

Whatever.

When Ai-man thought that he owns the Ultimate Superpower at least among the people from his community for being able to fly, he met Reza-man, The Man of Right Eye.

Reza-man is cool and quiet. His superpower is his powerful fist, besides freezing any movements using his weapons. The day when Ai-man and Reza-man came head-to-head, Ai-man was terribly defeated, and all his shameful moments were captured by Reza-man's weapon. The records were kept in order to humiliate Ai-man, like this:

.. and not to forget Lina-Lithium, Reza-man's beautiful assistant, who masters all the Chinese Kung-Fu and as her name indicates, Lina-Lithium is soft but yet strong as metal. Ms Chun-Li from Street Fighter was actually her protege, FYI.

The point here is, again, Ai-man's superpower failed to stand out relatively. And as usual, the shameful moments of Ai-man being beaten up by a small lady were captured by Reza-man's weapon, and for plain humiliation purposes, some of the frozen moments are shown here (please imagine yourself the sound effect of Ai-man being beaten up):

It seemed like the combination of Reza-man and Lina-Lithium will be given the title of The Ultimate Superheroes as they proved that their Superpowers are relatively stronger than Ai-man.

However, they forgot the new generation of Superheroes are making their way into the race. There came a new challenger that eventually made everyone -- Ai-man, Reza-man, and Lina-Lithium surrendered. Even the Great Az-Man(af) who came for rescue was also beaten terribly by this new challenger.

Everybody just got no idea on how to handle this new comer. 4 Superheroes eventually had to went down on bended knee to ask for mercy. Of course, no records at all showing how terrible and humiliated the 4 heroes were when they were defeated by this new Superhero. It was just too painful too recall.

So she declared to own The Ultimate Superpower, and nobody there dared to object, as the Superpower she owns is just too powerful --

C-R-Y.

Here is she, Camelia, The Ultimate Superpower bearer, who just got all heroes in the world pack their own stuff and go home....

"Grrrr.. I am The Ultimate Superhero!! Takut tak?"

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After post note:
Yup, another 'just-for-fun' post, hope this can make up your day (smile~~). And the pictures you saw in this post were taken during the photo-outing with kiddos last weekend in Lake Garden. Thanks SJ and Mai for bringing Camelia, and Thanks En Azani (Az-Man ler~~) for bringing his two princes: Saif, Zein and his bubbly princess, Nur to become our models. Thanks to Reza (Reza-man he is) the Photography Guru who shared a lot of photography technique knowledge of with lighting and Lina (-Lithium) the photographer cum nanny cum model cum assistant.

And EXACTLY, those fantastic pictures showing me hanging in the air were shot by Reza using his Canon D1 with the aid of the 'umbrella' and speed lights. Lots of technical know-how behind those pics in order to make the flying shot flawless.

Here's a 'behind-the-scene' picture snapped by Reza while I was shooting Camelia's portrait as shown below. Cheeeeese!

Ps..No, Camelia is not as garang as I might have unintentionally described. She is an angel I would say. Don't you agree?

In revival of self confidence

Let's say this is a program for me myself as well.

When Kamaruz and I met face to face for the very first time after n-th time of Jakarta-Malaysia long distance phone conversations, what he gave me was a feeling of thrilled. And right away, I forgot all my hesitation and I was already in the program.

'The program' was way much more meaningful than I could expect. It was, for the very first time, a program to call upon the youth of Malaysian Indian-Muslim to come under one roof, come as one family.

It was a program to revive the self-confidence of this minor community, and it was also an opportunity for me, to revive my self-confidence towards photography.

Thanks Kamaruz and Sherry for accepting the whole experimental idea of 'Apple shot', and thanks to the lovely participants. I felt sorry, somehow, when they had to interact with GREEN APPLES while not knowing WHAT'S ABOUT THE GREEN APPLES..

So what's about the green apples? Let me reveal one confession here: those "It's Fresh, It's Young, It's Natural, It's Cool" stuff -- yeah I made it up. The truth is, I STILL DON'T KNOW.

..but why do we need reasons for something worth for fun and simply .. erm.. simple?

24 hours with a homo sapiens

Today
0755hrs: I'm still thrilled. Yes I am. Even though I think I'm safe now, with Ana lying beside me, weeping out of happiness. My antenna senses, that I'm back to my familiar ditch, that I'm safe, that my last terrifying yet confusing 24 hours, is gone.

Yesterday
0643hrs: I was on my way to meet Ana, my sweetheart, when he stood beside me and tackled my antenna with a cardboard. I know this a typical Homo Sapiens' behavior, they just love to tease us as a slow and stupid crawling creatures.

0655hrs: I hate Homo Sapiens. We were taught to stay away from them, or we'll die. Hiding inside my shell I just missed my family and Ana, I know I'm not going to see them anymore, cuz' I knew I'm taken away by this Homo Sapiens. I felt my whole body was moving, I didn't think it was just because of my shiver.

0714hrs: I peep from my shell. I feel the mushy ground I was touching, I know that's the container he uses to keep me in, and I see a little plant which I know it was plucked from my ditch, because I can sense the smell. It's the smell of home, and it makes me feel lot more comfortable..

0717hrs: ...wait... is this the feeling called 'fly'? I feel I'm accelerated ahead in an extreme high speed.

0721hrs: The 'flying' stops. But in a very short moment after that I feel I'm 'raising'. I caught a glance where I was brought into a little room and then the raise starts. I try to crawl out from the mushy container but again, I'm touched on my antenna. It makes me shrinks. This Homo Spiens knows very well what I'm sensitive of.

0740hrs: I'm lifted up and separated from the plants while I am hiding in my shell. He takes me out from the mushy container and for the first time I can see clearly what's surrounding me. I see more Homo Sapiens, I see them smiling with weird face expression, that makes me terrified. And I see him. He looks slightly different from the other Homo Sapiens.

I think he got antenna as well.

0800hrs: Few minutes ago I was transfered from the mushy container into the solid this one. Now I'm lying beside the little plant. It is the only thing that assures me. From time to time I feel water dropping on me and the little plant. I just love the moist and the temperature, but I think that the whole environment is too bright for me.

0900hrs: I'm falling asleep. The brightness is simply eye-piercing. I need to hide deep inside my shell.

1330hrs: I shouldn't be so careless! I fell asleep!! Damn it. Anything could happen to me since then! ..and where am I now? The temperature is still cold, the moist is still there, but it's a lot more darker here. Where am I? Where am I?

1547hrs: I can feel the ground is stomping, and I can see his leg coming in and out from my eyesight. But I dun care anymore. I'm so sleepy.

1745hrs: I hear the grumbling sound of 'flying' again. That wakes me up, and I'm in the 'flying' mode again, I remember that. I started to understand the 'flying' is actually a method of moving for Home Sapiens. I think it's the best time for me to escape. I try to crawl out of the solid container, but again, I fail. The Antenna Homo Sapiens seems to be very alert to my every movement. I can even hear him say something to me.. not clear, but sounds like ".. hey Mr Chanel, you're active now...."

Mr Chanel? Who? Me?

2105hrs: Argh I just hate this Antenna Homo Sapiens!! I don't care anymore whether I'm going to die or not.. I just want to have my dinner quietly!! Shit damn it he forces me to be separated from the leaf I'm chewing. I hate him I hate him I hate him!

2115hrs: I'm transferred again. This time on a slippery surface with a big word 'MAP' on it. ..but I just don't care, I need to find my food. I crawl on the slippery surface. Suddenly I see him aiming at me with a big black hole!!

Shit! This is it, this is it!!! This is the tool he's going to use to kill me! God please help me!!

2142hrs: I heard a few times the clicking sound comes from the big black hole of the Antenna Homo Sapiens, I thought I'll die every time the thing clicks. But the fact is, I'm still alive... I'm so frightened as well as confused. When he drag me out of the slippery surface and put me back to the container with the plant, I have no comment. I started to think what's the main purpose of him? I'm confused, I'm confused...

2200hrs: I poo. Shit this is the most embarrassing moment in my life!! I poo in front of a Homo Sapiens!! And I even see him clicking his big black hole on me!! I don't care what's about the big black hole anymore, cuz the fact here is, HEY FUCK OFF!! Don't you see I'm doing something very private?!!??? ..

2300hrs: The light of the world of this Antenna Homo Sapiens turns off. And I kinda feel that this Antenna Homo Sapiens is harmless to me.. although it has been the weirdest experience to me in my life..

0630hrs the next morning: A tremendous quake wakes me up!! I'm shocked and terrified! My world is up-side-down, little plant falls off of the container, I'm still sucking very hard on the surface of the container.. What is this what is this??!!?! The quake is still shaking, hardly and harshly.. I don't think I can hold anymore. Quick enough, I shrink my self into my protective shell, although I'm not sure whether can my shell stand the huge quake...

0640hrs: Ouch!! I fall. I can feel the impact of the falling even though I'm protected by my shell. But almost immediately I sense something familiar. I stretch my antenna slightly out of my shell and try to sense for anything to assure. The moist, the chill, the smell.... I think I'm back.. I get out from the shell and have a quick peep.. I see Ana's ditch across the trail... and..

I see Ana standing right in front of her ditch. Waiting for me.


Note from Spidey aka Antenna Homo Sapiens: pardon me for talking on bahalf of Mr Chanel, the celebrity snail who will carry one of the main role in my upcoming montage project... will tell y'all later if the thing is successfully produced.