Okay, maybe not ulu ulu road, but it sure was ulu. Here's somemore non-flower photos taken during that trip.
Animals
Dogs on guard duties
A lazy one
Farm
The orchid farm
Flowers for sale
Greens
Sun bathing and having a great meal
Strange plants hanging
Hogtied
Pinkish red
Qian Hu Fish Farm
This local brand fish farm is just nearby and was the 2nd destination. But who would be interested in dirty green water with fishes that moves (and difficult to capture?)
Arowana breeding pond. They need huge space and a great scenary to procreate
Dried leaves, artistic view, useful for them to put in tank to 'soften' hard water
singapore farms photoblog dsc h1
A red one that is. 
The H1 red pen with the M3358 close up filter, with flash
School reopened for only the 2nd day and I'm already packed with stuff to do... no wonder people say that teaching is a half day job, it takes 12 hours a day! Here's just a brief breakdown of tasks that I'm suppose to do, and to expect much more to come along once I get my CCA and if I become part of any committee.
- Set 95 marks worth of questions for prelim examinations
- Be a mentor for the IDMI week
- Mentor for the parent child day
- Mentor for pet rocket programme (seems familiar to the good old rocketry competition that I used to organize in NUS)
- Set test paper for next week
- Level coordinator for some stuff that I'm not even sure of what is it, yet.
I just hope that I get to know my friend well enough.
Same H1 red pen, with M3358 close up filter, without flash.
Meanwhile, expect shorter posts and longer update times
singapore pen teach teacher education photoblog dsc h1
I was so disturbed by the news today.
Singapore is installing 150 handicap bus for wheelchair bound citizens to enjoy the public transport. These busses had a wider entrance with a ramp for wheelchairs. Not only does handicap citizens have to use their manual strength to board the bus, the bus driver had to manually setup the ramp for use.
This 'effort' from a modernised and wannabe graceful society?! What a joke!
3 years ago, in Germany, from my backpacking trip. They have fully automated wheelchair friendly bus for their less privileged citizens. These busses had a platform that can be automatically lowered down with a touch of a button by the driver. The flat platform lowers to ground level for the wheelchair to board on it and at another touch of a button, the platform raises up to the bus level so the wheelchair could board the bus easily!
We can install 2 LCD tvs in all our busses but we can't do 150 busses with automatic platforms.
I would rate this as a half-hearted effort to making Singapore a more inclusive society.
Come on Singapore, you could do better than that!
P.S. I wonder how the Singapore version of handicap friendly bus would fare during the sardine packed peak rush hours.
singapore essay handicap public transport
How many Earth do you need to support your lifestyle? I need 2.2 Earth planets.
Ecology footprint quiz
They should learn to provide easy to use html code for bloggers to quickly quote the results and do some free publicity for such meaningful stuff.
Here's the link.
Singapore's not on the map so use Malaysia instead.
singapore ecology earth
That's the ideal of a democracy.
Is there any true democracy in the world?
Could you find any country whereby the politicians are a good representation of the statistical distribution of the nation?
Can anyone who wants to serve get the chance to do so? Or is politics limited to the rich and powerful? How much money does one need to fork out in an election? Where do they get their funds? Do the political party work for the people? Or do they work for the people who gives them the power (whether by vote or by donations)?
Which is the most influential media during the elections and who controls it? What is the propaganda behind the news stories?
Does democracy work?
singapore democracy
Never did I know that so many different types of orchids exists, including some leafless breed. It's a shame that the photography session did not turned up to be a true photography session at the orchid farm. So I only had a couple of chance to shoot and pray before moving on to the next location. So here's roughly the entire collection for the day. Bet you can't name all these different varieties of orchids.
That's all, no time for any post processing yet.
singapore orchid flower photoblog dsc h1
Started working full-time this week, even though there's still a couple of days more before term starts again but I've got plenty of stuff to do and datelines to meet already! But nonetheless I caught perhaps the last movie that I will get to watch for months today - Cars.
McQueen showing off his 'lightyear' tyres in his dedicated wallpaper. Oh man, do I love derivative terms from Physics!
Oh my did Pixar did it again!
I always preferred Pixar's cartoon over Disney or any other productions. Pixar's animation felt sincere and was always a job well done. Their cartoons alway manage to touch my heart and is always about something simple - Friendship or Family. They brings a life and most important of all, a personality to the characters they create.
Pixar's animation always had a plot as thin and simple as a sheet of tissue paper. One could effectively guess the plot after the first 15 minutes or so. But that does not stop it from becoming a classic. Cars started off Lightning McQueen, the lead car in the animation racing on tracks. He was a rookie, arrogant, fearless and a show off, in other words, he was a jerk, a complete jerk. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that dear McQueen will be humbled and transformed to Mr Nice at the end of the show. The only piece missing was, how did that happened.
Reflecting back, many of us may be just like Lightning McQueen, a rookie in the workforce chasing after the dollar. We may be clouded by the finishing line in front of us, trying to make sure that we cross that line before others do but had forgotten what really makes one a champion. McQueen figured that out and truly became a champion, will us figure that out too?
All in all, Cars is a heartwarming and funny animation with a great soundtrack to boot. We may never see talking cars but these cars can be more human than we are. Highly recommended by me and sucre to watch before schools kick in.
singapore essay cars pixar
I'm no astronomer, but at times I will point my camera to the sky at night to see what I picked up. It didn't occur to me to do it again after getting the F11. So here's something that I found with the F11
2 big colour dots of planets? I don't think with the 3x zoom we could take such a 'big' picture of planets. This image is cropped. Wonder what is it. Taken when pointed towards 2 bright spots on the night sky yesterday.
I tried to do the same with the H1 but fail to capture anything like that with 12x zoom. So I use this photo instead. This is what the H1 picked up from another place more conducive for 'star gazing'. Post processed. Wonder how many are actual stars and how many were noise.
singapore stars photoblog fuji f11 dsc h1
Show up one evening to pick her up after work with a rose waiting for her AND it's not for any anniversary or special day. It's just for her.
The bouquet of a single stalk of rose.
Close up of the rose.
Another close up shot
Baby's breath.
Sucre's take of the rose with the F11
Money well spent.
All photos taken with the Sony H1 (and possibly with the M3358 close up lens) unless stated otherwise.
singapore rose photoblog dsc h1 fuji f11
There's two things I picked up from the Jurong Bird Park trip. Or rather, after the trip. One is on Moire effect, the other is an example of how to use the H1 to shoot birds more effectively.
Moire Effect
This is a wavy 'pattern' observed when you have repeated patterns that could not be represented in detail with the image. And you have to take note of it when resizing images too. Here's some examples.
Resized image of a woman working at the bird park. See the wavy patterns on the large mic she's hold. Resized using smart resize of dimin image viewer.
This is how the mic looks like in a crop. You can see that it is not wavy like the resized image.
Resized using spline in dimin viewer. I think it basically tries to fit a 3rd order polynomial to figure out how to do the resizing here. Even though the details are not there, at least it don't misrepresent what the image is suppose to be.
DIY Bird Hunting Scope
As for birds, this is what I found recently.
The perfect aided to hunting birds with a redspot in middle of scope.
It's not for sale unfortunately as it was a DIY thingy that someone made for himself. And he managed to capture quite a few flying birds with this setup. But it's a simple scope with a red dot in the middle that is aligned with the camera. So that you could trace birds in the scope with the red dot and make taking birds in flight easier. Now all that's left is the weather and the focus issue. Maybe I could be adventurous and try to make one myself too.
singapore essay photography photoblog dsc h1
Greedy Pelicans
Time for feeding the pelicans next and we managed to catch the last few minutes of the show here. These birds disappear from the stage and returned to their lakes the moment when feeding time is over. Bird park makes a lot more money by 'selling' bird food for you to feed them at every show time. Or $10 per photography with the birds.
Trivial: Pelican's big mouth can hold 13 litres of water. Or more than 2 cartons of packet drinks!
This one doesn't seem to have such a big mouth.
Ruixuan was sleeping by then. It's after lunch and she got to sit on a comfortable pram...
Where We Were Bombed - Waterfall Area
More feeding near the waterfall area. This time is smaller birds like bee-eaters that feeds on small insects. The feed - worms... This is also the place where the two of us got bombed by birds.
Queuing up for food.
Worms in a cup. Fighting for food
Not enough light, need to stop the action, gotta use flash now. Why it didn't occur to me on the spot to take the F11 from Sucre for these difficult shots.
There's another round of feeding when these birds attacked Sucre's uncle for food. What a messy eater!
Hawk, Eagles and Owls
This was the last big show for the day in the bird park and there's two playgrounds beside it for Ruixuan to have fun too. It started drizzle again and the birds were a bit reluctant to fly too. Reluctant birds, poor weather, H1 not suited for flying birds (EVF mah). Sigh...
This bird did something wrong and had to stand for the rest of the class.
The bald eagle was punished for sporting an unacceptable hair cut.
'Professor Dumbledore' was nearby to ensure that the punishment were meted out to the younglings.
Hawk Show
Many people were standing inside the shelter, watching the show from far, while some of those, like us, took the seats and brave the rain for a better view.
These birds are big
How does it feel to be a bird stand?
Who woke me up so early in the evening?! I'm all grumpy now!
Zipped! Wheww....
You can't catch me!
The sharpest photo taken of the flying birds were those when the birds left my field of view. Followed closely by this shot.
So the main complains for the bird shots - Hard to trace with EVF and the megazoom involved. The birds leave your view in a split second and you can't locate them in your EVF easily when in full telephoto. Plus I need higher shutter speed, and to a certain extent, faster AF and burst mode to improve the hit rate. Finally one thing that the H1 couldn't really do well in.
singapore birds jurong bird park photoblog dsc h1
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