As expected, a cheap third party macro lens would have quality issues and required a bit more photoediting to clean up. But is still valuable to let me have a hands on to learn about macro photography.

Ironically, a close up lens let me take macro photos further from my subject and hence I could use flash macro photography. Which is very helpful since it will let me use higher shutter speed at lower ISO values hence getting better quality pictures. In return, the background will be darker (depends on the environment that I shoot it). But it's so darn hard to get good focus at full telephoto macro.

Looks like a good macro lens would be coming my way soon after I get my pay increment, and hopefully, some mid-year bonus.


Look at the colour around the edges at the bottom left corner. It's bluish on one side and yellowish on the other. This is known as chromatic aberration (or rainbow effect). I think that is why those expensive macro lens consists of two glass elements at least.


The same photo edited. Not perfect yet but it's better nonetheless.

These are chilli flowers by the way and the ant you see are the typical small ants we find in our house all the time. Obviously this is not the closest I can get but is more or less the best I could do, so far, hand held.

singapore macro flower kenko photoblog dsc h1

Something funny happened a week ago at IMM, sucre and I brought along Xiaobudian to IMM to play at the playground, and this young lady thought we were a pair of young parents and wanted to share with us some information on child healthcare. Sucre was so shocked she immediately denied that Xiaobudian was our child. It was so funny. But I had to admit, who would have guess that we aren't a pair of young parents. And here's why.


Me walking with xiaobudian


Having some fun at the playground


That's the lady on the right who made the honest mistake


Rules for the playground


That were meant to be broken


This family even fed their kid when she was running at the playground. I even spotted some food dropping on the floor, yikes!

All photos taken with the Fuji F11 here.

singapore IMM photoblog fuji f11

A year ago, I blog about an unreasonable man in yahoo auctions who demanded 'his' CD' that he was suppose to had won but got outbidded at the last minute by another bidder. He tried means and ways, including offering a 'higher price than $2.40' and threatened to pull out from other deals if he don't get his way. When I kindly point out that it is unreasonable to pull out from the deal and I will not hesitate in giving negative feedback, he claimed that I am using scare tactics. At the end, the auction ended amicably when he decided to pay for the item that he won and accept reluctantly that he lost the other.

A year later, I met with another unreasonable bidder in yahoo auctions. Which makes me wonder, are they (unreasonable bidders) a seasonal phenomenon? Anyway, let this be a lesson for me, you and everybody who reads it.

The whole account of the story is as follows. Richard surf the yahoo auctions and saw my advertisement about selling a used camera at $160. Everything starts from that point onwards.

The advertisement for the camera is as below.

Terms and conditions clearly stated. Take note of the point at the 2nd last line that states I had updated lately, the price is reduced now and no bargaining. And this is what happened chronologically.

This is what happen when he saw the advertisement.

27 May 2006, 2pm: Richard offered $140 and to get it from me at Clementi personally. He left his contacts on the question and answer option at Yahoo Auctions. (Obviously Richard did not read instructions, because he must had missed the no bargaining sign, anyway, I did not read the messages until I got the second one below)

27 May 2006, 4:20pm: Richard bidded for my camera at $160, the buy now price and won the auctions. See here for the page if you are those who need hard facts. He left another message at the question and answer option requesting for arrangement of meetup.

I have the screenshot of the questions he posted, which is only visible to me, the seller, because I have yet to answer his queries. Only questions that are answered by sellers would be published. I did not post the screenshot directly here because it contained Richard's private information.

27 May 2006, about 6pm: I checked my email just before dinner and found that someone won my P3, finally somebody wants to buy it after generating it's fair share of interest. Therefore I send a confirmation sms to arrange for meet-up to deal with Richard using the number he provided. This is roughly what follows in the intermitted 30-45min sms conversation.

1. Me: I sms to confirm he won the P3 at $160 and suggest a time tomorrow for trade
2. Richard: He sms to bargain for $140 (bargain x 2)
   
3. Me: I politely remind him of my terms (no bargaining) and offer to trade for $140 but without the 256mb memory stick (which is still useful for me with my H1).
4. Richard: He sms to confirm that he wants the P3 and agreed with $160 and he wants it tonight (If he backed out here, I would graciously let him off with a neutral rating)
5. Me: I thanked him and offer meetup at any time before 10pm at my flat's void deck or 8pm at Clementi MRT
6. Richard: He sms to bargain for $150 if he collect at my flat's void deck (bargain x 3)
7. Me: I remind him politely not to bargain again and told him firmly that I won't give discount.
8. Richard: (After some considerations) I want to cancel my bid because it's too expensive. (What the heck?!)
   
9. Me: Sure, but I would have to give you a negative feedback because that is not a good reason. (You agreed to the price by bidding it on Yahoo Auction and agreed to it again through sms and now you are backing out?! He had taken me for a ride and is irresponsible with his bidding, therefore I politely inform him that I will give a negative feedback because I find his reason totally unacceptable at this stage.)
10. Richard: It will be reciprocated (means giving me a negative rating too), thanks for your understanding. (Now that I don't understand. Is this a petty tic for a tac?). Screenshot of original sms here.
    
11. Me: For what reasons may I know? (I challenge him to give a reason, because if I die, I want to know what killed me)
12. Richard: Yahoo Auctions let bidders to back out (This is something unheard of, for all the years selling and buying in yahoo, all I knew was that a bid is a contract to buy, and this is what yahoo auctions say about bidders who don't honour their bid. In short, rate them negatively.)
13. Me: If there is a good reason why not (rate me negatively) I have stated clearly (repeating my stand here)... I don't accept that (you reason to back out) as a good reason. I don't think you have good reason to rate me negatively. But that is your right to choose to do so. (Now this guy is seriously pissing me off, he is so unreasonable. He backed out from a bid, don't bother to say sorry and want to threaten me with a negative rating if I give him one?). You can read original sms here and here.
    
14. Richard: It's your right and mine too. Good Luck but as a seller you would be more disadvantage for your potential buyer. Good luck to you. (Is that a threat? Can I sue him for criminal intimidation? Just kidding. I have a clean record as a seller and had been rated good by 81 other buyers compared to 27 sellers for Richard. On paper, I am 300% more credible than Richard. I don't need him to remind me of the disadvantage but I'm more concern in seeing justice done.) See sms here.
    
15. Me: Good luck to you too, your actions would reflect well on your character. Thanks for your concern for my selling online. (I have no wish to pursue this matter any further with him and pointed to him that his actions would be good reflection of his character.)
16. Richard: He asked me to stop and go to do what I want to do. (Which I have every intentions of doing)

Bid at buy price of 160 but keep bargaining for discount despite written clearly on the item info that no bargaining. Agreed at $160 finally but back out again last min, reason too ex. Threaten to give -ve rating in return for no good reason when informed.

Very foul temper and bad behaviour. Better think twice abut buying anything from him. No patience and never reply my earlier message to him

This is inspired by MP Denise Phua on her recent comments on managing the internet. In short, Denise was shock to find an overwhelming anti-PAP comments on the internet and said the gahmen should manage us (luckily she did not use the word "fix"). Perhaps rich investors such as Bill Gates, who might rely on internet sources, particularly blog of unknown individuals, for news would think negatively of Singapore and don't give discount when we buy MS Office.

So here's some suggestion on how to "manage" the internet.

Great Firewall of Singapore
Do it the China way by building a Great Firewall of Singapore to search and filter all things perceived as negative by PAP such as NYP Tammy video, James Gomez News, persistently non-political podcasts.

Pros: There's a model (China) to follow, full control for government, can claim to create jobs for drones to do search & destroy block for these sites, peasants can't complain over things they can't see.

Cons: Induces more quitters, likely to p*ssed off investors/foreign talents, Internet is approximately infinitely large, smartass hackers can get around it and do more harm.

Likelihood: Singapore already have a great firewall in various extent, mrbrown was once famously banned by MOE two years ago (See here). But the firewall is unlikely to be the main tool for managing Internet for a simple reason, it's almost impossible to visit all websites/forums/blogs of Singaporeans to be effective.

Defamation and Law Suits
Something the Lee and Lee family likes to do to dissidents is to sue them in order to legally shut them up. Famous casualties include J.B. Jeyaretnam and Dr Chee Soon Juan. Even though I'm too "young" to be familiar with Jeyaretnam, I did witness Dr Chee infamously asking our then PM Goh "where is the money?!" been broadcasted infinitely on national TV. A more related example is the Acidgate a year ago where a Singaporean blogger was sue by A*Star over comments written on his blog.

Pros: Mostly worked very well, makes it illegal for others to do the same too, windfall from all the damages to be paid up.

Cons: Might backfire if you accidentally sue someone more powerful than you unless you are already the most powerful (Refer to T.T. Durai NKF Saga), placing the issue on the spotlight by suing would defeat the purpose of shutting individuals up. Possible work around by hiding comments behind satire or using disclaimers such as "persistently non-political podcast"

Likelihood: Expect to see it for a few high profile individuals (or a small group of peasants) to serve as a warning tactic once in a while. It takes too much effort to identify every individual and to bring them to court. History also tells us that the easiest way to bring more negative opinions and unwanted attention to all things you wanted to hide is to sue the other fellow.

Law by Law
Since the Government can just add/change/remove laws in Singapore easily, like they did for the recent elections to ban podcasts and persistent political blogging, it will be easy to make it illegal for Singaporeans to persistently write negative things about Singapore hence scaring away foreign investors. Famous example such as making music file sharing over Napster, mIRC etc illegal and the chewing is bad for SMRT ban.

Pros: Costs next to nothing to lay down new laws, essential step for lawsuit strategy above.

Cons: Run the risk of falling behind North Korea (Position 167, last while Singapore is at 140) in the Freedom of Speech index, gives bloggers more negative things to write about, encourages bloggers to read guide to anoymous blogging.

Likelihood: 99.9999999%. But this will be as effective as curbing illegal music download by closing Napster and stopping mIRC.

singapore essay pap mp

Yes, I've fallen deeper and deeper into my hobby and started to buy and buy accessories for my camera. This time round it is a macro lens set bought second hand online. It's so cool to finally get my hands on not one, not two, but three macro lens at the same time. Why? Because macro lens could stack. If you stack them together you can get much larger images! Here's some images to prove it to you.

All images are original uncropped but resized versions.

Original Sony H1 Wide Angle Macro

First, this is taken with the H1 native wide angle macro function, my Jia Jia herbal tea is almost touching the lens and the camera is blocking so much light that I have to compensate with a longer exposure hence burning the brighter edges.

Kenko Macro lens No. 3 with 1.7x Teleconvertor, Telephoto Macro

I can even stack my Sony 1.7x Teleconvertor lens with the macro lens to obtain this image. It's about the same size as the wide angle macro but without the shadow problem. Things are looking promising from here.

Kenko Macro lens No. 1, 2 and 3 stacked with 1.7x Teleconvertor, Telephoto Macro

Now this shot is taken with 3 macro lens stacked together. Voila! An even larger image. Note, the sides are blurry because of the shallow depth of field and that the can is curved.

Kenko Macro lens No. 3, Telephoto Macro

Now if I removed the teleconvertor, I could obtain this with my No.3 lens, which is about the same as stacking 3 macro lens with my teleconvertor. For some reasons, the minimum focus distance is further with the teleconvertor. Something I did not expect.

Kenko Macro lens No. 1, 2 and 3 stacked, Telephoto Macro

This would be the largest magnification I could get with the lens stacked together. Why don't you take out a can of Jia Jia herbal tea and compare for yourself.

Now, I had only played with my macro lens for like, 20 minutes before I started with this and there is much for me to learn with my new toys. (Yippee!) And I did some simple estimation to what the macro lens could do. Here's a quick summary of my findings on the length captured in the images. I repeat, all values are estimated using my Jia Jia can drink and a 15cm plastic ruler.

• Original wide angle macro: 4.5cm
• Lens 3 telephoto macro: 2.9cm
• Lens 1, 2 & 3 telephoto macro: 1.8cm

The chalet period falls during my term time so I had to travel back to school from the north eastern point of Singapore at Pasir Ris to the south western point of Singapore at NTU. Nonetheless, I still managed to do a few things at the chalet and here are some photos of it.


With the pool 20m away from our chalet, swimming tops the priority list of things to do there. No, you won't find photos of me or sucre in swimming wear here.


Of course, lunch was packed from the famous nasi lemak stall at Changi Village, just a 10 minutes drive from the chalet.


Sucre was complaining about this toilet located at Pasir Ris park inside the Fishermen's Village. 20 cents per entry and yet does not provide toilet paper.


The chalet included a mandatory trip to downtown east at night. But no Wild Wild Wet or any other expensive stuff. Downtown East is like the most expensive chalet among the stretch there and with the best facilities.


Cute mini mahjong set for sale there. Brought a mahjong set but pity nobody played there. What a shame. I missed those bridge games with my fellow friends in NUS too.


This is the cutest chinese chess set I've ever seen. It's based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the pieces were made after famous characters such as Guan Gong (关羽， 云长) and Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮，孔明).


And the magnificent view from the swimming pool at Costa Sands.


3X zoom from my F11. There's another spot to "peek" up which is a bottom up view of the pool.

Which chalet would you prefer? The cheaper yet larger, scenic and tranquil version or the expensive and smaller but packed full of facilities and entertainment stuff? I know which one to go for.

This is the final instalment for the chalet photos that I had taken, finally. I've certainly enjoyed the trip and the photos.

All photos taken with the Fuji F11 except for the first photo (Sony H1).

Related Links
Xiaobudian wants to buy this chalet
Chalet: Bird Watching
Chalet: Seaside View at Pasir Ris Park
Chalet: Nature Walk

singapore chalet downtown east swimming pool chess mahjong fuji f11 photoblog dsc h1

You don't need to pay an entrance fee to walk down some man-made nature walk to admire flora and fauna at some local amusement/entertainment/tourist park or island. If you just pay careful attention to your surroundings, I'm sure there are plenty around too. So these are my findings when I took a slow walk around Pasir Ris beach and the chalet area. First up, all the flowers.

Warning! This is a picture intensive post.


White flowers in full bloom are very difficult to picture because it is so easy to blow the white colour petals.


Another type of white flowers of sort.


We know that the number of petals on a flower follows a mathematical pattern known as the fibonacci numbers, just how do we count the petals for this one?


These yellow flowers remind me of the aloe vera flowers I took last time. Just that this is much prettier.


The yellow flowers closed up.


Is this a flower too? Or is it a fruit?


I seriously have no idea if it is a fruit or a flower.


But I'm 100% sure that this is a fruit.


Nice tree with blue sky as the background.


My 2nd favourite photo of nature taken at the chalet. This reptile here posing for just one shot before scampering away in a hurry.


This had got to be my favourite photo taken at the chalet, a colourful butterfly with transparent legs. Thankfully this subject were more patient with me and posed for several shots till I got it right at the end.

All photos here taken with the DSC H1. Even though I brought along the F11 and took a few flower shots with it, the colours and the results did not turn out as well as the H1 hence I decided to exclude the F11 shots from this collection. Hope you will enjoy this photo journey of the wonderful nature at your doorstep chalet at Pasir Ris. There's still more wonderful photographs to share.

Related Links
Xiaobudian wants to buy this chalet
Chalet: Bird Watching
Chalet: Seaside View at Pasir Ris Park
Chalet: A Short Photo Diary

singapore flower butterfly lizard trees nature pasir ris park photoblog dsc h1

There was a massive jam along Alexander road today and I was caught in it with sucre and xiaobudian. The reason behind this jam was that a BMW caught fire near a busy road junction and the civil defence had to come to put out the fire. Luckily, Alexander hospital and the fire station are just 3 minutes walk away from the accident scene. Here are the photos taken with Fuji F11, the handy take around camera for everyday use.


This black BMW underwent a facelift, it's a grey BMW now!


The number plate is gone and the front wheels are falling apart, but if you strain your eyes I think you can spot the blue/white logo for BMW above the number plate.


Enlarged crop of the number plate and BMW logo.


Students these days are so rich that they can bring their dSLR everywhere they go for shooting opportunities like these.

There are no visible dents on the car itself so it should not be a traffic accident. The car most likely caught fire by itself. No, this is not a anti-terrorist exercise. No one in their right state of mind would use a BMW on a weekday in the middle of a busy junction to do this exercise. According to my Dad's amateur expertise, he concluded that the vehicle caught fire because the driver went to "zhng" his car audio and the mechanics never insulate the wires properly causing the car to catch fire due to short circuit or sparks etc.

On other unrelated news, one of the two civil defence vehicles (or fire engine lar) present there was towed back to base. Is that junction "suay" or what?

singapore accident bmw photoblog fuji f11

Since Pasir Ris Park is just next to the chalet, there is a nice sea view if you take a minute to walk to the beach there. Surprisingly, we could see sunsets at Pasir Ris Park.


If you didn't notice, this colour is fake. I left the camera at flourescent white balance on purpose to get this sunset.


An alternative angle looking at the sunset.


Panoramic sunset. The sun, the sea and Pulau Ubin.


Stitched shot of the trees growing out of the sea by request of Sucre.


Stitched shot of the view towards the east side with all the industries. Just loved the clouds and the blue sky.

Once again, the quality of the shots are poor because of excessive compression used so that I could fit more images in flickr.

Related Links
Xiaobudian wants to buy this chalet
Chalet: Bird Watching
Chalet: Nature Walk
Chalet: A Short Photo Diary

singapore sunset pasir ris park photoblog dsc h1

Now the whole election is completely over and the mediacorp news stopped reporting on it, even the Jeff Lopez saga had came to an end. It may seem too late to put this out now but I think it's worth a read for two different reason.

Fruit Contest Results by Adam on the Road, a funny interpretation of the elections results. Recommended because it is funny.

Here are some reasons why 66% of Singaporeans prefer the durian sellers:

# For one, the durian is tasty to the carnal man and richer, and when eaten, gives you the strength to climb as many flights of stairs as there are leading up to one's HDB apartment. Old folks are particularly drawn to the durian for this reason even though many of them understand that it can be potentially harmful to take too much of the fruit.

While the Ministry has advised that H1 subjects be given less academic content than H2 topics, the load difference is almost negligible. What is worse is that teachers receive added pressure to deliver more within a reduced curriculum time for H1 subjects. Weak students and their committed teachers are the first to be affected.

The 5-day work week has now been transformed into a gridlock, ironically. The solution - have tests that end later on weekday afternoons some as late as 7pm. What does this translate to for teachers and students?

Also, some students in other JCs learn at a slower pace and would benefit from a less pressurised school system. The same critique applies to SPA and Project Work, compulsory subjects which claim to develop student competencies only to have these very aims dampened by ineffective and limited assessment modes which operate within a over-taxed school systemic model. You only need to interview outspoken teachers or students to obtain more evidence.

One thing that strike me at the chalet was the never ending songs one could hear from the birds there. There are mostly common birds we find around in Singapore but to find them all at the same place is something different.


Starting off with the most common type of birds found in Singapore.


Caught this crow in flight that keeps disturbing other birds and making my bird watching a challenge.


The cutest bird you find there.


I don't know what bird is this but I think I will call it panda bird, for obvious reasons.


Kingfishers? Well, I find them near the sea most of the time.


Green colour parrots.

All Most photos taken handheld with my DSC H1 at full zoom with telephoto lens attached (equivalent to 732mm focal length or about 21x zoom for a 35mm film equivalent camera). The image stabilization works really well on the H1 but the images are resized and degraded badly through jpg compression because I'm running near the limits at flickr for this month already.

Related Links
Xiaobudian wants to buy this chalet
Chalet: Seaside View at Pasir Ris Park
Chalet: Nature Walk
Chalet: A Short Photo Diary

singapore birds parrots kingfisher photoblog dsc h1