For the girls out there who find furry animals totally irresistible.

Today marks a new beginning of my life as it starts another chapter in my adventure. These few years have been very fruitful as I'm doing a lot more adult stuff than ever before... If someone ask me what's my job, I think one of the many replies I could give them is "I'm a full time adult".

Anyway, some of you may be looking forward to this series of pics. If you haven't got them in CD yet, you can preview some of it here. And er... it's 1600 x 1200 size, good for 4R prints. $88 for 2 original size photos if you like any of them. Buy 42 get rest free promotion ends this National Day. LOL...

Yes, I'm aware that I can be very very lame at times.



Grad Photo

Everyday I keep hearing stories about rising costs of living. Prices for properties on the rise, prices for COE on the rise. Even roti prata costs $1.50 now and to quote the friendly duck rice stall in Ghim Moh market after more than a month of renovation works, "Now no more 30 cents rice, only 50 cents rice" even though I just heard him said a minute ago to another customer "I never adjust my price, duck rice still $2.50". Jia Jia from Sheng Siong that used to cost $8.80 per carton now is on offered at the discounted price of $11.60. Petrol just increased by 5 cents per litre a couple of days ago. Of course, there's rising medical bills with the greatest increase at C ward patient even before means testing is put into place.

Heck, even trainee teachers are better paid now. A good $300 more than what I used to get in the past as seen from the MOE website. And it's pretty close to what I'm getting now even though I in my 2nd year of teaching as a trained teacher. I'm looking forward to the formal writing to whatever adjustments MOE would made to recently appointed teachers.

It's been quite some time since the cost of living increased so tremendously. I thought that a good economy means that people would become richer. But with everything on the increase, we might just end up poorer because we have to pay a lot more compared to the past. It seems like a no win situation for middle to low income folks like us.

At least I still earn enough to support my photography. And in the future, my wife and my family.

Grrrrr... especially when there's so many things in my head...

Here's some selected photos from Angkor Wat. A true wonder (recall my old old post)

Moving into the entrance


We used the centre gate meant for the kings, the one you see here are for officials, the one further back is for commoners


Centre view of Angkor Wat


The favourite Angkor Wat angle - reflections of Angkor


Angkor, a closer look at the architecture


Something modern, to protect us and the site


The many corridors with added touch to protect these ancient rocks

To be continued...

Maybe Ms Leong could share some of her insights about economics which I know nuts of. But for some reasons unknown to me, I know that the price difference of some lenses that I'm hoping to buy in Singapore is so huge that I could get a return airfare to Hong Kong to get those lenses and still end up with a huge savings.

The stuff are as follows
1.) Sony Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* DT 16-80mm - $1,285–
2.) Sony SAL 50mm F1.4 Lens - $637 –
3.) Sony SAL500F80… price - $1,187
Price before GST. Makes up to more than S$3.3k if I buy locally. If I visit those specialized camera shops like MS Color or Cathay, I might be able to save up to a max of $200 I guess.

Let's look at the price in Hong Kong Sony Style
http://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/alpha_lens/index.jsp

In the same order,
1.) 5390 hkd
2.) 2690 hkd
3.) 5590 hkd

For a grand total of about $2.65k SGD! That's a S$650 savings at least if I get from Sony Style HK compared to Sony Style SG! And the tickets for return airfare to Hong Kong from Pricebreaker.com? S$280 (or S$400 for SIA). Even if $280 does not include airport tax and fuel surcharge, I'll still save quite a sum. Plus, if I source out local stores like Wing Shing which seems to hold good reputation in HK, I may get the lens at 10% cheaper than official HK Sony price too! WTH?!! (P.S. Hong Kong don't have GST, yet)

Similarly, I could save lots of money if I buy from USA instead but the air fare there is more expensive plus my passport is non-biometric ready. (However, I got a friend in USA) The best thing about USA is that I could buy online safely and get them to deliver to Singapore and still save hundreds. And if there is anything wrong with the lens, I can mail back my lenses (twice) for exchange with the money I saved! More so if I buy a few lenses at the same time

I bet local distributors might wonder why business for their Sony lens is so bad. That's because they shot themselves by pricing it ridiculously high. The only thing that is cheaper locally? Perhaps its the flash gun.

Crap.. I'm itching for some new glass. Is this an addiction?

Just barely 24 hours ago, I came to an end of a 15 hour work day... here's what happened


Super chatty before and after adjusting her hair. Still looks as cute as ever. Taken during the NE symposium break.




Followed by the parent teacher meeting for our pioneers... most of them got the rude shock after the common tests in their first quarter of the 2 years 'A' level course.

Then this morning it's Harry Potter craze as the story finally comes to an end. Would Rowling really write the 8th book? Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis since the story ended 19 years later? Opps. Was that a spoiler for some of you? Nevermind that, there's a lot more twists and turns in the story to keep you occupied for quite a while...

Racial Harmony Day Celebrations Special Edition Part 3 and 4
and so the 3rd part of the celebrations included here with a bit of part 4. Part 2 is not publishable while I had to miss most of part 4 due to listening comprehension invigilation for 'O' level Chinese.


The latest hand gesture so popular with the 15 year olds, the buddha palm flip stance



It's time to play hide and seek shoot with my form class


Smiling even when they are scolded, but these 3 girls got the potential to shoot toothpaste advertisement, don't you agree?


And not forgetting, ahem, photos of the rich, famous and cultured beings there. (Just kidding)

Did we meet our objectives for racial harmony? Better ask our guest french 'ang moh' there.

The ideal world is boring. Everything is in black and white. Everything fits into different categories perfectly. The bad guy is always evil and the good guy is always kind. You will always reap rewards proportional to the effort you put in and there will always be good karma and bad karma. Blah Blah Blah... Life gets pretty stale when it comes in only 2 flavours for everything that we do, chocolate and vanilla.

Luckily, the world comes in different shades of grey, and in colours too.

I never do any statistical studies but I'll guess that for an average human, we may be performing more than 100 tasks a day. And every activity or task we work on comes in 3 stages that you can see in the title. Fortunately (or is it unfortunately) for all the idealists out there, most things that we do are simple ideal tasks.

For example, you may have the intention to take a shower, so your action would be to grab a set of washed clothes and get into the bathroom to shower. The end product is that you will feel refreshed and clean at the end of the shower.

Simple tasks like the example above is simple due to 3 factors. One is that the actions and consequence of your action fulfills your intention. Second is that it does not involve a second person. Thirdly, the whole process is an isolated event. In our ideal world, it's so simple. In the real world, your sister might be using the bathroom or there could be a cockroach there. Nonetheless, these 'perturbations' is not what makes life interesting...

Life is interesting because of interactions with other people. When your intentions involves people, when your action involves people and you consequences involve people, especially when that people is someone you care for. And because it involves people, intentions, actions and consequences is dependent on the subjective views of individuals.

There's quite a few forum letters to the newspaper recently debating about the issue of same-sex parents. These parents, who are lesbians, adopted some under privileged orphans and took cared of them. Many people are arguing over if that is a right thing to do, is it beneficial to the child and if society should accept it as a norm.

The couple started off with noble intentions, to adopt and take care of under privileged orphans. But they do it as a pair of same-sex parents. The choice of their actions led to many controversies in the forums with many conservative Singaporeans writing in to say why it is wrong to do so because of such and such consequences. Their argument includes stuff like children with parents of different gender are better off and that the kids will grow up confused about their gender, that they should raise kids in 'normal' families etc. In some instances, religious books were quoted too. On the other hand, the open-minded Singaporeans were glad that these kids were well taken care off by capable adults, that the kids found warmth and love.

Our actions may be interpreted differently by people. They say great minds think alike, but I guess it's that the person who thinks like you seems to be smarter to you. Intentions seldom matter when we interact with people because we could never measure intentions accurately but we could observe the actions and consequences easily even though the actions that we take are reflections of our intention. And people would take different actions even when they have the same intentions. This is what makes the world interesting. That's why there's such a buzz about these lesbian couples.

As for the consequences, there are long term consequences and short term ones. There are individual consequences and societal ones. There are many different consequences related to an action. Some consequences fulfills your intention while some do not. There are some that may be opposite to your intentions and there could be other consequences that is totally unrelated to your intentions. Just like the lesbian couple who adopted the children. Getting into the limelight of forum discussion is a relatively unrelated consequence to their intention of caring for their children. Providing care and love when nobody else is doing it now is a good short term consequence and if the naysayers are right, in the long term it may not be so good. What about the children's point of view? If you are posted the question if the lesbian couple were right in doing what they did, how could you answer in a black and white manner?

Life is not black and white. It is colourful. I'm so tired... Year 5 PTM coming up... it's been a long long week. I hope I'm coherent. Finally I can rest, for less than 7 hours.

Racial Harmony Day Celebrations Special Edition Part Satu
If I'm not wrong this is the first time we get an outdoor event for our campus radio station. And man is the echo disturbing. Nonetheless, some 'behind' the scenes for this 'outdoor' and 'indoor' radio event.


From the left - The 'Producer' who grabs passerby, also the most chatty of all and the 2 radio Dee Jays in the 'studio'

Shameless pic of the banner with a pic taken by (me or Mich, can't remember) during orientation... looks like it but i can't remember

Our future students?