Click to embiggen. / ISO 1600 · f/2.8 · 1/60s
K got himself a manual-focus 50mm lens for $50 earlier this month. Getting things in focus is really tricky! The stiff focus ring is partly the reason why, but $50 was a steal.
The Passenger
Posted in • photos/images.
25 July 2010, 3:30 am
#15
I like my chocolate cakes dense and moist; K-ki’s was a little dry. I will go back to try other cakes, but The Little Dröm Store was perfect — I wanted to buy everything. There was a zine with absolutely delightful caricatures and they tickled me so! If you are in Chinatown, do drop by The Little Dröm Store at Ann Siang for the most precious bits and bobs, then have tea and cake at K-ki right after. :) They share the same shop space.
Posted in Food, Love, • photos/images.
25 July 2010, 3:06 am
Waiting for the world to change
Three shots by Siggie at Parco next NEXT:
Posted in • photos/images.
24 July 2010, 2:38 am
Fire
Click to enlarge.
If it is born in flames then we should let it burn
Burn as brightly as we can
And if it’s gotta end, then let it end in flames
Let it burn all the way down
Posted in • photos/images.
20 July 2010, 1:17 am
New lenses
Two posts in a day!? You’re in for a treat. :)
Got a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 and a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 yesterday. The first three photographs were shot with the Sigma on my 50D and the last two were taken with the Tokina. Apart from making colour temperature adjustments, cropping and resizing, those five pictures were not digitally retouched. The lenses are sharp enough wide open in my opinion; I am no pixel-peeper and I always post-process. I did not get to play with the lenses much because my dad “borrowed” them for a while. I will only get the glasses back after the 20th! :( Chromatic aberration’s rather strong on both lenses, I noticed, but I have to spend more time with the glasses before I comment further. Can’t wait to shoot with them.
Posted in • photos/images.
12 July 2010, 7:07 pm
Miss Clarity Café with CGM
The food was definitely not mind-blowing save for Mud Ooze: a chocolate lava cake topped with vanilla ice cream. The chocolate was still bubbling when it was served! Chocolate lava cake is hard to fault… I think I can down two or three of that myself. :D Someday, with K, I will attempt and perfect a chocolate lava cake recipe, and have those heavenly desserts every other hour… Then die because I got morbidly obese. Food aside, let me point out my grossly round cheeks and awfully square jawline which makes my face look even fatter in the photo of G and me. I have to enlarge and make copies of the picture and distribute them to my favourite dining places. They shall serve as a very graphic reminder that I am indeed piling on the kilos. *stabs self*
All of us only had time for lunch that day and just one meal together after months of not seeing each other is far from enough. At the start of the year, we swore to get together every month but arrangements are difficult to make when work, school, family, etc. all demand time from us. I am distraught because G will be leaving for Edinburgh in September, and C for Australia next February. That leaves M and me. To say that I will miss C and G, and the four of us collectively, is a massive understatement. :( What is worse is that C will be there for three years, and G for six! Did I say I am distraught? :( :( :( :(
Posted in Food, Friends, • photos/images.
12 July 2010, 3:27 pm
Late Night Fears
I don’t know what to do with my life or if I am on the right path.
I want so much more but how?
I am afraid I will never be as good as I am in my head.
I am but a grain of sand, a leaf in a forest, a droplet in the sea.
I am nobody. How can I be sure I will, someday, be somebody?
What scares me even more is that I have no answers at all.
Posted in Life, • thoughts.
9 July 2010, 3:31 am
Ootoya + Big O Cafe & Restaurant with Rey & Co.
This dinner at Ootoya (Orchard Central #08-12) was from early June, before Rey left for his internship in Boston. The first time we were there was in October last year for Yihui’s birthday, and we retured because the food is decent (and decently priced too). :) This restaurant is frequented by the Japanese and if the fare is good enough for them, it’s good enough for us!
Rey ordered the char-grilled pork set, and I got the chicken alternative. Both were palatable, but Rey’s was more flavourful, I believe, because of the luscious pork fat. Tommy had kimchi (yes, in a Japanese restaurant…) and gave his nod of approval. Unfortunately, I do not have the habit of noting down the names of dishes ordered and with my memory prowess equivalent to that of a goldfish, I can not remember what Yihui and Brian (they ordered the same thing) thought of their dinner.
I am a big fan of after-meal sweets and so I brought the guys to Big O Cafe & Restaurant (Wheelock Place #02-04/05) for cakes. Their cakes are very rich and rather heavy, so unless you are a chocoholic, I suggest sharing. One of my favourites is Bananaruma, a dense chocolate cake with banana slices. We had one of that, a cheesecake (tiramisu?) and a mud pie. I once had a mud pie from New York New York that was basically a huge amount of chocolate contained in a dessert pie shell (known as Mississippi mud pie), and mistakenly thought all mud pies were made that way. I was rather disappointed the first time I was served an ice cream mud pie.. Just so you know, Big O serves the ice cream variation.
I downloaded a WordPress plugin* to try a new way of presenting my “picspam” because I felt scrolling down a page to look at pictures was inefficient, and I wanted to display photographs at sizes larger than 510px. If you are viewing my blog straight from a browser instead of a RSS reader, you should see a group of thumbnails which will enlarge when clicked. I have no idea how this will look on a RSS reader though. Let me know if this solution is good!
* I’m now using Fancy Gallery instead of Lightbox Plus. Fancy Gallery does not preload images but looks better.
Posted in Blog, Food, Friends, • photos/images.
7 July 2010, 2:41 pm
{Photolog} K’s birthday
May 22: K’s birthday.
In short: we lunched at Bel Mondo (fantastic), strolled around Resorts World Sentosa to look-see (disappointing; Marina Bay Sands was more awe-inspiring), had dinner at Chili’s (another let down) before finishing with desserts at Max Brenner Chocolate Bar (marvellous!). :)
Posted in Food, Love, • photos/images.
24 June 2010, 12:19 am