christography

It’s so strange to have my kids flipping through my website during my class. I just do not know how to react to that!

I carried a 9 month old child in my arms yesterday. My neighbor is looking after him for the next 2 days. It was a child that had a mother that could not take care of him, and a father nowhere in sight or sound. This small adorable life was from a broken family. 

He didn’t know that. I wonder when he would start realizing that. When will his life decide to make a change when he realizes that? What kind of change would he make? Good, educated choices, I hope. His name was David. 

My life isn’t that bad when I realize this. He looked eurasian, with huge eyes, dark skinned, curly hair. I hear he’s chinese, though.

I love this little baby. He is very adorable. He will go back to his mom tomorrow. *hugs* little one, and may the love and blessings of the world befall upon you in the coming years. And when we do meet again, you’d be full of smiles and not frowns.

Every year, without fail, I get asked to help look for a piano. I’ve been out of the music industry for more than 10 years, and yet, people still ask! Nice to know people remember. 

Anyways, must remember to write an entry so my friends can come and use this as a reference!

I spent a lot of my lunar new year listening to some mandarin CDs which I’d bought over the past year. I was actually quite shocked to hear some of the quality produced. I will not mention names as I’ve heard how fans are fanatical and illogical.

First, there are those who can’t sing, otherwise known as 偶像派, which is to say they are technically not so good, but are extremely delicious in the looks / image department. I cannot image how these people could even make a music album. There have been many western singers out there who are more good looking than good singing, but at the very least, they have some other talent, like playing a percussive instrument, writing songs, creating dances moves that changed the dance industry, producing albums, come from a musical background, (you don’t need to know how to sing to produce or play an instrument), etc. None of these mandarin singers even have anything else besides being good looking. Can’t they just make some music video where they are one of the dancers and don’t have to sing? Gawd, what have the world come to?

Then, there are the 實力派, they are good to hear, but packaging could really be better. Most produce albums which are diverse in styles to reflect what ’sells well’, and do not really gel as a ‘complete series’ in a CD. Much like shooting a series of images for Photography. At least, for some of these, the subsequent albums will see them come true to their own personal styles.

Ever wondered why would happen if you shot for a circular panorama and then use Photo Stitch to stitch it up? Well, here it is, after 3 hours and 3.6G of a file. Of course, I shrunk it down to a much more useable size!

I like the fact that it looks like mountains in a singaporean skyline. Abstract.

Everyone’s talking about how facebook connects people, etc. How do I use facebook to go beyond the first 6 degrees? Like if I want to see how 2 of my friends have common friends with me? Doesn’t work that way, yeah?

Here’s a new idea. You heard it here first.

My home is beginning to smell so nice. 

There was this article I read that teaches people how to keep their jobs in this economic downturn. 

It goes in the likes of:

1. Make yourself valuable by thinking of ways to help the business make more money, or value add / value create (note the use of archaic fancy terms here).

2. Work harder than your co-workers. Work overtime.

3. Arrive at work earlier than anyone else and show enthusiam.

4. Be more involved in the other areas around the workplace, don’t just focus on your area of work. Expand your usefulness. 

5. Give up on countless the smoke breaks and make it a known to everyone at work. Go healthy, stay committed. A good trait that employers would like.

6. Encourage a sense of friendship in a workplace. Team building is a sign of leadership.

etc etc etc. The list does goes on.. I think they have 10 pointers, don’t know since I stopped here at about 6. The most idiotic one has to be the ‘work overtime’ tip. If you can actually find something to do so you can actually do meaningful overtime, then what have you been doing all this while? 

I can’t help but wonder the kind of people who would take this article seriously. If you need to be told  what should already be expected of you, well, you deserve to be fired. And looking back at all the people I know who work in factories, offices, banks, schools, etc.. I think a lot of people will loose their jobs. 

And thinking of the bosses that I know and hear of, most will make use of the current economic situation to pressure the staff to do much more than they are suppose to do and pay less. This will, of course, create the wrong culture of just work and no leisure (except maybe for the boss). Instead of using this time to build a stronger company through pay cuts while keeping and training the staff to better their work, they’ve chosen the easy route of bullying. 

And some employees will only want to work at the higher rank of a company because they don’t want to work that hard, but at the same time fail to realize they don’t really deserve that. 

This is a story about the need for good employers and employee.

A definite conversation piece. Printed in 18% gray; a photographic definition that’s still being discussed this day: Do we really need 18% or do we really need 12% since light meters read 12% and not 18%? Why 18% and not 50%? How do we really get gray these days? Not forgetting the white gutters which serves as a white balance point when shooting (we could try to use the gray, but how DO we get real gray?) 

See? Conversation on photography.

Just a little thing that I thought is really important in the promotion of photography. It is not just for the photographers, but also for the young and old, aunties and uncles on the street. 

We need people to understand the value of photography. To put value in art; and not “I dun understand leh.” infront of conversations regarding art, in particular photography. As artists, we understand how life is art, and art is life, we need an audience to understand that as well.