let u know how it goes when i am back alright

As for rice! Oh, I love it. I could eat plain ole white rice. A little butter in rice is so yummy too. I can eat it just about any way, lol. I love starchy foods. =D

Chris and I try to do our part in taking care of our environment. Using less water, recycling, driving an economy-friendly car, etc. It infuriates me too when people are so careless about their environment. My younger siblings are the worst. They are so wasteful, will leave their lights and tvs on ALL the time and run water way longer than needed. I can understand your anger!

Thank you so much for explaining HDR photos to me! I can’t wait to try it. I absolutely love going through my Nikon manual because there are so many things I have yet to learn–like HDR! Speaking of lugging around a tripod and what not, what kind of bag do you have for your camera, if you have one at all? I am just curious. =D

Welp, Alana is in my lap refusing to let me type more, so I will have to end this here for now, haha. She rules over me, that little devil! She keeps edging her little hands towards my laptop, lol. Sneaky sneaky..

Congrats on the freelancing design job! Hope all goes well. I sure do miss making layouts and graphics for people. It’s such a stressful job though. =P

@med: Wow, you’re getting a diving certification this month? Cool! Take care and good luck! Which island you’re going to – is it Redang or Pangkor islands?

@nann: Haha, indeed. The way they argue resembles so much like the old couples (Opal and Earl) in the comic strip called Pickles. Your legs aren’t short at all, haha!

Does your dislike for seafood stem from the potentially raw, uncooked taste in badly prepared fishes? My grandma has got this fear (and dislike) too – she rarely eats seafood because of a horrible experience with a rather undercooked fish decades ago (bad habits, and also bad experiences, die hard, haha!). I don’t come across Americans who love rice very often, heheh. I’ve got this US friend who came to my university for a one-semester exchange programme and he was horrified that rice is actually a staple food in Singapore. He said unless rice is served with lots and lots of melted cheese, he won’t eat it (and for me, I wouldn’t eat rice with cheese lol!).

I’m a tree-hugger too! It kills me inside to see that people couldn’t care less about the environment – they squander resources from the paper we use to the water we drink. I’ve seen people spreading tissue paper all over the toilet seats because they “don’t want their butts to be in contact with the surface where another person’s butt came into contact”. Bleagh. And it always irks me that my brother thinks it’s perfectly fine to leave the water running when he’s soaping up, and that my parents think spraying the car with lots of water is the right way of getting it cleaned (I’d prefer them using buckets of water, which saves a lot more).

I’m not that good at photogrpahy, Trina! Your compliments are really too flattering *blushes* Regarding the HDRs, they are constructed from three separate photos taken at varying exposures – usually one at normal exposure as metered by your camera, the other two is usually +/- 1 step in exposure. Then one will use a program (there’s an automated function in Photoshop CS or CS2 onwards) to combine the different exposures together.

Alternatively, you can create a pseudo-HDR image from one single camera RAW file (check the settings in your Nikon, I think there’s an option to shoot in JPEG, in RAW, or in a combination of both – i.e. JPEG + RAW). Do note that shooting in RAW reduces the frames per second the camera is designed too – for my camera, the frame rate drops to around 1 frame per second if I shoot in JPEG + RAW format, while it’s usually around 2 ~ 2.5 frames per second in JPEG only. With the RAW file, you can pass it through an automated programme (I use Photomatix 3 Pro) where it will automatically create a pseudo-HDR image from the RAW file. The reason why it’s called a ‘pseudo’ HDR is because a true HDR is composited from 3 or more photos taken at varying exposures. For true HDRs, I rarely produce them now because RAW files are so much easier to handle and I don’t need a tripod (it’s kind of heavy to lug it all around the place).

Sadly, the world is never fair… but I would love to see changes made in the system such that merit has the highest, or at its best, complete weightage for scholarship consideration. There’s this debate going on about household income as part of the seleciton criteria, but I’m not going into that because it’s a really tricky topic to tackle – should scholarship be based on merit only, or based on merit with the pre-requisite that a family has to be less-financially capable enough to be incapable of supporting the further education of their kids? It’s quite a hot topic in Singapore, heh. But I believe both of us agree that race should not play any part in scholarship consideration. That’s just baloney.

People have to wise up to the fact that H1N1 is not as deadly as it seems – as the days pass by, the death rate falls to 0.82% (as I calculated from the officially released numbers on the papers) across the globe. People who are more susceptible to death after infection are usually those who are older, weaker or younger – the same for the common flu. Annually, many thousands die from complications arising from common flu, and nobody is alarmed about it. From my observation, I agree with you that the media has feasted too much on the scare – while making lots of money from sales, they’re also spreading the untrue, illogical fear behind the H1N1 pandermic.

p/s: I just got a design job for a friend, so my theme has to be postponed by at least 2 weeks before I can resume the work :P

Good luck for your midterm exams! All the best, heh.

I don’t think I’ll be posting more hiking pictures because me myself is getting bored of yapping all about hiking trips lately :P teehee!

Currently the government is still busy tracking down the 79 people who were on two separate flights where the two confirmed H1N1 patients were on. I can’t believe that there are still people who refuses to be quarantined for the sake of the society’s safety. What are these people thinking?

The airport checkpoints only check for flu-like symptoms (most usually just check for fever, but it is reported that not all influenza A patients have fever, and some viruses are still in incubation stage whose physical manifestation of the infection are yet to show), so there’s nothing much the government can do about preventing the spread of the virus except for people taking responsibility for themselves and the society.

Oooh, I’ve never heard of Nasi Katok before! So it uses plain rice instead of coconut milk? Hmm, that’s interesting. I’ve never tried one with plain rice before, heheh.

Brunei has some heavily forested areas, and I’m looking forward to visit your country in the future :) I can imagine the beautiful, absolutely breath-taking sight from the mountain top looking out to the South China Sea. Woah!

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Oh my goodness. I am not a fan of fish or any sort of seafood for that matter.. BUT those dishes look so good. Maybe it’s the big pile of rice? Mmm. I do love rice. Rice soaked in coconut cream at that! Sounds so delicious. hehe

It’s so terrible reading about the part of the forest that caught on fire all because of some careless and stupid druggies. It’s horrible. I am such a tree-hugger, as you may know, so that image of the burned trees is so sad! Bleh. Stupid stupid people. Argh.

You are so amazing at photography, you really inspire me to get out there and try something NEW. I love your HDR and all that stuff. I still have yet to figure out HOW you accomplish this (I am determined to read up on it!) — I absolutely love that photo of the towers. The deep contrast color of the sky is brilliant! It really makes the clouds POP!. And with the dark green trees and landscape.. It’s simply lovely. I really dig this one. :D

Wow, I don’t blame you for being outraged by the lack of meritocracy of you country. That is ridiculous. I believe that exists every where. It’s ugly, the lack of merit and fairness in the world. I don’t think it’ll ever change.. sadly.

Gah, a part of me is a little tired of hearing about the H1N1 ordeal. I understand it’s importance, most definitely.. but it seems as though the news stations, at least out here anyways, it’s literally scaring the crap out of people. I was one of those people. For being such a health and clean freak, I was a bit nervous about the outbreak. Especially after hearing there were cases breaking out near my town. It was terrifying. But after realizing that the number of deaths from the normal flu highly outnumbers the deaths of the swine flu.. I wasn’t so scared. I’m just going to continue to wash my hands and stay clean and hope I’ll be fine. :)

As for your new WP theme! You know I’m so anxiously waiting for it. I do admire your simplistic and clean style. =)

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