Women's 10K

Went to support my dearest in her first ever 10K run!
A slideshow tribute to the girls.... of cos photography by me..*wink*

Women's 10K run. 21st October 2007

Kimi is the F1 WORLD CHAMPION!!!!!

OMG, Speechless, goosebumps....

Been a supporter of F1 since 2000....and last night was the defining moment of my life as FANatic...

Kimi Raikkonen, who just turned 28 on Wednesday 24/10, won the Formula1 World Driver's Championship by ONE POINT!!

Lewis Hamilton has been leading the points for almost the entire season with Fernando Alonso and Kimi lagging far behind at points of the season.

Kimi needed to win the final race in Brazil with Alonso taking 3rd or lower and Hamilton 6th or lower to claim his first driver's title.

And win he did! Starting in 3rd behind Masa and Hamilton, the Ferrari duo made the perfect start into Senna S and kept Hamilton behind. This allowed Alonso to be wheel-to-wheel to Hamilton by turn 2 and Alonso managed to pass Hamilton and forcing Hamilton to make a mistake a turn 4. Hamilton's Mclaren had a technical glitch where it went into Neutral gear for 40sec, dropping him back of the field.

THE DREAM had begun!!!!!! Though the positions looked right for a Kimi win, it was too early to dismiss Hamilton as he 'only' needed to fight his way back up the field to get into 5th place to win the crown. This is entirely within his grasp as he made good progress until Mclaern brought him into the pits for his first pit stops. The opted for soft tyres and the stop last only ~6s!!!!! This meant that they were gambling on catching up the field with a light car BUT with THREE pitstops!!!! (Compare to the likely 2 pitstops by Ferrari). By the 2nd Hamilton pitstop, it was definite that they were going for the 3rd stop after!!! With most of the field just heading for 2 stops, KIMI was on his way.....

Kimi was lagging behind Massa until the 2nd round of pitstops, where Ferrari strategy + Kimi's awesome pace saw Ferrari pull off a 'textbook-overtaking' manuvoure of switching place with the Massa for the lead!! It was nail-bitting to the finish as Hamilton MUST not reach the 5th position. Hamilton did claw up to 7th place with ~10laps remaining. It seems difficult for him to catch the next driver as there was a 16sec gap. But cars can easily retire in a F1 race. So it was holding-of-breath for the final leg of the race!!

And with one lap remainig, I had my big big (~2mX1m) Ferrari flag waving in my room! Yes, it was mad..as I said...the defining moment in 7 yrs.... as Kimi crosses the line.....*WOOT*!!! But it wasn't over yet, one needs all the cars until Hamilton (lying 7th) to cross the chequered flag, else Hamilton could will steal the crown...and when Kubica and Heidfeld crossed the line in 5th/6th place...it was ALL OVER!!!!!

KIMI WINS!!!!! WOOT WOOT!!

I've been a fan of his for a few years, especially during 2005 when he had a shot at the title and showed true talent in his Mclaren then. The defining race that year was at Suzuka: Starting last, he fought his way up the field......and with 5-6laps remaining..he was 2nd with Fisi leading the race with several seconds...and...the unlikelyhood of Kimi catching up....man....he did!! And overtook Fisi in style on the OUTSIDE line on the penultimate lap on the start-finish straight.... That poster is still on my wall.....

WOOT!!!

The Alley Cat

3 new kittens at a neighbour's house. Fell in love with one of 'em...named Ally for now.

28 Candles

Long overdue post for my 28th Birthday on the 14th of August. Went to Kuriya@ Raffles City with Wenhui, shared a King Crab meal, excellent sake, an expensive Treelin Grunt (some fish), and my first taste of Fresh Wasabi! Shiok!

Butts Hunting: More Macro

Finally took my macro lens (EF100mm) out to shoot what I meant it to shoot: Butterflies!! Took more than half a year to make this trip to Alexander hospital butterfly trial. Went along with bro Loke Yuen and spend couple of hours around bushes....

Some pros mentioned that different butts have different habits of activities/diet at different hours. We didn't know and we didn't care! It was really difficult to catch any butt landing...and in the right angle...and doesn't fly off in 1sec when you make the slightest advancement!
You can't see me!

One sleeping butt on the underside of a long leaf. wind blowing the background leaves make for a dramatic background!

Macro madnes!

I've got a Macro lens (100mm F2.8) and I hardly ever use it. Some experiments done at home, with a tripod, and some H2O. All colours are real and have negligible photoshopping. Enjoy!

Some read pearls...

Droplets getting jiggy

Pink terminator!

Kiki

Was trying to resize some images of one of my cats to store in my mobile...and somehow made into a montage to send Wenhui....then I've decided to name her Kiki!
Here's the montage to share.....She's soo cute during the earlier months!!! OMG...

Mother's Days: A tale of 2 Japanese Restaurants

Went to Kaisan for my family's celebration and Ikukan for Wenhui's family. Fantastic Sashimi at Kaisan (Raffles hotel, #01-21, tel: 63394929). And interesting Tofu variations of the Macribiotic set meal at Ikukan. Here's trying out my new 35mm lens at F1.4..sweet!

Yo-sem-it-tee, April 2007

New web links of gallery uplodated at San Francisco/Yosemite and
Death Valley/Las Vegas/Grand Canyon

Yosemite, pronouced yo-sem-it-teeeee, my favourite national park for the trip! Took a rented car, and drove ~350miles from San Francisco to Yosemite! I'm adding in some snaps in addition to the photographs that shown. I'll separate out the photographs into a pure html photography link later...cheerios

One of the main attractions of Yosemite. This is the upper falls, which we trekked all the way to the top on the 2nd day!

Our budget lodging, in a tent. ~S$100/night. It was unbearably cold on the first night, rain, 2 layers of clothing, 3 layers of blanket, and it was still freeeezing cold! Every turn of the body felt the chill!! (Temp unknown, but my breath condenses inside the tent, hence cold enough!)


Some miles up the Yosemite Falls, the remains of winter melts ...

The Half Dome, one of the greatest monolith granite rocks... It looks nothing impressive here..but during the hike up Falls trail, I quaked in my shoes after staring at the half dome for a while... a more impressive half dome picture will be feature in the photography link.

Decently marked trail allowed little effort in navigation.

Went rock climbing the following day. On this particular surface, the upper body is not really required. Quite different from the rock-climbing that I've done (Gym, artificial walls & limestone), this granite is smooth!. 'All feet!' - as the old-school instructor Jo points out again. One really needs to trust the tinest dish and cranny to surface such surfaces! Here a fellow climber bravely takes on the...El Capitan?? Another shot of myself in the photography link.

After rock climbing, Siva and I went up Tenaya creek to try to capture half dome's reflection in Mirror lake. We were on the wrong side of the river, and we traversed the icy-cold (my feet went numb immediately) stream. On the reverse trip I stopped onto a rock and took this photograph. Siva fell into the river shortly after and I pulled him up in a jiff!

An attempt to shoot star trails, left the tripod directly outside our tent and went for a 15min exposure. Not long enough to get nice trails, but heck...was good enough for another cold night!

The final morning at Grand Canyon, we woke up very early to catch the sunrise. Here, Siva took a snap of yours truly gearing up for the 'moment'....

San Francisco 8th to 13th April

Thanks to bosses in school, I got to go to San Francisco, California for a conference. What follows was a tour of a lifetime across 3 states, 3 national parks and 2 cities. Here I'd like to share some snaps with you guys!

Here's me right after my presentation. Was nerve-racking at times the few days before the talk. However, once it started, all was well! Cheerios! Thanks to Siva for the snap.

All set to conquer USA (one small part lah)

Cruises on the San Francisco Bay area. Here Alcatraz in the background.

One of the many golden gate bridges that you're going to see in this post!

A cyclist hurtling down one of the world famous streets, the 'Crookedest' at Lombard Street. No motion blur added to the shot.

Evening view from the top of the Marriott, San Francisco.

One of the steepest roads in hilly San Francisco. And we cycled up there...(except the final part, which was at least 50degrees in slope!)

Another shot of the bridge. Here 'silky' foreground of the waters controlled by slow shutter. Used a ND4 filter to cut down the exposure.

Market Street, ala 'Orchard Road', where retail giants show their presence.

The final picture of the bridge, here at 1024x768 in case anyone wants a wallpaper (shameless here. :P)

Hope you've enjoyed this series, more to come!

Embrace it! NUS Biathlon 2007

Last year's was held at Sentosa. This yr's at East Coast park. Signed up for the sprint event (750m swim, 5km run) at almost the last minute, got myself the last no. tag (6047). As usual, preparations were minimal! Had butterflies in thie morning and had to visit the loo a few times to get the flies out! When the swim starts...all were well....till I began zig-zagging through the murky-oil polluted waters. Now I realise by looking up every -5-6strokes are not enough.....every strong current/wave will simply make me veer off-course again!

The run was more straightfoward. Starting from the transistion zone at carkpark F2, the turning point as at the chalet. Finished in a time of 58mins..yeah....last yr's was 59mins. Well, all in all a great morning!

Here's the jog just before entering the water. Shot by reknowned photographer Wenhui!

Cheers!

Kitty

Here's the new kitten! Brought in by my bro in-law from some carpark as the poor kitten was meowing to no sight of its mommy. And Wenhui and I turn to become foster parents.

No idea how the sex yet on the ~1month old kitten..hence no name for it!

One of the first moments which Tommy meets kitten. Tommy was sniffing around at the kitten while the kitten was desperately trying to suckle!!! This was the best shot that I could gather,...it was difficult to get both of them in proper perspective as the size difference..is...HUGE!



Here one of my fav pix...Love both of them.. *mucks*

And there were two...

After Mocha passed away at the end of 2005, Tommy was all alone in the line of Feline dynasty. Then we took in Junior, one of Tommy's son. The two was never best mates, Tommy has always been aloof, and cats are never good fathers. Junior would want attention from Tommy, but he'll get little or none of it. All was well for an entire year, we brought Junior for checkup, vaccination and microchipping. Then the worst disaster happened.

Junior went missing on (friday) 26th January 2007. The cats would go missing at times for a day or two, but never for more than a few days. A search through the streets two days later came up short. When I reach home on the following Tuesday night, I went to search again. I went to look under the drains of neighbour's driveways. And I saw a cat's silhouette in the torch's shadows. I went to the other end of the drain...and when I saw the rear end of the cat...I knew immediately it was Junior. My heart sank as I called him several times..and he didn't flinch a bit. I was on the phone with Wenhui through all these...and I raced to fetch her from her home. I took a long stick and went into the drain...and sigh....Junior was motionless. The night proved difficult to pass as Junior was a 2.5 yo healthy male...and thoughts of him going without any warning was extremely difficult.

And now...there's a new 'apprentice' to the 'master'...stay tuned!

The year of 2006

2006......the year of blogging! I finally got started on a blog, more of a reminder to myself the events that I'd been part of thru the year. The first post...1st march...of my passing of the written qualifying exam was one of the big days. Coupled with the oral test in August, this exam allowed me to be a full fledged Phd student and concentrate more on research.

Other highlights of the year include the concerts that I've been to: Pat Metheny, Paquito, Hiromi, George Benson etc. Best concert of the year, Paquito!

Travels include Schumacher race live in an F1 car...for the final time...and the rough trip to the roof of the world...Tibet!

2006 has also been a year of photographing weddings and fireworks. Do visit www.perqjon.com for weddings. For fireworks, I was a huge fanatic through 2004/05 and also 2006. I'm pretty numb to ordinary fireworks, and I hope to be thrilled with bigger/better/nastier ones in 2007!

2007: Looking ahead. Put together a gallery of fireworks, venture to other photographic fields such as macro and food. Put more brain&heart into research. Love my cats and my meowmeow more. et cetera.....