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.....

Tibet June 2006....

This post serves to be a completion of the other pictures that I've not posted for the June2006 trip to Tibet. Friends have been asking for pictures! And here are a collection!

Seen here the infamous prayer flags of the Tibetian region. Basically the wind will carry your prayers whenever the wind blows. More Here



By writing names of your loved ones, your prayers shall be delivered everytime the wind blows!



More of the blue skies, Minor tweaking done here. Ascending to ~5000m above sealevel to Namtso Lake - One of 3 holy lakes in Tibet. We were suffering from altitude sickness....headaches/breathlessness. etc.





Along the roads to any touristy sites, tourist-attractions aglore! Locals egging tourist to pose with their wares, even taking pictures with the locals. Tips are a must, and they'll get rude if you try to bargain! Here we have Wenhui with a baby lamb! Would that make a nice dinner? hmm..



This was shot at the edge of the Namtso lake itself, and again, plenty of horses and yaks for tourists to pose/ride with...for a fee of cos!




This was shot on the way to Namtso, quite number of site prayer sites littering across the vastlands.



Toilet with a to-die-for view!! "dry-cleaning" services included!! Free of charge!!







A series on Tibet would not be complete without monks and temples, here we have monks just outside Tashilunpo monastary/temple.




A building within Tashilunpo. The broad building contrast with a lone tourist at the corner.

Vast buildings with white walls are common features in Tibetian architecture. Black framing of the windows are to reflect away evils and bad luck.



Coca-cola or Pepsi-cola?












Along country roads, hawkers would set up stores selling fruits/drinks/tidbits. Here we have a family selling watermelon. We gave their kids candy and one can see the joy on the girl's face...but boy looked suspicious as he chunks down a Snickers



Back to Lhasa. Pasar Malam style stores selling every imaginable items. Here a shop selling soley horseshoes!






The final meal in Tibet before heading back to the equator. Han/Tibetian cuisine ain't exactly palatable..hence we tried their version of KFC!

Gold Class!!

Planned the first outing to the most exclusive movie screening in SG! Gold glass @ Vivocity! Booked central seats for Wenhui, Huiqin, Winnie and I for Curse of the Golden Flower.

The seats were truly luxurious!! Better than 1st class airline seats! We were pretty on the dot, hence had little time to enjoy the lounge. We appeared quite mountain turtle as we didn't know food was served right insite the theatre!.

The perennial rain + the air-conditioning brought out tightest snugs of the gold class blankets. The blankets were lovely! HQ wanted to 'stunt' one home leh..hehe.

The show was alright, shan't post any spoilers here.

Next went shopping around, haircut at Team, followed by Spa at Wellness Village and wonderful portobellos at Spaggadies!

26 Degrees

Its a yearly event, consecutive days of rain in december. Wooooo....other than the traffic jams, i'm loving every minute of it. One gets to play in the rain, jumping into puddles, driving and splashing onto the kerbs, skidding (safely) on tiled floorings.

More interestingly, the temperature in my room dropped to below what I see when I turn on the air-conditioning!

~19th December 2006

Fwahhh!!! Gwahh!!!!

Went to Kazu, Cuppage shopping center last Saturday to celebrate the birthday of Wenuhui's Mom.

Kazu is a Jap restaurant specialising in yakitori (japanese 'satay').

Man..we tried almost every exotic stuff... one of the first dish was a gooie looking white stuff like mini intestines of some kind. I was told put it in my mouth without breaking the 'satchet', and when it melts in my mouth....heaven! Was told by Tiong Kiat (Wenhui's bro), that it was some sperm of some seasonal fish...hmm..fish sperm!?!

Wenhui has turned to non-meat dishes for reasons attributed to disgestive well-being. She could only watch the rest of us chunk down the ox-tongue, pork belly, chicken heart etc while she chew on her ...fish.....







How boring normal fish looks next to the other yummy animal 'parts'. Take a good look at the next picture and guess its origin before scrolling down!








I thought that this was like chicken satay......I put it in my mouth...and *bling!* : I reached the 7th stage of heaven. Man, I never knew chicken tasted that good! Or was it chicken? I asked Tiong Kiat who ordered all the dishes...this was...one of the most 'cruel' food.. --> Foi Grois (I think the pronouciation is 'Fwah Gwah'). And rightly so....u just wanna go Fwah!!! Gwah!! after eating it. Yum yum. This picture was the second stick that we ordered.....

The 3rd dish worth mentioning was Horse Sashimi...yes..HORSE..马!
Never tried, and tasted one piece totally raw and cold...almost tasteless and forgettable. Then I was told to mix it with sesame oil and some radish/ginger garnishs etc....then 2nd piece was.....you guess it...Nth stage of heaven! More of these and I'll be lost and never be able to get back to Earth....

Thanks Tiong Kiat for the marvelous treat!

JazzyJeff - ZoukOut 2006: Were you there?

What a Night!

Bought the cheapest tix possible $28 at Zouk some moons back with LokeYuen and Roland. Didn't prepare much for the day as I was having a photoshoot at SP guild house in the morning and covered June's solemnisation in the afternoon. Picked up LY and RG + a couple of his friends (Aragon? and Sophie) at the entry to Sentosa and headed to Beach carpark. Taxis were streaming in and out, and cars were everywhere! And it was only 8:30pm!

Beach Carpark - Ministry of Sound:
Found a lot easily (heard that by 11pm, no more lots!). Groups of party-goers were having mini discos out of their car boots with booze lying everywhere. Lugged a bottle of JD and Jose Cuervo to the entrance of Siliso beach and check in first with LY and RG while Sophie waited outside with Aragon.

Jacks, Jose & Eon:
After circling a round within the ZoukOut compounds, we went out to start the boozing. Eon, a friend of LY, was there to join us. After a few card games and the fav "clap for every '3'", everyone was 'getting there'. As feared, ice was running low and we still had some hard liquor left. Ice had ran out@7E too! Alas, I initiated pouring Jose down out throats directly...*evil*. Only Eon and later Aragon was on about it.

没有酒量，只有酒旦 - EonWhat a 'profound statement'. Man, what a character! We rocked into the compounds of ZoukOut. Electronica/live band/Mambo sets were all amazing. I sprined my left elbow in the midst of it...yikes. Then Jazzy Jeff came on at 2am. Having heard him in ZoukOUt 2004, I knew that he is the most interactive DJ of all. This time with an Emcee rapping ocassional to Jeff's beats, it was a lethal combination. Jeff was scratching while mixing every sort of beats imaginable. From Retro numbers to house anthems and down to a medley of Michael Jackson 80's hits, Jeff's mixes never went more than 2mins per track, this kept the crowd on their toes throughout!

The Z monster
By 3am, we were getting tired, wandered deep into the main arena as Ferry Corsten had just came out. Though the numbers were good, they were sort of predictable, the usual progressive house music, similar to each of the 'main attraction' of the past ZoukOuts. By 330pm, we were staggering out the compound and heading off to our vehicles..

My friend called Jack

Played with my Canon 100mm macro and some water. ! Water turned into a soothing sour mash....
Way to go, Jack!

*Edit - This is a closeup shot of a droplet of water, with a Jack Daniel (Whiskey) bottle in the background. The label can be seen as off-focus in the background. The bottle can be seen within the droplet itself, click on it to enlarge! This edit was posted as many couldn't figure out the message behind this post*

Singapore Motorshow 2006

Not as keen to attend motorshow as 2000... but still made the 'pilgrimage' to Suntec City on Sunday. Brave the crowds and took only 1 minute to find a parking lot!! How lucky, no traffic jam outside as well. Strange.

The convention halls were busy, but not packed. Russ Swift is here again to do stunt demonstrations. The tickets ran out very quickly. Well, we've watched it in 2004, shldn't have been much of a difference.

Well, pictures are at www.perqjon.com/motorshow2006.html

It doesn't have to be Oysters and Sashimi - Cafe Brio's

*Picture to follow*

Happy birthday, to me!

Went to Cafe Brio's @ Grand Copthorne. 1 for 1 deal using UOB cards. Of course, as an Oyster / Sashimi fan, the first plate is full of raw stuff! But then, disappointment....failed to tickle my palate. It was the next round of MEAT that blew me away. MEAT that doesn't need to be CUT, and to be able to be chewed off easily..and thats goooood stuff! There was also supremely delicious Cheeses that Wenhui was yumming all the way through.

*burP*

NUS Triathlon 13th Aug 2006

My first Triathlon. Signed for 500m swim, 25km cycle, 5km run. Cost $54! + $5 'admin' fee for the champion chip (chip where times are logged during the race).

Seen here at -2EV using A80 shot by wenhui. Racer on the left is Terence. Race delayed due to reasons unknown... butterflies stirring!

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Thanks to Terence for loan of Helmet and anti-fog (for goggles)

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Had some struggle during the swim at 200m, had to force myself to relax, pace the strokes to finish it. Getting on the bike never felt so good, the breeze on the salt-laden water on my skin felt good. It was still only 830am (I think), sun was gentle. And time to push the bike!! Getting into rhythm, but still got 'qie4' by at least 100 riders.(99% were using road racers). Enroute towards esplanade, a good friend Mr Sehsuan got up early to prep himself on the road shoulder and snap this pin-sharp shot at the right moment. Thanks bro!

At the halfway mark of the ride, I managed to start pulling back on some of the earlier riders, counted at least a couple of mountain bikers and 1 or 2 on road racers! Many complains on the race by the veterans as the roads weren't completely blocked, leaving top riders dreading the occassional red light.




Finally, I managed to push the bike back at around 1hr and a few minutes. Was happy with my time. But there's still a 5km run!!! OMG...my legs weren't jelly, but there was nothing left in them, nor in my lungs! Was literally throdding along, forcing myself not to stop and walk, and finally made it back in ** mins. Shot taken by my beloved Wenhui as I was near the finishing point.

Overall a great experience, but it seems to be one of the worst organised race in recent memory for those veterans!

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Finally, after shower, it was lunch at the East Coast lagoon, and Terence and I shared a bday cake as it was to be our bday on the following day...14th aug 2006. :)

Utmost thanks and love to Wenhui for being the cheerleader, supporter cum photographer. :)