Since I am on a totally different time zone (its supposed to be 1.20pm in KL now but its only 12.20am here in Chicago) so I decided to post pone the post a little bit to suit my time here. Frankly, between 8am-7pm classes all day, I am thankful that the sun does appear about later than usual so that it doesn't feel that late. But nevertheless, I haven't gotten used to waking up at 6am everyday so that I can head over for breakfast before class. Food here is absolutely fantastic and fresh strawberries every morning! Ok, I have to be honest, my breakfast is usually made up of pork cumberland sausages, with pork bacon and scrambled eggs and of course, the creme de la creme, free Starbucks coffee. Yeah, that is the life I can get used to.

Anyway, back to this week's click.

• Head over here to download Coldplay's live album, absolutely free!


• Check out this new blog released by the New York Times called Lens. I guess the name explains it all about what the content of the blog would be.


• This week's guest speaker at Scott Kelby's blog is none other than Vincent Versace. I was introduced to Vincent Versace by Kee Sitt. This led me to purchase his book last year and to be perfectly honest, I have had just a glance through it but never really study it yet.


• New leaked specs about the upcoming iPhone which is predicted or assumed to be launched on the 17th of July. Can anyone say, Organice Liquid Emitting Display ten times?

That's all for this week. Its late over here and its time to sleep. I guess it would be easy to get over the jet lag now since I have had a couple of drinks at the local bar earlier.

On my way to Chicago, I was booked on a flight which I had to transit in Hong Kong for 2 hours and then fly another 12 more hours to Los Angeles and stay overnight at the transit hotel and before you know it, hop on a 5 hour flight to Chicago. After a 3.5 hour flight, we arrived in the Hong Kong airport and it was full blown ready to take on the reported H1N1 Flu. Actually, all I did see were cameras which monitored each person disembarking the plane to see if they showed signs. Other than that, the transit area was quite nice.



First of all, I liked the architecture of the airport itself, the design really reminded me a lot of KLIA but the airport was so much more packed compared to our wonderful deserted KLIA.



Everywhere I turned within the transit section, there were loads of stores there ranging from high end brands such as Giorgio Armani to Starbucks coffee as well as individual smaller restaurants (they could be a chain too).



I guess the rent must have been quite high as the seats that we were given were really small. So small that I can't put my bag on the chair and sit on the chair as well (no, I am not that fat, the chair is just that small!).



Anyway, Jamie ordered a duck pizza which was interesting but it was extremely small. The damage? USD$16.30. Food prices in Hong Kong are off the roof especially in the airport.



After a quick snack, I managed to go to one of these stations to charge my laptop as well as surf the internet. Note that I realised that KLIA and the Hong Kong Airport provides free Wi-fi. Sadly LAX and O'Hare International Airport does not offer free wi-fi.

After going back on board the next Cathay Pacific flight, the one thing I noticed was that all of the flight attendants were wearing masks throughout the entire flight there. By the time I arrived at LAX, the scene over there was as if they never heard of what the H1N1 flu was. The line at immigration was very long especially since the Homeland Security has implemented the new "Visit US" rule. By the time I arrived at the transit hotel, it was already 12am and I had to get up at 6am the next day to catch the 8am flight.

Anyway I definitely need to catch my sleep now, need to definitely fight off my jet lag. Will be continuing my transit nightmares on my next blog post.

Ok, I lied about the title, its officially 1.14am and I have not yet finished packing. I guess I only packed the important ones, or the things which I deemed as important such as my camera gear and my laptop.



That's right, my camera gears! I will be at Chicago and New York in the upcoming two weeks so I definitely know I can take loads of pictures there! What's in my bag above? I have packed in my D700, an 80-200mm f/2.8 lens, a 14-24mm lens (I want to shoot when I am on top of the Empire State building!) as well as a 50mm lens. Also together with my camera gear is my MacBookPro and I am packing all of these items into my new Lowepro FastPack 250. Not too bad eh?

I still got loads of packing to do and double checking to do so I am going to continue packing and hitting the slack soon.

My laptop is currently copying photos over to a portable hard disk where I am supposed to pass some photos to Grace and I am also considering trying to figure out where should I backup my entire laptop documents. Probably into one of my external hard drives. Ah, I do things very last minute!

At the same time I printed out an eBook and I will be reading it on the way to US as well as brainstorm and plan out my slides for my presentation at ShootFest and for a photography workshop which I am giving at my company.

Before I announce the official press release below, the quick update is that there has already been 65 participants who have already signed up for ShootFest, hence there are only 15 spaces left people!

Anyway, I have been a little busy this entire week and I started packing last night for my trip to the US which begins tomorrow! Woohoo! Yes, I will be flying off to sunny Chicago on Saturday and then over to New York the week after. After trying to remember what I need to bring, I definitely have a huge packing list including some of my camera gear and 20Gb of memory cards. In the event that 20Gb is not enough, my contingency plan is that if I do use all 20Gb of memory, I would probably buy a 8Gb CF card there.

If you are wondering what I am doing in the US, its part business and part holiday (I've never been to the eastern seaboard). Definitely looking forward to photographing New York and checking out some of the fantastic landmarks there. Tweeting will still continue and hopefully, I can find some free wifi spots about NYC.

Official Press Release

ShootFest: The Wedding Unconference

Date: 6th & 7th June 2009 (Saturday & Sunday). Registration starts at 9am.
Venue: Integricity office, Centrepoint Bandar Utama, PJ
Fees: RM50

So what is ShootFest: The Wedding all about? And what is an unconference?

An unconference is an informal gathering of likeminded people with a common interest. It’s a participant-driven conference, meaning everyone must participate in some way or another. Everyone is encouraged to present a topic or engage in a discussion during the 2-day sessions.

Each ShootFest is a media unconference primarily for photographers and videographers. This first one that is organised is themed The Wedding and is meant for professionals, freelancers and anyone interested in wedding photography and videography.

The benefits of ShootFests are knowledge-sharing, networking and raising the bar for the industry. The idea is to breed improvement for everyone in a friendly environment.

Our sharing slots are open to everyone who is interested to speak. Participants can choose to speak about anything… from technical know-how, to marketing your photography business, to sharing your experience about how you left your full time job to be a wedding photographer. Other interesting things that will be happening are like Pecha Kucha sessions, where you share 20 slides, each for 20 seconds, or a buy-sell session where everyone brings their second hand gear to sell.

How it All Started

Inspired by a techies gathering called Barcamp, Alex Lam (www.integricity.com) and Grace Tan (www.weddingstory.com.my) gathered a group of wedding professionals and shared the idea of an unconference with them. The first ShootFest meeting was held at a coffee outlet and 5 people met up to discuss ideas. Those who were present were Zach Chin (www.zachchin.com), Jon Low (www.idealwedding.net), Mark Leo (www.markleo.net/blog) and of course, Alex and Grace.

Everyone was really excited about the idea of sharing knowledge and networking with others. It was at this first meeting that the name ShootFest was determined, and that night itself the domain was purchased, and a Wordpress site set up. Others who couldn’t make it for the meeting due to geographical constraints were Ian Chong (www.eeyern.com/blog) and Lim Kee Sitt (www.weddingstory.com.my).

Latest Updates

From that first meeting, we have gathered a group of volunteers who have willingly availed themselves to help in any way. Word about ShootFest went out informally through forums, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Over a short period of 2 weeks, we had 65 registrations. The cap on the total number of people would be around 80 due to venue restrictions.

Visit the ShootFest website: www.shootfest.org to get the latest updates, view the schedule, register and sign up for a speaking session. If you’d like to help out in any way, do email admin@shootfest.org. We gladly welcome volunteers

Before I announce the official press release below, the quick update is that there has already been 65 participants who have already signed up for ShootFest, hence there are only 15 spaces left people!

Anyway, I have been a little busy this entire week and I started packing last night for my trip to the US which begins tomorrow! Woohoo! Yes, I will be flying off to sunny Chicago on Saturday and then over to New York the week after. After trying to remember what I need to bring, I definitely have a huge packing list including some of my camera gear and 20Gb of memory cards. In the event that 20Gb is not enough, my contingency plan is that if I do use all 20Gb of memory, I would probably buy a 8Gb CF card there.

If you are wondering what I am doing in the US, its part business and part holiday (I've never been to the eastern seaboard). Definitely looking forward to photographing New York and checking out some of the fantastic landmarks there. Tweeting will still continue and hopefully, I can find some free wifi spots about NYC.

Official Press Release

ShootFest: The Wedding Unconference

Date: 6th & 7th June 2009 (Saturday & Sunday). Registration starts at 9am.
Venue: Integricity office, Centrepoint Bandar Utama, PJ
Fees: RM50

So what is ShootFest: The Wedding all about? And what is an unconference?

An unconference is an informal gathering of likeminded people with a common interest. It’s a participant-driven conference, meaning everyone must participate in some way or another. Everyone is encouraged to present a topic or engage in a discussion during the 2-day sessions.

Each ShootFest is a media unconference primarily for photographers and videographers. This first one that is organised is themed The Wedding and is meant for professionals, freelancers and anyone interested in wedding photography and videography.

The benefits of ShootFests are knowledge-sharing, networking and raising the bar for the industry. The idea is to breed improvement for everyone in a friendly environment.

Our sharing slots are open to everyone who is interested to speak. Participants can choose to speak about anything… from technical know-how, to marketing your photography business, to sharing your experience about how you left your full time job to be a wedding photographer. Other interesting things that will be happening are like Pecha Kucha sessions, where you share 20 slides, each for 20 seconds, or a buy-sell session where everyone brings their second hand gear to sell.

How it All Started

Inspired by a techies gathering called Barcamp, Alex Lam (www.integricity.com) and Grace Tan (www.weddingstory.com.my) gathered a group of wedding professionals and shared the idea of an unconference with them. The first ShootFest meeting was held at a coffee outlet and 5 people met up to discuss ideas. Those who were present were Zach Chin (www.zachchin.com), Jon Low (www.idealwedding.net), Mark Leo (www.markleo.net/blog) and of course, Alex and Grace.

Everyone was really excited about the idea of sharing knowledge and networking with others. It was at this first meeting that the name ShootFest was determined, and that night itself the domain was purchased, and a Wordpress site set up. Others who couldn’t make it for the meeting due to geographical constraints were Ian Chong (www.eeyern.com/blog) and Lim Kee Sitt (www.weddingstory.com.my).

Latest Updates

From that first meeting, we have gathered a group of volunteers who have willingly availed themselves to help in any way. Word about ShootFest went out informally through forums, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Over a short period of 2 weeks, we had 65 registrations. The cap on the total number of people would be around 80 due to venue restrictions.

Visit the ShootFest website: www.shootfest.org to get the latest updates, view the schedule, register and sign up for a speaking session. If you’d like to help out in any way, do email admin@shootfest.org. We gladly welcome volunteers

Its Wednesday's again and time for the this week's Wednesday Clicks. With all that has been going on politcally here in Malaysia, especially that state up north of Selangor, there have been loads of interesting news flying about.

• Chase Jarvis has posted on his blog a post entitled, "Shake Your Tree", which is an interesting read especially for you photographers out there. He talks about how to start shaking our own tree and start doing something instead of laying about idle. Personally, my plan is to start taking more photos with my iPhone and look out for interesting subjects and frames about.


• Apparently news are going about that Rocky will be the CEO of Malay Mail. According to Rocky himself, it is completely wrong.


• This link is dedicated to the Pulau Ketam Save the Dog's Campaign. For more information check out the link, here are some thoughts from some bloggers about, here and here.


• ShootFest 001 has reached 65 registrants so far and the max number of registrants who can attend is only 80. That means there is only 15 more spots available. I do encourage everyone to participate and find a session to present, it can be either 15mins or 30mins and the rest could be time for networking. Let's all get out of our own comfort zone and share with one another ok?


• Apparently some dude in China is saying that he knows of what are the new specs for the upcoming iPhone. He claims that it will have a capacity of 32Gb, a 3.2MP cam with autofocus ability and a 600MHz processor. I do think that the additional capacity and memory bump speed and the autofocus ability of the cam is a nice welcome.

That's all for this week folks.

I managed to catch this show last week and to be frank it was a fantastic show because not only was it action packed, I always have been a fan of the X-Men. Note that I don't actually read much of the comics but coming from a movie fan (I never really liked how the shot the first 3 X-Men movies), this show really was a huge improvement.

The movie starts with how Logan was a boy and how he eventually ran away from home and the scenes move from him being part of the American Revolution, to world war 1 and world war 2 and eventually in Vietnam. The weird part about the beginning was that Logan started off with bone claws.

Anyway he was recruited by Stryker to join a team of other mutants where they went on missions around the world. Logan's real story begins when Victor (a.k.a Sabretooth) went on a killing rampage during these missions which made Logan decide to quit and head into exile to live a peaceful life. When things start to go wrong and Stryker entering back into Logan's life a few years later, Logan was then driven to avenge his lover's death (killed by Sabretooth).

With revenge in his mind, Logan then decided to join the Weapon X program under Stryker and then received his adamantium skeleton and claws.

The movie was interesting to me because it also showed other heroes from the Marvel universe in the forms of Blob, Gambit, Wraith, Agent Zero, Deadpool and many more. From my discussions with some of my friends who were real avid fans of the X-Men comics, they have mentioned that the storyline is very different compared to the that of the comics.

I guess this argument holds true for the most recent movie, Watchmen, where the movie was created to reach audiences who were more unlikely not to have read the comics. The same goes for our Asian creators as well in the forms of Anime vs Manga where both have different views but of the same character.

My take as a viewer who never really followed the comics:

3.5 out of 5

Over the labour day weekend, I went for a climb up Bukit Tabur with some of the guys. I think I shall have an entire post dedicated to that episode but I wanted to share with everyone a shot I took whilst I was still able to breathe during the climb.



I actually do have quite a number of photos to post process but after a gruelling weekend of back-to-back shoots, my feet is really killing me and I definitely need my rest. Contrary to that, it is officially 1am and I have to get up early for work. Will work on my post tomorrow!

About a week ago, a good friend of mine decided to hook me and bk up with an audition for this reality tv show hosted by 8TV. I was really wondering what in the world it was about but thank God for this blog post by the tiger dude, it really shed some light for me. Anyway the show was called Discover Smile Zoom Malaysia and it was about discovering Malaysia via a series of challenges and events.



So together with BK, we both headed to Media Prima at Bandar Utama after work. Our appointment was actually at 9.00pm but little did we know that there was a huge crowd, well basically 4 other couples waiting before us. We were oblivious to the fact that we needed to fill in some forms but thanks to me asking about, I found out that we needed to fill in some forms which of course included the usual personal details as well as answer questions such as "Where is your most memorable place in Malaysia". BK's answer was Mimaland (did I spell that correctly?)

Another thing that we needed to do was to actually come up with an opening line to introduce the two of us. I would guess that it must have been something that is unique to us and how we were going to introduce ourselves on TV. Heck, this was just an audition.



Thats a picture of BK above, I took this shot of him with my phone because after filling in the form, we had to wait for the other groups of people to complete their auditions. We decided to call ourselves team "Wingman", mainly because we have been good buddies since we were both 14 years old and we have NEVER EVER been each other's wingman. Anyway, did I mention that we waited for a while, and by while, I meant 1 hour.



The waiting area wasn't too boring, we were actually facing the Fly.FM deejays as they were hosting the evening show. Interesting to actually see the deejays hosting live while listening to the delayed broadcast over the air (sounds waves to take time to travel!). BK decided to do stupid things in front of the deejays, such as waving at them while they were recording live.

By the time it was our turn, we were the last to be auditioned and we totally forgot to rehearse what we were going to say and everything had to be spontaneous. To be frank, you should have seen us there. I never had so much fun in front of the camera and just being myself talking and explaining about the answers in our forms as well as answering the questions from the producers Azmi and Bob.

After 30 minutes, me and BK walked away rather happily from the audition and I really felt that we had a shot at this. I guess most of it had to be credited to the shirt I wore for the audition.



I bet it was a hit with the producers!

Alas, after a week, we both had good news and bad news.

The good news is that we made it through! Woohoo!

The bad news was that they wanted us to be in the studio this Saturday but I am scheduled to shoot Warren & Amy's wedding this Saturday. After another call with Bob, he asked if we could perhaps make it on the 17th of May instead but that was when I am flying off to Chicago. Talk about bad timing :(

Anyway, I am left lying in bed now wondering what would the outcome be? Would this ever be my once in a chance shot to be on TV or there might be other chances? I can only leave that up entirely to God. But hey, I get to witness my friends from church get married instead and even play an important part in it. I just can't wait to capture beautiful photos of the wedding!

Okay, so I missed out my weekly Wednesday clicks and this time, I am back with more interesting links. I have been sort of isolated from most of the social media networks at work because Facebook has been banned and I only can check Twitter via the web which is quite hard at times. Anyway, enough about my troubles, here you go.

• If you can view YouTube whereever you are (I can't view YouTube at work), check out this video. Totally awesome especially if you love Taylor Swift's Love Story as well as Cold Play's La Vida Loca. I love the dynamics of the song, just beautiful.


• ShootFest 001: The Wedding is coming (6th and 7th June) and I will save a post just to explain a little more about what it is.


• Something I may have written before but I am writing it here again, if you don't know what Nikon DTown is about, check it out here. It is a website which shows episodes of Scott Kelby and others giving tips on how to use your Nikon DSLR and even with guest appearances from Joe McNally teaching about using flashes.


• There is a new NikonSchool.com website out now. Check it out if you are free.


• A little bit of political news on what is happening now as I am typing out this post. A political activist has been arrested under the Sedition Act.

To be honest, this post has loads of Nikon stuff and I will definitely try to limit these single-brand focused type of posts. Heck, i love Canon's 5D Mk2 for its amazing 21MP of pure joy as well as Canon's 50mm and 85mm f/1.2 L lenses. Although there are rumours that Nikon will be releasing their latest AF-S 85mm f/1.4 as well as the 28mm f/1.4. Definitely going to be some sweet lenses but after my recent purchases, I am flat out broke.

Oh my goodness, last week went by and I didn't even post up my usual Wednesday clicks. I guess I wanted to get out of the rut of my blog just having those posts. So a very "femes" blogger told me that I should blog more often, which is so true because what is a blog if it isn't there to be blogged. Anyway, I am getting way over my head here.

I have been meaning to post about this for a while already but it totally slipped my mind. But as they always say, better late than never right?

Imagine this, you are feeling hungry and you want to get some food or in my case, I wanted to bring @munZ out for a nice place to have dinner but at the same time eat at some interesting place. So what I did was I headed over to this site that I kept on seeing at this fella's nick on MSN.



Being a relatively shy guy, I constantly face the problem of trying to reserve places at restaurants. Ok, that was a blatant lie. When it comes to food, especially good food, I would beg, borrow or kill for awesome tasting dishes of delectible culinary delights. Anyway, back to the story. After stumbling unto theQguides, and by stumbling I meant being guided to this URL, I thought to myself, why not give it a try.

The first restaurant I came about on the site was Bermuda & Onion. Bermuda & Onion is located at Changkat Bukit Bintang and it is located amidst a busy street of restaurants, bars and pubs. To be really and completely honest, I got lost trying to find the restaurant because I thought Changkat Bukit Bintang was at the row where Bangkok Jazz was. Anyhow, I was totally late for my reservations (oops!) but the staff was kind enough to keep my table.

Anyhow, the moment I stepped into the restaurant, I glanced through the menu and decided to order food to share between me and munz. We both ordered a ceasars salad, baby back pork ribs for appetisers and pork ribs and chops for the main course.



Bread was complementary and they served it with a rather interesting sour cream sauce. Definitely a good break from the usual bread+olive oil+vinegar from Italiannies.



The baby back pork ribs was served in a rather small dish but the taste definitely made up for it's size.



The salad instead was rather good and it had been tossed nicely and dressed well. Not too much sauce but just nicely dressed.



The main course was quite filling but my only dislike about the entire dish is that they had baked beans at the bottom of the pile of meat and it didn't really taste that good.



But the main highlight for me was dessert where munZ says that their crème brûlée was really to die for! And after tasting it, it held up to it's reputation. If you are in the vicinity, you got to try this dish.

While waiting for munz to finish her food, I decided to take some shots of her. Apparently when she eats or waits for her food, she has many different expressions!



Anyway, its been a while since I had a post that included photos. I definitely have been slacking in my photography as well as in this blog. More posts to come and with loads of photos!