First of all I would like to wish everyone out there a fantastic happy new year. 2009 went by in a blaze for me and I really do look forward to 2010 because I want to put 2009 behind me and look forward to a brighter and better future ahead. I blogged about my new year resolutions and starting later today, I will be tackling them one at a time. I foresee 2010 to be a tough year where I will be facing a lot of changes and challenges but I am very determined not to live like how I lived 2009 and slowly change and improve.

In my post about Weng Jou and Yvonne's portrait shoot, I mentioned a little teaser at the end of the post. Well, its now the 1st of January 2010 and I would like to also announce the launch of Stories! Want to know what Stories is about?

It’s finally here! After weeks of hard work, we are launching Stories by Integricity Visuals. Most of you would know that the team at Stories originated from the brand Wedding Story. In 2009, our photography services at Wedding Story has grown by leaps and bounds. It is with much excitement that we announce to you a specialized boutique wedding & portrait photography service from Stories.

With this new launch, we are pleased to give away special treats to couples who are interested to make a booking for 2010. We will give away gifts worth up to RM1,500 for the first 5 couples who confirms a booking with us!

Call us for a consultation to find out more details. Wishing everyone a wonderful New Year!

That's right, I have been shooting together with Grace and the WeddingStory team and now I am pleased to announce the launch of Stories.

Updated my resolutions with KPIs :P

Photo Courtesy of Alain Bachellier

I am just baffled because I actually scheduled a post to be posted on my blog on Christmas Day (knowing that I will be in church and spending time with the family) only to find out that it has been missing. Weird, huh?

Speaking of older posts, I always realised that I have been blogging about my New Year resolutions and I realised that I didn't set any for 2009. I guess that after setting them in 2007 and 2008, it hasn't really turned out that well. Let's just say that I haven't been able to get off my ass and start making a change in my life.

One of the funny things is that my friends always say that my weight is like a yo-yo. It goes down as fast as it quickly goes up. Definitely one area which I will be concentrating in my resolutions this year, maybe its because of a different motivation altogether this time. I will talk about that later.

I guess with most other people is that we all set too many resolutions. Worse of all, we try to tackle all of them all at a time. I for one, am guilty of spreading myself too thin by challenging myself to so many different habits to break that I lose my motivational momentum. Recently I read this blog post on how to stick to our new year's resolution and it really was an eye opener!

Leo says that, (ironically he is a Leo as well :))

New Year’s Resolutions usually fail because of a combination of some of these reasons:

• We try to do too many resolutions at once, and that spreads our focus and energies too thin. It’s much less effective to do many habits at once (read more).


• We only have a certain amount of enthusiasm and motivation, and it runs out because we try to do too much, too soon. We spend all that energy in the beginning and then run out of steam.


• We try to do really tough habits right away, which means it’s difficult and we become overwhelmed or intimidated by the difficulty and quit.


• We try to be “disciplined” and do very unpleasant habits, but our nature won’t allow that to last for long. If we really don’t want to do something, we won’t be able to force ourselves to do it for long.


• Life gets in the way. Things come up unexpectedly that get in the way of us sticking with a habit.


• Resolutions are often vague — I’m going to exercise! — but don’t contain a concrete action plan and don’t use proven habit techniques. That’s a recipe for failure.

Now from the above I can safely say that I met all of those which led me to find out that I have been missing all these time. From mentioning some of the reasons why we fail, Leo then went on to talk about the 6 changes we can do and how to start working on that.

The 6 Changes Method
So what are we to do? I’ve created the 6 Changes Method, along with a new site called 6Changes.com, to solve these problems:

• We only focus on one habit change at a time, so our focus and energies aren’t spread thinly.


• We implement the habit changes gradually, so we don’t run out of steam.


• We start out really, really easily, so it isn’t intimidating.


• We focus on enjoyable activities, so we don’t need “discipline”.


• We have two months to do the habit change, so if something comes up, it’s but a small bump in the road. And because we’re publicly committed, we’re going to get back on track.


• We have a very specific plan with actions built in, using proven habit change techniques.

If you stick with the method, you’ll do much better than you’ve done in the past with New Year’s Resolutions. You’ll focus on creating long-lasting habits rather than trying to reach a short-term goal that fails. You’ll maintain your enthusiasm for longer and not become overwhelmed by the difficulty of change. You’ll have habits that will change your life, and that’s no small feat.

The Method
So how does the 6 Changes method work?

It’s simple:

1. Pick 6 habits for 2010.


2. Pick 1 of the 6 habits to start with.


3. Commit as publicly as possible to creating this new habit in 2 months.


4. Break the habit into 8 baby steps, starting with a ridiculously easy step. Example: if you want to floss, the first step is just to get out a piece of floss at the same time each night.


5. Choose a trigger for your habit – something already in your routine that will immediately precede the habit. Examples: eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, showering, waking up, arriving at the office, leaving the office, getting home in the evening.


6. Do the 1st, really easy baby step for one week, right after the trigger. Post your progress publicly. (Read more.)


7. Each week, move on to a slightly harder step. You’ll want to progress faster, but don’t. You’re building a new habit. Repeat this until you’ve done 8 weeks.

You now have a new habit! Commit to Habit No. 2 and repeat the process.

Pretty interesting if you asked me but at the same time, don't we feel that most of the resolutions that we set ourselves are something that we don't like doing hence it becomes something we don't like and hence we need a resolution to get around it? But the 6 methods does come as a truth because for every habit we might want to achieve, there is definitely something fun out of it.

It is also interesting that Leo did mention about public accountability hence I do hope that the readers of my blog keep me accountable for my 6 habit changes! A comment or two would definitely be helpful in reminding me and checking up with me if I have been keeping up with my habits. I heard that if I do something consistent for at least 20 times then it will become a habit.

So here are my new year's resolutions for 2010!

1. Wake up earlier and start my day earlier. I usually wake up quite late and have to rush through the morning. So within the next two months I will set my alarms earlier, snooze at most once or twice and force myself up earlier so that I have more time to prepare and drive to work as well as reach the office earlier and get a better parking spot. The tough bit about this is measuring this so the easiest way I think I can set is to start waking up at 7am for work.


2. Spend less and save more! With my wedding coming up, I definitely need to save up for plenty of stuff and for furniture as well for when I move in to the apartment above Tropicana City Mall. 8 baby steps to achieving this? I guess I can start by spending less on photography equipment (actually I told myself not to spend on any equipment at the moment as I have everything I need and lots of training DVDs to watch). Stop spending on unnecessary gadgets and utilizing what I currently have at the moment.


3. Lose more weight and maintaining it! Ok, with my wedding coming up, I definitely have to lose weight and make sure that I can fit into a tux. How do I achieve this? Run more often at work, at least once a week and start playing badminton with my old badminton mates on Tuesday nights. Probably get poisoned by them but I definitely need new badminton shoes. Target weight to achieve is 85kg, currently my weight now is over 100kg so its going to be a long journey.


4. Be more disciplined! Yup, this is one area I feel I am totally weak in. I have to be more disciplined in everything that I do, it really doesn't help that I am kind of a slacker hence I need to be more disciplined, disciplined in my personal life, disciplined at work and disciplined in my relationship with God. I can't really put a KPI to this yet, need to give this a little more thought.


5. Read more! I have a mountain of books which I happily bought and haven't even opened them yet. To achieve this, I am going to slowly start by reading the book at least 5-10 minutes a day and as the weeks progress by, I will slowly increase my reading time. To make things interesting, I will write a book review on a monthly basis on what I have read recently.


6. Blog more! Frankly, blogging is one thing I have been sort of consistent about, meaning that after 3 years I am still blogging but not as frequent as I would like. I am the type of guy who likes to laze about after a days work and by that I am simply too lazy to blog. So with resolution number 4, I want to be more disciplined in blogging as well. I do admire those other bloggers out there who can blog consistently. In terms of my creative writing skills, hopefully by blogging more, I can improve on it as well.

Well here are my 6 habits or new years resolution for 2010 that I have set for myself. Do keep me accountable ok?

I would like to wish all Malaysians and everyone out there a very Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year.

2009 went by so quickly, and I have plenty to hope for in 2010.

Drive safely for those of you who are traveling, drink & party responsibly and most of all, enjoy the holidays.

Sometimes the weather in Malaysia has always been rather predictable especially now during the monsoon season but there are times where I would be praying very hard for nice weather and bright sunlight. Unfortunately, the sun wasn't up that day but although the sky was rather gloomy in some ways, we still managed to have some fun and enjoy ourselves in the park.

Yvonne contacted me via email after hearing about my promotion which I posted on my blog and after a couple of email exchanges, we agreed on the date and time where we will meet for me to photograph both her and Weng Jou.

Here are some of the photos I liked from Yvonne & Weng Jou's portraiture shoot.



I took this shot below as we were walking to our next location :)









Having a little bit of fun during the shoot.











Thanks a lot to Yvonne and Weng Jou for being such a wonderful couple and being such great models during the shoot.

By the way, there is going to be a big announcement on the 1st of January. Stay tuned for it.

In case you have been living under a coconut shell lately, or haven't even caught up with the amount of movies you need to watch or if you have 2.45 hours to spare in your busy life, let me tell you what you should do. First of all is to head over to your local cinemas and buy tickets to watch this amazing show, Avatar. Why is it amazing? Let me tell you why.

My first thoughts about the show when I watched the trailer was that it was going to be a fully a computer generated film. That was my benchmark for the film. Only to be surprised that it wasn't fully (although it was considerably made with CG), but the storyline and how the plot was built up made it very very entertaining.

Directed by James Cameron (Titanic, Alien), the story talks about a marine by the name of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who is handicapped due to a previous combat experience taking the place of his deceased brother on an alien planet inhabited  by blue locals called the Navi.



In this show, the humans are depicted as the enemy (much like how I saw a tweet about the movie depicting America going to war against Iraq), where they went to this planet in search of extremely minerals called unobtanium. During their survey, the humans discovered a large  deposit of those minerals sitting directly beneath a tribal village of the Navi.



In their attempts to move the village/settlement away peacefully, the humans developed Avatar's which is a combination of the human DNA as well as the Navi where the humans will link up with the Avatar's and go undercover amongst the Navi and interact with them. Each Avatar could only be controlled by the folks whose DNA was used and when Jake Sully's brother (a scientist) died, he was then tasked to take over his brother's role.

The movie then talks about how as Jake Sully used his Avatar and learned the ways of the Navi and only to learn that they weren't the ones who are really savages.

The movie is indeed visually stunning and it contained enough action films to keep us at the edge of our seats. If you get the change to watch this show, please watch it in 3D! I missed that out so I am going to catch it again in 3D. Personally, the movie is indeed fantastic and I rate it only second to Star Trek (of all the 2009 movies).

Still don't believe me that it is worth going? This is a movie that was rated 83% by Rotten Tomatoes!

After having been so used with the tag line above for the past 4 years, it is quite sad that I read this morning in my email and in the news about Tiger's sponsorship being detracted. I have always been quite familiar with the huge advertisements of my firm featuring Tiger in major airports especially during my recent trips to Chicago and New York. It's going to take a lot of getting used to it now.

[caption id="attachment_1341" align="alignnone" width="803" caption="Headlines in the Star"][/caption]

We even had an event where there was a printed out shirt of "Go on, have a tiger" which means that the tag line was rather synonymous with us.

[caption id="attachment_1342" align="alignnone" width="814" caption="Snapshot of CNN's website"][/caption]

Well, I can only wait and see what comes up next.

One of my favourite advertisements which I have seen in the cinema previously and one of those which suddenly reminded me of what the world should become instead of how it is. It is rather ironic that it is an advert about Vodka but the way it was created and portrayed as well as included in the sound track, "Money makes the world go round", seemed so relevant to how it was presented.

Kudos to TBWA\Chiat\Day for coming out with this advert.

Darn it, the song keeps playing in my head right now....

Aaron works in the same company as I do and he previously helped me organize the photography workshop I thought at my firm a couple of months back. This time when he emailed me again, it was for something totally different. He was going to be in front of the camera together with Susan instead of behind it.

Frankly, I believe that Cyberjaya is a little hidden gem when it comes to photo taking. I believe there is plenty of potential here in terms of the photos you can get. I just need to experiment more and recce the place out a little bit more and I am sure I can find more unique locations.

So when Aaron asked me to shoot his portraiture session, I jumped at the chance to suggest Cyberjaya.

Here are some of my favourite shots from that day.







The weather wasn't really what I had hoped for, instead of the sunny and dramatic skies I know Cyberjaya has, it turned out to be dark and gloomy. To make it worse, it started to drizzle as well during the shoot.

Despite the weather, we powered through with more shots!









The sun did eventually set earlier than expected or it probably hid behind some clouds, so we headed towards Putrajaya for a couple of shots there as well.





As a confession, we took these photos right after work so I had all of my lighting equipment and no one to help me hold them. Hence I had to employ the street lamp to assist me with my lighting.











I can't wait for my next assignment to be in Cyberjaya or Putrajaya, I definitely want to try other locations other than just using the usual bridge shots there.

I previously blogged about my trip to Chicago here and here. Actually I was on training for a week before spending the weekend in Chicago. Right after spending a couple of days in the windy city, I journeyed towards east together with my mate, Jamie. I learned a lot about flying in the US. First of all, when it is stated that you need to be at the airport an hour earlier before your flight, that really means you need to actually check-in at the counter an hour earlier. This doesn't include the time it takes you to line up (it took us about 45minutes, so we kinda missed out flight).

Anyway, by the time we landed in New York, we both took a cab towards Manhattan Island only to be greeted by what some people might call a New York cab experience. We didn't get conned but the experience was somewhat disheartening. The cab driver did get cut off but he didn't have to wind down his window and started cursing non-stop for 15 minutes. He didn't get a tip from me.

By the time we reached our hotel (we stayed at Sheraton Manhattan), there was a street fair going on.



From all of the movies I have seen, I always had the mental image of how New York would look in either sephia or black and white.

The fair was in full force with plenty of vendors selling trinkets and souveniers as well as plenty of food.





This was my lunch, a mixed version of a kebab with plenty of filling and vegetables. It tasted fantastic, maybe because I was a little hungry at that time hence that could have been an added bonus factor.



The corn dog was really calling out to me and they had like 1 foot sausages. Jamie could tell that I was drooling all over them!



And what is New York without the guys handing out flyers or street baskers.



Times Square was extremely packed. The queue to get theater tickets were extremely long. We wanted to catch the new play called "Shrek". The hotel wanted to sell us tickets at USD$175 but if we spent about 2 hours queuing up,  we could have bought it at a much cheaper price.

After walking about for a bit and enjoying the view of the city, the two of us felt sick and it probably was that we might have been too worned out. But with the current crisis of swine flu, we were a little paranoid and after checking into the hospital, we ended up all bandaged up as shown below.



Ok, I was lying about the bandage thing.

Find out more in my next post :)

Here is a sneak peak from one of my recent portrait shoots.