It was a bright sunny day when a group of VW enthusiasts all decided to meet up at Putrajaya on a Sunday morning. Well, we didn't really all decided together but more towards an opportunity for me to be able to photograph some VW cars, talk to some of the other members and get to know them better. This is all part of my procrastinated project where I wanted to take the effort to shoot more cars and build up my automotive photography portfolio.

Although this was my first time but I also learned quite a lot of things to take into consideration. Here are some of the results.



Group shot of all the cars which participated in the shoot that morning.



A Volkswagen Scirocco 1.4 TSI with the Scirocco R bumper and custom Euro license plate.



A white VW Scirocco 2.0 TSI with a full Rieger Bodykit











Next up is a series of photos of a Volkswagen Scirocco 1.4 TSI which is not black but rather in the colour, Dark Maroon. But yeah, it looks black in the photos. This car sports a Supersprint exhaust system, Caractere 18" Rims, a Scirocco R bumper and Rieger side skirts.

















Overall I learned that when it comes to photographing cars, a lot of factors come into play. The more I look at my photos, the more that I know I can do better and the mistakes that I have made along the way.

Stay tuned for more photos!

Every year on the 31st of August, Malaysians come together as one to celebrate our nation's independence day but this year seems a little more of a solemn affair for me. Maybe its the tiring weekend I had and with all of the frustrations I went through, perhaps the joy of the day has become another passing holiday. Maybe its due to the extremely sorry state of our nation that we constantly read in the papers, read online and watch on television.

Youtube has been a great source of information but everytime I watch our politicians in the Dewan Rakyat, I have nothing more but more concern. As leaders of our nation, instead of focusing on the key points, getting us out from a bad economy and continue to build this nation into a developed one, we have those who tend to like to take every opportunity to gain some limelight and make an arse of him/herself.

Oh well, that is what happens when you just simply elect a representative without knowing their true capabilities.

So instead of out celebrating, I am a little more inclined to read these bit of news instead.

• The ultimate Malaysian debate: Malaysia or Malaysaja?


• Freedom Freedom Freedom


• Door to any house of worship open


• The Struggle for Merdeka: What the Malaysian History books do not tell us

Happy Independence Day everyone.

* Apologies for the confusion, I am trying out a new desktop publishing tool and it seemed to have screwed up the entire post and I have lost everything! *

The one thing I really hate to do is to retype an entire blog post which I have spent quite a fair bit of time writing. It saddens me that a simple mistake or being totally oblivious to the new tool which I am trying out can cause about 30 minutes of work down the drain. Nevertheless, the post must go up! Let me try to recapture what I have written in my earlier post.

I wonder how many people out there get up on a Monday morning, feeling worn out and said to themselves,"Wow, its going to be a great week ahead!". Most of the time I hear from my desk is that people are either feeling the Monday blues or they are updating their Facebook status about what a wonderful weekend they had recently. Personally, my weekend was the bomb!

Together with the WeddingStory team, we headed to a part of Malaysia I have not been in over 10 years, and that was the island, Langkawi. Feeling excited about Stuart & Amy's wedding, I took the 8am flight to Langkawi on Friday and I can safely say is that, don't fly so early in the morning. Why? Think about it, if your flight is at 8am, then you would probably need to be at the airport by 6.30am to check-in. Which means you have to leave your house at 5.30am by taxi. Hence you need to be up at 4 something in order to get ready.

And that was what happened and I have to thank Alex and Grace for hosting me and Mun Tzin the night before so that I didn't have to take account the time needed to travel from my house to their place. Also I have to thank Mun Tzin for waking me up in the morning by rubbing her wet fingers against my face. That really didn't give me a shock at all.

By the time we arrived in Langkawi, rented two cars, checked into the hotel, the first thing I did was sleep! Yes, sleep was the first thing in my mind and after a quick nap, whilst Alex and Mun Tzin went to pick Kee Sitt and Sharon up from the ferry dock, I felt hungry. A quick walk along the main road where our hotel was located, we found ourselves in a cosy restaurant ordering some dishes and eagerly waiting for our food to arrive



Kee Sitt then decided to try out Nigel's camera while we were waiting for our food to arrive.



By the time the first dish arrived (fried rice in case you were wondering if this was some special Langkawi grown rice), we were all too hungry to take more photos of the rest of the food. Ok, I admitted that once I started eating, I didn't stop until the food was gone!



The one thing I remembered about Langkawi was that it was a duty free island, meaning that all alcohol, chocolates and cigarettes were very cheap. It was so dirt cheap that they even served my chinese tea in a beer mug.



After lunch we decided to walk about and check out some of the stalls across the street from the restaurant. Apparently Alex and Nigel found a new toy, Langkawi Poken!



Kee Sitt loved playing with his new toy so much so that he took loads of pictures and videos with it. Can't wait to see all of them when he is done with it.

After lunch, the team got ready and drove about 45 minutes up north of the Island to the famed Andaman resort. There we were to shoot Stuart & Amy's beach wedding. I will leave more details about the shoot in a separate post. :)



This was the view from the bride's room. Look how lovely the scenery is.



And last but not least a view of the beach side where the ceremony is to take place. The decoration and the lovely sea breeze was just amazing, makes everything feel so romantic. The wedding lasted from 4pm all the way till past midnight and it was just so much fun!

I was totally wiped out by the time we got back to the hotel which means only one thing for me. I need more exercise!

Stay tuned for day 2 of the Langkawi trip.

I am back again with this week's Wednesday Clicks, last week I decided to actually not post up due to the fact that it was April Fool's day. Nevertheless, its back up again with loads of interesting links.

• Wacom launches the new Intuos4 tablet line


• Canon released their latest 500D series camera, Nikon is rumoured to release the Nikon D5000.


• What are the 50 "must-have" wedding photography shots?


• Skype for iPhone is official! Don't count on making VoIP calls via 3G but you get to do that via Wifi. I have used it personally and the line was very clear. I called a mate living down in Singapore.


• I got this link from Andy's tweet, its the ULTIMATE guide for everything Twitter. Read it if you don't understand a single word I just wrote here.


• 20 ways to share your blog posts


• Want to know what has happened during the G20 protests in London? Check out this gallery here.


• Malaysia has a new Prime Minister and he has a blog and he even tweets on Twitter with 235 tweets and counting!


• BarCamp KL was on over the weekend and here is a 60-sec video to show you what it is all about.


• Do you think that Twitter is worth USD$1 billion?

Have a great week ahead everyone, as they always say, Wednesday, its all downhill from here!



Don't forget to stay updated by subscribing to my RSS feeds or follow me on Twitter.

This week's Wednesday clicks would come a little earlier as I think I might be rushing through the day to complete quite a lot in a very short time. Anyway, there have been some very interesting sites that I managed to troll out from the world wide web so brace yourself and enjoy the links.

• This is a very obvious but yet surreal piece of information about why Malaysian Government officials are corrupt. I never knew that an entry level ACA officer only earns RM1,482 and the highest scale is RM3,282. This is over a span of 22 years. This is definitely mind blowing to me, we need to do something about it.


• We are adding in 1 second to the clock during New Years.


• This is an easy tip on how to pose a portrait quickly.


• Check out this list of the top 100 photography blogs. I do see some of the blogs that I subscribe to in that list. I wonder whether if my blog will ever be included in that list ;)

On a personal note, I got back from Penang on Monday and I was totally exhausted. I guess the 9 hour drive up on Saturday and the 5 hour drive down on Monday took a huge toll on me but the trip was fun and relaxing. I really didn't know that prices of food in Penang has gone up, I ended up paying RM8 for "char koay teow" and worse of all, "tau sar pneah" was completely sold out. I got loads of photos to sort through, process and deliver so will be very busy over the next couple of weeks.

Amidst the financial crisis some parts of the world is facing as well as dropping fuel prices (currently at USD$96), there is always time and space on CNN to highlight our country. Previously it has never been in any sort of good light that we are highlighted, especially if we hoped that news like this might attract more foreign investors.

Anyway, here is a snippet of the article from CNN.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Malaysia's opposition leader demanded Thursday an emergency Parliament session for a no confidence vote in the government, insisting he has secured enough defections from the ruling coalition to topple it.

Of course this talks about what has been going on around our country and what are the current headlines screaming. The Star is back to their cutdown web page to reduce bandwidth whilst Malaysiakini is screaming the headlines that "Anwar seeks emergency House session".

News Strait Times on the other hand is highlighting on another matter, "SAPP senior vice-president and youth chief resign" whilst MySinChew is saying that Anwar demands a "Special" session of Parliament.

Our ex-prime minister, Dr. Mahathir, has this to say about the ongoing financial crisis. Whilst many people are wondering on why a blogger was detained under the sedition act. Apparently some said that he was charged because he asked that the national flag be flown upside down and this has caused much grief to certain parties.

Wikipedia states that based on International flag terminology, flying a flag upside down means to show that a country is in distress. With so much going on, this country is changing ever so rapidly. I guess change is inevitable, whether it may be that the economy will face another crisis on a global scale or maybe there might be some sort of a life line in our current state of affairs.

I had an interesting conversation today with one of my colleagues over lunch and it was about the failing financial crisis. Out of all of these, somewhere out there, in the midst of a whole economic downturn, there is someone out there who is actually on the benefacting side. Who knows, maybe until when the shroud has been cleared, only will we know what was the real cause or who might be the real cause.

(Update 4)

If you have the chance, head over to MIS's blog on his thoughts in regards to RPK's arrest.

Raja Petra Kamaruddin has been arrested under ISA. As the author of the popular Malaysia-Today news portal, RPK has always been the centre of the limelight in many of his interesting articles posted on his news site. The arrest came as a sudden thing to me especially after reading that the MCMC has been ordered to remove all blocks from the website. Reported in by RPK's wife that he was detained a little over an hour ago.

Personally, I am rather shocked and saddened that such an action had been taken.

Read here for the Star's account.

Read here for the Malaysian Insider account.

Also reported on other blogs:

1. Rocky's Bru


2. Wong Chun Wai


3. Lim Kit Siang


4. Malik Imtiaz Sarwar

SexyJudge has this to say about who we are. Though the name of the blog definitely doesn't add enough credibility to the writer (maybe it's because I have something against corny names or perhaps of our recent judicial problems, who knows?), I couldn't agree more about the article.

Recently, I have decided to subscribe to a very interesting RSS feed, one based on the thoughts of our previous Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir, on his blog over at Che-Det. I liked one of his recent articles here and it does touch home some very interesting points. Nevertheless with headlines screaming that he is on the verge of returning to UMNO, perhaps this article was targetted for his return.

Update:

According to the News Straight Times, Malaysia-Today.net should be back up and running but I still can't seem to access the site. I guess I am fighting with the millions of other people trying to gain access to the website.

As usual I would try to read my daily dosage of news online and one of the many news sites that I visit was unavailable. I guess the reason why it was unavailable was because the bookmark which I saved on my browser linked straight to the index.shtml file. So I thought, why not just try with the main address at http://www.malaysia-today.net/ and was shocked to find this instead of the usual news site.



I guess the admin team over there must be working hard trying to restore control to the website. Its a pity that this should happen during the time when everyone is awaiting for some piece of news. I wish the admin team all the best in trying to get the site up and running as usual as well as get it properly secured.

As contreversial the site may be, it is definitely a target for many.

Yesterday I did what all citizens of Malaysia was tasked to do, which was to exercise our right to vote. Then of course I spent the entire night watching channels 501, 101, 103 and 109 on Astro waiting to see the results.

The results are in.

Glad I performed my national duty and glad that our votes counted.

Aiks, I am late for my meeting now!

With the elections coming pretty close (this Saturday), a few interesting things popped up today. Firstly, Malaysiakini, a news website, where users have to pay a fee to read has declared that their site is now free from the 4th of March till the 10th of March. Want to know why?

"We hope that voters will be able to access independent news so that they can make an informed decision on polling day," said Malaysiakini CEO Premesh Chandran in announcing the decision.

Now that is interesting and it really did give me some sort of hope until this bit of news appeared. Just 4 days before voting begins and this change suddenly comes in? What is going on here? I wonder if they will provide us with the transparent ballot boxes as they have promised us here.

With so many people shouting and tussling at various "ceramahs", I pray that Malaysians will make an informed decision when it comes to casting their votes. It is not about being anti who or anti anyone but our own future including our children's future would ultimately depend on the people who lead this country.

Anyway, enough ranting on and on. My D200 is with Nikon Malaysia at the moment together with my Nikkor 50mm f/1.4. I sent it in this afternoon for servicing. Hopefully after calibrating the focusing motor, I wouldn't face too much front focus problems.

Read more related news over here:

•  http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/79162


• http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/79147

Today mark's the UN's celebration of the World Human Rights day. In effect, many people today lack the very knowledge of the rights that one might hold, whether it may be their own personal rights as a consumer, a voter or just as a normal citizen.  But truth be hold, amidst many of what some might consider a "drivel" of misguided information put forward to unsuspecting people, many of them are clouded by a mist of twisting and spinning stories to lure them further away from the truth.

Quote from the UN's website:

The promotion and protection of human rights has been a major preoccupation for the United Nations since 1945, when the Organization's founding nations resolved that the horrors of The Second World War should never be allowed to recur. 

Respect for human rights and human dignity "is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world", the General Assembly declared three years later in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1950, all States and interested organizations were invited by the General Assembly to observe 10 December as Human Rights Day (resolution 423(V)). 

The Day marks the anniversary of the Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Over the years, a whole network of human rights instruments and mechanisms has been developed to ensure the primacy of human rights and to confront human rights violations wherever they occur.

Respect for human rights and dignity is of the essence but unfortunately it isn't practiced so much around here with statements such as "balik tongsan" coming from the very people charged to helping us preserve our rights.

Too much has happened over the weekend and too much has been reported on the media. Of course everyone wants to know what is going on and with the Internet being so easily available nowadays, who ever believes what they read in the newspapers. How much so can we trust these so called "credible" sources of the media?

I rather read my news online because I believe that the level of trust I have for these spin doctors have reached an all time low and as someone once told me that it only takes a minute to destroy a lifetime built reputation.

Anyhow, let us not stray from the fact that today is the World Human Rights day so let's celebrate the fact that we are still in a democratic state but yet mourn for the things that are happening around us. Perhaps these photos might tell a better story indeed.