Oh my goodness, I really can't remember the last time I actually posted something up here really means either I have been busy with work, busy with shoots, busy with hanging out or maybe perhaps, trying to get all the details in for my own wedding. But I will leave that bit for another post.

I received May's email one fine day in regards to my portrait promotion which I gave out for this year and after a couple of email exchanges, we were up early in the morning for our shoot in KL. I had my wonderful assistant, munZ, who assisted me throughout the shoot.

Here are some of my favourite shots from that session.

We started off with just some fun, hoping to catch the sun and the smiles :)







The sun was already blazing high up in the sky as compared to the recent rainy season.







Actually, both Peter and May came prepared with some of their props. We tried very very very hard to make the balloon float. Eventually, we sort of managed. Well, sort of ;)









And finally, in the end, we had a little bit of fun at the playground. Man, did the kids look at us funny. They must be probably thinking, "Uncle, can you move away, I want to play with the stuff there la!".



Was definitely a fun session, I think I got a little sunburned then. Ah the joy of taking photos :)

Do you use a Wordpress engine for your blog and recently whenever you try the automatic upgrade functionality you seem to get an error such as the "Unable to locate Wordpress Content Directory (wp-content)" issue?

Usually when you start upgrading either the Wordpress engine or your plug-ins via the automatic upgrade, you might come about the screen below.



Now upon entering all of your usual details, you might end up with the error below.



The "Unable to locate WordPress Content directory" message would then pop up. This issue has been bugging me and after trying various fixes such as allowing the directory to have the necessary authorisations or including in codes into the theme files, it just didn't seem to fix the issue until I came about this solution.



By using "127.0.0.1" as your Hostname, you will actually inform the engine to locate the LocalHost where your "wp-content" folder resides in.

Only to return on a Monday, I have decided to return my old trend of providing some interesting links as well as excerpts from other sources which either inspire me or give some sort of educational value.

First up for this week:

• I've only started reading some inspirational blogs lately especially to gain some insights of what I can use in life as well as apply at my job which has been consuming a lot of my time lately. Just see when was my last posting and you will know why. Anyway, I thought that this article on "How to be good at something" is very relevant and useful to us all no matter which industry you might be in.


• A good book review on the "The presentation secrets of Steve Job" can be found over at Duarte's blog. In case you don't know who Nancy Duarte is, she is the owner of the company that came out with Al Gore's "The Inconvenient Truth". I get plenty of corporate presentation tips from her although I still find it hard to apply some of the design principles into corporate slides.


• In case you have been living in a nutshell, Louis Pang recently launched his new training portal called WedShooter. Check it out over here, sign up quick and get a discount for a year's subscription as well as his World Tour DVD!


• Scott Kelby has a recent posting on what every new Lightroom user should know. Check it out especially in particularly that you are new to Lightroom as well as trying to figure out what Lightroom is about.

I always wondered who started the term "the Monday Blues", even after searching through Wikipedia, there hasn't been any entry on it and yet I am somewhat curious how the term came to coin. Maybe its because I got a latest dose of mystery cum adventure in the form of Dan Brown's latest book, "The Lost Symbol", which made me realised that I have been taking a lot of things for granted.

One of them is being the way I do things. How many times have I ever given my 110% in anything that I have done? Truthfully, I find it extremely difficult trying to perform at a 110% in all physical, mental and spiritual context. Even if my average is at say 75%, an increase of 1% may or may not prove significant, but in actual sense, the end product can have many leaps and bounds.

In truth, I am slowly coming to terms that in life, there are certain things that we take for granted, that we tend to procrastinate, that we tend to just shun off for another time. There are things that we take up, only to know that it hinders us from our actual goal. If you ask me now, what is my goal in life, my answer would have been the same 10 years ago. "No idea", "get rich?", "don't need to work ever again", seems to pop into my mind but apparently it doesn't work just that way in life. I realised that everyday is an effort, an effort to find oneself, an effort to realise what I am and what I can accomplish.

Over lunch, I had an interesting conversation with my colleagues in reference to the show, "Yesman!", starring Jim Carrey. It was a show about a guy who usually said "no" to things in life having suddenly have to say "Yes" to everything. It changed his life tremendously. So how many times is it that we said "no" to things when it should have been a "yes"? Okay, here comes the twist. How many times have we said "yes" to things when we should have said "no" instead? I have a feeling the latter occurs more often.

A good example was over the week, I said "yes" to so many things that it left me utterly exhausted. But what did I get from saying "yes"? Quite a fair bit as well. I watched my first orchestral performance at the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. On the other hand, I gained a bit of weight from eating too much at California Pizza kitchen instead as there was just too much food on the table.

Right now, I've got about 5 more days before I have an important meeting to discuss over my annual review. I definitely need to map out a path for myself but I have been procrastinating it for way too long. Maybe its time I took that extra 1% and channel it to what my goal is.

So, have you set your own personal goals and development plan? In your career? As a photographer? As a parent?

Don't wait, lets start working on it.

p.s. I still can't find out where the term Monday blues came about especially when we have cultures where the first day of work does not begin on a Monday!