Exactly a week ago, me and munz decided to take up an offer by Canon Marketing Malaysia to attend an event for photographers where Simon Yam (yup, Canon's ambassador) would be there in person for a quick question and answer session with everyone as well as provide a couple of photo opportunities for the attendees. This was then followed with a free movie screening of "Echoes of the Rainbow" which helped Simon win the award for Best Actor in the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards.







The event was held in Pavillion, so by the time me and munz battled through the Monday evening traffic, we arrived there slightly late where we saw Simon entering the Gold Class Lounge at GSC Pavillion. There he was speaking to a couple of reporters while a huge crowd of 200+ photographers filled up the main hallway before entering the cinema.



Whilst the rest were waiting at the main area where Simon would be speaking, I tried to enter into the Gold Class Lounge but didn't manage to get past the guards!

So I decided to take a couple of shots of the folks I know who was there.


Yup that is camera shy Xavier in the photo above


A shot of Jason, he tried to get me into the Gold Class Lounge to get up close to Simon but the guards wouldn't let me


Jason and Mun Tzin

Once Simon left the Gold Class lounge, I managed to sneak in near the door to capture a couple of shots.







By the time he arrived at the main hall, there were so many photographers there that I could hardly get a glimpse of him so I ended up chatting with Jason. Most of the time I didn't know what he said because he was answering questions in Mandarin as well as Cantonese, so me being a "banana", I was just "lepaking" in front of the air con vent because it was getting a little hot in the hallway.



I even took a couple of shots of the people surrounding him trying to get photos of Simon.





After he has completed his Q&A session and adjourned out, everyone was ushered into the cinema to catch the show where they even provided free popcorn and a tin of coke. Not too shabby at all.

 

Overall I thought the movie was actually quite good. It was a proper serious type of show which depicted life in Hong Kong in the late 60's for a shoemaker and trying to make ends meet to send his two sons to school. The movie talks about how the sons went through life, private school (yes, the parents worked very hard to pay for their school tuition), bribing police officers with moon cakes and facing harassment all around.

My rating for the show is a good 3.5/5 stars!

p.s. Check out Jason's blog post as well with his up close and personal shots with Simon.

It's not very often that I receive emails such as this but this time I received it from within my organization which I think also makes a bit of sense. Why do I say that is because there seems to be a trend going now (from my personal observation) that the younger generation seem to want more for less. Heck, I even admit it that I definitely fall into that category and have wayward dreams of having it all whilst floating on cloud 9, but only to fall back onto the hard floor of reality.

(Image source)

I am digressing. The fact of the matter is, Bill Gates went to a high school and gave this piece of advice to them. Frankly, I am not too sure whether it is authentic or whether he actually said those words but hey, it made sense to me. The comments in red are by me.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. (I guess this advice was given before a mobile phone was created?)

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. (The same should be for serving food, cleaning toilets, sweeping the roads)

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life.. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs..(reminds me of Friends, haha!)

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
These rules definitely are not easy to swallow but so is medicine and it's intention is to heal you. The same goes for advice, either we take it with open minds and a willing heart or we can shun away from it, there is no right or wrong in that.

As I mentioned in my previous post, me and the RedNinja team were invited by Canon Malaysia to speak at the recent DCIM show over at Midvalley. Grace, Jon and I had different slots throughout Saturday and Sunday. Here are some of the photos that we took of each other during the talk.

Jon started his talk and shared his photos and videos, which were absolutely amazing! Jon's topic was on "Wedding Photography" and he also covered a bit about RedNinja.tv as well.



Some familiar faces in the crowd, Paul Kong and Ben Lim.



Jon gave out a number of cards as well which had his photos printed on. The participants were happy with them!



Kurt (a.k.a Orionmystery) who was speaking next also listened in on Jon's talk.



I saw Visithra there as well.



As well as Nick Leong!



I have to thank Jon for taking these photos as well while I was speaking. My topic was on "Experience with EOS". Now that isn't really an easy task to talk about especially since I have only used the system for a little over a month and covered two weddings with it and two portrait shoots.



The magic mouse (my impulse buy on Friday) was very useful for me, I managed to use it to control my slides.





I returned back to Midvalley again on Sunday to provide support to Grace who also presented on "Wedding Photography".



Alex was there as well to help out and support her.



Here is a shot of our schedule that was set up at the EOS Interactive Booth.



Overall I thought DCIM was great! Plenty of bargains (I ended up buying two Sandisk 16Gb CF cards at RM209 each at the Sandisk booth) and plenty of interesting talks and information as well as meeting new people and catching up with old friends.There were some other bargains there such as the WD Live TV was only selling for RM399 instead of the usual RM499 and their WD Essential 1TB hard disk was going for RM289. What a bargain!

Also I was finally given a live demo of how Drobo actually works, it does look impressive and it is definitely something that I would love to get but the prices here are very expensive at RM1699 for the most basic Drobo storage with no hard disks! Definitely a lot to pay but I guess you are paying for the technology as well as having a safe feeling that your photos are protected!

A copy of my talk in PDF form can be downloaded here.

Now the title of this post says it all, instead of finding ways to always treat ourselves and making ourselves feel good by buying that really nice new gadget (hides in shame as I have been lusting for the iPad), lets do something different for a change, lets make that difference in someone's life.

So, do you know of someone who would love to have their photo taken? It could be an engaged friend who wants amazing wedding portraits but cannot afford it. Or it could be the family living next door that has been contributing so much to society but just never had their family photograph taken. Or it could be a friend living with a terminal illness.

It’s up to you.

Tell me their story.

Contest Details:
1. Nominate a friend and write an email to (grace.tan [at] stories.my) explaining why this person / family / couple deserves a free shoot. It is up to you to be as creative as possible with your entries! Please attach a photo of your friend. If you don’t have a photo, you can create any kind of graphic with images or text and send it to me. The photo can be a web resolution photo. Please include the contact information of your friend (eg. phone number or email).

2. Every week, selected images and stories will be uploaded onto the Facebook Stories page. Invite your friends to ‘like’ your story.

3. The contest will end by 31 May 2010.

4. Judges from Stories.my will select the top 2 stories with consideration of the public votes. However, the number of ‘likes’ may not necessarily influence the final decision of the judges, who will decide based on story idea. Your nominated friend will win a 1 hour photography session with Stories.my. He/she will get all the photos on CD (printable up to 4R size) and one 15″ x 10″ matte photo print. Shoots are to happen within the month of June or July 2010 within the Klang valley.

Looking forward to hearing your stories!

For more information about the contest, head over to the following links below :)

• http://stories.my/help-your-friend-win-a-free-portrait-shoot/


• http://www.facebook.com/photo_comments.php?id=119085758107815&