Category: General

My flight has been delayed 2 hours. No idea why, but Taipei and Hong Kong looks very foggy today. Low lying clouds where you can’t see anything till you’re almost touching down. 2 hours, reminds me of a typical flight in Europe around Heathrow & CDG.
There’s a 75HKG voucher for dinner, which I think I know what to have for that price (2 bowls of wonton noodles, for one) but the most depressing thing about this is watching the only TV I can find, Larry King and with someone called Dr Laura who’s talking about “free world” bla bla bla. Oh, and she’s going to talk about Britney and Lindsay too according to the subtitles. I hereby term this crap-o-vision. Only someone marooned in an airport with only 1 TV and no internet would watch this. I have internet so I’m going to put on the ipod and do something else.

On my first flight of the year, KA831, with my notebook whipped out. Admittedly not many people are travelling during the new year, at least not from or to Shanghai. I get the whole of the left side of row 33 to myself, my original seat 33K has one of those broken recliner stopper, and when I lean back it reclines. Switched to 33H but the table is a little screwed up such that when I’m typing on this damned Dell notebook it rocks side to side depending on where the keys are. So fine… 33H for sleeping, 33K for typing.
The usual question we all get getting into the new year is “what is your resolution”. Personal problems not included, this is what I think I’m going to do in 2008. First of all, I need a haircut.

Continue reading “New Year 2008”

Wonder if its a good decision to have. Earlier in the week I was expecting to spend the new year in Taipei, hoping to find some time to escape work to go to Taipei 101 to catch the new year mayhem (stages are starting to be built, including a largish PS3 stand), but meetings were postponed to the end of the first week of January, so I’m on the next flight back to Shanghai. When I got to Taipei’s Taoyuan airport, the Cathay Pacific counter put me on an earlier flight to Hong Kong, meaning that I will have about 2 hours in Hong Kong for lunch, and a little bit of blogging before I get back behind the great firewall of China.
They’re setting up a large stage over at Xintiandi as well, but facing away from my apartment so I don’t think I will see much of it from the balcony like a lazy ass. I’m sure its Hong Kong entertainers coming over. No idea who they are, but posters are everywhere. Doubt I’ll bring my camera to the live variety, and it will be interesting to see the temperature drop below freezing like the meteorologists said it would. As usual, blame it on the Siberian winds.

That’s it, I’m going to spend the next 30mins scouring eBay.

Meeting with the customer in Taipei seems to be postponed to end of the week ‘next year’. So now I need to find a way to call up Cathay Pacific and get a ticket to Hong Kong and then to Shanghai. All that on a Sunday. Since its impossible to fly tomorrow on Sunday with the short notice to pack up and all, I should have a day off in Taipei! Not sure where to go though. Taichung?

Crap. I though I’d never join this facebook thing, but I joined up todayafter 6 months of staying away! Dammit.

The price of fear. Fear of not being able to find Kodak’s tri-x film in Shanghai. The last time I looked, it was impossible to find Tri-X. They do sell them here in Hong Kong today, saw ample stock at Man Shing at Mongkok, only problem was that its 10hkd more per roll than the last time I bought it in Singapore a couple of years ago. Maybe its because things in Hong Kong has gone up in price. Maybe Kodak has increased the price of a roll of black and white film by 25%. But instead of finishing my ready stock in Shanghai, bit the bullet and bought 10 rolls at a premium of 100hkd from what I was originally hoping. Ok, its just 7 metro trips from Mongkok to Quarry Bay. Maybe its not that bad after all. Anyway, Kodak Tri-X costs 35hkd per roll today in Hong Kong.

Went over to the photo street in Taipei this weekend and stumbled across a shop that sells Think Tank Photo gears. After negotiating for a little below the list price on the Think Tank website, bought a Urban Disguise 10 and a Speed Demon bag. Nice!

Got my first issue of LFI today. That’s Leica Fotografie International for all you Leica illiterates out there. A relatively thin magazine and sparsely populated with advertisements. It arrived in a cardboard envelope from Germany on standard air snail mail, padded apparently to prevent it being crumpled like salted vegetables (kiam chye: in Hokkien dialect). But whatever the intentions were, my LFI got crumpled anyway.
Will be spending the night reading it, looks like one of those publications where you can go from cover to cover. I might get some past issues from Taipei/Hong Kong over the coming days.

Just finished spending 2 weeks in Kuching. Now back thru Singapore Changi Airport on the way back to Shanghai. Spent the time doing daytrips into jungles, and doing orchid shots around the house. Came back with a lot of gear, tripods, selections of lenses, on-shoe flash, R1C1 flash system and took close to 500 pictures, maybe 600. Will need to go thru them back in Shanghai to sort out the shots. Found my sweetspot on the flower shots. I tend to like to keep the background darker and the flowers with enough lighting (typically -1.7EV but depending on the colour of course). Found that to have that dark background effect, I need to set the camera on center weighted exposure (since most flowers are on the focus point), the camera dialed with -2EV compensation to get the dark background, but not really black, and the SU800 on about -0.3 or 0EV to expose the flowers in brighter light than the background. The 70-180mm Micro lens was ideal for flower shoots. Even brought it with me into the jungle. But in the jungle I had to move swift, so it was D2H, 70-180 and an SB800 flash. In the garden around the house it was D2H, 70-180, R1C1 and on a Gitzo tripod. Tripod is necessary, since a flower shot will require at least f16 all the way to f32 on the micro lens to get enough of the flowers sharp enough. Anyway, I’ll post the pictures and some essay if I remember after going thru the photos. Also took 3 rolls of b&w film on the FM2 during the trip. Been fun. Posts will come later….

Got in my possession one of the first iPod Touch to be released in Singapore. It was supposed to be out yesterday but not all shops received the stock. There’s this shop in Funan that had a few and I bought it right away. Got just the 8gb version for S$498 which is list price here minus about S$25 in GST refund when I leave tomorrow.
Other than the iPod, bought a couple of accessories for my photo stuff, and a mid sized backpack for my future chinese adventures. Cathay photo was selling the Epson R2400 printer for just S$1599 but its too big for me to smuggle back to Shanghai. Anyways, the Chinese customs are kings at imposing duties on new and used printers and scanners.