And what would an afternoon swim in what’s been the among the driest month in years be without some poolside humor? :)
Yeah Matt swam as well. He’d been wanting to give the pool a go for a while now, and finally got round to it that day.:)
Sandie – Matt’s wife – picked up some new clothes for Hannah, and here’s our baby wearing them. Hannah looks like a little American cheerleader lass now, though she couldn’t quite adjust comfortably to the head band.:)
It didn’t take long for her to take off the band and started chewing on it.:)
A class of students I’ve been counselor and mentor since April 2007 will be graduating in a few months’ time. The staff did an informal Seniors’ Farewell event yesterday morning in school, where my colleagues did several industry prep talks and myself a Further Education: Universities talk followed by a presentation of testimonials and finally lunch.
I’ll miss this bunch: they were my first group of students I saw from start to end over three years, and while I’ll be receiving my next group of counselees and students to ‘look after’ for another three years next month, firsts in this sort of thing is always very special. So – here we go with the picture (several persons arrived late or were overseas):
In the likely event that years from now I’ll forget many of their names: [Back row] Lian Jing Wu, Jonathan Foong, Isaiah Tan, Neo Zhen Ming, Tan Pin Xun, Chua Yizhuan, Benjamin Ng; [Front row] Toh Wei Ming, Zulhairul, Jacqueline Tung, Mindy Low, and Nicholas Tan.
There’re just three extended news issues running in the last week or so now. Firstly, the inquiries made to a certain Romanian DIplomat’s actions that resulted in a poor guy’s death; secondly, the extremely dry weather here that finally saw very welcome respite in the form of island wide downpours yesterday, and local director Jack Neo’s adventure-capades with women half his age. The forums, not unexpectedly so, have been abuzz with the usual gossip, speculation and finger-pointing – though unlike what the newspapers here seem to be suggesting, I don’t get the feeling that more than a very small handful of online persons are sympathetic to Neo at all. He’s pretty much the butt of jokes right now, with Mr. Brown getting into the act too and getting his usual mileage.
Funnily though, I’m feeling a little more sympathy for Jack Neo than other Singaporeans seemingly, and certainly more than Ris Low six months ago when a saga though of a very different sort reached the same kind of online fervor. Not sure why. His indiscretions are a lot more impactful and were obviously destructive to his family and at the same time made the more ironical when one considers the moralistic-styled themes of the series of films he’s directed.
I think my sympathy might be to do with the fact that I sense there’s some degree of opportunism from the persons who seemed to be lining up to expose him, with two so far announcing that they have come to the public because they wanted to shame him. But why was that even necessary to begin with? Surely they must have realized that by going full media public, the persons who were going to be hurt the most would had been Neo’s family and wife and not just him. At least the latter’s already used to media and publicity, his family no.
The second person was even reported as that “…[she] was spurred to go public after reading about Ms Chong’s story and wanted to prevent further such incidents” – but I think that was either just mind-numbingly bad judgment or pure vindictiveness. The same objective of preventing further incidents would had been equally reached if she had just gone to Neo’s wife directly to let her know, since news had already broke from the first woman. Moreover, the same second woman claims that at the age of 20, she was just “a little girl” who didn’t know how to handle the older man’s advances. I don’t buy that for a minute either. A 15 year old maybe, but a 20 year old who’s already a freelance i.e. independent model…? Who’s she trying to kid? Not in today’s world, even in the year 2004.
I don’t think Neo’s indiscretions can be reasoned away or excused, and to the director’s credit, he has offered no excuses for his behavior. There’s also a bunch of online comments complaining about Neo’s rudeness at the press this morning when he yelled at them to get away when they started photographing his wife after she collapsed from sorrow during the press conference.
My opinion differs: I saw a man who’s finally realized the net effect of his carelessness on his wife, but who is going all out to protect her now. Surely, that must count for something.
Matt was using a Nikon D90 with his 35mm f1.8, and myself the D300 with the Sigma 24-60mm f2.8. Different lenses not withstanding of course, the flash settings and DSLR modes we used were roughly similar but the results turned out rather differently.
Mine’s the first set below:
And Matt’s:
And just for fun: of Matt shooting Hannah.:)
Every other day there’ll be photographic events organized and posted up on Clubsnap, with the subjects of photography in one room at least typically young female models, and not always fully clothed but in lingerie and bikinis. I remembered these amateur model photoshoots were actually reported in The Straits Times a couple of months ago, and there was some bad publicity surrounding some of these photo shoots with some persons I think asking aloud if some of these amateur photographers participating in these events had sleazy intentions. While Matt was in Labrador Park last week, he encountered one such event with a young female model being followed by seven photographers around the park, and texted me asking what was going on haha.:)
Anyway, we decided to pull our own TFCD (LOL) ‘model’ shoot at The Rivervale stunt, just for fun. The model? None other than our very own Hannah! Here’re the third-person behind-the-scenes pictures taken by Ling on that little Panasonic LZ8 compact.:)
Hannah gamely took up the challenge of posing for Matt and myself, and didn’t seem in the least perturbed by the three flashes constantly going off. I’ll put up the pictures tomorrow in a different post.
In the mean time, the whole experience was just outright hilarious, and Hannah’s mood willing, we’ll do this again very soon.:)
We’ve been bringing Hannah for the occasional dip into the pool. The last time round we did this Hannah while could adjust to the use of her neck float, couldn’t quite float by keeping her body vertical. So, it was thrilling to see her able to do that this afternoon. Pictures.:)
Of the about 135 pictures taken over the 15 minutes using the Sigma 18-250mm, most of them turned out delightfully, though some color temperature adjustments were necessary with the SB600 flashlight alternating between TTL and TTL-BL modes throughout.
Two more pictures below: at the start of the swim (you can see that Hannah’s hair is still dry), and towards the end in Hannah’s Jedi-esque swim-robe but looking pretty tired:
As soon as we got back home and changed her back to her normal clothes, Hannah zonked right out into sleep! :)
Ling wasn’t kidding when she wrote here last month that Hannah bursts into tears whenever our baby sees Ling coming to pick her up from infant care! Semester break started for me a week ago, so I’ve been taking a day of leave here and there – and this afternoon I saw exactly just that.
Hannah was on the far side of the room at the infant care center playing with toys, while Ling had to crouch and hide behind an ankle-height obstacle just so that Hannah wouldn’t spot her LOL! Too funny for words. As soon as Hannah spotted me on the other side of the room (about 5 metres away), she broke into a huge grin and started scrambling on all fours to me. I’d brought along the Sigma 18-250mm so managed a few pictures of Hannah on the move crawling towards me, though the uneven lighting in the room messed up exposure metering.
When Hannah was on my side of the room, she spotted Ling – and immediately started crying haha.:)
…standing on the promises of God my Saviour…” this song was reverberating in my head during one of our play times together.
I was deliberating whether to buy a play yard (see example) for Hannah so that she could play in a safe, enclosed area on the floor while I attend to other chores in the house. The only nagging thought I had was whether Hannah would want to play in it. What if it lasts only a day? Sell as a preloved item lor. Hmmm….?
Hannah has been exploring the things around her in the little space I created in front of our TV console. I thought this was great as she was learning more about the actual settings of her home. The only downside to this type of ‘play zone’ is that someone must keep a close watch on her at all times. She could scratch or bang herself against sharp objects.
May be I’d just give the play yard a shot. In any case, here’s a little video of Hannah doing her latest feat, i.e. standing up using supporting structures around her. :)
It’s extremely rare for Ling to show any interest in the lenses I use when it comes to taking pictures. So it came as surprise to me when she took a look at some pictures I took of Hannah yesterday evening, expressed surprise at how amazing the shots looked and asked what lens was used:
The lens belongs to Matt, and is the Nikon 35mm f1.8G DX and for cropped sensors a fairly recent release from Nikon actually. Prior to coming to Singapore and earlier this year, Matt actually asked if I’d to buy a copy of the lens too for him to bring here too but I declined then. While I don’t have a lens capable of shooting at 35mm @ f1.8, I thought the Sigma 24-60mm f2.8 I normally use for indoor and Hannah’s pictures would cover any intended use of the 35mm.
Well, I got to eat my words now: the lens is simply superb! Even Ling was bowled over at its color reproduction and how much detail the lens could resolve (“Wah… can see the detail in the cushion cover!!”). And when I told her it was a lens the lens costs about USD200, she said “buy buy buy!!”, and even suggested buying it from Matt haha!
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