Musings

When I was unpacking at home the 37kg of luggage I had with me from Boston, Ling made a remark that I thought was fun:

“Wow dear; you really bought a lot of stuff there this time.”

And just to put her remark in context; I’d left Singapore with just 23kg of luggage!

She’s right that I did buy a lot more things on this trip than I’ve ever before did. Heck. In all the under a month trips I’ve made in the last decade, the most I’d ever returned with would be one or two shirts, and an equivalent number of fridge magnets.

This time, I returned from Boston with, among other things, a new jacket, two polo-shirts, three T-shirts, an umbrella, three mugs, several toys for Hannah, so many fridge magnets that they weighed about a kilogram in net weight, and ten books –a few of which are really heavy.

One book that I picked up from Borders at the intersection between School and Washington streets was With Wings Like Eagles by Michael Korda, a London-born author who once was the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster in NYC, and currently today lives in the city.

Accounts of leaders in the face of adversity have always fascinated me. This book looks at the three month-long Battle of Britain in 1940, but from the perspectives of leading politicians and military leaders of countries who were involved in it. I’m aware that for many of us, or at least those of us who might read this blog occasionally, the only persons who might be even familiar would be Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.

But without getting into too much detail in this post, the individual whose decisions had the most impact on the historical fact that England did not get overrun that year was neither person. Rather, it was a British officer, Hugh Dowding, who was placed in command of the small number of British fighter planes who had the very difficult job of stopping the Germans from attaining air superiority before actually invading the isles.

The book maintains a high level of discourse; exploring the conflicts and circumstances between Churchill and Dowding, of Dowding and his commanders, and their individual personalities. Unfortunately, despite that history would had been very different had Dowding not had the moral courage and foresight and gone against Churchill to make the decisions he did then, he was eventually given the political shaft by his rivals and enemies, an outcome he became extremely bitter about in his remaining years after the war.

It was more than a little sad to read in the last chapters of his fall from grace and from great heights of achievement, the more so that his political assassination seemed more from spite from his detractors and rivals than through any real character failings on his part.

I was reading With Wings Like Eagles initially slowly – several pages at a time – each morning over breakfast at Blue’s, then finished the remaining half of the book on a single shot over the long flight home from Boston to Singapore.

The next historical book I’m reading now I picked up from the Harvard University bookstore, and it’s about four American and Japanese officers and how their lives and careers got intertwined. More on it later.:)

Just over three months ago in February I posted briefly about starting work on Vita Una: Book V. The fifth volume is finally about done. And not a moment too soon too, since I’m hoping to do a final check through it before sending it to the printers before I fly off. The book covers the last four months of our Hannah and up till yesterday – her first birthday.

I’ll be working on two more books next, likely simultaneously: one for travels which will include pictures from the Boston trip, and another Hannah book – this time covering likely up till she’s 18 months old.:)

I realized I haven’t done an updated entry on the fourth volume of Vita Una since posting about it more than a month ago here. The volume was titled Vita Una IV: To One that covered Hannah going onto one year old, shipped on the 25 Feb, and was properly delivered on the 11th March. Unlike Volume III, the printing for both copies of the book was perfect this time, and I was immensely pleased with the USD132 I paid for the entire package.

Here’s the landscape coffee-table sized book:

Given the very large number of photos I’m taking of Hannah, I started work on Book V: At One immediately after finishing the fourth volume. It should, hopefully, cover the months from mid-February to Hannah’s forthcoming first birthday in early June – and is already half-completed. Pretty consuming and a lot of work, but the pay off is incredible – seeing printed pictures of our little tot now, and that hopefully in 20 years time, our adult Hannah will find these memories equally meaningful.:)

Writing and preparing yet another Blurb book has become a regular ritual for me. As soon as I finished Book III of the series of Vita Una books last September, I began work on Book IV:

The initial plan for the fourth book was to cover the period from Hannah at 3 months to when she’s a year old, but the large number of pictures I liked and are significant in Hannah’s life journey accelerated the production quite a bit.

This new volume covers the period between 24 Sep last year to 21 Feb 2010 and just a shade under five months. There’re more photos than the previous volume too: a projected 221 compared to 182, though that’s come at the expense of text. The format of the book, like the previous volumes, stipulates a maximum of 160 pages – a bummer since I’d really like to do up more pages if I could.

I suspect that the next volume – Book V – will come out even quicker, and that’s in view of the travels we’ve had that weren’t centered specifically on Hannah and I haven’t yet covered in the series of books. Specifically, I’d like the next book to at least cover the San Francisco and Kumamoto Trips, and Hannah turning one in June this year – and if at all possible, perhaps even pictures from the Boston trip if plans work out.

It was my last day guest lecturing at the college today. The lectures and workshops I did with my Japanese students covered a lot of material.

And when there’s such high content density, so much memories have been created during the last five days that even though it’s just been five (intensive) days, each day has actually felt long – and in the good sense.

I finally got round to bring the D300 to work and taking pictures during my lunch hour today too. Didn’t get to take much as the weather was crazily freezing. At noon with the sun right up overhead, the temperature was still a frosty 4 degree celsius… with wind to boot!

I was no longer playing hero: I didn’t bring winter pants, but wore a thicker polo-shirt, a sweater, and my jacket as a third layer when I was outdoors.

So, there really aren’t too many pictures I took of the college compound as I was too cold to venture walking further than the immediate vicinity of my block to take better pictures. The first picture was taken right beside the cafeteria building with some students milling about during their lunch hour.

The picture below is a HDR composition:

Lots of students cycle to work – and all the bicycles aren’t secure chained. Theft of bicycles clearly isn’t a problem in this part of the world:

And lastly, here’s my class of students, with the college professor I’ve been liaising and working with this whole week (these are also his own students). This was taken just before we said our good byes. In addition to their daily bow at the end of each teaching day, the class – led by their class representative – also thank me in unison in English for my teaching this week. It was really moving, especially considering many of them aren’t confident English speakers:

Well, the rest of my stay here or at least for tonight and most of tomorrow morning will be spent marking their test they sat for just now. Hopefully I’ll finish by noon time though, and also that the weather holds – just so I can visit Suizenji Gardens.:)

Tom Ang -- the UK-based photographer whose How to Photograph Absolutely Everything book I enjoy reading so much -- was apparently in Singapore to do a photography series in Singapore. As far as I can tell from the series trailer, he goes around to both well-and less-known spots on the island… alongside two local photographers LOL. Quite a refreshing concept.

Here’s the trailer for the series:

Over the last 18 months now I’ve been putting together a series of photo books with Blurb and titled Vita Una, or “Life in One” in Latin. The first volume covered the first four years between 2004 and 2008 of our being together (blogged here), and the second volume of our Bali trip.

I’ve been meaning to put together the third volume since June this year, and it’s intended to cover the most significant event since the Bali trip: pregnancy, delivery and Hannah’s first four months. The photo hard drive has 531 pictures, selected from the probably two or three times more that number of actual frames captured of Hannah’s journey in the last 12 months.

This new volume is a little different from the first two though. Firstly, I’ve selected about 70 of the Baby Blues blog posts here and am adding it to the book. What better way for Hannah to read of her history one day than to read the actual posts we wrote of her? Secondly, the pictures will be supplemented by more text that’s addressed to her as Daddy and Mummy.

At this point now I’ve completed work on the first 135 of the intended 160 page length of the volume, and it’s been a fun ride recollecting many of the memories, observations and thoughts going through our minds of Hannah from her conception to pregnancy to delivery and to her first three and a half months so far. Hannah will be four months old in 2 weeks, so there should be enough material in both pictures and blog posts for the last 25 pages of the volume.

I’ve been looking for a good travel photography book for ages now – and in every sense of the word. It’s got to be about travel photography, and also portable enough for me to bring during travel too.

The photography books section though isn’t short of material on this subject; though it’s a lot harder to find books that are small enough yet contain enough objective information and captioned pictures for one to get ideas from.

The Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Photography is in its third edition, and with a publication date of Aug 2009 is a very recently-released book too. Interestingly, the third edition is a larger tome than the earlier edition which was paperback novel sized. This third edition isn’t nearly as big as a coffee-table book, but it’s still larger than the earlier one and about the size of a netbook.

Of first impressions: the paper used is of heavy stock… nice! I’m not quite so sure of the cover though. A landscape shot would had been nicer. Instead, there’s this scary looking painted Pulikkali dance performer eye-balling the reader.

Content wise, it’s all in order. The book has been nicely updated from the earlier edition with technical specifications that are more 2009 than 2006. E.g. the table presenting storage space vs megapixels in an image now specifies up till 32 GB cards and 25 megapixel images. I’Anson in the book’s Introduction also notes a long list of additional places – including Singapore (!) – he’s visited since the second edition, and the book end nicely indexes pictures of each new place.

Unlike also the other Lonely Planet Photography book I picked up a fortnight ago (blogged about here), I’Anson’s writing is more objective, less flippant and containing pained attempts at humor injection. His advice, perceptions and take of a particular subject theme is stated matter-of-fact.

Unlike Tom Ang’s How to Photograph Absolutely Everything though, while I’Anson’s book covers very roughly the same ground and 2-3 page presentations of numerous subject themes, there isn’t those third person pictures to illustrate how pictures were taken that I really liked in Ang’s book. Oh well – you can’t have everything.

Minor quibbles too. The books shipped from Amazon are always cardboard reinforced, and shrink-wrapped for additional protection. Of the two books that arrived from The Book Depository, one was placed in a bubbled envelope – scary – and neither of the two books were shrink wrapped. Scarier. The Child photography book was in pristine condition, but this Lonely Planet Guide was very slightly dog-eared.

The last of three books I’d ordered from The Book Depository arrived yesterday afternoon: and it was Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook 2009. The book costs a hefty SGD38 including shipping from the store – compared to a hefty SGD58 from Kinokuniya. Even with the member’s 20% discount, it would have still cost SGD46 at Kino.

For those of us who read critical reviews of films, Roger Ebert is one of the industry’s most well-known and popular film critic and reviewer. He’s been reviewing films for 42 years now.

This book is a pretty massive tome. It crams every review that Ebert has written from January 2006 to July 2008. The book is also supplemented by numerous other articles, essays, and interviews. And the heap of written content weighs in at a massive 944 (!) pages. Just goes to show how incredible is Ebert’s output volume.

Funnily though, while Ebert is one of the two film critics I make a point to read, he’s not my favorite of the two. Specifically, I prefer James Berardinelli’s reviews (his review site here) – the latter’s articles are as insightful as Ebert’s, but I enjoy his humor far more. Unfortunately, Berardinelli most recent book collection of articles comes from several years ago and there hasn’t been a new edition since.

Either way, I did quite a bit of browsing at Amazon before settling for this one by Ebert. Leonard Maltin’s yearly guides are pretty popular, crazily thick at 1664 pages for the latest volume – but his reviews are all snippet-lengths and typically just a paragraph long. I’m guessing Maltin’s guides are intended more as a quick references to DVD or video rental. Not especially interested in short articles, as I’d really rather read long critical essays on films.

The nice thing about this book is that I don’t feel the compulsion to read from page 1 to 944. That would be like reading a Dictionary i.e. crazy. Nah – this book is a reference volume that I can pick a film between 2006 to 2008, flip to the page and read an essay on the film. Just my kind of thing. For certain in the upcoming trip to Japan and on the 8 hour long flight, this is gonna be in my carry-on luggage.

I finally set aside some time over Sunday evening to begin reading the second of two photography books I’d bought from Kinokuniya during the 20% members discount a week ago.

Lonely Planet has a couple of photography-theme books. I like them for a few reasons: they’re slightly cheaper than similar books from other publishers, the pictures in them are invariably annotated (more on this later), and most importantly – the books are novel sized. As much as I enjoy reading Tom Ang’s How to Photograph Absolutely Everything, hard cover books of that size just aren’t much fun bringing around to read when I’m eating dinner alone at Kopitiam.

I found Wildlife Travel Photography by Andy Rouse a good read. The author has certainly traveled widely, and the book is broken down into many chapters, and then into bite-sized sections. Not essay-like like Joe McNally’s The Hotshoe Diaries whose author uses a writing style that doesn’t appeal to me.

All the pictures in this book are annotated with equipment identified: the SLR and the lens used, alongside shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings. What I like even the more was that the annotations also note the location where the picture was taken, and the full name of the animal or critter in the picture.

The little descriptions finally also include the author’s explanations of challenges he faced in taking each picture and how he got through them. Some of those anecdotes elicited chuckles from me, like one picture he took in which his subjects – inquisitive wild dogs at a South African private game reserve – bit the DSLR he’d mounted to take remote-trigged pictures, leaving teeth marks on the wireless transmitter unit.

That said, there’s also lame humor, as though Rouse is trying hard to be cute when writing. E.g. when describing the usefulness of angle finders, he says

“It (an angle finder) allows the camera to be flat on the ground without you having to be, which is great for those tuxedo-wearing photographers out there.”

Duh. The humor works better when it’s part of a situation he encountered taking pictures.

I’ve got a couple of other little gripes I’ll make a mention here.

Firstly, there’s some incongruity between the book’s intended audience and the kind of equipment that non-professionals are likely to use. Rouse makes no bones about the value of expensive glass. Ok I get that; but not everyone has the moola to own a 500mm f4 – which costs a very cool USD5.8K. If this book is written with advice and ideas pitched at entry-level enthusiasts, then I think the author should have provided more material advising non-professionals how best to maximise their consumer-grade equipment to take the best pictures. Like what Tom Ang did in his Absolutely Everything book.

Secondly, the book was published 3 years ago, and there’s a bit of information in it that isn’t as correct as it once was. Not the author’s fault of course though. But still… for instance, Rouse discourages the use of laptops for field use and makes a pitch for portable photo storage devices.

But 2006 was before netbooks came about, which has made photo storage devices look so yesteryear. Netbooks are cheaper, have better and larger displays, bigger storage space, potential photo-editing abilities, better battery life – and most importantly, don’t cost an arm and a leg. Just take a look at the Epson P-7000 photostorage device. It costs USD740. For that money, you could get two netbooks that can do everything the P-7000 does, and better too.

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Still, I’m happy with this purchase, considering that it costs just SGD24 for a good read that I can bring along with me. I’ve got another Lonely Planet photography book on order, and this time it’s the new edition of Richard I’Anson’s Travel Photography. Hopefully the next one’s just as good.