Nosy business…

I was on a cab yesterday. It stopped for a red light and this shiny brand new black coloured SAAB pulled up beside my cab. I’ve always marvelled at how well a car would look no matter how ugly it is if it’s brand new and this wasn’t a bad looking car. The guy was driving and his wife was sitting behind with their baby beside her. It was a picture of a relatively well to do young professional Singaporean couple out for a Sunday family outing. Typical.

Then it started. Oblivious to the fact that people were watching, the lady began digging her nose. She seems to be enjoying it alot and what was it that has accumulated in her nasal passage only she knows. For what seems like eternity she finally got the contents out. She took a look at the remains on her finger and then nonchalently plastered it onto the car’s window, wiped her finger a couple of times on the window again and then turned her attention to her baby.

The traffic light turned green and my cab moved on, I looked at the scenery flying past me and just let my mind wander, feeling lost.

How do I get some rest?

I’ve been sick since Thursday afternoon. The flu came on pretty strong and I was reduced to a feeble weakling by night. I was in and out of conciousness until Satuday morning, I kept waking up duing the night even after the medication that the doctor claimed would knock me out.

I think the unbearably hot weather didn’t help as well as I’m pretty confused as to my pespiration was due to my weak body or the weather. I has no food on Friday and minimal on Saturday as I couldn’t stomach anything, not that I’m throwing up food or anything, just didn’t have the appetite.

Last night was worse, during the day I thought I had recovered ‘cos I started eating some porridge and soft stuff although I still felt weak but when the night came, I was wide eyed. I just couldn’t sleep. I felt very sleepy but just couldn’t sleep. Ended up watching both games of the Euro 2004. Finally caught some sleep at around 5am.

The rest of the day was a blur as well. Somewhere in the afternoon I couldn’t take the heat anymore and went for a show. I thought maybe I must be feeling better, but now I’m typing in this entry, sleepy but can’t sleep, feeling hot and sticky (and I had just showered). How do I get some rest?

What makes a good portrait?

What is a good portrait? Why makes one portrait different from another? I’ve been asking these questions for a long time and only recently did someone answer those questions for me. A good portrait is one where it causes the viewer to take notice of the portrait, to want to learn more about the person in the portrait and after which that, leaves with a yearning for more.

That answer led me to think about portraiture in general and why it’s a very difficult art to master. There are guidelines and rules in portraiture photography that will help you enhance the picture so that it’s pleasant looking, but the ability to capture the essence of the subject in the portrait to a point where it will arouse interest is something else totally. How do you take a portrait that would bring these questions to mind? Questions like, who is this person? What does this person do? Why did the picture of this person invoke this feeling in me? Why?

To be continued…

Surnames… Does it really matter?

Till now, everyone has known me by my wrong surname, my official surname in my identify card is the wrong surname. Surnames are the same as your last name, for those who don’t know. The immigration officers got it wrong when my father was making his identity card. He knew about the mistake but decided not to get them to correct it because he felt that as long as the mandarin version of his name is correct the english one doesn’t matter.

Since I learnt that, I have never felt comfortable knowing that I’m using a surname that doesn’t belong to me. It’s like I’m not a complete person. I’ve been toying with the idea of changing it and recently I’ve been feeling an urgency to do so, not sure why though. I’ve already found out which lawyer can do that for me and the cost as well as the consequences of doing so. Some of my friends are telling me that I’m letting myself be bothered by a trivial matter, but I beg to differ. If one day, you found out that your name’s not your real name, what’ll you do?

Bad day…

Some days are just meant for you to sleep through instead of going around getting yourself into shit…

Extra doors..

I was living in a 3 room flat and someone arrived at my door, fiddled around the power point and plastered a fake door on the blank wall beside my house. Then I woke up.

It felt so real. Weird.

Back from KL shoot… Again…

Just got back from a wedding dinner shoot in KL. Following is what transpired.

Friday, took a 9.45am bus to KL. Stopped at Yong Peng for lunch, pretty expensive for a rest stop. Almost reached bus terminal when the aircon belt broke, no air conditioning in the bus, temperature goes up and we were stuck in a massive jam. Saw the hotel just around a few blocks away, asked to be dropped off and walked to hotel with gear and all, blistered my toe in the process, that’s what you get for walking without proper footwear. 4pm, arrived at hotel, checked in and went down to Times Square, dinner and then walked around the place. Had supper at this kopi tiam that serves pretty good authentic hokkien noodles. Had a history lesson on the area, traids used to own the area until the government decided to clean up the place. Before that nobody would be eating supper like I was during the night. Shop owner beside the kopi tiam was hacked to death soon after he took over the shop. After supper, went for a drink at hotel lounge and then back to room to catch some sleep at 2am.

Saturday, 8.30am, woke up, breakfast, food at the hotel quite bad. Back to room and slept till around 3-4pm. Went for late lunch. Stepped out of the hotel and was just in time to see this woman robbed by these 2 guys on a motorcycle. They must be waiting for her ‘cos they just suddenly appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her handbag. Her husband gave chase but it was too late to do anything. I couldn’t do anything as well so I left the scene. Ate at Bukit Bintan. Went back to hotel and sleep again. Evening, restaurant where the wedding dinner was held is just across the road, took a walk across making sure I had my camera bag secured. Finished the shoot around 11pm, went back to hotel, showered and sleep again.

Sunday, woke up for the “not so nice” breakfast again. It’s free, no point wasting it. Went back to hotel room, took a nap, packed my stuff, checked out and made my way to the bus station via cab. Cab driver a very weathered fella but seems pretty friendly and sincere, he’s driving a very run down taxi, can’t close its boot, quite amusing actually when we were banging the boot at the hotel entrance trying to close it, finally gave up and left praying hard that the boot cover would not open up during the trip. He didn’t want to get stuck in a jam so he took a short cut, parked his cab and walked me to where I was going before going off, nice. Weird ticketing system for the bus, you buy the ticket and had to bring them to this small counter to change them for the actual ticket, don’t know why they couldn’t just issue the actual ticket. Took my free bottle of mineral water that comes with the bus ride and crossed the bridge to the terminal station and boarded the bus. Bus left 30 minutes behind the schedule time. Stopped at Yong Peng again for dinner, should have brought my own food. Reached Malaysian customs around 8.05pm, mad rush for clearance. Reached Singapore customs around 8.50pm due to traffic jam. Mad rush for clearancee again but at least bags are x’rayed instead of hand searched. Hope the scanners are film safe though. Reached Golden Mile complex at 9.30pm, had dinner across the road, called a cab. Reached home at 10.30pm. Clear bag of cloths for wash, showered, drink lots of water. Check emails, mind racing again after reading the emails, lots of stuff coming up this week.

I want a holiday.

Lost me movie cravings…

After a meeting I went down to a cinema nearby and was about to buy a ticket for a show when suddenly, I lost any interest in watching anything. The cravings I had for the past few days just suddenly decided to pack up and migrate somewhere else. I stood at the ticketing area feeling quite lost and looking pretty dumb. I ended up having a bowl of ramen for lunch and went back to work. Tomorrow I’m off to KL again… Sigh…

Craving unfed…

Gave up and went down to Plaza Singapura to try and catch Harry Potter, ok, I was there to pay my SCV bill as well. Anyway, there was a long queue and just before it was my turn, they announced that the only seats left for the 3 shows starting at around the same time were all in the first 3 rows. Had a nagging feeling that someone’s being pretty cruel to me.

So instead of going for it, I didn’t want a stiff neck after the show, I went for my dinner, bought 2 books and an interesting bookmark, came home, turned on the tv and am still watching it at this very moment while I’m typing this. I’m starting to feel the shivers from the withdrawal…

Movie cravings…

I’m having cravings for movies. If I go for Harry Potter later, it would be the third movie I’ve watched over a period of 3 days? And I have this dreadful feeling of running out of movies to watch, weird…

Movies during weekdays…

These days I watch movies during the weekdays to take advantage of the $2 difference. It’s not much but it does help me buy an extra drink to go with the movie. Another thing about watching movies during weekdays is that it’s usually not as crowded unless it’s the school holidays, which happen to be now.

I decided to catch “Shrek” today and I got myself into a theatre filled with kids and some parents even brought their infant kids who won’t remember or even understand anything about the movie. A whole family sat behind me with 2 rascals running up and down, knocking on the seats and making screeching noise.

Despite that, I enjoyed the show though, it’s very funny and I had a good laugh. It’s nice to watch movies on a weekday.

Chicken pie @ *Bucks…

I’m waiting for a friend at Starbucks and decided to try its chicken pie. It’s been a totally horrific experience and I finished everything ‘cos I didn’t want to waste any food but I felt I had to put down in writing on how this will haunt me for quite some time.

At first look the pie looks decent enough. Fresh crust and well formed. They said they’ll heat it up for me but when I cut it with the knife there’s no hot steaming filling that is suppose to be flowing out of a good pie.

I ordered a coffee along with this pie and I took a sip of the coffee before having the pie. The coffee had a pretty nice aroma and taste to it, it went down pretty smooth, I was happy. Next came the horrible mistake, I took a mouthful of the pie, it was dry and tasteless and after which my coffee tasted bitter and horrible, I almost choked.

Now both the coffee and pie taste horrible, I am sad…

Lightradio…

Just discovered a Malaysia radio station. It’s called Light Radio on FM 94.6. It plays light music and I’ve been listening to it since 9pm and it hasn’t repeated any songs yet, unlike 90.5. I visited their website and it shows the song title and singer of the current song on the top bar of the site beside a animated lava lamp, very cute and useful. Wonder if I’ll get sick of it like I got sick of 90.5…

Channel 5 news sucks…

Sometimes due to work commitment I fail to catch the 8.30 news on Channel i so I have to catch the 9.30 one on Channel 5. What I can say is that the news content for Channel 5 is extremely weak. And recently, instead of news, they’ve dedicated a significant part of their news program featuring potential contestants for the Singapore Idol show.

Why can’t they keep all these to some entertainment news or program? I watch the news to get an update on the happenings on what went on for the day around the world as well as local, not to see you feature an entertainment program like some lengthy advertisement campaign.

Mediacorp, first you loose your creativity and originality, now, you don’t even know what kind of content you should be running in your programs… Eh, news program is news program, entertainment is entertainment, don’t waste people’s time…

Block…

My mind is like blocked… Can’t really think of anything sensible at this moment…