Alex's Random Postings

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2008-06-10T15:54:00.005+08:00

This site is not updated any longer. Please proceed to the new site at http://alexchew.freehostia.com/

Special delivery from UK

2008-01-09T16:50:00.001+08:00

Thanks man! U know who U are. ;)

While I was bored...

2008-01-08T12:42:00.000+08:00

...waiting for my wife to deliver our baby (we were already in the hospital 3 days before her delivery), I took these pictures at the hospital's indoor garden.

The one above was taken on a cloudy afternoon using a Nokia N95. Don't U just love bubbles? :)

And this one, the same fountain from a different angle using my trusted dSLR on full manual mode. Semi handheld night shot with the camera restedon a curved railing for that slow shutter setting. My next lens definitely must come with Image Stabilization!

Sorry for the lack of updates / Parenthood

2008-01-08T11:06:00.001+08:00

The past 1.5 weeks have been a very very busy time for me; my wifey gave birth to our beautiful little baby boy on New Year's Eve and both of have have been taking turns feeding and changing nappies round the clock since then. The feeling of being a parent can be a rollercoaster ride; it's all good with that warm fuzzy loving feeling when your baby is sound asleep, looks cute or smiles at U. Yet, when that little monster wakes up in the middle of the night for his regular feed and decides to NOT go back to sleep and cries his heart out, I tell U it can be quite frustrating especially when U've only had a couple hours of daily sleep for the whole week. Nevertheless, being a father is a great and wonderful feeling, and I'm loving every moment of it.

‘Tis the Season to Be Jolly

2007-12-24T10:46:00.000+08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!!

Image copyright Jane Wooster Scott.

Tang Yuen

2007-12-22T15:24:00.000+08:00

Winter Solstice festival is here and as part of the celebration, "Tang Yuen", which are simply glutinous rice balls cooked and served in sweet brown sugar syrup is eaten. I still remember when I was young, I would help my grandma and mother to roll these riceballs mixed with green, yellow and red food colouring (some are also without any colouring for white ones) the night before. Each riceball is actually rolled at least twice to ensure that it would stay round after it was cooked and served. My mom also used to make 2 types of syrup, 1 which is actually just with sugar and pandan leaves, and the other type was with dark brown sugar.

Tang stands for reunion and yuan means round or complete. Eating Tang Yuan is symbolic of family unity and harmony. Also according to Chinese customs as well, we are supposed to grow a year older after eating these Tang Yuen. However, I know of a stall in Magazine Road near KOMTAR that sells these Tang Yuen nightly. Guess those who always frequent that stall must be all very old. :D

Seafood Porridge

2007-12-20T21:04:00.000+08:00

Another lazy, cold and wet day for Penang today. Seems pretty weired to still have frequent rainfall at this time of the year when it's just about 1.5 months or so before Chinese New Year. It's supposed to be blazing hot right now! Oh well...

We were not having an easy time deciding on what to have for dinner, since we were all pretty sick of the usual hawker food that we've been having so frequently for the past few months. In the end, we decided to go to this seafood place to have a simple meal....

Sorry about the picture, told U it was a lazy and wet day. :D We have actually been here a couple of times before, but we have always had rice with the various seafood cooked in different style. Tonight's order was different...

A steaming hot bowl of seafood porridge. U can actually "customize" what kind of seafood U want, be it oysters, clams, crab, or even lobsters. But in the end, we just ordered the porridge with a red snapper and some regular prawns. The serving was huge, partly because of the whole fish. The serving could easily be for 4 people.

Besides the fish and prawns, the porridge was cooked together with generous slices of ginger so that there was not too much of that "fishy" smell, and sprinkled with spring onions and "chye poh", a type of chinese seasoned and preserved vegetable that is very commonly used when serving porridge or broth. The fish and prawns, needless to say, were very fresh, something U'd expect from a seafood restaurant.

And the taste? Simply delicious, and perfect for a cold and wet night like this.

Chocolate Truffles

2007-12-15T18:25:00.000+08:00

Last week some of my colleagues came back from out US headquarters. So as usual, when anyone returns from a business trip they would bring back assortment of foods such as nuts, candies, dried fruits and chocolates. But this round, something "special" was also available as it was the holiday season...

Truffettes de France "Truffles of French". Now these French truffles are only available during the holiday season from CostCo, as I was told.

Inside the box U will find 2 separate "golden" packs holding 64 truffles (500gm) each.

The truffles are about the size of a 50sen coin, and are lightly dusted with cocoa powder. They do melt easily, but keeping them in an air-conditioned room is perfect. They taste like dark chocolates, but are SO SO SO MUCH richer and instead of being too sweet, they are a bit bitter because of their high cocoa content.

If U chance to come across them, grab them immediately. I promise U will go back for more. Just imagine, 5 boxes of these were finished in just one day in our office!

Oh, and I did also manage to find them on Amazon here. But I wouldn't recommend U to try sending them all the way back to Malaysia. :D

Diapers...

2007-12-14T16:34:00.000+08:00

So cute....and in case U are wondering, yes, I am really that bored with NBTD...:D

Baby fever, part 1

2007-12-11T20:36:00.000+08:00

As the magical EDD comes closer and closer, I decided that it was time to dig out the brand new baby car seat I had "hidden" in the closet. It isn't exactly brand new, as it was purchased at the end of 2005 in US and shipped back here with the help of my cousin (thanks again man, U know who U are). Still wrapped in brown wrapping paper used by by shipping company , I carefully ripped it to reveal the car seat...

Hidden behind the removable fabric of the backrest was the manual, which I read word for word to ensure that I would install it correctly and securely. That took me about an hour or so, including playing with the various levers, knobs and LATCH hooks.

Installation was quite straightforward, although it took me a couple of tries before I was satisfied that I had installed it correctly. I actually moved the seat from the center seat position using only the lap belt (boo Honda!) to the outboard location with the shoulder+lap belt, but the side installation wasn't as secure as the center, so in the end I moved it back to the center.

I had to place a rolled towel beneath the base to ensure that the seat tilt was at 45°, which is optimum for baby's comfort and more importantly, safety.

Here are some of the online resources that I read besides the product manual before I did the installation, which I think is beneficial for those that are interested or will be attempting an installation.

Carseat.org FAQ
American Academy of Pediatrics - Car Safety Seats
Babies Online - Car Seat Choices
and a very sad video from YouTube which I stumbled across :(

Eating Out: Ichyo Ramen

2007-12-10T16:14:00.000+08:00

Last weekend, my wifey was craving for some Japanese food, so she suggested that we should have dinner at this place in I-Avenue near Bayan Point. So we arrived quite early for dinner, and found the place to be empty although it was a Saturday night...

There was an usher outside who ushered us into the restaurant (doh!) and we were greeted with the usual "irashaimase" we get so often in almost every sushi joint or Japanese restaurants. We picked a spot, sat down and were presented with the menu. The waitress also brought us our green tea and "appetizer".

OKlah...doesn't taste too bad. And before U know it, our orders were ready...

I ordered the Kimuchi Ramen, which was nothing to shout about. My father in-law commented that the soup tasted a bit like our local Penang Laksa....LOL. Wifey ordered the Tori Teriyaki Bento set with garlic rice...

Check out the huge slices of raw salmon...yum yum...just what my wifey was craving for I think...hehehe. Also included besides the salmon and chicken teriyaki was some cooked brinjal which was pretty good according to my wifey. Above the bento set is a plate of grill salmon teriyaki which was ordered separately by my in-laws, pictured again below...

Tastes just like any other salmon teriyaki...which is good. There was also another bento set which I did not photograph as the battery on my phone went flat after the shot above. :(

After we were done, we were given a scoop of complimentary ice-cream each, chendol flavoured. Yummy...apparently, we were told it was made by Nestle.

So how was the overall experience at Ichyo Ramen? I would say it was nothing special, just like any other Japanese restaurant. I guess it won't be at the top of my list whenever we feel like having Japanese again.

First attempt at HDR

2007-12-05T10:17:00.000+08:00

Not the greatest picture for HDR, but this was the best I have at this time. Except for some of the overexposed windowpanes on the building (because it was reflecting the sun's ray straight towards the lens), the overall outcome is not too shabby I think. See Vanilla Day's HDR Tutorial for more information on what is HDR, and how easily U can make one. Certainly, I will be experimenting with HDR when I manage to get more suitable pictures.

Night shot, revisited

2007-12-04T10:26:00.000+08:00

Ahh, the haze is gone and the stars are in the sky. So out comes the tripod for another attempt at night landscape photography. With some pointers from my colleague and after reading this guide, I set the camera to Manual mode, adjusted some settings, and pressed the shutter. And I was pleased with the results this time.

Visit to the Buddhist Temple

2007-12-03T11:09:00.000+08:00

Yesterday before lunch, we stopped by the Buddhist Temple in Perak Road for some prayers. There was also a bus full of tourists, and 1 of them caught my attention as he has this SLR with a big ass zoom lens trying to take some photos against the blazing hot 11am sun. Um...yea...good luck with that. :D

Anyways, I did manage to snap some pics as well with my trusty N95. Not too bad, but the edge sharpness is really something Nokia / Carl Zeiss needs to fix for their next release.

And 1 from the Macro mode (in the strong wind :P)

Night shot

2007-11-29T14:39:00.000+08:00

Nothing much to say here, except that I think there are lots of room for improvement...Also it's not the best night to be taking night shots as the haze was pretty bad. Will try again when the sky is clear and there's stars in the sky :)

And it was the first time I used the tripod in my life...so I was a bit scared if the camera will come crashing down during the long exposure because of the wind which was quite strong last night.

My new subject

2007-11-28T09:52:00.000+08:00

Since I've been playing with the 50mm most of the time, decided to switch to the kit lens and see how good (or bad) it is. This little moth was in the kitchen this morning, so I managed to catch and placed it on my table to pose for me...LOL. Don't mind the dusty tabletop. And no moths were harmed in this production. :)

Another one from Alan

2007-11-27T21:57:00.000+08:00

This was from last year's (06) Imperial College Malaysian Night. Enjoy...

Power singing!

2007-11-26T21:36:00.000+08:00

I was trying to search for my brother's blog, but instead, I found his performance during Imperial College's Malaysian Night 07 instead...Damn power!

First shots

2007-11-26T15:36:00.000+08:00

Took these yesterday, but I have to admit I'm a total noob when it comes to post-processing. The last time I used Photoshop was like 10 years ago when I was the so called "webmaster" for my previous company's Intranet. And to make things worse I'm now using GIMP 2.4.2 instead of Photoshop CS3 because of some issues (company laptop...cough cough).

Below photos were cropped and processed using only unsharp mask and then bordered. Nothing else.

My feng-shui rooster at home.

A white flower (doh!)

Another white flower...looks lonely all alone. Click here to view a cropped version.

Fuiyoh! My new toy

2007-11-26T10:15:00.000+08:00

After months of looking at dSLR reviews at dpreview, dcresource and a few other websites, I finally made up my mind at the camera fair to go ahead with this...

I was contemplating between the Nikon D40, Olympus E-510 (with the twin lens kit) and the Canon 400D. From the reviews, I gathered that their image qualities are almost similar...well...maybe up to 10% difference, but with Photoshop, the difference can be easily compensated.

What made me chose the Canon is that it is a Canon (LOL), but seriously, it had a cheap 50mm f/1.8 lens that I really wanted for portrait purposes, and as a bonus, it was really CHEAP (and so was its build quality). The Nikon had 1 too, but on the D40, U had to manually focus on it, and on the Olympus, it costs about 4.5 times compared to the Canon, and it was only f/2.0. Oh well, call me a scrooge, I don't care. :P

So, besides the 400D kit with the 18-55mm lens, I also got a 50mm prime, 2 Hoya UV filters, a 2GB Sandisk Ultra II CF card, and a screen protector. Total damage...well, let's just say I'll be eating roti kosong for quite a while.

Oh, and BTW, I didn't buy it at the camera fair at Gurney Plaza. ;) Stay tuned for some test pics, and my first attempt at photoshop, but using the GIMP (as I can't install "software" on my company laptop)