Month: April 2008

i am stupid.

Had an important meeting with a potential client yesterday. I was prepared, done my research, covered all my bases. Made my way to the office, thought I was going to get lost in the industrial area but it was surprisingly breezy to get there. The office is very nice, I hope I’ll have a nice office like that soon.

Parked my car and walked to the mezzanine area. Pushed open the glass door. It won’t budge. Kept pushing. GrnggggGrnngggGrnnng. Lady at the reception was waving at me frantically. Then it hit me. Oh!

I pulled the door handle me and got in. (Grins sheepishly)

Apologised to the lady about the door episode and asked for the person I was meeting. Was asked to go up to 3rd floor. So I went to catch the lift. Waited a bit and finally got in. I was alone.

Lift doors opened and I stepped out. All glass panels. Locked. Hurmmmmm.

Fortunately a woman was coming out of the office, told her about my meeting and she let me in. She asked me to wait in the conference room while she get the person I was meeting with, W.

5 minutes passed. Then 10 minutes. I was fiddling with my phone. Checking comments, reading emails and facebooking. Suddenly this woman, huffing and puffing came into my room.

“There you are!”.

I thought she was W. And then she was like no, “I’m not W, I’m just here looking for you!”.

I went “Huh?”. “Meeting’s at the 3rd floor”, said she.

“Isn’t this 3rd floor???”, I asked. “No, this is the first”.

“But, but…I pressed 3”.

“Heh, this is the first floor”.

(wtfwtfwtfwtf)

She took me up the ACTUAL 3rd floor and I finally met up with W. Had a laugh over it.

Gawd help me please not to commit faux pas like that in my next meeting!!!!

Story of my favourite picture.

Here is my favourite picture, taken in a church I shall not say where for now.

Light and stained glass.

It looks like an ordinary picture. Nothing special.

But the reason why I love it so much is because it’s was very hard for me to take it. Technically speaking.

I was just learning…aperture, shutter speed, metering, focal length and all these other stuff I shall not bore you with. In fact I am still learning and discovering new things everyday. And it baffles and frustrates me why I couldn’t capture things the way I envision them eventhough I’ve stuck to the all the tried and tested techniques.

We entered this church. It was dark, peaceful, quiet. We were the only ones there. I had a sunken feeling in my gut, thinking that it would be impossible for me to capture the atmosphere of the church due to the darkness. I didn’t have a tripod with me either and my hands….my hands are made for jerking off -_-.

I wanted the blades of lights and I also wanted the walls to be exposed properly.

So I tried. And tried. And tried. The walls were underexposed. The walls were overexposed. The light was too bright. The stained glass looked washed out. The stained glass disappeared. The whole picture was blurred. Bottomline is, I just couldn’t get the right picture!

So I stopped for a while and gathered my thoughts. What on earth was I doing wrong? And just as suddenly, there was a light bulb moment.

It was the freakin’ metering! I had only learnt about the magic of metering earlier that day and did not really give much thought to it, since matrix metering had served me very well so far. And for the life of me, I just couldn’t comprehend the usage of other metering modes besides matrix.

I set my camera to spot metering, knelt and propped it on the bench at 45 degrees pointing at the walls and took a shot. And there, my favourite picture :)

It’s amazing and mind boggling how an unassuming setting could make such a huge difference. And this is going to sound dramatic, but I knew I’ve found my passion there and there. I am no longer the girl with no passions.

Do you fake compassion for dead pets?

I can deal with many types of grieves. But I can’t deal with dead pets.

I still remember eons ago, when a friend’s pet died and he called, bawling into the phone in cantonese…..”sei jor, sei jor”. I thought his sweet old granny had passed on (bless her, she’s still alive!), felt a knot in my heart and tried my best to console him. Then he finally uttered the dog’s name.

I don’t know how to explain my feeling then but I think “cheated” would have been quite close to it. If “wtf” were in vogue then I would have told him exactly that. But of course I didn’t.

The knot in my heart undid itself and it was all by the book from then on.

1. Listen.
2. Reinforce the fact that the dog is now in a better place.
3. Offer company.
4. Repeat from step 1.

Like clockwork, man.

Obviously, I don’t hold special attachment to animals. I may gush at the cutest puppy but that’s about it, I’m quite happy to be without one after 2 hours. When my bf brought home abandoned kittens and nursed them back to health, I felt more inconvenienced than mushy. I couldn’t wait for them to be all grown up and leave. The day finally came and the first thing I did after that to was sprinkle cabai all over the balcony.

Cruel? Maybe. Lets put it this way, I just can’t treat them like human beings. Any compassion derived from me for animals is merely a basic knowledge that they are important to complete an ecological unit.

So yeah. I’m out of the closet. Are you a non-animal lover pretending to be one under peer pressure?

p/s: Happiness is stumbling upon a forgotten piece of TimTam in the fridge.

Chocolatey goodness.
Happiness in a packet.

++ /Update ++

I have a dog named Charlie now and I would take a bullet for him. Now you can boo me :P