She’s a very nice lady, gave me a wonderful job with good pay, even increased my salary without me asking for it.

Occasionally she would treat me and my co-workers to some sushi lunch in downtown Ann Arbor. As sushi is one of my favorite food, this was a big deal for me.

I only worked for her for two years before I had to to quit because my student visa expired.

Thank you, Susan, for those wonderful two years. It was a pleasure working for you.

Ask me anything

Ok they eat bananas too. Oh and they’re all just bottles of 100plus.

For more photos of the telematch (yes, it was a telematch, the teachers don’t do all those stuff for no apparent reason) you can go to the Picasa web album or the Facebook album.

-ihsankhairir-

Part of the menu?

Smoked salmon…

Salmon skewer…

Heavenly.

Seconds? You betcha.

I had my salmon binge during the buffet lunch session for the 8th International Conference on Fracture and Strength of Solids held at Hotel Istana last week.

Best lunch buffet ever. When will I ever get to have a (free) buffet like this again…

It’s as if they were programmed to fail or break at that exact moment in time when you are no longer eligible for that free-of-charge repair / replacement. The products served their purpose and they served it well. No, not for the consumer by performing flawlessly for the past [insert warranty period here]. For the seller and the producer for being sold and setting themselves ready for repair / service / replacement once the free period ends. Which maximizes the revenue for the manufacturers, sellers and service providers. They’re cons doing piracy. Conspiracy!

…

Last Saturday my SB-600 Speedlight failed on me. I was asked to take photos of my ex-roommate’s engagement and just when I was about to start shooting the flash failed. I was sure it wasn’t because of the lack of battery power because I just put in a fresh set. It was the speedlight that refused to work.

I was stricken but I didn’t panic. The popup flash on the D60 can still provide artificial lighting. Problem is, it’s harsh, and I lose control over the direction of the light and having bounce light from the ceiling. I don’t want my shots to look too amateurish. I had to improvise.

I attached a torn piece of white paper in front of the popup to diffuse and soften the light. I set the power to manual 1/2, and took control over the exposure manually by setting the ISO, aperture and shutter speed for each shot and lighting conditions.

It wasn’t easy.

With the SB-600 I can just use Aperture-priority and bounce the light of the ceiling and the pictures would turn out fine. With popup this wasn’t an option. I had to punch in the controls for every shot. In some ways, the experience taught me a lot about setting exposures on-the-fly. Before this I only relied on the camera to set the correct exposure every time. This time I had to do it on my own. And fast.

Improvisation, coupled with some post-production in Adobe Lightroom, managed to produce some decent photos that I can safely present to my friends who got engaged that day. I was worried that they won’t like the photos because of the bad lighting and all, but after I put the photos up in Facebook I got a call from my friend and he said they both liked the photos I put up, so I felt relieved.

Here are some of the photos I shot that day with a popup flash and a torn piece of white paper.

Either I get another flash (maybe a Nissin or a Metz) or have the broken one serviced. Either way, I’ll be losing munny over this, but I really want to be able to be in control of the artificial lighting, and I can only do that with a dedicated external speedlight. Replace or repair, I haven’t made my decision yet. I shall seek counsel with my wallet and bank account first.

P/S: I kept getting asked “when’s it your turn?”. I feel indifferent to such queries already, having been asked questions of the like for the past 5 years.

Pleasing everyone. Impossible, I know.

Until now.

Still, it won’t be easy.

I left some unfinished business for a new position just to take care of the difficult situation I am in, and now that I am committed to this new position the unfinished business is still left unfinished. Should I want to attend to the unfinished business, which by itself would require a lot of my time, I would have to abandon this new position I have. But I need this new position for self-sustenance and independence. To dedicate my time to both these things would require me to be in two places at once.

Sometimes I wish there were two of me.

Imagine being able to be two persons doing two different things at two different locations.

Oh, I don’t need to imagine. Michael Keaton. Multiplicity.

Maybe it will make things easier and simpler. Or harder and more complicated.

Until we can figure out instant cloning of human physiology and memory (not to mention the human soul), I guess my occasional wish for having two of me would just remain a wish (more like a rant).

Woody Woodpecker. I remember enjoying Woody Woodpecker cartoons when I was little. I think he’s like Bugs Bunny. All he does is just annoy people around him and still he comes out on top at the end of each episode. And I loved it. Especially his ‘taunt’ or laugh, I can’t quite represent them in typed words.

Anyway, I guess nowadays you can’t create a cartoon character for kids with a name like that. Woody Woodpecker. Hah.

Lining up for the Shrek 4D show. I love the promotional posters that spoofs real-life movies. Like Pinnochio being the star of Liar Liar. 

 
The Mummy ride was awesome. We waited in line for like 45 minutes for this one, but it was worth it. The pyrotechs in there, you can really feel the heat on your skin. If the waiting wasn’t so long you can be sure I’d go for a second ride.

That ‘Pharaoh’ on stilts… he was in character the whole time. Never smiled at all, even when a bunch of girls tried to tease him. One girl got so scared she ran… and the ‘Pharaoh’ chased after her… into one of the shops. It was so funny… her friends was laughing the whole time. I wonder if she’d find it funny. I wonder if she was actually genuinely terrified. 

 
The MIB ride, we decided to take the Single rider line, which only cost us 2 minutes of waiting. This is the smarter way to do it I think. You might not get to ride the same car as your friends, but you exit the ride about the same time and you get to share the same experience anyways, so what’s the difference? It’s not like you’re going to be talking to them in the car, you’d be too busy trying to shoot all the aliens around you.

I got to be on the ‘disabled’ car and since there were no disabled person on the ride, the seat next to mine was empty. Every rider gets his/her own gun, but I got to dual-wield 2 guns, which was awesome, made me feel like a badass ambidextrous super-agent. I was shooting different targets in different directions the whole time, which was totally exhilirating. I got around 100 as my score, another 2 riders in my car got about 150 each, but a young 8-yr old girl got only 9 points, so it brought down our average greatly. It was fun though, coz the group we were up against have 6 people in their car (we had only 4) and they got only a below 90 average. So we were declared winners. 
    
The Back to the Future ride has no Single rider line, so we waited in line for about 30 minutes I think. I especially like this one because we got to ride in a ‘DeLorean’ and the screen was so big it was actually a whole sphere-shaped theatre screen (I dunno what to call em). I know that this ride has been there for quite a while, so the ‘movie’ wasn’t in high def so it felt less real than I hoped it was, but still I enjoyed the experience enough to come out of it satisfied. Most of my friends say that the ride made them a bit dizzy but not me, I was pumped up and high after that one.

    

After that we just walked around being silly and take pictures… a lot of em.

   
    
I especially like this one… where I got to pretend to pry open the jaws of the shark called Jaws. That thing was huge, I think hanging by its tails it was about 25-30 feet tall. Maybe even more. I’m not really good at feet and yards. I’d say it was like 10 meters perhaps.

I think it was safe to say that we took one picture every 45 seconds of walking…

Then we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe Orlando, said to be largest Hard Rock Cafe in the world.

Next to Hard Rock Cafe was an NBA store, so I went there and got myself this….

I am in no way comparable to Billups… but I do like to play the way he plays.

  
A couple of pictures before we left for the day…

…

The next morning we left Orlando for Ann Arbor after 5 days and 5 parks – Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney MGM and Universal Studios. I wish we’d stayed a little longer so we’d get to get on more rides in each park, but we knew that time wasn’t a luxury anyone had, and you had to choose the ones you really want and not regret not taking the ones you didn’t so that you’d enjoy the day more. Which I think was the smart thing to do.

Ah, it was fun. 

This time I made sure I took some pictures with the castle.

 
If you look closely it says ‘Hong Kong Disneyland’ (look at where we’re pointing). That panel and the picture above it changes every few seconds… basically shows the history of Disney parks for the past 50 years.

 
Finally got a picture of me, the castle, Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. You won’t believe how long I waited until this spot clears for me to have a photo of myself taken.