End of Busy Week

I JUST GOT BACK from Niah Cave, Sarawak, Malaysia - and man, am I exhausted. Especially after Disney on Ice lastnight, coming home late, sleeping late, waking up early after a 4hours sleep, spending the whole time awake up until now. Almost midnight. *breathes*

This marks the end of my busy week with all the incredible but fun activities. Tomorrow, the new week starts and I hope I won't be too busy.

Now, should I process some of my Niah Cave photos and post some here or go to sleep?

...

Sleep.

Gnite world.

Babbling

I'M TIRED. I'M SLEEPY. Coming weekend was full. This weekend is full. Parties. Anniversary. Birthday. Concert. Disney. Nemo. Expedition. Niah. Cave. Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Oh... mother~ Give me my Sudoku...

The Heart Still Listens

MY CHOICE OF MUSIC is normally rock and metal. There's a little bit of jazz inside me coz I used to be so into it - in fact, I still listen to them once in awhile, especially since I have a huge collection of jazz in my hard disk (more than both rock and metal combined actually). Mind you though, as much as I love rock and metal, I do not like acid jazz. Adding electronic sounds onto jazz just ruins jazz in my opinion.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the last post, I went to the Jazz Night concert performed by BMS. And as confirmed by the blog owner, I bumped into him earlier tonight there (in fact, he's written a post on the show).

As promised, I'm updating now that I've got a photo. Just one though. Photos were taken with my fiance's T10. She emailed me the photos but my connection's rather slow tonight. I think it's because of my Ninja Gaiden Sigma demo download on the PS3. Ignore that if you don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I asked her to resize one of the photos and re-send it to me (which she did - what a sweetheart) and below is that photo which she took.

Jazzy

DURING THE SUNSHINE BOYS play, performed by BADS, at D'Anggerek Hotel, flyers on a Jazz Night were distributed by some members of the Brunei Music Society (BMS). That show was tonight. And it was great. Met a number of familiar faces including those from the BADS show. And I think I bumped into one of my linked shutter there who ushered us to our seats.

I'll update once I get my hands on some photos.

400D on someone's shelf

NEWS HUNTING is such an annoying task these days. Not a lot of people update their blogs out there that is worth my two cents - mind you, they're very interesting posts but just not 'news worthy'. They're mostly daily photography blogs. But then again, I shouldn't be complaining. I haven't really been doing a lot of posting myself.

So, speaking of news, I just recently added shaiomarali's blog to my links and there's a new update. Want to get yourself involved in photography? He's selling a Canon 400D packed with kit lens plus 1gig CF plus grip for 1.7k. Check it out here to view the rest of the detail.

Low, Low Photo

HERE IS A COOL PHOTO my colleague, Mr Zyr, took of me and another photographer during SMAS's annual sports day event (I'm in red).


I love this photo. It's a photo of the human pyramid performed by the acrobatic club (I think). Just shows how low photographers would go to get that great shot every one of them longs for. You can view the rest of the photos he took here.

I have yet to upload my set. I'll need to find the time to do that first. I took some really great ones that I am proud of - not a lot, mostly between blah and good, but some great ones. Like I said, I'm not that much into sports photography.

Them and Softball

LAST SUNDAY, I woke up early (well sorta) to meet up with mofo of WithAku and ripin of RJ63 for breakfast and lunch. I ended up being too early as they were busy at a Softball event in Jerudong. I ended up waiting for lunch. Hungry. Tired. Almost sweaty.

I'm not too much into sports photography so I just left my camera in the car - but only to regret the brilliant idea the moment I stepped onto JPCC's field. The trees there were beautiful in the morning. Oh, how that feeling sucked.

I also bumped into bruneian and ucingitam there, and ripin told me airbiscuit, artyeo and jim747 were there as well. Didn't see airbiscuit when I got there so I guess he left but apparently artyeo and jim747 were there at the time but I've never met them so I didn't know how they look like.

In any case, I went to view their blogs and, with the exception of bruneian and mofo, saw the updated photos taken from that day.

Photos by rj63: here
Photos by airbiscuit: here, here and here.
Photos by ucingitam: here.
Photos by jim747: here.

Photo on the side taken by RJ63.

Daylight Moon

SOMETIMES I just want to write for no reason at all. I love writing. I love to just create new stuff, make lines, say this and that in my writing. If only i have all the time in the world, I'd spend my daily free time just writing crap after crap after crap that automagically blossoms into a huge pile of beautiful (what's coming up next?) brown shitty monument that everybody adores.

Yes, I have a weird taste in art. But don't deny it. Everybody loves it.

Now, behold - the daylight moon.

The Sunshine Star

THIS POST IS DEDICATED to Mr Melnick, who stood on the stage longer than anyone during the play. Without a doubt, Mr Melnick was the best of The Sunshine Boys and so this post goes to him... or her. "Without high heels, I can't tell." =)





See The Mr Melnick album.

PS: How far can you take a portrait photo? =D

A Sunshine Thanks

JUST THOUGHT I'd dedicate this post to Mr. Melnick. I took a lot of photos of the old boney guy in different suits. Our greatest start during the showing of The Sunshine Boys (Mr. Melnick's the guy in the suit btw).

I'll post the photos ones I'm done processing them. For now, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who managed to come and watch the play. I also like to thanks my family for the support and for coming to watch the first show. To Albert, for inviting me to help out. And to JuLeZz, thanks for joining babe.

Now I'm pretty sleepy and beat. So I'm off to sleep . Got another early morning yaaaawwwwn~~ Hope I can wake up to that.

Goodnight people. And sweet dreams.

See: Sunshine No More from my multiply for photos those have already been uploaded.

The Sunshine's Over

DRAMA's OVER! Oh... wow. Is it really over? I'm gonna miss those nights of ordering take outs and rehearsing for the big day that ended so quickly. Months of preparation, and poof! we're here. It's all over.

But, despite the sad news, the play went extremely great. Tickets were quickly sold and lots of people turned up to watch. If you missed it, then you missed one of the best shows this year. The Brunei Amateur Dramatic Society did an excellent job with Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys.

Can't wait for the next play.

Running Around

SPORTS DAY, OH SPORTS DAY. How tiring you will be. You are full of events everywhere but oh how unfortunate the day will be for you are only offered one photographer such as me. Oh Sports day, sports day. I don't know how successful you will be... in terms of photography I mean.

Sekolah Menengah Awang Semaun, SMAS for short, will be holding their annual Sports Day event at ... I can't quite remember the name of the field but it's that field in Lambak, not far from PAP Masna (Masnah?). I'll be the only photographer of the day and I have to cover all the events, running here and there, trying to catch as much of the event as I can under the hot sun.

Tomorrow's gonna be hectic day for me. SMAS's Sports Day in the morning, The Sunshine Boys matinee and another Sunshine Boys show for the night. Under the sun in the morning, acting in the afternoon and night. Hope everything goes well.

Time To Shine

The Sunshine Boys plays tonight!

Wish me luck!

Before The Sunshine

REMEMBER ME BEING BUSY? With that drama I told you about by BADS? Well, we're in the final stage of rehearsals and soon it will be time for our hard work to be shown to the public.

Tickets are currently on sale and it can be found at Cfbt, Kiarong for $10 each. They are selling out pretty fast so if you want to see the show you'll want to get them as quickly as possible. Shows run on Thursday night (19/04), Saturday afternoon and Saturday night (21/04). More details below.

"The play is a comedy about two elderly comedians, Willy Clark and Al Lewis, formerly partners known as "Lewis and Clark, 'The Sunshine Boys'". After working as a double act for some 40-odd years, they grew to hate one another, and for their last year as a team never spoke to each other. In the eleven years since Lewis retired, they have neither spoken to nor seen each other. Clark, who was not ready for retirement, resents Lewis for breaking up the act. It is now 2007 and Star World is inviting the team to reunite for a special on the history of comedy...."






Again, the Sunshine Boys will be performed at the D'Anggerek Hotel, BSB on Thursday, April 19, at 8pm and Saturday, April 21, at 2.30 pm & 8pm.

Tickets are available from Trisha at CfBT Kiulap, 2442773.

Monitor

I KNOW I DID say that I was gonna post at least on entry each day and I didn't do that the past two days. But, granted, I wasn't feeling well and I was really busy the past two days. What with the wedding preparations and this upcoming play the Brunei Amateur Drama Society (BADS) will be performing Thursday and Saturday.

Enough about that for now. I'll give you more info about BADS once I get enough detail.

Anyway, more photos from that monkey hunting we had. True to its name, a monitor lizard was on a tree keeping watch of its surroundings while we were shooting the monkeys. Seeing this, I took some shots at it. Here are two of them.

Monitoring In The Shadows

Inspecting

See also: Reflected Fisher and Nakhoda Manis
Hi-res uploaded: Monitor via My Photoblog

Trust

I HAVE A HEADACHE. God knows what's going on. I used to get this kind of headache a lot before but for awhile it hasn't happened. And now, here I am - staring at the computer screen in pain, hurting my eyes and head, but still forcing myself to post this entry.

I just want to make sure that I have at least one post everyday. I'd like to keep this page filled with updates. Sometimes, nothing much - but at least there is something.

The following photo was taken during this... actually, I have no idea what the event was called but some students from Sekolah Menengah Awang Semaun were taken for a leadership thing (I think) at Tasek Lama and they had some great activities. We went there, had a chat with the organiser and managed to get some info on what they do. They're called Datalish (if I'm not mistaken). Sorry for being unsure with all the information. Like I said, I'm not well.

Anyway, I call the following shot simply 'Trust'.


"One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life."

- E.M. Forster

Reflected Fisher

SOME MORE shots from that proboscis monkey hunting we went to a couple of weeks ago (wow! it has been that long? Damn, where's my time to process these shots?). This time, I've managed to process the fisherman's (and his wife I assume?) photos who were with us cruising along the river.

I took a lot of their photos, even when they were moving but I love these three the most because of the reflection on the surface of the brown river. The second photo is even cooler because I caught the fisherman looking at the camera's direction.




More coming soon, I hope. I'm just looking for the free time.

Nakhoda Manis

FINDING THE TIME to process the thousands (at least that's what I think it has accumulated to since I've been delaying them) of unprocessed photos piling in my hard drive is not easy. Work is taking too much of my time. Add that to wanting to socialise and finishing the wedding preparations. Fewh~

But I managed to process one of my shots in lightroom at the same time creating and editing a new watermark for my photos. Here's one photo from our proboscis monkey trip I took while showing off my new watermark. Nakhoda Manis.


I love this shot because it really tells the story of Nakhoda Manis. Other than showing how the massive land (or rock?) actually looking like a ship (if you know not of Nakhoda Manis, go google it - you'll find it somewhere - and you call yourself a true Bruneian), it shows off all elements that make up this planet - the sky, the earth, water and men (portrayed by the building and that red thing - whatever that is). It also shows how time has passed since the time of Nakhoda Manis.

Besides those, since the story of Nakhoda Manis is about a kampong ayer kid marrying a princess, having the Istana in the background and the tiny boat (yes, there is a boat) really portrays the story of Nakhoda Manis. Thus is why I dubbed this photo simply Nakhoda Manis.

PS: The watermark is trial. I might change it coz I'm thinking of including the title of my photos - but I also don't want to clutter the image with lots of text.

UPDATE: Hi-res photo uploaded at my photoblog. To see it, click here.

The New Guy

JUST THOUGHT I'D WELCOME a fellow friend who just started his blog, Visions of Gold. He's been waiting for his time and it has taken him awhile. But finally, he's here and let us all welcome him into our picture perfect world. =)

Welcome RJ63.

I'd say some more but I gotta run and do some work (my short break is for eating but here I am blogging).

Miss Exclusive

NINTH APRIL. In 9 days come the 18th. When that day finally arrives, it will be a month to the big day. My wedding. I'll be married.

WARNING: The following might be corny and cheesy for some. Be warned.

It has been awhile since that magical day (told you it's gonna be corny) arrived. Things are still great. Heck, even better. This is more like a personal post I'd like to dedicate to my beloved and tell the world that the day for the world to celebrate is coming. The big day of The Exclusives. The day when two great world collides.

Now why am I posting this here instead of my personal private space at my multiply or at The Exclusives' multiply group? Because, I want to share photos that I took a few days ago. So what follows are photos showing reasons why I want to marry this amazing woman.






This multiply post best portrays of that feeling.

Temporary Turned Permanent

YOU MAY NOTICE a little face-lift on this page. I've added a banner at the top and changed my profile avatar. At first, I thought I'd just make a simple one for temporary use, making use of simple fonts and stuff. Then, I ended up liking it.

The 'shutter' part is set inside boxes to represent electronic devices having an outlayer shape as well as elements being captured. The 'speech' part is done so to show the original written nature of a speech before being said. I kept the tag line 'if shutters could talk ...' in there so it leaves room for people to interpret the meaning. The colours black, white and grey are chosen to show the colours of a digital SLR, ink, paper and a touch of elegance.

So now, ladies and gentlemen, the no-longer-temporary-sorta-official-banner-slash-logo of ShutterSpeech[dot]com (umm... see above and right).

Belated Maulud

FINISHED UPLOADING my Maulud Nabi photos on my multiply earlier today but I had to rush for a tahlil followed by a movie. It's 2am, and I just got home. I miss night life. Oh how working days suck. Not that I don't like my job, mind you. It's one of the best out there. Although, I don't come without a dream job. What's my dream job? That'll come another day on another post.

This post, however, is to inform you lot, who knows not of my multiply world, that I have finally managed to upload the Maulud Nabi photos. You can go and view them by clicking here. But don't click yet. I've still got a lot to say.

Oh second thought, it's past 2am. And I think I'd rather go and play Oblivion on the PS3... or process some more photos from the past and beyond. I'll decide right after.

Okay, I'm done now. You can click away to the Maulud albums.

(And if you're lazy, here are some)

Shooting The Shooters

I HAVE FINALLY found the time to process my Maulud photos from last week and the first batch of the photos are already up at my multiply. Dubbed "Shooting The Shooters", I compiled photos of photographers I took during that day into one album. They didn't need a lot of processing and editing so I'm able to post them first.

Here are some of them.




Check out the rest of the Shooting The Shooters at my multiply.

Celestial Genesis

FINALLY! FIIIIINALLY!
The day has come! I have been waiting for this for years! And now! It's all mine!!! MWAHAHAHAAA!!


Okay, less drama. Let's get on with what this post is all about. The official opening of...

SHUTTER SPEECH DOT COM

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www.shutterspeech.com

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Ladies and gentlemen, please re-link your pages to the above url.
Thank you.

PS: Thought my Celestial Genesis of my long gone photoshop graphic designing would do the trick for this official opening.

Microsoft Brunei Darussalam

MICROSOFT ENTERS BRUNEI. Their office? At the PGGMB centre in the capital. Their current project? e-learning. Imagine your grandma using Windows Vista. Impressive huh?

Today, while happily walking around The Mall with my fabulous fiance, there, smack in the middle of the Gadong building was a huge banner that said, Microsoft Brunei Darussalam. I was curious and I thought I'd scout for news but I left my camera in the car! So I ran downstairs, with the permission of my fiance of course (who happily went off shopping), to get my trusted DSLR.

I got to talk to some of the people at the show floor, asking questions about what the hell that thing was. And I got the following info.

E-Prime Networks, as I gathered they were called, introduced Microsoft Brunei Darussalam, promoting Windows Vista and Microsoft Office to the public. Their aim is to introduce the basics of using Windows to the masses by conducting special classes. They claim that since the "world today is growing at an astounding pace and it comes at no surpise that everyone is in pursuit for the latest and most advance technology" they think that people "neglect the basics and in most cases are afraid to get involved entirely".

Currently, a number of bodies are getting their share of this e-learning experience including Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Education, Government Printing (Prime Minister's Office) and Takaful IBB SDN BHD. The promo at The Mall was made to introduce this e-learning to the public through fun activities and games (they had this musical chair this one time for the kids). But that's gone now. Still, there is a chance for you (or your grandpa or grandma) to learn the basics of Windows.


If you are not sure of their teaching environment, fear not, they have capable teachers teaching in both English and Malay. Learners will also get to learn interactively via their supplied computers through videos and personal headphones. They also provide notes in the form of a book which will also be distributed to learners electronically.

To start, you pay BND$270 for Prime Office Skills which includes learning Microsoft Windows Vista, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook and a one time registration fee of BND$15.

For more info, call 22220866, 2220797, 2220898 or visit their website at e-primenet.com.

Now go tell your grandparents that you'll pay them to learn Windows Vista so your friends can think they're cool (not.. that they aren't already - but hey! it's cooler this way).


See the rest of the photos from the show floor at Tanah Air Ku album here and check out their uber cool banner.

Monkey Hunting

WENT MONKEY HUNTING this morning. Proboscis monkey hunting to be exact. What's proboscis monkey? Go google/wiki it yourself. I'm too lazy to link that for you. In fact, you should be getting your lazy fingers off that mouse and start typing once in awhile. Start by leaving messages here or the shutterbox.

Now, back to the main topic. Monkey hunting. A week ago, I planned to go proboscis monkey hunting. That was cancelled and ended up planning with Bruneian to do that this week with a bunch of other photographers. So we did. And it sure hell was great. I'll link the posts if any of them updated their sites with the monkey. For now, check out the following collage of the shutters at work - oh, and our guest of honour, my fiance (Pst! Guys! Forgot to introduce her to you! Her name's JuLeZz btw!).

On the way to take shots of the monkeys, we got to take a lot of shots of other things on the way as well. Best part was, there were a bunch of them red monkeys. I'll upload those shots once I've managed to process all the RAW files. Right now, I'll leave you with the jpegs and a preview. =)


Check out the album at my multiply page here.

Update:
Bruneian has updated his blog. Check it out.
Aku has updated his as well. Check it out here, here and here.

Update 2:
Just found airbiscuit's page and he has updated his. See here.
Man... everybody's shots are starting to look similar now haha!

Update 3:
And now by UcingItam here.