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Back in OMF, Camerons

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A lot of my life seems to revolve around Cameron Highlands. No reason why but it’s been the place for a lot of interesting and life-changing events in my life. One reason could be that I’m kind of a winter person. Anything above twenty-one degrees celcius is warm and I think the sweet spot is a lovely fifteen. Camerons, being at an altitude of 5,500 feet above sea level makes for a more pleasant temperature for me.

Anyways, this time round, we returned to my favorite place to stay, the OMF bungalow just outside Tanah Rata (flat-ground in Malay). OMF trumps every hotel I’ve stayed in Camerons mainly due to it’s lovely caretaker and surrounds. The old bungalow still has charm and Mrs Chye, the current caretaker serves up good old plain home cooking and unbeatable scones. Don’t waste your money on those pathetic scones at Ye Olde Smokehouse. This one’s made with love and freshly baked. The only other scone worth spending money for in Camerons (my opinion anyways) is at T-Cafe in Tanah Rata. T-Cafe is going to be renamed to Lord’s Cafe soon. All the best Terese!

Secondly, this is a great place to unwind from the hustle and bustle of any city. There’s only 8 rooms and the nearest neighbor is about two miles down the road. Being on an isolated outcrop, it does get windy and cold but get yourself a mug of steaming hot chocolate, a good book and you can enjoy the great outdoors.

It was a good getaway and as usual, was filled with quite a lot of good food. Probably overdid it but don’t you always overeat on holiday anyways? The Sungai Palas Tea plantation has now been upgraded and it looks fantastic. It looks awesome but I didn’t take any photos of the exterior because the excitement has now been spoiled by stupid drivers who don’t know how to drive on single lane roads. I mean if you see an approaching car and you’re at a section which permits passing, stop the car and let the incoming car pass. Seems like all the good drivers are long gone and we have city folk who think that giving way is a weakness. Pure stupidity which results in a fifteen minute journey taking over half-an-hour. Not recommended if you’re not a good driver! Looks like all that off-road driving on even narrower trails had some benefit after all!

That’s it for now, more photos to come…








{edit}
Since this posting, I’ve received a dozen inquiries on the OMF Bungalow… I guess my blog’s pretty heavily indexed by Google 🙂
Anyways, here’s a low-down on the bungalow if you’re keen…

OMF BUNGALOW, CAMERON HIGHLANDS

This Bungalow is a place of rest, refreshment, fellowship and spiritual renewal for Members of OMF (OMFers) as well as local pastors, leaders and other cross-cultural full-time workers/missionaries from other Christian organisations. It is not a guest-house nor is it a business enterprise. It is a self-financed ministry and pretty booked out well in advanced.

Meal times are fixed and guests are asked to vacate the dining room as soon as they finish their meals to allow the helpers to clean up. Meal times are: Breakfast: 8.00-9.00 am; Lunch: 12.30 pm; Dinner: 6.30 pm

Back from the Middle Kingdom

Travel

With over 94Gb (or approximately 5,800) of photos and videos, it’s going to take sometime to get through and process. There’s also lots to do around the house at the moment along with a wedding PhotoBook so please be patient while I get the backlog cleared!

Few things about China for those uninitiated for the Rise of the middle kingdom is now due.
1) If you still think China is a 3rd world Country, pay a visit.
2) Like America who thinks Europe is quaint, China will be advertising “quaint” New York and ancient Europe.
3) People (or society) needs some catching up to do but they are a nation of fast learners.
4) For overseas Chinese, it’s sometimes a shock but it is awesome to see the land where our forefathers once fled from.


p.s. It was too early and foggy — the Maglev only hits 430km/h between 9am and 3pm

Travel Packing – China

Travel

Specifically, Shanghai. The packing challenge is compounded by the fact that a hard case is better protection for your stuff that’s going to be checked in. Not to mention a bit more secure in terms of airport pilferage. The problem is once in China, I’ve a couple of trains to take. From maglevs to intercity fast trains. Packing a backpack in there solves the problem but not the capacity and weight issues. My empty hard case weights 4kg empty. My 65-liter backpack weights 2.5 kg empty.

I also have to pack in my Manfrotto tripod. Clothes for a week at least (I always do laundry on a trip) and enough rain gear considering that certain places are nicer with rain. You also don’t want to stop shooting when the weather turns bad — you’ll miss out the better photos of the trip! Target loaded weight – 18kg. Usually airlines won’t give a hoot if you exceed the weight by a kilo or two but I do have fond memories of three people with 105kg of checked baggage at Beijing Capital International Airport! On our return trip, we have five this time which should give us about a hundred kilos. More than enough unless someone was overzealous in their shopping!

Other problem is that my day pack will primarily consist of camera equipment but I’ll also have my Dell Mini 9, Sandisk card readers, two portable SATA drives, battery chargers, batteries, assorted cables, you know the drill. For longer excursions out of my Shanghai base, 65-liters is good. For overnight sojourns, it is unwieldy. Looks like I’ll have to bring along a little stuff sack so that I can cram a nights’ worth of clothes, etc into the stuff sack along with my day pack loaded with cameras.

ThinkTankPhoto Cable Management 50 – excellent way to organize my cable mess.

Travel Packing

Travel

Travel light. Depending on what you like to do, that’s going to be a serious challenge. Photographers have had this challenge for a while now. If you’re also going to do some serious hiking or outdoor activity and more, it’s also going to be even more difficult.

My camera equipment alone weights about 5kg, excluding some smaller non-accessories that I can check in. I don’t check in batteries, CF cards and chargers. Those are essential if the bags don’t arrive at the destination. Then I add my notebook (netbook this time round) and portable hard drives. I use Downloader Pro to copy from card to disk and with the backup plugin, it makes two identical copies to two physical hard drives. Two drives because single drive can fail plus me and my wife can carry one each in case a bag gets stolen.

Since I’m going for some serious canyon hiking, I also have my trusty Garmin 60CSx GPS along with me (Downloader Pro can also load a GPS tracklog and geo-stamp your images). Add a couple of little things you carry onboard and that gets heavy pretty fast. Not to mention my checked in baggage. I’ve never been on one of those tour packages so usually our trips are more photography and activity loaded and less hanging around shopping. With all the restrictions on baggage means my usual swiss army knife, leatherman wave tools all go into the cargo hold. Along with my tripods, monopods, leki trekking poles. My excel spreadsheet pack list has reached 145 items. Of course this includes little things like 2-stop neutral density filter, polarizer, 16 Maha Imedion AA batteries, ziploc bags, first-aid items like anti-diarrhea tablets, band-aids, etc and a lot more little things.

The only problem is trying to fit all that into the luggage, backpacks and more. Of course there are tricks to lighten my carry-on bag. Worse case scenario sees me hanging my 5D Mark II and 70-200 lens around my neck (whatever you wear on your body doesn’t count it seems). Never had to do that before but my aim is to have my Think Tank pixel rocket (CF wallet) and the Panasonic GF1 in my ThinkTank bum bag. My Mini 9 will be carried separately again with the hard drives and two 580EX flash units and RadioPoppers. That’s already 2.5kg out of my carry-on pack. If need be, since all my lenses sit in the Think Tank modular pouches, I’ll just belt my 70-200 and my pack will pass airline weight and size restrictions!

Blast from the past – New Zealand 2003

Travel

Almost seven years ago. Let me see if anyone knows the equipment I used … I feel like the time I showed my 8 year old nephew a film camera and he asked me where’s the LCD display!?
Camera bodies:
– Canon EOS 30 (with Eye-controlled focus)
– Canon EOS 50E ( ” )
Lenses & Other (hmm, my lens collection is pretty old!)
– EF 16-35 f2.8L lens
– EF 28-105 f3.5-5.6 IS
– EF 70-200 f2.8L lens
– EF 50mm 1.8 lens
– EF 2X TC
– 550EX Flash

And my sensors, aka film were Fuji Velvia (ISO 50), Fuji Provia 400F (ISO 400), Kodak EliteChrome 100 (ISO 100)! All the photos you see here are almost as-is. What’s done is my Nikon film scanners is the Digital ICE correction (for dust and scratches) and for resizing, unsharp mask was used. The output from the scanner was intentionally left soft for any post-production work if needed.


Aoraki Mount Cook, shot on the side of Lake Pukaki, 70-200mm lens at 200mm with 2X teleconverter. 400mm on Fuji Velvia.


Church of the Good Shepherd on the shores of Lake Tekapo. 16-35mm lens and Fuji Velvia


Another view of Aoraki Mount Cook while hiking in the area. Kodak EliteChrome, 28-135 IS lens.


Farm gate, on the Road to Wanaka. 16-35mm lens, Kodak EliteChrome


Queens town from the Peak. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome and guesstimate exposure. Hey, no LCD previews then. I’ll guess exposure times from 1 to three minutes at f/11. Shot half a roll on this!


Saw this sign while driving/wandering around the Milford Sound area. Kodak Elitechrome


Our 25km hike from Wanaka. Kodak Elitechrome. 16-35mm lens


Prancing Pony from Lord of the Rings or in real life, the Cardrona Hotel, Arrowtown. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia


Morning drive along Lake Wanaka. 16-35mm lens, Cokin 2-stop graduated ND filter, Fuji Velvia


If you want him, come and get him! The black riders cross the Bruinen Ford here in Lord of the Rings. Near Arrow town. The water is very cold but I walked across! 16-35mm lens and Kodak Elitechrome


Pesky Kea parrots. They were rather destructive, trying to take the wipers off our CRV.


Sheep making love? Te Anau downs, 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia


On the road to Milford Sound. Fuji Velvia, 16-35mm lens


Looking for Isengard! Near Te Anau. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Velvia


Angry cows near Wanaka. Found out later that they were bred for beef, hence their hostility — milk cows it seems are friendlier. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia


Parked at Isengard. Tea with Saruman? 70-200mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome


Sheep pasture, Te Anau, 70-200mm lens, Fuji Velvia


Looking for Navorra lakes and the spot where the Riders of Rohan ambushed the Uruks of Saruman… 28-135 IS lens, Kodak Elitechrome


On the Milford Explorer cruise ship, Milford Sound. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome


Milford Sound. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia


Arriving at the woods of Rivendell, near Te Anau. 70-200mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome


Road-kill possum. No, I did not run this one down. They are a pest in NZ though and some bumper stickers urge you to run them down. It was getting dark and I had my 16-35mm lens and ISO 50 velvia… hand-held at like 1/2 second exposure. The digital era has spoilt a lot of us 🙂


Henry, the Tuatara at Invercargill. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia


The YHA we stayed at Dunedin. Supposedly haunted. Didn’t bring any IR film and nothing untoward happened anyways. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome


Lands’ End at Bluff. 28-135 IS lens, Fuji Provia


Arthur’s Pass, the high road cross the south Island from Christchurch to the West Coast (Tasman Sea). 16-35mm lens and Kodak Elitechrome. Obviously someone felt that the name Arthur’s Ass was more appropriate!


Misty mountains? Not really but it was really misty when we drove across to Hotkitika. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Velvia


Toast on a clothes line. Near Milford, this home of Murray Gunn, an elderly bachelor is a museum of sorts. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia


Caitlin Falls, the Caitlins. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia. 2-stop ND filter, Again, another guesstimate exposure.


The light house at Bluff, Land’s End. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia


Kaikoura Whale Watch catamarans. 28-135 IS lens, Fuji Provia. At ISO 400, my fastest ISO available! The Pacific ocean is no joke. Expect the boat to be rising and falling over fifty feet and getting soaked with sea spray. Suffice to say, my Canons had no problems with the ocean water!


Sperm Whale tail. 70-200mm lens with 2X Teleconverter. Fuji Provia.


Dolphins decided to show off instead. 70-200mm lens with 2X teleconverter. Fuji Provia


Christchurch Cathedral Square. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome

A 900km sunrise to sunset drive

Travel

And also why I really need a small camera (The Lumix GF1 comes to mind… my Birthday is coming you know)…

Anyways, it was an interested drive down south and into areas unknown. While the highway stretches were ridiculously boring (how exciting can highway driving be), there was a short stretch of about 15 kilometers of plantation track where going at dust storm churning rally speeds provided a bit of thrill. All for a bit of fresh (live) fish. Really awesome considering that they survived the trip home. Well, not every fish though, just the ones we wanted. The rest were mercilessly packed into ice. Surprisingly though, they survived till the Pagoh rest stop, or maybe beyond, I don’t know as some were still flapping around at the stop. Probably expired between Pagoh and KL but I wouldn’t know.