Posts tagged experience

This is no drill…

The day I show up in the office fairly early (earlier than my normal time anyways) and first thing was I saw crowds of people everywhere and for the first time, the Semasa Sentral security personnel deployed at various locations. I asked the guy assisting illiterate people at the season parking boom gate (yes, people cannot read a sign with 16″ letters stating “Season Parking Only” and attempt to get a parking ticket where there is no dispenser!) what is going on. He replied “api-lah” in a very nonchalant way. So anyways, I head into my parking and assume it’s all a drill.

When I get back up to the ground floor to change elevators to go up to my office, it smells a bit strange and there was an actual fire it seems. So anyways, I was a bit lazy to walk to Starbucks so I head over to Gloria Jeans, get myself a iced coffee and waited out the crowds of hard-working people queuing up to re-enter their offices. And all I could get was this blurry photo with my iPhone.

Crumpler 6-Mil doesn’t Work!

After three weddings, two portraiture shoots, two events and one pre-weddings, I’m come to realize that my Crumpler 6-million dollar home just doesn’t work out for me. It’s bulky, noisy, the shoulder straps keep slipping plus after a few hours, your neck and shoulders hurt. With three Canon ‘L’ zooms from wide angle to telephoto, two DSLR bodies and two flash units, the fact that I occasionally need two hands to access the bag makes it a big problem.


I’ve come to realize that the problem lies with the two definitions: transport and usage. Bags that work well in airplane overhead bins, and lugging your equipment around probably would be a failure when you really need to use your equipment and access it quickly. So, anyone want to buy my 6-million dollar home?

FHM Disaster

Was back at KL Convention Center with its horrible, really limited parking space. First photo-journalist experience since I wasn’t saddled with booth duty today. It was just to get photos of His Excellency, the Ambassador from Netherlands who will be visiting our booth with the Dutch Business council and a bunch of VIPs. First disaster was the batteries in my flash weren’t charged. Yes, I forgot but I was also rushing out a proposal due next Tuesday. Backup batteries also failed (more later). So resorted to my IS lens, ISO 800 and occasionally, on-camera flash! Terrible! Finish shooting at 3:45pm, rush over to Bon Cafe’s booth, get a triple shot latte with hazelnut syrup, download 1.2Gb of photos, select 10 best ones, post-process in Photoshop CS, download to a thumbdrive and off I go to get them printed. This is 2007! Why is the official media booth requiring prints! Are they stuck in 1997?! Anyways, got that all done by 4:31pm, get the heck out of the convention center, smack into a rain induced jam at Jalan Sultan Ismail but managed to get home by 5:15pm. Whew! What a day!

Smile for the camera!

Once home, I decided to condition the dead Sanyo batteries on my Maha C-204W charger but after an hour, something decided to blow up. Charger’s now dead plus I probably won’t kill my other Maha charger so the batteries went into the trash. Hmm, maybe I’d stick with PowerEX 2700s instead of Sanyo’s from now on.

Appetizer, Starters and the Main Course!

Overhead at Ocean Village Seafood restaurant in KK, Sabah.
A couple, probably Franco-swiss, late forties, staring at the expanse of tanks, tanks and tanks holding various sea creatures, from the mundane shrimp, prawns and lobsters to odd looking critters, sea cucumbers and what-not-unidentified underwater objects.

“How do we start? So do we have starters, or appetizers here? Do you have a main course?”

The answer came back:

“Here, you choose and order, and then food arrives and you eat.”

Seriously. Had to hold back any forms of laughter or giggles.

Waiting to be sacrificed for food!

On a Friday like a Sunday

Starting with an early morning visit to a friendly local mechanic, it was then to the nearby coffee shop more famous for its curry noodles and assam laksa. Of course being 9am, it was too early for that so we had chee cheong fun and nasi lemak instead. After that, it was downtown KL for a shopping spree but that’s not all, throw in a run back to 1Utama to add to the fray and then back to the now familar coffee shop for a late lunch. Of course this time, we had the famous Assam Laksa. Anyways, then it’s back home to continue cleaning and packing!

Yummilicous asam laksa!
Few customers at 3pm!
Drop-off and pickup!

Window Cleaning

For some unknown reason, Plaza Sentral where I work, does not have the standard window washing equipment, i.e. the platforms, sky-lifts and what-nots. Instead, they dangle down and spray soap. How fun.

From the 17th floor…
Wonder if this is efficient?