Beautiful Water Lilies

I arrived at my brother's house yesterday afternoon. He showed me his "garden" and introduced me to his wonderful variety of plants and fruit trees! I will blog about it later.
So, early this morning, I visited his lily pond to take the photos of his huge lilies for your enjoyment! They are of so many different colours and shades. Enjoy.....

White Balance

These two photos, I set the white balance differently and the resuylt is quite different also.

With raw format, I can always tweak it if I change my mind. But I don't bother. This photo, I set it to "Auto" white balance.

This one, the white balance is set to "cloudy". So which one do you prefer?

More on MMU Daicon exhibition (Figurines)

On arrival at the main door of the Great Hall, Ah Jon met his friends....
... what a coincident! He is from Lutong coming to KL for holiday...

... at the exhibition, there were many students dressed in Japanese costumes ...

... asking for marriage in Japanese style? These students are very creative ...

... ok... figurines ...I didn't take pictures for everyone. Just too many of them.

... you can see the interest ...

... every one was made to great details and nicely coloured ...

... shall I call them sexy as well?! ...

... the only problem I found in taking these photos is the label placed at the feet of every figurines. So... I will crop them out. I should have cropped a bit higher up on all these photos...

... but ...never mind lah ...

... just enjoy the pic...

... I have many more to post. Do come back again! Some of these photos were taken by Ah Jon.

World of Cartoons

At the beginning of the month, World of Cartoons open an outlet in Miri Bintang Megamall.
The nice looking and attractive external!
They have a good selection of quality goodies for kids... baby pram, clothing, ...
... soft toys and attractive children clothing...
... fashion sun glasses for children ...
... walkers, prams ...
... barbie dolls ...
.... attractive clothing ...
... and more of them with colours which are pleasing to the eyes ...
... and also children shoes!
Price wise, I think they are ok as they have certain quality to maintain. Oh, I can't remember how much you need to buy and you get a free membership card. That would entitle the holder 20% discount. Good deal! Worth visiting them if you have kids.

Rest in peace

Remember I blog about pet last week? Well, what I didn't know was that Joshua's class has a pet keeping initiative and he volunteered for a little aquarium and his classmate invested RM10 for a few guppies, etc. He pestered me to give him my little aquarium and he brought it to class.
In the afternoon, he brought back his aquarium from class complete with fish!
By about 6PM, he told me that all the fishes had died.

He found the water dirty and changed all the water. When I came back I saw the above...
... and he asked me to bury them as his heart is not strong enough to see them go!

On Saturday afternoon, we went to the pet shop again as his friend told him that he has to buy the fish in order to pay back!
So, I bought just a fish of his choice and some water plant. The tank is too small to keep anything more than one fish! I hope that it survives this time.

Premier Clinic

Columbia Asia Medical Centre has started a new clinic next to the main building. It is directly above Dr. Roland Mattu Clinic. It is opened to the public. So anyone can go there. They started their business at 7:00AM. I believe the majority of customers are from SSB. The afternoon is for appointment only.
The apple green colour is very pleasing to the eye. However, the flat panel TV on the wall needs tuning.
Two friendly staff are always there to serve you...
This is the entrance at the first floor. It gave you an immediate "clean" look

Vegetable in Miri is so cheap

If you have been to the Tamu Muhibah (Opposite Park Hotel) lately, you will be shocked to know that the price of vegetables have dropped from the high price of RM15/kg (in Dec/Jan) to the current RM1-2/kg.
I was there two Saturdays ago at about 3:00PM, and this kangkong was sold at RM1/kg.

Last Saturday, this kiucai was selling for RM2/kg. Long bean was the most expensive at RM4/kg.

I am from a farming background. After pepper harvest, we plant lots of long bean and cucumber. During the peak, they were sold for 5 cents/kati, ie, 10 cents per kg. Still no one ever wanted to buy them! So, you would see mountain of them left to rot! A pity that we didn't know how to preserve. (That was in the '60's. A kilo of sugar cost RM0.25)

Just in case you don't know...

... this is peppper vine on belian pole. Inset is the pepper corn.

Baby cucumber with flower. By the way, cucumber flowers have distinct male and female. Male flower has no baby fruit.

How fast is fast?

So far, I have never written about my camera, a Nikon D3 with a AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED lens. But I think I just like to show two of my photos here taken at an event in Boulevard carpark Miri on 29 March 2009. While wandering to the stage area, I saw a martial art demostration. But I couldn't go near the stage as there were so many people. Anyway, standing some distance away, I decided to take some pictures.

Nikon D3 f/2.8 1/1250 sec ISO-1800 EV: -2.7 70MM no flash.

As this was my first time taking real action under some colourful spotlight, I have to experiment. Initial shots were blur because the shutter speed was too slow until I crank it up to 1/1250 sec. Only then I manage to "freeze" the action. Nikon D3 f/2.8 1/1250 sec ISO-1800 EV: -2.7 70MM no flash.

The two photos above were not retouched other than cropping and resizing. There is no noise/grain visible.