I’ve been friends with these girls for a long long time. I’ve known Sherina since I was in kindergarten and Sharon since Standard 1. Of course, there was this one time Sherina decided not to tell us she’s leaving Taiping for Johor after Standard 6 but she reappeared again in Form 2 so all is good.

I love these girls to bits. We can be so totally honest with each other and at the same time, make fun of each other without anyone getting angry. Although we missed out quite a bit during our Uni years but whenever we meet, we always click.

Just the other day, the three of us went out on a day long photoshoot. I had so much fun shooting them. They are natural models. I didn’t know where to go and so for most part, we pretty much drove aimlessly, stuck in traffic, thinking of the next place to go. Here are some of the shots we took for the day.

We saw an orange coloured wall and thought it was a good place to take a few shots. We had an unpleasant incident which involves a perverted old man. We didn’t do anything to him. He pretty much did something for himself. lol.

I like this shot. It was a little overexposed. Thank god for RAW. I managed to tone it down a little. Still looks overexposed but I like the effect.

Sharon helping Ellie up the tong.

A good way to capture a shot of everybody.

Imagine going for a photoshoot in the hot hot sun! Here’s a bit of shadow play.

Playgrounds are always a fun place to take pictures. It’s a little overexposed on Sharon’s face.

Jumping shots are fun!! I don’t know how they managed to make it seem so effortless to jump like that in the middle of the afternoon.

We didn’t thought this would turn out. I love this picture!

There are still tons of pictures to put up. It will have to take a few post to cover all my favourites! Watch out!

Posted by Ling | 2 Comments »

good company, portraits

Posted by Ling | 3 Comments »

I had to run around to catch up with them.

This is one of Ethan’s normal pictures. The rest, he was just giving me crazy faces.

Dylan’s version of smiling. He listens to his brother a LOT. If we ask him to smile, he will refuse most of the time but when his brother asks him, that smile is immediately on his face.

One of Ethan’s crazier moments!

This chasing around is tiring me out. I am going for a snooze. See ya later!

kids, portraits, sigma 17 70mm f2.8

Posted by Ling | 2 Comments »

I actually wrote a long post about Proton and how misleading they can be but I have already decided some time ago that this blog will not contain a negative post.

So….., the troop went back to Taiping 2 weeks back and the kids had fun running in the field!

Here is my first successful HDR from a single RAW file. Tone mapping done with photomatix. It’s a little dark, but I like the details of the clouds in the sky.

“What’s that?”

That’s Dylan’s favourite word at this age. The kids were looking into a hole on the ground.

“Wow! Look at the butterfly!”

You noticed how we don’t get that many butterflies in KL anymore?

Do you see how Ethan is standing in a position that looks like he is doing ballet? LOL. The other day, he wanted to do a forward roll. He will be good in gymnastics!

HDR, kids, Photomatix, sigma 17 70mm f2.8

Posted by Ling | 5 Comments »

On the last day, before we checked out, I took some alone time and went walking along Jonker Street.

Can you see that it says Jonker? A bit too artistic but if you squint your eyes a little, you may be able to make out the words. I love graffiti like these. Makes a good backdrop.

Remember in the last post, I was talking about people laying their stuff on the ground and selling them? These records are one of the interesting things that I stumbled upon. My dad and my aunt has records just like these back home. Oh look! Mr Engelbert Humperdinck! And Carole King in the middle!

An old camera. I am not sure how old it is. Here are some shots with the Fujica. My dad has cameras as old as these.

On the right, in the blue box contains assortment of old coins. My dad would have loved walking along these streets!

A little further down, I came across this old F&N bottles. You can find other weird stuff like locks and latches. I am not sure how they see the value of this to be offered a price. I may have a chat with them one day.

Did I mention locks? LOL. But this wasn’t on display. It was a lock being used.

One of the ‘No Rubbish’ signs from the olden days. All faded, exposed to rain and sun. They still used the dollar sign instead of RM.

Window details! I like the contrast of colours.

After my very enjoyable walk, we headed out to the Portuguese Settlement for lunch.

The restaurant that we ate in is called De Lisbon, situated in the Square itself. They served delicious food. We had the Portuguese Devil’s curry, baked curry fish, otak-otak (the empty plate!), brinjal in black sauce, lala (not in the picture yet) and pineapple squids. I can’t wait to go back there again! Oh yum!

Malacca is great for photographers. There are so many things to photograph! I totally enjoyed my stay there and will be looking forward for the road trip with the gang! w00t!

And this ends my posts for my Malacca trip!!

Next up…pictures of the kids. Overdose of cuteness coming up!!

Malacca, sigma 17 70mm f2.8

Posted by Ling | 3 Comments »

Part 3 continues….

We stayed at a little awesome boutique hotel called Hotel Puri. It’s located very near Jonker street which is fantastic! The standard rooms costs RM120 per night (without taxes included yet) and the rooms that we stayed in was RM184 for a deluxe double. Price wise for the location isn’t too bad. Malacca is small but the one way streets makes you go a lot farther!

Hotel Puri is nice because it is a mixture of the olden and modern days. Each room comes equip with their own air-cond so you have the liberty of adjusting the temperature. There is a cool area to hang out but the bar closes at 10pm which is a bummer if you want somewhere quieter to sit down and chat. If you want the noisy atmosphere, Jonker street has a couple of pubs and bars you can cruise into.

Since we went straight to Malacca after work, we all missed out on our sleep. So after checking in, we got 3-4 hours of snooze time and then headed our for dinner.

Satay CELUP!! It’s the equivalent of lok-lok but instead of boiling water, you dip your food into peanut sauce. I am not a big fan of any satay peanut sauce but I complied with this because it is very tasty. Yum! We numskulls put in the stuff before the sauce came to a boil. Here is a word of advice, don’t wear white shirt! Or you’ll end up like me having to hold the Malacca map in front of me so that I don’t get the sauce on my shirt. Yeah, I am a smart ass!

I love this montage! Here is Kate trying out pig’s ears for the first time. It was a dare by Dave and Kate takes dares very seriously!

Nope, this is not satay celup. I just love the details on the cupboard in my hotel room that I got to show this. I love it! can you see the animals?

Here is a view of the port. These waters carry great big ships that dock here a long time ago and thus became a very popular port. It was here that merchants from all over the world stop to have a cup of coffee…and trade too, of course.

We didn’t hang out too long there because it was smelly and frankly, there’s nothing much to see. So we headed back to the hotel to take a walk in Jonker Street.

This road leads to Jonker from the hotel. Jonker Street is actually a night market (pasar malam) with many variety of stuff to see AND buy (minus the vegetable stalls). I am always amused by the people singing in the Hokkien Association. It’s very very lively and very out of tune but they are all having so much fun! I really feel at home there because you don’t find many Hokkien speaking people in KL.

I was hungry and I was craving for….pasar malam fried radish cake! I think they make the best BEST fried radish cake ever. At the food court, they don’t taste the same. Oh…yum! I know my sis will be missing this. hehe

The next day, we got up for breakfast and spent quite sometime talking about work(?!!). After that, I had some time off to myself and took a walk around Jonker again. It’s so different during the day. It is still noisy but it came from a different age group. Older folks would lay out their stuff on the ground and people will come by to haggle the prices for something that they find interesting. These stuff aren’t exactly antiques, it’s more of collectible items. I have come photos of my walk there in the morning so I’ll post them up in the next post.

Before we leave Puri for good, we took a few group pictures in memory of our good time in Malacca.

Here is a group shot of us from the shutters at the ‘air well’ in the hotel. Check out the carvings and the paintings on the wall. Awesome!

And this one has got to be my favourite!

It was a very natural shot of the girls on this trip!

And this, my friends, ends part 3 of my Malacca trip!

Next up, Jonker walk in the morning through my lens. OOooooo….

Hotel Puri, Jonker Street, Malacca, Satay celup, sigma 17 70mm f2.8

Posted by Ling | 3 Comments »

And so…we continue with Part 2. All pictures taken with the Sigma 17-70mm f2.8. I love this baby!!

Before heading up to St Paul’s hill, we went down to the Stadhuys Square to see Christ Church. They had an event going on at the square and unfortunately, the tents were blocking the church a little bit so we couldn’t get a nice picture of it.

Here’s a picture of the boys making their way to the square.

Dave has somekinda radar. He knows exactly when a camera is pointing at him and without fail, he’ll either give a peace sign or do a pose for the picture. And there I am……trying to look cool. In fact, the weather is anything but cool. It was freakin’ HOT!

Here is Kate pulling off the “cool” look much better than I did.

Here is JY and I walking up to St Paul’s.

Here are the remains of the church taken from inside. This is our attempt to do a funky panorama shot. This was taken by YC.

After a few photo sessions up on the hill, we head down to the fort. It looks really small now. I remember when I was a kid, it looked enormous!

Before the trip, we bought ourselves a map and the map is fantastic! Everything is accurate! The only thing that pisses me off was when we were trying to find a particular satay celup shop and we were looking for landmarks…all of a sudden the landmarks went missing. You know why? Cause the smart people in Malacca town thought it was cool to decorate all the buildings on that row with blue lights and that totally blocked the name of the buildings. We drove around the same area more than twice just because we couldn’t find those landmarks. And yes, we did eat our Satay Celup in the end. Happy campers!

Chung Wah chicken rice balls. It has been ages since I ate chicken rice balls and I really forgotten it tasted. Before eating it this time around, I remember thinking, “Why is it so famous? Is it THAT good?” It was the most delicious chicken rice I have ever eaten!

They have a fantastic system. When you sit down, you don’t need to order, they’ll just give you the rice balls and a big plate of meat on the table. Awesome!

Just in case you want to go there and try it out yourself, this shop is located opposite the Stadhuys Square, by the bridge. It’s a corner shop and you cannot miss it during lunch because there is always a queue. Along Jonker Walk, you’ll see other shops claiming to be the best chicken rice balls in Malacca, but Chung Wah is the place that you should go.

More coming in the next post! Stay tuned…

Malacca, portraits, sigma 17 70mm f2.8

Posted by Ling | 8 Comments »

I have been planning a Malacca trip for a long long time now. Unfortunately, YC doesn’t know his way around Malacca. So the opportunity came when we wanted to take the Kate and JY to get a glance of the past. Seema and Dave came along and I enjoyed myself tremendously!

We went straight after work and dropped by Seremban to have their Famous Beef Noodle.

I love meat. I do. And this beef noodle is wonderful. Yum. It’s in Pasar Besar Seremban and look for lot 748. I don’t think you can miss it.

We head on to Malacca after a short stop at YC’s house to pick up his sister. We went straight to Malacca’s most famous spots - Stadhuys, Christ Church, St Paul’s hill and Porta de Santiago (A Famosa).

The Stadhuys completed in 1660 and it is one of the oldest Dutch building in the east.

The colours of the buildings are in dull red. I spiced this picture a little to bring out the colours. The original colour of the building is the red on the first picture. I love the colours in this town. I can walk for hours and take lots of pictures!

This way up to St Paul’s hill. The hill, once housed the church where long ago, many Portugese Catholics go for prayers. It then became a burial ground for the noble dead by the Dutch. St Francis Xavier frequented this place on his trips to Malacca from China. He was buried here until his incorrupt body was moved to Goa in 1553. The body is now in Basilica of Bom Jesus, Goa. Pictures of St Paul’s hill will be in the next post.

There are many souvenir shops everywhere in Malacca. This is one of them, situated at the bottom of St Paul’s hill.

We headed on to Admiral Zheng He’s (Laksamana Cheng Ho) museum where it told the great wonders of Zheng He’s expeditions.

And from inside the museum is a great view of Stadhuys Square and the mighty clock tower. Outside, Zheng He’s statue was erected in memory of the great explorer.

I am so glad that it didn’t rain. It was very extremely hot though. We had a great time sweating and walking around being all tourist-ish. In fact, we were more of a tourist than Kate and JY are. Which is pretty embarrassing when we had to do many U-turns to find our way around Malacca.

More Malacca photos up next. I still have some more to tweak. Adios!

Posted by Ling | 5 Comments »

We went to Malacca recently and had a fantastic time there. We took the American girls out and brought them to the famous tourist spots. I hoped that they liked it.  We also went for an eating spree and ate all kinds of food. But that’ll be up in the next post. Right now, I am editing my pictures and am pretty swamped at work. Till then, be good!!

Posted by Ling | 1 Comment »

Here’s the chinese version of Bob the Builder. He’s 4 years old. He builds houses and erm, buildings from wooden blocks.

He is known to be mean and vicious!

Up there, that’s his mean mean look. The ‘what do you mean you don’t want to work’ look.

This is his ‘you got to be kidding me’ look, accompanied by his mother in the background.

This is his ‘Ohh……I don’t get it. GET BACK TO WORK!’ look.

This is the ‘oh…I am so sorry but I don’t care’ look.

But at some point, this little Bob the Builder still needs a little help.

This is the ‘Errr…mommy? I need to go to the toilet’ look.

Oh well, I guess tough little macho man still needs help. =)

Posted by Ling | 4 Comments »