I've gotten to Norway safely and on time. Having been here for the past 24 hours, here are some of my first thoughts:

1. It's bloody expensive! I spent some £50 on the first day, not doing very much. And by not doing very much, I mean just taking the bus from the airport to the city and getting a hostel for the night. And that's already £50. It seems like pasta and bread will be my best friend on this trip. ;p

2. Brrr... it's cold. Well, you would think that it's spring, but it's not. And England is nothing like Norway in terms of the weather. Had to battle wind and rain yesterday standing at the harbour taking photos.

3. Museums, museums and more museums. In Oslo at least. Lots of them. Went to two today - the Fram museum (it's a ship designed to sail in the polar regions) and the Maritime museum. The former was a lot more interesting and value for money though.

Will try and find time to upload pictures soon. I'll be camping at the airport tonight, since my flight's early tomorrow (my excuse) and the clocks are going forward tonight as well (don't forget to reset your watches!)

Labels: Norway, Travel

I'm gonna send my laptop for repair for a spoilt DVI port later today (in fact, it's been spoilt for about 1.5 years already, just that my warranty is running out so i figured it'll be a good time to get it fixed... ;p). This will be the first time in a while which my powerbook will be alone, so take care yeah?

So I was in London today.

And I went to the National (Portrait) Gallery, because I had to kill some time. And I was wondering about looking at the various exhibits. Did you know that Bryan Adams is a Photographer? And a darn good one at that. (And yes, I'm referring to songwriter. (Everything I do) I do it for you. [yes... you... haha])

Guess who else I found? I also snuffed out the portrait ofSir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles. Oh wait. Did I say Bingley? Wow. In Jane Austen's world, that would have made him about 10,000 times more attractive to women! Why didn't they tell us that in the history textbooks? Now we'll have to modify our textbooks to include Bingley! (otherwise minus 1/2 mark! *gasp*)

(Who could this be?)

Oh, there was also an display on Brilliant Women - 18th Century Bluestockings. (very small exhibit lah. we all know deep down in our hearts how few many brilliant women there are... JOKING LAH, before I get accused of being a misogynist - and i'm definitely not one).

But anyway, it's a fairly delightful visit to just wander through the galleries and marvel at the works of art. And I think I've had my dose of galleries for the entire month already. =)

Labels: Muses

I've got to go for a meeting, and give a presentation tomorrow afternoon, which could mean a sponsorship deal for £5000 if I succeed. The success (or failure) of my job as captain will depend on this... ;p Wish me luck! (while I slog away on a powerpoint presentaiton now.. hehe)

It snowed! Last night! While I was asleep! ;p To think that it's spring will be foolish. But anyhow, every time there's snow, I jump at the opportunity to take some photos - out in the freezing cold. Here are some of the results, processed though, because the original shots were somewhat grey and gloomy.

#1:
Punt intended. But it was obviously too cold for this one.

#2:
One of the pillars in King's college that's meant to keep tourists (and students) from wandering off the Daffodil-lined paths. You can compare this shot with one from THIS POST, which I took 2 years ago in the summer and compare the difference.

#3:
A daffodil, about to collapse from the weight of the snow. Good thing the snow melted soon enough.

#4:
My college! (that's Churchill College btw..) The samurai warrior trio fights on, despite the snow. This is just one of the many sculptures scattered through the college, although this one's of my favourites...

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And I need to rest early today. The lack of caffeine flowing through my bloodstream is giving me a headache. (someone get me an IV-caffeine shot!)

Labels: Cambridge, Photography

Magnolia - What a terribly gripping movie, if not very long (3 hours!). It's quite old I know, but it was the first time I've watched it. It was really enjoyable though, and not in the Mary Poppins kind of spoonful-of-sugar type happiness, but the oh-my-f**king-goodness type of enjoyment. And somewhat depressing as well.

Towards the end of the show, there was this scene of raining frogs. And I was commenting on how that's technically not possible, since you'll need a incredibly high concentration of frogs to be sucked up, transported to the city, to be rained upon. But a search on Wikipedia reveals that it does actually happen, though the animals may not always be alive. (Article HERE). And the most interesting about it is that there's apparently a documented rain of fishes in Singapore once upon a time (in 1861), according to this source.

The note is entitled
“Shower of Fishes; earthquake at Singapore,” and was published in 1861:’

We experienced here an earthquake at 7: 34 m., February 16, that lasted about two minutes; it was followed by & rains, which on the 20th, 21at, and 22d became veritable torrents. The last day at 9 a. m. the rain redoubled in fury, and in a half hour our inclosed plot became a sea of water * * *.

At 10 o’clock the rainn lifted and from my window I saw a large number of Malays and Chinese filling baskets with fishes which they picked u in the pools of water which covered the road. On being asked where the fishes came from, the natives replied that they had fallen from the sky. Three days afterwards, when the pools had dried up, we found many dead fishes.

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In other random stuff, I found out that GDBO in a Cambridge context means God Damn Bloody Oxford! ;p All the best to CUW and CULRC who are racing tomorrow - go kick some dark blue asses!

Labels: Cambridge, Movies

Into the woods
And down the dell,
The path is straight,
I know it well.
Into the woods,
And who can tell
What's waiting on the journey?

Went to watch "Into the Woods" at the ADC theatre the other day (Monday)! It was nice - the best theatre production I've seen in Cambridge thus far... A musical it is, which combines all the fairy tales that we were told, once upon a time! There's the Little Red Riding Hood, Jack & The Beanstalk, Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel and more! (to be honest, i can't remember all of it... haha) Gee, it was like I was five again... (what the hell did I do when I was five years old anyway? hmm)

And I heard LaSalle is performing it in Singapore as well except urm..... it's ending today (Saturday)... oops..(get your tickets from Gatecrash)

And they lived happily ever after....

Labels: Into the Woods, Theatre

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what this is? ;p

Today, while I was walking around aimlessly in town, a certain man asked when I walked by, "Are you chinese?". Well, for a moment, I thought he meant ethnically, so I said yes. And it turns out that it was the answer he was looking for, cos he gave me a DVD - and he whispered under in breath, “在国内找不到” or something along those lines. Of course I'm not gonna say who this man is. =X (although i don't think i'd recognise him again either...)

But anyhow, I've just remembered that I have the DVD in my bag, so I took it out and watched it. It's basically a documentary about exposing the secrets in China, about how there's this sort of conspiracy going on or something like that. I'm afraid I gave up after about 10 minutes of watching. The title of the DVD though is "透视中国“。。(which means exposing China btw... or something along those lines). I imagine it's quite interesting though, cos a google search on that title gives 148,000 results... (although because my cheena is super powerful, i didn't read through any of the results... ;p)

Gee, all these "underground" stuff makes me excited. It's like when Keng Rui and I were in Syria, and we were approached by some shopkeepers, asking us if we wanted to make ISICs (International Student Cards) - because if we wanted, they could make one for us - a fake one that is.

Since my birthday is coming soon, I'm allowed to make a wish list right? haha... I want:

1. A Nikon D300 (previous post here)
2. A Nikon SB-800 flash unit. (oh yes... it's only SGD600, about 1/3 the price of the D300!)
3. Anyone of the lenses below:

I think the cheapest one is probably a 400mm F/2.8, which costs ONLY SGD20,000! (and fyi, the people in the photo were trying to take pictures of a bird... which I think is MUCH SMALLER than the lenses they were using... ;p Photo credit: NaturePixels)

Or actually, this one will do too:
It's a Sigma 200-500mm, f/2.8. It's a f**king bazooka man.. The camera is absolutely tiny compared to the lens! (Photo credit: Ken Rockwell)

4. Handphone. My Sony Ericsson W800i is starting to go wonky already - the joystick especially... though I'm known to use the same phone for many years (like how my Nokia 6510 lasted me from 2002 to 2005).
5. Assorted Mac stuff - like a MacBook pro maybe? ;p

If you've noticed a particular trend of my wish list, it's that none of the items cost less than SGD500 I think... hehe... That's why it's called a WISH list right? =)

Lately, Kenny Design Pte Ltd has been tasked with several jobs. The first of which was a Poster for a certain Physics in Action course, of which the result was this "Fundamental Forces for Dummies" poster...

It was quite an interesting conceptualising process though, starting with me wanting to do a "For Dummies" poster, and then wanting to use a chalk font, and then Darryl suggesting the use of an entire blackboard for the poster... Quite satisfied with it... =)

And then the 2nd and ongoing task, and the hardest task was the CUUNA publication (United Nations Association)... I'm not supposed to bitch about it publicly but I think you get the drift. ;p
Very professional I must say. It's taken more than 10 hours of full-time work on it, starting from scratch...

Also managed to get roped in for several photographic EXPLOITS jobs, including the Homerton Choir Concert, a recital, and the Abacus Annual Dinner, of which only the last was a paid job... tsk tsk.. Times are hard man... =X


Thank goodness term has ended! Hurray! Although the stuff for this term hasn't ended yet for me... boohoo....

PS: To hire the professional services of Kenny Design, you only need to leave me a comment. For you, Best price! Confirm good one!

Labels: Cambridge

Was just looking through some old albums, because I was working SO HARD. =X and decided to post-process some of the shots I took some time back. Here's a sample....

BEFORE


AFTER


if you can't tell the difference, too bad... loL

Labels: Photography

Wanna know how powerful is your England? Listen to this segment from the Class95 Morning Show...

Check out the MP3 HERE

yay! i found out how to type Japanese on my laptop and it's not exactly that hard to actually... I just need to learn how to read it now... =X

My name: ケニー　(Ke-ni-i)

Labels: Japanese

I spent some time today fiddling with Photoshop and tried to digitally enhance my images - something which I have been quite reluctant to do, since I think my photos should be WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) from the lens. But I guess I have to "catch up with the times" and play around with it.... So here were my 3 images from last weekend's trip to Rutland Waters: (bearing in mind these are the "enhanced images")

#1:


#2:


#3:


And then I decided to put them together into a collage. Here's the result, which I kinda like... It's a little small here, so if you want to see it in its full glory, it's available HERE

Labels: Photography

Been so swarmed with work the last couple of weeks, I've hardly had a breather... Now that the barrage is over (mostly), I think I can afford to take a quick break... =)

It's been a surprisingly sober Boat Club Dinner for me, considering how hammered I was at the last one, and having to fly off the next day. =X I guess it helps when I'm sitting next to the Master (yupz, the Master of my college). In fact, I was even sitting in the Master's chair, since I was "presiding" over the dinner, which makes it all the more interesting for the Master i guess.

But all in all, a really enjoyable dinner. My speech was certainly much better than last term's I must say. hopefully we'll have the results to show for it in Mays.... =) will post pictures soon enough. (i say that all the time but it doesn't usually happen... ;p)

Labels: Cambridge, Rowing