Red Island Cafe

Somehow the logo resembles some cafe's design...

Ah Choo is kind enough to treat a bunch of us to the Red Island Cafe at Crystal Point for lunch. The restaurant was moderately full, found a table and ordered up... not to mention I brought my camera there and snapped up.

Stopped snapping for 2 days and back to my old prime lens of 50mm I can't use to the manual settings I've got to shoot at again... sigh, so please bear with me for the below shots.

Overall the food was okay, the kaya toasted bread is nice, not sure if its theirs that was nice or its cos I have long tasted toasted bread. :)

Enjoy the pics.

Ice lemon tea rite?

Er... some hot coffee I guess, unfortunately there were no Red Island Cafe logo around the cup...

Tom yam, tasted very spicy and... not sure sour or not

Hot and Spicy chicken (not KFC) with er.. sour sauce. Personally the chicken tasted hot cos it was just out fresh from the oven but doesn't taste spicy at all...

Rojak... not my type of dish...

My favourite.. toasted kaya bread!

Ah Mon's nasi lemak, didn't hear his comment...

But somehow Ah Bok highly recommended it! (order at your own risk.. LOL, j/k :p)

P/S: Thanks Ah Choo for the treat! and excuse my food pics, still getting a hang at shooting with full manual and food photography, not sure if i did justice to the cafe or not.. anyway it's free advertistment for me... hahahahha...

20 years apart...

Old and New

Technology as we know, gets replaced very quickly. Take for example, PC... can you possibly use any part of your PC 20 years ago for a brand new PC of today? ok, maybe u can use the casing, probably keyboard with some jack converter or the monitor huh?

Guess what? I'm amazed at 1 particular thing that's able to function beautifully as of today as it was 20 years ago. What am I talking about? Take a guess... no prize for guessing it correctly...

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Nikkor 50mm f/1.4!!!

Okay probably u've guessed camera, but which part? it is the SLR lens of course. I bought Nikon's dSLR a while ago (as you all may know from my previous entry) and my dad had his Nikon SLR some 20years ago.

My dad's SLR, notice the retro design, haha...

I got curious, so I asked my dad if he remembered where he put his camera. And there he went and flip through his books on the shelf... a while later.. tada... he found it! It was tucked away nicely in a plastic bag. He took it out, gave it a scrub or two... then woala! I was amazed when I looked upon this.. anchestor of SLR. hahahahha... the divine one!

My dad checking out his camera cos I can't seem to view thru the view finder (notice the engraving words 'made in Japan', mine's made in Thailand...)

And so, initially I've tried his lens, pluck out, pluck in.. wow. surprisingly.. it fits! hahahahha, alright.. tried to snap a pic.. pressed the shutter release... er...nope... can't. the LCD screen kept reminding me that no lens has been attached. Well, I tot that my body aren't compatible with this type of old lens.. so a bummer...

It is a very good lens. 50mm Prime lens of f/1.4. okay so most of you who are not into these photography jargons.. i'll put it in simpler term. An autofocus type of this lens today costs RM1.xk. Thousand over lens so dun play play. : ) I'm delighted that it was in a good shape and no fungus was developed in the lens.

I went over to a camera shop just now and asked one of the fellow there, he taught me how to use it and I came back... took out that lens and mount it on my dslr body, made the necessary settings and I was snapping away~ wow... happy man..

Well, I'm happy that I'm able to use the lens and I hope I'll use it to capture nice moments in the future in my photography journey, I'm sure my dad are much more happier for me to use it rather than keeping it in a plastic bag.

Thanks dad, I'll put it to good use and make the lens proud! : )

Test shot, notice the shallow background... hence the nice "Bokeh" effect!

P/S: Its a shame that my dad stopped taking photography when I was growing up and he was busy taking care of the family than enjoy this only hobby of his. Aren't we all? as we grow old, we surpressed most of our hobbies because of work life... I truely hope one day I can cope my dad to go take photos with me not along side with me but together, each of us holding our own camera. that'll be a great moment for me. : )

Dragon-Y

Calvin welcomes all to Dragon-Y

Today we finally went to Dragon-Y restaurant at Suntech Cybercity to have our lunch. Received email a while ago regarding this and the first thing that reminded me of Dragon-Y is the Dragon-i restaurant in QB which I have never been to b4.

Its Hong Kong based restaurant that offers a variety of Hong Kong food, resembles Kim Gary but in a cheaper scale.

2nd Floor of the restaurant, there's 1 row of seats beside the staircase

The restaurant has 2 floors, the ground floor is quite small, only managed to house 2 to 3 tables and so we proceeded upstairs. Surprisingly, the whole venue seemed cramped to me. Table was square in design and it barely able to accomodate our food and drinks. I had to carry my camera bag on my lap.

One of the few lanterns hanging from the ceiling

Menu, the mascot seemed cute

Some of the gang waiting for their food while others started digging in

They even have 1 LCD TV playing MTV at a far end of the place

Design is modern like, with some wallpaper and lantern ligting hanging from the ceiling. It was almost full house during lunch hour and judging from the menu, the price they charged seemed reasonable for this type of restaurant. I've ordered Sour vege pork with rice set that comes with a soya bean milk and also 1 desert cup that costs RM8.90 only without tax. It tastes good too, and btw... its not those vege pork that they serve for vegetarian, its sliced mushrooms with sliced pork topped with sour sauce.

Sour Vege Pork

The rice, nice bowl shape with some sesame

The soya bean and desert cup

Honey Chicken

Anyone who liked Hong Kong food can have a try there. Suntech Cybercity is just beside Sunshine Square.

P/S: The place is so small that, instead of having the waitor/waitress carrying the food from kitchen at ground floor all the way up thru the staircase, they have 1 mini elevator which will send the food and drinks upward so that the waitor/ waitress can put them onto a tray and serve them to patrons directly. Smart thinking! :)

PENANG - Heritage Sites

Well, Calvin and I thought about having a photography session with the gang and this would be my long awaited outing with them. Last time I didn't join as I have yet to acquire my camera, so naturally... I agreed with both hands up in the air~

Breaking fast...

We had our breakfast at dim sum restaurant opposite of KDU but it was a brief one as we're suppose to meet up at 8am but ended up late for 10mins. oops~

The day was 18th October 2008, the sun was shinning for us and we gathered around Masjid Kapitan Keling. Right when Ah Teng parked his car and we lobbed some coins into the parking meter (note: it only accepts till RM4 and not more, I inserted 40cents more but the counter didn't increased... =_=!) so lasted us for 4 hours. hahahaha.

Meet up with Felicia and Jimmy zhai and all of us got out our image capturing devices and started snapping away at the Masjid.

Made our way passed Kuan Yin Temple, St. George's, Church of Assumptions, The Magistrate court, Esplanade, City Hall and finally along Fort Cornwallis. Applied sun block in the middle of the journey before the sun really gets hot. :p


It was an exhausting but fun and fulfilling event! Here's a few photos for sharing.










Btw, shot a very nice sky scenery up in the light house at Fort Cornwallis~

Train station photography

Ah.. what would Penang be without the famous ferry?

As I've mentioned yesterday, today I will be and already did joined the shutterbugs for 2nd outing. The agenda today will be to wait in front of the QE2 besides Penang Jetty and ferry over to Butterworth's Trainstation where the main shooting venue will be.

I reached there around 7:50am, I saw a bunch of people with cameras in front of QE2 (well the port to be precise) so naturally I walked in and joined them. I didn't see any familiar faces such as those from yesterday's outing so I thought some of them are from ShutterAsia.com probably. I remembered Kevin told me he's not coming but he said "you'll see a bunch of guys there in front". Okay, later on.. .guess what.. those are from a totally different group of people... omg.. lol.. 'or tau'.

The 'real' group... :p

Soon I saw those 'real' shutterbugs and then we moved out.

Walked towards the upper floor of the ferry port and shot a few shots here and there. Funny, the ferry seemed to arrive quite fast or perhaps am I too preoccupied with my shooting. :p

Shot the interior of the ferry, stuck my head and held my camera outside the windows and snap here and there while enjoying the morning breeze. "Perfect outing again..." I told myself.

You see, 1 guy shooting auntie, another guy caught him shooting and shot him while I framed the whole thing... (no, no one shot behind me :p)

Well, soon as we've landed. Followed the group and walked a bit to reach the station not far off from the ferry. I've never been to the station nor ride the train b4. hahahha... so looked around and snapped quite a number of photos and the rest is just as usual.

Went and held my camera near track level for this shot. first time shooting at train station, I actually looked left and right (scare of incoming train...)

What would train station visit be without a photo of a train? This one is actually out of commission one.. hahahahhahaha

An activator to switch tracks

This is where the track begins... at Zero

Fueling pump beside a working train... I ran down the tracks and cross over to the other side for this photo

Again, a bright sunny and clear blue sky. Thank you sky!

See Komtar?

Streetphotography @ Georgetown

Good morning sunshine!

All readied, let's move out

I've decided to join shutterbugs for their outing this week. Guess what, my prayers were answered! Its clear blue skies baby! Their last outing last week were hit by rain so they had to end the shooting prematurely around Gama area.

Shot this while waiting for the rest to come

So this week I joined them where they left off last week, started off at the street opposite of Gama and walked a few blocks there.

A lot of them are geared up with dSLRs with some really nice lens (zoom I presume with the lens hood in front) and certainly some with prosumer and not sure anyone went with pns camera or not. Followed them along the trails as everyone starting shooting away.

Some of the flags from a Chinese temple high up in the clear sky

The faithful companion (actually not his pet)

Meeooowww...

The roof top of the coffee shop, somehow it blends well with the skies

Half way around the blocks we stopped at a coffee shop to have a drinks as it was quite hot around 10am. The shoot continued on till 10:45am and ends.

Had a drink at coffee shop to cool down

Overall quite nice experience. You might have live near your neighborhood for a few decades but its a whole level of difference when you actually travel with your own foot and paid attention to your surrounding objects to shoot not to mention angles are important as well.

Postbox

Tiles at the Indian temple

A good photographer keeps a eye for specific objects and linked them together and compose the shots at a certain angle that would produce an excellent picture. That's something I'm learning along the way and hopefully improve my photography.

Cracks

Some hello kitty fans

A shutterbug was snapping this k9 at close range

There's 1 more shooting tomorrow. Check back for more updates!