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Highly acclaimed Taiwanese movie featuring a movie crew who had virtually no experience in movie production whatsoever actually managed to sweep numerous awards with this amazing movie - You Are the Apple of My Eye!! Visit http://wordshutter.blogspot.com/2012/04/you-are-apple-of-my-eye-limited-edition.html for the equally amazing packaging of the limited edition DVD of this movie!
YEAH!! I’m finally at the last post for the 4 days worth of celebrating Lunar New Year!! I know it’s way overdue but it’s better than not blogging about it at all, no?
And to all the blogs that I go to every day without fail, please update something because I want to read something when I’m bored~ I see the same old posts all the time and I get sad. Hint hint!!
Anyway, I doubt this will REALLY be the last of the Lunar New Year that you’ll see here because I’m going to my sergeant major’s house to do some visiting with the rest of my camp mates at 5:00pm. I can leave my home at around 4:55pm if you get what I mean. :)
Without further ado~ Pictures of the fourth day of the Lunar New Year WAR!! :)
I think old people do not really remember their birthdays since birthdays, I guess, were not really celebrated by the olden generations as much as we do nowadays so every year, we will just pick a convenient date where we can celebrate our grandfather’s birthday. We would normally go out for dinner and stuff so yeap. This year’s no exception. Before I left the house, I took this photo of the potted cactus outside my door because the rabbits made of red packets are so funny. Courtesy of Nick and Leon.
My family was pretty late because my father was dragging and taking his own sweet time. Not to mention WOMANIZER came to my house again for the third consecutive day for whatever reason. Maybe he’s been womanizing so much he has no money to get a house? Who cares!! So when we finally arrived, everyone was like “WEI!! LATE ALREADY LAR~” or something like that. And I just realized that Sheena actually put on colored contact lenses. Not really liking the lenses’ design but I love this photo~
The kids/teenagers table. And like all other family dinner, we always get the crappy food. Oh well~ That’s for not paying for your meals. At least this time, we get soft drinks and a better table cloth as compared to my grandma’s birthday. Let’s see….. http://broylim.tumblr.com/post/647045570/dinner-with-my-family Yeap! This is it! Flies and all and smokers and whatnots~
Even though this place is located in an industrial area just a 10 minutes walk away from Sheena’s house, it’s so much cleaner and more hygienic. Most importantly, it was relatively quiet so we basically had the whole place to ourselves (with a couple of strangers).
Laura enjoying her Pepsi. The drinks cost a whooping $1.50!! At least it’s refillable but $1.50 for a glass of soft drink? You can get ONE WHOLE BOTTLE with that money!
One of my cousins who I don’t really feature a lot, Guo Qiang. He’s my eldest aunt’s son and yeap. He’s really tall and really dark!! I may even look younger than him. What do you think? :)
iPhoning and Xperia-ing away while waiting for our food to arrive…
Laura and her not-so-glam smile.
The soft drinks!! Normally when we eat at these coffee houses or eateries, there will be this woman who comes along to take our orders for drinks but for this place, they will just give you either Pepsi or Orange. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it helps fickle people like myself make up my bloody mind. But on the other hand, if you have a craving for a particular beverage, then that’s too bad!
Rena showing off her braces and her starry bracelet which is actually a hair band. Sometimes, I wonder why people design hair bands like this because won’t it trap the hair and make it a living hell to remove it? I’m not sure~ I never tied my hair before~
This photo was taken after we had our 鱼生 (translates to “raw fish” or better known as sashimi). Basically, it’s like a big plate of sashimi salad where everyone in the family gets to toss using chopsticks. The video’s on facebook if you are interested to see what the whole process is like. The person who prepared our 鱼生 was really nice but he talks a little too much.
I think she’s got something stuck in her braces.
The adult/kids-that-are-too-young-to-feed-themselves table. Well, they normally get the better food but I don’t really care. My father’s wearing the Carneyvale shirt that I got him from GAMBIT because no one wanted that shirt. What a pity, no? It’s a cute shirt. I would wear it if it was a couple of sizes smaller.
So if you are interested in bringing your family to an industrial area for a meal, you can come to this place. I don’t know the exact address but oh well~
The aftermath of the 鱼生. From here, you can derive that the salad consists of cucumbers, peanuts, carrots and some other things on top of the few, miserable slices of sashimi.
Sheena’s Hello Kitty organizer which she uses to keep track of her work place’s daily sales. I asked her why she bothers to do it and she said that her boss promised her that if she can hit a certain target, then she will get some incentives. Coolness~
And finally~ The first dish; Kang Kong! Not a huge fan of kang kong because I prefer veggies with bigger leaves but I’ll have it anyway. Better than nothing. This kang kong was not bad~ Crunchy and greasy (in a good way).
Qiang helping himself with the kang kong. I think I actually got to eat quite a good portion that day because hungry ghost Nick wasn’t at our table. Normally, he would clear the plates before I’m done with taking the photos of the food. At least everyone was co-operative that day. :)
This is Vanessa, my 小姑’s eldest child. I realized that I don’t really feature her as well so here she is, eating her veggies.
The next dish. Is this fish? I think it was… It’s fish covered with cereal and I love the cereal! Anything with that kind of cereal (be it prawns, crabs, whatever) is nice! I can just have that cereal because it’s so buttery and heavenly! The fish is good~ Sheena’s “favorite” dish!
Lemon chicken. Nothing special other than the fact that this is a good photo.
I think this was one of the best dishes of the day! Pork in sweet sauce! The pork is bone-free, unlike the ribs you have outside that makes eating it such a chore. The meat is really tender, unlike some places where the meat chews like rubber. The sauce is fantastic! I like!!
Tofu and veggies. I don’t really like cooked cabbage because it’s slimy and I don’t like slimy. But the mushrooms and tofus are good!
Through dinner, Sheena’s Pepsi got more and more diluted. Just look at the color!!
And the final dish; CRAB!! I think this is butter crab but I don’t really care because I had a bit only. As usual, Vera would fight for the pincers and I’ll just eat the shelly parts. The crab was pathetically tiny and I don’t think I would have crabs at this place. Notice that the plate isn’t really on the table? That’s because Leon had to snatch the plate for me to take the picture before everyone snatch my subject away.
By small, I mean REALLY SMALL!! The pincers are only the length of your index fingers! Where’s the satisfaction from eating such a small crab?
Leon playing with his food.
Shortly after we were done with the crab, Sheena had to report for work. In fact, she was terribly late for work because of this dinner. Poor her~ Have to work on weekends and during the new year. So, Rena and I saw her to the road to catch a cab and on the way, we had lots of fun snapping cam-whorish pictures. :P
Sheena waiting for the cab but to no avail. Probably because she looks scary… Probably because the cab drivers think we are playing a fool because I was walking around with a camera on a tripod. Who knows?
We were doing everything but waiting for a cab. :P
Seriously… I look like a little boy… :( But that’s not a bad thing, yes? :)
So while Sheena was frantically waiting for her job-saver to arrive, Rena and I attempted to take jump shots but we failed. :P What we got instead was a ghostly Rena.
This road leads to Ang Mo Kio, in case you’re wondering.
Sheena got tired of cabs rejecting her so we walked a little farther down to try our luck again. In order to make the cab drivers less suspicious of my tripod and camera, I stood slightly farther away from them so that I won’t attract unnecessary attention, like what Rena’s doing here.
Sheena looks like a ghost.
One of Rena’s famous poses, “I’m a waitress”.
Shooting at night is fun because you always get opportunities to shoot the more artistic side of light, like how cars zoom past your camera to create these amazing streaks of light.
When Sheena finally got a cab, Rena and I started to head back to the coffee house to rendezvous with the rest of the family, until Laura came over to see what we were doing and we started to cam-whore all over again~
Funny faces~ For once, Rena looks more glam than me.
We tried shooting solo shots! Laura’s pose is nice but her right hand seems a bit stiff. Did I mention that it was extremely windy by the road and that we always had constant wind in our hair? I was really fun to shoot our hair flying madly. Well, I don’t have much hair to begin with but…
Rena’s solo shot was more of her crazy personality.
And we’re back!! After cam-whoring, we went back and my family was about to leave. So before that, we tried to take family portraits since we don’t really get the chance to go out together as one whole family often. Laura snatched the shot with her big nose.
This was actually a test shot. Somehow, I feel that during test shots, the people are more relaxed because they know they can do all sorts of stupid things and that’s when their personality and character really shine. Maybe I should tell them that I’m always doing test shots to get their real emotions.
This is the first time Vera can give me something good! Her long hair made her look slimmer and the way she puts her arm by her hips and the way she positioned her clutch made her look so much slimmer. Her 3/4 “cheat” to the camera also worked in her advantage. If she arched her back a little bit more, she will get more curves and it will reduce her size even further!! Now that’s a tip for y’all if you want to look less of your weight in photos~ :)
My family~ Had Rena to take this photo using the camera+tripod+control. The control is such a magnificent invention because it gives people who don’t know how to use the DSLR less of a hellish time when it comes to helping me take portraits. Just hit the button and you get a good picture!! :)
Leon, Vera, Laura and Rena. I really loved the colors of the shots~
My 小姑’s family as well as my grandparents. And yes!! My grandma’s eyes are opened even though she looks a bit lost in the picture! When I get my printer, I’m so going to develop these family portraits and give it to them as gifts~
The whole family, less Sheena because she abandoned us to go to work. :( Kaka helped us take this photo using the controller. Really love this photograph~
One of the reasons why Sheena went to work so late was because she thought she had to stay for the portrait taking. I had no clue who told her about it but oh well~ She left anyways. So I told her that I will photoshop her face in. This is the first version where she snatches the limelight.
Let’s play “Spot the Sheena”. Can you see her? I did my best to make her fit into the lighting but that was about the best I could do. If you’re sharp enough, you can immediately tell that she don’t belong in the picture at all~
Anyway, there are some who asked me why I picked this picture of her. Firstly, because she looks FUNNY!! Secondly, because it’s about the only face-on photo I can find of her that fits into this family portrait. I know very well that she will not give such a hideous smile during such an important photo but…
WHO CARES!! :P It’s not me! :P I’m just living to my reputation of taking unglam shots!
My aunt was complaining why we kept taking photos in front of someone else’s car as opposed to hers so I took this picture of her and my uncle to make her happier. Maybe you should try buying Toto or 4D with those numbers. :P
Xander and Xavier (Banana~ In pajamas~) taking a photo with their family car.
And to end the post, Aik Hin and Vera~ I think their faces appear a lot on my blog and I think I’m like their official photographer because I have SO MANY of their shots together. -_-“
“I’m your biggest fan I’ll follow you until you love me… Papa~ Paparazzi~~”
Maybe if I don’t become a photographer, I can go be a paparazzi because I’m so damn good at it! :P But nah~ Singapore is a bad place for paparazzi because the news are boring.
That marks the 4th day of the Lunar New Year celebration and probably the last which I celebrate with my family for this year. Hopefully, next year’s would be so much more fun and hopefully by then, I will have new photography toys to play with to get even better shots!!
Imma go find something to entertain myself while I wait to go to my sergeant major’s house. Going to take pictures so stay tuned yes? Because I’ll probably not post the photos on facebook. :)
And yes! I’m home again on a Wednesday! Good thing I get offs now and then so I can continue to maintain this blog… Otherwise, it would be collecting dust already.
I did promise that I will blog the rest of the Lunar New Year when I get the time and I’m doing so right now, even though I have a whole day worth of pictures left untouched but that’s tomorrow’s problem. Not in the mood to edit the film now anyway.
So, as the time goes by, my memories of the Lunar New Year will start to fade away so I will do my best to entertain the few readers (hi y’all!!) with the rest of the posts. I just want to get them done soon so I can keep them as accurate as possible.
The Lunar New Year is not over yet, as of today. Today’s everyone’s birthday, apparently; the 7th day of the new year. HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVERYONE!! :)
And a side note, the visitors for today…
#01 - 31.82% from US
#02 - 22.73% from UK
#03 - 18.18% from Canada
#04 - 13.64% from Singapore
Rest of them are just a couple of percents…
LOOK SINGAPORE PEOPLE!! SHAME ON YOU!! :P
Moving on…
On the second day of the Lunar New Year, my family would normally visit my 小姑’s house (aunt’s house) and just stay there for half, if not the whole, day. Most of them would be playing cards and gambling their money away while I would normally just sit in a corner (literally sometimes) and entertain myself.
Or, take pictures…
But this year, before heading over to my aunt’s house, we went to visit my mom’s friends whom we haven’t seen for quite some time. We call one of them godma and the other one “Aunty White”, simply because when we were young, she used to wear white a lot.
Well, we visited them in a Chinese Astrology store in People’s Park Complex at Chinatown. Yes, they are into the astrology business and they were open for a short while on the second day of the new year to do some feng shui reading for a Caucasian couple who were in desperate need for divination. This is how creepy the old shopping mall that normally smells like bad Chinese herb looks like when all the shops were closed.
To make it even freakier, I made Leon and his girlfriend walk down the corridor and made this shot ghostly; almost Silent Hill-ish. Yeap. So while waiting for the Caucasians to be done with their astrology reading, we took random photos. While waiting, I heard some of the divination, saying that this year is the year of the METAL RABBIT; whatever that means…
And we finally went in!! My apologies for not taking pictures of these awesome people (godma and Aunty White) because we were too busy chatting. They were really humorous; in fact, I don’t even remember that they had such a good sense of humor! Every statement they made made me grin or laugh because it’s so funny. Anyway, I had this bandung (rose syrup) drink.
The 8 treasure box thingie filled with preserved fruits. Tell me, who actually eats these during Lunar New Year? I know very well that when people offers me these, I will kindly reject them because they look ugh! But the preserved mango was really good though!
After visiting creepy building of Chinatown, we headed over to my aunt’s house for lunch and all (the usual new year drill) and I took quite a number of photos of random things because I was THAT bored. Caught my cousin, Xander, on candid camera when he was preparing to launch an attack on my father’s butt.
While we had curry rice/noodles for lunch, Sheena’s mom had strings. She found this piece of elastic-band-looking piece of string in the noodle she ate. She was commenting that the noodle refused to break no matter how hard she chewed and when she took it out, she realized that she was chewing on string. Well, my grandma accidentally threw that in apparently.
I don’t really fancy the yellow noodles so I had rice with curry instead. The curry was YUMMY!! Made by my grandma and thank goodness there were no nasty surprises in the curry.
While I was having lunch, my other aunt was peeling the pomelo. Do you remember that I mentioned the pomelo in my previous post? Yeap, this is how you peel a pomelo and how the flesh looks like, in case you haven’t seen one before. I didn’t have any though; wasn’t in the mood for that.
When I go to my aunt’s house for visiting, I will DEFINITELY attack her new year goodies because they are so good! Especially the cookies and pineapple tarts that she makes. They are marvelous and sometimes even better than commercial ones simply because she uses the best ingredients!
Her mouth-watering pineapple tarts made from scratch! I don’t know whether she bought ready-made pineapples or made them from scratch as well but the pastry is good! She used good butter and therefore, the pastry is flavorful and really tasty. The pineapple is chewy too and unlike the normal ones sold outside, she packed each tart with a generous amount of pineapple. I crave for more even as I type this entry.
So much for food. Now let’s talk about people and everything else that cannot be placed in your mouth. This is Leon and his girlfriend, Yihui. Say hello!!
After lunch, my uncle gathered everyone on the floor and they started to play Blackjack. I think the term “gambling” seemed more appropriate though. In my family, it’s legal to gamble even though you’re like 5 - 6 years old. Odd, no? What lessons are the parents trying to teach? I myself do not gamble at all. I rather save my money for something else.
And so, while they are gambling their money away, I went around the house to look for things to photograph. Found Serene-bear-bear (this classic Pooh that my cousin named Serene, after his mom) on the study table and took this shot. The colors were manipulated in Lightroom but the sunlight was genuine. Love this photo of the lonely bear.
For once, Xander didn’t shun away from my camera. He was really sporting that day and allowed me to take lots of photos of him! It’s too bad his eyes appear quite small on photos but his smile is so cute!!
The chrysanthemum flowers were part of the decorations of the living room and they were gorgeous! I was really tempted to pluck at the petals but I didn’t because I didn’t want the younger children to follow suit and I will get the blame for dirtying the floor.
WOOOOO~ I forgot to resize this image but marvel at nature’s patterns! I was bored of staying indoors so I went out into the corridor and went shutter-happy; snapping pictures of plants and whatever nonsense I can point my camera at. Found the sunlight shining through the leaves really cool and took a close up of one of the leaves. This is enlarged digitally so yeap… But it still displays the veins which are really interesting.
Xander, being way too young to gamble (or maybe because he doesn’t know how to play the game in the first place), followed me to the corridor and snapped photos with me using his sister’s Samsung Galaxy S. Well, I’m not very fond of phones’ cameras but this camera is fun to use because of its sweeping panorama function.
Another willing shot. If you look closely at the phone, you’ll see the photo of me taking a photo of him taking a photo of me. Confusing much? :)
This was really cute!! Normally when I want to take photos at a lower angle, I will high-kneel on the ground to get the angle and that day, I wanted to take a lower shot of Xander and this is what he did; he copied my pose! Looks like I’m grooming a future photographer! :P
When I found it too warm outside, I went indoors and saw my father being obscene. The photo explains all.
My grandma did not play Blackjack (OF COURSE) because she was watching TV. If I didn’t remember wrongly, it was the show where senior citizens sing on TV. I admire their courage because… well, you get what I mean don’t you?
If you think babies and children are hard to photograph, you had not tried my grandmother. Half the time when you take pictures of her, her eyes are either closed or she looks away even though you told her to look at the camera. I had to take a lot of shots before I get this slightly more successful one of her and Rena. Maybe I should jiggle some toys in front of the camera next time to grab her attention… :P
Apparently, Rena got bored of losing money and became my model to shoot. That’s her new phone, a Sony Ericsson Xperia. I’m not a big fan of Sony Ericsson phones but this phone is neat~ I love the big screen and the color. Rena got this phone just so she can tweet non-stop and flood my inbox with her complaints. :P
HAVE YOU TRIED THESE? If you haven’t, then you probably have no childhood!! I remember having these when I was young; “ice-cream”!! Basically, it’s just a tube of cream that looks like ice-cream when you squeeze it into these mini cones. They are really sweet (which candies ain’t?), adorable but not cold… Unless you leave the tube in the fridge. Really interesting candy. Pei En is squeezing out the cream into the cone in the above shot.
Rena about to devour the cone of calories. I refused to have any because I believed I ate too much that day and didn’t really need that extra sugar.
Another 8 treasure box!! Just that this one has lesser compartments but still filled with weird things I dare not put into my mouth. I only had those chewy candies and the plums (orangey ones at the bottom of the frame) because they looked less yucky. I was too lazy to have those 瓜子 (I forgot what they are called in English… Sunflower-seed-looking-nuts-things??).
OOO!!! My grandma made another huge boo-boo that day! Well earlier in this post, I mentioned that she cooked strings with noodles? Well, around the time when I took this photo, she made coffee using 7-UP!! She mistaken 7-UP for plain water and added that into the coffee and everyone went crazy~ I had a good time laughing though. 7-UP with coffee!! That’s a first. I wonder how it tastes like but I’m not very keen on finding out.
My aunt trying to annoy Pei En, who was watching TV.
Xander’s elder brother, Xavier. He had this weird white stuff on the left eye. Probably some ointment or sort. Everyone was asking if he peeped at someone bathe and that’s why he needs to put ointment on his eyes. Did your parents say that to you to discourage you from peeping at people?
Aik Hin fell asleep, just like I did when I was too bored.
But being bored is actually good because you will look at things that you never noticed before and take pictures of it. The sunlight was shining through the patterned glass window and I took a picture of it to capture the texture and the patterns. Applied a preset in Lightroom and ta da~ Got this shot!!
The final shot of the day. Rena sat on the floor and the light was hitting her really nicely so I took this shot. Well, it seems like I’m giving reasons for why I take photos but actually, sometimes I just feel inspired so I want to take a photo. Sometimes, I’m just too bored. That day, I was really bored out of my skull so might as well use that energy to do something productive. Anyway, Rena looks good in this photo, less the pimple on her face though.
All in all, the second day was a bore because I did nothing but eat, sleep, take photos and repeat. Nothing much to it.
Stay tuned for Day 3 (hopefully I will finish Day 3 by tomorrow) to find out what else I did. It will be really beautiful, I promise~ :D
