Not All For Money, Not All For Love

I just came back from a wedding dinner shoot, my last photo assignment for the month and year.

December has been a crazy month, keeping me busy with 7 shoots. Fortunately for me, I only have one shoot scheduled for January - for now.

December also sees the launch of my music album, ROCK ON PIANO. This album has eluded me in CD shops: I have no idea which category they classify this under: new age, rock or pop. Either the album is selling so well or the shops are shelving them in some obscure corner.

Just found out that one of my videographer affiliates will be retiring from freelancing videography due to career commitments. He decided to call it quits because he did not have the confidence of doing videography full-time.

Sometimes, I wonder, all the time and energy I spent on doing photography or music. What is it for? I'd be fooling myself if I say it's all a labour of love, but I'd also be lying if I say it's all about money, because, I really love what I am doing. In my last music assignment, I only charged $1000 to arrange 13 minus-one tracks. Yes it's below market-price because the album is for a school fund-raising. But then all the hours I spent on them made me wonder: is it worth it?

I think it'll be quite accurate to say that I am merely want some form of compensation for the time I spent, away from my family, on my hobbies.

Given a choice, I would not be too bothered with making every cent count. But with the arrival of my first child this year, I am no longer in capacity to indulge in personal enjoyment. Over the months, I have come to terms about shifting my priorities. I have got to devote more time with my family, unless there are financially-compelling reasons otherwise. In other words, the time I spent away from my family should be for increasing family income.

Put it bluntly, if I don't get much money out of the job, I would rather spend time with family.

That's probably going to be my mindset for 2008, until I encounter further changes to my life.

So, sorry, no more charity or free requests. I think I'll be happier spending time with family. Life is not all about money, but at least pay me enough to make me spend time away from my loved ones, ya.

Rock On Piano TV Commercial

My album has been on sale for 2 weeks, and people has been telling me they saw the ads on TV very often. But I did not manage to see it on TV myself. Until today.

I Missed...

I have no idea that I have actually blogged for more than a year already! It all started in 1 Nov 2006 and now I am in my 14th month.

Using Google Analytics, I can track where my readers come from, and I do notice I have a few regular readers, and that kindda puts me in a little pressure to update the blog so that they know what's happening in my life. And after blogging for a year, I feel that the one benefit of reading a person's blog is not really to be 'kaypo', but actually to read a person's point of view and learn from these thoughts. I am not any philosopher, but I have my way of living life which I feel is keeping me quite happy and contented.

Each blogger has their own agenda. Some for fame, some for attention, some to network. There is no right or wrong. There are no rules to blogging. No one should impose what a person can write. If you don't like what you see or read, just don't visit again. The ironic thing is that, these "blogger-haters" want to leave their mark there because they know their comments will be read by a lot of people on these popular blogs. Agenda: fame/infamy.

So what's my blog's agenda?

I think I've mostly kept to my initial objective: to share my personal thoughts on music, photography, life. In the first months of blogging, I tried to blog everyday, writing about my events - a diary. Then I realised that it's not appropriate. A diary is a log of your personal stuffs. A blog is a diary of your personal stuffs that you want people to read. You either make sure that you have a hoard of people interested in your daily routine (not a problem with girls blog with lots of photos) or your blog has information worth reading on.

So for 14 months, I have shared photos (mostly of my newborn girl), music (mostly piano arrangements of pop songs, only these I can post them online for full listen), and life (mostly as a multi-tasking dad). I cannot guarantee that my blog will sustain the "interestability", but it's quite a good indicator of my life. If it gets too dull, that means my life is as smooth and boring as a paper.

Thank you for visiting my blog again and again. Happy Birthday to me and Merry Christmas to you.

Silent Nights No More

For the past weeks, putting Mayenne to sleep has been an onerous task. We usually coax her to sleep on our arms, but when we transferred her to the bed, the first thing she always does is to turn to her tummy and starts to fuss. Only if we carry her long enough that she would keep still. Even so, it's highly likely that she would toss and wake up within an hour - except when she gets really tired.

Mayenne has also been waking up many times throughout the night. And it's not for feeds. She can no longer sleep through the night. And she also wakes up very early, sometimes as early as 4am.

Even if we try to feed her regularly, she doesn't take as much milk. We suspect she has taken a liking for more more solid food.

But she's growing, and learning, becoming more child than an infant. She can now crawl animatedly and reaches for anything around her. She plays with her toys enthusiastically, on hand and on mouth.

Last Saturday, we brought her to see the Christmas tree at Ngee Ann City, possibly the largest indoor tree in Singapore. She always behaves in public, for she indulges in the new sights and sounds that surrounds her, so much so that she often forgets she is hungry.





Here are some other shots I took of her at home.

1. If she looked sickly, that is because she was. But we find her aloof look so adorable.

2. Here's one for daddy.
3. Happy with her favourite toy.

4. Always on the lookout for the camera.

What is our National Treasure?

When Nuffnang asked me "what is our national treasure", the first thing that comes to my mind is: Love.


As corny as it sounds, love makes everything and anything possible. With the power of love, we achieve.

Nuff said.

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets the movie will be screening in Singapore from 20 Dec 2007. Can't wait to watch what kind of conspiracy theory the script writers can come up with.

Images waiting to be processed

December is an overwhelming month for me. Lots of photography assignments, thousands of photos waiting to be processed. And it's only the 10th day. Quite a horrible feeling leaving the untouched photos alone, even for a day. Every time I finish my shoot, I would want to review the photos and edit them immediately, for I want to process the images to convey the exact mood that it was intended. Not this month. After this evening's eventful wedding shoot (the wettest shoot I've ever done yet!), I now have 3 projects waiting to be processed, and another project that I have completed processing but doing the photobook layout.

Personal portfolio shoot (work in progress)

ROM Solemnisation Shoot (completed editing, doing photobook layout)

Wedding (work in progress)

Rock On, Piano Spa!

Some news on my music albums.

First, my latest rock song piano album is out. ROCK ON PIANO is a 2-CD 24-track piano interpretation of some of the best soft rock songs on the planet. I have not got hold of one myself yet, but it should look like a DVD box, like this:

Second, my Piano Spa albums have extended its presence to the mobile domain. Currently, SingTel and StarHub are offering selected tracks for download into your mobile phones. Now you can enjoy relaxing therapeutic songs anywhere you go. But if I were you, I would grab the 3-CD 30-track album instead of downloading. At about $20, each track costs only $0.60, and you can convert and download onto whatever player you got. I do hope you can still find them, because music stores typically do not keep stocks of "old" albums. In time, Piano Spa albums would have become a collector's item. In fact, only the first press comes with the elongated packaging. Subsequent prints are packed in the normal thick jewel casings.

Class95 De'car

Every morning, my wife would tune in to Class95 radio station to listen to the radio deejays Glenn Ong and the Flying Dutchman talking sense (and often non-sense too). This morning, Glenn and Carol was on radio and they were mentioning about the car decal goodie giveaway happening at Bishan Stadium. Since it's near our home, we decided to go pick up the goodies.

When we reached the entrance of the car park, it was already 7pm. The car queue did not flow outside the car park so we thought it was rather short. Neither did we expect that this car park was deep! It snaked behind the swimming pool and the sports complex for a good 20 minutes before we saw the lorry of goodies - cartons of Whatever and Anything. The giveaway was very systematically executed: cars were asked to stop at 4 'stations' where helpers would load the cartons to the cars and the cars would drive away in less than 10 seconds.

It so happened that my car stopped right in front of Carol Smith's station, and it kindda caught me by surprise. Firstly, I did not expect her to be around when it was almost 7.30pm. Secondly, I did not expect her to be at my 'loading station'.

My windscreen was already wound down at the start of the queue thanks to the cool weather, so Carol saw us and said hi and continued, "Oh, what a big beautiful smile you've got there... well, I would too if I were you!" And I just smiled too, practically dumbfound, loss of words. After the cartons were loaded up, she wished us a merry Christmas and I drove off quickly not wanting to hold up the queue.

Thinking back, I would really want to say to her how appreciative we are to see her there and grateful to the Class95 crew for the goodies - and probably shake her hand, take a photo, whatever. But I'm not a very quick person when it comes to communicating, and this is not the first time. I would always reflect on myself after incidents were over only to regret what I did not say or do. Because I am basically a very "thought-full" person: I won't do something until I have completed my thought process and decided on my course of action.

Marina City Park No More

Last Saturday I went to Marina South with a client for portrait photoshoot. I wanted to visit some of the spots at the Marina City Park where I thought looked good. When I reached there, I was appalled to find that it has been razed to the ground, making way for yet another urban civilization - the Integrated Resort.

Sad.

If the park were still 'alive', these scenes would still be around.

Sleeping Seems To Be The Hardest Time

It's so hard to put Mayenne to bed, which is such an irony because she could nap at the oddest or noisiest places but not at the comfort of her own cosy bed.

She would toss and turn and make noises. She seems to want to flip to her tummy but after she did that she would still fuss.

The only thing I could do is to stay with her and turn her to her side or her back, hold down onto her, pat her, keep her still, coax her, until she finds a position she felt comfortable then she would stop fussing. If all goes well, she would drift into sleep. Else, she would toss and turn for another round.

This routine is repeated every night.

Commercial In Disguise

I was watching this music video and halfway through I felt something strange. I noticed that the MV focused a lot on the female lead's silky hair. Then I saw some product placement shots, and eventually I realised that this is not just a MV, but in fact a commercial for a hair product. Enjoy.

Rock On, Piano

My latest music album project is finally going to be released, according to my agent. The moment I got hold of the cover design images, I promptly created a web site, as I always did for all my other albums, Timeless and Piano Spa series. These are not official websites from the record label, but it's important to establish a web presence to let people search for album information on the web.

The web is really a powerful platform. Everyone should make a small effort to post information of their own products and services so that anyone can find information about them. Whenever someone tells me of a product, a service, a shop name, a person, a news, the first thing I do is to search online for information and validation. So if I can't find anything on the Internet regarding something, I will cast doubts on it.

This is my first commercial album on songs are not my originals. As the title suggests, this 24-track album features some of the most popular rock songs on the planet. But, instead of the "rocky" style, I re-arranged them to my trademark piano instrumental style. Some arrangements are totally unlike the original, while others carry similar feel.

If you enjoy these rock songs and want to enjoy them in a more conducive and less rocky feel, get this album for an alternative listen. If you hate rock songs, get this album to enjoy piano music.

What songs can you expect? Here's the track listing:

Disc One

1. Love Of A Lifetime
2. More Than Words
3. Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough
4. The Flame
5. Winds of Change
6. November Rain
7. Love Will Keep Us Alive
8. When I See You Smile
9. When The Children Cry
10. Carrie
11. When I'm With You
12. Always

Disc Two

1. Was It Nothing At All
2. More Than Words Can Say
3. I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing
4. Listen To Your Heart
5. Alone
6. High Enough
7. Every Rose Has Its Thorns
8. Love Is On The Way
9. Wonderful Tonight
10. Where Are You Now
11. Faithfully
12. To Be With You

Visit http://rockonpiano.chester.sg/ for a sneak preview of the album.

Blog vs. Portal

For over 5 years, I have maintained a portal that contains news, reviews and insights about products and services. Then one year ago, I started a blog on a separate site. There were times when I asked myself why I should maintain 2 sites that basically does the same thing: to share my thoughts.

Then after my previous post, it became clear. I was right to separate factual information with casual remarks. My portal.chester.sg contains reviews and opinions that are referable. My blog however is just a diary of private thoughts that belonged to me. I needed a platform to share my carefully-researched information, and the portal provides my readers this assurance of a reliable source of information.

Today I found a photography service for babies and families that is very affordable. It's by funshotz. I know by sharing this information, I am potentially losing customers to them, but if someone else can do something better than me for cheaper, why not share with people? I always believe in offering information to people and let them decide themselves, providing an environment of perfect information and perfect competition in economics terms. I would be most interested to evaluate how they can offer at such competitive prices and maybe I should revise my prices. As the ingenious saying goes: you can choose only 2 of the 3 traits - good, cheap, or fast. Think it through yourself and see if it makes sense.

People requests me for photographic or music assignments because they see value and quality in what I offer. I trade in second-hand goods because I see value and so does my buyers. The time when I know I can no longer offer my services is the moment when no one wants my services or when I decide that the reward is not worth the effort.

Decisions are never binary or measurable. Not everything is about price or time. There is the intangible element of the human interaction, something that sometimes is worth paying for.

Out Of Hand

I think the Internet community is getting out of hand. More and more people are making insensitive, crude and lewd remarks on forums and tag boxes of blog sites. It's almost certain that these people do not behave like that in the real lives, but on the Internet world where they can create a virtual identity, they think they can simply be wild and inhibited.

This is quite serious to growing adolescents, who might be easily affected by these remarks. Others who have grown strong to ignore these criticisms could also become insensitive themselves and apply this attitude in the real world.

We get influenced easily by the things and people we encounter. We imitate TV culture, we look up to role models. Today, we spend more time over the Internet, where everyone talks in a bold and thoughtless manner. People then pick up all these communication styles and use it habitually in real life. They might think that it is 'cool' to talk back and be rude, a show of power and control.

Blogs and forums are mostly unmoderated for grammar and content, except expletive phrases. It is like allowing anyone to publish a badly-written book and sell it at bookstores. When people read these personal sites, they got misled by either the grammatical errors or the incorrect facts. Worse, these posts will stay online forever unless the website implements archival policies. Bloggers these days will do anything to increase traffic to their websites in order to entice advertisers to pay for ad space.

With the proliferation of personal content sites, it takes a lot of caution when searching for information, to identify the facts from the fictions, the truth from the fallacies. Young bloggers use their blogs to voice their complaints, only to demonstrate their lack of maturity in handling life's issues. Curry-favourers easily show their support by leaving positive remarks, whether they mean it or not. Provokers can easily sabotage the site by leaving negative comments, perhaps just for the fun of it. The question is: who do you believe?

Then there is the computer virus that lurks out there. Now, even legitimate sites could be infected, so there is no way to claim 100% safe. The irony is that, if hackers and spammers succeed in destroying the Internet, these people would have nothing to live for. They have killed the hand that feeds them. Now that computers are getting so cheap, it probably makes sense to buy a dirt-cheap computer for Internet surfing, and a powerful computer for serious work.

And perhaps one day, when every single human being needs to register a virtual international identity profile to validate his or her authenticity, we will behave ourselves better on the Internet.

Quiet, Don't Tell Her the MP3s are here

I've been doing so much photo taking and editing that I have not touched on my music side of me for the past month, so I decided to arrange 2 pop songs.

"Quiet" 安静 by Jay Chou, is a favourite song to many many people out there. I remember my cousin asking me to teach her how to play this song a few years back, and she only had electone organ training which she stopped for a hundred over months. My arrangement uses the warm pad and strings as accompanying instruments to my piano.

The other song I did is "Don't Tell Her" 不要对她说 by Jeff Chang. A 1995 oldies by pop song standard, songs like this are worth reminiscing. I was reminded of this song when I saw one of Huirong's blog post.

The songs can be listened on my IMEEM playlist at the top right of my blog.

Everybody Loves Mayenne

These days, everywhere we go, we get lots of attention. Passers-by look towards us, relatives swarm around us. Yes, Mayenne is the attraction.

After 5 months, we are getting a hang of Mayenne's behaviour, her likes, her dislikes, her routine. One thing we still haven't figured out: she loves to turn to her tummy, yet after she did that she would be upset and would cry. The only explanation we have now is that she feels immobilised as she has yet to learn how to crawl properly. We try not to put her on her tummy too often for it would most certainly result in a mess of her puke, usually just a spoonful. What we fear is the occasional catastrophic "merlion" effect gives us extra washing and smell.

We also find that her legs are getting very strong, thanks to her persistent leg-stretching exercises that are often so violent that she hits hard objects yet without feeling pain. When we carried her up in the air, her legs would stretch out and lock so tight that she would be able to put her feet firmly on the ground while we support her underarms.

Angie's mum is recovering very well, and she can't wait to hold and carry Mayenne once again. But that has to wait for a few more months until she fully regains her health and mobility. We have also engaged a foreign domestic worker (FDW, a.k.a maid) to care for her mum, and later Mayenne. The FDW should be arriving in a week or two. Meanwhile, my mum has been giving us tremendous help in taking care of Mayenne at times when Angie and I are busy. Thanks to Mayenne's good behaviour, everyone is happy to spend some good times with her.

Here's more good times captured on pixels.

Private Life?

I haven't been blogging much about my private life, which is, um, private. But basically my life has undergone extreme re-configuration after Angie's mum was hospitalised. Since then, the situation is being brought under control, but it will be a few more weeks before we establish a new routine.

That's the beauty of mankind - and every living organism. We evolve and adapt. Humans adapt faster than any other complex living thing because we have a highly-evolved brain to help us analyse and adapt. But often, we try to outsmart ourselves and ended up with detrimental results. Or we may have too many choices and what-ifs and resulting in delays in decision-makings. Other living things are more lucky. They only have one set of responses to follow. Call them stupid, but at least they know their purpose in life.

Look at our baby girl as she grows, we are gradually introducing her knowledge so that she can make decisions. For instance, if she is hungry, initially she could only cry. Then after a while, she finds a new option: to shout for attention to be fed. Very soon in the near future, she will be able to choose to tell us in words and phrases, or any of the above, when she's in a foul mood.

Turn Left, Turn Right

Do you see the figure turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

I found this post from a blogger, Averal. Basically, if you see clockwise, then you use your right brain. If you see anti-clockwise, then you use your left brain. For more explanation, vist her blog and look for the post dated 30 Oct 2007.

I found a way to 'switch' directions. Just focus on the shadow on the legs, then bluff your brain into believing that the legs are rotating in another direction. It took me a while to get it right, and after that, switching was an ease. I guess it's also a good exercise to switch your brains. Maybe you should watch this animation and force yourself to switch to that desired direction in order to use that part of your brain. For instance, if you are undecided about something, and you want to think logically, then look at the animation and force yourself to see the anti-clockwise.

Updated 11 Dec 2007: some readers still think that the animation above is fake, that is, the animation actually changes direction on itself. I've attached a screenshot of the animation sequence here. Click to see. There are 34 frames in this animation and it loops. So whether the dancer turns left or turns right depends on how your brain sees it. This is no trickery: only your brain is tricking you.

Time In, Time Out

meeboguest299231: goodness.. how do u find time 2 compose music, do photoshoots, work in **, blog n take care of family?

After this friend of mine posted this question on Meebo, I then realised how many tasks I have been undertaking all these while.

The answer is: time management. To help me manage my time is Google Calendar. Just like Gmail, this online calendar colour-codes all my various interests so that I make sure I have time for each activity. Google Calendar even comes with SMS notification which I use as a reminder note at appropriate times, e.g. "6pm Buy groceries". You can share your calendar to anyone with Google account, so people can know your schedule if you so choose to. My only wish is for Google to create an applet for the mobile phone like what they did for Gmail.

You really don't have to manage time to the minute. I always leave lots of room between tasks so that I have time to rest and idle. We all know about the "The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee" story. Here's the full article:

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes".

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, " I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

The golf balls are the important things in life. Your God, your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions: things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

The sand is everything else: the small stuff.

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean house and fix the disposal.

Take care of the golf balls first; the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

I would rather spend time on my passion and my family than on shopping or clubbing or watching TV or monitoring stocks or gym. My life feels meaningful and complete with these activities.

Different people live different lives, but everyone only has 24 hours per day. Choose your priorities and forgo the rest. Live for your passion and your love, and you will find life happier and worth living for.