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.