Dandy Weekend
Weekend was just pure relaxation for once in a long while.
On Saturday was out to see a Malaysian cultural festival at City Square in the city. There was plenty of Malaysian music and food. There was also a stage showcasing Malaysian dresses. Brought my 70-200mm lens and while it’s one big ass lens, it sure does a good job of keeping your hands steady due to the weight of the lens. The bokeh is less harsh on this lens compared with my 28-200 and at f/4 (the 70-200, my 28-200 only allows a minimum of f/5.6 at 200mm) still produces pleasing results.
There were also a few dances and I got managed some nice shots but am lazy to post them all, heh.
and martial arts. Framing is still a little difficult with the lens but I have found that shots I’ve liked from people’s portfolios tend to be on the long end of the zoom.
Performances aside, there was also plenty of Malaysian cuisine on sale, from the various types of kuih to nasi lemak. There was probably more but there were so many people and I was so busy taking photos I didn’t notice much. Heh.
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On a side note, don’t know if I mentioned it but a few months ago I inherited a bicycle from a friend (well, I got it at a good price) but hardly took it out for a ride. The first time I tried I was lugging my camera bag and tripod. Not only was I an unstable mass with a weird centre of gravity, it was freezing and I managed to get only a trip around the park outside my apartment before my knuckles were frozen from gripping the handle bars. That first bad experience plus my phobia of cycling alongside cars on the street made me paranoid about cycling around on the bike. I was also paranoid about theft as I needed to lock my bicycle on a lampost or some object that’s stuck to the ground. The amount of locks and keys my friend left me seemed daunting at first.
Now it’s a few months later and I needed to go to Vyanne’s place. Didn’t fancy walking and out of being spontaneous, just picked up the bike, put on my helmet and rode off! Well, cycling is an exhilarating experience and once you get on the road on the bicycle lane, it’s more a sense of wonder than anything you else as you feel the breeze blowing straight at your face. Slicing through air feels good and you can feel the adrenaline pumping through you.
Cycling is fun and the bonus is that I get free exercise without the need to actually allocate time to do it. For me to be motivated to do something, it has to serve a greater purpose, and getting from point A to B seems motivational enough. Heh. I’ve only done it for two days and I can feel certain muscles aching when I move about (shows how little exercise most of my muscles get). My body eye coordination is still terrible but I still manage to get around with ease and that’s the really fun part.
Let’s just hope I keep it up.
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Made my way into the city today to do some window shopping. Well, it was supposedly “window” shopping. Had an intent to get a Nintendo Gameboy Micro. Last remembered seeing it in Myer for AUD$80, which was astoundingly affordable. Went to a few shops to compare prices and nowhere was it selling so cheap. When I finally arrived at Myer I knew my luck would run out. They didn’t have the item in stock. Heh, I have always fancied playing games and while the Sony Playstation Portable is a technological marvel, it does not enamour itself to me due to the sheer size of it (it’s like holding a slightly oversized gamepad), the less than durable construction (all screens have a knack of being scratched if left unprotected) and most of all, the crummy battery life (3 hours tops? Do I have to recharge it every single day?). On the other hand, the Gameboy Micro was small and lasted 10 hours on a single charge and there were a few other technical issues about it that made it attractive. You’d think that the technologically superior PSP (Playstation Portable) would beat the crap out of all other portable gaming consoles but it lags in market share compared to Nintendo’s Gameboy and DS systems. Why? Just like why Apple’s iPod takes such a large chunk of market share in portable music. Both have common ideas that make them so great. They are simple and so easy to use, you can just unwrap it, chuck the manual aside and within minutes, start enjoying yourself with the device (well, maybe not everyone will do that but it comes close). The PSP is like having a portable PS2 in your backpack, but because of all these advancements, you have to wait for games to load and the higher end games will soak the battery like a sponge due to the high processing requirements. The PSP can be a do all device, running Linux and a web browser or watching movies. Nintendo’s devices don’t claim to do any of that. All it does is allows you to play games and it passes with flying colours in that department. The PSP tries to be a jack of all trades and doesn’t really do any one thing too well.
Heh, all this is based on read reviews, but I have enough experience with new gadgets to know what I like and don’t like about devices. It’s like when I advise someone on what to get for their computer and they refuse to listen, preferring instead to buy into what the marketing department churns out. Well, getting back on track, I never got myself a new gadget, but ended up getting a much cheaper cookbook. Procured myself a Jamie Oliver cookbook that has tons of recipes and what to do with the various types of ingredients out there. Cooking is like a semi obsession to me now, and the most important thing to me is a proper gas stove. You can’t cook properly unless you use gas as electric stove tops just don’t produce enough heat or adjust temperatures fast enough to meet the requirements for getting food to taste good.
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Goodness, haven’t been so chatty or expressive in a long while. Must have been feeling suppressed all this while. Heh.
makumaro.net is the rented space of HC Mak, built on 
