I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

Tea Bone Zen Mind
3 Seah Street, #01-02

The other day Sharks and I visited a tea store – Tea Bone Zen Mind – at the Raffles Hotel Arcade. It’s next to Sasha’s, the teddy bear store. The window display was pretty enough, cups and bowls and pots and intricate little implements.

Seated on the zen sofa inside, two Japanese ladies were sipping teas and snacking on candy. We looked around, a bit like a couple of 12-year-olds in a Salvatore Ferragamo store. Once we asked how much the tea cup with the ceramic strainer was, we knew we were outclassed, out-of-water, outright out of place.

Still, it was a nice place to be. Along the wall on the inside of the store, a small shelf with urn-like containers in Chinese hues of jade green and wine flask browns hold sweet blends of teas from oolongs to japanese green. Aside from the weird gregorian chant music going, it was like an oasis in there where time passed slower. Sipping tea there was a little ethereal, from the dainty mini gaiwans to the delicate little sniffing cups, the itty bitty teapot and the Japanese sweeties that the proprietor served that looked like reconstituted fruit (and I mean that in a nice way).

We spent an hour there, in part due to the rain, and I ended up buying two teas just so that I could get them wrapped. That, apparently, is an artform on its own. Perfection, protocol and a lot of pride go into each package.

It took me 2 days to feel satisfied enough to open the package and ruin the wrapping forever

In the end, I bought a lovely experience. And a small hope that whatever’s in that package can provide that same reprieve for a couple minutes each day that that hour I spent in that store gave me.

And if I ever need a special knockout gift for someone important, I’ll be headed here too.

Coping

Rooftop at Alcatraz. That pretty much sums up how I feel right now.

It’s been a week since the last entry, and that is how long Ross has been away. Since then there was a smashing booze party for him, and we had our very own pizza party for a more comfortable bunch.

On the workfront, things have been piling up. Unfortunately I think the bulk of the load went to AK and DP. I see AK running in and out of meetings the way Ross used to, poor thing.

Mitigating factor
Well, on a brighter note, life has been better since Crystal Jade opened at Bugis Junction (next to Cold Storage). At 10am or so, you can go to the cakery and grab nice Bo Lo buns and other sweeties. The prices are quite competitive too. A typical Sausage Roll costs $1.10 (about the same as Breadtalk and Four Leaves). Today I discovered a cute little pastry – the Chicken and Mushroom pastry – the size of a small mooncake, but fluffier. That costs $0.80. I think I’ll get one tomorrow.

So who is Ross?

Ross can be found in Chinatown, San Francisco, CA

Some people say Ross is a bit of a legend in the local internet scene.

Tonight at the party I overheard someone comment that all of us (that were hired before 2002) owed our jobs to Ross.

There are some who think Ross looks like Kevin Sorbo, or Viggo Mortensen or Tom Cruise (only in Mission Impossible 2).

Ross laughs at everything – even the lame-assed jokes we crack when we get desperate, even the ones at his expense.

Ross is an eternal optimist, he believes common sense will prevail.

Ross stands for perfection in products, great ideas that all products need, and thoughtful execution.

This isn’t to say that Ross is perfect. He has 6 years worth of email on his notebook, and has a weakness for new fangled gadgets.

Ross is really hard to shop for.

Ross is the heart and soul of the company. And that came from some guy who thinks the Ken Watanabe look can be replicated with a scruffy beard.

Yes, I’m going a little wild here with the Photoshop-ing
Last batch for today, I promise. Been seeing the Lomo Effect used on some of my favourite phlogs, so I decided to give it a whirl today.

Check it out:

Before the Lomo Effect

After the Lomo Effect

That was fun! So many possibilities. Looks like I’ll be doing a lot more post processing from now on. It seems that colours, or the lack of it, can make so many of my bland shots that much more interesting.

How monochrome can monochrome be?
I used to think black and white was just black and white. Then a couple weeks ago, I saw a really nice cover on a Practical Photography magazine – it was a close up of an eye, in black and white. Inspired, I bought it hoping I could get some ideas on how these people do it. I got more – tips!

So here’s what I tried.

This is the original photo
We took that at Chinatown 2 weeks ago, and I’ve been itching to convert that to monochrome.

Atttempt 1 – Channel Mixer
To find the Channel Mixer, go to Image > Adjustments > Channel mixer. Check the monochrome box. You can mix and match the colours until you’re satisfied. I forgot exactly what I had, but it was something like 80 red, 30 green, and 5 blue.

Atttempt 2 – Desaturate
This was the quick and dirty option. Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Atttempt 3 – Lab Colour
According to the mag, this is similar to the Grayscale method of conversion, and produces crisp results. Ok. If they say so. For this, go to Image > Mode > Lab colour. Click on the channels palette and select Lightness. The other 3 channels will go invisible. Then go to Image > Mode > Grayscale.

So anyway. If you want, have a go. Personally, I like using the Channel Mixer, the results were a bit more dramatic, and it was more fun to play around with. The results of the other 2 options was a little flat. Well, let me know what you think.

The recent revival of The Iron Chef Series on Channel 5
Has got KF so excited that he records every episode every day (since we discovered it was showing), edits out the commercials, re-renders it, then saves it for when I get back so we can watch it commercial-free. It’s been great so far, they’re mostly episodes I’ve never seen, though they’re from the later seasons (the ones with Morimoto as Iron Chef Japanese and Sakai as Iron Chef French). I used to like Morimoto the best, cos he’s got Nobu sense of humour. But then he started to get a little boring. Now my favourite is Iron Chef Chinese, Chen Kenichi, but I really can’t say I’d eat the stuff he cooks. Sichuan is really not my thing.

There was an interesting theme the other day: new potatos from Nagasaki. The challenger was a (then) 25 year old food stylist and musician, Kentaro, the son of a well known chef who took on Chen Kenichi and won. I love potatoes. And the irony was that when Chen competed against Kentaro’s mother, the theme ingredient was potatos too. Older, bigger ones from Hokkaido. That was a nice match.

And of snooping
Yes, I couldn’t resist and went back onto Friendster to snoop yet again. And as if that wasn’t enough, I went back onto Orkut to snoop even more – and that’s really where more stuff happens because of the community element. Now – you’d think being the offspring of Google and sibling of Gmail, they could really let you search/sort/filter your head off around your communities right? Like I’d really like to know how many people in my communities overlap. So at least the next time I meet some of them at work, there’s one more option I could have to talk about, next to the weather.

But it’s amazing how many people change their photos, or their profiles, with such frequency and discipline. Damn, I need one of those.

*Gripe*
I seem to say this every Wednesday night/Thursday morning, but here goes. CSI Miami sucks, and if there’s only 1 reason, it’s because David Caruso is such a wannabe! Get over those over-the-top NYPD Blue heroics!

Thinking about better times

This was one of the few meals I didn’t enjoy

There is so little to look forward to at work. So here’s a shot from when I wasn’t working. All being busy does is distract you from your current discontentment. When it’s over, and you take a breather – with each breath you sink lower, until you were exactly where you were 3 weeks back, when you were bored and decided to sit on your work so that it’d avalanche later, and maybe for a moment, you’d feel some respite from the lack of motivation.

Here’s to a night of fine dreaming, and hopefully Thursday flits quicker and Friday breezes by. We’ll need it, with all that Sumatran forest fire smoke.

Further proof that life is a comedy
Is when all week when you’re stuck at work, the skies are a perfect azure – the way clear skies are – and the light is great; come weekends, when you really have the luxury, the skies are cloudy and gray.

Nonetheless, this morning when KF woke me up at half past nine with an invitation to breakfast at McDonald’s, it was an opportunity too good to pass up, so we went to Boat Quay for some morning crud.

After breakfast, we went to UOB Plaza – there’s a viewing gallery on the 37th floor that’s open to the public – for some snaps.

The bumboats are resting now, but they’ll be busier tonight

It was good fun, I bought an adapter and teleconverter lens for my A80 earlier in the year, and this is probably the second time I’m really using it. I also got to use my new polarizer lens today.

Looks like the restaurant touts are taking a rest too

The only problem with living in Singapore is the weather. Otherwise, this place would be perfect. But I suppose this is life.

It was a fabulous Friday
During lunch, CL, DP and I headed to Chinatown for some beef noodles and photo taking. It was good fun, we braved the scorching heat for blue skies and fascinating architecture.

Doesn’t this look familiar?

We walked from Far East Square, then went over to Club Street and then South Bridge Road. Along the way I caught some familiar sights, since KF and I just went for another photo shoot around the same area some nights back.

Window to the world

I like the shot of the window, and I think I’ll try to convert that to black and white using some techniques I read in a magazine.

Then – surprise!
After we got back to the office, I received an SMS from a close friend. She said she just delivered a baby boy, and both her son and she was doing great. I replied to tell her I didn’t even know she was expecting a baby, but that I was really happy for her.

Has it been so long?

Swinging!
In the evening KF and I went to our first performance at the Esplanade, thanks to my friend Sue who not only provided us with a place to stay when we visited LA – twice – but also sent us the tickets because she was out of the country and couldn’t make it.

It was the Count Basie Orchestra and it was divine. The Esplanade is such a nice place – it’s so pristine on the inside, and the Concert Hall was a sight to behold. I would’ve taken photos, but they didn’t allow any photography. I’m glad I caught the performance, it’s one of those things you need to savour to really feel alive. Or at least that’s what I think. When Butch Miles, the drummer did his solo – Drum Thing – it was like for that 4 minutes life was described in those drumbeats and it was such a lovely journey. I particularly enjoyed the version of Skylark they performed with singer Byron Murrell.

Even Mr Weird-Dance-Music-Lover Chang enjoyed the performance. I was a little skeptical that he might like it, since he doesn’t listen to jazz or anything that pre-dates ’80s music, but he came out of it also feeling an emotional response to the music, which was fantastic. I think it’s the whole point of watching a live performance.

I can’t say much about the acoustics of the concert hall, it sounded great, not too amplified and distorted. But then again, I won’t really be able to tell, so perhaps ignorance really is bliss.

Parting shot – Duck Feet

See them all at my imagestation account.