Simple Pleasures

Life is short as the old saying goes. I remembered this saying when I heard the news from Jojo that his family friend's daughter died four days after she was admitted to the hospital.

She is their pastor's daughter who has been playing the piano for their choir during their Sunday worship service. She is a lovely girl at the age of 20. One of the warmest people I have met when Jojo took me to his Church in Antipolo. Makulet. Friendly. Mahilig magcomment sa friendster. No sign of sickness at all.

This is why I was also struck by the news. I thought about Pastor Carding and Tita Wyett. I know how parents would feel about losing their child. My mom went through it when she lost my elder brother after struggling with Leukemia. It was heart breaking even for someone who has witnessed all the grieving.

She had low platelet count which led to organ failure. She had blood transfusion but it did not help at all. The diagnosis was not even identified yet when she died. Test results of the bone marrow test are only coming out by tomorrow. They were speculating it was leukemia that caused it. Jojo was thinking Malaria.

Life is short as the old saying goes. You will never know when death will come upon you and tells you that your time is up. At least, she had a good life. Yun ang nakashout out sa friendster niya. Funny coincidence.

I've always wanted to take a shot at portraiture. After getting tired of making do with my kit lenses, I have pondered of buying my first portrait lens.

There are two types of portrait lenses that I'm choosing from: a 50mm and an 85 mm. Both lenses comes with f1.4 and f1.8. My first experience with a portrait lens is with a 50mm and I liked how creamy and bright the background even at night when you only have light fixtures in the room as source for ambient lighting. But an 85mm gives me more zoom and nice DOF while keeping some comfortable space between the camera and the subject.

As for the price, 85mm proves to be much more expensive than the 50mm but if I wanted wider angles, I can easily pick up a 50mm and maximize the aperture for poorly lit subjects.

The list of pros and cons goes on and on until I found a winner. Thanks to this flicker site of sweethobbes. Most of his photographs are taken using 50mm f1.4. He is using a Canon though which can have some technical difference with my Nikon but I believe the concept is all the same.

Also, Ken Rockwell approves of this. Even if there is no stark difference between its brother 50mm f1.8, I would rather get lenses that can do low-lit photography and daylight at the same time even it is worth 3 times the price of f1.8 (50mm f1.4 AF costs SGD 450++ btw).

Time to tighten the belt and save up for this baby.

I boarded a train at City Hall while reading a hard bound copy of the Seventh Scroll by Wilbur Smith. I moved towards the center of the car to save myself from the continuous inflow of passengers in the train. And as I excused myself to a throng of people while nimbly moving towards my spot where I intend to continue my reading quietly, an old lady screamed the following words:

"Your bible offends me!!!"

I didn't realize that those angry words was meant for me. As I stood on my spot reading my novel and still oblivious to what was really going on, she continued to rant against Christianity. She even used the name of her father to attest to her mockery. I can easily guess that she is a traditional Taoist, which nature is to pay homage to their ancestors.

People around her just shook their head in shame. They knew it is against human rights to show discrimination which Singapore is trying to uphold for its citizens who comes from different countries, races and even religion.

What's worse is that she even ranted that Christians do not act as Christians. I looked back and gave her "the" look but I never bothered to answer back. There I realized that she must have thought that the black hard bound book that I was holding must be the bible she abhorred. I stiffled a laugh and continued to ignore her.

Eventually, she decided to get off at Lavander station and continue to rant about the things she hated about Christians. As I took a recently vacated seat while being stared at by people, I held my chin up and said in my almost flawless Singaporean accent, "She thought I was holding a bible. She didn't know I was only reading a novel."

Signed up for a sneak preview of the face off between VS.Net 2008 and SQL Server 2008 with a special segment on Microsoft Performance Point.

Imagine this, multi-framework support, improved intellisense, WPF (windows presentation foundation) support for ASP.Net, improved Java-scripting debugging, better emulation for Mobile apps development (can even emulate PDA phones on empty battery) are one of the cool things to check out in VS.Net 2008.

Earlier on, there was a demo Performance Point which is a glorified user friendly interface for BI. As my colleague would put it, why bother pay for Performance point when you can actually do it with SQL Server Analysis services + Sharepoint. Also, the page loads very slow even for a demo machine.

I didn't make it to the SQL Server 2008 preview as I have to step out of the room to attend to something urgent. But I was told that T-SQL queries comes with intellisense. Hehehe. So is this goodbye to SQL Server Books Online?

Just came from the Singapore IT show in Suntec last night.

A few disappointments. Brand new PSP selling at SGD 280 + additional 2 games of at least 30 SGD each as compared to PSP dealers selling 299 SGD all-in. Also, Nikon booth is manned by Harvey Norman, which do not sell any lenses. D300 sells at SGD 2,999 (body only) as compared to the SGD 2,750 in other photography shops.

Quite happy to see the Creative booth is showing really good deals for the Zen Micro (for SGD 459 @ 60 GB) and Zen stone series (SGD 89 with built in speakers). Too bad I already got a Zen stone for myself.

Found good deals for Brother printers worth 99 SGD but there is no need for me to get any printers. I was told a spool of 10 light-scribe DVDs on the 6th level is selling a little less than 10 SGD. I have yet to wait this Saturday to go back and find out if there is really something worth buying in this show.

Revisiting my old travel photos and I'm yearning for new material. Recycling my unprocessed Ho Chi Minh photos makes me itch to travel again and take good photos.

Photography is my good excuse to travel. Now, If only I had the luxury to do both.....

Last weekend, my cousins are teasing me to go with them to New Zealand to see their sibling who has already settled there. They will see all the scenic spots including the ones shot for the LOTR movie. It would have been great if I can join them and further add my IR and HDR landscape set in my travel collection. But for now, I will just drool in envy while saving money on things that matters.

Uubusin ko muna ang mga scenic spots dito sa Singapore.

I was talking to a friend from Manila and he told me that he turned down his offer in Singapore. He said it was like starting all over again. Given that he has established his contacts in Manila for possible business ventures and lucrative investments for his future gaming firm, I wanted to tell him that he can still find his niche on a bigger and global audience. But then I thought, what is the point of going out in the open sea when you already got everything that you have in the small pond.

Almost a year ago, I could have been happy with the things that I have accomplished but I felt that I wanted to see myself in the ocean full of things that I may never get to taste in Manila: experiencing the underlying currents of fast paced living; contributing for a goal that can affect people in a larger scale; making a thumbprint and create an impact to the very thing I've been working for; increasing my worth more than what I used to be.

I left my comfortable life to chase that dream. And like the other hopefuls trying to make it in this world, I am not the only one dreaming the same dream. Like them, I am just a small fish making its own way in this big ocean of opportunities. I still have a long way to go.