KLCC in the Evening

KLCC, the premier shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, and Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest building in the country, are two popular subjects of photographers. Every time I go to there, I see many shutterbugs.

Recently, I learned of a technique, from book, for taking ‘night view’ photos, and decided to put it into practice. Hence, I headed to KLCC. Here are a few of my photos…

At 6.50pm…

At 7.00pm…

At 7.06pm…

Strictly speaking, I am not very satisfied with these images. I had not brought along my tripod, and was handicapped by that. Perhaps I will have another try in the near future.

Photography Tips:

‘Night view’ photos are best taken when the sky is still bluish, preferably with twilight. Do not wait until it is completely dark. Timing is critical.

It is advisable to stabilize the camera using a tripod.

陶傑評海外中國人

我在英文帖子The Chinese Diaspora中指出：中國人一方面強烈愛國，另一方面又老是想移居海外。但他們的愛國心，可能會妨礙他們融入當地社會。

香港作家陶傑在評論中國電影《月滿英倫》時也有類似看法。《月滿英倫》描寫一對中國戀人在英國的經歷。陶傑這麼寫：

問題是：這對男女主角無法融入英國社會，是他們自己出了毛病。他們揹著大陸的包袱出國，一個緬懷著毛澤東時代的中國，另一個放不下鄧小平時代的中國。他們肉體上到了一個自由的國度，精神上卻還沒有走出從前的大牢籠。。。他們既想要英國護照，又受不了英國的生活。他們硬說中國的月亮比英國圓，但又不肯回國去擁抱自己的月亮。除了他們自己，沒有人須對他們的慘境負責。

Two Commercial Ads

In my post, Malaysia’s Broadband War, I mentioned P1’s ‘Cut Now’ advertisement. P1 also has ‘Cut Now’ TV commercials. Unfortunately, the commercials were met with strong objections from certain groups, who thought they were derogatory to women. In this conservative Muslim-majority society, the word ‘cut’ has another meaning – removing skin from a man’s private part.

‘Cut Now’ commercial (Cantonese version) on Youtube…

The controversy caused by P1 reminds me of Japanese commercial for Wacoal Up-Up bra. In this commercial, a man drops his document when he sees a pretty lady at the elevator. The lady lowered her body to pick up the paper. It’s at this moment that the guy sees her breasts, enhanced by the Up-Up bra.

18SX! Up-Up bra on Youtube…

I gather that this kind of ads will never make it to Malaysian TV. But let’s assume for a moment that it does, what would happen?

Religious groups would condemn it as obscene and polluting the minds of youths.

Women’s groups would criticize it as a form of gender discrimination.

What do you think of the two commercials? Are they distasteful or creative? Are we too conservative?

An Encounter with a Thai Model

As a shutterbug, I like to photograph sunset and beautiful models. Recently, a photographer organized a model shooting event by a beach. The theme was ‘Sunset Bikini’. Since the theme involved two of my favorite subjects, I happily signed up. According to the organizer, the model was Kat. I thought, “Kat must be short for Katherine.”

The photography session was scheduled to start at 5.00pm, but the organizer and the model failed to turn up on time. I was a bit impatient, as we didn’t have much time left before it got dark. At 5.30pm the organizer finally arrived with the model. But there was another lady who appeared to be the model’s mother. I was intrigued.

It turned out that Kat was actually Katoy, and she was a Thai. She had just flown in from Bangkok. It is said that Thai girls are very attached to their families, so it was no surprised that Katoy asked her mother to come along. According to the organizer, Katoy was stuck at the immigration. Apparently the officers suspected that she was a sex worker! It wasn’t until she proved her return flight that the officers let her go.

Wasting no time, five shutterbugs – myself included – took pictures of this sexy model from the Land of Smile. Sadly, I didn’t quite manage to capture the sunset. Anyway, I got a few OK shots. Here are two:

More photos on my Flickr set.

Link:
Katoy’s homepage

Malaysia’s Broadband War

Among Malaysian consumers, ADSL is the dominant technology used to access Internet. Streamyx is the leading ADSL service providers. In the past few years, however, wireless technology has emerged as the alternative means of Internet access. 3G and WiMAX providers are now challenging Streamyx.

P1, the leading WiMAX operator, recently launched an advertisement with the slogan ‘Potong Now’ (Cut Now). The ad tells us to cut the plain old telephony line (landline). Since most of us own mobile phones, landline is redundant, except in the case of prolonged power failure. And if we cut the landline, we essentially terminate the Streamyx service as well.

Here is the P1 ad. Click to enlarge…

Streamyx responded by launching its own marketing campaign. In its ad, a man is shown as having to surf the Net from a window. It implies that wireless technology is not good, and that we can’t use it indoor. (I doubt the claim, though.)

This is Streamyx’s ad. Click to enlarge…

P1’s ‘Cut Now’ slogan may backfire. In this Islamic state, the very word ‘cut’ has another meaning. It implies a ceremony performed on Muslim boys.

The broadband war has heated up in Malaysia. Competition is good for the consumers, isn’t it? (Well, except in the case of soccer TV broadcast.)

The Chinese Diaspora

Chinese are some of the most patriotic people in the world. They like to boast about their country’s 5000-year history. Chinese men like to tell us how beautiful their women are. Now, with the Middle Kingdom poised to become the next super power, Chinese have more reasons to be proud of their identity.

Just before the People’s Republic of China celebrated its 60^th National Day with fireworks and military parade, a university conducted a survey to find out how Chinese felt about their nation. The results showed that a full 98% of the respondents were proud to be Chinese. 95% answered that even if given a free choice, they would still want to be Chinese.

They wanted to be overseas Chinese, that is. Deep down their heart, they yearned to go to the ‘Beautiful Country’ a.k.a. the United States of America. On Oct 19, 2009, a ship carrying about 70 Chinese who tried to enter America illegally capsized in the Caribbean Sea. Many of the passengers drowned.

When I traveled to Singapore last July, I noticed that majority of the ground officers in Changi’s Budget Terminals were Chinese mainlanders. So were many of the food stall operators. In fact, there were so many Chinese in the Lion City that it has been dubbed ‘Chinapore’ by its very own citizens. Recently, a Chinese girl with PR (permanent resident) status was blasted by Singaporeans after she declared that ‘Beijing is my real home’.

Funny as it may sound, Chinese still do all they can to emigrate, even though their much-loved country has the world’s most dynamic economy.

It is, of course, not wrong for the Chinese to migrate to a foreign country so long as they have proper documents. After all, skilled Chinese workers are in high demand in rich countries. Nonetheless, Chinese migrants should do their best to integrate into the host nations, rather than keep thinking of how great their motherland is.

All the workers of this food stall in Changi’s Budget Terminals are Chinese mainlanders…

Note:

The USA is rendered Mei Guo (美国) in Chinese. The first character means ‘beautiful’, and the second means ‘country’.

My Flickr Statistics

I uploaded some of my photos to Flickr. The Flickr ‘photostream’ shows the thumbnails of the pictures. Each picture has a counter, which is incremented when someone clicks on the thumbnail.

Here is a picture of a pretty model. I uploaded it to Flickr on Oct 19, 2009. As of Oct 22, this picture had 10 ‘views’ – meaning that its thumbnail had been clicked 10 times.

This is a picture of Malacca which I took during the last Mid-Autumn Festival. I uploaded it on Oct 9. As of Oct 22, it had been viewed just once.

Below is a picture of another model. It was uploaded on Oct 4. As of Oct 22, it got 28 views.

And here is a picture I took from inside a plane. It was uploaded way back on Aug 31. It got only 4 views as of Oct 22.

What can the statistics tell us? Perhaps we can conclude that visitors to my Flickr page are more interested in the pictures of pretty women. What say you?

Link: My Flickr page

滾水，涼水

日前我到一家飯檔用餐，服務員用粵語問我說：『飲乜嘢？』（喝甚麼？）我回答道：『滾水。』(白開水。) 數分鐘後，他拿了一杯涼水（涼茶）給我。

要開水給涼茶，這已經不是第一次。難道粵語中的『滾』和『涼』，是那麼難分清楚的嗎？

我也懷疑他們是不是故意給我涼茶，希望我將錯就錯：『唔相干啦，我就要呢杯涼水。』（不要緊啦，我就要這杯涼茶。）畢竟白開水一杯只賣四毛，涼茶一杯塊多錢，飯檔的人當然希望多賺些。

問題是，飯檔的涼茶『淡過阿婆尿』，喝得不過癮。我還是堅持他們換一杯『滾水』給我。