Posts in category "Random"

The Itanis

Headlocks

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Taking por­traits of fam­i­lies is a lot hard­er than I expect­ed. It’s not so much the amount of light and large depth-of-field required (although that does play a part), but the fact that there are so many things going on at once. Getting every­one to co-ordi­nate what they’re doing becomes expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fi­cult with every extra per­son. And if only one per­son blinks, the pho­to is ruined.

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One of the biggest assets a pho­tog­ra­ph­er can have is a sense of humour. If you can make your mod­el laugh, you low­er their appre­hen­sive­ness, which brings down their guard and pro­vides you with much more nat­ur­al expres­sions. Not to men­tion the fact that it’s a plea­sure to see some­one smil­ing or laugh­ing.

The Price Of Moving On

Remember this one, or even this one?

I wrote those entries four years ago1. Amazing how much they apply to the sit­u­a­tion I’m in now. Except this time, I’m stronger because I know that I sur­vived this once already. It’s sad that at the end, all my efforts turned into an attempt at mak­ing sure I would­n’t regret any­thing by giv­ing more of myself than I should have. Because when all that you’ve giv­en makes no dif­fer­ence, and you have noth­ing left, you know for sure that there’s noth­ing else you can do. You can always say that you took the chance, and it does­n’t mat­ter if you get hurt in the end, because often you can’t sep­a­rate the two.

That’s the price you pay to look back with­out any regrets. That’s the price of mov­ing on.

And I always pay it glad­ly.

  1. It’s quite a trip to see that I was mature or smart enough to fig­ure this out back then. [↩]

Praise The Night

Oh, and lis­ten to this.

Sometimes you wish your friends lived far away so you could dri­ve home for­ev­er, and sing off-key into the dark­ness.

But at some point you have to come home and undress, you have to stop the pres­sure of the water run­ning down your back and step out of the show­er, you have to go to bed for the sake of your colon, you have to put aside your thoughts for anoth­er day.

There was some­thing about his expres­sion that made you believe that you’re bet­ter now. You’re safer. Maybe the real­iza­tion that your mis­takes are your own to make. That you’re stronger now than you ever were, and that peo­ple care about you, enough to tell you the truth when it’s the last thing you want to hear.

Praise the night, for this would­n’t be pos­si­ble any oth­er time.

Little Hong Kong Differences

I’ve been back from my trip to Hong Kong for a lit­tle over a month now. Here are some lit­tle dif­fer­ences I’ve noticed between there and here.

Parking

Space is at a pre­mi­um in Hong Kong, so park­ing spots are tiny. Most cars have fold­ing side-mir­rors, and prox­im­i­ty sen­sors that beep faster the clos­er you are to some­thing when back­ing up. Vans and SUVs have mir­rors on the back win­dows that lets a dri­ver see the back bumper through the rear-view mir­ror. That way, you can squeeze into a space with­out any guess work, although it takes about three or four turns, Austin Powers style.

Parking sensors

Some park­ing lots also have these lights above the spots that let peo­ple know if a car is parked in the space — green means it’s avail­able. That way, you can see what spots are free with a quick glance, instead of dri­ving around and hunt­ing.

Taking care of the elderly

Workout area

In the parks, there are work­out areas for the elder­ly. They include things like Gazelles, bench step­pers, and wheels you can rotate for flex­i­bil­i­ty. This is so awe­some. Canada should have some­thing like this. My grand­ma used come to this park to work out before she had colon can­cer.

Bench stepper station

Fitness guide

How cool is it that the sym­bol they use is the sil­hou­ette of some­one doing sin­gle whip. I found this sym­bol in many parks actu­al­ly, and I think it means that it’s a pub­lic park.

There are also speak­ers that beep at the traf­fic lights to let blind peo­ple know when to cross, and sub­way esca­la­tors that click con­stant­ly, so they know where to get on.

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