tuk tuk
took the tuk tuk to town tonight
Got off the sky train and the usual motorcycle taxi took the night off and the bus stop was a distance away - and there was a tuk tuk. i hardly take tuk tuk, it's one of those transport mode that doesn't make sense when you've gone through the novelty stage. motorcycle taxi is small enough to speed you through the congested traffic, taxi you get some comfort of a/c chamber. tuk tuk is pricy, stuck in traffic like any other car only you get to suck up the pollution.
logically i don't get these 'fee base' drivers. they don't get pay more than before if they drive fast. i mean i like speed, but in traffi filled street, driving fast only to break even harder don't make sense. Instead of getting tuned with the traffic rythm, so they would get the most milage for the o-so-expensive gas (and break pad). afterall gas price is directly effecting their bread and butter you know.
that said, i must admit that the only fun part about tuk tuk is the zig-zack-zoom-zoom-i-got-attitude driving style.
Flickr-ing
I started off using
Flickr for its slide show facilities. This is one of the few photo sites that detects ‘taken date” from camera’s
EXIF data and with their coolie slide show facilities, I gave it a try. It is more seductive than I thought.
I wanted to use flickr to do slideshow of the wine bar’s construction process without the hassle of arranging them. They have tools to organize and display by taken dates. I love construction photos set. There are there for a short moment and you won’t see them ever again in that stage. They are only cool to look at when you see them in sequence when there is beginning and end. Slide show was perfect tool to show them.
While I was trying out other features, i explored the community a bit more. The users and image pool is huge, and some of their pictures are amazing. There so many talented photographer out there. Some photographs they took made me want to travel and take more pictures. I thought this will be fun, I can learn a lot from these folks. Below are some fav' i picked up browsing around.
Now, I thought I would never spend on an online subscription anywhere! I’ve been around in the net business for a decade, there are many interesting sites, but none that i find absolutely worth spending membership fee.. until now. Maybe its because I like taking pictures. And I have tons of it. To load them all up, and arange them in multi sets, i'd need to upgrade. I thought i do have the patience to load 20meg per month, or put up with 3 maximum picture set, but i don't.
Photography was my 'thing' when I was a kid in middle and highschool. A small lil boy carrying this bulky SLR with my ‘so proud’ 28-200mm zoom lens. I practically took it everywhere I go. That was eight grade. I used to join up the photo club, did my art class on it, and was part of the school’s paper’s photographer. That was all fun. Playing with the prints in the dark room – stinky but fun. Then when you start being busy with college and working, playing with photo and prints can take up too much resources. My 2 slr is now busted (one stolen, one droped). After that I didn't really bother with film photography that much.
Then comes digicam. No more film! Better resolution, no more print lab cost! I can play around again. The past few years, i've used a couple of digicams but again, one stolen (Oly 3040c - man i luv that cam), then this oly C40 which is now half the time working. It was time to upgrade and went for the Olympus E1 digital SLR- although not totally happy with it, i'll stick to it for the time being.
Then another thing hits you, how do you display them to your family and friends? You still have to print and then go through the trouble of searching for the darn album you’ve miss placed somewhere in your book shelves. What a hassle. No more of that with this online photo sharing thing. Upload, organize and so many ways to display them. As millions others have found, it is great. And there goes my first payment to upgrade to a pro account. Not only that, I paid for 2 years account, since the baht is going strong at 37/1usd, why not.
So now I’m spending more time uploading and organizing my photos online. I like the privacy protection thing but I wish they have more setting not just private, family, friends.. It should be able to focus right on who is able to view. I know, there’s a lot of database crunching overhead but hey, it’ll be nice to do that. It should also let users chooses how to display their public photo-stream, not just by upload date. It gets cumbersome having to change upload date to organize the sequence of photos you wanted to display.
I have gigs of photos, stored in some CD somewhere, As I find time I’ll upload them up. It will probably take a while, but there’s no space limit. But the 2gig upload limit per month do bothers me even if i might not use that much.
So now with this flickr pro account starting May 1, I’ll be taking more pix and organizing them online. There’s a lot of things to experiment around. I still have not mastered the controls in the E1. The low light noise is still very annoying. How could a cam that used to cost more than 100 grand has this kind of problem. same 'ol complaint.
steak
i had my usual weekly salad buffet at sizzler last night. when i got home i had this crave for stake. maybe because i just worked out and my body wants for more meat i don't know. i browsed around for my picture pool and found this picture. oh my it is so yummy.
although i do love meat i try not to have too much of it. but if i do have it, please let it be good. i mean not the grocery store type of beef. the things they fed and injected these cow with are just too nasty. when i think about it, i can't wait to start the organic food plantation. anyhow, as i browse through old picture, i found this lemon cake picture too. it was so nicely decorated i had to take a shot. many times when have these visual treat on a plate, i want to take a picture, cuz in less than a minute all that will be gone. indeed, one of the fastest disapearing art is food decoration.
i so do envy my client, the owner of this giusto restaurants. they get to have superb dishes made with fresh ingredients from all around the world - every day. aside from having to put up with the headaches in running the place, when it comes to meal time, thats where it all pays off. the chef likes to have some thai dish once in a while though, but the mr G, no way.
missing the water fight
i probably will participate in sonkran water festival even if i'm old n grey, as long as i have strength to squirt a water gun i would.
since the first year i've been back to thailand i would get very excited about songkran just as i did when i was a little kid. there's so much fun and i loved it then, still do now. but this is the first year that i didn't get to participate in water fight during songkran festival.
i went to samet island to do photo shoot and web update for the client's resort. this seems to be the only time i can find to do this as the interior construction work stop during this time. i thought i could just go to samet for 2 days, take the pictures then go to Klung for songkran, then later do the web stuff. but i end up loosing my phone which makes it difficult to contact my family in klung, and the update work is a bit more than i antipipated. anyhow, i end up speding 4 days in samet. I also had my computer gear with me, i certainly don't want to get it wet. so this year, i didn't get to play, but i did get to talk to a lot of the people who didn't care so much for it.
Some girls said they just don't like songkran, and they think it is dirty and degrading to woman. It is one of those time that men takes advantages of woman by touching them.. this is in many ways true, and there are also woman who do enjoys getting that kind of attention and do like the fact that they feel sexually desired by men around them. for me, i think it is mainly how you positioned yourself in the scene and the message you are sending out. It maybe wise to use common sense to evaluate 'where', and 'what' choice of cloth to be in ( there's different type of message advertised when you wear skin-tight white thin t-shirt compared to a darker or multi color loose clothing) more importantly, the 'who' you are there with. i know one of the point of going out is to also meet with new people, but it would be safe to go with somone you know that you can run to if shit happens.
Now if you don't have friends and just walk on skimpy wet t-shirt heading towards a bunch of drunk boys with loud music on, it is most likely you will be greeted with aggressive sexual approaches. During our crazy water fight days, we took the girl friends on the truck rides and they simply had one heck of a good time. i know that men have much more flexibility during songkran, but i think there are just as many woman who brought along the right attitude to have fun. and there are also those who will enjoy staying home and enjoy more quite time with the family.
the sad part is the bitter people that hates songkran and feel like they are trapped at home and not able to go out. i just think maybe they don't have a group of friends to tag along for a good time. That being said, there are always sad, nasty, scary side to everything. so it depends on which situation you want to pick to make such impression, but for me, i will take the best of what has songkran water festival has to offered - instant ego wash, the wide non pretentious smile and laughter.
Last year, i went back to my mom's hometown to join the festival. Like most small town, songkran water fight only goes on one day, and people from all around the region would come in to play. The days for klung was on the 15th of august. the 16th and 17th would be for the next province down south.. So caravan of water warriors would hop on a pickup truck and play until they are sick of it.
I went to klung last year to both play and take picture of the scene. To see men, woman young and old from all types of work splashing water at each other is just priceless. Because I do know some of these townies as i did do part of the growing up here, I also know that some of these neighbors don't have much reason to interact. To see them spraying water at each other and giggling is something. In a normal circumstances, each has got their own lives to attend, and what, in any other day would triggered such joyful interaction. there are simply no reason to. many of us even think that we can do just fine without having to deal with each other. one probably had to evaluate the potential benefit and risk of getting to know more people before doing so. All that careful, thoughtful, fearful (paranoid?) precaution simply gets washed down the drain together with the bulk of water that lands spashed on their body. for that miraculous day, everyone in town is friendly. when is that possible without songkran? how could i miss witnessing something like this.
all the seven years that i've been back to thailand i always had so much fun with the water fight. riding the back of pickup trucks, hanging on to your big tank of water - and ice of course. we go round and round till water goes out then continue on at night (if we are in bangkok) to clubs that allow water fight. this goes round and round for a few days and even with the ruetinal "vitamin c Dope", some of us would still cath a flue, and just call it a day. i mean a holiday.
Prime nesting ground for rent
in the past four months, my balcony has been a hot spot for home maker birdies. they like my dead tree. they do because they picked the dead one instead of the -almost dead one right next to it. that sort of disclosed my misdeeds doesn't it. yes, i didn't do a good job on feeding the tree, see, last year i'm away from the condo a lot.. and there's no rain. and it is not easy to get out there and i was too busy to notice it dieing.. and it kinda look artzie being dead.. and it's a good symbolic statement to helps remind me of my own motality and.. ok. sorry tree, i am so careless with the watering reutine. that's not the point.
the birds digg my dead tree. plus the fact that my unit is right at the end of the building. the adjacent condo is unoccupied and i'm hardly in the condo. that spells 'good security' in bird language. i consulted dr. doolittle. so birdies do learn about marketing framework. there's the
product (dead tree good strong branch),
price (free),
place(perfect),
privacy(they sure don't want to promote this),
people(the less the better). anyhow, my balcony definately qualify for as a prime nesting ground.
there has been two birdie families so far that has occupied this nest. they were so cute, i enjoyed watching them built, hatching and feeding the lil one. what i didn't see is when the little one learn how to fly. it seems like they just took off. now they all have left and nest is all torned up by other birds taking the material for their new home. maybe cuz i'm home much more frequent, the last "p" didn't fit.
many bird came to check out the spot, but recently, the pigeons also came. Call me a bird racist, but i don't like pigeon, they leave nasty shit everywhere and when they fly up i feel like they farted out large volume of air - fume full of nasty germs. so i've been chasing them away. although i must say i am a bit amazed to see that these pigeon actually made effort to fly up here. most bangkok pigeon i see they just walk on the street. i mean they prefer walking than flying. they actually think they can out walk homosapians that have legs 20 times longer than them. they look like chicken that (unless really, truely, necessary) can fly.
today i have potential customer. this one in the photo was here for a good ten minutes, inspecting the future property. plenty of time for me to take a few shots. i was less than a meter from it. see, it doesn't know, i'm on the darker side of glass door and there's this bamboo screen in between. so during the day, they can only see the bamboo and their reflection. that's how i can i do my national geographic moment. i should have had this e1 sooner. i couldn't take picture of the feeding process from the previous family because my point and shoot cam will only focus on the bamboo screen, no manual focus like the dSLR.
the above image is not the same type of bird that built this nest, the builder are much smaller type with longer beek. the picture below is with the mommy inside the nest. tough to see it but you can spot the long black beek. darn i miss'em.
laundry day no more
laundry day, it doesn't come that often. it is a must when i'm having underwear crisis. this is one of those days.
underwear no more.
i was ready to dry them off and there it is.. out on my balcony.. the thick rain cloud creeping in. no dry underwear but a good time for a photo shoot. see, rain clouds plays interesting lighting effect on both land and the sky; the contrast, the shadow, it is unique each and every time. with a bit of photoshop curving, i know it'll have a nice effect.
today's late morning storm isn't all that exciting. usually the quick blowing, thick heavy rain storm cloud display more dramatic visual effect on the sky. the good one is when there are blistering thunder ( yes i used to read tin tin), boy, you can hear nature rawl. she's showing 'i'm da man'. (she da man?) anyway, awesome power. i always wanted to take picture of heavy thunderstorm, but all my older cams are afraid of water. but with this E1 weatherproof built, i am looking forward to it. So, with some luck, i should get a cool lighting shot. - and a nasty flue?
one of the good thing i do apreciate living in a condo is the view of the sky. i like the sky seems like nature's showing off its art on the grand canvas. same sky, but all so unique to everyone who's watching it, depending where, when and how it is looked. anyway, bla bla too much. the view i have is not all that specatular but at least it doesn't get blocked by surrounding buildings. i get to see the tiny lives living around me. peekaboo.
o wel, tonight, there'll be no rain.
pano goes to work
Since i'm still on the 7 days testing the replacement e1, i took the camera to the work site and did more panorama shooting, as if i haven't done enough already. I've taken over 90 panoramas in samet.. i've gone panoramically mad. hey, why not when you can shoot tons of shots in a burst - at no cost. so here are more of them.
above: this one was taken at the BTS prakanong station. A short walk from here would get me to the construction site. i've always liked the bts's roof design, it is way cool.. and i do like the effect of the glowy effect of the afternoon sun behind it.
below: and here's the condo site, yup,
ficuslane, 5 months delay, and still not done. it is coming along though.
and finally here's one of the four units i'm
working on. you can't imagine the amount of dust and stuff that flys around in the air at these site. won't be too surprise if lung cancer is creeping in. so why do i bothered with this construction monitoring thing when i could end it at design stage. because i couldn't 'end' it there. i mean even though the design is done, there's always some new issues that comes up during construction, maybe some problems that requires design modifications. No doubt the challenges and the fun of problem solving on the spot is there, but only in short moment, the rest is dealing with the noise, dust and nose jamming smell. having to eal with some bitchy worker can definately spoiled any of the remaining creative mood.
The real reason for doing it is that i do feel responsible for the design work. i mean there's a lot of effort from both me and the client along the design process, and we all would like to see it come out nice. not to mentioned the cost involved. one of these unit cost 14 million, for just the bare shell! so for this kind of investment, these clients would like to make sure things does goes the way it was intended. for that kind of money i would build a house. although for single foreigners like these clients, they don't have that choice. in a lot of ways, the luxury and there's all the benefits and conveniency of living in a fancy condominium. let's just hope it is that fancy when everything is done.
after this, i should retire. wait, i still have to do mom/dad's house.. then quit this space design/construction stuff. don't ge me wrong, i do love the design, its the stress of dealing with unreliable constructors that turns me off. sometimes it seems like it is out of your control. so for the past months, i've been declining new project offers and trying to finish this condo. although i feel it is the right thing to do but not sure about the financial side of it all. but unless i declined, i'll never get to seriously do my folk's housing project.
mom has been so nice and patience, saying, oh.. her house can wait. i know she's been waiting too long for her house. dad also have been complaining that he needs a place of his own that he can stay and relax. this should be my piority. the
giusto winebar project already put her house one year behind, and now these condos. not that i haven't done the design, i did over 14 houses. the more time i had, the houses just multiplies!
one and a half more month let's survive this. i just took my lungs for a clean up at samet... so c'mon lungs. puff puff.
e1 still hot
yes, it is hot alright. the new e1 the shop replaced me is still full of hot pixel. at 2 seconds you can already spot these hot spots. imagine using it for many seconds, taking night shots of the stars. oh my, i'll be a famous astronomer, discovering the sky full of new star. here's a lil crop of the 6 seconds shot.
there's a way to fix this, by turning on noise reduction and noise filter, but the draw back is that it takes about 10 seconds to run these software through before it saves to a file. now, if i see a shooting star in between, i'll miss it. i won't be doing much night or star shots, but still a camera that used to worth more than 100,000 baht should not have these problems. The store person said that the olympus thailand said most of the cam would have this effect. maybe these lot are the rejected lot like i expected. i might just go to them and select one by one until i find a good one.
i tested out canon 350D, no such hot pixel problems, but it feels much more flimpy. i like the handling and the built of the e1 very much. oh. i know i said that already. it just sounds comforting to say it again.
