Books Bought

Have been on a buying spree lately. Books ordered from Amazon and also a splurge at Kino due to their 20% anniversary discount. All these were bought in batches, not all at once, thank goodness. This may give you an idea of where I'm headed at this point of my creative pursuits. Sadly, the library has not missed my presence much (life goes on at the library). I've missed taking the short bus ride there but am putting my fiction reading on hold for now.

1. Digital Photography: The Digital Photography Book, Vols. 1-3 - Scott Kelby
2. Layers: The Complete Guide To Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature - Matt Kosklowski
3. The Hot Shoe Diaries - Joe McNally
4. The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book For Digital Photographers - Scott Kelby
5. The Adobe Lightroom Book for Digital Photogtaphers - Scott Kelby
6. The Creative Family - Amanda Blake Soul
7. Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story - Isabel Gillies
8. Simply Sublime Bags: 30 No-Sew, Low-Sew Projects - Jodi Kahn
9. Bend-The-Rules Sewing - Amy Karol
10. Zakka Sewing: 25 Japanese Projects For The Household - Therese Laskey, Chika Mori
11. Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts - Martha Stewart
12. Julie & Julia - Julie Powell
13. My Life In France - Julia Child
14. Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs - Ed. Smith Magazine
15. The Cats Of Kittyville: New Lifes For Rescued Felines: Best Friends Animal Society
16. Cookie's Week - Cindy Ward
17. Twinkles, Arthur and Puss - Judith Kerr
18. Dogtown: A Sanctuary For Rescued Dogs - Bob Somerville

My Friend Barney

She loves posing. Alone. With her toy friends. With her books. With mommy and daddy. She loves being recorded. On print and on video. And she loves looking at herself.

Magic Box

The many uses of an ikea storage box is not lost on us as we go about our daily lives. We do all we can to entertain ourselves with as many daily objects as possible. We already have too many toys, as it is. So a box on wheels is perfect as a 'train' or a moving ball pit. It barely fits her but she loves it.

The Sticky Brown Cows

The brown cows know how to live it up. They do it in style and they do it together. Always.

Difficult For Whom?

After her breakfast this morning, the munch monster wanted Jona to sit with her with Tiger in her hands while she did her jigsaw puzzle.

"It's so very difficult, Tiger!" she exclaimed as she deftly manouvred the pieces into place.

In the kitchen, I'm trying not to laugh my head off at her exclamation. At the same time, I'm wondering where she picked up that three syllable word. So I rattled off in my head the three syllable words she knows, with a few four syllable ones thrown in:

banana

apricot

strawberry

papaya

vegetable

crocodile

everybody

everywhere

beginning

difficult

disappear

watermelon

Note the recurring theme?

Pulling a David Blaine

And failing, at that. No matter, she doens't need tricks and illusions to endear her to everyone's hearts.

Mooooommmmmmyyy!!

This face is why she gets her way most of the time.

Sigh, the clock is ticking and the little monster is growing up. Fast.

Tutu Cute!

The Kate Mack swimsuit. Which doubles as a play tutu. It's really too cute to get all wet at the pool. So we romped in it at home.

She didn't want to take it off.

More Mountains And Hills In Sight

I've finally gone and bought myself a flash. I decided to just spring for an SB900. Might as well. It's actually really versatile and quite fun to fiddle around with.

Then I realised that my Crumpler CANNOT fit the 50mm lens and the flash in it. Not with the camera in there as well. So now, before I can even think about getting the 17-50mm lens, I've gotta think about getting a new home for my camera gear.

Great.

This will never end.

No Humans Allowed

District 9 has got to be one of the best movies I've seen in a while. Here's why:

1. There are no big names in this flick.
2. There are no big names in this flick, hence, it's a refreshing change.
3. There are no big names in this flick, hence, the movie actually feels 'real' (it's done in a documentary style).
4. There are no big names in this flick, it's not based on a book and it's original.
5. There are no big names in this flick and it's still a really great movie.

I could say more but I don't believe in spoilers. Haven't seen it yet? Go catch it before it ends its run at the cinema.

Itsy Bitsy Etsy

Etsy's been around for yonks and I've known of its existence ever since I can remember. But I've never been tempted to trawl for stuff there.

That's all changed. A few days ago, I wound up on the site and well, let's just say I haven't been able to not visit the site on a daily basis. I have bought only from one seller but I've got a list of favourites.

Luckily, some of the sellers don't ship overseas. And I'm also mostly a miser. Although a compulsive shopper at that. The two don't gel but most times, the compulsiveness wins.

So while I've been trying to regularly post photos on my alterna site (even that's kinda stalled for the moment), I've been pretty much quiet on the refried brains front. It may stay that way and I may end up hiccuping along for a bit.

Now, excuse me while I shop.

Spot of Colour

I almost forgot about the many photos I took at a Hindu temple during one of my photog outings with the group. Not very many turned out. But there were some that I liked. This is one of them. It's a flower garland at an altar. Can't see the deity; I wanted to catch the burst of colour on the white stone.

Herb Pots

We've just got ourselves a pot each of sweet basil, thyme, rosemary, mint and menthol. Always wanted to have our own little herb 'garden'. I guess pots will have to do for now. They're still in their ugly little plastic brown pots, with no bases. So the plastic bags they came in are serving as bases. I hope to get some nicer pots to put them in and maybe then there'll be some nice photos of them to post up. We used the basil already, for our fried rice. Yumm....

Attention Seeker

He would love to sleep on the bed with us if he could. So he takes whatever liberties he can. If the door is open and we are on the bed, then we'll eventually find him curled up at our feet.

National Day Sparks

I had my settings all done up. I had the camera pointed at the right direction with the Flyer in view at the bottom left.

And then something happened.

My settings went mysteriously awry and the camera angle shifted; instead of 5 seconds, the shutter speed had gone up to 1/5 seconds. And as I was shooting away at the beginning, I was cracking my head and wondering what was wrong.

It wasn't till the very end that I figured it out. And these are the only two shots I managed to get that are even moderately good.

Plus I lost the Flyer. Completely forgot about it.

I need to get to know my camera better.

Languishing In A Sweat Bath

"Why am I doing this?"

The thought crossed my mind more than a few times as I got into the nth pose during my Hot Yoga session this morning. I feel like a piece of limp dough that's been stretched out and left in the sun too long, and I'm melting into oblivion.

The pose itself I could execute. It was the 38 degree room that felt stifling and made holding the pose all the more difficult. I had to drag my mind away from the thought of the heat. It boiled down to just me, my mat and my sweat.

Sometime later, T-shirt drenched and yoga pants pretty much soaked through, I figure it's almost the end of the class because I hear the click of a knob and the drone of the heater softens. All right, I can do this; I'm almost there.

90 excruciating minutes later, while we're in the relaxed pose (the names of poses elude me), lying down on the mat with eyes closed, I pick up the sound of the instructor opening the windows, letting in a burst of cool air and turning on the air-conditioning.

Finally.

I slow down my breathing some more. Relax. And try to relish having sweat more in 90 minutes than I have in a week.

A warm shower later, clean hair, skin and clothes, and I feel rejuvenated. More than I have in yonks. I look in the mirror and my cheeks are actually flushed.

Then the hairdryer decides it doesn't want to work for me. It's humiliating because there's someone else using the other one just fine. So I wait and walk back into the dressing room when the other person's done. No luck. Even that hairdryer decides I'm beneath it to work.

The receptionist has to get in there and make sure I'm not pulling her leg. Sure enough, one of them is a dud.

I end up signing up for a 20+5 class programme.

When I see Rizal for lunch, he says I sound and look happier. Huh. And then says why didn't I sign up for a 100 classes or more? Huh.

We'll see if I survive the 25 first.

Helping Out

Jona's in the kitchen preparing dinner.

I'm on the laptop trying to finish up my story before I head to class tonight.

Sophia comes over and tells me, "Mommy, mommy! Sophia wants to wee-wee."

So I get her out of her panties and ask her to get on the potty by herself. Which she promptly does. There's a bit of scuffling when she tries to position her potty into a better spot to get a good view on both Jona and me.

The next thing I know, she's taken her potty into the bathroom and trying to empty its contents into the toilet bowl. When I see that she's in the bathroom, I get up and try to give her a hand. Peering into the bowl, I notice she's done #2 and has successfully poured the contents from potty into the bowl.

Wow. She's gone from needing reminders and supervision to use the potty to using it and emptying it herself.

Another stepping stone for the little monster.

The Island's Strays

Singapore has a healthy population of stray cats. When I say healthy, I mean that most of these strays have been neutered.

I haven't come across that many street cats in my forays out into the city. Maybe I haven't been walking the alleys enough. They generally hang in and around markets, food courts and the general HDB areas.

Sometimes, when I'm lucky like today, I come across more than one street feline. On my way to the library I spotted a tri-coloured kitty and couldn't resist calling out to her and giving her a rub. Surprisingly, she was very friendly. And then I noticed that her ear was clipped, a universal sign that she'd been neutered. Her friendliness also went to show that she's comfortable among humans, meaning some kind souls have probably been feeding her. Then I found that she wouldn't let me walk off on my own. She took to following me when I started to head off. Finally not able to keep up with me when I crossed the road, she sat down and meowled quite woefully. Smart cat, trying to appeal to my soft spot.

I studiously walked around her on my way back. By then she was still looking in the general direction of where I'd gone but was distracted by a car tire.

On my way towards Shop N Save, I passed by another stray cat, this one a tuxedo beauty, who also had her ear clipped. She was observing human traffic perched atop a stack of plastic chairs. She wasn't too happy that I decided to stop by and pat her head.

Both cats appeared healthy and well-taken care of, even though, with the tip of one ear snipped off, they are clearly strays. Singapore's catch-and-release programme seems to be working much more effectively than KL's.

As usual.

One Of His Favourites

I received my Polaroid SLR680 last week. Alas, my hoard of 600 film had already expired for more than a year. So here's what the photos sorta look like after auto-adjustment with the Epson CX3800 scanner. No adjustments = yellowy pix. Sigh.

Elsewhere, we celebrated Singapore's national day by viewing the fireworks display from daddy's office. Great view. Due to some unforseen circumstances, my settings on the camera went astray (on their own!) and I only got TWO fairly good shots of the fireworks.

The long weekend was spent trying to entertain and keep the little one busy. Sunday morning we spent at Fidgets where she could rumble and roll to her heart's content and Monday we went to Paragon for the rides and the little indoor play area. She was happy just walking around inside the mall (mall rat!) and found, to her delight, a florist with loads of little water features on sale. "Fountain, fountain! Fountain, mummy!"

Ah, the little pleasures in life.

Lounging

A two-year old knows more about relaxing and enjoying life than all the adults put together. Aaaaah, if only we always remember what really matters in life; maybe we'd experience life like a toddler or a child more often.