The 52-Week Collection - Week 29: Dedicated

Week 29! It's quite exhausting to go photo shoot after a half day work, but I enjoyed it no less. I am always a dog lover, they are really cute and with attractive character. I think dogs are connected to their owner in a very special way and the fact that they are always by their owners' side is one of the reasons I like dogs so much. Be nice to them though, think carefully before we want to keep a pet, it's a huge commitment!

Btw...I think my prime lens is not working well since it was dropped on the sand about one year ago...sigh >.< it focuses in a slower speed and the focus point seems to be not that right...

First encounter with Black and White

Frankly speaking, I didn't like black and white photo, I thought they are lack of color, lack of lively spirit. Not until I read an article on the newspaper regarding Mr. Chow Yun-Fat's point of view on photography do I start to learn how to admire the beauty of black and white photo. Mr. Chow said black and white photos are special in the way that they are black and white, that the subject in the picture wouldn't be distracted by the color presented, and I agree!

I tried to experience what he said about black and white photograph and to me it's true that when I look at the colored one, I focused on the color compositions of the flower, on how the color interacts with each other. However, on the black and white one, I would focus on the petal of the flower, the texture and lines of the petal, and the different level of light reflection between the left side and the right side.

Now I don't resist black and white pictures that much as before, but still, I fond of colorful pictures more~ :):)

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 2010

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Now the cool weather is approaching! Didn't have time to make my icy moon cake this year, but happily got a box of moon cake from the workplace! These few days have been raining with lots of cloud so we couldn't quite admire the moon, however we enjoyed the moon cake no less!

Baked a cake today! That's what I like to do on a holiday...do something relaxing at home...hehe!
Quite a lot of people around me has been talking about Pandan cake, I haven't tried one before so this morning I decided to see if I can get some fresh Pandan leaf nearby, luckily I found them haha! 1 dollar for 2 pieces! I got 6 of them and followed this recipe.

It turned out quite well however the Pandan flavour is not as strong as the egg flavour, maybe I should get a piece from the cake shop and see how the taste is!

People vs. Things

Randy was so generous to share those important messages. People vs. Things is the point that leads me to a lot of thinking after watching it. When we just see the words "People vs. Things", it's likely that we'll say "People of course", however, when we look at our lives, perhaps very often, it's "things" that we are going for. When we think about it, many of our arguments might be originated from "things". Later when we are cooled down, we might just realize that it is not worthy to make someone sad just because of that "thing".

It is hard to tune that way but I believe if we can learn this bit by bit, we would learn how to love the people around us.

This is a reprised lecture of Randy and I think it worths you 10 minutes to watch.
Randy's Lecture

CLICK

Finally watched the movie CLICK (2006) yesterday. The movie is about a guy who was not satisfied about his life and was given a remote control that can pause, fast forward, go back and re-watch, mute etc his life.

At first, he is very happy about the remote because he can fast- forward the moments that he doesn't like, such as argument, stressful moments, failure at work, sad events etc. However, this remote is really intelligent that it can remember the user's preferences and gradually run the fast forward function on its own. Thus, he is being skipped all the unpleasant moments automatically and every time when it's back to normal speed it's always promotion, promotion and promotion.

He wanted to have his life back and to stop skipping the unpleasant moments after a while but there is no such function. He is even automated to skip his own father's death and funeral, which he is really frustrated about. He is so sad and asked why Morty who gave him that non-returnable control is doing this to him.

He is able to watch the moment when he last saw his father - he was so busy at work that he barely looked at his father who paid a surprise visit to his office, he is so sad to know this and keep repeating the moment when his old father says "I love you son".

When he is fast forwarded near the end of his life, at the hospital he sees his son is following his steps, putting work above everything else and decided to postpone the honeymoon. He wanted to say something to his son desperately but they left. Morty, the angel of death who gave him the remote control, saw him taking away the tubes and machines that are sustaining his life and ran after his son, warned him "it doesn't have to be now". But he wouldn't listen and keep chasing after his son. Fell onto the ground at a rainy night, his son spots him luckily, and the 3 words that he wanted so much to say are "family comes first" to his son and "I am sorry" to his ex-wife(which he has fast-forward all the argument and he doesn't even know they are divorced until a while later). And Morty took him away.

Suddenly, he finds himself woke up in the store he has fallen asleep, back to when he wanted to buy a multi-function remote control. He was given a second chance. When he is back to home, happily thinks that it was just a dream, the remote appears again on the kitchen table. Shocked in horror, he read the card attached to the remote that is written by Morty, who believes "good guys need a break sometimes and I believe u would use it wisely this time".

Without a second thought, he throws the remote away in the rubbish bin and it doesn't return ever again.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I think this movie is worth watching. When I was at school in my psychology class, I remember we have discussed about that is happiness and there is one point that is quite true: without unhappiness, there would be no way for us to know what happiness is. For sure we wouldn't want to deal with all the sad moments in life, however, every moments in our lives made us who we are and meant something to us, weather those are happy or unhappy moments.