March 10 – The celebration of Life

It was a week after Ate Net died, and I was contemplating the whole week last week about her death. Had a fasting for the whole week (no dinner) as my part to mourn for her and as part of my prayer for her soul. I did this because I wasn’t able to go to her wake due to time constraints, priorities and money (as advised by my mother).

Now, today is my birthday and I was given a leave-in-lieu. I was actually planning to celebrate it at work but since I was allowed to take a leave, I decided to celebrate it all by myself. It’s not because I was so pathetic that nobody remembered my special day or spend it with some people in a fancy way. In fact, my friends in the Philippines called me just to give that warm “happy birthday, tol!” and some were asking for a dinner. But I just want to celebrate it alone for some reasons.

March 10 - FYI…

March 10 is my birthday. Nothing special there I know (LOL). But there are some things that I want others to know on this very date. I saw this page before but I tried to keep it for myself (and officemate who keeps on laughing at me because of “may lahi kang terorista, ‘Min”. Now find out why…

Events:

• 241 BC - First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands - The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end.
• 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
• 1917 - Batangas was formally founded as one of the Philippines’s earliest encomiendas.
• 1982 - Syzygy: all 9 planets align on the same side of the Sun. See also Jupiter effect. - sabi ng mga tito at tita ko, nakadyaryo daw eto, lahat ng ipinanganak sa araw na eto e gifted. Hindi naman totoo un… LOL
• 2000 - The NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaks at 5132.52, signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom. - Start of internet industry
  

Births:

• 1940 - Chuck Norris, American actor and martial artist
• 1957 - Osama bin Laden, Leader of Global Terrorism Group, Al Qaeda - Kaya mag-ingat kayo sa akin. LOL
• 1958 - Sharon Stone, American actress
• 1963 - Jeff Ament, American musician (Pearl Jam)
• 1964 - Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex
• 1971 - Timbaland, American rapper
• 1973 - John LeCompt, American guitarist (Evanescence)
• 1983 - Carrie Underwood, American singer

March 10 - now you’re informed. For the complete events and births, click here.

Pre-birthday celebration with Imago…

I was actually waiting for this day. Not because it will be the eve of my 26th birthday, not only because Imago will be performing, but also it will be the very time that I will be test driving my new baby - Nikon D300. Here’s my picture with the band:

Goodbye, Ate Net…

Ate Net reminds me of living life in a way that is opposite to what most people do. If most people are heading their way to the left road, she’ll opt to go to the opposite direction without any care if she’s on the right path or not – as long as there’s an adventure, she’ll go. She’s one of my cousins with a brave way of life – trying to live without really meeting other people’s expectations and doesn’t care of what might other will say – if she’ll go, she will. I wish I can imitate that attitude fully, without hesitations.

Although she might have grown to be a rebellious one, she’s still the cousin that we’ve known, funny and adventurous and without pretentions.

First Day of March Macro…

I spent the whole day trying to think of melody for our composition, but what-a-heck, I can’t think of a good one. So instead of thinking for the melody for the song that we will submit for BF3, I decided to grab my DSLR and macro lens and tried to roam around the vicinity of our HDB building.

Sorry JP, I just hope I didn’t kill your plants because I sprayed a lot of water just to see what it looks like to produce artificial dew (see last 2 pictures) =D. Here are the pictures I had for this day:

Year of Extravagance…

As the new day marks the beginning of my birthday month, I started to think of the things I did during the 25 years I spent here on earth. February is over and this month end always gives me the thought of “Crap! Age++ again…”

I’ll be 26 soon, still young and plenty of time to accomplish.

Here I am, more than 5 years working, but seldom had a chance to enjoy fully what I had laboured. I know that the house I had makes me happy. Even the confidence of having a life insurance plan, ever ready to anytime leave this material world, I also got it. But other than that, for these long years that I’ve been working, it’s always the family that came first. No! Don’t misinterpret the previous sentence. To tell everyone, all those things that I did for my family, I consider them my greatest achievements in life. Making my family happy – it’s a life-long fulfilling achievement to gain. But then, I guess it’s time for me to pamper myself and I’m allotting this year for that.

Singapore Air Show 2008

I had a chance to experience my first air show here in Singapore and there were some disappointing things happened in this event. Not to mention the longest queue that I have seen so far just to take the free shuttle, that me and my friends ended up taking a cab to the venue. Not to mention the burning heat that day (not because of the sun), though understandable because it’s an open area. But for someone like me expecting a good, blue sky weather (that’s the point, heat that day is not because of the sun, but the humidity that day even if the day is so cloudy), air show was a little bit disappointing.

Anyway, though the sky is gray and the weather is humid, I do still managed to take some shots that time. Here are some of the pictures:

More pictures in my multiply site.

First Prenup Experience…

No, it’s not my prenup. It’s my friends’ prenup - Mike and Dianne. A friend photographer, Marc Obfenda, gave me the opportunity to have my first prenup photoshoot experience. It was a blessing that we were given a nice, sunny day and the venue - City Hall. It was also the first time I used my telephoto lens for real - Nikkor 80-200mm F2.8.

Here are some of the unedited shots taken (I still have to study Photoshop and post processing). More photos on my multiply site:

While waiting for Hongbao Festival…

Today is the start of Chinese New Year (GONG XI FA CAI!) and yesterday, our company declared a half-day of work. Since I need to finish up a major application and we’ll be attending the Hongbao Fireworks, I stayed ’til afternoon. During the second half of the day (during those times that I can’t barely think of any solution for my programming dilemma), I decided to take a break and shoot the 3 corners of our floor (south side is big bosses’ offices).

Here are the shots from the 25th flr of Millenia Tower:

     

Bleach Photoshoot…

For the sake of keeping my lens collection in Nikkor, I decided to purchase Nikkor 80-200mm F2.8 over Sigma 50-500mm F4-6.3. Cross-fingers for any regrets but a little bit relieved though. The rating for the Nikkor lens is 9.4 (not bad).

Here are some of the shots I had using the lens. Images in BG were taken using my Nikkor 18-135 though.