Back from Japan: Part 2 – The weather and catching a cold

Finally,  some time to write more about my vacation in Japan. I will write about my experience with the weather and me catching a cold there in this post.

Vacation in Japan – The weather and catching a cold

Growing up in a tropical part of the world, I was unprepared for the weather in Japan. I bought my winter coat, Vaseline, thermal socks and sweaters to keep warm, however the dryness of winter and wind chill was a shock to my body.

I caught a bad cold there and starting having a bit of chills and fever. I didn’t know at first, as I was irritated by a rash on my body, and found it hard to sleep as I kept feeling a cold draft on my chest. I just thought it was my sensitive nose at work and me being unused to the weather. However, later on, things got worse.  I couldn’t sleep and started shivering and shivering and shivering.  Albert woke up and felt my forehead. He exclaimed that I had a fever I should use cold compress to bring the fever down.

But by that time I was feeling terrible and frustrated by many nights of poor sleep, I just broke down and cried.  It was a horrible. I just kept shivering and felt so sick and AWFUL. Thankfully, Albert took charge and said he’ll bring me to the doctor. He called the Singapore embassy there and managed to get a name of a 24 hours clinic. We then went down to the lobby to prepare to leave. Bryan later came down and suggested  asking the hotel personnel for help. We rang the emergency bell and luckily the hotel manager was around . He knew the address of a  hospital nearby and helped us flagged a cab to get there.

We got to the hospital pretty fast and after registration, I could see the doctor within 15-20  minutes of waiting time.  We  spoke with the doctor and tried to describe my symptoms the best we could to her. After that, her diagnosis was that…I caught a cold. I was flummoxed. All this rush and fuss  for a simple cold? Albert then reminded me that a cold or flu that goes untreated will result in complications. Furthermore, it was in winter. Catching a colds in winter can be dangerous.

I felt better after eating the cold medicine from the doctor. She also gave me some cream for my rash, which is actually Keratosis Pilar. Albert and I stayed in the next day and mainly slept. With better sleep (the cold medicine made me very drowsy),

I felt very guilty and silly for making Albert so worried about me and also needing to be rushed to the hospital over a cold. But, I’m extremely thankfully to him, for taking care of me when I’m ill and feeling crappy because of it.

Albert is a great person and I’m very lucky to have him as my love.

P.S.

The hospital we went to was the Tokyo Kyosai Hospital in Naga Meguro. Here is a picture of it (taken from Wikipedia).

Photo. Random.

HIDING PLACES.01

Click, Flash!

Click. Flash!

These were the sounds I heard on Saturday at the Cosplay Challenge competition (held at the Singapore Discovery Centre). Despite being a little disappointed that it was not as big an event that I thought it would be, I decided to make the best of it and stuck around for some photo-taking.

And now, I’ll admit it. The main reason why I appear at cosplay events (apart from supporting my club’s cosplayers who is usually cosplaying) is to get photography practice.

Stage photography is not easy.  You  have to work with the limited time, location, lighting and equipment.

Time
Things happen very fast. You have to be on your toes and move around, otherwise that great moment is gone. Forever. Best to attend rehearsals to know what’s going to happen and when to take photos. If not, be on High Alert to move or press that shutter real quick when necessary.

Location
Picking a good spot with minimal obstructions and the best view of the stage. Although, sometimes I like to choose a less-than-ideal spot because most photographers crowd at the best spot and then, they become obstructions themselves.

Lighting
Very important component, it can make or break your photograph. After all, photography is painting with light, is it not? Too little light and your photographs will be underexposed (too dark), too much light and they will turn out overexposed (too bright, too much white). Bad lighting may require flash, which currently I loathe to do, because it usually creates a very harsh lighting (y’know that photo you take with the foreground/subject too brightly lit, yucks >.< ). But yeah, I’ve been avoiding the use of flash as much as possible…but looking at things, it’ll be good for me to practice using it.

Equipment
Let’s face it. Photography can be quite an expensive hobby. Going digital does cut the cost of developing photos, but the equipment is never cheap, especially if you want a DSLR like me. Unless you go second-hand,  and then, you can get cameras at a more affordable prices (either that or sales, which i often miss). So far, I’m trying my best with my 18-55mm lens. It can get frustrating at time when I want more zoom or wide angle, but a new lens would have to wait til I can get the $$ for it. Meanwhile, I’ll continuing working with what I have, and sometimes, less can be more too.  Because to compensate for whatever is lacking, new and more creative ways to take photographs may be discovered/created.

For me, there is this funny thrill to take good photographs with all these restrictions. Challenging!

And now, I shall present to you a photo, taken of those who take photos

Photographers being photographed

Self Portrait

Have been cracking my brains over a school assignment for Public Speaking, which is a Self Introduction Speech.

Got some ideas, but they are still playing and flying around in my head. Haven’t quite got the “AH HA!!” and the light bulb moment yet =(

But this assignment makes me think about how I should represent myself, or rather what do I see myself as, or what kind of image do I project to others…I think…kind of along those lines.

Been taking photos last Friday and Saturday. Took a few self portrait shots. Noticed something.

Most of the self portraits shots that I am most satisfied with are either blurred, a partial face shot (meaning you’ll only see some parts of my face, e.g. eyes and nose mostly) or a combination of both.

I believe so far, I have only one full non-partial face shot…and it’s also blur! Lol.

I’m thinking the reasons for this phenomenon could be….

1. I’m a person who is hard to know. I do need take time to warm up to people. To the unfamiliar, I don’t disclose a lot. Just partially, bit by bit. Thus, the partial face shots.

2. I don’t want to be seen one-dimensionally. Sometimes I do get a little peeved about this (but I wonder it happens because of  number 1), so maybe subconsciously, I used the blur here to counter this?

3. I do not have steady hands and I used a low shutter speed.

4. I like blur photos, because I find that they can be more interesting.

5. A full face frontal and a grin. Just reminds me too much of cam-whoring.

6. I’m uh…kinda shy (yeshy introvert). I like to stand behind a camera but not in front of one.

7. I am lazy to clear up the zits and other imperfections via photoshop. I mean, the blurry effect does exactly that! =D

Crazy reasoning aside, seems like I over-exerted myself a tad walking a lot around and kneeling down to take photos. My left knee is irritating me again. Hope it clears up by tomorrow, because I want to jog. Otherwise, I may have to settle for a walk and a visit to the doctor’s instead. This stupid knee is acting up again. (yeshy, I am whining…so you can ignore this)

Sigh.

What to do.

Guess I’d take better care of myself.

Ah, well, back to work, back to work…and I’ll leave you with this:

Self Portrait

P.S. I just wanna say…I’ve finally completed MGS4 a few days ago! Whoohoo! Now playing on Naked Normal difficulty…yeah…I played Liquid Easy first time round. Now second round…I’m going to try and see if I can get the “chicken” emblem ^_^

Pigeons – Un, deux, trois

Last week, I went out along the Singapore River and took a bunch of photos.

Here’s my favourite and best photograph for that day:

Choosing Sides

A few random thoughts about pigeons:

1. Pigeons are great to take photos of because they are tamer than other birds. They won’t run or fly away from you as fast as the others.

2. I find that pigeons almost always have this “What the hell are you looking at?” look in their eyes when I try to take a photo of them.

3. The whole world is your loo, if you are a bird. You can poop/pee anywhere, anytime. Including in front of a photographer.
(The pigeon in the foreground demonstrated by pooping in front of me after I took this photo. After the camera moved away from my face, it was probably thinking, “Great, I can stop posing now! Boy, am I urgent holding all this shit in. Finally, time to relieve myself…” and oozed some brownish-coloured, slightly viscous substance with a consistency very similar to spit, out of its butt and onto the floor. Eeew!  Thankfully, it is NOT ABOVE me. Hmm..I also think that it could be a plan to gross me out so I’d stop taking photos of it.)

In thinking mode

Just got home. Went out to have lunch at Ajisen with my classmates. Was really great…we chatted for a long while Very insightful and thought-provoking discussions.

The problem now is, I’m thinking a lot about what is being discussed today, in addition to some things which I have already been thinking for quite a while, which can make some things a bit more confusing and distracting for me….because I have to study for my NTR 108 mid-term.

Nevertheless, I have to try to think more later and FOCUS on NTR. Otherwise, studying a lot tomorrow is not fun…exam on Friday is at 9am (hate to wake up so early…).

And yesterday, I think our speech went quite well…although as usual, I let my nerves get better of me and didn’t perform as well as I should. I think this is something I have to try to work on more. Well, there’s the persuasive speech coming up next, so I hope to do better in it.

In any case, I got some flowers as a souvenir of yesterday’s speech (we used them as props) and here are some photos I took:

So colourful~

Sun tanning orchid!! I like this photo a lot actually....

Boooring!!

It is b-o-r-i-n-g to stay at home for so long. Swelling has gone down a lot, but not fully yet. >.<

Can’t wait to be able to go out and play. Not much of holiday left!! Sad…oh well, I guess I underestimated the amount of time for it to heal. Seriously, I though after 5 days I’ll be fine….no wonder the receptionist at the dentist warned me that it may take up to 1-2 weeks to recover fully. Argh!

Got so bored, that I had a staring competition with the fishes. Unfortunately, they win hands down. Why? Because they have no eyelids! (yeah lame joke, i know) Actually, they were more interested in food, they were in “begging” mode, shaking their tails and bodies for food. Kind of like a dog wagging its tail and begging for food, I guess.

Most of our fishes and other previous pets (terrapins) usually have this “begging for food” syndrome, due to my brother’s taming powers. Though, sometimes I think it would be nice to have a cat or dog as a pet for a change. Anyway, here is a photo of our adorable, food-begging Angel fishes.