Sorry for being late for the weekly promised Fonty Friday feature – it’s Saturday already! I can’t believe a week just flied past me that swiftly. The feature went on the one-week break last week because of the length of the post, so now it’s back for good again. For this time, we’ll be having Alta Haas Grotesk, a simple, elegant and neutral sans serif typeface that looks good in almost any context. Just a tip – I’m currently using the font for the development of my next WP theme, so you know how useful it is to me (and that’s why I’m recommending it).
The typeface author, Yann le Coroller, has smoothened out the sharp edges, which is more noticeable in a larger font size. Some of you might not like that feature, but it is the smooth corners that made me fall in love with this font – it distinguishes itself from other sans-serif typefaces partially because of this cute visual gimmick. He has been working in the broadcast industry for more than 10 years as a creative director and a 2D/3D animator, which explains the simplicistic beauty behind the font – it’s a wonderful combination of creativity and simplicistic idealism :)
You should also check out his illustrations, which I find too cute to resist staring at. An added bonus – he also loves photography!
Life updates
Okay, so here’s the part of the post where I say things that are rather general, mundane, semi-rant in nature and will make you crave for the powerful, enlightening effect of caffeine (in simple terms, it’s boring). To make things a little less painful, I’ve made a list instead of ramble on and on (surprise!):
- I’m working on a new WP theme for this blog. It’s taking longer than usual and I’m stuck in the designing stage. I am also concurrently converting it into XHTML/CSS (notepad is my saviour for hand-coding), has been testing it in Firefox 3, Safari 4, Chrome 1 and IE7. So far so good, hasn’t lost a lot of hair yet. I’m still thinking whether should I add IE6 compatibility.
- Confirmed the trip to the Perhentian Islands with my aunt – my brother and I will be heading off to the lovely tropical islands on the 5th of June. We’re already too excited about it… and it’s still 3 weeks away. Containing all the excitement is very, very painful. For the past 2 decades, we’ve only been to Genting Highlands and Penang – my parents are not the travelling kind of people, so yep, little variation in holiday destinations.
- I was outraged at the level of meritocracy (or the lack thereof) in my own country. The government finally said ‘the most honest thing I have ever heard’ (to quote my friend, Lee), quite true. The current selection of the public service criteria has a 60% weightage on RACE and 20% weightage on MERIT. My goodness, do they even call that scholarship? Total bullshit. That’s why they have people like me running over to Singapore, open heartedly embracing their way of education. I wonder if they’re smart enough to know the huge brain drain taking place. Perhaps not.
- Malaysia has its taste of the H1N1 scare – we have the first confirmed case. Tonight I received messages from relatives that there are two more confirmed cases in Penang up North, but I’m not going to speculate. 199 people were aboard the flight from US (via Stockholm) to Malaysia, only 39 or 40 people voluntarily showed up for checkups and quarantine. What are the other 150+ people doing? Cowards.
Just in case you haven’t notice, 2 out of 4 points are me ranting. Told you, it’s a semi-rant section, heh.
A taste of Penang food
Today my family headed out to a huge shopping mall located in the heart of an even bigger suburban sprawl. It’s called One Utama (locals call it One U), Utama meaning main, importance, first, priority in the Malay language. When we were searching for parking lots at the basement, the inevitable verbal argument between mom and dad happened again (my brother and I are so totally not surprised). When pampered with too many parking lots, they can actually get very, very picky with what lot they want to park the car in. For the next 30 minutes, mom walked ahead of us while dad walked behind us. Tension sliced the air… and my brother and I dreaded this kind of situation. Soon after dad hugged mom in the shoulder and well, problem solved. I think they’re going to be an interesting couple when they age gracefully, haha.
Till my last breath I bet I still couldn’t understand why my parents love heading to shopping malls early in the morning – the shops aren’t opened for business yet, let alone the restaurants and cafes. And they keep whining about the lousy customer service because ‘people should open their shops earlier on weekends to accomodate for the crowd’. The problem is, there wasn’t any crowd that early in the morning (early as in the definition of yours truly, a university undergraduate who sleeps till 2pm on weekends).
We finally settled for Little Penang, a nifty little shop in the old wing just above the ground floor. Located in a rather obscured corner, they serve excellent food and it’s a shame that they’re not getting as much customers as they deserve to (and you must have guessed, I’m promoting their little cafe).
Fried fish and coconut milk rice
Mom ordered their famous nasi lemak (coconut milk rice) with fried fish. Nasi lemak is a dish sold in Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Southern Thailand. In Kuala Lumpur, it is called the national dish, a national heritage of Malaysia. The name is derived from the cooking process whereby rice is soaked in coconut cream and then the mixture steamed. Sometimes knotted screwpine (pandan) leaves are thrown into the rice while steaming to give it more fragrance.1
Nyonya rice with spicy fried shrimps
I love curry chicken, and was offered a choice between nasi lemak and nyonya rice. I love their nyonya rice because it comes with fried spicy shrimp which makes the meal even more appetizing. I like it!
Hiking again. I promise, final serious post about hiking!
Ah, I hope I’m not boring you to death by writing about hiking again! I understand that some people are not particularly fancy about that – like my brother. When I warmly extended the invitation to him, who has just finished his mid-year papers, he brushed it off with a remark that mountain climbing is boring and the list goes on. I guess he’s just not that kind of an ‘explorer’ person, let alone being one that appreciates nature (all he appreciates is the inventor of computers, the Internet, PlayStation Portable and DOTA – lol!).
Aunt and the poor, burnt forest - a HDR image.
We revisited Gasing Hill, walked pass the burnt patches of the forest and examined the aftermath of the fire. While many plants were fried to crisp, the area is starting to teem with life again. An ants nest repopulated a charred tree trunk, and when we pried over some of the bark, there were still some cooked ants inside as the result of last Saturday’s fire started by drug addicts. Mother Nature will give them really bad karma for all the stuf they’ve done to the forest.
For this hike, we managed to get up the observation tower (it was fully-occupied by tired hikers last time, with little hope of giving up the precious space above there so we had to move on). It is narrow, around a meter wide at the top platform, but around 3 to 4 meters long. Good thing that it offers an unadulterated, scenic view (not panaromic though since there are still trees around blocking the view) of the area around the forest reserve.
A split toning experiment... gone wrong.
What you see above is a desperate attempt to replicate the split toning experiment in black and white photography coupled with a pseudo-HDR image made from the same RAW file. Epic fail, but tinkering with PS for 45 minutes struggling with this single photo gave me some hands on experience of split toning, teehee. Somehow I dig the noise on the sky (I darkened the blue during split toning to achieve the dark sky), but the halos around the buildings are a big NONO. Looks like I’ve ruined the view of the telecommunication towers on the tallest peak in the forest reserve, whooopsy daisy.
Aunt on the suspension bridge.
Arriving at the suspension bridge, we all agreed that we should take another photo of her. In the previous trip, my hand shook and to make things worse, I accidentally set my camera to shutter priority mode, fixing the shutter speed at 1/15th of a second. Yikes.
- Traditionally, this comes as a platter of food wrapped in banana leaf, with cucumber slices, small dried anchovies (ikan bilis), roasted peanuts, hard boiled egg, and hot spicy sauce (sambal) at its core. As a more substantial meal, nasi lemak can also come with a variety of other accompaniments such as chicken, cuttlefish, cockle, stir fried water convolvulus (kangkong), pickled vegetables (achar), beef rendang (beef stewed in coconut milk and spices) or paru (beef lungs). Traditionally most of these accompaniments are spicy in nature. Nasi Lemak is widely eaten in Malaysia, even as a dish served in Malaysian schools. Nasi lemak is a common breakfast dish, sold early in the morning at roadside stalls in Malaysia, where it is often sold packed in newspaper, brown paper or banana leaf – Wikipedia. ↩
and where has another 20% gone?
oh, perhaps 20% weightage on which-political-party-you-support?
they should instead just rename the scholarship to “only-bumiputera-scholarship” or just ban all non-bumis from applying.
hah…
Check out WanCing’s latest blog post » The Best Gift
hey coussie..enjoy your upcoming trip to perhentian…me going to an island in june too…redang for my diving certification ;)
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Ooh, a new theme? I can’t wait ;)
Brunei had also a case of H1N1 recently, but I heard that it wasn’t that serious. But omg, should those who arrived at the airport immediately have checkups there? I mean, why let those 150++ people just go off somewhere without being checked for the virus strain? Sometimes, it’s because of those people that hundreds other suffer.
Mmmm, Nasi Lemak :D I haven’t eaten that for a long time D: Most of the time we eat Nasi Katok in Brunei, which is a variant of Nasi Lemak except that we use plain rice.
Hiking! I love hiking but then again I haven’t gone hiking for a long time. My interaction with the forest during a year-long project resulted in various hiking trips, and so I got used to the sounds of nature XD You should come to Brunei one day to hike too lol XD
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Actually, the common flu is way more dangerous than Influence A (aka H1N1 or some still insists, the swan… I mean, swine flu). However, local officials are not taking any chances here and they’re setitng up checkpoints in airports and at hospitals. I love the way the Australian (or is it New Zealand?) government encouraged people to honk thrice when visiting a clinic if they are experiencing symptoms of flu. A good way of warning others beforehand.
Currently the government is still busy tracking down the 79 people who were on two separate flights where the two confirmed H1N1 patients were on. I can’t believe that there are still people who refuses to be quarantined for the sake of the society’s safety. What are these people thinking?
The airport checkpoints only check for flu-like symptoms (most usually just check for fever, but it is reported that not all influenza A patients have fever, and some viruses are still in incubation stage whose physical manifestation of the infection are yet to show), so there’s nothing much the government can do about preventing the spread of the virus except for people taking responsibility for themselves and the society.
Oooh, I’ve never heard of Nasi Katok before! So it uses plain rice instead of coconut milk? Hmm, that’s interesting. I’ve never tried one with plain rice before, heheh.
Brunei has some heavily forested areas, and I’m looking forward to visit your country in the future :) I can imagine the beautiful, absolutely breath-taking sight from the mountain top looking out to the South China Sea. Woah!
Yikes… 60% based on race? That’s pretty ridiculous. Then again, there are scholarships over in Canada that actually ban people who AREN’T part of a certain race from applying, so who am I to judge, really?
I’m excited to see the new theme you’re working on–not to mention looking forward to all of the hiking-related pictures to come. ^_^
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Yea, it’s pretty twisted, isn’t it? It’s a shame that there are still scholarships catered towards a certain race – however, an exception will be a scholarship fund set up by members of the same race (something like a community scholarship). I expect the government to be completely fair when it comes to skin colour!
I don’t think I’ll be posting more hiking pictures because me myself is getting bored of yapping all about hiking trips lately :P teehee!
Totally digging the font you chose this week. (I just downloaded it!) I’m a big fan of smooth edged fonts as well. And his illustrations.. so cute! gah
Oh my goodness. I am not a fan of fish or any sort of seafood for that matter.. BUT those dishes look so good. Maybe it’s the big pile of rice? Mmm. I do love rice. Rice soaked in coconut cream at that! Sounds so delicious. hehe
It’s so terrible reading about the part of the forest that caught on fire all because of some careless and stupid druggies. It’s horrible. I am such a tree-hugger, as you may know, so that image of the burned trees is so sad! Bleh. Stupid stupid people. Argh.
You are so amazing at photography, you really inspire me to get out there and try something NEW. I love your HDR and all that stuff. I still have yet to figure out HOW you accomplish this (I am determined to read up on it!) — I absolutely love that photo of the towers. The deep contrast color of the sky is brilliant! It really makes the clouds POP!. And with the dark green trees and landscape.. It’s simply lovely. I really dig this one. :D
Wow, I don’t blame you for being outraged by the lack of meritocracy of you country. That is ridiculous. I believe that exists every where. It’s ugly, the lack of merit and fairness in the world. I don’t think it’ll ever change.. sadly.
Gah, a part of me is a little tired of hearing about the H1N1 ordeal. I understand it’s importance, most definitely.. but it seems as though the news stations, at least out here anyways, it’s literally scaring the crap out of people. I was one of those people. For being such a health and clean freak, I was a bit nervous about the outbreak. Especially after hearing there were cases breaking out near my town. It was terrifying. But after realizing that the number of deaths from the normal flu highly outnumbers the deaths of the swine flu.. I wasn’t so scared. I’m just going to continue to wash my hands and stay clean and hope I’ll be fine. :)
As for your new WP theme! You know I’m so anxiously waiting for it. I do admire your simplistic and clean style. =)
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I hope you love the font, heheh! I’m a big fan of sans-serifs – I know there are lots of lovely serif fonts out there too, but I prefer their sans-serif counterparts because they are so nice to look at. I love his illustrations, and this particular movie he did for Christmas. Too cute!
Does your dislike for seafood stem from the potentially raw, uncooked taste in badly prepared fishes? My grandma has got this fear (and dislike) too – she rarely eats seafood because of a horrible experience with a rather undercooked fish decades ago (bad habits, and also bad experiences, die hard, haha!). I don’t come across Americans who love rice very often, heheh. I’ve got this US friend who came to my university for a one-semester exchange programme and he was horrified that rice is actually a staple food in Singapore. He said unless rice is served with lots and lots of melted cheese, he won’t eat it (and for me, I wouldn’t eat rice with cheese lol!).
I’m a tree-hugger too! It kills me inside to see that people couldn’t care less about the environment – they squander resources from the paper we use to the water we drink. I’ve seen people spreading tissue paper all over the toilet seats because they “don’t want their butts to be in contact with the surface where another person’s butt came into contact”. Bleagh. And it always irks me that my brother thinks it’s perfectly fine to leave the water running when he’s soaping up, and that my parents think spraying the car with lots of water is the right way of getting it cleaned (I’d prefer them using buckets of water, which saves a lot more).
I’m not that good at photogrpahy, Trina! Your compliments are really too flattering *blushes* Regarding the HDRs, they are constructed from three separate photos taken at varying exposures – usually one at normal exposure as metered by your camera, the other two is usually +/- 1 step in exposure. Then one will use a program (there’s an automated function in Photoshop CS or CS2 onwards) to combine the different exposures together.
Alternatively, you can create a pseudo-HDR image from one single camera RAW file (check the settings in your Nikon, I think there’s an option to shoot in JPEG, in RAW, or in a combination of both – i.e. JPEG + RAW). Do note that shooting in RAW reduces the frames per second the camera is designed too – for my camera, the frame rate drops to around 1 frame per second if I shoot in JPEG + RAW format, while it’s usually around 2 ~ 2.5 frames per second in JPEG only. With the RAW file, you can pass it through an automated programme (I use Photomatix 3 Pro) where it will automatically create a pseudo-HDR image from the RAW file. The reason why it’s called a ‘pseudo’ HDR is because a true HDR is composited from 3 or more photos taken at varying exposures. For true HDRs, I rarely produce them now because RAW files are so much easier to handle and I don’t need a tripod (it’s kind of heavy to lug it all around the place).
Sadly, the world is never fair… but I would love to see changes made in the system such that merit has the highest, or at its best, complete weightage for scholarship consideration. There’s this debate going on about household income as part of the seleciton criteria, but I’m not going into that because it’s a really tricky topic to tackle – should scholarship be based on merit only, or based on merit with the pre-requisite that a family has to be less-financially capable enough to be incapable of supporting the further education of their kids? It’s quite a hot topic in Singapore, heh. But I believe both of us agree that race should not play any part in scholarship consideration. That’s just baloney.
People have to wise up to the fact that H1N1 is not as deadly as it seems – as the days pass by, the death rate falls to 0.82% (as I calculated from the officially released numbers on the papers) across the globe. People who are more susceptible to death after infection are usually those who are older, weaker or younger – the same for the common flu. Annually, many thousands die from complications arising from common flu, and nobody is alarmed about it. From my observation, I agree with you that the media has feasted too much on the scare – while making lots of money from sales, they’re also spreading the untrue, illogical fear behind the H1N1 pandermic.
p/s: I just got a design job for a friend, so my theme has to be postponed by at least 2 weeks before I can resume the work :P
Actually, I grew up as a vegetarian and only slowly have I been eating more and more kinds of meat. I just recently started eating chicken. I also eat some beef, sausage, ham and bacon. Anything else I probably won’t eat, lol. I actually tried a bite of fish last week for the first time! It was.. tasteless, lol. I have always been scared of fish so eating it.. bleh, I have trouble preparing my mind for that, haha.
As for rice! Oh, I love it. I could eat plain ole white rice. A little butter in rice is so yummy too. I can eat it just about any way, lol. I love starchy foods. =D
Chris and I try to do our part in taking care of our environment. Using less water, recycling, driving an economy-friendly car, etc. It infuriates me too when people are so careless about their environment. My younger siblings are the worst. They are so wasteful, will leave their lights and tvs on ALL the time and run water way longer than needed. I can understand your anger!
Thank you so much for explaining HDR photos to me! I can’t wait to try it. I absolutely love going through my Nikon manual because there are so many things I have yet to learn–like HDR! Speaking of lugging around a tripod and what not, what kind of bag do you have for your camera, if you have one at all? I am just curious. =D
Welp, Alana is in my lap refusing to let me type more, so I will have to end this here for now, haha. She rules over me, that little devil! She keeps edging her little hands towards my laptop, lol. Sneaky sneaky..
Congrats on the freelancing design job! Hope all goes well. I sure do miss making layouts and graphics for people. It’s such a stressful job though. =P
teddy teddy! how have you been lately??
well ive been busy, mid terms are still going on =( sigh.
ive got lotsa posts to catch up! but its all good, your posts are rather interesting anyway =D *that was a praise, so your welcomed.* haha.
seems like i still have my sense of humor with me in the midst of all the exams =D
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I’m doing fine, no worries! I’m getting busy too! Just received a freelancing design job, so will be updating sparsely for the next two weeks when I’m busy rushing for deadlines, haha.
Good luck for your midterm exams! All the best, heh.
woahhhhhhhhhh! a freelance design job?? for who?? omg thats so cool!
what type of design?? web design??
yucks you make me jealous, in a good way!
@WanCing: I think part of the 20% goes to financial considerations. They already have bumiputra scholarship offered by communities (which I don’t dispute, because communities are different from government), but at least I expect the government to be fair when it comes to race. Damnit, those numbskulls.
@med: Wow, you’re getting a diving certification this month? Cool! Take care and good luck! Which island you’re going to – is it Redang or Pangkor islands?
@nann: Haha, indeed. The way they argue resembles so much like the old couples (Opal and Earl) in the comic strip called Pickles. Your legs aren’t short at all, haha!
will be going to redang island :)
let u know how it goes when i am back alright