Top Gear, no more?

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Mark

I was so looking forward to a near season of Top Gear but alas, there will be no more episodes of Top Gear this year (except for the Christmas special). There were rumours of it flying about but Jeremy Clarkson himself has confirmed that via his Twitter account.

Sunday night is full of fat people singing

Personally over the past 3 seasons I felt as if they are repeating their same stunts over and over again that it has become cliché. Although I loved the India special which of course drew a lot of flack, I would definitely support if they did a Malaysia version since they covered Vietnam and India already. I fear if they tried riding their bikes here in Malaysia, they might get knocked down instead.

So it looks like fans will have to wait till 2013 before the next season of Top Gear is released.

Renovation Renovation Renovation

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Mark

The title says it all, if someone were to ask me what have I been doing with my free time lately, my answer is being tied up with renovations. Went to HomeDec 2012 last weekend and also during lunch time as well to check out accessories and good deals on furniture.

Then over the past two weeks, I have visited various tile shops to choose tiles for the house as well. Choosing tiles hasn’t been easy, there are so many varieties, colours to choose from, brands and designs. All of these choices to make and then trying to see if it fits into my budget. From floor tiles, wall tiles, table top tiles, decorative panels and even more, it was a fun process although at times I might have been a little edgy but I blame that to lack of sleep rather than the process of choosing tiles.

Some of the shops that I visited included the Niro showroom near 3-2 Square, the Guocera showroow (Wisma Kemajuan) opposite Niro near 3-2 Square, Buimaco at Taman Megah, Hoover at Section 17 located at the same row as Kanna Curry House, Super Ceramic at Jalan 222, and Sing Mee at Jalan Penchala off Jalan Tandang. Personally I would say if you were a first time tile hunter, just head straight to Sing Mee and you can probably find your tiles there. I also visited Feruni and Better Living at their HomeDec booths but didn’t like some of the tiles they had on show there.

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Living Room

Overall, I stuck with 2×2 tiles for the living room, dining room and dry kitchen. I chose 2×1 tiles for the wet kitchen floor and 1×1.5 tiles for the kitchen wall. The toilets will be using a mixture of 2×1 tiles, 1×1.5 tiles and 1×1 tiles. Will snap pictures of them once they have been laid out.

With the house design, I have decided that I wanted a more spacious area for my living room and dining room. That was achieved by knocking the wall previously separating the kitchen and the living room.

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Look ma, no more parquet flooring!

Another option I wanted was to remove the older parquet flooring and replace it with other types of flooring. From laminated flooring, vinyl flooring, hard wood and even engineered wood, I found that hard wood was my preferred choice. Hard wood is nice but it takes a long time (9 weeks) to get it all laid and cured.

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Laying out the aircon points and piping

Learnt some interesting tips as well, once the wiring and cables have been laid, take a picture of them so that the next time when you want to do a bit of drilling or knock in some nails to hang a picture, you would know where the wires are located. Thanks for the tip guys!

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Huge dumping site on my front porch

After experiencing fantastic water pressure at hotels, I really want to have the same pressure for my house especially since I will be using a rain shower head. Looks like I will be hunting for the water pump as well as the water heater for the house this weekend.

I really have to thank my parents for being so supportive and helpful with the house renovation as well as checking up with the contractors. Definitely wouldn’t be able to progress this far at all without their help! Thanks Mum and dad!

The Megane RS

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Mark

Over last weekend, I managed to get an opportunity to shoot this beautiful car during an automotive workshop organized by Live Life Drive magazine. The entire workshop was held at the new Renault showroom over at Section 13. There were about 13 participants in total (I think) and most of the time, we never really had our alone time with the car.

Hence the lack of interior shots as well as the white Megane RS which was in the showroom itself. The instructor was Sherman who guided us through from shooting cars in an outdoor location, what are some of the tips that we needed to be aware of.

After that, we moved into the showroom where Sherman then explained to us about the things to watch out and what to be aware off especially when shooting cars in the showroom itself as well as in an indoor location.

In between shoots, I managed to have a chat with Sherman about shooting cars and what I thought about it. He did give me some insight about shooting cars and I learned that cars alone are as much as shooting a portrait session. Instead of looking at the couples as just another human being, we tend to learn more about them, find out their history, what their likes and dislikes are in order to capture “them”. The same goes for cars, the history behind the car, what car is it, what does the car represent.

At the beginning of the workshop, the participants were also informed that there will be a winning shot competition where each participant would submit their best photo. I took this time as a challenge and made a complete fool of myself because I shot it RAW and forgot to change it to JPEG. Another surprise was that the image was going to be straight from camera so there was no Photoshop manipulation.

After shooting in the showroom, we moved on towards the back of the showroom where a Renault Koleos was waiting for us to photograph as well as the yellow Megane RS.

At the end of the day, this was the image I submitted.

Although the image I posted up here was a slightly touched up version as the original image had a bit of a yellow hose which was left on the ground where I cloned it out.

Photo credit: Live Life Drive Magazine

Here was a photo of my shot being displayed on the projector during the end of the workshop and when the judges were giving their comments.

A little bit of technical stuff here, I shot mainly with a Canon 5D Mk2 in full RAW. I used mostly the 17-40mm F4 lens throughout the shoot with the occasional change to the 50mm. I wanted to use the 70-200mm lens but couldn’t get the right angle and shot that I wanted. All of the photos were shot in natural light, placement of the cars was done by the showroom guy so even if I wanted the car at a different angle, I couldn’t.

At the end, I was glad as my photo was selected as one of the top 5, woohoo!

Photo credit: Live Life Drive Magazine

Thanks to that win, I received a small goody bag and of course a big boost in terms of confidence. I did recall that one of my projects last year was to start shooting more automotive themed shoots so this was one of my initiatives. Can’t wait to shoot even more cars especially if the opportunity arises!

Do check out some of my shots below.

More photos and information about the workshop is available here.
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Twenty Twelve, what its like so far

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Mark

It is almost the end of the first quarter in 2012 and this year seems to be looking fairly interesting. One of them mainly is that I will be renovating my house and I have been trying to figure out how to budget and juggle the budget so that I don’t blow everything away. I have already received the 1st quotation on the heavy work that needs to be done and it really didn’t leave me much to work with in terms of my initial budget.

I thank God for my mum and her slew of various contractors that I can leverage off otherwise things might just be too costly. Heck, it was an adventure driving deep into Klang just looking at a timber factory there to negotiate a good deal for some hardwood merbau flooring. Thanks to more recommendation, I have a few more leads on floor tiles and then I can start focusing on kitchen fittings and toilet fittings.

Diablo III has been slated for a launch sometime this year, although it might get a lot of people very excited about it, I kind of lost interest in the game. Heck, I even started to lose interest of Starcraft II even though I have been waiting for more than a year before their so called “expansion” would be released. If they keep on delaying all of their games, I really might just completely lose interest in it.

Also last weekend was the first time I played at the golf course for 2012. Decided to head back to the UPM golf course (University Pertanian Malaysia) since all of us haven’t played golf in a long while. Thankfully there wasn’t a crowd there on Sunday and we managed to play at our own pace. That game also marked my first use of my new R9 driver which I managed to “steal” last year. Definitely not an easy driver to use thanks to its super steep head angle. But if you hit a good shot with it, the ball just flies. Speaking of flying balls, I think I lost about 9 balls that day. Thanks to super long grass, huge ponds by the fairway and of course the dead dried leaves which litters the fairway (yes, fairway and not the rough!). Hope to play better in our next game.

The Volkswagen Club managed to pass 2500 members in the forum which I think was an awesome milestone. I guess with the launch of more VW models as well as the upcoming CKD Passat at lower prices, I can definitely foresee more and more Malaysians buying into the brand. Of course there were the usual rumour mills and reports that Proton was going to rebadge the VW Polo. I think it would be a good strategy for Proton as well as VW but DRB HICOM has already denied that so there goes that theory.

There hasn’t really been any new TV series, I am still waiting for Game of Thrones Season 2 to start and I think the only TV Series which I am actually really following is How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, Modern Family and of course, Spartacus: Vengeance.

In terms of movies, I definitely can’t wait for the Avengers. Other than that, there really isn’t any other movie that I am looking forward to. Not too sure why but maybe perhaps there hasn’t been any real hype for other movies.

Apple has released their new iPad, seems like a good upgrade for me since my iPad 1 is really suffering in terms of speed and I can hardly watch any HD movies on it thanks to its slow processor. This time around, I shall get the 64Gb non 3G version as I really hardly require the 3G data.

In the tech world, it’s definitely tough especially if you are the CEO of HP and have to answer questions by shareholders such as, “Why HP isn’t like Apple?“. Definitely a high reach for even a giant like HP to achieve but it all takes is a visionary within the firm to push things through. Focus on the key business driver and be fantastic with it. Anyway I am just ranting away.

More to come in 2012!

I am still alive!

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Mark

Yes, this blog is still not dead yet. Why? That’s because I am alive and have been a little busy. Busy with work, busy with interviews (conducting them), busy with more work, busy with renovation plans, busy with Munz’s new business (I’ll talk more about that later) and have been sick lately. Perhaps I haven’t been drinking enough water.

In pops an email, automated as it seems, I was just about to trash it when I skimmed through the contents and decided that hey, it was something interesting. It was the newsletter for the upcoming KL Marathon and I am really contemplating running the 10km run. That means it would definitely force me to start training up for the run due in June. This might just be the push I need to lose some much needed weight. So much so that my nickname amongst the VW club members is now “Touareg“.

So what else has kept me busy? Well I started my renovation plans already and am still trying to finalize some of the layout and design ideas with my ID. The hardest thing I must say is trying to stick within budget and I haven’t even included in the furnishings and fittings! Why must it be so difficult! Also the target to move in is about mid year so yeah, that’s gonna be tight deadline to meet.

I mentioned Munz’s new business earlier and I am proud to present “Milestones.my“. Milestones is basically her entrée into the wedding planning business and last weekend was her first customer’s wedding which was held in Ipoh. So practically my entire weekend was spent in Ipoh helping her out. Do check out her website ok? Especially those of you who are thinking about getting married

Anyway, I haven’t had much time to shoot and recently Canon also released their 5D Mk3. On paper the specs show a lot of improvement. But until I try it out with my own hands and test shoot it especially with the F1.2 lenses, then only will I consider that camera. Otherwise I would be more than happy to stick with my Canon 5D Mk2. I really want to take more photos of cars but finding a free weekend would be quite tough!

Cameron Highlands

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Mark

A couple of weeks ago, a bunch of us from the Volkswagen Malaysia Club embarked on a weekend holiday at Cameron Highlands. We managed to book a bungalow at Tanah Rata which was located very close to the bus station. In total there were about 30 of us but not all of us squeezed into the bungalow.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I missed the convoy heading up to Camerons on Friday afternoon so I decided to take a drive up at night. Thanks to heavy rain, the journey was not an easy one. Besides having to avoid heavy traffic coming out of the Klang Valley, I am really thankful for the Guthrie highway which provided me an easy avenue out of the NKVE and straight towards Rawang. I initially wanted to stop at the Rawang rest area to fuel up and grab a quick dinner but thanks to the hordes of people camping there waiting for the rain to subside, I decided to continue on ahead.

By the time I reached Tapah, the rain had already subsided. After a quick bite at KFC, we then departed onwards to Simpang Pulai. I decided to try out the new route up to Camerons, instead of taking the usual route through Tapah, there has been a lot of reported landslides on the old route through Ringlet.

The new route via Simpang Pulai is a much safer route especially if you are travelling at night. The roads are newer and the uphill roads have dual lanes at quite a fair bit of points. Do note that the route is very winding so if you are going on a spirited drive especially at night, make sure you use your high beam lights throughout the drive. There are a number of very misleading sharp corners. Traffic up this route wasn’t that heavy, I think I only encountered like 4 trucks on the way up.

This route will bring you through Brinchang and then towards Tanah Rata.

Upon reaching at our destination at Tanah Rata, a quick shower and a quick change and I was ready to join the gang for some “games”, which involved cards, and lots of yawning away. Heck it was already 3am at night!

The next day we went out for scones and tea at the Lord’s Cafe. Now if anyone asks where are the best scones in Cameron Highlands, I would definitely say, “The Lord’s Cafe” at Tanah Rata. The jam that came with the scones were heavenly and I can definitely say that we all enjoyed ourselves at the place and even some of us brought back a huge number of scones for loved ones.

After scones we had more food by sipping tea at the Cameronian Valley and enjoying the view. None of us wanted to drive towards the Boh Tea plantation especially since we had so many owners with lowered rides and none of us brought a Touareg!

When night came, we started it all off with a barbecue and chit-chat which went on all the way till late at night.

The one thing I never did like about Camerons is that the traffic there is really crazy, because of the one way in and one way out, whenever we did pass Brinchang, we would get stuck in insane traffic. Heck on the way back, I was stuck for 40 minutes and over that 40 minutes I probably drove about 100m. I made a quick u-turn and then used the older Tanah Rata route back home. Overall it was a fun trip up Camerons and definitely would love to do it again when I have the time!

Happy New Year everyone!

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Mark

I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year! 2011 came and gone and 2012 has a lot more to offer.

New plans and new focus is my target this year, not so much on resolutions because I know I tend to break all of them but I will try my best this year.

They include the usual, work, loosing weight, exercising, reading more, picking up new skills, shooting new things and travelling.

Chinese New Year as well is also very close by, just the other day I walked into the local supermarket only to have Christmas music playing at the entrance and Chinese New Year music playing at the check out counter.

Have a great year ahead!

Perception versus Reality

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Mark

So do you think that photographer’s lead a very nice and high flying life? I guess the Duck does tell a different story

30 lbs by Thirty – Project 30

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Mark

I hardly ever blogged about my birthday but this time I decided to write a little bit about that. You see, I turn 30 (yes the big three oh) in a couple of months time, less than 3 months to be a little bit more precise. A friend of mine once told me that when he turned 29, he embarked on a journey to complete a set a tasks for him to complete by the time he hit 30. That sort of gotten the clogs in my brain working a little while and I decided that I should embark on a similar journey.

To lose 30 pounds (lbs) by the time I am 30 years old.

Well of course the whole idea of losing weight is something I have been procrastinating and the final nail hit the coffin when my insurance agent informed me that because of my current weight, I got to pay an extra loaded premium.

At this time, I weigh about 107 kg. So my target weight to reach by the time I am 30 next year in February would be 93 kg (I am just rounding up). Hopefully by then, my pants/shirts (about 70% of my clothes) would have fit me better.

What I have installed for me would be to:

Diet – cut down on fast food completely, drink more water, eat less carbs especially at night and eat more fruits instead
Exercise – swim a little bit more at the swimming pool at my apartments, reschedule my night teleconferences and go for badminton!
Lifestyle – Get more sleep in order to let my body process the sugars in me

Let’s see if I can keep up with this project, Project 30!

Movie Review: The Adventures of Tintin

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Mark

Having bought a model ship, the Unicorn, for a pound off a market stall Tintin is initially puzzled that the sinister Mr. Sakharine should be so eager to buy it from him, resorting to murder and kidnapping Tintin – accompanied by his marvellous dog Snowy – to join him and his gang as they sail to Morocco on an old cargo ship. Sakharine has bribed the crew to revolt against the ship’s master, drunken Captain Haddock, but Tintin, Snowy and Haddock escape, arriving in Morocco at the court of a sheikh, who also has a model of the Unicorn. Haddock tells Tintin that over three hundred years earlier his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock was forced to scuttle the original Unicorn when attacked by a piratical forebear of Sakharine but he managed to save his treasure and provide clues to its location in three separate scrolls, all of which were secreted in models of the Unicorn

I remember when I was young, whenever I got sick, my mum would always cheer me up by bringing me to the bookstore and getting me a Tintin comic book. Yes, back in those days, comics such as Tintin and Asterix would fill my time tremendously and I really did enjoy reading them. Of course these were the days before computers and computer games.

The moment when I heard that a movie was coming out about Tintin, I was equally excited. Especially when it was coming from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson! And to top it off, it was in 3D as well. From the moment I bought the tickets via my GSC iPhone app, queueing up for snacks at the counter and entering the cinema, I was totally on my edge, thrilled with excitement and joys.

And the movie doesn’t disappoint! What actually disappointed me was that there weren’t that many people who were interested in Tintin. I think there were only 8 people in total in the entire cinema.

Based upon the story of the 1st book, The Secret of the Unicorn, the movie goes through the story well and shows how Tintin meets Captain Haddock where the two of them will eventually start off on an exciting journey of adventures and thrills.

Overall the movie was done quite well and the CGI graphics were nice. I love how that the entire series is depicted in the old days and how funny the Thompson and Thomson idiotic Scotland Yard policemen were played as well.

The movie itself had a star in the form of James Bond actor, Daniel Craig who played the voice of Red Rackham/Ivanovich Sakharine. Jamie Bell did play a good job as Tintin

Overall I would rate this movie a good 8/10

It even garnered a good 7.8/10 on IMDB

Mark Leo Dot Net

Loving all things photography, tech, gadgets, Apple and cars