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: Adjustment Bureau

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Mark

It all started when Mel suggested that we try eating lunch at this “char siew” restaurant in Shah Alam at a restaurant called Spring Golden. During lunch we toyed with the idea of catching a movie that night and at 5pm I received a call from BK and he said that there were tickets for the “Adjustment Bureau”, I just said, “yes” without much thought.

Fast forward a couple of hours, the 7 of us went into the cinema and I had totally no expectations of the movie. I didn’t read the synopsis and I thought this was gonna be some Bourne Identity style type of movie. Only did I realise that after a couple of minutes into the show, the story line did become a little weird.

The movie centered around a character called David Norris (played by Matt Damon) who was running to be elected as senate. He was deemed as the youngest one ever to run for office and just before he was supposed to deliver his speech right after the polls were in, he met a girl whom he fell head over heels over. But because he was a high profile figure with a promising career in front of him, there are people who deemed that this relationship shouldn’t continue and are trying their all to keep them apart.

So basically, it sounds straight out of a bollywood plot. Rich boy from upper class meets girl of his dreams from lower class and everyone is trying to separate them.

Thats where it gets interesting. Trust me, it gets real interesting.

I shouldn’t really spoil it for those who have yet to watch it. I personally thought that it was rather entertaining and I would give it a 7/10 stars.

Greetings from Bangladesh!

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Mark

It’s currently day two now here at Bangladesh and although I really wanted to write a blog post whilst I was in the airport yesterday, the internet connection at LCCT was horrendous. Anyway its the same here in Bangladesh as well, I hardly get any internet connection so it will be brief posts and updates.

Anyhow, the experience here is a real eye opener! I have never seen so many mosquitoes before in my life. My first encounter with the swarm (yes, thats how many there were) was at the airport. I could literally feel them flying onto me and hitting me whilst I was walking about. Same goes for the place I was staying as well and my left hand alone had more than 10 bites. No worries, we bought (we meaning Andrew and I) a mosquito repellant as well as a diffuser to run whilst we are sleeping. The repellant was excellent, Mortein to the rescue! I sprayed the room earlier and I already see 13 dead mosquitoes lying on the floor.

So much for those bloodsuckers!

Anyhow, the shoot is gonna start soon so I better best prepare myself

A relaxing weekend

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Mark

Okay, I was just kidding myself. Yes, we had a long 3-day weekend and after two weeks of hectic living, it was good that I managed to get some rest. Note that I just said “some” instead of a good rest. Anyway, Friday itself wasn’t exactly a rest day. I was supposed to collect my car on Friday and then head down to Malacca with the peeps for a day trip but alas, I was utterly disappointed when the dealer messed up my registration hence there is yet another delay.

Nevertheless, the trip must go on so we headed down to Malacca for some great food (although I hardly know the various spots for eating even though I was born in Malacca and have traveled there countless of times). The trip down there was eventful as it is, especially if you like travelling in a moving sauna

First stop of the day, Seremban for some good ole beef noodles and loads of sugar cane with lemon (yes, that is my new favourite drink!). The beef noodles were good as well and it was starchy as hell.

Traffic there was totally insane, everyone in Singapore decided to check out what Malacca has to offer as well. The meals started with the coconut shake off Klebang, then for some chicken rice balls in Jonker, loads of cookies and pineapple tarts and ending it with some crepe from Nadeje. So much for my dieting plans.

Saturday itself was relaxing with loads of sleep and SC2 and ending it with dinner with some old uni mates.

Spent more time in Ikea finding stuff for the new place, I am constantly finding new things to buy, or basically more things to get such as a wall clock and a dish drainer and other smaller items which we might have missed out initially. Also it was MW’s birthday as well so we had a drink with her as well at Sid’s TTDI.

I realised that a snake bite black can definitely keep me awake because I couldn’t sleep till 3am this morning. Was busy fiddling with the new Sim City Deluxe game which I bought on iTunes. Although the game was meant for the iPhone but because unlike my mum who has the new iPhone 4, I am still using my older one, hence it gets slow but playing the game on the iPad is just fantastic!

Here’s to a great week to everyone out there!

Proposal Ideas

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Mark

For the past couple of weeks, there have been so many activities that went on. First, I had gotten married, then tried moving into our new place at the same time (which we are still moving in and getting things sorted out) as well as flying off on our honeymoon and straight back to work. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend getting married and trying to move into your new place at the same time!

One of the things which I really would like to thank both Alex and Grace was this amazing video which they helped me and Munz to put together as well as film, edit and set up and was shown during the wedding dinner

Now I can definitely help those of you out there if you want more and more “fun” proposal ideas and how this post ties back to the title of “Proposal Ideas” :P

But in case you do find this amusing, here are some of the reasons why I decided surprise Mun Tzin this way.

Marriage has already been a discussion point so doing anything overly romantic will definitely make her suspect
If I bring her for a nice dinner she would suspect (goes to show how often I bring her for nice dinners)
I knew if I did something photography related, she really wouldn’t suspect a thing (and I was right!)

Here are some funny things that happened during the real proposal,

Munz bought the flowers that I eventually gave to her, it was so funny when she was commenting about the flowers and she kept asking me why was I the one getting flowers.
She accidentally spilled some water on the wrapping which she spent 20 minutes trying to make the bouquet look presentable for my friend BK.
The restaurant I booked screwed up my booking hence we ended up at a totally different place. Lesson: Make sure you triple confirm your booking with the restaurant.

Anyway for the full story of my wedding, head on over here for Grace’s view of things

T-minus 1 Day

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Mark

Wow its been a while since my last blog post. I guess time really does fly with so many things to do. A new beginning starts for me tomorrow, so until then, it will be busy busy busy for me.

One of the things that has kept me busy is getting my new place ready. So far the contractors have done quite a good job and what’s left are some of the more minor stuff.

Here are some of the stuff they have already completed.

Shot both these images with my trusty iPhone 3Gs. First one using an app called Pro HDR.

The Challenge Has Begun

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Mark

A couple of days ago, BK threw this idea at me and asked me whether I wanted to participate in the challenge or not. BK being BK, always talk in a cryptic slang and if you sat next to us listening or eavesdropping, chances are you might get more confused than informed. Anyhow, the challenge was something in line with the image below.

file 1 Biggest Loser logo hi The Challenge Has Begun

That’s right, a couple of us are going to be competing over a two month period on who loses the most amount of weight percentage and if you were following my tweets last night, the weigh-in session started last night. I took this shot with my iPhone and my official weigh-in was in fact 102.2kg and not the one shown below. The added weight was probably the weight of my iPhone in my hand.

Yes, that is my weight in kilos!

So by now, you might have guessed what the challenge might be but if you are as equally blur as some people, it is about a group of friends chipping some dough into a pool and whoever loses the most weight percentage over an 8-week period keeps it all.

My target is to try and achieve a 10-12% weight loss which would bring my weight down to 90 kilos. That is a lot but I am determined to achieve that with a mixture of eating right and less (no puking out my food!) as well as regular exercising and trips to the gym.

Truth be told, the idea of this challenge started from LY and most of the action will be blogged on her blog here. I will also update my blog periodically on this challenge and use the tag “weight challenge” for all related posts.

Hope I win

Bill Gate’s Advice to High School Students

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Mark

It’s not very often that I receive emails such as this but this time I received it from within my organization which I think also makes a bit of sense. Why do I say that is because there seems to be a trend going now (from my personal observation) that the younger generation seem to want more for less. Heck, I even admit it that I definitely fall into that category and have wayward dreams of having it all whilst floating on cloud 9, but only to fall back onto the hard floor of reality.

(Image source)

I am digressing. The fact of the matter is, Bill Gates went to a high school and gave this piece of advice to them. Frankly, I am not too sure whether it is authentic or whether he actually said those words but hey, it made sense to me. The comments in red are by me.

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. (I guess this advice was given before a mobile phone was created?)

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. (The same should be for serving food, cleaning toilets, sweeping the roads)

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life.. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs..(reminds me of Friends, haha!)

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
These rules definitely are not easy to swallow but so is medicine and it’s intention is to heal you. The same goes for advice, either we take it with open minds and a willing heart or we can shun away from it, there is no right or wrong in that.

How do you recuperate?

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Mark

After a grueling time throughout yesterday’s wedding shoot, I was just asking myself how does one recuperate from a long day’s work? That got to both me and Grace talking about those photographers who shoot two to three weddings in a row.

Now the story began yesterday when I was up very early for a shoot in Puchong. I dragged myself out of bed at 5ish and reached the groom’s place before 6.30am. By that time I was already wishing that I had slept earlier the night before but thanks to some printer problems, that kept me up till way past midnight. Anyway the shoot went on until about 2pm in the afternoon so that would mean we have already shot for 8 hours non-stop.

During the morning shoot where we were shooting at the indian temple in Shah Alam, we had to go about barefoot and walk around barefooted on the tarred road which was riddled with small pebbles and stones (extremely painful experience). And not to also mention that it was broad daylight and the road was definitely heated up!

By the time I got back home after the shoot, I was completely wiped out and my feet were aching! I just couldn’t help but take a long and refreshing cold shower and rest as much.

Now the question comes to mind, how do you recuperate from a long shoot?

I know some photographers tend to take power naps.

Others might go for foot massages.

Some eat extra energy bars.

Anyone knows a quick and easy way to recuperate some of that lost energy and aching feet? If you do know, please write them down in the comment section.

Note: This question is open to all, not just those in the photography line

Image by Maggie Smith – source

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Mark

I would like to wish everyone a very Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year for this upcoming year of the Tiger. May the year of the Tiger be a roaring year ahead for you and your loved ones.

For those who are traveling, I bid you all a safe journey to your hometowns. Its times like this where caution is the utmost importance.

I am here in Malacca as usual celebrating the Chinese New Year so if you all are about the Malacca area, do let me know and we can catch up

Mark Leo Dot Net

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

Tag Archives: Personal