September 2021

Every month went like a rocket, times do flies and yet I am still here trying to jot down some fleeting thoughts at least once a month.

September is weird, I was a close contact to a confirmed covid case, she was completely fine when I saw her and a day later she fell extremely sick and can barely do anything because she was so out of breath, it just proved how powerful this virus is, I then went onto a 7 days home quarantine and a swab test follow that, luckily it was negative. Entering this year thinking that I will never get some unknown fluid aka vaccine injected into my body (yes I was an anti-vax for a bit) and now not only have I got the first shot I am even fully vaccinated now. Just need to trust science at least once and also I need to get my normal life back.

August

My work from home life ends along with the end of the Tokyo Olympics, sports are great. With a very little time difference between here and Tokyo, I can enjoy almost all of the games through live broadcast. Thank you to Japan for pulling up this great event. Hope you see it

Vaccinations appointment came in last week and in a few day’s time, I’m going to get my first dose, can’t wait for myself to get fully vaccinated so that I can see my friends again.

A lot of self-reflection and self-improvement have been done in the previous lockdown. I’m still waiting for the camera lab to open again so that I can get my film developed. Can’t wait to see how will my photo turned out as I’m now more familiar with the camera that I bought 4~5 years ago.

Hope everything go well.

Much later on

Approaching the end of July, it will mean that I have been working from home for two months now. The never-ending nation lockdown, it makes me realized how important for a person to have a routine. Working from home just made things all mashed up together, you get lost in time and days.

I have been thinking about one of my internet friends, he lived in Hong Kong. He used to send me postcards wherever he went and he told me he will be a sailor and will tour the world while living on a ship. He posted a lot of sarcasm stuff towards (_) government and we talked sometimes. One day, I realized I haven’t been seeing him posting for a while, when I looked back to our chat window, his account is gone, it’s either he deactivated his account or his account got deleted. I looked for the postcards he sent me, he never wrote a return address, all the leads I have of him lead to a dead end. I hope he’s still alive and doing good wherever he and his cats are right now. Actually been thinking about writing this for a while and I finally figured out how.

Starting to picking back up my Korean learning plan, I’ve been putting it off for a while due to work and stuff. In lockdown I got plenty of time at home and don’t really want to do any handcrafting work, might as well make my brain and intellectual do some work. I’m so glad that I grew up speaking Chinese and my Chinese is actually pretty solid, in Korean there’s 59% (based on google) vocabulary comes from the Chinese words, so while I memorized the Korean vocabulary it will make it less hard for me to link and connect the word in Chinese to make it easier for my brain to absorb, grammar is a whole new world that I’m exploring right now.

I missed going outside and taking pictures, looking back to my phone photo gallery, I don’t have many photos, I used to have a great distaste for taking pictures of everything that I do OR everywhere that I went in the past, and I’m mad regret for not doing that back then.

The cases number in my country hasn’t gone down since the lock down and the perpetually locked down feels more and more like hell. August is approaching, where does the time go?

Party

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Small gathering is cozy and nice. Can’t wait to get back out there. Today is the 14525436543 in locked down.

Parting season

With the last minute lockdown announced came a very abrupt end, though the possibility was always crawling under everyone skin. With the outbreak, for the past few weeks we were as if in a marathon race, racing with Covid and still the pandemic gets the best of this country and every plan needs to be re-adjust which is totally sucks.

Those times we spent hiding or fighting against something intangible could’ve been use to create memories but instead some people had became a memory to others. My heart breaks every time when I think of this.

Where did it came from? How long will it stay? When will this end? Why? Why? Why? Endless questions and painful reality. Just gotta embrace it because there’s no other way.

We all needs to chill

Pun intended.

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Go out and chill if you can, stay home and be chill when you are not allowed to go out. Either way, just chill

I wanted to capture the amazing color transition of my friend’s hair but then I remembered I got a B&W film inside of my film camera, it was gold and the tail was violet, amazing. The stay was amazing from the BnB to the view, the cityscape and the tranquility at night (mostly thanks to CO-VID), this film makes the picture look like it was jumped out from the 50s, 60s movie we saw but it’s not. The flash clashes with the natural lighting, makes the picture looks as if it was captured under the gloomy weather but it’s actually not, it was captured during the sunset and also when the sunrise

I used to take pictures with what’s the normal exposure, what’s the perfect framing and all that “photographer” things in my mind but then the picture looks neither what I had in my mind nor what I like, there’s no ME inside but now I am just doing what I like and I feel liberated.

Photo taken on Konica K-mini with Shanghai GP3 400

Enjoy your life; Take risk!

I spend this year’s birthday with my dearest friend and I had a great one, thank you two for the gift and the flower, words cannot express how happy I am about the nice surprise.

I once brainwashed by people telling me we will stop making rEAl friend the moment we stepped out of school and there will be no real friendship forged in the workplace and your high school friend(S) will be the best best friend you will have throughout your entire life, while part of it was later proved true most of the thing they told me was just based on their own experience and ignoring the fact that people are different and environment changed and people thinking evolved. Shits happened at my workplace and I couldn’t remember how many times that I turned to my friend at work place for help, support, and comfort, I am just grateful that I have people by my side.

Happy belated birthday to myself.

Recording memories

Just got my film roll back and the result is… hardly acceptable (the problem lies wholly in me). I will share some of it in this blog soon, just need some time to sort it out and post-edit it a little bit, maybe some light and dark and pulls away some grain.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not a black and white film person and I am always indoors, hardly go outside, let alone the things that happening now which stop more of us from taste the natural. Thinking of selling my Konica camera point and shoot away, I think the camera will fit more partygoer because of the always-on-can’t-turn-off flashlight, it will do well with parties and fits the personality well with a partygoer. The flash ruined all the things for me.

Sometimes having too many cameras will distract you from doing the right thing because most of the time you have already spent it on deciding which camera to use. When I first started out shooting film, I brought 3 camera to a 5 day 4 night trip (2 points and shoot camera and 1 SLR camera, and many rolls of film and spare batteries) I was THAT passionate and dedicated, and when I go to Korea I bring neither of the film cameras because I got OMD EM10 Mark 3 for that trip.

I was thinking of taking photo and recording at the same time and I got kind of overwhelmed and frustrated about that because wanting to do all will often times result done nothing which in my case it is kind of truth.

I also went to the film lab opening last weekend, it is so amazing to see so many filmography shooter in one space, I am amazed! And most importantly, I don’t need to mail my rolls far to get it develop anymore and I don’t need to shop online for film roll anymore to which I remember when I first started out I couldn’t find any in my local area.

So I’ve decided, for the upcoming trip, I am just going to bring my cellphone and 1 SLR camera, just one! And shooting sometimes at night… it will be challenging… for sure.

Time passed really fast when you hit 25 years old. Was through with one hectic Monday and got the Tuesday as a public holiday for our state, so I spend it as a recuperating day to recover from the chaos I’ve just gone through on the day before.

Started the next day (Wednesday) with ungrateful people ranting about the free service he has got. Sometimes you just can’t use the compassionate heart you have for others to some specific people. Having to put up with these things on an almost daily basis drained me, I just wished people have more gratitude.

If you are a long-time visitor of my blog, you will know that I have mentioned more than one time that English is not my first language, I speak Mandarin growing up hence grammar error in some of my posts. I can handle it if communicating in the second language with people on daily basis but not on the day I do excessively, I can still handle it but it will reach a point that my brain just stops functioning, I am still receiving but I just can’t convey the message anymore. Those who speak more than one language will resonate with me. But I am and always still, trying my best.

11F Art week

I sat down and opened my computer and want to write something but I wrote nothing instead. I go on YouTube, watched some videos from my favorite YouTuber, and came back here to jot down my thought.

I met with a friend last weekend, I haven’t seen her for half a year now because of the MCO, she’s always my best buddy to hang around the art event in this city. She’s moving her online business to offline as well with a physical store open which I’m really excited and happy for her.

I got a hibiscus tattoo on the outer side of my left arm I have been thinking of doing it for months now which I loved so much. I love the flower language of hibiscus, It just happens to be our national flower but I’m not doing it because of my love for this country.

The event was pretty fun, I didn’t take many pictures as there’s already many on the internet, I enjoyed the time hanging out with my friends and out at night. Talking to different people is always fun, communicating is fun. And also received some shocking news, underneath a calm big sea are usually a catastrophe in making. What are we to say?

Reading reading I will try to do more reading, the spiritual me needs nutrition. There are so many things that I wanted to do but as always, so little time.

I love reading news recently, all types of news though some news unsettling me. Knowledge is power so do knowing things that going on around the world.

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