Crazy times in the Lion City

To my utter shock (and it was quite a disorienting feeling) I actually won the first prize (Or was it second? Who cares?) at the Office Dinner Dance raffle draw, a return air ticket to the Singha Pura, the Lion City (More commonly known as Singapore). It did, however, come with conditions, the most relevant one said "Must be claimed in 4 weeks" or some cock like that. That wasn't happening in the middle of a busy time at office and during the Christmas season! Besides, my passport had expired.
But this is Sri Lanka and times are flexible things. After fuddling around, I asked if they could set up the trip in April (wanted to catch a long weekend so I wouldn't need to take time off from work). Further fuddling (Renewed the passport) and fuddling onwards, the office travel co-ordinators (who kindly took care of the details with the travel agency ppl) calls me up on Friday. I had asked for the tickets to be arranged in such a way so I could leave Friday night or Saturday early morning and come back on Monday evening (long weekend so Monday was an off-day) so I could come back for work on Tuesday. And on the said Friday, when I had given up hope of going, they called and said there is a ticket available on a flight leaving at midnight on Cathay, do I want it? After picking my jaw up off the floor, I decided to go for it.Had a few issues, like packing and figuring out lodging, but luckily I was in contact with my buddy Dilesh, who is a student at the NUS and said I could stay with him in his flat. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I was able to get the info out to him that I was coming after all, and get the address from him, and bothered Nadisha into going home an hour earlier than than the shuttles and giving me a ride home in order to get packed. Of course, fun things happen when you pack in a hurry, which meant I went to Singapore with my laptop and phone, but without my laptop and phone charger :Major FacePalm: Also, even tho I asked for my phone to have sms roaming turned on when I went, it never worked all the while I was there. But I remembered all my camera gear, which was very important! Specially coz it took up most of my hand luggage space. If anyone thought I was travelling to Singapore without my photogear, they are flat out crazy.

I was somewhat sleep deprived, since I had to be at the airport by about 9 to make the midnight flight (security) and the flight got delayed somewhat (apparently not just a Sri Lankan Airlines problem) and I was somewhat unsuccessful trying to sleep on the plane despite trying (Economy class sucks). But the food was good and I think I managed about an hour of sleep in the three hour flight. And watched some old episodes of Top Gear on the in-flight entertainment.
Anyhoo, landed, got my bags, called Dilesh from a payphone, found a taxi and headed off. The taxi dude apparently wasn't familiar with the area we were headed too. Google maps to the rescue fortunately! Got there with minimum fuss, and apparently Dilesh sleeps late on weekends coz he hadn't had breakfast. Which was lucky for me coz it meant I had company for breakfast.

I had a plan for this trip. Day one, zoo. Day two, Jurong Bird Park. Day three, shopping and head back home. However, this not bringing my phone charger (which was plugged into a power outlet at office) changed plans a bit. Decided to go and buy a phone first (on my budgeted todo list) and then head to the zoo. So got directions and how to use Singapores public transport system from Dilesh (who very fortuneately had a spare swipe card that let me use the system) and went up to the harbourfront station to make sure I got the hang of it.

So off I went to the specified station and found the famous Mustafa's looking for a phone. Not an experience I wanna repeat. The most "don't care" sales staff ever. Obviously don't work for commission. But somehow picked up a LG GW620. Not sure if its supposed to not have a CD, but mine came with a CD from some kinda Singaporean teeny bopper pop duo. Also didn't realise that the thing came with a 2Gb memory card and that damn fool salesman didn't tell me so I ended up buying another 8gb mem card.
Anyway, trying to come outta there, I got lost. I'm pretty sure I went under the street to the building on the other side of the road and came out that way. While wandering around trying to find the train station, I found another funky mall, advertised as the first eco mall or something. So since it was there and it was lunch, thought I'd get something to eat. It was ... interesting. There were lots of unidentified meats. Language barrier was a bit of an issue :) But finally settled one some duck rice thing. The conclusion is that chicken tastes better.
Anyway, found the station again, and proceeded upto Ang Mo Kio, where I was supposed to catch a bus to the zoo. Luckily, as I exited the station, I found a zoo arranged shuttle that carts people to the zoo from the station, and was about to leave, so I caught that.
Singapore Zoo is a funky place. Thanks to my jaunt around Mustafa's I didn't really get the time to do the full tour, so I really need to go back. Also the fact that I obsessed at the white tiger enclosure and spent an hour at the Elephant show didn't help. Also just missed the Polar Bear show, got there just as it was wrapping up. :( But still, got a few nice photos. That Lion cage was crazy, there is a place that people can view the Lions from that is basically just a glass seperating the cats from the people. Which doesn't look particularly thick. I shudder to think what will happen if a 500lbs lion decided to test its strenght on it! Quite possible if people keep using pocket p&s cameras in there, which was flashing away. Nobody is gonna get a good pic, coz of the flash reflecting off the glass. Hopefully the Lions will ignore it as if it was lightning or something.
Of note, white tigers are a dream to photograph. Even in dim light they light up so well :) The pic on the left was quite late in the evening. Kitty cats they are not tho, they have mauled a zoo-keeper to death after the man fell into the enclosure. See the wikipedia.
It was somewhat after dark when I found my way back into the campus. Missed the stop and got down at the next one, but found my way back ok. Was a bit worried there, since I didn't have a working phone. Wasn't very sure I was in the right place until I saw the stone rhinos at the resteraunt. Or were they hippos?

I think I'll cover the next day in another post, this is getting too long. So until whenever I feel like blogging again, the end.

Random thoughts on Style

One of those oft cliched phrases you hear in photography is “You must find your own style”. Its not something I've generally paid attention to. It sounds like something that applies to serious photographers, people who find Art in photography. Personally, I don't pretend to understand Art. Its too obscure, and isn't logical. Guess its the tech-rat in me. How people can look at a canvas that has what looks like the artist just took a few buckets of paint and threw the paint on and make declarations of how artful the work is always puzzles me. Likewise some photographs.

So how does one develop a sense of artistic style without a proper understanding of what artistic style is? I preferred to think of myself as a happy snapper. I take photographs, not develop art. Weirdly, that is a style. Its not my style to set up studios, place lights and try product photography. I don't like tons of post processing. A friend of mine has a style that leaves his pictures with very warm tones. He makes it look good, but its not really for me. Besides, its easy to overdo and leave your pictures looking very yellow. I rarely make my photographs sepia, or black and white. Rarely use the vignette effect for art.

But out of these don't, I realized, I was developing my own style. I look through my pictures and realize, my favorites involve movement. I tend to spend more time and and effort on pictures of movement. Fixed poses, group shots, profiles... these are things I don't spend a lot of time or care on. To capture movement, I often spend long moments peering through the viewfinder, trying to find the perfect moment to click to capture a picture that will either freeze the movement, but still convey the sense of movement, so go with a slower shutter speed and try motion blur, like water cascading over rocks. Whatever the technique, its all about the movement. Its also more of a challenge, since you have to grab the right moment, not spend half an hour setting up and capturing one frame. From there, my interests start making more sense. Motor-sports photography is about capturing movement. Wildlife, can go many ways, but my favorites involve animals in motion. Events, I'm not much into people posing. Which becomes apparent when half my pictures from a wedding turn out to be pictures of people on the dance floor. Parties, sports, catwalk fashion, performances, in general, things in motion. Explains my boredom with landscapes and arty wide angles, I guess. Why I like to be in close covering the event, rather than far back taking details or abstracts.


Limitation? Possibly. Its also a good explanation of why I like working with guys like Charli and Chamil. But then, by definition, style is a limitation. Its a boundary by which you define yourself. This is my style.

Living with the Atom™

Post apocalyptic connotations aside, it might actually seem like a doomsday scenario. The Intel Atom is its low budget, low power consumption series of processors for net books, and due to circumstances, I took the plunge into mobile tech and bought one.

Scenario : Home PC mobo burnout. Quite annoying. Also, 18-55 kit lens on my 450D is bust, and I wanted to replace it with a 17-40mm f4L. Also was planning on getting a new phone, keeping an eye on a Google Android powered phone with a full sized slide out keyboard. Also get a 23 inch LCD monitor to help with the graphics work and reduce power consumption at home. That's quite a strain on the old budget. Which isn't even getting incremented. But I digress...

So, compromises in order. Compromise one, chuck away the old machine and go for the laptop. I could have gone for the Atom powered desktop (the so called Nettops) at a much lower cost, but went for the netbook instead. Mobility being the key. Also, might give up on the 17-40 L idea and compromise by getting a Tamron AF 17-50mm f2.8. Kills me to give up on the L, but unless I can get a major raise, its not happening. Also wait for the newly announced Motorola Droid. 3.7 inch touch screen, fully slide out QWERTY keyboard and Android 2.0 OS. The phone is still serviceable so it can stay in service a while more until the finances stabilize, and until this hits the markets.

But anyway, Back to the Atom™. I decided to save a few bucks by going for an el cheapo Chinese no-brand model. Well maybe it has a brand, but the lit is in Chinese, so who can say? Headline specs, Intel Atom™ N280 processor, 1 GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 10.2 inch screen at 1024x600, WiFi, on board SD card reader, RJ-45 connector, two USB ports, webcam and mic. All for 45,990! (sarcasm, in case you didn't get it). No Optical device tho.
The main reason I went for this was that I was able to get a USB adapter that lets me keep using my SATA HDDs and IDE DVD-RW with it. Not having that was a deal breaker. I wanted plenty of HDD space! Gonna have to buy a couple more HDDs (Ahhh, more strain on the budget. Excellent. But need it to store my photos)

It really is a funky little thing. 1.26 KG with the battery, and the batt is most of that. Without the batt it weighs next to nothing. About 2.5 hours battery life on a full charge. Not spectacular, but usable. Beautifully clear monitor. Even if screen real estate is sorta at a premium and its not really a multitasking workspace. But then, its not really a heavy multi tasking processor, so ... Touch pad is something new to me. A little annoying with its limited size, but usable. Very nice tactile keyboard, but a little small. Also some of the control keys are all over the place so that make touch typing difficult, but its quite comfortable to type on. I've typed this entire post on it so far, after all :). But I knew this would be a problem so I gotta full sized USB keyboard and mouse. And made sure to get a keyboard with a USB hub in it so I can connect two more devices to it. This two USB port limitation is somewhat of a pain.
WiFi is a little on the weak side. I'm within two feet of my wireless router at home, but still not getting a full strength signal. Still to hit some of the free WiFi spots in Colombo and see the connectivity.

Performance is not bad. I know not to expect instant performance. But it quite happily runs Office, Firefox, ACDSee, and Lightroom, which is the most important thing. On XP with Service Pack three and .NET framework. The .NET framework slowed things down immediately, but I needed it to install Paint.NET. In these budget conscious times, best to stick with the freeware as much as possible. I will be looking to upgrade to Windows 7 and Lightroom 3 Beta, but lets see. Like I said, its not earth shattering, but quite reasonable. Boots up pretty quickly, under a minute I'd say. Which is a lot better than my office PC :) Very few issues so far. Quite happily connects to my 19inch LCD at work at 1440x900. Fits quite comfortably in my camera bag. The only real loss is in the gaming department, no more NFS, but older games run fine. I've got Alpha Centauri, Alien Crossfire running quite comfortably. Will probably install Zeus sometime.

So in summary, I'd say I'm quite happy living with the Atom™. :)

Randon ranting

http://hnlk.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/sights-unseemly/

Good read, this. :) Strikes many chords ... :)

BasketBawful

I'm actually working on another trip report, but I came across this on one of my must read blogs and almost choked laughing. Maybe I just have a weird sense of humour, but this just cracked me up. Check it out.
http://basketbawful.blogspot.com/2006/03/gatorade-conspiracy.html
And a followup:
http://basketbawful.blogspot.com/2006/04/gatorade-conspiracy-part-ii-cover-up.html

Yes, its old. Yes, its immature childish toilet humour. And its just flat out hilarious.

Yala Trip report July 2009

Yala Trip report July 2009

It took 4 years to return to Yala after the memorable Tsunami trip, but this time, just six short months after that, I found myself heading jungle-wards once more. This time, with the family - assorted cousins down on SL for the sister's wedding, Aunts, Uncles, Grandmas, etc. Two vehicles needed. Some of us piled into the van for hire, some into Uncle Tissa's Pajero.
We were supposed to start at 4am, but in typical fashion, left the house only at 4:30. After stopping at Silver Ray for a breather and refreshments (we had made good time) we had to go thru the Great Roast Paan saga. This consisted of stopping at every eatery and bake house looking joint looking for Roast Paan for Gamunu Maami to have his Haal massa Seeni Sambol with. I think we were well past Pelmadulla when we finally found some. Anyhoo, we had planned to get to Uda Walawe by lunch and see the feeding of the Baby Elephants at the Elephant Transit home at noon, but we got there so early that we just barely missed the morning feeding at 9am! So we toured the area, checked the Lock Gates at the Dam, checked out the temple (still under construction) had some snacks and generally chilled until the next feeding time at noon. I got a couple of good pictures of an Indian Roller (Coracias benghalensis indicus) perched on a fencepost. The Uda Walawe elephant transit home is an interesting place. It has this museum with some gorgeous pictures of wildlife on the walls and a mini cinema that shows documentaries every so often. Plus of course, the obligatory elephant stuff to see, including the huge elephant skull. Of course, the highlight is the feeding of the elephants. Its interesting to see how the elephants are trained to come get the milk. Oddly there was a baby wild boar wandering around the feeding enclosure, apparently with something wrong with it coz it didn't walk straight, and kept staggering around like it was drunk. Some of the older elephants didn't like it and kept chasing it around the enclosure. From there, we headed to the Uda Walawe Safari Village for lunch, which was pre ordered. Odd thing was, we couldn't eat the ordered packets there, coz while the cost of the packets was 250 each, staying there to eat it would raise it to 800 per head! We took the packets and left! I'm not sure how it was managed but we stopped at a house of a road side fruit seller on the road besides the electric fence and eat there. Setting out from there, everybody, full of lunch, and drowsing the heat (a/c in the van was intermittent, at best) promptly went to sleep. I only woke up in Tissamaharama where we were stopped for fuel. From here we headed straight for the Yala Village hotel.
We were a bit unlucky, in that the extremely dry weather had dried up most of the lake and the closure of the park for long periods had meant that the hotel was in a somewhat shabby state, but hopefully, the influx of tourism from the park reopening will mean the hotel can come back up to its full glory once the funds start coming in. The Yala Village is really quite an interesting concept. The guests are pretty much IN the jungle. The rooms are detached cabins on stilts away from the main reception and dining area, and guests are advised not to wander the grounds alone, specially at night due to wildlife. Sound advise, since the water collecting from the air conditioning unit in our room pools in the play underneath the room and wild boar come there to soak. This family of wild boar roam the hotel grounds freely and were having a drink at the hotel pond when we arrived, causing some excitement among the cousins. There is also an elephant that wanders the gounds, a huge male. We caught sight of it as we came back from Safaring, and it had apparently gone past the Grandmas' room while they were on the balcony! Its not reputed to be friendly. If we needed any further hints that we were in the jungle, we got it when my dad went to take a shower and found it occupied by a pencil thin snake about two and a half feet long. All the while my mum kept calling the reception with a constant stream of complaints (burnt out bulbs, missing towels, snakes etc) I'm sure they were glad to see the back of us when we left, business or no business :) The catering dept, however, kept a high standard of excellence right through our stay. So much so that I overate and ultimately couldn't have the last breakfast due to being sick and suffering a loss of appetite after eating so much! I also got some strange health issues whenever I got into an A/C environment, like the room or even the vehicle. Specifically, I couldn't breathe. Wierd sorta thing. Like being too full of food and no room to breathe.
Anyway, Safari was set for 5:30am, and everyone was set on time, we had hired a safari jeep and split the crowd between that and the pajero. This was a bad time of year for safari. It was incredibly dry and dusty, all the watering holes had dried into tiny slivers of water and patches of mud, and animals and birds just weren't there. Quite a contrast to six months ago. Doubly annoying was the fact that we were trailing the pajero in an open safari jeep, and the tracker was in the pajero, and Uncle Tissa was hammering around Yala like he was on some sorta rally. Kinda hard to take pics when you just zoom around without stopping. However, I did manage to take a few shots, including an enormous concentration of crocs at one of the few large waterholes left. There was one huge croc in particular, sitting around with its jaws gaping open with blood stained teeth. There was also a stranded buffalo and a calf in an island surrounded by crocs. Could have done some nice National Geographic style shooting if we stayed. Only managed the pic on the below. As it was a croc launched an unsuccessful attack on a flock of Pelicans while we watched. After poppsing out of the park for lunch at the hotel, we headed back in for round two, scoring some points over correctly identifing a bird near the crocs as a Lesser Adjutant, while Uncle Tissa got it wrong. Boo ya! Victory dance! The days highlight however, came as the sun was going down and we were preparing to leave the park. News of a leopard sighting caused us to rush to Pidurangala where we saw a leopard, extremely far off, almost out of sight, but I was able to finally spot it with the aid of the trusty 55-250mm. The leopard was pretty close to the coast, Which was sorta puzzling. I'd have expected them to be more in the heavily wooded interior. Anyway, with the leopard moving into hiding and a long line of vehicles forming, we cleared the area to resume the hunt, and .... promptly spotted another leopard on the other side of Pidurangala. This one was my sighting, as in, I saw it first, and got the jeep to stop. It was sitting on the peak of the rock, sillouetted against the sky, and obligingly got up and moved around. It too was at least a kilometer away, but thanks to the 12mpx and 250mm, I got some really jazzy shots. Not the quality to print and publish, but certainly good enough for us to see. Finally it moved to a position that left just the head showing and we decided to move. The driver put the vehicle in gear, started moving the vehicle .... and a bear popped out from behind some shrubbery at the lower part of the Pidurangala rock. I almost forgot to keep quiet in my excitement (First to spot it again :) ) and stopped the jeep. I got a series of shots, but another jeep rushing up scared it into moving back into the shrubbery. The parents in Uncle Tissa's jeep missed this one, coz they had already left after seeing the second leopard. We raced a round the park for a little longer in a futile attempt to see something else, but nothing came of it. However, after dropping off the tracker at the Park office, while heading back the last km to the hotel, my cousin spotted another leopard, this one about 10 meters away from the edge of the road. It was way too dark for photography, but I did manage a grainy image that needs a helluva lot of boosting, but manages to show the cat. There was also that Elephant I mentioned above wandering around the grounds of the hotel when we got back. It managed to scare the bejeezuz out of the van driver. This was a really massive male.

This was the end of the Safari portion. Praying that another tsunami wouldn't sweep us away, we headed off back to Colombo via the Galle Road next morning (after a sizable breakfast, which once again, I couldn't eat properly due to being sick). Again the Air conditioning on the van was acting very intermittently, so we fell asleep for most of that journey. Lunch break was at Weligama, at Barberyn Beach Hotel. Quite a fast run to get there for lunch! After wasting considerable time there, we hit the road again, heading to Barberyn Reef Hotel, Beruwala for tea, and a bit of splashing in the ocean. From here on, we just puttered on homewards, arriving after 7pm and worn out with all the traveling.

Wrap up : Family is fun to travel with, but not safari with. Didn't stop enough for pics, too much noise, and no interest in the uncommon. I much prefer safari adventures with Nilu, Ruwan and crowd, even if they do stop for too long for my tastes. Its a lot better than not stopping and rally racing around Yala! Yala Village Hotel needs quite a bit of work, tho I expect they will find it easier to operate now that tourism is coming back to the area and bringing in the revenue. They are quite actively promoting the place, even online. It definitely has huge amounts of potential if done right. Good enough that I would go and stay there again, and see if they have made progress. I'll give it 4 stars from 5, mostly on its excellent catering, and the fact that most of what needs fixing are minor niggles, which I'm sure will be attended to. Pictures I'll put up later. :)

The Sri Lankan Crimson-backed Flameback woodpecker.

I’ve always loved woodpeckers, must be that childhood influence of Woody Woodpecker cartoons, so my childlike delight on coming across this fine specimen of a Crimson-Backed Flameback at office when I just happened to have my camera was quite understandable. The jungles of Malabe do have the advantage of having a lot of bird life.
It was quite interesting how I saw this one. I was just at this desk and looked up, out the window, and it occurred to me that that dark lump in the tree wasn’t something that was there before. I took a closer look, and viola, Flameback. Luckily my office colleagues are used to me running around with a camera, so no one looked twice as I grabbed the cam and ran out to the balcony.

Quite interesting fellows these. They specially look like Woody coz of the gorgeous red plume of feathers on their heads. This chap's plume is quite muted, makes me think its not quite a mature specimen. Possibly an immature male or a female, judging but the wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_flameback. (That article features a picture of the only other time I saw a Flameback. Crappy picture of one on my back wall years ago with a really old fuji digicam. But you can clearly see the spectacular plume of red feathers on that ones head). As noted in the article, it supports itself on its tail feathers, behavior which can be seen in the picture below.

Now the technical details, the Sri Lankan Crimson-backed Flameback (Chrysocolaptes lucidus stricklandi) is sometimes considered a Greater Flameback subspecies, sometimes considered a distinct species. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flameback for a description of the genus.