Thursday, May 29, 2008
I've been observing the side effects of working for too long under the same boss. Such that even after the boss is gone her subordinates still quote and live by her "teachings" (since they have been so 'well-trained' to do things the 'right' way). Some unfortunately suffer more serious repercussions and get nightmares. While I feel that the lessons 'preached' makes good sense for the most part and somewhat guides one to become upright public sector officers who produce quality work, the penetrating and seemingly lasting influence on colleagues even on the most trivial of things at times make me pretty disturbed. This morning, I was rather surprised that a colleague's tendency to insert two spaces after a fullstop in her writing was a legacy of ex big boss's preference... And I also found myself increasingly disturbed by a colleague's perseverance in delivering the most well-aligned/font size-perfect/spatially well-distributed briefing slides... (Fyi, these cosmetic adjustments are the most potent time thieves). I mean, I think it's good that we have such high standards for briefing materials, but sometimes it works against us and we focus excessively on these trivial micro things and neglect the bigger picture. Deep down I sometimes feel like I am in a very dangerous place, where frequent expectations of standardisation/protocol-adherence will slowly rob me of all individuality and thinking-for-myself abilities...
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Just when I thought I could have some peace of mind preparing for annc, my term as co-secretary for a boardwide meeting had to be advanced some 2 months in advance.... hai. Why did my predecessor have to go on no-pay leave all of sudden... :( Oh well, while I know that I'll be super stressed come June (when the under-study would commence, together with a thousand and one other things), some part of me also feels somewhat excited that I will finally have a bird's eye view of what goes on in the organisation... :) Something I am rather sore about is that I'd probably need to shelve any plans for a long holiday till next March (as this is a thrice-a-month weekly mtg). I suppose I shall not be prematurely, entirely 死心 over any vacation... and hopefully I can work smthg out to travel late this year!
Sunday, May 25, 2008
"You have a supermarket tripod..."
So I was told by a fellow photography enthusiast whom I shall call Mr A. But more on that later :) Had a spontaneous outing with hj at Boat Quay yesterday evening... to catch the 2nd performance of Water Fools on S'pore River (It was the opening performance for the S'pore Arts Festival the night before). Actually I detest crowds but since the performance looked pretty interesting, was FOC and gave me a good opp to figure out my camera, decided to brave the crowds this one time. Having heard "horror stories"on the swarms of ppl yesterday night and being kiasu S'poreans, we thus decided to meet real early to 'chope' seats by the river...
We arrived at the S'pore River at abt 5.45 pm for the 8pm show. By then, the best seats (ie. front row, on the ground with unobstructed view of river) were more or less taken. BUT... there was like one spot beside this man (Mr A) seated on a foldable chair, with his tripod already plonked sui sui in front of him... Not wanting to settle for 2nd row seats, I recced for front row seats at another stretch of the river, but those didnt have as a good a view as this earlier stretch... In the end we decided on the spot beside Mr A, cos we thought follow someone who looks like expert, our location can't go too wrong lah :P
Mr A turned out to be a slightly kaypoh but I guess on the whole quite helpful lah... Since he had nothing to do other than wait for the show to commence (more than 2 hrs away) he took an active interest in my equipment... As I fished out my camera and tripod to "mark my position", whatever he could recognise he managed to call it by its technical term, making me feel secretly intimidated and stressed. When I decided to do some random trial shots aiming at the Asian Civilisations Museum across the river, Mr A advised me to make sure I had enough battery life left, else I would waste my battery unnecessarily... He was probably quite appalled I brought along such a pok tripod for my relatively expensive camera and expounded on the importance of a good tripod. How much did his cost? More than $300... And its legs could extend independently of the others, making it a much more flexible tool... (But seriously, I wouldn't want to fork out $300 for a tripod lah) He observed that mine was really basic and light and concluded that it was a "supermarket tripod"... Was damn amused by him and replied, haha yeah, erm it's free, how to compare?? :P Luckily there was another photography enthusiast to his right and he eventually shifted his attention away from us. But yeah, twice more at night he made two very stress-inducing comments -- "Every photographer needs to bring along a torch" (When it was all dark and I was squinting my eyes at my camera manual to figure out a particular function); and "Only uncles and aunties will use flash when taking river scenes" -- I had no idea why cannot use flash and was contemplating trying it out (anyway i eventually found out that flash photography was not allowed). Ok i guess i shall not bore you with more anecdotes involving Mr A, but yeah, maybe next time I will consider sitting somewhere more secluded and then figure out my camera at my own amateur pace....
Anyway, back to the main story! At about 6 something, there were already some 5 lines of ppl seated by the river... Man in black was trying to get ppl to sit down (so that ppl behind them could see) and pushing back the kiasu ppl (who inched right to the edge of the steps).
Cute twin girls among the crowd, waiting comfortably in their pram for the show to start... Hj and I ended up with sore butts sitting on the ground for some 3 hours...
As we nibbled away (sadly) on our Mcdonalds dinner, the sun began to set...
I imagined it must have been quite nice to watch the sunset at the Clarke Quay area...
On the other side, the sky also began to darken... unveiling a very pretty Fullerton Hotel by night.
Opposite the river, crowds were also beginning to form (hehe, I disregarded Mr A's advice and continued to take my random pictures...)
And finally at 8pm sharp, the floating cars, bed, red lady, cleaner, balloon man etc started to appear one after another...
The red lady and balloon man were two of my favorite performers... However, I seriously doubt that anyone (esp those armed with cameras) really caught the storyline. Mr A, who came down the day before, was trying to explain to his companion on the right that part of it had something to do with the industrial revolution... but his explanation wasn't too coherent :P Needless to say, I didn't catch the storyline either :P Not when I was trying out various combinations of shutter speeds, apertures and ISOs for the most part...
I've never been so close to fireworks for a long long time. So it was really cool to see a bright sparkly sky just above me. This was the only vaguely decent shot I got of the fireworks.
The show ended around 9pm and we saw a funny sight while strolling over to the Esplanade area -- What a place to dump your rubbish. Btw, those bottles are PUB-sponsored NEWater. Well many many ppl got amused by someone's creatively mischievous act and it became a highly popular photo opp.
So I was told by a fellow photography enthusiast whom I shall call Mr A. But more on that later :) Had a spontaneous outing with hj at Boat Quay yesterday evening... to catch the 2nd performance of Water Fools on S'pore River (It was the opening performance for the S'pore Arts Festival the night before). Actually I detest crowds but since the performance looked pretty interesting, was FOC and gave me a good opp to figure out my camera, decided to brave the crowds this one time. Having heard "horror stories"on the swarms of ppl yesterday night and being kiasu S'poreans, we thus decided to meet real early to 'chope' seats by the river...
We arrived at the S'pore River at abt 5.45 pm for the 8pm show. By then, the best seats (ie. front row, on the ground with unobstructed view of river) were more or less taken. BUT... there was like one spot beside this man (Mr A) seated on a foldable chair, with his tripod already plonked sui sui in front of him... Not wanting to settle for 2nd row seats, I recced for front row seats at another stretch of the river, but those didnt have as a good a view as this earlier stretch... In the end we decided on the spot beside Mr A, cos we thought follow someone who looks like expert, our location can't go too wrong lah :P
Mr A turned out to be a slightly kaypoh but I guess on the whole quite helpful lah... Since he had nothing to do other than wait for the show to commence (more than 2 hrs away) he took an active interest in my equipment... As I fished out my camera and tripod to "mark my position", whatever he could recognise he managed to call it by its technical term, making me feel secretly intimidated and stressed. When I decided to do some random trial shots aiming at the Asian Civilisations Museum across the river, Mr A advised me to make sure I had enough battery life left, else I would waste my battery unnecessarily... He was probably quite appalled I brought along such a pok tripod for my relatively expensive camera and expounded on the importance of a good tripod. How much did his cost? More than $300... And its legs could extend independently of the others, making it a much more flexible tool... (But seriously, I wouldn't want to fork out $300 for a tripod lah) He observed that mine was really basic and light and concluded that it was a "supermarket tripod"... Was damn amused by him and replied, haha yeah, erm it's free, how to compare?? :P Luckily there was another photography enthusiast to his right and he eventually shifted his attention away from us. But yeah, twice more at night he made two very stress-inducing comments -- "Every photographer needs to bring along a torch" (When it was all dark and I was squinting my eyes at my camera manual to figure out a particular function); and "Only uncles and aunties will use flash when taking river scenes" -- I had no idea why cannot use flash and was contemplating trying it out (anyway i eventually found out that flash photography was not allowed). Ok i guess i shall not bore you with more anecdotes involving Mr A, but yeah, maybe next time I will consider sitting somewhere more secluded and then figure out my camera at my own amateur pace....
Anyway, back to the main story! At about 6 something, there were already some 5 lines of ppl seated by the river... Man in black was trying to get ppl to sit down (so that ppl behind them could see) and pushing back the kiasu ppl (who inched right to the edge of the steps).
Cute twin girls among the crowd, waiting comfortably in their pram for the show to start... Hj and I ended up with sore butts sitting on the ground for some 3 hours...
As we nibbled away (sadly) on our Mcdonalds dinner, the sun began to set...
I imagined it must have been quite nice to watch the sunset at the Clarke Quay area...
On the other side, the sky also began to darken... unveiling a very pretty Fullerton Hotel by night.
Opposite the river, crowds were also beginning to form (hehe, I disregarded Mr A's advice and continued to take my random pictures...)
And finally at 8pm sharp, the floating cars, bed, red lady, cleaner, balloon man etc started to appear one after another...
The red lady and balloon man were two of my favorite performers... However, I seriously doubt that anyone (esp those armed with cameras) really caught the storyline. Mr A, who came down the day before, was trying to explain to his companion on the right that part of it had something to do with the industrial revolution... but his explanation wasn't too coherent :P Needless to say, I didn't catch the storyline either :P Not when I was trying out various combinations of shutter speeds, apertures and ISOs for the most part...
I've never been so close to fireworks for a long long time. So it was really cool to see a bright sparkly sky just above me. This was the only vaguely decent shot I got of the fireworks.
The show ended around 9pm and we saw a funny sight while strolling over to the Esplanade area -- What a place to dump your rubbish. Btw, those bottles are PUB-sponsored NEWater. Well many many ppl got amused by someone's creatively mischievous act and it became a highly popular photo opp.
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