Heritage in a concrete jungle...

Only a few weeks ago KL was plagued with a bad case of haze courtesy of our friendly neighbour. Below you see before and after shots from my office. It's nice to be able to see the mountain range in the back again to remind us what the phrase 'Klang Valley' really means.


Working in the oldest part of KL where the city literally began, I get to see the remnants of the past everyday. It is quite disheartening to see no great effort is taken to protect and conserve these majestic shophouses from ruin. Singapore for all its metropolitan lifestyle has whole areas in the city refurbished by the government preserving the buildings of old.

Here, it is up to building owners to conserve but not everyone has deep coffers to do a good job of it. With the rent control still in effect, the owners have no impetus to revive their buildings to meet current building codes. Sad!
Having said that, a rich entrepreneur may still be able to swoop in on a few spots in KL that has great potential. If you are one, get in touch with me for some ideas. We can do the whole nine yards of luxury city dwellings, to vogue eateries, to haute couture shopping. If you think YTL has done that, the good Tan Sri missed out a few spots. Email me, Mr. Trump!

Did you know that KL is the only city with a natural tropical rainforest right smack in the middle? It also houses my alma mater which can be seen here. There used to be cable cars going up Bukit Nanas when we first moved to KL. Now, that would have been one novelty worth preserving for this city. One of these days, I'll walk along her streets with my camera and try to capture the essence that is KL. Watch this space!

Just the way mom does it...

Going out for lunch is a daily adventure for us. With so many outlets to choose from around the office, we still opted to go out of the way to have a taste of 'home'.

Ghani (left) is the guy we look forward to see to serve us the basic 'home' food that we crave for. What's on the menu? Ikan goreng! Simple dish of rice with a selection of fried fish and some gravy. Of course sambal belachan is a necessary side dish to gel all the taste together.










The venue? Would you believe it, Puduraya Bus Depot. Not actually a place you go to for gourmet meals. Nevertheless, going back to basics has its inner appeal where a home-cooked meal just like mom does it attracts even the most westernized amongst us.

Camera play...

We took a drive out of town to get to the closest beach we could over the weekend. The main reason was that Josh wanted to build sand castles. What option did we have but to go to PD. Not exactly your white sandy beach destination.

Nevertheless, with some imaginative angles and the play of some of the functions available on the camera, we managed to get some cool pictures taken. The left picture is with the sepia filter with high contrast parameters while the one on the right is just Josh from a nice angle.

The beach was not much to shout about but the ingredients were right for silhouette shots. This is achieved by under-exposing your shots. The aperture setup was the smallest while the speed was the quickest. If you're camera illiterate, set it up for the highest number for both. Oh yes, a big light source from the back is crucial too....

My favourite shot for the trip...
You can see the glitters on the water and really clean outline around Josh. Play around with your cameras. It's now digital so you dont have to waste money on printing if they don't turn out well. Just snap away...

When we first started, we used a fully manual Nikon F50 SLR. There was one time when I happily snapped away on black and white film and when it was time to put in a new roll, I realised that the whole roll was wrongly put so no pictures were actually taken for the last 36 frames... DUH!!! Thank god for technology!