Back from Rome

It was a great vacation, a great break in Italy for 4 days.

The kiasu me's preparation before the trip.

I flew to Ancona, east coast of Italy on my first day and spend the other 3 days in Rome.

The great view of the Mount Alps from the plane.

Obviously I didn't read enough before booking my trip. I only read the lines in The Rough Guide to Rome when I was on the coach to Rome. It says "If you can, you should avoid visiting Rome in July and August, when the weather is hot and sticky, and those Romans that don't make their living exclusively from the tourist industry have left town; many business are closed."

Thinking that I am from the tropical country with summer all year long, I was quite sure that it will not be an issue to me, until I arrived in the city, stepped out from the coach...

I felt the heat immediately, it was an absolutely insane 42.5 degree Celcius on my first day in Rome!

Luckily you get to see these beautiful water fountains everywhere in the city, which carry the natural mineral water from miles away. It did save my days in Rome indeed.

A lot of walking in Rome, now I totally agreed with the famous idiom "Rome wasn't built in one day" that I've been listening since I was a small boy. I have to walk because there are so many interesting places every few steps away and I don't want to miss it.

Measured on map, I've covered 20km in the city by foot on the second day itself, double of my one day walking record set in Paris last year. Furthermore this round I was carrying my camera bag with 4 lenses at all time. My shoulders and foots are still aching now. I think I need one full week to fully recover.

Taken 700 pictures during this trip. Hopefully it won't takes me too long to process it.

Weekend in Italy

It's a bank holiday long weekend, I am going to Ancona, Civitanova Marche and Rome adding a few more cities in my Facebook travel map.

I actually feel a bit tired even before the journey. Hopefully it'll be a good one.

Project HDR 03

I'm very impressed with the HDR processed picture and playing with it more often than Photoshop these days. Another experiment on this shot taken some time end of July viewing of The Gherkin behind a church building.

The original version - a bit under exposed on the tree leaves, a bit over exposed on the left of The Gherkin.

The HDR version - I think I still tends to adjust the 'strength' on the strong side in tone mapping.

Project HDR 02

Ever since I joined the gym end of July, I have got lesser time to play with the pictures. Whenever I switched on my laptop after a long day work and gym after work, I'll fall asleep within short time.

Thanks to RaD!c4L from Lowyat forum who passed me his 'godly package' which now there's no more watermark on the my pictures modified in Photomatix!

Whenever I go to my client's office at Paternoster Square, there's a view of the St Paul Cathedral from a small lane which I have an idea composing the image long ago. Finally last week I grabbed my camera and headed to the spot to take the shot.

The original image taken in RAW format at 18mm from my kit lens. I used the spot metering to get the correct exposure on the Cathedral, but then the foreground appeared to be under exposed and the sky became over exposed. This is a situation where High Dynamic Range (HDR) technique becomes useful.

2 more images were created in JPEG format at +2 and -2 EV respectively. An HDR image was generated from all 3 images in Photomatix. Tone mapping done to adjust the strength, saturation, contrast etc.

A quick 30 mins job. The foreground appeared much improved especially on the bricks texture and the signboards. Anyway it can be improved for sure in particular to the sky which looks a bit error to me.

YMCA

To me, gym is always the best place to hang out after work and during weekends especially for a guy like me with the status of alone but not available.

I was a gym member in Fitness First Menara Maxis KL for nearly 3 years before I quit due to relocation to London. Throughout a year living in the city life has changed much - lots of pressure from work, having to cook daily for a lazy person like me, lots of crisp and junk food. I had lost 7kg and looks so unhealthy. A year ago I was 70kg and I was fit!

I had been looking a gym desperately and visited few gyms including Fitness First, LA Fitness and some small timer but none made me feel right to join. Nearly join the 'platinum' Fitness First club at St Paul as I can sign up with corporate rate of GBP41 per month. I was pissed because being misled that I can visit all FF clubs in the UK but later found out I can't go to 2 'black label' clubs which are bigger and better and cost GBP55 per month. In fact most of the 'gold' or 'platinum' clubs are much smaller and extremely packed during peak hours. LA Fitness is about the same at GBP40+ per month.

After much consideration I finally decided to join the Central YMCA Club located at Tottenham Court Road. It's the very first YMCA in the world established in 1844. Although it looks a bit old but it has everything that I need. At GBP47 I joined the London Fitness Network package which allow me to go to some other local gyms in case I'm lazy to visit the main club.

It's a 4 storey basement building:

• Ground floor - reception area
• Basement 1 - swimming pool, studio, stretch area, lounge with live sports! Cafe, there's even a photography club room but I'm not sure whether it's active or not!
• Basement 2 - weight machines, stretch area
• Basement 3 - a huge multi purpose sports hall, a rock climbing wall, a RPM (cycling studio), a squash court, sunbeds area (need to pay extra though), cardio machines, weight machines, free weight area, changing room and sauna (no steam room which I prefer more though)

At last the gym glove that I brought to UK a year ago is useful again!

There are a lot of interesting classes included in the membership like body pump, abs class, RPM, yoga, capoeira, canoeing in the pool! badminton, volleyball, basketball! ping pong, trampoline etc.

I love playing basketball, it's the best sports to sweat a bit and not as boring as doing the cardio machines. Hope to make a few friends and can play a bit more. I would like to try rock climbing as well but so far I haven't seen people doing it there. There's a volleyball class on Wednesday evening and the training looks very professional. Anyway I think volleyball is a very gay / ah kua friendly sports if you watched the Thai movie Iron Ladies before. I saw a black ah kua who played exactly like those in the movie!


There's a very interesting Trampoline class on Tuesday evening. However I don't think I'm able to join the class at the moment as when I first joined, I picked up a skipping rope (the last time I did that I think was like 15 years ago!) and I was a bit shocked when I felt dizzy just after few minutes jumping. I don't wanna collapsed half way doing it and I'm glad that I didn't continuing to hesitate longer before joining the gym.



Trampoline YMCA from Eugene Goh and Vimeo.

The only part which I don't quite like about the gym is the shower as there are only 2 dividing partition between the showers and no doors! Being an Asian I'm extremely uncomfortable with it initially seeing everyone walking around exposing their private parts and to my horror, lots of gays! It reminds me of the gay fella who approached me in FF KL before sending me 'I miss you' texts. Anyway slowly I'm getting used to it as I start realising that my size is actually quite ok comparing to the kwai lou's.

I saw an old gay who looks 80% like Paul McCartney of Beatles and I almost laughed out when I saw him took off his shirt in front of me in the changing room. He got nipple piercing on both of his sagging tits. Not only that, he has got the funniest body tattoo I had ever seen in my life - 2 flowers surrounding his 2 nipples.

After few weeks joining the gym I start to appreciate and like the gym more. Although now I can only lift half of the weights which I managed to do last time but I feel I'm picking up the pace and is getting fit again. I had gained a kg to 63kg after 3 weeks and I'm closely monitoring the progress and let's see the result after 3 months.

Emirates Cup 2007 Part IV

Match 2 of the first day, playing the host team Arsenal and Paris Saint Germain and we started to feel the heat.

Warming up before the match.

Manuel Almunia, the Spanish goalie who looks alike Silas, the character in the movie Da Vinci Code. I guess this season he'll play more than Jens Lehmann, the aged German goalie in the first team, and probably the new signing Fabianski will play a bit.

The video man is on douceur de vivre and I'm on Sky TV.

55,000 attendance on the Sunny day.

Starting line up for the match, I don't know many of the players in PSG, and there are plenty of young faces in Arsenal. Anyway, I was happy that Van Persie and Fabregas appeared in the line up. The rest who appeared were Flamini, K. Toure, Hleb, Clichy, Diaby, Denilson, Sagna and Sanderos. The new signing striker Eduardo hasn't got his UK permit at time so wasn't playing.

The most popular player in Arsenal now obviously is Cesc Fabregas, you can tell from the crowd's reaction when his name appeared on the big screen.

The match started and both teams were playing their best even though it was more like a friendly for the cup competition.

The midfield ace Fabregas in action.

Sanderos v The Portuguese striker Pauleta. As predicted, Pauleta performed as how he did in the World Cup, plenty of chances but wasted all.

Rothen the PSG winger took the free kick against the wall formed by Clichy and Denilson.

My favourite shot of the day - RPV in action. I agreed with Wenger's decision to sell Henry as I think he is not as good as before, might as well sell him when he still worth 16 million pounds. I think RPV will be the next big time in Arsenal and the premiere league.

Flamini scored the only goal during the first half. Even though it was just a friendly match, some fans from opposite teams were swearing and shouting at each others.

Police got involved before a possible fight could happen. This is English football, make sure you wear the right jersey, say the right thing and sit at the right place to avoid any trouble.

You certainly don't want to sit besides fans like this one.

The photographer sending first hand data during the half time break. I guess I will never be a good sports journalist as I am too slumber, posting the entry 2 weeks after the match.

Typical Arsene Wenger post.

To me, Alexander Hleb was the player of the match, he's a hardworking type of midfielder linking the whole team after Fabregas was rested for the second half.

Hleb won a penalty and the young Danish striker Bendtner took the initiative for the spot kick.

He took the shot, and missed it. Another Adebayor in the making it seems. Anyway he used his physical advantage and scored and a lucky goal later. Arsenal won the match 2-1 and lifted the Emirates Cup after beating Inter Milan the day after.



The Mexican Wave from Eugene Goh and Vimeo.

Overall view on Arsenal, there are plenty of talented young players who has great individual skills but they will need to rely much on Fabregas and Hleb to link the whole team. I predicted Arsenal will fall to 5th or even 6th place, after MU, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham in that order. Watch out for West Ham, Newcastle and Man City as well.

Arsene Wenger wrote me an email after the match asking my interest to join Arsenal, but I told him that I prefer to join MU instead.

Emirates Cup 2007 Part III

Match 1 of the Emirates Cup - Inter Milan v Valencia.

Valencia dominated throughout the game and I really couldn't believe Inter won the Serie A last season. Anyway, a lot of superstars and it was really unbelievable to see them play right in front of my eyes.

Materazzi conceded a free kick, the most hated football player in the world got boo-ed all the way throughout the match every time he touched the ball. Everyone still remember how he provoked Zidane and got him sent off in World Cup 2006.

It's Luis Figo the ex world player of the year organizing the wall! No. 10 is Adriano replacing Ibrahimovic just after 15-20 mins.

David Villa scored a brilliant free kick. Too bad he didn't come to the premiere league.

The new fat boy of Brazil, Adriano succeeding the old fat boy Ronaldo.

Bench players on the field during half time, I think this young lad of Inter will shine in near future, I don't even know his name but let's see.

The most friendly player on the pitch - the Spanish goal keeper Canizares. The English boy behind me keep shouting "Blondie! give me your drink!"

I didn't know Ivan Helguera has moved to Valencia from Real Madrid.

Julio Cruz took the free kick.

Valencia scored 2 goals in the first half and won the match 2-0. I was hoping to see Patrick Vieira but he didn't turn up, not even on the bench.

Emirates Cup 2007 Part II

Been really tired and lazy these days, every night when I tried to write something on the bed, I fell asleep within minutes.

So we made it to the Emirates on 28th August, I tried my luck to bring in my camera and I was glad that it wasn't as crap as Stamford Bridge.

Me, Tom, Angel and Sam outside the stadium, KK was taking the picture.

I was quite excited even though it was not MU.

In the Emirates! 1st row behind the goal at Orange Quadrant, the seats are really nice.


Took a video with Arsenal's mascot. Video quality of my IXUS 30 is a bit crap though.

The Wrestlers

I used to be a big fan of wrestling sports during the WWF (now WWE) era in late the 80's and early 90's. My favourite wrestlers back then were Bret 'The Hitman' Hart, The Ultimate Warrior and The Road Warrors (later Legend of Doom). I used to paint my face like The Ultimate Warrior when I was a school boy and fight with my childhood friend Chee Heng.

Got bored of it as it was getting over commercialised and over dramatic when the whole McMahon family step in to the ring. Since then I hardly follow the 'show' or any news of the 'sports', it's an entertainment show after all. Until recently I read the shocking news of Chris Benoit killed his wife and kid and later hanged himself.

I browsed on YouTube and Wikipedia and found out more news of the wrestlers to my surprise.

Bret Hart was such a cool wrestler no matter he was with the 'good' or 'bad' side. He suffered a stroke in 2002. His brother Owen Hart, the small time wrestler died in 1999 from a stunt accident in the ring.



There are a number of wrestlers who died young, mainly due to misuse of steroid and other drugs rather than from injuries suffered from the 'sports'.

• Hawk (of Road Warriors) (1957 - 2003) - heart attack
  
• Curt Hennig (Mr. Perfect) (1958-2003) - acute cocaine intoxication
• Bam Bam Bigelow (1961 - 2007) - drug related heart disease
• Rick Rude (1958-1999) - heart failure
• Andre The Giant (1946-1993) - congestive heart failure
• Eddie Guerrero (1967-2005) - heart failure
• Miss Elizabeth (1960-2003) - the former manager of Randy 'Macho Man' Savage, died of drug over dose or domestic violence by Lex Luger?
• Dino Bravo (1948-1993) - The self pro-claimed "world's strongest man" was shot dead
• Davey Boy Smith of British Bulldog (1962-2002) - heart attack
• Big Boss Man (1963-2004) - heart attack
• Earthquake (1963-2006) - cancer
• Yokozuna (1966-2000) - heart failure
  

In memories of some of the dead wrestlers.

The conclusion is - don't try steroid, you will die young.

If not, you will become insane like The Ultimate Warrior.

A Big Thanks

A big thanks to Chee Wei, who saved all my precious data in my crappy Samsung external hard drive. I guess it was the casing causing the damage and corrupted the hard drive hence the data couldn't be read from Windows Explorer.

That could have cost me GBP100 to 250 if I were to fix it in UK, like this one which quoted me GBP129 for normal recovery and GBP249 if it's physical fault of the hard drive.

I nearly send my hard drive back to KL for cheaper option here, for RM200, but limited to software failure only.

What a relieve and I will do double back up next time coz it was really an heart attack for losing my memories for the last 2 years!