New Dun Sarawak Building with Decorated Boats.

Dun is a shortform of Malay words (Dewan Undangan Negeri).  It means the “State Legislative Assembly“.  This is a new building replacing the older Dun.  It is located beside the Sarawak River right across the Kuching Waterfront.  It was just opened last Monday (27 July 2009) by Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin (King, or constitutional head of state of Malaysia).

We missed the opening ceremony and the fireworks but we went there on the Tuesday and Wednesday evening.  Luckily the decorated boats were still there.  There were more than 10 decorated boats, I will show you in the coming post.

It is across the river, but it looks so near because of its size.  Remember don’t judge the distance of a building based on its size.  I was cheated by a building size in KL and walking on foot will never reach that building.

Zoomed to the max and cropped, I can see there were 2 people at the Dun Building.

From this angle, it is partially covered by trees.

Fort Margherita is next to the Dun Building.

There is a small UFO shape building besides the main Dun Building.

I found that a lot of government buildings are in UFO or triangular shape such as:-
1.  MBKS Building (Majlis Bandaraya Kuching Selatan / Kuching South).
2.  DBKU Hall / Cat Musuem (Dewan Bandaraya Kuching Utara / Kuching North).
3.  Upper part of Kuching Civic Center.
They all have similar shape, agree?

Zoomed to the max and cropped a bit and found a red light on the roof of Dun Building.

Let’s get closer to the upper part of the building.

The building’s body.

SiewPeng and the Dun Building.

SiewPeng and I with the Dun building and Decorated Boats.

We went to the waterfront on both Tuesday and Wednesday.  I need to use higher ISO without tripod on Tuesday and caused a lot of noise on the photos.  Therefore I decided to go again on Wednesday evening.  My brother Clement joined us on Wednesday with his camera as well.

I demonstrated to Clement what are 1st Curtain and 2nd Curtain Slow Sync Flash mode.  The picture above was taken using 1st Curtain Slow Sync Flash mode.

In Slow Sync mode, tripod is a must, the shutter is opened long enough so that the background is not underexposed, and the flash is fired to make the object in front bright enough.  1st Curtain means the flash fires at the begining of the shutter opening whereas 2nd Curtain means the flash fires right before the shutter closed.

Without the tripod, we try to take a lot of pictures of ourselves with the Dun Building.

The jetty is on our right.

The Sarawak Cruise was on our left.

Camwhore again with the decorated boat.

The word “CamWhore” sounds a bit negative but it is a new Internet jargon and not an easy job.  My camera flippable LCD does help a lot.  My semipro camera is about the size of a small DSLR, it is heavy especially when I need to straighten my arm.  We attracted a lot of attention when we used a big camera to do camwhoring.  My tips for camwhore is - Don’t Zoom.

Stay tuned, I will show you a lot of pictures of the decorated boats.

It has been more than 10 days we did not update our blog due to some business busyness.

I was busy with: -

1.  Car problem:  My car timing belt break again in 15 months with the mileage of 15k km only.  (Luckily I can use my father’s van for about 1 week but it’s quite difficult to find parking everywhere, plus there was traffic jam everywhere because of road closure for the DUN opening).  - will blog about it soon.

2.  Bank: Since I am a treasurer of a religious organisation, I need to go to bank more frequent than usual for last week.

3.  Project: Start a new project of seting up PCs with Ubuntu OS and link them up to a server.

4.  Farming in Facebook.  :p

5.  and many many big and small matters.

This is not the longest record for taking a long break on blogging, but I can see that the web traffic from search engine has dropped.  I think we should back up with more schedule posts. :p

LIAA#08 - An old Audio Cassatte player + VCD player + Tuner + Karaoke system.

Today I am going to show you old things in our home that we should put a love sign on. Nothing last forever. Some of the things, before we send it for recycle or put it into the rubish bin, it’s a good time to take its photo so that years later I will still be able to remember how it looked like. Some of the things may look quite old, but it may still last for years before come to the end of its life.

If we love the things we use, it will last longer, agree? The player above have played countless of CD & VCD. The cassatte player is not working anymore, but we still use it to play VCD. We love it because it can ‘consume’ 5 VCDs at a time, and we don’t have to ‘feed’ it with each VCD after we have finished watching each episode of a drama series.

LIAA#09 - An old dusty red toolbox.

I have quite a few toolboxes, but I think this one with red matches the leaf best.

While taking this type of pictures, a lot of things need to be taken care of. Such as composition, object arangement, lighting, white balance etc. I always try to avoid flash.

LIAA#10 - A broken washing machine.

I have taken the picture of this washing machine in different angle, but finally find that the first shot is the best. I wonder if there is any movie director that has taken a lot of repeated scene, shouted “CUT” for many times, but finally chose the first shoot and thrown away the 2nd, 3rd, 4th… … takes? I asked myself why the first shoot is the best but I still keep on trying. (The problem is the preview LCD is too small, :p blame the camera. :p )

For me the effort to take the rest of the pictures is not a waste nor adding to my cost of production. :p I learned more things. This picture is chosen by SiewPeng, and I thought it’s the best among the rest too. The only thing is the more picture I take, the more time I need to spend on selecting the best picture. Not only that, as you may know I always use bracketing mode, the number of photos will be triple. :~ Bracketing mode does help me a lot but waste me a lot of time too.

LIAA#11 - Main switch.

We love it because it the main source of power for doing most of the things. Without electricity we can’t switch on our computer.

LIAA#12 - Fan in red.

SiewPeng asked me how I stuck the leaf on the fan. Do you know the answer?

LIAA#13 - Extension Wires.

LIAA#14 - Old style Windows.

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To those who are going to move to a new house,

Do you feel boring looking at these pictures? I am doing something that help me to recall my memory in the future. You can try to do this too especially on your favorite things. When I look at each of these pictures, I can tell many things that related to them, and it’s not limited to the things in the pictures only. If you try to do this, don’t forget to share it with me.

Do you still remember what was the colour of your blanket when you were a kid?

LIAA#01 - On our Bathroom floor.

SiewPeng and I have a love-shaped leaf. We keep all the details such as where and when we got the leaf, and other details to ourselves :p. This is our secret. But love is (and should be) everywhere in this world, therefore we are showing our special heart-shaped leaf all around to everybody.

Today, we are going to show you 7 places where they becomes the leaf’s background. (There is only one love-shaped leaf).

LIAA#02 - On a plastic chair.

7 can means many things, here we have selected 7 because there are 7 days a week. Love the one you love 7 days a week.

7 can also mean love the 7 categories of people in our life.
1. Love our God, Buddha, or the religion that you believe.
2. Love our parents.
3. Love our wife / husband.
4. Love our sibling.
5. Love our children /grandchildren etc. (younger generation).
6. Love our friends and relatives.
7. … Love our enemy.

Remember, love is not only limited to the love between male and female as many people may thought of.

LIAA#03 - On our living room table.

This is the table that we always use to have our meal (lunch, dinner) while watching TV. Sometimes, when our room runs out of space, we use this table to do our work too.

LIAA#04 - On Sofa in living room.

LIAA#05 - On the floor of the ground floor.

LIAA#06 - On the floor of the upper floor.

LIAA#07 - On my table.

As you can see many photos taken before has this background. This is my favorite background because it is the place where I spend a lot of time doing my work, reading, and writing. Many times, when I think of taking the photo of certain objects, I can just simply put it on my table and shoot it immediately.

What you can see is actually a plywood. My table was small, but I have extended it by putting a bigger plywood on top of it.

Please vote which one is the best, and more love comming soon… Each series, there will be 7 pictures with the love-shaped leaf.

I have a very old high school mathematics reference book in Chinese, printed in 1956. It belonged to my grand-uncle (mother’s mother’s brother). The book was given to me at least 10 years ago. And I have learned something “extra” besides the mathematics that I have learned in school.

Well, you may ask what is so special about it.

There is a part which amazed me - “Calculate the square root of a number without a mathematic table or calculator“. Can you do that?

When I was in secondary school, we were taught to calculate square root (punca kuasa dua) using:
1. Four-figure mathematic table (Sifir angka empat).
2. normal calculator.
3. scientific calculator. :p

I had never learned in school to calculate it manually using my brain and hand only.

This is how it works.

I learned it but never use it practically. Now is the world of calculator and computer. (Not even using a Chinese abacus or a four-figure mathematics table). We have no reason to calculate it manually. This part of the mathematics is only for references and not important at all.

If you need to calculate a square root of a number urgently but you don’t have a calculator in your hand, you will need to use this method. But we still have no reason to calculate it manually. Why? The reasons are:
1. we can go to buy a calculator. (The time to go to buy a calculator may be shorter than calculate it manually).
2. we can borrow a calculator from our neighbour.
3. we can call a friend, ask him/her to operate on a “remote calculator” and tell you the answer.
4. we can make mistake while doing the calculation. Besides time saving, correctness is also very important.

Printed in the year of 1956 and was sold at HK$3.20.

Everything in this world - cars, human etc., there will be one day in the future when they all get old, and finally become soil and dust and return to the nature. But the content in the book will never die because new books keep on printed with updated contents.

Is this book considered as in good condition while it is 52 years old?

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Science and Math in English or Malay?

Recently there is a decision by the government to change in the language used to teach Science and Maths in primary and secondary school in Malaysia. During my time, it was Chinese for my primary school, Malay for seconary school and English in College and University. I am not an MP nor PM, and do not wish to debate which one is better and anything about this topic.

But I have learned about this issue that we should make decision with clear purpose, take a small step by testing, make some adjustment if needed, and keep the final goal in mind all the time. :p