GST

The topic on everybody's mind at the hospital lately had been GST. Or Goods and Services Tax. Akin to the VAT in the UK. Will we as Doctors be affected by this new ruling?

The management got the Consultants from Ernest and Young in to brief is on the impact it would have on us. It appeared that we would be exempted. It may sound good initially but that carried some major draw back. It seemed that we would not be able to charge our customers GST for services but we were subjected to GST for rentals and equipment. Not exactly fair wasn't it.

The ruling had yet to be tested, and there would be uncertainty at the beginning. Some teething problems. Praying that in the end things would work out for the better.

Monday Morning Walk

On Monday morning after my post call round, I drove into town to settle some bills. Usually I have clinic at Park City on Monday morning. This was canceled because of Sunday's call. After the bills were settled, I decided to drive into the City Center to see how things were on Monday morning. I ended up having lunch at Pavilion since I could settle my phone bills there.

I had lunch and walked around to a nearby UOB branch to settle my credit card payment for the month. And all this without needing to rush. Amazing how slow-paced late Monday mornings can be. Would definitely venture again the next time my clinic got canceled in Park City. Or I should cancel it at least once a month...

I certainly wouldn't mind doing it again...

Low Key

I haven't been updating the blog lately due to the combination of work and being under the weather. I was hit by a virus while doing my call on Sunday and to be honest, my muscles were aching so badly yesterday morning, I could hardly walk during my ward round.

I had to put myself on antibiotics, and took regular painkiller. My temperature shot up to 40C yesterday after work which got Puan Anita worried. I decided to have an early night but was woken up by a phone call at 3 in the morning. Couldn't sleep properly after that I was afraid.

At least, the muscle ache was more bearable this morning. Drove to work early and quickly settled in for my morning rounds. Then it was Park City and a meeting in town during lunch.

Afternoon clinic back in Subang came next before a quick evening round. I was supposed to attend a meeting at 6, but I don't think I could've survived that. I decided to head home for another early night.

I went straight for dinner, wrote some letters and other paperwork before settling into bed. Irfan was already fast asleep next to me while Idlan was finishing his homework at the sitting room.

I will be on call tomorrow, expecting another long day before settling in for the Aidil Adha weekend. Time to sleep then....

Smitten

I managed to take the GR for a quick spin after work yesterday. Mind you I was on call. So, it was a quick escape while having dinner essentially.

Even on a 15 minutes spin, I could already see the potential. After my evening round, I went back to the apartment and downloaded the snaps onto my deskstop. I couldn't remember how many times I shook my head looking at the quality of the photos coming off the sensor.

There were a few observations though.

1) The camera tended to under expose. I disliked up the compensation by a third of a stop to get better exposure.

2) The on camera crop worked a treat. I programmed one of the function buttons to cycle through the standard 28mm, 35mm and 47mm zoom equivalent. A clever idea by Ricoh to build that feature in.

3) The jpeg capture was almost as good as the RAW provided that the underexposure was not too severe and could be corrected in post.

4) The black and white "filter" on camera was quite useful. I changed the setting to include some vignetting for better effect. It looked good.

On the whole, I still personally felt that snaps coming from my Fuji bodies were more pleasing colour wise. They also tended to get the white balance and skin tone more natural. The Ricoh may been some tweaking.

I was sure that there would be more snaps from this little gem in the coming fee days. Might take a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon to do a proper walk around Bukit Bintang may be.

KLPF 2014 Discoveries

The main part of the festival for me personally was the personal work exhibits scattered around the hall. I could always go to the shops to look at cameras, but for exhibits, it was not often I could see this many. There were so many talented photographers around, both in terms of idea and execution.

One thing which stuck on my mind was the quality of the printing. Some of them were pretty awesome but the size of the printouts were too small to be enjoyed. Maybe it was the cost. I understood from one of my friends who had his work shown, all his printing was sponsored by Fuji, but the size of the printed work would never make a gallery show. As if Fuji was not putting in the funding whole-heartedly. I would happily paid to see those work - the exhibition was free.

Presentation to listen to ....... and photos to see ...Subjects to photographAnother thing I noticed was a lack of sitting area. A cafe or two would have been nice. I don't think it was against the exhibition hall regulations since on the previous occasions I went there, there were cafe and stalls strewn across the area. After walking around for a couple of hours, I wouldn't mind having a sit down reading the handouts the stalls passed as I walked by.

On a more positive note, the amount of area dedicated for the exhibits should be lauded. The number of talks and topics covered were also pretty decent. I sat to listen to one of the speakers. Clearly he was enjoying his time on stage, taking us through his work. It was more a talk on motivation and inspiration than just technique.

Panasonic had their own stage - with great production value I must add - next to their booth. I wouldn't mind sitting through a talk about studio lighting, but unfortunately my timing was off.

One thing caught my eye was a portable flying camera system, controlled via remote. The camera would be mounted on a hovering craft, able to travel about 200 meters at a decent height. Was not exactly stealthy, but an interesting innovation ... It was selling for around RM4000.

Seen at Thai tourism boothFor the "Peeping Tom" in usNext year's date had been bookedDuring the walk, I bumped into old friends and we talked about how there festival was to them this time. Most agree that the gallery was good, but the vendors should have made more effort to really offer us something extra. Both in terms of deals and discovery of their new hardware. As it was, I felt like it was merely a glorified shop front. Minus any special offers ....

Still I would definitely be coming again to visit next year's chapter. I felt that it was my duty to keep shows like this going. The quality could have definitely be better and hopefully we would start to see exclusive products which were hard to find in the shops. Well, at least that was my wish .....

Here are my entries for the event in 2011 and 2012.