Too Hot to Swim

So, it was a busy call last night and I only managed to get back to sleep at 1, falling asleep soon after. And that was before my boys hit their bed. They were at the apartment to keep me company, and they only went to sleep after Puan Anita shouted at them. I was too tires to do that. The boys had been turning the living room into a cinema, complete with dimmed lights and all, some chips instead of popcorns. A right mess.

They were all excited to the wee hours of the morning. They were snoring away when I went off to start my post call rounds.

The rounds this morning went on smoothly, with a busy clinic following right after. So, after lunch, it was time to put my feet up, at the front of the pool during the boys' swimming lesson. It was far too sunny however and I couldn't lie on the deckchair for too long. Not sure how the children coped.

Kites. Everywhere.

On my way back from ParkCity to Subang last Wednesday, I stopped by Bangsar Shopping Centre to do a bit groceries and stumbled into these colourful kites adorning the main foyer. Apparently for the week - which I suspect coincided with the international school break - the centre was organising a kite exhibit. All the way from building, painting and flying them in the end. There were hundreds of them already on display for a competition ending this weekend.

Quite interested in seeing what would unfold this weekend. Idlan especially is fond of kites.

Lumut Trip Cancelled

Nope! It wasn't my fault. I did not plan it. The MPV was in the garage for the weekend for some major work. Cost us a bomb and we were glad to get the van back on Monday in time for the planned trip to Lumut on Tuesday. I would be left behind since I would be on call a couple of days this week. So, everything was fine at the beginning of the day, apart from Anita suffering from a slight sniffles. Even the boys went to bed early in order to get an early start for the drive.

At around noon, as I was finishing my morning clinic and waiting for admission at the Doctor's Lounge before lunch, I got a call from Anita. An hour out, and Tanjung Malim,smoke started coming from the engine and the temperature gauge went up. The stopped the car at a lay by and called in the mechanics and tow. But they would only be able to tow to the nearest highway exit. We would have to pay extra to get the van back to KL and the tow truck was too small to fit everyone in. Plus, there were no taxis at the lay by.

I got one of my colleagues to cover - thanks Nor Liza - and drove from Subang to Tanjung Malim and drove everybody back to KL. Our driver decided to drive the van slowly back to KL, and he everybody, including the van made it back to Gombak in one piece.

The van went straight back to the garage, and guess what? Everything checked out fine! Strange. The van did not give any problem on the drive back to KL not when the mechanic stressed the engine later.

Sadly, the trip was already cancelled, and I was on call, so the boys had to spend the time in KL. Not sure what the plan was for today. My mother-in-law might take a drive down to the apartment in Port Dickson instead. Anita was not feeling too excited to go as she was still carrying a cold. Idlan especially was disappointed. Had to make plans for tonight I think …..

The Boys were Packing

So, the boys would be going to Lumut and Pangkor with Puan Anita and their Grand Ma tomorrow. Dad had to work - in fact I had a couple of on calls this week. They are on school holidays this week but I couldn't get time off as I was traveling a couple of weeks back and also next weekend to Penang. It looked like I would be traveling to Penang either alone or with my parents as Anita was a bit concerned that we would not be able to get a proper room for the family in Penang with the election campaigning which sure to be hitting up by next week.

The boys were helping their Mum do the packing earlier but Idlan got a bit distracted when he couldn't find his Nintendo handheld. He left it at the back of the car when Anita and I went out to fetch something from the shops. When we got back, we saw this notice at the entrance. Obviously he took this from his brother although he didn't use the new board I bought for Irfan from Kyoto to write on.

And another thing, he wanted to be a bit clever. But ended with a notice none of us could understand. Come again Idlan?

My Output Flow

It took me a few days to get all the photos from Kyoto sorted out and uploaded to my server, Flickr and Facebook. I was yet to blog about them though. That would be another week. I would need to do a bit of reading for that. Otherwise, I was pretty happy with the snaps. Happy that I stuck with the X100 rather than a bigger camera. The low-light performance form the camera was fantastic especially during the night walk capturing the sakura at the of Gion district.

So, what did I do with the snaps from the camera? I captured jpg on my X100. The on camera processing on a Fuji is excellent and I don't think that I would be able to get any better result tweaking a RAW file, not to mention the time saved. I then uploaded them onto my Mac, ran a program called Photolinker which would geotag the photos as well as keyword insertion. A straightforward but powerful program which I had been using for the past 5 years.

Once that was done, the photos were transferred onto Aperture for sorting and selection, followed by post-editing. Once the colors were tweaked, the files were exported into the final jpg via module called Border FX. This was how the frame was inserted as well as the final resolution of the images as well as the watermarks, both in prints and the metadata. The captions were also inserted before the export within Aperture. As a result, I was able to maintain the same captions no matter which service I uploaded the photographs to.

The first thing I did once the final jpeg were produced was to upload the photos onto my SmugMug server. For this, I used MacDaddy, another simple program which did the job very well. For Flickr, I used Flickery, and Facebook just the plain old web uploaded. No hassle there. This had been my method for the last few years. Simple, but effective. And if I had the time, I could breeze through all the photos within a few hours. But not this time. Work was in the way.