Happy Birthday to my Dad

090620 KL Butterfly Park 07, originally uploaded by Haris Abdul Rahman.

Today happens to be my Dad's 63rd. However, we thought we will take him out for dinner tomorrow for a 2 in 1 thing with Father's Day. First thing, I drove to PJ Hilton for a Haematology Study Group Meeting. We spent the whole morning discussing protocols and I must say, compared to the sessions in the years past, this has been the most fruitful.

We actually touched almost every aspect of Haematology, but the gist of it is the the plan to standardise the trefatment for adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. Looking back, the treatment response has been rather disappointing and it is about time that we be more aggressive in terms of chemo regimes. It will take a few more sissions though to get things rolling although from the looks of things, Hospital Ampang will be going ahead as early as July with the new plan.

Lunch came next, after a good chit-chat, I decided to take my camera out in the afternoon. Last year, I went to the Butterfly Park in Tasik Perdana, KL with my gear and was disappointed. Most of my snaps turned out blurry or out of focus. I think the problem was the aperture I was using was too wide, narrowing the depth of field. As a result the focal plane become very small. So in English, aperture (assigned a an f number) is the diameter of the opening on the lens to let light in. The smaller the f number, the wider the aperture, the more light gets in. The maximum aperture is usually indicated at the name of the lens. The main advantage of wide aperture is the ability to increase the shutter speed. The higher the shutter speed, the less like the image become blurred.

However, there is a price to pay for wide aperture. The wider, ie, the smaller the f number, the narrower the plane of focus become. Image falling before or after the plane will become out of focus.

The mistake I made was thinking with the smaller f number and the higher possible shutter speed, I hope the image will be sharp. Unfortunately the focusing on my camera can be tricky sometime. As a result, around 75% came back unsatisfactory. This time around, I increase the ISO - sensitivity of the camera to light, and shot at f8 to 11. I think the results this time around is much better.

Later in the evening, I attended the Medical Department Annual Dinner. This year it was held at Holiday Villa Subang. The highlight was definitely Sanjiv's rendition of "Sound of the Falling Rain" as a tribute to KL Goh. It was hilarious. Iqbal's 15 minutes of stand-up wasn't that bad either. I got to also go on stage to pick up my Badminton's winners medal.