The 14th just passed yesterday and it was rather like a small celebration for a few of us. Thanks to Elaine for mass cooking and guys at 80 Noel Street for loaning their house as the hosts, we had our famous Malaysian Styled Steamboat~ Wee~ Tom Yom paste, fish cakes, fish ball, lamb slices, mushrooms, noodles, yum, yum~

To set the records straight from the start, the party wasn't held because of extreme boredom or stress whatsoever. First of all, it was my Birthday (yay me! ^_^) , the 3 master students are graduating (so sorta a celebration much? ) and a farewell party as some of us

Games of Mixed Feelings

Wow, it's been 2 weeks huh? as par usual, a status update is in order! For some who didn;t know, I was away for 10 days in Europe. The Eurotrip was fun as we visited Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, and Rome with Venice in Italy. As fun as it is, this post is dedicated for something else, the Malaysian Notts Games. For now, there's only the teaser pic form the inside of the Roma Colosseum.

Ok, after getting grounded on the plane for 4 hours in Venice, finally landed my arse back in London thus ending the tedious 10 Day trip! Without delay, this got followed by a 5 hour arse dragging journey on the bus back to Nottingham. At long last, I reached home and reunited with my dearest bed bed. =)

Since Nottingham Games was the next day, I had to recuperate myself or I would have slept through the entire days festivities. After a peaceful 18 hour sleep, it was Saturday a.k.a. Malaysian Nottingham Games! (Wee~ Fireworks in the background). As glorious as it sounds, despite being a year shy over it's jubilee year, it wasn't as much I would have expected.

First of all, they are less food stalls this year. (Oh come on, how could you not like MALAYSIAN FOOD!) Turns out that the contract this year changed as stalls were required to pay unnecessary insurance fees and unaffiliated private stalls are not allowed this year. Needless to say, the amount of stalls were reduced to a mere 12 this year? (Might be slightly off by one or two stalls). Weirdly enough, there was a stall selling cupcakes and fudge under the 'Malaysian Food Fest' banner. How on earth can people relate to that? My friend even commented that the food sold this year sucks big time cause of no satay being sold and no post-graduates cooking at any of the food stalls? His logic was that Post-Grads cook better than others. Hence the question remains.... 'Am I considered a good cook then?' o.o

Spirit of One Malaysians, sitting together and eating =)

Most of the people hanged out in the eating area till it was time to be shooed away by the NG Committee Members

Anyways, it was a bit lonely for me as many of my friends did not attend the 'great' festivities this year. Some were busy with assignments to be handed in on Monday which is excusable, but others did not even know that it was Notts Games Day. Others got lost to the wrong uni's campus (Nottingham Trent instead of Nottingham Uni) and some even didn;t attend cause they claim their respective Uni. did not promote the event? So much for one of the most attended Malaysian Event in UK huh?

Badminton this year was also another topic to be of note. Unlike last year where the match ups were evenly spread, this year's lineup was rather weird. All of the seeded teams were concentrated in the first block, while the unseeded ones were left in the other. This resulted in early fierce eliminations in the preliminary rounds. A bit of a let down as the teams i wanted to root for got eliminated by the second rounds. =(

Overall I'll just rate this year's games as half hearted. On the bright side, I got to met some long lost friends, my cousins and new friends to boot. Anyway, there's always next year right? =)

On a side note, the leaves are STARTING to change in colours, but the weather is just going downhill towards subzero lately! Oh well, i guess even the wise old trees can't keep up with raging mother nature. Gonna finish up my Eurotrip pics for now. Till then, Ciaoz~

Eurotrip, Here i come~

With 2 hours away from departure time, 'THE' day is finally here! Right now, sitting patiently listening to some K-Pop songs while waiting for the time to be 10.30pm. As the time ticks away and slowly passes, the anxious me can't wait to finally leave Nottingham for a long awaited holiday trip!

Gah, typing in non-melancholic tone really doesn't suit me at all! ;p

So, this time got planned myself a 10 day trip to Spain and Italy. Will be visiting famous places like Madrid and Barcelona in Spain and Rome and Venice in Italy! Wee~ Can't wait to be in those lovely cities, especially during the warm but still chilled weather of fall! Will be takings loads of pictures, so just patiently wait for my updates yea? Goanna make so much people jealous by random taging then, wakaka, yipee~~~

P/S : Will not have internet access for the next few days, so no sneak peaks or spoilers for anyone till I get back :-)

See you guys on the 5th of November

~Ciaoz~

Anti Cams

And yet, another boring week solemnly creeps by without me noticing. As melodramatic as it sounds, I actually did something rather peculiar this week. While waiting for my MSc results to be released, was actually reading some books! Yup, you've heard me right, ironic right?

Well, since I had so much spare time in my hand, I decided to read some books that I've brought over from Malaysia and those that I bought over here in Nottingham from back in May! Judging from the bookmarks of each book, I'm sure one hell of a lazy reader. (Blames it all on busy uni life!). For the past week, been actually piling up more and more interest in one of my later books 'The Digital Photography Handbook'.

I'm still reading books even after my studies has ended!

Sure some might say "Why on earth did you buy such stuffs? Ain't most of the stuffs common sense?". Well, the first few chapters are agreeable, but heck, unless I read something that is off a printed book, I'll never find any information legitimate. :-p

The book itself ain't half bad. Gotta learn the basic stuff of photography and the reason of choices of added equipments that come with it. Who knew there were so many tricks and tips for taking the 'right photo'. One important thing that I'm still working on is using the famous 'Golden Axis Rule' of photography. No wonder most of my holiday pics look out of proportions...

Some might say, "just go get yourself a high end camera and it'll solve everything". I may not own a SLR (Single Light Reflect) or DSLR (digital ver.), but heck I have a handy dandy Nikon Coolpix which was given to me by my dad. Most might not know, but I treasure it a lot, to the point of not letting anyone else besides me using it. Still, a digicam is good enough for me, as I'm a travelling compact photographer. Those bulky ones are just meant for a more professional line of job. Heck, I don't even have the peas and brains of using a camera professionally yet, let alone taking top notch photos.

Isn't this retarded, using a camera to take a photo of another camera

Epic~! XD

This reminds me of a hateful mindset that only beautiful pictures taken by high end DSLR's as the can have more pixels in their photos. Well newsflash, it's not! DSLR just eases the process of photo taking with loads of high tech gadgets pre-installed. A normal digital camera can do equally the same work, but just needs more experience and knowledge of use. This is kinda like the analogy of choosing an auto or manual geared car.

Well, if you are the landscape picture lover, a DSLR is terrific due to the high details. But if you are the trigger happy kind and only store your pics on social sites and on your computer, a typical 6 to 10 mega pix camera is more than sufficient, since higher details are meant for large prints. But oh well, since half of my friends own a DSLR or equivalent, I can't say more or I'll be sleeping with the fishes tonight!

Anyhow, results came out last night and got a borderline distinction. Could have gotten higher since I only had one module that scored low, thus bringing EVERYTHING down. FYI, that module was due to miss information by the module leader, thus giving me just 3 days in completing the given work. No compensation was even given to me afterwards. Well, at least I will be graduating with a distinction, unless the final exam board decides to lower it again. Tough luck for me as I seriously poured in lots of effort. Nothing left to do but to wait till graduation.

Signing off,

~Ciaoz~