Sometimes I don’t sleep till pass 3.00 am… but waking up at 3.00 am was never… as far as I can remember… will this mean I have to stay awake all the time?… that will make me feel walking on air!!! Yea, when I don’t get enough sleep, I will feel like walking on air… so what is my option tonight?… should I rent a motorhome? But wait, we don’t have motorhomes here… how nice if I can get a motorhome…. can park at the central market, sleep inside the motorhome and jump out from it anytime!!!

Oh, well… my option now is to sleep early… probably by 9.00 pm tonight in my bedroom… I hope my can get sleep that early…

The gym is totally out… there is no single light I can see inside the gym… on the 1st and 2nd floor of the mall. So, I called Disney… who is also coming to the gym… he was still on his way. I told him about the blackout… then we decide to abandon the gym… and decided to go for night photography instead…

Since I did not bring my camera, I have to go back home… same with him. Going back is another hard part… there was a massive traffic jam at the main road outside the mall… and I was stuck there about half hour before manage to make a U-turn.

For the photography, we went to Kota Kinabalu’s Central Market… around it, there are many stalls selling foods… its quite lively… so we spend quite a long time there… and I was sweating and damm tired walking around… but well, since we did not go for gym, this is good way to do quick weight loss…

After that, we proceeded to KDCA to take photos of the dragon lanterns… and it was so tiring… worse than doing exercise at the gym… I have to use every part of my muscle to stretch out to have a good view of the dragons…

This is my second time covering a paint ball game… the first one was in April for the same friend for their woodsball game at KKIP.

Last time it was held in an open space area… a site for constructing building. This time it is held in woods next to the sea… at the lagoon

It is quite difficult to take photos in the woods… especially when the players are dashing behind the woods… my camera can’t lock its focus on the player…

I reach the park a couple of minutes before 10am as promised since I have to replace my 3 years old back tires before that…

The first game started before 10.30 am with a cloudy weather… but still I got a bad sunburn on my neck and both hands

The second game started before 11.50 am with a bit of cloud…

And the third game started before 1.00 pm with rain… I did not enter the arena coz I don’t have rain protection for my camera.

And the third game ended in less than 20 minutes because the players’ goggles are forging… if you never wear a paint ball mask with goggles before, let me tell you how it feels… it is hard to breath underneath it… and with the cold rain, it make the goggle fogging badly inside…

And luckily I have a ponco… a thin plastic rain coat… it was given to me by Disney when we were covering the Borneo Downhill Challenge 2009 in May.

You can either swim in the lagoon or use the shower area to clean yourself… but the shower area was quite a distance from the arena… fresh water supply?… yes they do have… in fact they have many pipes without faucets around the park… it would be nice if they have it working so that guest can clean themselves without taking a long journey to the shower area.

Anyway here are some of the photos I took… will post the full album later… after I finish editing them…

The plan was to test my new lens… Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. Formerly I was using my friend’s Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS. For now, I don’t feel much different other than the extra 50mm and the USM. But it’s cool to hold the lens… feels more solid and big.

Then on Sunday, after sending off my sister to the KK airport, I took my nephews to the Tanjung Aru 3rd beach to watch the airplanes landing and taking off. If you are familiar with the airplanes viewing spot, you will be saddened… if you have not been there for sometimes the place has been fenced.

Previously there are some areas where you can park the car near the runways and watch the airplanes. But now, the fence has been moved right next to the road until there are no more places to park cars.

I spotted a photographer… he is an airplanes spotter I guess. He use a tall ladder so that he can snap the airplanes landing and taking off above the fence. I did talk to him and he is an airplanes spotter for BKI… the Kota Kinabalu International Airport… KKIA.
 

And while me and my nephews were at the 3rd beach, I found out latter at night that my friend, Willy, was at the second beach for photography outing with some friends. They were shooting models… damm… this is what we call friend… syok sendiri saja!!!

But luckily their model is not wearing sexy bra sets like that one >>>

Here is their model photo session at the Prince Philip Park, Tanjung Aru 2nd Beach… photo taken from Willy’s facebook…

A couple more of photos taken at the Jesselton Point jetty…

Then do some adjustment to my shutterbomb photo blog. Do you know that the Google custom search is so powerful?… But the only drawback is I can’t make the search box centered… anyone knows how to do it?… I tried to ‘center’ it with the ‘p’ and ‘div’ tag.

And I’ve been neglecting shutterbomb… maybe it is time for me to upload photos there… coz my 250gb mobile drive is half full with photos I taken.

Me and a friend was the first few registering at the Level 1 of Pan Pacific Sutera… we arrived just after 10am… we are the non member of the FAPA convention registering I guess… coz most of them are busy with photography session outside the hotel near the swimming pool.

Then when it started, it is in Chinese… OMG… how lah?… ayoyo… never mind lah… just listen lah…

Lucky, the speaker is talking about how to enhance photos with Photoshop… so can guest what he is doing… ‘agak agak saja lah’… but even his Windows is in Chinese character… odoiiii dogo…

The talk end at around 12pm. Since nothing to do, we decided to have lunch at 1Borneo, where the FAPA thingy and Photo Exhibition held.

After lunch, we walk to the South Atrium of 1Borneo where the photography exhibition is held. The photographs displayed are great… Then I noticed someone familiar… at the corner of the stage. They are doing some photography thingy. I went there and ask if he is Flanagen… aahh… correct lah. Then there is another familiar face… Edgar… I never met them before in real life… only in their blog… Another ‘famous’ photographer is with them… but forgot lah the name/blog… hope Flanagen and Edgar can enlighten me here… I can add him in my blogroll.

They are doing a ‘noble project’… 999 Portrait Project… to capture 999 portraits to put into Canon magazine… I think lah… you can read at Flanagen’s “We want you for 999 Portrait Project!!” and Edgar’s “999 Portrait in 1 Week Project and We Want YOU!”

But I did not know what they are really doing at that time… although they did ask me to participate… I think I was still ‘pening-pening’ after attending the talk in Chinese. Feel bad did not participate… I only know more about it after reading their blog after I went back… but hopefully I will go there again on Saturday or Sunday… to see the Canon booth… I want to see their gears… hopefully they will showcase their super duper gears… just like what they did in KL… but I doubt it… and hopefully they will be still there doing the noble project… OK, to those of you who want to participate in the 999 Portrait Project, go to 1Borneo… I think they are doing it for 1 week… not sure when it going to end… hope they can tell…

At the LG floor, they put all the not so cool cars… MPV, mini, sedan etc.

At the G floor, they put all the so called Big Boyz Toys… Z4, Lotus, Lexus, Ferrari etc… Although they called it big boyz toys, I don’t think those cool cars have any PS3 on it like what the Pimp My Ride usually installs. They are all the standard kind of boyz toys… none with ICE.

There wasn’t much car on display too, but good enough for the big boyz toys model photo sessions

They also have photography competition but I’m sure the organizer did not do a proper event plan for the photography competition… nobody knows what to do or how to enter the competition. I approach the MC and ask about it, but he also doesn’t know what’s going on… he asked me to talk to the ‘event manager’… I went to meet the ‘event manager’… he admitted everything are last minute… at the end I did not enter the competition because I only carried my Sony T200 with me although I manage to get some shots at the models

I called my friends and told about it because there will be another session next day, Sunday… And they did go for the event… but I did not coz I was so tired.

I reach home around 7pm and immediately change my office cloths, grab my sling bag and back on the road again… destination 1Borneo, that is about 20km away! And no dinner! In my bag are my big gun, a video cam and the T200. Everything is in tip top condition… fully charged and full of storage. The video cam even has 8GB of memory stick under its hood

Less then 5km from Alam Mesra… our new meeting place which is opposite to 1Borneo… CRAPP!!! Traffic Jam!!!… Clock shows 7.40pm

Lucky the jam was not that long… I manage to meet them at the kedai kopi around 8pm. Ordered my drink and food… fried rice only Eat quickly then 2 of my friends hop into my car and we went further away so that we can get better view… about 1km – 1.5km away from 1Borneo. We set our gear on the road island… there was not much people there. Only the 3 of us using tripod Wonder where the other photographers…

The show did not start at 8.30pm… we got ‘insider info’ that it’s going to be delayed to 9pm and it’s going to be shoot from the top of the hotels at 1Borneo… Novotel or Mercure. Exactly at 9.02pm the show started… and I was still posing for photo

The weather was so good… so clear… our position is great… using my 17-85mm lens at its widest setting, I can capture everything… BUT the only unfortunate was ‘what I requested did not come!’… NO WIND!!! It turns out like a nuclear bomb being released at 1Borneo. The show only lasted for 5 minutes… and can’t do much becoz of the smoke! And… please comment how to take fireworks… this is my first time using M on DSLR, and I did learned few things last night. Normally I just use P. I set my shutter speed to 2.5 seconds… I should have set it to 4 or 5 seconds  

But it was fruitful since the Canon EFs 55-200mm f/4-5.6 IS lens is available. Now I have the chance to use it first before the 400D come back

I told Lucy, the taukey, that I will write about her shop in my blog… and I gave her my blogs url Trying to get free promotion… win win mah…

I also get myself a HOYA CIR-Polarizing filter with 0.75 pitch. I know what polarizer can do, but I’m not sure yet about the figures. I will try this first and hopefully I got the right one. More of the polarizer result at my SnapShot ShutterBomb.

Investline Sdn. Bhd. located opposite of the road in front of Centre Point, Kota Kinabalu. You can get a good price from Investline if you know your way. I’ve compared with other shops around, and found out prices for body and lens can be much more cheaper here

The look of the 40D with the 70-250mm… very long till my Lowepro bag has to be modified a bit to fit it inside.

Maximum 200mm towards Centre Point, Kota Kinabalu and Wawasan Flyover while moving inside car.

When we arrived there, the sunset is just setting… so immediately took out camera. There will be more photos from my big gun at my Photo Blog soon.

 
Jonathan with his big gun… no lah, thats my S5… checking what he captured… he said got ‘Tiger’ on the photo he took… I also confused

 
Taxi colorful formation… Le Meridien swimming pool at 2nd floor.

  
When I’m bored, I will do anything… after lunch, I was soooo sleepy.

On my way, when I was going downhill towards the Penampang Bypass’ tunnel, I saw a huge & thick black cloud. It looks like a huge smoke from a burning houses or something like that.

But it doesn’t have the smoke tail from the ground… it just floating freely on the sky… then I said it must be a chemical or toxic cloud… just arrived in KK!!!

Well, I keep on driving towards Sutera Harbor Resort… then I noticed it actually coming from the Sutera’s power plant… their diesel generator… the only huge private diesel generator in the middle of the city… they claim it is ‘environmental friendly’.

 
The smoke tail is in the middle of the photo… and the smoke cloud.

Captured some photos from the 3rd floor of Le Meridien Hotel.

 
Pulau Gaya’s stilt houses

Reflection of the Filipino Market or UNHCR Market… more of the market activity photos at my Snapshots.Shutterbomb blog.

Aaaaha… the camera phone is not producing good pictures… i see your problem… in fact almost all pictures taken with camera phone are below par… but why don’t you get the Nokia N73?… it’s a decent camera phone with 3.2 megapixel… with Carl Zeist lens  … yea, it’s a great camera phone… But how about if you can have a 5 megapixel camera phone? Yea! Sony Ericsson has one with 5 megapixel camera.

The Sony Ericsson K850i Cyber Shot… yea… that’s right… Cyber Shot as in the Sony Cyber Shot compact digital camera line.

The souvenier book of the dinner.

We were seated at Table 2… very near to the stage.

One of the recipient…. here is the translation of her message…
I feels very happy because chosen to received the wheel chair, this gift meant a lot to me, with this wheel chair it will make it easier for me to go to the clinic and for me to move around in the house. I thank you to KESITER.

And of course the star of the night… Velvet the Malatup… which I did not ‘bodyguard’…

my not so lucky ticket…

Today, I received the $1,500.00… it is a sponsorship for one table. The table of 10 will be given to my colleagues… and if they are working hard for me, I will allow them to bring their spouse or partner… ha ha ha…

The proceeds of the charity is to buy some wheelchairs… frankly, I’m not sure what is the target number of wheelchairs… but if you plan to come or sponsor… please check it out at Ben’s blog.

The highlights of the dinner will be the performance by Velvet AF the Malatup! KESITER have to ‘agree’ on certain ‘condition’ by her ‘manager’… one of it is ‘BODYGUARD’… and two of the event organizer told me that…. I can be the BODYGUARD… ha ha ha… no way lah… but if they really serious and they can’t find any… emm… I will think about it… but for now… no way lah…

The dragon fly is focused and not the sun or the centre of the picture. How did I do that?.. Although I was using the Canon PowerShot S5 IS which comes with DIGIC III which can focus 9 faces at one time, the dragon fly is not a face.

What I did was, first I focus the dragon fly. While focusing on the dragon fly, the sun is not within my composition. But it’s OK… once the focus is locked to the dragon fly, I turn the camera to the right so that the sunset enter my composition… and that is the result

 
MOST is located at Sadong Jaya, Karamunsing.

  
The 5 top students…. 5th Darius (KSIT) – mouse pad, 4th Ray (HQ) – mouse pad, 3rd Arman (HQ) – cap

  
2nd Me (KSIT) – cap 8)  1st Edi (KSIT) – Novell watch

fuyooo… my office sapu 3 places….

It was cool that MOST gave us supprise by giving prizes… we did not expect it… although the prizes are not expensive like notebook or printer LOL… it still really made all of us happy with excitement… way to go MOST… we might come back here