Bummer.

No fret, we just thought we’d take a drive and see what else we could find…we thought of turning back over five times but God must’ve been driving because I just followed the road until we got to a railway crossing. Across the road way up in the countryside was something yellow.

“It couldn’t be”, I thought…”Let’s check it out anyway!”. Steph also didn’t think that it could’ve been a sunflower field. We turned the car around and tried to find a way in that direction. We hit a couple of dead ends but eventually we were greeted with a huge sunflower field!

I’m talking BIG. It extends all the way to the horizon. Here’s a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

That not enough for you? hmm..OK, imagine this: You are now seeing the image above in reality. Now turn 90 degrees to your left and you’re looking down the field from an elevated position…and this is what you see:

Yup. Thats a heck of a lot of sunflowers. Just as I was getting my gear out of the car the owner of the field happened to walk by with his dog. I greeted him and he let me go crazy so I had myself a photo-frenzy. I didn’t have my camera out yet so I didn’t get a shot of him. Next time I’ll be sure to bring the polaroid so I can give him a little something for his generosity.

Oh, by the way, be prepared to have your screen blasted with all sorts of shades of yellow. I love composing shots by colour. However, something funny happened while I was taking pictures of the sunflowers. Check out the image below and tell me whether or not its edited…

Am I seeing things or does it look like an HDR image? (for the noobs out there who do not know HDR is High Dynamic Range. What is it? Google is your friend). It looked the same way on the camera screen which I thought was weird. This is actually straight from camera. No post processing, no photoshop, no nothing! Even looking at it now I can’t help but think how “edited” it looks…am I right?

Also, this wasn’t a one off thing. Check out the following six images which were all taken straight from camera with no post processing whatsoever. Only adjustments made (if any) are to crop and/or straighten the horizon.

Is that weird or what? Those of you who follow me know that I like to get the shot right in camera but even I’m amazed at this! In the interest of full disclosure I will share some of my settings with those who are interested. Camera on variable aperture/shutter speeds depending on the shot (Duh!). All shot on “more vivid” picture mode, cloudy WB, and with a 0.9 (3x) Graduated Neutral Density filter (cheapo Tian Ya brand but works great!). Obviously a wide angle was used – in this case a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 mostly at 10mm. Any explaination people?!

Moving on, we also brought along our little guinea pig, Shybrow who kind of got high from all that fresh vegetation.

Shybrow is no little piggie, shes a big fat piggie and shes still growing but at around six months old and almost too big to hold her comfortable in one hand, shes no match for the sheer monstrosity that is a sunflower. I mean that thing could literally eat her up!

Man, I could almost see this shot advertising for something…for example:

How’s that? haha…fortunately that not the extent of my graphic design abilities but thats all I could think of in two minutes. Ideally, the sky would be a gorgeous deep blue but I’ll have to go back again in the near future to get that shot. More about revisiting this place at the end of the post.

Heres a shot that was inspired by another photo I saw somewhere on the internet but I can’t remember where. If I find it I’ll credit it.

Sunflowers are one of the few “photogenic” flowers. I say so because of their beautiful texture. Not to say that other flowers aren’t great but a macro lens and a sunflower would really produce some amazing results. I didn’t bring one along as it was a cloudy day and I knew it would be too windy to take macro shots (maybe next time I can steal a flower and photograph it at home?) For now, the crappy Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 will have to do.

Heres a great little pano I shot:

Altogether we were there for over an hour. Brandon called me and said that it was raining in Toowoomba so we packed up and left. Looking up there was a flock of birds. I had my telephoto lens on so I took a couple of shots of them. Nothing impressive but I sort of like this picture:

Would have loved to stay til sunset…but that was hours away. Perhaps next time. For now I can only imagine…

As I previously mentioned, I will be going back there to get some shots with blue sky instead of a cloudy one. If you don’t already know, this area has been in a 6 year drought and having clouds is a rarity so I took the opportunity to make the most of it. I will be going back on a nice clear summer day to get some different perspectives. I’ll probably go down again in a week or so. Anyone interested in joining me? let me know in the comments!

Til next time, good bye and God bless!

So anyway, this story began a long time ago…but that not important. Whats important is that it ended just a little while ago. Last Monday to be exact. Thats the day Jun left to go back to Malaysia. The day before that, Jun asked if I would be able to photograph our group at our university’s own Japanese Garden.

Of course I could!

We arranged to meet at the gardens at 4.30pm so obviously I made it a point to be  there by 5.30pm…

which I did…

…barely.

Good news is we all got there eventually and almost everyone obeyed the “all black” dress code.

We started off at the far side of the garden where there was a couple nice sheltered benches which would be suitable for a large group portrait. We tried a couple of shots but the sun was way too glaring so we swapped around and shot into the Sun. I set up two lights on both sides of the camera to makes sure everyone was evenly lit while I pull down the background exposure. Here are the results:

I took over a hundred shots but I’ve weeded them to these few to keep from boring you, my dearest readers. After 20 minutes of positioning the lights, posing everybody, and getting the shot right without people blinking, we got some really good shots before moving onto the big red door. I like this door.By the way, have you guessed which one is Jun yet?

See the smartie pants that didn’t conform to the dress code? *Ahem* *ahem* Will and Jun (Not the Jun thats leaving, we have two Juns in our group). Let me introduce you to the group.

From Left to Right: Will, Ted, Sabrina, Wilson, Stephanie, Neo, Jun, Ben, Edna, Shin Yong, Jun.

Next up is our group of lovely ladies in black.

I like the above shot except for the cross shadows which make the girls look flashed straight on and defeats the purpose of strobing. (Phototip: The lights are meant to “look” natural and inconspicuous).

Now with two flashguns shooting camera left at full zoom we can bring the background down to exposure without loosing the foreground. Remember shadows are our friends and almost this entire series was shot with the flash on full power or close to it.

Next we did some creative shots and laughed the whole way through.

This next shot is the “Eww, Yuck, its Jun” shot:

This next one is the “PHeeewWWWIIiTTtTTT, Hubba hubba, it’s gorgeous Jun!!!”:

This next one is just…well…I like the composition.So have you guessed which one is Jun yet? Now we come to our hero, “Neo, the ladies man”:

…or would you prefer, “Neo, you disgust me!” look?:

Okay, enough of that…lets move on to more group shots ya?! Moving not more than 30 meters away is the Zen garden. The little pebbles on the ground were beautifully carved when we got there. It looked like crap when we were done, haha!

In retrospect these pics remind me of the Friends series opening sequence…

Don’t you love how it looks in black and white…when everybody conforms to the dress code? Will and Jun had already left by this time because they had other stuff to do.

Every good Japanese garden has a red bridge so it wouldn’t feel complete if we didn’t take a shot there:

Theres actually four bridges at our Japanese garden. This is one of the smaller ones. In the middle of the garden is a small island which I’ve found to be a great spot for photographs! By now we were quickly loosing light and were about to wrap up so we quickly had to get it over with. Once the lights were set up I was ready to go. Check out the reflections!

Sort of has a “The Bold and the Beautiful” theme going on, hey? Heres another:

You can see the flash in the picture which I felt would pass as a lamp post or something. I tried to clone it out but preferred it like this. At this point we were exhausted and ready to pack up. Jun had other plans. She wanted one last shot with Ben, Edna, and Neo so with plenty of people around I used them as assistants to finally get some use out of the umbrellas which I’d been lugging around all day without using for fear of them being blown by the wind. Its happened once and broke the flash that way. I had just got it too!

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom! If you enjoyed what you saw please leave me a comment! Send me feedback, what I should or should not be doing! critic! We all learn from our mistakes. Let me leave by saying I appreciate criticism a lot more than flattery so don’t hesitate if there was something bothering you that you thought would look better only if…(I’ll leave the rest to you)

Take care and God bless,

Jiaren

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/12/03/jun-loos-farewell-photoshoot/feed/ 8 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/08/02/sydney-blue-mountains/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/08/02/sydney-blue-mountains/#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:34:49 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=607

About a month ago, we headed off to Sydney for the Hillsong Conference. Altogether there were about 20 of us which was pretty cool…unfortunately, we didn’t all travel together (nor did we all stay together). I headed a group of 11, nine of which were gonna fly to and from Brisbane together, while one of them took the flight before and the other came from Singapore! Here’s our group of 9 after we disembarked from the plane:

Okay, that creepy non-Asian white guy in the back is a advert poster…Will isn’t in the shot coz we were on the horizontal escalator where as he wasn’t…of course I was behind the camera…
After countless hours (yes, literally HOURS) or arguing which would be the best transport to get to our accommodation we finally decided on a big shuttle bus which brought us on a 40 minute drive to Parramatta, which is located to the West of Sydney. We happily unpacked our bags and was out the door! We took the train down to the city where we were just in time for dinner before heading toward the Harbour to meet up with Christoph.

Meet Christoph:

Christoph was our housemate back in Toowoomba for a year. He’s currently somewhere between Thailand and Singapore on his holiday before heading back to Germany where he comes from. He moved out by this time and happened to be in Sydney that night so we planned to meet up…being Asians, we had to take a lot of group pics…

How many people can you spot? One of us had relatives in Sydney so he didn’t join us…thats why there’s only 10 ppl. *EDIT* Actually theres less coz I cropped Edna out of the frame…Sorry Edna! I didn’t have my tripod and so I had to improvise…this next shot is heavily cropped so the lamp post I used wouldn’t get in the picture of the Eye of Sydney.

I think its funny how every major city now has an “Eye”…

We walked along the harbour past the Sydney Aquarium and other attractions which were almost closing as it was rather late by this time…We checked the schedule for the ferry and saw that we would be able to make the last one so while we waited for the ferry we walked back to the Sydney Aquarium where they had a nice backlit billboard of Spongebob Squarepants. I noticed it on the way to the ferry and went back for one purpose and one purpose only: to get this shot:

That’s my friend Patrick (which also happens to be from Miri). This picture is titled, “Patrick & Patrick”.

Anyway, we then headed to a place called the Rocks to have some sort of famous pancake. Indeed it was a pancake house franchise which had been sort of springing up all over the place. We went in for dessert. Now, let me make it clear that I do NOT take pictures of the food I eat…its sooooooooooooooooooooo cliche doncha think? …but they insisted so I took a happy snap of my chocolate strawberry pancake…YUM!

Hmm…I’m really sorry but my timeline of the events that occured after this pitstop seems to have screwed itself up in my brain so I can’t remember what we did when we did…All I remember is that along the… (this crossed out paragraph corresponds to the “Patrick & Patrick” picture and the paragraph above it…)

Although I took a bunch of pics after that I’m not going to share anymore simply because I still have a lot to cover…by the way, the current time now is exactly 5.13am. I don’t plan to sleep and I want to finish by dawn-ish so we can go to the Sunday Market before church Who’s “we” you ask? That’s me and Steph…I’m not sleeping tonight because I slept this arvo…what’s “arvo” you ask? its Aussie for “afternoon”. What’s “Aussie”? It’s short for “Australia”. What’s “Australia” you ask? A big island surrounded with water which has a severe water problem. Go figure.

Fast forward through the night and early the next morning…

Yours truly together with his team of intrepid explorers, Patrick and Stephanie, went to pit their strength against the wrath of the mighty Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains is one of Australia’s biggest tourist destination. It is a collection of mountains that expand across the landscape that when looked at appear to be blue in colour. Its blue haze is of a different hue and deeper than anywhere else in the world. This is caused primarily by Eucalyptus trees emitting oil vapour into the atmosphere which along with fine dust particles and droplets of water vapour scatter the blue light (blue light is short wave light) more than any other colour in the spectrum. (That last sentence was taken from the guide book. If you’re interested, look for it on wikipedia.)

Also the home to the Three Sisters, a natural rock formation which is sort of difficult to explain so I’ll show you a picture:

You can see the Blue Mountains in the background. I’ve already warmed up the tones to make the Three Sisters more prominent in the frame of this picture and even so the mountains appear so blue so you can imagine how blue it actually was!

We took the ExplorerBus to Scenic World, home to the steepest railway which has a maximum gradient of 52 degrees!  It feels like its almost 90 degrees!

See how the trees are straight? If I left my bag on the empty seat im front it would’ve ended up right at the front! When we got to the bottom Partrick helped me take a picture of me and Steph and the three sisters…thx Pat!

We continued by foot through the forest to the bottom where we would take one cablecar up to the main platform and another back to the place the bus dropped us. We managed to sneek in a strobist shot while walking through the forest. After a few attempts we got it right…credit to Steph for taking the picture and Patrick for holding the flash:

Heres Steph in the cable car enjoying herself on one of the cablecar rides:

Oh, by the way, this is our ExplorerBus…the hop-on hop-off tour bus we used to get between places…the bus driver was kind enough to let us take a picture before he zoomed off to the next stop:

The driver was very friendly. There are actually two busses but this one seemed to always be the next one up! We walked through the cold forest to Leura Cascades. Its a beautiful stream of water falling all the way to the bottom. Be warned that I LOVE LOVE LOOOOOOOVVVEEE waterfalls. If I see a waterfall I MUST take a picture of it…that means I have to take out my ND filters and spend a good 15 minutes taking the fall from almost every conceivable angle. These are my three favourite shots:

How convenient the series is actually in order of how I shot them and its going from top down so you can actually sort of visualize the waterfall as it slowly cascades down to the bottom where you can see the pool in the last pic…

After this we continued our jungle trek for another hour or so until we finally reached the end and waited for the bus to pick us up. These were the last few shots I took during the day because I was too tired by the time we were out of the forest.

A view from one of the many many lookout points.

Patrick at the bus pick up point to head back to the main town.

The rest of the group actually asked us to go back to the Sydney CBD after our trip to the Blue Mountains but we were just too tired to bother…otherwise we could have met up with Rachel who lives there… By the time we got back to the accommodation (which is 2hr + away from the Blue Mountains) it was about 9pm and I couldn’t wait to sleep!

Fast forward through the night and early the next morning…

Today we had big plans. Places to go, things to see, and stuff to do…unfortunately, we were late.

…sooooooooooooooooo we ended up going to see the Sydney Opera House and then went to some small town for lunch before we did some other things which I can’t remember…crap this is the second time in this post! Well, that doesn’t matter because I only want to share my pics of the Opera House and ask you a question.

This is a rather famous bridge. The Sydney Harbour Bridge. Now for the question. Which of the following two photos do you think is better? They are both the same picture just differently cropped.

Personally, I like the second one. That’s all I got. The day after this was the conference so I’ll get working on it right away! Til then, thanks for reading!

Its when I’m free from obligations that I actually push myself. Why I don’t know. I guess its because when I’m shootin’ for myself, I’m shooting against myself…and myself is very competitive…geddit? Also, I don’t feel confined to do what I know works and works well…instead I do things that others don’t think about…what others don’t see…and most importantly, what others couldn’t be bothered turn a second glance at.

Its when I can look at something simple. Something everyday. Something “normal”. For example, a calculator:

Ok, nothing really special about that…just wanted an excuse to show off the tiny DOF of an f/1.2! Thats right! 50mm f/1.2 right there…at 50cm the DOF is a mere 6mm!!! SHWEEEEET!!! Here are a couple of shots taken at f/1.2…

Notice how sharp the web in focus is? I don’t know why everyone keeps complaining about the f/1.2s?! They’re tack sharp wide open!

Someone founds this little bead on the floor at church so I took a picture of it…(after the service of course…)

Toowoomba’s own shopping mall – Grand Central.

This, my friends, is where the f/1.2 REALLY shines! The picture is taken handheld at 1/60 with nothing more than a dim street lamp!

After that,…well…actually it was before that coz I just recently got the f/1.2…We were testing the shoot through umbrella for strobing…

No comment.

Needless to say this post will contain excessive Steph.

Poor guinea pig Steph has to become my model for all my weird shooting needs…

After some fun indoor portraits we went outside to shoot some more portraits…real strobist stuff! This next picture is definitely my fave of this set! Check them out!

By the way, thie series of outdoor portraits were taken at the University of Southern Queensland’s Japanese Garden…

I also really like this above picture…

Thanks Steph!

Thats about it for today…I also took some pictures of the Brisbane Floating Boardwalk which I’ve already uploaded on Flickr…will post about it tomorrow…I still have a lot of these sort of shots lying aroung the HDD but I needed to get some of it out to make space for next week. If you didn’t know I’m going to the Hillsong Conference in Sydney next week. We’re leaving this Sunday morning so I’ll try to keep the blog updated as the conference is held…Its gonna be LEGENDARY!

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/07/04/strobing-and-misc/feed/ 6 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/02/01/mission-trip-to-cambodia/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/02/01/mission-trip-to-cambodia/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:51:38 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=209 My travel holiday officially started on the 13th December 2008. I’m pretty sure this is the best holiday ever! …and the best part: ITS NOT EVEN OVER YET!!! too bad Steph is in M’sia…would be nice to have her company

Anyway, so my holiday goes like this:

BRISBANE – KUALA LUMPUR (13 Dec ’08)

KUALA LUMPUR – PHNOM PENH (17 Dec ’08)

PHNOM PENH – KUALA LUMPUR – SINGAPORE (21 Dec ’08)

SINGAPORE – LONDON (24 Dec ’08)

**drove back to Holland: LONDON – FRANCE – BELGIUM – HOLLAND (28 Dec ’08)

HOLLAND – ABERDEEN via EDINBURGH (27 Jan ’09)

ABERDEEN – LONDON (04 Feb ’09)

LONDON – KUALA LUMPUR – MIRI (05 – 06 Feb ’09)

MIRI – KUALA LUMPUR (18 Feb ’09)

KUALA LUMPUR – SINGAPORE (dunno…unbought)

SINGAPORE – BRISBANE via DARWIN (19 Feb ’09)

sort of complicated but you get the idea...

*Phew* thats a heck of an itinerary huh? now you know the backlog of my blog posts, haha…and so, I present the Captain’s Log.

Day 1: 13th December 2008

I am embarking on my journey around the world in 70 days. Weather is calm, flight departure is on time. Stephanie is accompanying me for the first leg of the journey. No events to report.

Day 2: 14th December 2008

Safely arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Retrieved luggage and proceeded through immigration. Upon exiting the terminal, taxi driver with my name is present. Two hours drive to Ipoh to visit my grandmother and relatives, as well as little 1 year, 8 month old Eanne.

Grandma and grand daughter

Fumbly hands ...check.

Pudgy feet ...check.

Girl talk ...check.

Headshot 1

Headshot 2

Head and Shoulder

my failed attempt at hi-key...too lazy to photoshop...

Mother & Daughter (My Auntie Chritz)

Father & Daughter (My Uncle Ming)

...and finish it off with a family portrait.

Day 3: 15th December 2008

Took train back down to Kuala Lumpur. Roamed around the city for a bit. First stop: NANDO’S CHICKEN!!! No events to report.

Day 4: 16th December 2008

Today we were scheduled to meet up five more of the people that would be accompanying us on the mission trip to Cambodia. However, they were only to arrive in the late afternoon. Therefore, Steph and I decided to pay a visit to the Bird Park in Lake Gardens. Unfortunately, on the way there the cab driver convinced us that the butterfly park wouldve been a better place to visit …and so, we went to the butterfly park instead.

taken by Steph at the Butterfly Park, Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur.

This is kinda cool...not exactly a butterfly so what is it?

Taken with Sigma 10-20mm @ f/16 + ND8 Cokin P154 (I love wide angles!)

Day 5: 17rd December 2008

Today we venture into the uncharted territories of…*drum roll* …CAMBODIA! *thunder in background*

We were on a mission trip to Phnom Penh where we would be ministering to three small villages as part of an outreach by New Life Fellowship (NLF), the organization which allowed us to come. They have been building the community for a couple of years now. They are basically a church that have provided the community with a place to worship and learn about God. Besides that, they also provide English lessons as well as computer training to the locals which greatly increase their chances of getting a decent job…and they’re VERY good too! Our translators were taught by NLC and are proficient in both English and Cambodian (obviously!)…Not only that but they provide medicine and first aid medical treatment to the locals. SO much so that the government has actually recognized their contribution to society and are actually funding them in some parts as their own hospitals and clinics are inadequate to meet the demand. Seriously, they’re very very good so if you are reading this I urge you to continue to pray for this organization and that Gods hand be upon them.

Upon arrival we were greeted by Pastor Kim and made our way to our accomodation by tuk-tuk.

Very dusty and my nose is very sensitive so I used my hanky to cover my face, hehe...

Townview Hotel, our accomodation for the first 3 nights.

Below is our first dinner. You can see the team from our Mission Trip. The first three on the left is Pastor Kim, an Australian pastor that moved here a couple of years ago. The two beside him are his wife and daughter.

From the Left side of the Table: Pastor Kim, Nicole, ?, Pastor Yew Meng, Seng Yee, Jason, Patrick, Andrix, Edna, Ben, Stephanie, and Auntie Elena.

IF SOMEONE CAN REMIND ME WHAT PASTOR KIMS WIFE’S NAME WAS PLEASE LET ME KNOW YA!

As you can see they've already adapted to the local culture...

Day 6: 18th December 2008

This was an awesome day! We went to a local program thingie where they look after small children including first aid medical attention and washing of their feet. However, the main purpose of the program is to expose these youngsters to Christ and Christianity. We had a blast, we were humbled, we were amazed, we were so blessed that day…and…

…

erm…

…

*sniff*

…

…

*sigh*…

…I…forgot…to…bring…

…my…

…

…CAMERA!

Lousy stupid friggin #%#@%!!!!!!!!!

In my defense, I didn’t actually forget, it was that I woke up late for breakfast so instead of walking back to the hotel and taking my bag I had to go straight to the church from the restaurant…

…at least I managed to get some pictures of what we did at night. I’ll let the pictures tell the story:

We visited this house sort of like a boys hostel which housed quite a lot of them. We were invited for dinner and got to know some of them.

You can see me in my "relentless for Christ" shirt...the guy to my right is Si Hua, the guy I met and got to know a little bit better. Credit to Steph for taking the picture.

After that, we prayed for them and took a nice group photo. (the houses in Cambodia are such that they

Even though we were only there for an hour or so we felt that we had really bonded. However, it was time to bid farewell and it was really quite touching.

Day 7: 19th December 2008

Today we had a day off…a day completely to ourselves. What normal people do on such an occasion is to visit the Angkor Wut…one of the 7 wonders of the world! …but instead we go to a museum of torture and the killing fields where a regime that took place was so cruel and so merciless that their exploits made Hitler look like kindergarden.

Toulsleng Genocide Musuem

Read it. Seriously. Read it.

Pictures too small to see...but basically what they do is hoist the prisoners up by their hands which are tied behind their back. They automatically hang upside down. The torturers interrogate them until they pass out. Then, they are lowered so their head go inside the pots which are filled with some smelly fertilizer thing. This causes them to immediately regain consciousness so the interrogation can continue.

This picture depicts how they kill babies. The first torturer throws the babies in the air. The second holds a rifle up towards the baby. On the tip of the rifle is a knife. The baby falls on the knife which pierces it before the torturer flicks the baby onto the mass pile of bodies of previous babies. Some babies do not immediately die but because of blood loss.

This was just the beginning. There are many more but I’ll stop there. Theres more gruesomeness to come…Next, we paid a visit to the killing fields, where thousands of people were slaughtered to death and left to die in mass graves which are all over the place.

Choeungek Genocidal Center. Credit Will for taking the photo. (I think)

The Killing Tree. Another form of how babies were killed. The executioner would hold the baby by thier feet, swing their head against the tree so that they crack open their skulls, and thrown into a pit (which is just to the right of the tree which I didnt picture).

See those indents in the ground? Each one holds the remains of over 100 bodies.

This monumet was erected to pay respects to the people who were killed during this time. The centre is housed with thousands of human skulls which have been excavated from the killing fields and placed on shelves.

Will decided he should start giving money away...nah, just kidding, but thats what we thought!

The Royal Palace - at least the gate anyway.

After a full day out around the town we went back to Pastor Kims “Healing Home” The healing home concept is hie brainchild where a set of decentralized houses act as a sort of nursing home or clinic where they can take care of the less fortunate and people who cannot afford to stay in private (or public) hospitals. Instead of having a single hospital like building, his plan is to have at least one healing home in ever province and eventually in every town or village. Below is the first healing home. They provide basic ammenities free of charge and at present can accomodate 4-6 people.

This is one of the rooms where patients stay. On the bottom right you can see a door. That leads to the attached toilet.

This is the toilet. Its basic but sufficient.

In case you’re wondering, they don’t simply give medicine to the patients. If the case is severe, they will have the patient examined beforehand by a certified practitioner before following carefully their treatment procedure. They employ certified nurses to administer the treatments.

After that we had dinner at a nice little coffee shop. Our group was so big that we took the entire upstairs area! lol...Credit Ben for taking the picture.

Day 8: 20th December 2008

Today we checked out of Townview Hotel on our quest to the remote parts of the country. We visited a place called Kampong Thom, some 3 hours drive North (I think) of Phnon Penh, the capital city.

On the way there we stopped at a petrol station for a toilet break. This is an interesting petrol station. Scroll down to find out why.

There are four steps to the operation of this technology. It really makes you appreciate what we have.

Step 1: Put the nozzle into the petrol tank of the vehicle.

Step 2: Push the flap so that the petrol flows into the vehicle. This is done by something called gravity.

Step 3: Watch the measurement on the side of the cylinder to see how much petrol was released. This calculates the cost of the petrol.

Step 4: Rotate the lever so petrol pumps up into the cylinder once again and stop when the measurement hits zero “0″.

Simple as that.

When we arrived for lunch beside the hotel which we stayed at we were greeted with the sight on deep fried crickets. Needless to say I tried it. ...can't say it tastes like chicken though!

After our lunch (which did NOT consist of insects) we had a little bit of time to unwind before heading to our first destination in Kampong Thom.

This is the church where the first celebration took place. The house in the background in the church and they erected a stage outside to accommodate enough people.

While they were setting up stage we played volleyball with the local kids! Thanks KEC otherwise I'd be uber crap.

When the celebration began it was already dark.

They had singing...

They had breakdancing...

...and as you can see there was a lot of people!

Finally, it was our turn. We presented 3 songs. Credit to Auntie Elena for taking the picture.

You cant see it from the picture but at the time there were bugs flying all over our heads and it was so difficult to try pretend that it wasn’t bothering us! After we finished our presentation we headed back straight away because it was already late and it wasn’t exactly a “friendly” neighbourhood.

Day 9: 21st December 2008

The very next day we were to visit a small local church. By small and mean REALLY small. Our pastor was set to preach today. Of course there were translators there too.

The wide angle lens literally got the whole church in this shot. Is a small zink hut with a zink roof.

We wore our C2C shirts today. Can anyone guess what it stands for? It says "R U C2C?".

Heres a shot of the congregation from the front.

This is the pastor of the local church.

We also did half the praise and worship. We did actions with our songs and got the congregation to join in as well!

Needless to say we were quite thirsty after that.

After the service we gave all the little children gift bags which had different things ranging from Koala key chains (see pic.) to Australian candy bars!

Group photo of the whole church.

Pastor noticed a motorcycle that belonged to the pastors wife who gave him permission to ride it. According to his wife (on bike) he used to bring her out like this when they were dating...over 20 years ago! Good times!

That night was our third and final appearance as we did the same thing as the first celebration but in a different church. Needless to say I won’t dwell into the details.

This was funny: Steph saw this cure little girl and wanted to take a picture with her. The other kids are like insects who are attracted to the light from the camera flashgun. After I took this shot Ben said he also wanted a picture with her but when the other kids noticed they quickly gathered around to be in the photo as well.

As the other kids crammed into the frame they ended up squishing the little girl (see pic) while Ben was still happily smiling to the camera. ...poor girl.

Later on in order to entertain them Jason thought of leading with the song "Christ is the Vessel" and its actions and the kids followed on...the kids follow everything you do...and so...that gave me and INGENIUS IDEA!

Thanks to Andy I started singing "MAKING MELODIES IN MY HEART"!!! ...and everybody followed! It was awesome!

As you can see once again this christmas celebration did in fact draw a huge audience!

And that was it for our mission trip. We were done. Finitimo. Habis. Kaput. The next day we were to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur (and for myself, Ben and Edna, straight on to Singapore).

Day 10: 22nd December 2008

The last day in Cambodia…and what do we do?

SHOPPING! We had a couple hourse to kill before we had to be at the airport.

They sell clothes, souvenirs, bags, ornaments, electronics, etc...

They also sell food and drinks!

To the Cambodians, this is the Russian Market

To the Australians, this is like the Sunday market.

To the Malaysians, this is like Petaling Street.

To the Dutch, this is like Hobbyma.

To the Scots, this is like Primark! haha!

back at the airport and all in one piece! The last group photo before we went our seperate ways.

Flying back to Kuala Lumpur.

After this, the three of us flew directly to Singapore. Thats Captains Log Day 11…and we’ll save that for another day.

Today I’m gonna blog about two road trips that I went on recently…the first was to Brisbane which was to celebrate Matt’s birthday…you can see his face on the previous post…

His birthday is one the 16th November 2008. He “used” to be staying in Toowoomba until just recently when he was called away from us to go to Canberra and work for Telstra. The story itself is pretty cool…according to what I know it went something like this:

Matt had no plans to leave Toowoomba (regional Queensland for non-Australian exposed peeps)…but he was looking for a job. He sent in his resume to an online website on a Monday (read Day 1) and got an unexpected call within an hour regarding his resume! These sites usually take days if not weeks for applicants to respond but his must have been outstanding! The conversation went something along the lines of this:

“Hey, can you come down for an interview tomorrow?” A little stunned he inquired where the interview would be taking place. “Canberra”, came the reply. “We would like to hold an interview tomorrow if that’s possible”, continued the voice on the other side of the phone. “Erm…”, replied Matt. “I’m now in Toowoomba…in Queensland” (Its a 2 hr flight). The voice said, “oh, what about Wednesday?” Matt thought for a while and agreed to meet for an interview on Wednesday.

(Matt correct me if I’m wrong but thats how it went in my happy head). No, I wasn’t there…So anyway, Matt shelled out just enough money for the flight first thing Wednesday morning. He didn’t have much and was putting everything on the line.

Day 3.

Early morning Wednesday Matt flew to Camberra and back. I don’t know the details but he was exhausted after that. The next morning (Thursday) he got a call saying that he got the job and would be required to start working the following Monday!!! This meant that he would have 3 days to get everything packed up and ready to go as well as say bye to everyone here! He emptied out his room in record time and within 48hrs he was ready to leave Toowoomba…Needless to say we had plenty of flour, eggs and water ready to send him off…unfortunately I was taking pics on the Polaroid so I cant upload them but it was fun!

A couple months later, his birthday arrived and we went down to Brisbane to surprise him…just a few of us: Me, Justin, Derrick, Steph, and Deborah (- his girlfriend)

Dont have a portait pic of deborah coz she was dressing up to pick Matt up from the airport so we went out for dinner in the city…

The original plan was to get a cake and hide in the room then surprise matt when he got there but as you know murphy’s law superseeds plans – “Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. First up his flight got delayed by an hour. Bare in mind that Deborah and Matt had a room but the three of us still had to drive back to Toowoomba that night. Nevermind, we thought we’d have more time to go sightseeing…which was true because as we were walking we say some people dancing.

Its pretty cool coz they had ad DJ, choreographer and all that jazz…

Thats the choreographer…can barely see his mic…

Theres Mr. DJ and his supporters…

whoops…and heres Mr blurry cam…you know you need a new prime when the 50mm f/1.8D isn’t fast enough…can’t wait to upgrade to the f/1.4…but gonna wait til the new f/1.4G comes out…

This one:

It looks so much better than its older brother which is trialed and proven.

Kinda wish Nikon would release an f/1.2 though…may be only half a stop faster than a 1.4 and prices would be overkill but why not? Canon has one…

OOPS…OFF TOPIC!

back to the dancing…there were some people really getting into it…

Quite a cool thing they had going there…anyway, we later on found out that Matt’s flight wasn’t delayed…rather the flight before his got cancelled and the people on that one was pushed to his flight which still managed to leave on time! …so they were at the hotel and we weren’t…Of course once we knew we immediately drove off…Deborah managed to get him to go out for a while while we snuck into the room with a 2nd key card to the room…

He was quite surprised although I kinda gave it away by forgetting to turn off the bathroom lights…all in all it was a fun day…plus, we had just finished our exams the day before and it was fun to get out…we had a good chat until about 1.30am in the morning…

When we left we made the mistake for following Derricks no-name-brand GPS which led us to some weird place with no electricity and half the road closed…I had enough when I heard the following instructions:

“Follow the course of the road until further instructions”

We doubled back all the way to the city (which meant we wasted 1+ hour and I took my own way back…the way which was familiar to me.