Meditation at Penang Bukit Bendera

Today, I joined 1 day meditation retreat organized by Vajrapani Meditation Centre (associated with New Kadampa Tradition - an Tibetan Buddhism for English speaker). I managed to know about this from The Star newspaper noticeboard. It is held on top of Penang Hill in a colonial designed restaurant called David Brown's Restaurant. It cost me RM60 with lunch provided. The lunch is skimpy (only bread and some vegetable). I grab some corn in cup outside of the restaurant for RM2.50. :P

Anyway, here's some photo taken with Fuji F40fd:

View from Penang Hill

You can view the bridge from here

Paya Terubong/Ayer Itam

Train track

The train

Foreign tourist

Few Malay girls taking photo

House on the Hill

Soaring below the cloud (check out the bird below the cloud)

Garden of David Brown's Restaurant

The meditation place

Some Brochures

The Altar (First time I see this. A lot of foods on the table)

Cute water dispenser

Cool day at Penang Hill

David Brown Restaurant

Another Penang view from the Hill

Palm TreesBukit Bendera Signage

The monkey

Hi! Am I cute?

Hello hello

I got long tail!!!

Clouds are clearing away

I'm protecting my child

Politics in Malaysia is getting confusing

Ever since the political tsunami that befall Malaysia on the fated 8th March 2008, the political scene in Malaysia is changed. Not sure for the best or the worst in the future. But I can see it is for the best now. But its a bit confusing. Before this, it is 1 vs 1 (BN versus opposition). Now, its not clear anymore. Its everyone versus everyone. Currently, hottest news is fuel hike. So BN versus the rakyat. Later, allegation of Judge Ian Chin regarding misconduct of Mahathir in interfering with judiciary matter. That's Mahathir vs Judicial. And then someone said this maybe side show to divert attention of the public from fuel hike. It also could be Mahathir vs Abdullah. It's been more pronounce ever since the BN massive losses in the poll. Due to this, there's infighting in UMNO. UMNO vs UMNO. And also, there's infighting in almost every major political parties in BN. In MCA, there's snoop squad case. And Chua Soi Lek who is implicated in sex video is trying to make a come back. In Gerakan, a party which is almost decimated in the poll, lost few of its members whom are employed by PR (a new coalition of opposition). MIC, an Indian political party) which is hated by Malaysian Indian ironically, are in shambled and their relevance are being questioned. Not all is well in PR though. There's problem in electing MB in Perak where Lim Kit Siang is threaten to boycott. But it is resolved amicably, Besides infighting, there's fighting between parties in BN. Sabah for instance, threaten BN to give them more (or else, I assume they will jump to PR). MCA and other non-Malay party start to question some policies which is threatening other ethnic in Malaysia. All this is very confusing indeed. Is this the democracy we wanted? This is absolutely confusing and not really that stable compared to old time. But do we want the oppressive and self indulgence of UMNO last time after the 2004 almost absolute victory? Hell not!! Hope we'll see more stability in the future. But in the meantime, stay tuned. A lot of great show played in your newspaper or more recently in internet. Bravo to Mahathir to have MSC. Probably due to MSC, we've less censored news. Or maybe due to censured news in MSM, we're now resorting to internet. Good luck to Malaysian, wherever you are...

Guide to dSLR

I've learned a lot posting in LYN Photography section. This is short guide to buy dSLR.

I would categorized 3 types of dSLR in the market currently:
1) Beginner
2) Semi-pro
3) Pro

Beginner have two types of category which is beginner normal and beginner newbie:
1) Beginner normal :- Sony A200/A300/A350, Nikon D50/D70/D80, Canon 350D/400D/450D, Olympus E510/E520, Pentax K100D/K200D
2) Beginner newbie :- Nikon D40/D40x/D60, Olympus E410/E420

The best buy for those who just want to take up photography is always the beginner normal model. Beginner newbie model have a lot of weaknesses that I normally won't advice to buy since the price between them is very little.

Next up is those who have the money to jump straight to semi-pro model. This has a lot of feature and might not be user friendly:
Semi pro dSLR : Sony A700, Canon 30D/40D, Nikon D200/D300, Pentax K10D/K20D, Olympus E3

My personal preference during middle of June 2008 is Canon 40D based on price/performance ratio.

Next up is the pro dSLR which the price is unreacheable for most of us which I will not talk about. There's a bridge between semi-pro and pro camera that is Canon 5D. This is Full Frame camera which have better noise per ISO ratio. But still the price is quite expensive (RM7000 ~ USD2000).

Almost all camera come with kit. But if you're concern about the quality, then you better buy body first and then buy the lens separately. Some of the kit lens is quite good. Olympus kit lens is one of them.

Anyway, my recommendation for useless lens is those with constant aperture. Meaning, even after zoom, you have same aperture. Before I continue, I would like to state that there's 3 types of lens that you can categorized:
1) Normal zoom lens - aperture smaller as you zoom
2) Constant aperture zoom lens
3) Prime lens - cannot zoom

The best quality will be prime lens. And they are cheaper too if you take price/aperture ratio. However, you lose the convenience of zoom. You have to walk around to get the perfect framing. Prime lens will have the biggest aperture of them all and suitable to take portrait photo. And most people buy 50mm f/1.4. Canon people love to buy 85mm f/1.8 or 135 f/2 which is cheap.

Constant aperture hit the sweet spot of big aperture and can zoom. But there's two aperture size normally come with this. That is f/2.8 and f/4. Of course f/2.8 is the best since you have the convenience to use it indoor. f/2.8 will let more light into the camera which is important in taking a better picture.

Normal zoom lens is very slow and small in aperture size. This is very cheap and normally supplied as kit lens.

I would recommend this lenses to anyone who want to have full complete photography gear that is good for everything and cheap:
1) Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
2) Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8
3) Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 HSM II Macro

All the brand above is third party lens. This is cheaper a lot than the branded one. And some of them is even better than the branded Canon/Nikon/etc, for example Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 which is sharper than the Nikon version of it.

Definition of addiction

I think addiction must be understand before we can rid of it. As always said, we must get rid of the root cause and not the symptom. And so we should understand the root cause of addiction. I was suddenly enlightened about the cause of addiction through some reading lately. It just make sense to me that some addiction is really caused by the need to have instant gratification. This instant gratification is normally wasting time such as surfing net, chatting, emailing, or drinking. So much so that a lot of our time is wasted doing nothing instead of doing something to improve our live i.e. reading books, exercising, etc.

With the definition of addiction stated as above, we can now try to find out why we want instant gratification during that time. Is it because doing important thing is very painful to us? Or because we're in some sadness? If its painful to do important stuff, we must find out why. Or at least we do it bit by bit and not as painful as to do it fully. And if we're sad, we have to know why we're sad. Are we too sensitive and causing us sadness unecessarily? Anyway, don't sweat over small stuff. There's more important things out there that needs our attention.

Anyway, take care.

The Last Lecture

I'm hopping on the bandwagon of the Last Lecture. Nope. I'm not going to die yet. But I just read the book and watch the video of The Last Lecture. Abundance of great advice. But its all the same advice repeated again and again from self help book. But we all just don't listen and practice. It feels good to read it but its not beneficial if we don't really practice it. Anyway, here is some advice from the book:

a) Don't complain. Just work hard. (Time wasted when complain can be channel to beneficial work)
b) Don't obsess over what people think. (IMHO, everyone is different. So you can't really satisfy everyone)
c) Dream big.
d) Best shortcut is long which is basically two words : work hard
e) A bad apology (insincere) is worse than no apology at all

This book can be bought cheaply from Amazon.