A quick Stroll at Bangkok Grand Palace

Harmonised colors. The Thais are great with use of colors.

These are Italian gold mosaic comissioned by the Thai King Rama V.

Even the ceilings are decorated with Ornate motifs.

One of the protectors.

Bees at the Lotus Flowers.

One of the golden lady statues. I noticed each one had slightly different features and expression. High level of craftsmanship.

This had smaller eyes and a longer neck.

Modern Vs Ancient. The phantom of the Grand palace.

The grand palace is one of Bangkok's biggest tourist attaction and the nation's functioning temple too. Getting there is a short trip by Taxi away, or you can take the Chao Phaya River Express and go to Wat Po and Wat Arun together. The problem with this place is that Cab drivers or Tuk Tuk drivers will tell you that the place is closed for the day or what not. Even after I reached near one of the entrance, I have a couple of con men telling me that the place is closed, or that I'm inappropriately dressed to go in. For the first part, it is absolutely untrue. It is open everyday until 5pm. You have to walk until you see the main gate with the sign "we are open everyday" to believe this.  Secondly, even you're not wearing long pants or skirts, there are many rental stalls renting pants or sarongs for like 30 baht. 

The entrance is a rather steep 400 baht which I guess goes towards maintenance of this very grand building. I guess if I am willing to pay 500 baht to eat a bowl of bird's nest which is merely birds saliva, and the birds aren't even paid too, then I should pay to visit this artistic marvel.

Quick shots at the Armenian Church

Nice Greece inspired architecture.


With a Pastors living quarters that is tropical colonial.



With a few sculptures depicting the passion of Christ in the compound.

Midnight bale at Mustafa

The place that sells everything you need or want or can think of at the 24hr Mustafa. I hate it when I get all kinds of racist statements. Eg too black or smelly or that the place is a fire hazard. Goodness.

Ancient vs modern light source

Happy New Year 2012!

Happy new year everyone! sharing some photos I took from yesterday's countdown at Marina Bay float. The thing cost me 56 bucks for 2 tickets and basically a seat to wait for the fireworks. The performance was rubbish. The walk home was exciting though, with the traffic control absolutely missing.
╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮
╭⌒╭⌒╮╭⌒╮～
,︶︶︶︶ ︶~~
╬　╱◥███◣
╬ ︱田︱田 田 ︱╬╬╬

will be arriving ! May you have a fun and magical year. All the best happen to you！
Treasure your love ones, and health

A quick stroll down Tanglin

Jack! I am flying!




Someone took a picture of me while I chilled.




Lines and boxes




Impressions of colored windows

Photography on Galaxy Note

I almost didnt manage to post this blog on the Galaxy Note because the andriod market did not have blogger app for singapore because of some geo location issue.

Anyway, as the Galaxy Note has a rather good 8 megapixel sharp camera, I want to check the apps that helps to edit photos.

So far I have tested out PicArt, Photoshop express, fx camera, toy camera and retro camera. They are all free but comes with a few ad banners.

The best of the lot is PicArt which allows the usual cropping, color adjustments, art filters and montage arrangements. It also allows photo sharing which is handy.




The branded Photoshop Express allows a useful subset of photoshop such as cropping, color adjustment and even some special arts effects.










The other apps Toy camera, Retro camera, fx cameras all have cute low-fi camera filters such as polaroid, holga, pinhole camera. But they all have one problem which is the app itself needs to be used to take the picture. A picture from the gallery cannot be selected. This is quite troublesome as i usually take my photos from the standard camera and then slowly edit.







Overall, although andriod has more than enough photography apps, i think they need a killer app like instagram or camera+ to beef up the photography crowd.

Unless we all go back to the decisive moment philosphy, do proper composition and eliminate all editing.

It feels like Spring

In Singapore, it's always either hot or rain. There are no cool breeze, no freezing winters, no seasons in the sun. It's all very boring.

But on this rainy day two weeks back, I noticed that there were lots of flowers on a tree. Where people spend thousands to go Japan to see the cherry blossoms, perhaps we should take a minute to appreciate this fleeting sight of tiny little white flowers on the crispy green tree.  Take a walk, enjoy the tropical nature, smell the musky humid, the wet steamy air. It's just nearby.

Take note! Galaxy note!

I thought the iPhone 5 will replace my iPhone 4. But with the stop gap 4s, I don't see much improvement. Just when I thought I will get a Galaxy s2, the newer Galaxy Note caught my attention with it's even bigger screen. Since I was essentially without contract for almost 6 months, I quickly bought it with an additional $50 discount from Singtel.




So far, besides allowing me to read more comfortably with the bigger screen, which is to be expected, the other thing that I like is the ability to play flash. Being on the iPhone means all sites with flash is a gonner. That means I can't play my Sims social and Farmsville or watch videos embedded in flash. I think it helps that this thing runs on a dual core processor with 1 gb ram which I believe is the same specs as my notebook at work.




This is the size comparison with Galaxy tab(which I think is too big for me to single handheld) and iPod touch. You can see that it's at a sweet spot between
too big and too small.

So far I haven't thought about life without Apps store yet since I have come to reply on quite a fair bit of stuff like Instagram and camera+ and stuff. the strength of iPhone is always about apps store than the phone. The android marketplace will always need to play catch up.

Also, after playing for a couple of hours on the note, it just doesn't feel as seamless and intuitive as an apple. But it's a small price to read more comfortably, with better battery life.

I feel sad on one hand that after the death of Steve jobs, people jumped ship to Samsung Galaxy and Sony errison. But I believe this promotes a more vibrant choices for consumer. I remember when I was purely delighted by a Nokia n95, the motorola razor and many other inventive phones. I guess it's time to be diverse and individual and not just reply on changing phone covers to differentiate ourselves.