Just what shall we eat??

Started from the milk powder issue in China, more and more dairy products were recalled. Today I received 5-6 emails regarding other food that may be highly hazardous to our health too. By browsing through the list - milk products we have milk powder, condensed milk, milky candies, cakes, M&M, dairy products etc... then other food such as preserved vege/taufu/eggs, snacks, beans, sausages, biscuits, soya bean drinks etc... it's a long list. Few emails also show pix of factories with extremely dirty environment that made me wanna puke.

Just what is safe to eat then?? -> non-China products, or non-asian products, or simply non-factory-manufactured products??? How to tell what is safe when the lab can't possibly test everything??

Regarding the milk powder case, I think the culprit Sanlu should be presented an award. Why?? Well, the impact of melamine on human health was being detected and confirmed due to Sanlu added excessive melamine to the milk powder causing few cases of baby death due to kidney failure. This is in fact an undeniable case as these babies were all found drinking Sanlu milk powder.

Due to this, other brands were tested and found with melamine as well but with much less amount. Imagine without Sanlu's case, more and more babies and adults will be poisoned slowly with melamine and eventually we are looking at enormous outbreak of kidney failure years later. At that time, it would be hard to find the root cause as there are simply too many possibilities. So even though very ironic, Sanlu should be given an award for running an experiment with proven results in short period of time.

Do you get what I am trying to tell you here??... Now, there are so many other things that may content all kinds of harmful substances but because it's not EXCESSIVE, so there is no proof to relate these things to certain type of illness. Hence nothing will be done and we continue to be poisoned slowly everyday, and eventually more and more people were found with cancers, kidney failure, liver failure, mental illness etc...

In view of this, what shall we do?? (With problem statement defined, come the proposal for solution)... First let's look back at the root causes. Why are there more and more products with hazardous content?

1. Lack of knowledge and experience. As I say, not enough evidence to prove the impact of certain substances. Hence it is hard to define the specification for testing. Even there are tests to detect everything, just how high is high??

Solution: It takes time to develope knowledge and experience, so temporary no quick solution. What can be done is to simply ban all substances that can't be proven safe.

2. Lack of ethics and knowledge among many business owners and agents... $$$ come first.

Solution: No quick solution. Why?? Well, if one decides to hide something, or is stupid enough to do something without knowing the consequence, it's hard for others to find out unless something BIG happens (small things will usually be covered). Of course, improve education and knowledge sharing may help but come to the end, it's a battle between morality vs. $$$ for these people to decide what they should do.

3. Advancement in technology - The Industrial Revolution in Britain in the late 18th century made possible a transition in previously manual-labour-based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. This made food production and many other types of manufacturing more efficient and less labour-intensive. The trend spread from Britain to Europe and eventually to the whole world. In fact, there were not many factories before 18th century, while human have existed thousand years without it.

So what has machine-based manufacturing brought us?? Mass production, competition, price war, and jobs (high percentage of the labour market are involved in manufacturing). So in order to survive, cost must be low, production must be high, specification must pass etc. The results: Finding cheaper substitutes, food genetic re-engineering, adding additives to achieve certain desired results.

Solution: Again no short term solution except one... if we can't change the world, we can change ourselve. That means we can choose not to support factory products and go for fresh food. If there are doubts on fresh produce in the market, then we have to grow everything ourselve.

Alternatively, just forget about all these worries and continue to live as before, try our luck and see what's our karma. In that case, I have one idea to share on risk reduction, i.e. if we do not stick to eating same type of food on regular basis, the chances of developing illness in short period of time is lower. This means you can try to randomize your food menu everyday. Worst come to worst, today you may be melamine poisoned but if you don't consume milk product everyday, then the impact will be diluted. Tomorrow, you may be lead poisoned slightly, then the day after, some other things... but just don't eat the same thing everyday and let our liver and kidney have enough time to filter. At the same time, drink more water (I mean 'clean' water) to dilute whatever.

Hopefully, WHAT DIDN'T KILL US, WILL MAKE US STRONGER!!! Good luck!!

Camera talk - Reasons for taking up DSLR photography

I have just written about reasons for giving up DSLR photography, so I think I should also write about reasons to continue this hobby.

1. You will never run out of idea of what to do in the weekend.
2. You start to read about camera and photography during your spare time.
3. You start to see the world in 'photography angle', admire colors of flowers, the sky, the clouds etc., and get excited to see both beautiful and ugly side of the world.
4. You start to think think think - about what photography and art are about, about the message and the techniques involved by looking at a photo, imagining shooting some incredible scenes, thinking about the line between photography and software editing... just so many things to add on to my 'thinking list'.
5. You found another way to express yourself.
6. You start to notice how different people see things in different way through their camera.
7. You found new toys - camera and lenses, besides internet.
8. You found time and space to be by yourself, taking pix and admiring colors of nature, and enjoying peace of mind while u are trying to compose and focus.
9. You found new challenge to yourself - in mastering the tools, composing a photo, to be creative and to combat with hot/humid weather and heavy camera.
10. You feel thankful to God for giving you a pair of eyes that are so much more powerful than a camera sensor. No matter how good a DSLR is, our eyes are still much better.

So even though I am still a beginner and often get disappointed with the pix I took (the composition and color not nice, the pix not sharp enough, the exposure is out etc.) or may never be good in photography, still... 'I am loving it'.

The biggest recession is coming...

Last night I watched TV and the financial analyst said that there are many predictions that the world is going to suffer from the biggest recession in the recent 100 years.

The last biggest recession was the 1930's world recession where many people went jobless. This time, there are 3 main things that could make it much worse than then (followings are in my own term, not the analyst's term):

1. U.S. influence - near to 30% of the current world economy, and it's currently suffering from financial crisis.
2. The use of USD as the major trading currency world wide, where USD is generated based on government bond, not gold.
3. Globalization ties the whole world together financially. So if U.S. sinks, others will sink too.

Even George Soros also warns crisis will only get worse:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080917/bs_afp/
usfinancebankingbritainsoros_080917000409

I think one of the potential solutions is for China who is one of the current biggest holder of U.S. bond, to step in and start to acquire Wall Street's companies?? What next?? China to take the control over from U.S. on Wall Street and remote control the world economy?? Haha... I'm quite impressed with my talent in plotting such conspiracy... (I must admit I did steal some idea from Anwar Ibrahim or may be I should say I was 'inspired' by his recent conspiracy... hahaha)

Anyway, does anyone have any idea how to deal with recession?? Imagine if everyone goes jobless and the $$ is worth nothing, what would you do??

p/s: Well, pay me RM100 and I will share more info on this topic with you... kakaka

Camera talk - Reasons for giving up DSLR photography

1. Too heavy to carry tripod and lenses around, especially for female.
2. Too troublesome to carry a DSLR on a trip oversea, have to choose between taking pix or shopping, can't do both at the same time 'cos camera is too heavy to bring for shopping. DSLR also add on to the luggage weight.
3. Background too bright -> over-expose and lose details. In order to capture the details on bright background, have to take multiple shots at different exposure and learn how to do HDR editing.
4. There is just no 1 single lens that can shoot macro, tele and wide angle etc. So need to buy multiple heavy expensive lenses and bring them all if you can't decide between shooting landscape or macro.
5. No matter how good your camera is, best pix still need some editing here and there... Need to have time and patience.
6. There is no clear line between photography and photoshop editing.
7. Forget about night time event shooting, you either need to use a tripod, vibration reduction lens (not sufficient), or a flash. Just so troublesome. Might as well just use a digicam with flash on.
8. You never see yourself in the pix 'cos nobody else know how to use your DSLR.

A colleague of mine just gave up DSLR photography recently and decided to just use his old Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20 which is a 5-megapixel digital camera with a high-quality Leica 12x optical zoom (equivalent to a 36 - 432mm zoom on a 35mm camera) and has a constant F2.8 brightness throughout the entire zoom range. His comment is it's "Great for Outdoor Photography, Poor in Low Light" but that's good enough I guess.

Hero Movie

This is what you can do with your DSLR if you are not going out to do any shooting...







What a scene... after all these years, they finally kissed each other on the screen.

My portraits

Since nobody is going to shoot an album for me, I used Pig Pig's Coolpix to snap a few portraits of myself...



Hello...

(* disadvantage of being a photographer all the time *)

'Miss Sg. Apong' - Hoonster (Part II)

Busy busy busy... finally I got some time to post the Part II...

Model 2 : 'Miss Sg. Apong' Hoonster














Let me try to create some different feel here...








How about adding some effect like this... (I actually like this one... if you know what I mean... kakaka...)

'Miss Hong Kong' - Pig Pig (Part I)

I planned to do some shooting on 'models' today.

Model 1 : 'Miss Hong Kong' Pig Pig

"You should care for me"??

Do you care about what others comment about you? Have you ever encountered situation where others expect you to treat them well, to say things or behave in the way that they prefer, and they keep expressing in different ways trying to convince you to buy their comments, hoping that you could adjust yourself to please them better?

Somehow I have experienced this from time to time, especially with new friends who don't know me well. Well, I did not tell a lot of them that even though I like to make new friends but the bottom line is it should not come with a lot of expectations. I might look really friendly to many people that some may think they could use comments like a knife to manipulate me. Well, then they are very wrong. Those who really go further to abuse the friendship by trying to start commenting this and that too much, I am sorry for being rude to just turn away.

Life is short, I have made a wish to live a happy and stress-free life, so I just won't be bother to care so much. May be cruel, may be unfair that I did not tell you upfront that I am not that simple minded, characterless, friendly (whatever you think I am) etc. Sorry for walking away like that without explanation when what you are trying to do starts to annoy me.

Yeah, I am bad and imperfect, so what?!! At least I know what I need and what I don't.

The Family Day (23 Aug '08) - Fathers and Kids

This is by far my favorite series...


























...love the color, the expression, and the interaction between fathers and kids very much. I love shooting this session.