I will end year 2009 at $3,023 spent on electronics. Are they excessive? Let’s review.

For myself totalling $2,301.

1. Canon EOS 450D + 18-200mm lens – $1,835.
2. Sandisk 16GB SDHC card – $62.
3. Holux M-1000C GPS logger – $104.
4. Canon EF-S 17-55mm lens – $1,100.
5. Sold Canon EF-S 18-200mm lens – ($800).

For families totalling $722.

1. Kington 4GB microSD card – $14.
2. Creative Live! Cam for notebook – $29.
3. K-World DVD Maker 2 – $110.
4. Sony earphone – $49.
5. HP Mini 5101 netbook – $520.

Come to think of it, the only spending I did for myself this year were all camera-related, and here hoping all those investments actually produced great shots this year and beyond.

So, what do you think? Excessive? Or not?

For more details: http://stemi.ws/kkr/natal-singapura-2009

Be there.

Tonight, those same aircon automagically turned itself on again. So, before our electricity bill shoot off the roof, preventive measures have to be taken. We’ve cut down their electricity supply for now, so it’ll keep them quiet until we decided it has to cool us, humans, again

The unit is located at Block 683A, the HDB area which is much more modern than the rest around them.

Amenities around:
- 10 minutes walking distance to the huge Jurong Point shopping mall, which have virtually everything you need.
- Next to Jurong Point are Boonlay MRT and Bus Interchange.
- Express bus 502 located below the block goes straight to Orchard, City Hall, Esplanade, etc.

The Master Room is complete with aircon, attached bathroom, wardrobe, dressing table.
The unit itself has a big living room, you can cook in the house. You’ll be staying with other Indonesian female professionals.

Price: only $800 (neg.) for up to two persons; Utility bills to be shared with everyone staying in the house.

Contact Hendrik @ 9856 5589 for viewing/details.

Photoworks Indonesia in Biak

Collection of photo albums

If you’d like to know more about Photoworks Indonesia, keep an eye on http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=252072090065. I took over 100 photos of different items in that whole day, it tells you how many items and customizations that they can handle and provide you, it worth checking when you have the need for a photo album.

Photo album

Customized boxes are available too

I had lunch at Hoka-hoka Bento, *finally*, and it tasted great as usual. For drink, it was Teh Botol, what else right?

True to my IT background, after seeing the PCs there without proper backups, shared terminals were given Administrator rights, etc., I couldn’t help myself NOT to fix all of them. At least, I didn’t spot any viruses around this time

Dinner time

Dinner time, few family members gathered at Ikan Cianjur at Batu Tulis. Their signature dish is Ikan Fesmol. I don’t know what Fesmol is, I only know Fesbuk :p

My two nieces, however, are not interested with the food on the table. They preferred chocolates bread and avocado juice instead.

Eldest niece with avocado juice

And this is when you give a 1.5 year old a chocolate bread

Sunday was even a longer day. I woke up at 6 AM, reached GRII church at Kemayoran for 7 AM Sunday service. After the service, I went to Bakmi GM for breakfast with Evie’s family. The breakfast was soon followed by me and Evie visiting my grandma and my parents for mango dessert and Hokkien Mee lunch. After lunch, we quickly dashed to Vivien’s holy matrimony in a church in Sunter. With me having no clue on where the church was, I drove around Sunter area with Evie’s holding my phone with GPS on. We got lost for a while before we finally found the church half hour later.

Evie and Me

After the holy matrimony, we drove back to Mall Kelapa Gading to meet my high school friends for a mini-reunion between 3-5 PM. We walked around the mall for an hour, then we went to Mangga Dua Square for Vivien’s wedding dinner. After Evie went home, I drove home, getting lost in Kemayoran area, but found my way back home safely.

Me, Evie, Tung2, Meli, Wylma, and Sara

With a draining Sunday, no wonder I only woke up at 12 PM on Monday, a novelty, haha… I went to optical shop to buy a new glasses for myself. This one I wear is more than 6 years old now. The good thing is, the power of my right eye has reduced though the power of my left eye has increased a bit. The cylinder power in both eyes have magically disappear, so after 6 years, it seems like my eyes have actually gotten better. Me and family went for dinner at Duck King, and ended the day at bowling’s alley. I took 431 photos that day, and spent the night editing photos *again*.

Me at bowling alley

My youngest niece

Tuesday was not much different. I went to my dad’s office, helped to digitize handwritten notes I found there, and finished up a product brochure’s design. After dinner, I browsed the net for images for my next product’s brochure’s design.

No doubt, tomorrow will be a long day again, I’ll update again in a few days

As planned, I upgraded my Macbook to Snow Leopard on Friday evening without any issue. However, I like things clean, and in the past year, I have dumped so many rubbish into it, and so I thought it’s a good time to do some house cleaning.

Saturday morning, I backed up everything I have, erased my disk, and install Snow Leopard fresh. 30 minutes later, I have Snow Leopard clean-installed, and few hours later, I have all my usual apps installed as well. Restoring backup took a few more hours, as I have ~70GB of videos and ~115GB of photos.

So far, I am impressed, everything ran fast. Launching Safari is something like a second, shutting down a mere 3 seconds, not more than four.

The main event started at 10.30pm, but there are fringe shows nearby which started at 7.30pm. After I had my dinner in Asian Kitchen, City Link (which has better noodle than Din Tai Fung), I went straight to the park nearby the museum with Evie and Rafi. The other folks later joined us there. One thing you know when you go there is you gotta bring your camera, and so I went with full gear, Canon EOS 450D with 17-55mm IS f/2.8 lens borrowed from Jowena.

The fringe shows started at 7.30pm, and these are the performances which I bothered to take picture of.

They call themselves "Deng"

Some dance

At around 9pm, we started walking towards the museum so we could get a better spot to take picture from. Unsurprisingly, there are already LOTS of people setting up their tripod around the museum, so we tried to find the best available spot from whatever empty spaces available.

The Loop of Fortune

The show started with some lady walking around, dancing, but I couldn’t see much as she was too far away, then it was these two men who continued playing drums in rotations, upside down.

Men playing drums

Then, the real loop of fortune show started in front of really cool backdrops of various decorations to the museum’s face.

Loop of Fortune in action

Finally, it was fireworks galore. Not as great as those National Day fireworks, but these are stage fireworks, so it was so close to you, you can feel it.

Fireworks

They ended the fireworks show with this great fireworks coming down from the museum’s building, really good stuff.

I love these fireworks the most !!

The crowds who were there soon left after the whole show ended. We waited for a while to wait for the crowd to clear up a bit before we head our way back home.

The crowds

On our way back to the MRT, I saw this poster.

The Cross of Christ

In the midst of Great Singapore Sale, it reminded us one most precious thing, human salvation through Christ, though free, is not for sale coz it ain’t cheap.

There were five cameras that went with us on the trip, and as expected, we came back with roughly 16,000 photos. That’s enormous amount of photos. So far I’ve only run through half of them, and still waiting to go through the rest.

Truth be told, I was planning to finish going through the photos before I started jotting down our travel experiences, but a month since I came back, and I probably have not remembered as much as I had last month.

We shall see if I’ll ever find enough time and more importantly self-will to start writing about our Europe trip. The last complete blog on my US trip took me a couple of weeks to complete. Maybe I should just write one summary blog post?

Or, follow me at http://twitter.com/hendrikch.