Travel, Interior Decoration, Photography and Food

Mystery malady A wife is visiting her husband in hospital Husband : "I'm worried, dear, I don't think the doctors know what's wrong with me" Wife : "What makes you say that?" Husband : "The suggestions box at the end of the bed." Source: Marion Kaplinsky 2005. 1001 things to make you smile

Lighting that is too bright or too dim will disturb your calmness and makes you feel very sleepy. When you buy lights for your house, think where you will put them and what is it for? Arrange the lights where you can control the ambience for specific purpose i.e. romantic mood, party, relaxation etc. You may want to have a power cut if you use the following items to illuminate your house. (1) Novelty lamps, anything shaped like duck and its family or crumpled paper bag. (2) Fluorescent strip lights, especially with plastic covers that collect insects. If used in the kitchen, some extra flavour may be added to your dishes. (3) Hand holding an illuminated globe, don’t tell me that you are the witch that should be burned alive. (4) Fake plastic Tiffany lamps, are you the granny!!! (5) Picture lamps, OMG throw all these illuminated scenes of the KLCC, waterfalls or the Taj Mahal. These also indicate how bad your taste is. (6)Whhhaaaattttt….disco light! Are you joking? Who will get down to...

In this post, I will share more about the general photography composition rules. FIVE more rules will be described such as background, viewpoint, depth, framing and cropping. Choosing a right BACKGROUND is important for portrait photography. Look for simple background such as brick wall, green grasses, bright or dark background etc. If you do not have the luxury to choose the background, then increase the distance between your subject and the background, use lens with longer focal length (at least 50mm) and open up the aperture to the maximum (smallest f-value), this will create blur background. Thus, your subject will stand out. Dark background, 50 mm, f1.8 Think from where you will shoot before photographing your subject. Try viewpoints that are less common, be different. If the VIEWPOINT is common such as at eye level, then your photo will look common too. Try from high above, down at ground, from the side, from far away, from very close and so on. Viewpoint down at gro...

Kitchen is a HEART of a house. Functional kitchen not only acts as a place to cook BUT also as a place for socialization. Kitchen should also be soundly safe for cooking activities. So, how to know if you have a disastrous kitchen? If any of the following apply to you or your kitchen, then you should do something…..may be buying or renting a new house….lol. Preparing a simple meal such as cooking instant noodle a.k.a. MAGGI is so stressful. Your workspace to do all the chopping is only half meter wide. If you have used the kitchen for more than a year and still have TEN fingers, consider your-self as LUCKY. You can’t cook what you want when you want. The space is overrun with gadgets i.e. the blender, the toaster, the cutleries, the microwave, the multiple chopper, the bread-maker, the kettle. egg slicer, strainer etc. Your kitchen cannot accommodate more than one cook at a time and does not provide sufficient space for your guest...

Light decoration on palm trees (50 mm, f1.8) When ever we look at a photo, objects that are in focused will pull our attention. Cameras and lenses were developed to produce high quality image with brilliant focused. Object can be focused by either fully auto- or manual-focus. This can be done by a click of a button. Photo with images that look out of focus are usually due to cheap lens, sensor issue, vibration, aperture versus focus point issue, high ISO or that’s what the photographer want it to be. While driving; the yellow/orange circles are the road lights, the red circles are  the car breaking lights Road junction; the green circles are the traffic lights Out of focus images can be valuable if it was done with a careful plan. These photos are categorised as abstract image. Abstract images are suitable for large print for the living room or bed room, or as background for posters, slide of presentation, webpage etc. The quality of out of focus images is usually d...

Ouch! A husband and wife went to see a dentist. The husband said, "I want a tooth pulled. I don't want gas or NOVOCAIN because I'm in a terrible hurry. just do it quickly as possible." "You're a BRAVE MAN." said the dentist. "Now show me which tooth it is." So the husband turned to his wife and said, "Open your mouth and show him the tooth!" [Source: Marion Kaplinsky 2005. 1001 things to make you smile] Just me..........the brave man.

Arrggghhhhh!!!! Tariff for electrical usage is going up!!!! My house is very small….makes me feel claustrophobic!!!! Don’t worry! just read the suggestions in this post, it might help in reducing your stress J . Use colour to make your room much brighter and larger. A dark room or a room with small window will benefit from white, creams and pastel colours. The room will look spacious and light as pale colours reflect light. So you will save your budget here by less turning ON the light. A room with big window and very sunny can be painted with many colours. Cool colours i.e. the family of blue or green will tone down the room. Warm colours i.e. family of red or yellow will enhance its sunny properties. If your home ceiling looks very low, paint them with a paler colour than the wall as this will heighten the ceiling. If the room has picture rail, paint the top wall of the rail and ceiling with paler colour. A narrow corridor will benefits from pale colours on the floor, walls and ...

Grow your money If money doesn't grow on trees,  then WHY do banks have branches?

Previously, I have shared one of the composition rules, which is the Rule of Thirds. In this post, I will briefly describe the next 3 rules; (1) balance of elements, (2) leading lines, and (3) symmetry and patterns. Dam Square, Amsterdam; the lion statue is the main object, the column is the balance object How do we balance the elements? The rule of thirds suggests that a more interesting photo can be created by placing the subject off-center. The problem with this rule is it will leave a void in the scene, thus, the photo looks very empty. What you can do is to fill in the space with less important object (especially at out of focused). This is what we called BALANCE OF ELEMENTS . The lamp post is the main object, the door arc is the balance object Human eyes looking at a photo, it is naturally drawn along lines. Lines can be man-made or naturally occurred. These lines will pull us into the picture towards the subject or directed the journey through the landscape. Exampl...