boomerang

seven days ago was my 27th birthday. it was a good one. i was in town, taking pictures of hot air balloons at putrajaya and went for movie, alice in wonderland to be precise.



and two days after that i bought myself another pedro shoes. it's brown, leather, flat sole and semi casual. that i can wear it both on casual occasions and to the office with all the ties and cuff links.

but my birthday was also a day of truth. i learn something that day. after all these years, i finally swallowed the hard truth that a friend of mine didn't really appreciate me that much. somebody whom i thought would appreciate me the way i appreciate her. it turned out to be a devastating moments of truth when i finally learned that it is not always as i wanted it to be. what you give is what you get back, i guess. i screwed up last time. so, fair enough. :)

but few hours after that, i learned another truth that there will always be somebody else who appreciates me better. haha. i got my first birthday present in years. haha. from someone i barely know and it was a boomerang. cute. and irony.

futhermore, i got the letter saying i am heading back to peninsular. so farewell to sarawak. i am going to be transferred back to here, back in the operations. so, another good news. i'm so like a boomerang, can be thrown and yet i always come back. never fail. exactly like the what you give is what you get back thingy. like what justin said, what comes around, comes around. like a boomerang.

lol~

i am a true madridistas

i have been supporting real madrid club de futbol since i was fifteen when raul was still with his boyish short haircut. when hierro and fernando redondo were still around. real was just another second seeded club during that time when they won the champions league back in '98.

i have seen their ups and downs, but i never left them unsupported as my heart is already carved with an embroidery and it says "real madrid". only girls and real madrid had made me cried. i cried last year when barcelona trashed real 6-2 at the santiago bernabeu, real's own castle.

now it is all different when real are opted as the richest club in the whole planet with star studded line up in the likes of kaka, cristiano ronaldo and karim benzema. now, real madrid or informally known as "los merengues or the whites for their famous white strips or "los blancos" in spanish are tipped by sports pundits across the globe as the new galactic or "los nouvous galacticos" after the end of zidane, figo, beckham and ronaldo era.

last week, real again failed to see themselves advance to the last eight phase when they drew at home to olympique lyonnais, a french club. another disappointing champions league night. for 6 consecutive years, real failed to pass the last sixteen phase, the first knockout round.

what actually went wrong? they spend 260 million euros in total during last summer when they landed kaka, xabi alonso, cristiano ronaldo, karim benzema, raul albiol and others. they were so excited about the new project, and so do i. i was so desperate to see my club to clinch the treble title especially the champions league since their last win back in 2002 when zidane brought glasgow into haywire when he volleyed home the winner. i still remember that night. with the amount of money spent for the summer transfer fees, somehow the whole family put themselves in an immense pressure, burdens on their shoulder.

i don't want to recap and dwell what went wrong in the previous years. i want to specifically discuss what went wrong in their last match against lyon. as everybody know, xabi alonso the holding midfielder cum deep lying playmaker was suspended for that match. instead of replacing with similar kind of player, for example, fernando gago, manuel pellegrini the manager lined up jose maria guti and esteban granero in the middle of the park. so it was 3 of them in midfield, guti, granero and lassana diarra. guti and granero are similar kind of players. they have similar attacking mentality, more like a passer rather than to win the ball.

so it was only diarra alone in midfield to win the ball. that was the biggest mistake before the match was even started. with that, it was easy for lyon to dominate the possession the game when their have a larger percentage of ball possessions through out the match. when you fail to control the middle park of the pitch, it is simply as you are losing the game. this is somehow similar to what happened last year's match against juventus, and losing to arsenal somewhere in 2005, i think.

other than that, gonzalo higuain (my favorite star after aging raul has lost his touch) had a bad game. he was selfish in few occasions. he should have pass the ball to ronaldo who was in a better position to score. he simply blew up the chances and let the team down. but the real culprit that caused the team to lose the match was, the individuality plays. they were not playing as a team. everybody were so busy to prove their price tag. especially during the second half as they failed to response to lyon tactical reshuffled after the break which was, to cut the ball supply to the fowards by holding guti and granero down. simple but effective. they let lyon played their game as they wanted to like what they did in the previous leg three weeks ago in lyon.

but true football supporter backs his club no matter what condition the club goes. indeed, real madrid is having bad streaks in champions league. i have seen worst than this. like we didn't win anything in a season. bad times, frictions in the dressing room, speculations, you name it. but that's normal in football. people critics when you play badly and you don't perform. but as time progresses, real will prevail. i know it. patience to all madridistas out there. we still have la liga left to compete and to win. we will bring the trophies back in our estadio santiago bernabeu's gala room. next year. but i guess, money can't buy a team, a success, a legacy. ain't it dandy?

hala madrid~

swing and sway

tell me if my left hip sways too much during my back swing down towards the ball in my down swing. sigh~

i like how camilo villegas swings his drive. you got to see this!

kenny and its long shutter

it is approximately two months past since i first bought "kenny", my dslr. why kenny? well, it's canon made, but i prefer to call it kenny. we don't want to make it too easy too commercial, don't we? hehe.

well, i've been learning for the past two months. both practical and in theory. i dig for photography tips in the internet, i went for my aunt's engagement to kind of have the feel of wedding photography, i went to certain spots for night scenery and i get down, very low and dirty to get the unique kind of perspective.

to be honest, photography is a never-ending hobby. there's always something candid to shoot with, something memorial worth of taking, something special or an occasion to be remembered, someone special that you couldn't afford to lay your eyes away from watching them.

i also learn new software recently. adobe photoshop lightroom for RAW images processing. it is an advance photo editing software, a very focus medium, designed just to play around with photos. it's fun since i have to struggle to familiarize myself with the tools, layout and the concept. i like challenges. i still remember when i first ventured with adobe photoshop back in the year two thousand when i was still in high school and adobe illustrator few years later when i was in graduate. i never had any formal class, all i did was, kept myself busy digging the help section for tips and tutorials.

all in all, i love my kenny and what i can do with it. here are few examples of my night scenes capturing and long shutter results. enjoy~

the flash

i am in penang. attending terminal attachment in prai terminal for three weeks as part of gap closure for my accelerated capability development program before i go for promotion assessment.

yeah, it is good to be back. after almost three years past since i left penang for sarawak. the food is nice. the heat. but that's not what i want to address here.

time flies. it surely does. within the blink of an eye, now it is almost 3 years. i didn't notice how instant 3 years could be, how fast the clock ticks away until everybody here keep saying " welcome back, buddy!". man, i'm old.

time flashes. so fast, too vast that you couldn't imagine. until come to a point, you are not young anymore. sigh~

nevertheless, the food here are always splendid! char kuey teow and mee udang. nyummss~