Singapore, my home
Posted: January 24, 2010 Filed under: Life | Tags: coming of age, home, Singapore Leave a comment »
A repressive state for those who yearn for freedom of speech, political expressions. Who can fault the ruling party when we were thrown out to fend on our own, surrounded by hostile neighbors in the recent past?
As Singapore enters the knowledge era, we are still stuck in trying to artificially suppress our bluecollar wages by mass importing foreigners who will work longer hours for cheaper. As the proportion of Singaporeans decreases in relation to the new immigrants, there’s only 1 thought running through my head:
fight or leave this place.
Taking o’ Minolta TLR out for a spin
Posted: January 3, 2010 Filed under: Frugality, Life, Photography | Tags: 120, Photography, TLR Leave a comment »I’ve been neglecting my old film cameras for quite a bit. Can’t remember the last time I used them. This year’s resolution is to take more pictures of my future wife as we both enter our 31st year on Mother Earth. We are all going to die eventually, but we made plans for the future to enjoy life to the fullest—content with what ever money we can make from our humble business ventures.
See, both of us quit our previous jobs—tired of long hours trying to make a living. We weren’t making bucket loads of cash or even own an apartment yet. Thing is we recognise the need of spending time with our aging parents, friends, people who matter and each others’ company. We still have dreams that we want to pursue which if we are employed and working 12-16 hour days—won’t enable us to fully work on projects that make us happy. We traded a life of constant income for a life of financial insecurity.
Even after 7 months of going full time on photography, I’m worried about how I’m going to service my insurance, pay my bills, etc.
Life is too short to worry about money though.
Have a great new year and may your dreams come true.
What if you know you will never be rich?
Posted: December 26, 2009 Filed under: Frugality, Life, Photography | Tags: Frugality, Life, rich Leave a comment »Let’s rephrase that: “What if you know you will never get rich from the current job you’re holding?”
I’ve been thinking about those jobs I had been holding over the years. Sales personnel, Graphic designer, Web Designer, 3D artist, Motion graphics designer, producer, executive producer and the flavor of the week is: Photographer.
I’ll never be filthy rich from working in the Arts, Media, Visual communication industry; or what ever you want to call it. Would I still do it? Yes. I’d hate to work in a job where I’m selling a product I have zero interest in to tons of people, even though it’ll fetch me ‘mirrions’. Maybe I’m just losing perspective of the way world works, maybe I’m just jealous of those making big bucks from a job they don’t even enjoy.
As we are entering 2010, I think back on the last 30 years of my life—not that I can remember all of them, but there’s one thing I remember vividly like I was 12 when I first discovered that I loved colors, painting and drawing: Happiness. Somehow, I lost a little of that innocent wonder. It’s all dollars and cents now. I rationalise to myself: “I need to feed myself and the Family.” That part is the strongest motivating force to work like a manic photographer running around, hoping to impress the client of my diligence—wanting them to engage my services again.
Creating images for whatever reason still thrills me. I hope that in the year 2010, I’d be able to feed myself with photography or at least learn to spend even lesser.
Enjoy the end of 2009.
Merry Christmas!
Posted: December 26, 2009 Filed under: Frugality, General | Tags: Apple, Frugality, iPhone, iTouch Leave a comment »It’s been a really busy week. First off, the iPod Touch that a friend handed down to me went busto—the ‘home’ button collapsed and I had to purchase an iPhone with a 2 year bond to the carrier in order to get it at a subsidized rate of $98. A day after that, I realised that I would have preferred a phone running Linux simply because most of the applicatoins available on Appstore has to be paid for the full feature. Sure, there are great free apps on Appstore, but the Linux community takes the cake on free and open-source apps.
For now, I’m trying to get used to the power hungry iPhone. The battery just doesn’t last for more than a day. We’ll see how it goes.
Command line Linux Jukebox?
Posted: December 3, 2009 Filed under: Frugality Leave a comment »A little bit of geek talk that has nothing to do with photography or Art. I’ve always had a strong interest in free software and naturally it led me to Linux about 2 years ago. Even though I couldn’t use Linux in my previous job as a designer, I had the chance to fiddle with it from time to time on my old computer. I believe in using computers till they can’t be repaired or it will simply take too much time or money to fix it. Over the years my friends’ obsolete computers collected in my room and I could find any uses for them other than installing Linux and learning about this mysterious open-source beast.
The beauty of Linux is that it has so many different branches that you can find any ‘Distro’ for just about any computer with any hardware. Even a 486 computer with 16MB RAM can be made to run.
This time round, I’ve installed Arch Linux on a relatively powerful machine with virtualbox. Needless to say, I’m setting off with just command-line and hoping to build upon it–installing only applications that I truly need. Forget about a GUI since I’m using it for typing, surfing the Internet for information, listening to music, general pissing around in IRC and IM. Definitely don’t need a GUI for all that jazz, but doing all this in the ancient command-line can really test ones patience. Still, there’s always something new to learn and I get bored too easily.
All I’m saying for now is that I’m enjoying myself and hoping to install Linux on that 4 year old computer sitting in the corner collecting dust. I hope to turn it into a Jukebox and maybe with a little Internet connective for those days I want to listen to an Internet radio channel.
Don’t throw that old computer out, turn it into something useful.
