Full Moon Drama

Posted on 23 February 2011 by Mimi

I did a bit of tinkering with Photoshop today and spliced two photos together — one of a dramatic morning sky with the moon overexposed…and one of the full moon with the rest of the sky underexposed. I cut out the moon, pasted it over the dramatic sky, made slight adjustments to the brightness of the full moon and voila! A dramatic morning sky with an equally dramatic full moon!

Click on the image above to see a slightly bigger version for a better feel of the drama ;)

I’m counting down the days until the weekend. How about you?

Lonely in Jakarta,
Mimi

Categories: Rojak | 7 Comments

Shooting The Full Moon

Posted on 19 February 2011 by Mimi

Moonlight streaming through my bedroom window woke me up at 5 o’clock this morning. I gazed at the full moon, as though dreaming, for a few minutes before the photography-enthusiast in me mentally kicked me in the shins and told me to grab my D90 before it’s too late.

To be very honest, I’ve never photographed the moon before. As in, photograph it properly. So I quickly referred to Mansurovs.Com for a quick primer on how to shoot the moon. [NB: Naseem Mansurov is a photographer based in Colorado, USA who takes photographs of landscapes that make me weak in the knees. He also writes many tutorials and how-to's in his site, "How To Photograph The Moon" being one of them.]

As Naseem suggested, I set my D90 to the following settings: ISO 200, aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/250. Since it was a full moon, the shutter speed rendered the moon far too bright. So I played around with the shutter speed until I was satisfied with the image that I got.

Here’s the JPG of the best shot that I got — nowhere near Naseem’s jaw-dropping shot but a promising start (I hope!):-

Shot with a D90 and 18-200mm VR II lens, shutter speed: 1/500, aperture: F/11, ISO: 200

I also shot it in RAW but realized too late that Photoshop Elements is too puny to handle that sort of file *sigh*

The elusive full moon made me wish I’m a better photographer…and predictably wished for better zoom lenses, as well ;)

Categories: Photography | Tags: | 15 Comments

Subtract 32 From Degrees Farenheit…

Posted on 16 February 2011 by Mimi

Random childhood memory: a dim cinema, a 2D cartoon, and a ditty so catchy it’s still stuck in my mind many, many years after I first heard it.

It’s easy to change from English to metric.
The system is fun if you know it.
So, let’s all convert from English to metric.
We’ll do it, and share it and show it!

Just multiply inches by 2.54 and there you’ll get centimeters.
The feet multiplied by 0.305 will you equivalent meters.
Multiply pounds by 0.45 will give you kilograms it’s true.
The gallons times 3.79 will turn into liters for you.
Subtract 32 from degrees Farenheit, the result keep it in mind.
Why, when you multiply that by 5 over 9, you’ll get Celcius just fine.

The yards and the miles are things of the past. Use meters and go kilometers.
So out with the English. We’re modern at last. The system of metric is better!

To this day, I still convert Farenheit to Celcius by singing this song ;)

Which brings me to the question: why can’t the Americans just use the Metric system just like the rest of the world??

Categories: Rojak | 13 Comments

How To Avoid An ‘Ambush’ By Customs Officers At Jakarta Airport

Posted on 12 February 2011 by Mimi

If you are traveling to the Jakarta, the last thing you want to do is to be asked by Indonesian Customs to open up your luggage and endure a 100% check of your personal stuff and unmentionables.

The Preliminaries: Just before exiting Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, everyone must fill up a Customs Declaration Form and hand it over to a waiting Customs  officer. Even if you choose to go through the Green Lane (Nothing To Declare), you will be asked to put your hand-carried items ONLY through the luggage scanner.

The Ambush: Sometimes, out of the blue (or so it seems), the Customs officer on duty suddenly picks out random checked-in luggage (at least, it LOOKS random) and asks an unsuspecting traveler to put it through the luggage scanner.

The Nightmare: The Customs officer on duty might decide to ask you to open up your bag for a 100% check. And they might just find some silly reason to make things difficult for you and not let you go unless you give them some uang kopi (literally: coffee money).  I mean, we are all bona fide travelers here, right? With nothing to hide, right? We just don’t like being hassled, right? Right??

The Trick: To avoid such a predicament, the moment you take your bag off the luggage carousel,  do a quick visual check.  Look for small chalk marks, like the ones on my battered Samsonite bag in the pic below.

marked luggage (Jakarta airport)

Did you see the small mark on the front portion?  And a smaller second mark on the side? And that, Virginia, is THE mark that screams to the Customs officer “Check me!”.

The Solution: Should you notice such marks on your luggage, just act nonchalantly and take your luggage trolley to the toilet, conveniently located very close to the luggage carousels. Take a piece of toilet tissue, wet it, and wipe off the mark from your bag. Arrange your luggage (if you have several) on the trolley in such a manner so that the wet portion of your bag is not so obvious. Then walk past the Green Lane as confidently as possible.

May your trip to Jakarta be hassle-free. Good luck!

P.S. As Filipina expat WitsAndNuts commented, carton boxes are also a surefire way of attracting the attention of Customs officers. So do your best not to use them when packing your stuff.

Categories: Travel | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

My Amazing Flying Lantern Experience

Posted on 7 February 2011 by Mimi

Tonight, at a friend’s Chinese New Year open house, my children and I experienced for the very first time the magic of lighting a paper lantern and watching it float away, up, up to the sky.

It reminded me very much of that magical scene in Tangled…even though what we did was on a much, much smaller scale. But the experience was totally awesome all the same!

I’ll be watching the night sky for more of these lanterns on the 15th day of the Lunar New Year, a.k.a. Chap Goh Mei (Chinese: 十五暝), which should fall on the 17th of February this year.

Xin Nian Kuai Le! 新年快樂! Happy New Year!

Categories: Rojak | Tags: , , | 10 Comments